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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Caxtons, by Bulwer-Lytton, Part 1
+#15 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+
+Title: The Caxtons, Part 1
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: February 2005  [EBook #7586]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 1, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAXTONS, BY LYTTON, PART 1 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Pat Castevens
+and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CAXTONS
+
+A FAMILY PICTURE
+
+By Edward Bulwer Lytton
+(LORD LYTTON)
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+If it be the good fortune of this work to possess any interest for the
+Novel reader, that interest, perhaps, will be but little derived from
+the customary elements of fiction.  The plot is extremely slight, the
+incidents are few, and with the exception of those which involve the
+fate of Vivian, such as may be found in the records of ordinary life.
+
+Regarded as a Novel, this attempt is an experiment somewhat apart from
+the previous works of the author.  It is the first of his writings in
+which Humor has been employed, less for the purpose of satire than in
+illustration of amiable characters; it is the first, too, in which man
+has been viewed, less in his active relations with the world, than in
+his repose at his own hearth,--in a word, the greater part of the canvas
+has been devoted to the completion of a simple Family Picture.  And
+thus, in any appeal to the sympathies of the human heart, the common
+household affections occupy the place of those livelier or larger
+passions which usually (and not unjustly) arrogate the foreground in
+Romantic composition.
+
+In the Hero whose autobiography connects the different characters and
+events of the work, it has been the Author's intention to imply the
+influences of Home upon the conduct and career of youth; and in the
+ambition which estranges Pisistratus for a time from the sedentary
+occupations in which the man of civilized life must usually serve his
+apprenticeship to Fortune or to Fame, it is not designed to describe the
+fever of Genius conscious of superior powers and aspiring to high
+destinies, but the natural tendencies of a fresh and buoyant mind,
+rather vigorous than contemplative, and in which the desire of action is
+but the symptom of health.
+
+Pisistratus in this respect (as he himself feels and implies) becomes
+the specimen or type of a class the numbers of which are daily
+increasing in the inevitable progress of modern civilization.  He is one
+too many in the midst of the crowd; he is the representative of the
+exuberant energies of youth, turning, as with the instinct of nature for
+space and development, from the Old World to the New.  That which may be
+called the interior meaning of the whole is sought to be completed by
+the inference that, whatever our wanderings, our happiness will always
+be found within a narrow compass, and amidst the objects more
+immediately within our reach, but that we are seldom sensible of this
+truth (hackneyed though it be in the Schools of all Philosophies) till
+our researches have spread over a wider area.  To insure the blessing of
+repose, we require a brisker excitement than a few turns up and down our
+room.  Content is like that humor in the crystal, on which Claudian has
+lavished the wonder of a child and the fancies of a Poet,--
+
+                      "Vivis gemma tumescit aquis."
+
+                                                  E. B. L.
+
+October, 1849.
+
+
+
+
+THE CAXTONS.
+
+
+PART I.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+"Sir--sir, it is a boy!"
+
+"A boy," said my father, looking up from his book, and evidently much
+puzzled: "what is a boy?"
+
+Now my father did not mean by that interrogatory to challenge
+philosophical inquiry, nor to demand of the honest but unenlightened
+woman who had just rushed into his study, a solution of that mystery,
+physiological and psychological, which has puzzled so many curious
+sages, and lies still involved in the question, "What is man?"  For as
+we need not look further than Dr. Johnson's Dictionary to know that a
+boy is "a male child,"--i.e., the male young of man,--so he who would go
+to the depth of things, and know scientifically what is a boy, must be
+able to ascertain "what is a man."  But for aught I know, my father may
+have been satisfied with Buffon on that score, or he may have sided with
+Monboddo.  He may have agreed with Bishop Berkeley; he may have
+contented himself with Professor Combe; he may have regarded the genus
+spiritually, like Zeno, or materially, like Epicurus.  Grant that boy is
+the male young of man, and he would have had plenty of definitions to
+choose from.  He might have said, "Man is a stomach,--ergo, boy a male
+young stomach.  Man is a brain,--boy a male young brain.  Man is a
+bundle of habits,--boy a male young bundle of habits.  Man is a
+machine,--boy a male young machine.  Man is a tail-less monkey,--boy a
+male young tail-less monkey.  Man is a combination of gases,--boy a male
+young combination of gases.  Man is an appearance,--boy a male young
+appearance," etc., etc., and etcetera, ad infinitum!  And if none of
+these definitions had entirely satisfied my father, I am perfectly
+persuaded that he would never have come to Mrs. Primmins for a new one.
+
+But it so happened that my father was at that moment engaged in the
+important consideration whether the Iliad was written by one Homer, or
+was rather a collection of sundry ballads, done into Greek by divers
+hands, and finally selected, compiled, and reduced into a whole by a
+Committee of Taste, under that elegant old tyrant Pisistratus; and the
+sudden affirmation, "It is a boy," did not seem to him pertinent to the
+thread of the discussion.  Therefore he asked, "What is a boy?" vaguely,
+and, as it were, taken by surprise.
+
+"Lord, sir!" said Mrs. Primmins, "what is a boy?  Why, the baby!"
+
+"The baby!" repeated my father, rising.  "What, you don't mean to say
+that Mrs. Caxton is--eh?"
+
+"Yes, I do," said Mrs. Primmins, dropping a courtesy; "and as fine a
+little rogue as ever I set eyes upon."
+
+"Poor dear woman," said my father, with great compassion.  "So soon,
+too--so rapidly," he resumed, in a tone of musing surprise.  "Why, it is
+but the other day we were married!"
+
+"Bless my heart, sir," said Mrs. Primmins, much scandalized, "it is ten
+months and more."
+
+"Ten months!" said my father with a sigh.  "Ten months! and I have not
+finished fifty pages of my refutation of Wolfe's monstrous theory!  In
+ten months a child! and I'll be bound complete,--hands, feet, eyes,
+ears, and nose!--and not like this poor Infant of Mind," and my father
+pathetically placed his hand on the treatise, "of which nothing is
+formed and shaped, not even the first joint of the little finger!  Why,
+my wife is a precious woman!  Well, keep her quiet.  Heaven preserve
+her, and send me strength--to support this blessing!"
