Alton Locke, tailor and poet : an autobiography / by Charles Kingsley.

  • Kingsley, Charles, 1819-1875.
Date:
1857
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Alton Locke, tailor and poet : an autobiography / by Charles Kingsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    395/736
    “Tuesday, 22nd. — Barometer rapidly falling. Heavy clouds in the south-east. My heart sank into gloomy forebodings. Read Manfred, and doubted whether I should live long. The leaden weight of destiny seemed to crush down my aching forehead, till the thunder-storm burst, and peace was restored to my troubled soul.” This was very bad; but to do justice to Lancelot, he had grown out of it at the time when my story begins. He was now in the fifth act of his ^Ver- terean” stage, that sentimental measles which all clever men must catch once in their lives, and which, generally, like the physical measles, if taken early, settles their constitution for good or evil; if taken late, goes far towards killing them. Lancelot had found Byron and Shelley pall on his taste, and commenced devouring Bulwer and worshipping Ernest Maltravers. He had left Bulwer for old ballads and romances, and Mr. Carlyle’s reviews; was next alter- nately chivalry-mad, and Germany-mad; was now reading hard at physical science; and on the whole trying to become a great man, without any very clear notion of what a great man ought to be. Real education he never had had. Bred up at home under his father, a rich merchant, he had gone to college with a large stock of general information, and a par- ticular mania for dried plants, fossils, butterflies, and sketching, and some such creed as this: — That he was very clever. That he ought to make his fortune. That a great many things were very pleasant — beautiful things among the ,rest. 1*