There were a couple of hundred volumes on the shelves--theology, history, biography, philosophy, science, travels, essays, and some old forgotten fiction; but no verse was there, except Shenstone, in a small, shabby, coverless volume.

This I read and re-read until I grew sick of bright Roxana tripping o'er the green, or of gentle Delia when a tear bedews her eye to think yon playful kid must die.

To my uncultivated mind--for I had never been at school, and lived in the open air with the birds and beasts--this seemed intolerably artificial; for I was like a hungry person who has nothing but kickshaws put before him, and eats because he is hungry until he loathes a food which in its taste confounds the appetite.

Never since those distant days have I looked at a Shenstone or even seen his name in print or heard it spoken, without a slight return of that old sensation of nausea.

If Shenstone alone had come to me, the desire for poetry would doubtless have been outlived early in life; but there were many passages, some very long, from the poets in various books on the shelves, and these kept my appetite alive.