+
+"But your honor will look at the baby?  Come, sir!" and Mrs. Primmins
+laid hold of my father's sleeve coaxingly.
+
+"Look at it,--to be sure," said my father, kindly; "look at it,
+certainly: it is but fair to poor Mrs. Caxton, after taking so much
+trouble, dear soul!"
+
+Therewith my father, drawing his dressing-robe round him in more stately
+folds, followed Mrs. Primmins upstairs into a room very carefully
+darkened.
+
+"How are you, my dear?" said my father, with compassionate tenderness,
+as he groped his way to the bed.
+
+A faint voice muttered: "Better now, and so happy!"  And at the same
+moment Mrs. Primmins pulled my father away, lifted a coverlid from a
+small cradle, and holding a candle within an inch of an undeveloped
+nose, cried emphatically, "There--bless it!"
+
+"Of course, ma'am, I bless it," said my father, rather peevishly.  "It
+is my duty to bless it--Bless It!  And this, then, is the way we come
+into the world!--red, very red,--blushing for all the follies we are
+destined to commit."
+
+My father sat down on the nurse's chair, the women grouped round him.
+He continued to gaze on the contents of the cradle, and at length said,
+musingly, "And Homer was once like this!"
+
+At this moment--and no wonder, considering the propinquity of the candle
+to his visual organs--Homer's infant likeness commenced the first
+untutored melodies of nature.
+
+"Homer improved greatly in singing as he grew older," observed Mr.
+Squills, the accoucheur, who was engaged in some mysteries in a corner
+of the room.
+
+My father stopped his ears.  "Little things can make a great noise,"
+said he, philosophically; "and the smaller the thing; the greater noise
+it can make."
+
+So saying, he crept on tiptoe to the bed, and clasping the pale hand
+held out to him, whispered some words that no doubt charmed and soothed
+the ear that heard them, for that pale hand was suddenly drawn from his
+own and thrown tenderly round his neck.  The sound of a gentle kiss was
+heard through the stillness.
+
+"Mr. Caxton, sir," cried Mr. Squills, in rebuke, "you agitate my
+patient; you must retire."
+
+My father raised his mild face, looked round apologetically, brushed his
+eyes with the back of his hand, stole to the door, and vanished.
+
+"I think," said a kind gossip seated at the other side of my mother's
+bed, "I think, my dear, that Mr. Caxton might have shown more joy,--more
+natural feeling, I may say,--at the sight of the baby: and Such a baby!
+But all men are just the same, my dear,--brutes,--all brutes, depend
+upon it!"
+
+"Poor Austin!" sighed my mother, feebly; "how little you understand
+him!"
+
+"And now I shall clear the room," said Mr. Squills.  "Go to sleep, Mrs.
+Caxton."
+
+"Mr. Squills," exclaimed my mother, and the bed-curtains trembled, "pray
+see that Mr. Caxton does not set himself on fire.  And, Mr. Squills,
+tell him not to be vexed and miss me,--I shall be down very soon,--sha'
+n't I?"
+
+"If you keep yourself easy, you will, ma'am."
+
+"Pray, say so.  And, Primmins--"
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"Every one, I fear, is neglecting your master.  Be sure," and my
+mother's lips approached close to Mrs. Primmins' ear, "be sure that you-
+-air his nightcap yourself."
+
+"Tender creatures those women," soliloquized Mr. Squills as, after
+clearing the room of all present save Mrs. Primmins and the nurse, he
+took his way towards my father's study.  Encountering the footman in the
+passage, "John," said he, "take supper into your master's room, and make
+us some punch, will you,--stiffish!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+"Mr. Caxton, how on earth did you ever come to marry?" asked Mr.
+Squills, abruptly, with his feet on the hob, while stirring up his
+punch.
+
+That was a home question, which many men might reasonably resent; but my
+father scarcely knew what resentment was.
+
+"Squills," said he, turning round from his books, and laying one finger
+on the surgeon's arm confidentially,--"Squills," said he, "I myself
+should be glad to know how I came to be married."
+
+Mr. Squills was a jovial, good-hearted man,--stout, fat, and with fine
+teeth, that made his laugh pleasant to look at as well as to hear.  Mr.
+Squills, moreover, was a bit of a philosopher in his way,--studied human
+nature in curing its diseases; and was accustomed to say that Mr. Caxton
+was a better book in himself than all he had in his library.  Mr.
+Squills laughed, and rubbed his hands.
+
+My father resumed thoughtfully, and in the tone of one who moralizes:--
+
+"There are three great events in life, sir,--birth, marriage, and death.
+None know how they are born, few know how they die; but I suspect that
+many can account for the intermediate phenomenon--I cannot."
+
+"It was not for money, it must have been for love," observed Mr.
+Squills; "and your young wife is as pretty as she is good."
+
+"Ha!" said my father, "I remember."
+
+"Do you, sir?" exclaimed Squills, highly amused.  "How was it?"
+
+My father, as was often the case with him, protracted his reply, and
+then seemed rather to commune with himself than to answer Mr. Squills.
+
+"The kindest, the best of men," he murmured,--"Abyssus Eruditionis.  And
+to think that he bestowed on me the only fortune he had to leave,
+instead of to his own flesh and blood, Jack and Kitty,--all, at least,
+that I could grasp, deficiente manu, of his Latin, his Greek, his
+Orientals.  What do I not owe to him?"
+
+"To whom?" asked Squills.  "Good Lord! what's the man talking about?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said my father, rousing himself, "such was Giles Tibbets, M.
+A., Sol Scientiarum, tutor to the humble scholar you address, and father
+to poor Kitty.  He left me his Elzevirs; he left me also his orphan
+daughter."
