Henry Thomas Buckle [pp. 339-345]

HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE.
would sneak up stairs and change my boots, and
put on another coat. I'll amuse Alison while
you are gone.... Old lady," he stood in the
full light of the gas, with his right hand modestly thrust into his bosom, and his left hand on his
thigh-" old lady, and everybody here present,
I give notice that I am about to change my name.
Henceforth I mean to be known as Nicolas Cridland-Hamblin, Esquire, about to become, as soon
as I leave school, a clerk in the firm of Anthony
Hamblin and Company, Indigo Merchants, Great
St. Simon Apostle, City."
HENR Y THOMAS BUCKLE.*
R. BUCKLE'S reputation is unique in more
ways than one; after a long preparation
he burst upon the world with a masterpiece, and
this masterpiece was received with instant ac clamation by the public, and depreciated so far
as possible by most of those to whom the public
generally looks for guidance. The most singular
thing of all is that during the period of prepara tion he deliberately abstained from any partial or
tentative work, and that he entered upon the
work of preparation with an utterly undisciplined,
not to say unexercised intelligence. He was a
very delicate child, and had hardly mastered his
letters at eight, and was quite indifferent to child ish games. Dr. Birkbeck was of opinion that he
ought to be spared in every possible way, and
never made to do anything but what he chose.
His great delight was to sit for hours by the side
of his mother to hear the Scriptures read. Up
to the age of eighteen he read hardly anything
but the "Arabian Nights," "Don Quixote," Bunyan, and Shakespeare, whom he began at fifteen.
He was sent to school for a short time to give
him a change from home, with strict directions
that he was never to be punished or forced to
learn; nevertheless, out of curiosity, he learned
enough to bring home the first prize for mathematics before he was fourteen. Being asked
what reward he would have for this feat, he chose
to be taken away from school. He knew hardly
anything, and was proud of showing off what he
knew. He would stand on the kitchen-table, and
recite the Creed and the Lord's Prayer in Latin
and French, translating sentence by sentence.
He would play with his cousin at "Parson and
Clerk," always preaching himself, according to
his mother, with extraordinary eloquence for a
child. This is more like a precocious child of
four than a clever and backward child of fourteen. The same may be said of his less intellectual amusements. "On one occasion, for instance, he turned every chair and table in the
* Life and Writings of Henry Thomas Buckle. By
Alfred Henry Huth. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
kitchen over, gave his nurse's daughter a pea shooter, and had shooting-matches with her;
and on another occasion, when he went to call
on his old nurse, turned everything there topsy turvy, romped about, threw the daughter's cat
out of the window, and, finally, walking with
them down the street, sang and was generally
uproarious, seizing fruit from the open shops, and
behaving so as to make them quite afraid that he
would get into trouble." He was sent again
to a private tutor's, and there, though he never
seemed to learn his lessons, he was always fore most. His health, however, failed, and again he
had to be taken home. In the latter part of this
time his father's conversation gave him an inter est in politics and political economy, and by the
time he was seventeen he had composed a letter
to Sir Robert Peel on free trade. His father, a
cultivated man who had been at Cambridge, and
used to recite Shakespeare to his family, wished
his son to be an East India merchant like himself. Buckle entered the office much against his
will, but when he was a little over eighteen he
was released by his father's death, which occurred
on the 22d of January, I840. His last words
were to bid his son "be a good boy to his mother." Buckle was taken fainting from the room.
He always repaid her self-sacrificing devotion
with the tenderest attachment; he never really
recovered from the shock of her death. She was
a very remarkable woman. Miss Shirreff said,
after meeting her in 1854:
Apart from her being the mother of such a son,
she was a very interesting person to know. It is curious how many people there are on whom their own
lives seem to have produced no impression; they
may have seen and felt much, but they have ndt reflected upon their experience, and they remain apparently unconscious of the influences that have been
at work around and upon them. With Mrs. Buckle
it was exactly the reverse. The events, the persons,
the books that had affected her at particular times or
in a particular manner, whatever influenced her actions or opinions remained vividly impressed on her
mind, and she spoke freely of her own experience,
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