Mr. ——. "Yes; I think that character has done harm; it has thrown a ridicule upon metaphysical disquisitions."
Mrs.——. "Are not those lines about the pain in the stick in the 'Letter[116] to my Sisters at Crux Easton,' in Dodsley's poems?"
Mr. ——. "Yes; but they come originally from Hudibras, you know."
In slight conversations, such as these, which are not contrived for the purpose, the curiosity of children is awakened to literature; they see the use which people make of what they read, and they learn to talk freely about what they meet with in books. What a variety of thoughts came in a few instants from S——'s question about Idem!
(November 8th, 1795.) Mr. —— read the first chapter of Hugh Trevor to us; which contains the history of a passionate farmer, who was in a rage with a goose because it would not eat some oats which he offered it. He tore off the wings of the animal, and twisted off its neck; he bit off the ear of a pig, because it squealed when he was ringing it; he ran at his apprentice Hugh Trevor with a pitch-fork, because he suspected that he had drank some milk; the pitch-fork stuck in a door. Hugh Trevor then told the passionate farmer, that the dog Jowler had drank the milk, but that he would not tell this before, because he knew his master would have hanged the dog.
S—— admired Hugh Trevor for this extremely.
The farmer in his lucid intervals is extremely penitent, but his fit of rage seizes him again one morning when he sees some milk boiling over. He flies at Hugh Trevor, and stabs him with a clasp knife, with which he had been cutting bread and cheese; the knife is stopped by half a crown which Hugh Trevor had sewed in his waistcoat; this half crown he had found on the highway a few days before.
It was doubted by Miss M. S——, whether this last was a proper circumstance to be told to children, because it might lead them to be dishonest.
The evening after Mr. —— had read the story, he asked S—— to repeat it to him. S—— remembered it, and told it distinctly till he came to the half crown; at this circumstance he hesitated. He said he did not know how Hugh Trevor "came to keep it," though he had found it. He wondered that Hugh Trevor did not ask about it.
Mr. —— explained to him, that when a person finds any thing upon the highway, he should put it in the hand of the public crier, who should cry it. Mr. —— was not quite certain whether the property found on the high road, after it has been cried and no owner appears, belongs to the king, or to the person who finds it. Blackstone's Commentaries were consulted; the passage concerning Treasuretrove was read to S——; it is written in such distinct language, that he understood it completely.