+
+"Oh! as a wife--"
+
+"No, as a ward.  So she came to live in my house.  I am sure there was
+no harm in it.  But my neighbors said there was, and the widow Weltraum
+told me the girl's character would suffer.  What could I do?--Oh, yes, I
+recollect all now!  I married her, that my old friend's child might have
+a roof to her head, and come to no harm.  You see I was forced to do her
+that injury; for, after all, poor young creature, it was a sad lot for
+her.  A dull bookworm like me,--cochlea vitam agens, Mr. Squills,--
+leading the life of a snail!  But my shell was all I could offer to my
+poor friend's orphan."
+
+"Mr. Caxton, I honor you," said Squills, emphatically, jumping up, and
+spilling half a tumblerful of scalding punch over my father's legs.
+"You have a heart, sir; and I understand why your wife loves you.  You
+seem a cold man, but you have tears in your eyes at this moment."
+
+"I dare say I have," said my father, rubbing his shins; "it was
+boiling!"
+
+"And your son will be a comfort to you both," said Mr. Squills,
+reseating himself, and, in his friendly emotion, wholly abstracted from
+all consciousness of the suffering he had inflicted; "he will be a dove
+of peace to your ark."
+
+"I don't doubt it," said my father, ruefully;  "only those doves, when
+they are small, are a very noisy sort of birds--non talium avium cantos
+somnum reducent.  However, it might have been worse.  Leda had twins."
+
+"So had Mrs. Barnabas last week," rejoined the accoucheur.  "Who knows
+what may be in store for you yet?  Here's a health to Master Caxton, and
+lots of brothers and sisters to him."
+
+"Brothers and sisters!  I am sure Mrs. Caxton will never think of such a
+thing, sir," said my father, almost indignantly; "she's much too good a
+wife to behave so.  Once in a way it is all very well; but twice--and as
+it is, not a paper in its place, nor a pen mended the last three days:
+I, too, who can only write cuspide duriuscula,--and the baker coming
+twice to me for his bill, too!  The Ilithyiae, are troublesome deities,
+Mr. Squills."
+
+"Who are the Ilithyiae?" asked the accoucheur.
+
+"You ought to know," answered my father, smiling,--"the female daemons
+who presided over the Neogilos, or New-born.  They take the name from
+Juno.  See Homer, Book XI.  By the by, will my Neogilos be brought up
+like Hector, or Astyanax--videlicet, nourished by its mother, or by a
+nurse?"
+
+"Which do you prefer, Mr. Caxton?" asked Mr. Squills, breaking the sugar
+in his tumbler.  "In this I always deem it my duty to consult the wishes
+of the gentleman."
+
+"A nurse by all means, then," said my father.  "And let her carry him
+upo kolpo, next to her bosom.  I know all that has been said about
+mothers nursing their own infants, Mr. Squills; but poor Kitty is so
+sensitive that I think a stout, healthy peasant woman will be the best
+for the boy's future nerves, and his mother's nerves, present and future
+too.  Heigh-ho!  I shall miss the dear woman very much.  When will she
+be up, Mr. Squills?"
+
+"Oh, in less than a fortnight!"
+
+"And then the Neogilos shall go to school,--upo kolpo,--the nurse with
+him, and all will be right again," said my father, with a look of sly,
+mysterious humor which was peculiar to him.
+
+"School! when he's just born?"
+
+"Can't begin too soon," said my father, positively; "that's Helvetius'
+opinion, and it is mine too!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+That I was a very wonderful child, I take for granted; but nevertheless
+it was not of my own knowledge that I came into possession of the
+circumstances set down in my former chapters.  But my father's conduct
+on the occasion of my birth made a notable impression upon all who
+witnessed it; and Mr. Squills and Mrs. Primmins have related the facts
+to me sufficiently often to make me as well acquainted with them as
+those worthy witnesses themselves.  I fancy I see my father before me,
+in his dark-gray dressing-gown, and with his odd, half-sly, half-
+innocent twitch of the mouth, and peculiar puzzling look, from two
+quiet, abstracted, indolently handsome eyes, at the moment he agreed
+with Helvetius on the propriety of sending me to school as soon as I was
+born.  Nobody knew exactly what to make of my father,--his wife
+excepted.  The people of Abdera sent for Hippocrates to cure the
+supposed insanity of Democritus, "who at that time," saith Hippocrates,
+dryly, "was seriously engaged in philosophy."  That same people of
+Abdera would certainly have found very alarming symptoms of madness in
+my poor father; for, like Democritus, "he esteemed as nothing the
+things, great or small, in which the rest of the world were employed."
+Accordingly, some set him down as a sage, some as a fool.  The
+neighboring clergy respected him as a scholar, "breathing libraries;"
+the ladies despised him as an absent pedant who had no more gallantry
+than a stock or a stone.  The poor loved him for his charities, but
+laughed at him as a weak sort of man, easily taken in.  Yet the squires
+and farmers found that, in their own matters of rural business, he had
+always a fund of curious information to impart; and whoever, young or
+old, gentle or simple, learned or ignorant, asked his advice, it was
+given with not more humility than wisdom.  In the common affairs of life
+he seemed incapable of acting for himself; he left all to my mother; or,
+if taken unawares, was pretty sure to be the dupe.  But in those very
+affairs, if another consulted him, his eye brightened, his brow cleared,
+the desire of serving made him a new being,--cautious, profound,
+practical.  Too lazy or too languid where only his own interests were at
+stake, touch his benevolence, and all the wheels of the clock-work felt
+the impetus of the master-spring.  No wonder that, to others, the nut of
+such a character was hard to crack!  But in the eyes of my poor mother,
+Augustine (familiarly Austin) Caxton was the best and the greatest of
+human beings; and she ought to have known him well, for she studied him
+with her whole heart, knew every trick of his face, and, nine times out
+of ten, divined what he was going to say before he opened his lips.  Yet
+certainly there were deeps in his nature which the plummet of her tender
+woman's wit had never sounded; and certainly it sometimes happened that,
+even in his most domestic colloquialisms, my mother was in doubt whether
+he was the simple, straightforward person he was mostly taken for.
