These, with Pope's Works, some Plays of Shakespeare,
Tull, and Dickson on Agriculture, The "Pantheon," Locke's "Essay on the
Human Understanding," Stackhouse's "History of the Bible," Justice's
"British Gardener's Directory," Boyle's "Lectures," Allan Ramsay's
Works, Taylor's "Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin," "A Select
Collection of English Songs," and Hervey's "Meditations," had formed
the whole of my reading. The collection of songs was my companion, day
and night. I pored over them driving my cart, or walking to labour,
song by song, verse by verse; carefully noting the true, tender, or
sublime, from affectation and fustian. I am convinced I owe to this
practice much of my critic-craft, such as it is.
In my seventeenth year, to give my manners a brush, I went to a country
dancing-school. My father had an unaccountable antipathy against these
meetings, and my going was, what to this moment I repent, in opposition
to his wishes. My father, as I said before, was subject to strong
passions; from that instance of disobedience in me he took a sort of
dislike to me, which, I believe, was one cause of the dissipation which
marked my succeeding years.
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