But I failed to please even the indulgent vicar, though he got his curate for nothing, and though his fair daughter amiably welcomed the not ungainly Coelebs; and as for the severe old clerk,--he naively blurted out, "Tell'ee what, sir, it won't do: you looks well,--but what means them stops ?" Alas! they meant the rebellion of tongue and lips against every difficult letter, a _t_, or a _p_, or a far too current _s_.

And so I came to the wise conclusion that I was not to be a parson.
And perhaps it's as well I'm not; for my natural combativeness would never have tolerated my bishop or my rector, or even the parish churchwarden, specially in these days of Ritualism and Romanism.

I was thus thrown back upon myself: and I now see gratefully and humbly how I was being schooled and forced into a mental era of silent thoughtfulness, in after years the seed of several volumes as well as innumerable ballads and poems which have flown as fly-leaves over the world.
After this clerical failure, my good father urged me to turn to the law, thinking that as a chamber counsel my intellectual attainments (and I had worked hard for many years) might yet be available to society and to myself, though on the "silent system:" but alas! verbal explanations are as necessary in a room as at the bar; I soon perceived that all could not be done on paper, and as I thoroughly hated law I speedily turned to other sorts of literature, in especial the fixing of my own rhymed or rhythmed thoughts in black and white.
There is a small chamber in the turret of No.

19 Lincoln's Inn Old Square, on the second floor of rooms then belonging to my late friend Thomas Lewin (afterwards a Master in Chancery, and well known not only for his Law books, but also for his Life of St.Paul) where I used to dream and think and jot down Proverbial morsels on odd bits of paper which gradually grew to be a book.

Lewin once, I remember, picked up from the wastepaper basket these lines which he admired much, and asked me where they came from: "For that a true philosophy commandeth an innocent life, And the unguilty spirit is lighter than a linnet's heart." They occur in my Essay on Ridicule, first series, so I had to confess as found out.
When my book appeared Lewin offered to review it for me in the _Literary Gazette_, then edited by his friend Mr.Landon, L.E.L.'s brother.