+There was, indeed, a kind of suppressed, subtle irony about him, too
+unsubstantial to be popularly called humor, but dimly implying some sort
+of jest, which he kept all to himself; and this was only noticeable when
+he said something that sounded very grave, or appeared to the grave very
+silly and irrational.
+
+That I did not go to school--at least to what Mr. Squills understood by
+the word "school"--quite so soon as intended, I need scarcely observe.
+In fact, my mother managed so well--my nursery, by means of double
+doors, was so placed out of hearing--that my father, for the most part,
+was privileged, if he pleased, to forget my existence.  He was once
+vaguely recalled to it on the occasion of my christening.  Now, my
+father was a shy man, and he particularly hated all ceremonies and
+public spectacles.  He became uneasily aware that a great ceremony, in
+which he might be called upon to play a prominent part, was at hand.
+Abstracted as he was, and conveniently deaf at times, he had heard such
+significant whispers about "taking advantage of the bishop's being in
+the neighborhood," and "twelve new jelly-glasses being absolutely
+wanted," as to assure him that some deadly festivity was in the wind.
+And when the question of godmother and godfather was fairly put to hire,
+coupled with the remark that this was a fine opportunity to return the
+civilities of the neighborhood, he felt that a strong effort at escape
+was the only thing left.  Accordingly, having, seemingly without
+listening, heard the clay fixed and seen, as they thought, without
+observing, the chintz chairs in the best drawing-room uncovered (my dear
+mother was the tidiest woman in the world), my father suddenly
+discovered that there was to be a great book-sale, twenty miles off,
+which would last four days, and attend it he must.  My mother sighed;
+but she never contradicted my father, even when he was wrong, as he
+certainly was in this case.  She only dropped a timid intimation that
+she feared "it would look odd, and the world might misconstrue my
+father's absence,--had not she better put off the christening?"
+
+"My dear," answered my father, "it will be my duty, by and by, to
+christen the boy,--a duty not done in a day.  At present, I have no
+doubt that the bishop will do very well without me.  Let the day stand,
+or if you put it off, upon my word and honor I believe that the wicked
+auctioneer will put off the book-sale also.  Of one thing I am quite
+sure, that the sale and the christening will take place at the same
+time."  There was no getting over this; but I am certain my dear mother
+had much less heart than before in uncovering the chintz chairs in the
+best drawing-room.  Five years later this would not have happened.  My
+mother would have kissed my father and said, "Stay," and he would have
+stayed.  But she was then very young and timid; and he, wild man, not of
+the woods, but the cloisters, not yet civilized into the tractabilities
+of home.  In short, the post-chaise was ordered and the carpetbag
+packed.
+
+"My love," said my mother, the night before this Hegira, looking up from
+her work, "my love, there is one thing you have quite forgot to settle,-
+-I beg pardon for disturbing you, but it is important!--baby's name:
+sha' n't we call him Augustine?"
+
+"Augustine," said my father, dreamily,--"why that name's mine."
+
+"And you would like your boy's to be the same?"
+
+"No," said my father, rousing himself.  "Nobody would know which was
+which.  I should catch myself learning the Latin accidence, or playing
+at marbles.  I should never know my own identity, and Mrs. Primmins
+would be giving me pap."
+
+My mother smiled; and putting her hand, which was a very pretty one, on
+my father's shoulder, and looking at him tenderly, she said: "There's no
+fear of mistaking you for any other, even your son, dearest.  Still, if
+you prefer another name, what shall it be?"
+
+"Samuel," said my father.  "Dr. Parr's name is Samuel."
+
+"La, my love!  Samuel is the ugliest name--"
+
+My father did not hear the exclamation; he was again deep in his books.
+Presently he started up: "Barnes says Homer is Solomon.  Read Omeros
+backward, in the Hebrew manner--"
+
+"Yes, my love," interrupted my mother.  "But baby's Christian name?"
+
+"Omeros--Soreino--Solemo--Solomo!"
+
+"Solomo,--shocking!" said my mother.
+
+"Shocking indeed," echoed my father; "an outrage to common-sense."
+Then, after glancing again over his books, he broke out musingly: "But,
+after all, it is nonsense to suppose that Homer was not settled till his
+time."
+
+"Whose?" asked my mother, mechanically.  My father lifted up his finger.
+
+My mother continued, after a short pause., "Arthur is a pretty name.
+Then there 's William--Henry--Charles Robert.  What shall it be, love?"
+
+"Pisistratus!" said my father (who had hung fire till then), in a tone
+of contempt,--"Pisistratus, indeed!"
+
+"Pisistratus! a very fine name," said my mother, joyfully,--"Pisistratus
+Caxton.  Thank you, my love: Pisistratus it shall be."
+
+"Do you contradict me?  Do you side with Wolfe and Heyne and that
+pragmatical fellow Vico?  Do you mean to say that the Rhapsodists--"
+
+"No, indeed," interrupted my mother.  "My dear, you frighten me."
+
+My father sighed, and threw himself back in his chair.  My mother took
+courage and resumed.
+
+"Pisistratus is a long name too!  Still, one could call him Sisty."
+
+"Siste, Viator," muttered my father; "that's trite!"
+
+"No, Sisty by itself--short.  Thank you, my dear."
+
+Four days afterwards, on his return from the book-sale, to my father's
+inexpressible bewilderment, he was informed that  Pisistratus was
+growing the very image of him."
+
+When at length the good man was made thoroughly aware of the fact that
+his son and heir boasted a name so memorable in history as that borne by
+the enslaver of Athens and the disputed arranger of Homer,--and it was
+asserted to be a name that he himself had suggested,--he was as angry as
+so mild a man could be.  "But it is infamous!" he exclaimed.
