"JOHN RUSKIN"

When once he could read, thenceforward his mother gave him regular
morning lessons in Bible-reading and in reciting the Scotch paraphrases
of the Psalms and other verse, which for his good memory was an easy
task. He made rhymes before he could write them, of course.

At five he was a bookworm, and the books he read fixed him in certain
grooves of thought, or, rather, say they were chosen as favourites from
an especial interest in their subjects--an interest which arose from his
character of mind, and displayed it. But with all this precocity, he was
no milksop or weakling; he was a bright, active lad, full of fun and
pranks, not without companions, though solitary when at home, and kept
precisely, in the hope of guarding him from every danger. He was so
little afraid of animals--a great test of a child's nerves--that about
this time he must needs meddle with their fierce Newfoundland dog,
Lion, which bit him in the mouth, and spoiled his looks. Another time he
showed some address in extricating himself from the water-butt--a common
child-trap. He did not fear ghosts or thunder; instead of that, his
early-developed landscape feeling showed itself in dread of foxglove
dells and dark pools of water, in coiling roots of trees--things that to
the average English fancy have no significance whatever.

At seven he began to imitate the books he was reading, to write books
himself. He had found out how to _print_, as children do; and it was his
ambition to make real books, with title-pages and illustrations, not
only books, indeed, but sets of volumes, a complete library of his whole
works. But in a letter of March 4, 1829, his mother says to his father:
"If you think of writing John, would you impress on him the propriety of
not beginning too eagerly and becoming careless towards the end of his