I remember, upon one occasion, when an usher, on account of some impertinent behavior, had boxed his brother Tom’s ears, John rushed up, put himself in the received posture of offence, and, I believe, struck the usher,—­who could have put him into his pocket.  His passions at times were almost ungovernable; his brother George, being considerably the taller and stronger, used frequently to hold him down by main force, when he was in “one of his moods” and was endeavoring to beat him.  It was all, however, a wisp-of-straw conflagration; for he had an intensely tender affection for his brothers, and proved it upon the most trying occasions.  He was not merely the “favorite of all,” like a pet prize-fighter, for his terrier courage; but his high-mindedness, his utter unconsciousness of a mean motive, his placability, his generosity, wrought so general a feeling in his behalf, that I never heard a word of disapproval from any one who had known him, superior or equal.

The latter part of the time—­perhaps eighteen months—­that he remained at school, he occupied the hours during meals in reading.  Thus his whole time was engrossed.  He had a tolerably retentive memory, and the quantity that he read was surprising.  He must in those last months have exhausted the school—­library, which consisted principally of abridgments of all the voyages and travels of any note; Mayor’s Collection; also his Universal History; Robertson’s Histories of Scotland, America, and Charles the Fifth; all Miss Edgeworth’s productions; together with many other works, equally well calculated for youth, not necessary to be enumerated.  The books, however, that were his constantly recurrent sources of attraction were Tooke’s “Pantheon,” Lempriere’s “Classical Dictionary,” which he appeared to learn, and Spence’s “Polymetis.”  This was the store whence he acquired his perfect intimacy with the Greek mythology; here was he “suckled In that creed outworn”; for his amount of classical attainment extended no farther than the “Aeneid”; with which epic, indeed, he was so fascinated, that before leaving school he had voluntarily translated in writing a considerable portion.  And yet I remember that at that early age,—­mayhap under fourteen,—­notwithstanding and through all its incidental attractiveness, he hazarded the opinion to me that there was feebleness in the structure of the work.  He must have gone through all the better publications in the school-library, for he asked me to lend him some of my own books; and I think I now see him at supper, (we had all our meals in the school-room,) sitting back on the form, and holding the folio volume of Burnet’s “History of his own Time” between himself and the table, eating his meal from beyond it.  This work, and Leigh Hunt’s “Examiner” newspaper,—­which my father took in, and I used to lend to Keats,—­I make no doubt laid the foundation of his love of civil and religious liberty.  He once told me, smiling, that one of his guardians, being informed what books I had lent him to read, declared, that, if he had fifty children, he would not send one of them to my father’s school.