+"Pisistratus christened!  Pisistratus, who lived six hundred years
+before Christ was born!  Good heavens, madam! you have made me the
+father of an Anachronism."
+
+My mother burst into tears.  But the evil was irremediable.  An
+anachronism I was, and an anachronism I must continue to the end of the
+chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+"Of course, sir, you will begin soon to educate your son yourself?" said
+Mr. Squills.
+
+"Of course, sir," said my father, "you have read Martinus Scriblerus?"
+
+"I don't understand you, Mr. Caxton."
+
+"Then you have not read Aiartinus Scriblerus, Mr. Squills!"
+
+"Consider that I have read it; and what then?"
+
+"Why, then, Squills," said my father, familiarly, "you son would know
+that though a scholar is often a fool, he is never a fool so supreme, so
+superlative, as when he is defacing the first unsullied page of the
+human history by entering into it the commonplaces of his own pedantry.
+A scholar, sir,--at least one like me,--is of all persons the most unfit
+to teach young children.  A mother, sir,--a simple, natural, loving
+mother,--is the infant's true guide to knowledge."
+
+"Egad! Mr. Caxton,--in spite of Helvetius, whom you quoted the night the
+boy was born,--egad!  I believe you are right."
+
+"I am sure of it," said my father,--"at least as sure as a poor mortal
+can be of anything.  I agree with Helvetius, the child should be
+educated from its birth; but how?  There is the rub: send him to school
+forthwith!  Certainly, he is at school already with the two great
+teachers,--Nature and Love.  Observe, that childhood and genius have the
+same master-organ in common,--inquisitiveness.  Let childhood have its
+way, and as it began where genius begins, it may find what genius finds.
+A certain Greek writer tells us of some man who, in order to save his
+bees a troublesome flight to Hymettus, cut their wings, and placed
+before them the finest flowers he could select.  The poor bees made no
+honey.  Now, sir, if I were to teach my boy, I should be cutting his
+wings and giving him the flowers he should find himself.  Let us leave
+Nature alone for the present, and Nature's loving proxy, the watchful
+mother."
+
+Therewith my father pointed to his heir sprawling on the grass and
+plucking daisies on the lawn, while the young mother's voice rose
+merrily, laughing at the child's glee.
+
+"I shall make but a poor bill out of your nursery, I see," said Mr.
+Squills.
+
+Agreeably to these doctrines, strange in so learned a father, I thrived
+and flourished, and learned to spell, and make pot-hooks, under the
+joint care of my mother and Dame Primmins.  This last was one of an old
+race fast dying away,--the race of old, faithful servants; the race of
+old, tale-telling nurses.  She had reared my mother before me; but her
+affection put out new flowers for the new generation.  She was a
+Devonshire woman; and Devonshire women, especially those who have passed
+their youth near the sea-coast, are generally superstitious.  She had a
+wonderful budget of fables.  Before I was six years old, I was erudite
+in that primitive literature in which the legends of all nations are
+traced to a common fountain,--Puss in Boots, Tom Thumb, Fortunio,
+Fortunatus, Jack the Giant-Killer; tales, like proverbs, equally
+familiar, under different versions, to the infant worshippers of Budh
+and the hardier children of Thor.  I may say, without vanity, that in an
+examination in those venerable classics I could have taken honors!
+
+My dear mother had some little misgivings as to the solid benefit to be
+derived from such fantastic erudition, and timidly consulted my father
+thereon.
+
+"My love," answered my father, in that tone of voice which always
+puzzled even my mother to be sure whether he was in jest or earnest, "in
+all these fables certain philosophers could easily discover symbolic
+significations of the highest morality.  I have myself written a
+treatise to prove that Puss in Boots is an allegory upon the progress of
+the human understanding, having its origin in the mystical schools of
+the Egyptian priests, and evidently an illustration of the worship
+rendered at Thebes and Memphis to those feline quadrupeds of which they
+make both religious symbols and elaborate mummies."
+
+"My dear Austin," said my mother, opening her blue eyes, "you don't
+think that Sisty will discover all those fine things in Puss in Boots!"
+
+"My dear Kitty," answered my father, "you don't think, when you were
+good enough to take up with me, that you found in me all the fine things
+I have learned from books.  You knew me only as a harmless creature who
+was happy enough to please your fancy.  By and by you discovered that I
+was no worse for all the quartos that have transmigrated into ideas
+within me,--ideas that are mysteries even to myself.  If Sisty, as you
+call the child (plague on that unlucky anachronism! which you do well to
+abbreviate into a dissyllable),--if Sisty can't discover all the wisdom
+of Egypt in Puss in Boots, what then?  Puss in Boots is harmless, and it
+pleases his fancy.  All that wakes curiosity is wisdom, if innocent; all
+that pleases the fancy now, turns hereafter to love or to knowledge.
+And so, my dear, go back to the nursery."
+
+But I should wrong thee, O best of fathers! if I suffered the reader to
+suppose that because thou didst seem so indifferent to my birth, and so
+careless as to my early teaching, therefore thou wert, at heart,
+indifferent to thy troublesome Neogilos.  As I grew older, I became more
+sensibly aware that a father's eye was upon me.  I distinctly remember
+one incident, that seems to me, in looking back, a crisis in my infant
+life, as the first tangible link between my own heart and that calm
+great soul.
+
+My father was seated on the lawn before the house, his straw hat over
+his eyes (it was summer), and his book on his lap.  Suddenly a beautiful
+delf blue-and-white flower-pot, which had been set on the window-sill of
+an upper story, fell to the ground with a crash, and the fragments
+spluttered up round my father's legs.  Sublime in his studies as
+Archimedes in the siege, he continued to read,--Impavidum ferient
+ruince!
+
+"Dear, dear!" cried my mother, who was at work in the porch, "my poor
+flower-pot that I prized so much!  Who could have done this?  Primmins,
+Primmins!"
