_ CHAPTER VI. I COBBLE
All this has led me, after a roundabout fashion, to what became for some time the chief delight of my Winters--an employment, moreover, which I have taken up afresh at odd times during my life. It came about thus. My uncle had made me a present of an old book with pictures in it. It was called _The Preceptor_--one of Dodsley's publications. There were wonderful folding plates of all sorts in it. Those which represented animals were of course my favourites. But these especially were in a very dilapidated condition, for there had been children before me somewhere; and I proceeded, at my uncle's suggestion, to try to mend them by pasting them on another piece of paper. I made bad work of it at first, and was so dissatisfied with the results, that I set myself in earnest to find out by what laws of paste and paper success might be secured. Before the Winter was over, my uncle found me grown so skilful in this manipulation of broken leaves--for as yet I had not ventured further in any of the branches of repair--that he gave me plenty of little jobs of the sort, for amongst his books there were many old ones. This was a source of great pleasure. Before the following Winter was over, I came to try my hand at repairing bindings, and my uncle was again so much pleased with my success that one day he brought me from the county town some sheets of parchment with which to attempt the fortification of certain vellum-bound volumes which were considerably the worse for age and use. I well remember how troublesome the parchment was for a long time; but at last I conquered it, and succeeded very fairly in my endeavours to restore to tidiness the garments of ancient thought.
But there was another consequence of this pursuit which may be considered of weight in my history. This was the discovery of a copy of the Countess of Pembroke's _Arcadia_--much in want of skilful patching, from the title-page, with its boar smelling at the rose-bush, to the graduated lines and the _Finis_. This book I read through from boar to finis--no small undertaking, and partly, no doubt, under its influences, I became about this time conscious of a desire after honour, as yet a notion of the vaguest. I hardly know how I escaped the taking for granted that there were yet knights riding about on war-horses, with couched lances and fierce spurs, everywhere as in days of old. They might have been roaming the world in all directions, without my seeing one of them. But somehow I did not fall into the mistake. Only with the thought of my future career, when I should be a man and go out into the world, came always the thought of the sword which hung on the wall. A longing to handle it began to possess me, and my old dream returned. I dared not, however, say a word to my uncle on the subject. I felt certain that he would slight the desire, and perhaps tell me I should hurt myself with the weapon; and one whose heart glowed at the story of the battle between him on the white horse with carnation mane and tail, in his armour of blue radiated with gold, and him on the black-spotted brown, in his dusky armour of despair, could not expose himself to such an indignity. _