Having easily said what, in those early years, I did not read, I have great difficulty in saying what I did read.  But a queer variety of natural history, some of it quite indigestible by my undeveloped mind; many books of travels, mainly of a scientific character, among them voyages of discovery in the South Seas, by which my brain was dimly filled with splendour; some geography and astronomy, both of them sincerely enjoyed; much theology, which I desired to appreciate but could never get my teeth into (if I may venture to say so), and over which my eye and tongue learned to slip without penetrating, so that I would read, and read aloud, and with great propriety of emphasis, page after page without having formed an idea or retained an expression.  There was, for instance, a writer on prophecy called Jukes, of whose works each of my parents was inordinately fond, and I was early set to read Jukes aloud to them.  I did it glibly, like a machine, but the sight of Jukes’ volumes became an abomination to me, and I never formed the outline of a notion what they were about.  Later on, a publication called The Penny Cyclopaedia became my daily, and for a long time almost my sole study; to the subject of this remarkable work I may presently return.

It is difficult to keep anything like chronological order in recording fragments of early recollection, and in speaking of my reading I have been led too far ahead.  My memory does not, practically, begin till we returned from certain visits, made with a zoological purpose, to the shores of Devon and Dorset, and settled, early in my fifth year, in a house at Islington, in the north of London.  Our circumstances were now more easy; my Father had regular and well-paid literary work; and the house was larger and more comfortable than ever before, though still very simple and restricted.  My memories, some of which are exactly dated by certain facts, now become clear and almost abundant.  What I do not remember, except from having it very often repeated to me, is what may be considered the only ‘clever’ thing that I said during an otherwise unillustrious childhood.  It was not startlingly ‘clever’, but it may pass.  A lady—­when I was just four—­rather injudiciously showed me a large print of a human skeleton, saying, ‘There! you don’t know what that is, do you?’ Upon which, immediately and very archly, I replied, ’Isn’t it a man with the meat off?’ This was thought wonderful, and, as it is supposed that I had never had the phenomenon explained to me, it certainly displays some quickness in seizing an analogy.  I had often watched my Father, while he soaked the flesh off the bones of fishes and small mammals.  If I venture to repeat this trifle, it is only to point out that the system on which I was being educated deprived all things, human life among the rest, of their mystery.  The ‘bare-grinning skeleton of death’ was to me merely a prepared specimen of that featherless plantigrade vertebrate, ‘homo sapiens’.