+
+Mrs. Primmins popped her head out of the fatal window, nodded to the
+summons, and came down in a trice, pale and breathless.
+
+"Oh!" said my mother, Mournfully, "I would rather have lost all the
+plants in the greenhouse in the great blight last May,--I would rather
+the best tea-set were broken!  The poor geranium I reared myself, and
+the dear, dear flower-pot which Mr. Caxton bought for me my last
+birthday!  That naughty child must have done this!"
+
+Mrs. Primmins was dreadfully afraid of my father,--why, I know not,
+except that very talkative social persons are usually afraid of very
+silent shy ones.  She cast a hasty glance at her master, who was
+beginning to evince signs of attention, and cried promptly, "No, ma'am,
+it was not the dear boy, bless his flesh, it was I!"
+
+"You?  How could you be so careless? and you knew how I prized them
+both.  Oh, Primmins!" Primmins began to sob.
+
+"Don't tell fibs, nursey," said a small, shrill voice; and Master Sisty,
+coming out of the house as bold as brass, continued rapidly--"don't
+scold Primmins, mamma: it was I who pushed out the flower-pot."
+
+"Hush!" said nurse, more frightened than ever, and looking aghast
+towards my father, who had very deliberately taken off his hat, and was
+regarding the scene with serious eyes wide awake.  "Hush!  And if he did
+break it, ma'am, it was quite an accident; he was standing so, and he
+never meant it.  Did you, Master Sisty?  Speak!" this in a whisper, "or
+Pa will be so angry."
+
+"Well," said my mother, "I suppose it was an accident; take care in
+future, my child.  You are sorry, I see, to have grieved me.  There's a
+kiss; don't fret."
+
+"No, mamma, you must not kiss me; I don't deserve it.  I pushed out the
+flower-pot on purpose."
+
+"Ha! and why?" said my father, walking up.
+
+Mrs. Primmins trembled like a leaf.
+
+"For fun!" said I, hanging my head,--"just to see how you'd look, papa;
+and that's the truth of it.  Now beat me, do beat me!"
+
+My father threw his book fifty yards off, stooped down, and caught me to
+his breast.  "Boy," he said, "you have done wrong: you shall repair it
+by remembering all your life that your father blessed God for giving him
+a son who spoke truth in spite of fear!  Oh! Mrs. Primmins, the next
+fable of this kind you try to teach him, and we part forever!"
+
+From that time I first date the hour when I felt that I loved my father,
+and knew that he loved me; from that time, too, he began to converse
+with me.  He would no longer, if he met me in the garden, pass by with a
+smile and nod; he would stop, put his book in his pocket, and though his
+talk was often above my comprehension, still somehow I felt happier and
+better, and less of an infant, when I thought over it, and tried to
+puzzle out the meaning; for he had away of suggesting, not teaching,
+putting things into my head, and then leaving them to work out their own
+problems.  I remember a special instance with respect to that same
+flower-pot and geranium.  Mr. Squills, who was a bachelor, and well-to-
+do in the world, often made me little presents.  Not long after the
+event I have narrated, he gave me one far exceeding in value those
+usually bestowed on children,--it was a beautiful large domino-box in
+cut ivory, painted and gilt.  This domino-box was my delight.  I was
+never weary of playing, at dominos with Mrs. Primmins, and I slept with
+the box under my pillow.
+
+"Ah!" said my father one day, when he found me ranging the ivory
+parallelograms in the parlor, "ah! you like that better than all your
+playthings, eh?"
+
+"Oh, yes, papa!"
+
+"You would be very sorry if your mamma were to throw that box out of the
+window and break it for fun."  I looked beseechingly at my father, and
+made no answer.
+
+"But perhaps you would be very glad," he resumed, "if suddenly one of
+those good fairies you read of could change the domino-box into a
+beautiful geranium in a beautiful blue-and-white flower-pot, and you
+could have the pleasure of putting it on your mamma's window-sill."
+
+"Indeed I would!" said I, half-crying.
+
+"My dear boy, I believe you; but good wishes don't mend bad actions:
+good actions mend bad actions."
+
+So saying, he shut the door and went out.  I cannot tell you how puzzled
+I was to make out what my father meant by his aphorism.  But I know that
+I played at dominos no more that day.  The next morning my father found
+me seated by myself under a tree in the garden; he paused, and looked at
+me with his grave bright eyes very steadily.
+
+"My boy," said he, "I am going to walk to--,"a town about two miles off:
+"will you come?  And, by the by, fetch your domino-box.  I should like
+to show it to a person there."  I ran in for the box, and, not a little
+proud of walking with my father upon the high-road, we set out.
+
+"Papa," said I by the way, "there are no fairies now."
+
+"What then, my child?"
+
+"Why, how then can my domino-box be changed into a geranium and a blue-
+and-white flower-pot?"
+
+"My dear," said my father, leaning his hand on my shoulder, "everybody
+who is in earnest to be good, carries two fairies about with him,--one
+here," and he touched my heart, "and one here," and he touched my
+forehead.
+
+"I don't understand, papa."
+
+"I can wait till you do, Pisistratus.  What a name!"
+
+My father stopped at a nursery gardener's, and after looking over the
+flowers, paused before a large double geranium.  "Ah! this is finer than
+that which your mamma was so fond of.  What is the cost, sir?"
+
+"Only 7s. 6d.," said the gardener.
+
+My father buttoned up his pocket.  "I can't afford it to-day," said he,
+gently, and we walked out.
+
+On entering the town, we stopped again at a china warehouse.  "Have you
+a flower-pot like that I bought some months ago?  Ah!  here is one,
+marked 3s. 6d.  Yes, that is the price.  Well; when your mamma's
+birthday comes again, we must buy her another.  That is some months to
+wait.  And we can wait, Master Sisty.  For truth, that blooms all the
+year round, is better than a poor geranium; and a word that is never
+broken, is better than a piece of delf."
+
+My head, which had drooped before, rose again; but the rush of joy at my
+heart almost stifled me.
