I also read at this time, by myself, as many of the great books of the world as I could reach; making it a rule always (whether bored or not) to go on to the end of each, and also following generally Gibbon’s advice, viz., to rehearse in one’s mind in a walk before beginning a great book all that one knows of the subject, and then, having finished it, to take another walk, and register how much has been added to our store of ideas. In these ways I read all the Faery Queen, all Milton’s poetry, and the Divina Commedia and Gerusalemme Liberata in the originals. Also (in translations) I read through the Iliad, Odyssey, Æneid, Pharsalia, and all or nearly all, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Ovid, Tacitus, Xenophon, Herodotus, Thucydides, &c. There was a fairly good library at Newbridge, and I could also go when I pleased, and read in Archbishop Marsh’s old library in Dublin, where there were splendid old books, though none I think more recent than a hundred and fifty years before my time. My mother possessed a small collection of classics—Dryden, Pope, Milton, Horace, &c., which she gave me, and I bought for myself such other books as I needed out of my liberal pin-money. Happily, I had at that time a really good memory for literature, being able to carry away almost the words of passages which much interested me in prose or verse, and to bring them into use when required, though I had, oddly enough, at the same period so imperfect a recollection of persons and daily events that, being very anxious to do justice to our servants, I was obliged to keep a book of memoranda of the characters and circumstances of all who left us, that I might give accurate and truthful recommendations.
By degrees these discursive studies—I took up various hobbies from time to time—Astronomy, Architecture, Heraldry, and many others—centred more and more on the answers which have been made through the ages by philosophers and prophets to the great questions of the human soul. I read such translations as were accessible in those pre-Müller days, of Eastern Sacred books; Anquetil du Perron’s Zend Avesta (twice); and Sir William Jones’s Institutes of Menu; and all I could learn about the Greek and Alexandrian philosophers from Diogenes Laertius and the old translators (Taylor, of Norwich, and others) and a large Biographical Dictionary which we had in our library. Having always a passion for Synopses, I constructed, somewhere about 1840, a Table, big enough to cover a sheet of double-elephant paper, wherein the principal Greek philosophers were ranged,—their lives, ethics, cosmogonies and special doctrines,—in separate columns. After this I made a similar Table of the early Gnostics and other heresiarchs, with the aid of Mosheim, Sozomen, and Eusebius.
Does the reader smile to find these studies recorded as the principal concern of the life of a young lady from 16 to 20, and in fact to 35 years of age? It was even so! They were (beside Religion, of which I shall speak elsewhere) my supreme interest. As I have said in the beginning, I had neither cares of love, or cares of money to occupy my mind or my heart. My parents wished me to go a little into society when I was about 18, and I was, for the moment, pleased and interested in the few balls and drawing-rooms (in Dublin) to which my father and afterwards my uncle, General George Cobbe, conducted me. But I was rather bored than amused by my dancing partners, and my dear mother, already in declining years and completely an invalid, could never accompany me, and I pined for her motherly presence and guidance, the loss of which was only half compensated for by her comments on the long reports of all I had seen and said and done, as I sat on her bed, on my return home. By degrees also, my thoughts came to be so gravely employed by efforts to find my way to religious truth, that the whole glamour of social pleasures disappeared and became a weariness; and by the time I was 19 I begged to be allowed to stay at home and only to receive our own guests, and attend the occasional dinners in our neighbourhood. With some regret my parents yielded the point, and except for a visit every two or three years to London for a few weeks of sightseeing, and one or two trips in Ireland to houses of our relations, my life, for a long time, was perfectly secluded. I have found some verses in which I described it.
“I live! I live! and never to man
More joy in life was given,
Or power to make, as I can make,
Of this bright world a heaven.
“My mind is free; my limbs are clad
With strength which few may know,
And every eye smiles lovingly;