One day when fortunately I was alone, I was accosted by an old gentleman, dressed as a dissenting minister. He was pleased with my replies, and he presently made it a habit to be taking his constitutional when I was likely to be on the high road. We became great friends, and he took me at last to his house, a very modest place, where to my great amazement, there hung in the dining-room, two large portraits, one of a man, the other of a woman, in extravagant fancy-dress. My old friend told me that the former was a picture of himself as he had appeared, 'long ago, in my unconverted days, on the stage'.
I was so ignorant as not to have the slightest conception of what was meant by the stage, and he explained to me that he' had been an actor and a poet, before the Lord had opened his eyes to better things. I knew nothing about actors, but poets were already the objects of my veneration. My friend was the first poet I had ever seen. He was no less a person than James Sheridan Knowles, the famous author of Virginius and The Hunchback, who had become a Baptist minister in his old age. When, at home, Imentioned this acquaintance, it awakened no interest. I believe that my Father had never heard, or never noticed, the name of one who had been by far the most eminent English playwright of that age.
It was from Sheridan Knowles' lips that I first heard fall the name of Shakespeare. He was surprised, I fancy, to find me so curiously advanced in some branches of knowledge, and so utterly ignorant of others. He could hardly credit that the names of Hamlet and Falstaff and Prospero meant nothing to a little boy who knew so much theology and geography as I did. Mr. Knowles suggested that I should ask my schoolmaster to read some of the plays of Shakespeare with the boys, and he proposed The Merchant of Venice as particularly well--suited for this purpose. Irepeated what my aged friend (Mr Sheridan Knowles must have been nearly eighty at that time) had said, and Mr. M. accepted the idea with promptitude. (All my memories of this my earliest schoolmaster present him to me as intelligent, amiable and quick, although I think not very soundly prepared for his profession.)Accordingly, it was announced that the reading of Shakespeare would be one of our lessons, and on the following afternoon we began The Merchant of Venice. There was one large volume, and it was handed about the class; I was permitted to read the part of Bassanio, and I set forth, with ecstatic pipe, how In Belmont is a lady richly left, And she is fair, and fairer than that word!
Mr. M. must have had some fondness for the stage himself; his pleasure in the Shakespeare scenes was obvious, and nothing else that he taught me made so much impression on me as what he said about a proper emphasis in reading aloud. I was in the seventh heaven of delight, but alas! we had only reached the second act of the play, when the readings mysteriously stopped. I never knew the cause, but I suspect that it was at my Father's desire. He prided himself on never having read a page of Shakespeare, and on never having entered a theatre but once. I think I must have spoken at home about the readings, and that he must have given the schoolmaster a hint to return to the ordinary school curriculum.
The fact that I was 'a believer', as it was our custom to call one who had been admitted to the arcana of our religion, and that therefore, in all commerce with 'unbelievers', it was my duty to be 'testifying for my Lord, in season and out of season'--this prevented my forming any intimate friendships at my first school.
I shrank from the toilsome and embarrassing act of button-holing a schoolfellow as he rushed out of class, and of pressing upon him the probably unintelligible question 'Have you found Jesus?'
It was simpler to avoid him, to slip like a lizard though the laurels and emerge into solitude.