+
+"I have called to pay your little bill," said my father, entering the
+shop of one of those fancy stationers common in country towns, and who
+sell all kinds of pretty toys and knick-knacks.  "And by the way," he
+added, as the smiling shopman looked over his books for the entry, "I
+think my little boy here can show you a much handsomer specimen of
+French workmanship than that work-box which you enticed Mrs. Caxton into
+raffling for, last winter.  Show your domino-box, my dear."
+
+I produced my treasure, and the shopman was liberal in his
+commendations.  "It is always well, my boy, to know what a thing is
+worth, in case one wishes to part with it.  If my young gentleman gets
+tired of his plaything, what will you give him for it?"
+
+"Why, sir," said the shopman, "I fear we could not afford to give more
+than eighteen shillings for it, unless the young gentleman took some of
+these pretty things in exchange."
+
+"Eighteen shillings!" said my father; "you would give that sum!  Well,
+my boy, whenever you do grow tired of your box, you have my leave to
+sell it."
+
+My father paid his bill and went out.  I lingered behind a few moments,
+and joined him at the end of the street.
+
+"Papa, papa," I cried, clapping my hands, "we can buy the geranium; we
+can buy the flower-pot."  And I pulled a handful of silver from my
+pockets.
+
+"Did I not say right?" said my father, passing his handkerchief over his
+eyes.  "You have found the two fairies!"
+
+Oh! how proud, how overjoyed I was when, after placing vase and flower
+on the window-sill, I plucked my mother by the gown and made her follow
+me to the spot.
+
+"It is his doing and his money!" said my father; "good actions have
+mended the bad."
+
+"What!" cried my mother, when she had learned all; "and your poor
+domino-box that you were so fond of!  We will go back to-morrow and buy
+it back, if it costs us double."
+
+"Shall we buy it back, Pisistratus?" asked my father.
+
+"Oh, no--no--no!  It would spoil all," I cried, burying my face on my
+father's breast.
+
+"My wife," said my father, solemnly, "this is my first lesson to our
+child,--the sanctity and the happiness of self-sacrifice; undo not what
+it should teach to his dying day."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+When I was between my seventh and my eighth year, a change came over me,
+which may perhaps be familiar to the notice of those parents who boast
+the anxious blessing of an only child.  The ordinary vivacity of
+childhood forsook me; I became quiet, sedate, and thoughtful.  The
+absence of play-fellows of my own age, the companionship of mature
+minds, alternated only by complete solitude, gave something precocious,
+whether to my imagination or my reason.  The wild fables muttered to me
+by the old nurse in the summer twilight or over the winter's hearth,--
+the effort made by my struggling intellect to comprehend the grave,
+sweet wisdom of my father's suggested lessons,--tended to feed a passion
+for revery, in which all my faculties strained and struggled, as in the
+dreams that come when sleep is nearest waking.  I had learned to read
+with ease, and to write with some fluency, and I already began to
+imitate, to reproduce.  Strange tales akin to those I had gleaned from
+fairy-land, rude songs modelled from such verse-books as fell into my
+hands, began to mar the contents of marble-covered pages designed for
+the less ambitious purposes of round text and multiplication.  My mind
+was yet more disturbed by the intensity of my home affections.  My love
+for both my parents had in it something morbid and painful.  I often
+wept to think how little I could do for those I loved so well.  My
+fondest fancies built up imaginary difficulties for them, which my arm
+was to smooth.  These feelings, thus cherished, made my nerves over-
+susceptible and acute.  Nature began to affect me powerfully; and, from
+that affection rose a restless curiosity to analyze the charms that so
+mysteriously moved me to joy or awe, to smiles or tears.  I got my
+father to explain to me the elements of astronomy; I extracted from
+Squills, who was an ardent botanist, some of the mysteries in the life
+of flowers.  But music became my darling passion.  My mother (though the
+daughter of a great scholar,--a scholar at whose name my father raised
+his hat if it happened to be on his head) possessed, I must own it
+fairly, less book-learning than many a humble tradesman's daughter can
+boast in this more enlightened generation; but she had some natural
+gifts which had ripened, Heaven knows how! into womanly accomplishments.
+She drew with some elegance, and painted flowers to exquisite
+perfection.  She played on more than one instrument with more than
+boarding-school skill; and though she sang in no language but her own,
+few could hear her sweet voice without being deeply touched.  Her music,
+her songs, had a wondrous effect on me.  Thus, altogether, a kind of
+dreamy yet delightful melancholy seized upon my whole being; and this
+was the more remarkable because contrary to my early temperament, which
+was bold, active, and hilarious.  The change in my character began to
+act upon my form.  From a robust and vigorous infant, I grew into a pale
+and slender boy.  I began to ail and mope.  Mr. Squills was called in.
+
+"Tonics!" said Mr. Squills; "and don't let him sit over his book.  Send
+him out in the air; make him play.  Come here, my boy: these organs are
+growing too large;" and Mr. Squills, who was a phrenologist, placed his
+hand on my forehead.  "Gad, sir, here's an ideality for you; and, bless
+my soul, what a, constructiveness!"
+
+My father pushed aside his papers, and walked to and fro the room with
+his hands behind him; but he did not say a word till Mr. Squills was
+gone.
+
+"My dear," then said he to my mother, on whose breast I was leaning my
+aching ideality--"my dear, Pisistratus must go to school in good
+earnest."
+
+"Bless me, Austin!--at his age?"
+
+"He is nearly eight years old."
+
+"But he is so forward."
+
+"It is for that reason he must go to school."
+
+"I don't quite understand you, my love.  I know he is getting past me;
+but you who are so clever--"
+
+My father took my mother's hand: "We can teach him nothing now, Kitty.
