In after years my mother,
looking at me almost reproachfully, would sometimes say, "Ah!
you were such a pretty boy!" whence I had no difficulty in
concluding that I had not fulfilled my early promise in the
matter of looks. In fact, I have a distinct recollection of
certain curls of which I was vain, and of a conviction that
I closely resembled that handsome, courtly gentleman, Sir
Herbert Oakley, who was vicar of our parish, and who was as a
god to us country folk because he was occasionally visited
by the then Prince George of Cambridge. I remember turning my
pinafore wrong side forwards in order to represent a surplice,
and preaching to my mother's maids in the kitchen as nearly as
possible in Sir Herbert's manner one Sunday morning, when
the rest of the family were at church. That is the earliest
indication of the strong clerical affinities which my friend
Mr. Herbert Spencer has always ascribed to me, though I fancy
they have, for the most part, remained in a latent state.
He was not a precocious child, nor pushed forward by early
instruction. His native talent for drawing, had it been cultivated,
might have brought him into the front rank of artists; but on the
perverse principle, then common, that training is either useless to
native capacity or ruins it, he remained untaught, and his vigorous
draughtsmanship, invaluable as it was in his scientific career, never
reached its full technical perfection.
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