own) and which nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that
blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey
Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas,
and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep me company.
They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that
place and time, - they, and the Arabian Nights, and the Tales of
the Genii, - and did me no harm; for whatever harm was in some of
them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it. It is astonishing
to me now, how I found time, in the midst of my porings and
blunderings over heavier themes, to read those books as I did. It
is curious to me how I could ever have consoled myself under my
small troubles (which were great troubles to me), by impersonating
my favourite characters in them - as I did - and by putting Mr. and
Miss Murdstone into all the bad ones - which I did too. I have
been Tom Jones (a child's Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a
week together. I have sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for
a month at a stretch, I verily believe. I had a greedy relish for
a few volumes of Voyages and Travels - I forget what, now - that
were on those shelves; and for days and days I can remember to have
gone about my region of our house, armed with the centre-piece out
of an old set of boot-trees - the perfect realization of Captain
Somebody, of the Royal British Navy, in danger of being beset by
savages, and resolved to sell his life at a great price. The
Captain never lost dignity, from having his ears boxed with the
Latin Grammar. I did; but the Captain was a Captain and a hero, in
despite of all the grammars of all the languages in the world, dead
or alive.

This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it, the
picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at