+We send him to school to be taught--"
+
+"By some schoolmaster who knows much less than you do--"
+
+"By little schoolboys, who will make him a boy again," said my father,
+almost sadly.  "My dear, you remember that when our Kentish gardener
+planted those filbert-trees, and when they were in their third year, and
+you began to calculate on what they would bring in, you went out one
+morning, and found he had cut them down to the ground.  You were vexed,
+and asked why.  What did the gardener say?  'To prevent their bearing
+too soon.'  There is no want of fruitfulness here: put back the hour of
+produce, that the plant may last."
+
+"Let me go to school," said I, lifting my languid head and smiling on my
+father.  I understood him at once, and it was as if the voice of my life
+itself answered him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+A year after the resolution thus come to, I was at home for the
+holidays.
+
+"I hope," said my mother, "that they are doing Sisty justice.  I do
+think he is not nearly so quick a child as he was before he went to
+school.  I wish you would examine him, Austin."
+
+"I have examined him, my dear.  It is just as I expected; and I am quite
+satisfied."
+
+"What! you really think he has come on?" said my mother, joyfully.
+
+"He does not care a button for botany now," said Mr. Squills.
+
+"And he used to be so fond of music, dear boy!" observed my mother, with
+a sigh.  "Good gracious, what noise is that?"
+
+"Your son's pop-gun against the window," said my father.  "It is lucky
+it is only the window; it would have made a less deafening noise,
+though, if it had been Mr. Squills's head, as it was yesterday morning."
+
+"The left ear," observed Squills; "and a very sharp blow it was too.
+Yet you are satisfied, Mr. Caxton?"
+
+"Yes; I think the boy is now as great a blockhead as most boys of his
+age are," observed my father with great complacency.
+
+"Dear me, Austin,--a great blockhead?"
+
+"What else did he go to school for?" asked my father.
+
+And observing a certain dismay in the face of his female audience, and a
+certain surprise in that of his male, he rose and stood on the hearth,
+with one hand in his waistcoat, as was his wont when about to
+philosophize in more detail than was usual to him.
+
+"Mr. Squills," said he, "you have had great experience in families."
+
+"As good a practice as any in the county," said Mr. Squills, proudly;
+"more than I can manage.  I shall advertise for a partner."
+
+"And," resumed my father, "you must have observed almost invariably that
+in every family there is what father, mother, uncle, and aunt pronounce
+to be one wonderful child."
+
+"One at least," said Mr. Squills, smiling.
+
+"It is easy," continued my father, "to say this is parental partiality;
+but it is not so.  Examine that child as a stranger, and it will startle
+yourself.  You stand amazed at its eager curiosity, its quick
+comprehension, its ready wit, its delicate perception.  Often, too, you
+will find some faculty strikingly developed.  The child will have a turn
+for mechanics, perhaps, and make you a model of a steamboat; or it will
+have an ear tuned to verse, and will write you a poem like that it has
+got by heart from 'The Speaker;' or it will take to botany (like
+Pisistratus), with the old maid its aunt; or it will play a march on its
+sister's pianoforte.  In short, even you, Squills, will declare that it
+is really a wonderful child."
+
+"Upon my word," said Mr. Squills, thoughtfully, "there's a great deal of
+truth in what you say.  Little Tom Dobbs is a wonderful child; so is
+Frank Stepington--and as for Johnny Styles, I must bring him here for
+you to hear him prattle on Natural History, and see how well he handles
+his pretty little microscope."
+
+"Heaven forbid!" said my father.  "And now let me proceed.  These
+thaumata, or wonders, last till when, Mr. Squills?--last till the boy
+goes to school; and then, somehow or other, the thaumata vanish into
+thin air, like ghosts at the cockcrow.  A year after the prodigy has
+been at the academy, father and mother, uncle and aunt, plague you no
+more with his doings and sayings: the extraordinary infant has become a
+very ordinary little boy.  Is it not so, Mr. Squills?"
+
+"Indeed you are right, sir.  How did you come to be so observant?  You
+never seem to--"
+
+"Hush!" interrupted my father; and then, looking fondly at my mother's
+anxious face, he said soothingly: "Be comforted; this is wisely
+ordained, and it is for the best."
+
+"It must be the fault of the school," said my mother, shaking her head.
+
+"It is the necessity of the school, and its virtue, my Kate.  Let any
+one of these wonderful children--wonderful as you thought Sisty himself-
+-stay at home, and you will see its head grow bigger and bigger, and its
+body thinner and thinner--eh, Mr. Squills?--till the mind take all
+nourishment from the frame, and the frame, in turn, stint or make sickly
+the mind.  You see that noble oak from the window.  If the Chinese had
+brought it up, it would have been a tree in miniature at five years old,
+and at a hundred, you would have set it in a flowerpot on your table, no
+bigger than it was at five,--a curiosity for its maturity at one age; a
+show for its diminutiveness at the other.  No! the ordeal for talent is
+school; restore the stunted mannikin to the growing child, and then let
+the child, if it can, healthily, hardily, naturally, work its slow way
+up into greatness.  If greatness be denied it, it will at least be a
+man; and that is better than to be a little Johnny Styles all its life,-
+-an oak in a pill-box."
+
+At that moment I rushed into the room, glowing and panting, health on my
+cheek, vigor in my limbs, all childhood at my heart.  "Oh, mamma, I have
+got up the kite--so high Come and see.  Do come, papa!"
+
+"Certainly," said my father; "only don't cry so loud,--kites make no
+noise in rising; yet, you see how they soar above the world.  Come,
+Kate.  Where is my hat?  Ah!--thank you, my boy."
+
+"Kitty," said my father, looking at the kite, which, attached by its
+string to the peg I had stuck into the ground, rested calm in the sky,
+"never fear but what our kite shall fly as high; only, the human soul
+has stronger instincts to mount upward than a few sheets of paper on a
+framework of lath.  But observe that to prevent its being lost in the
+freedom of space,--we must attach it lightly to earth; and observe
+again, my dear, that the higher it soars, the more string we must give
+it."
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CAXTONS, BY LYTTON, PART 1 ***
+
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