It was a great disadvantage to him that his education should have been so much neglected in his boyhood. He had, it is true, been at three schools before he was six years old, but, as we have already seen, he was turned away from them all because of his love of “beasts.” He had learned comparatively little from his schoolmasters,—who knew little themselves, and perhaps taught less. He was able to read, though with difficulty. Arithmetic was to him a thing unknown. He had not even learnt to write. It was scarcely possible that he could have learned much in his boyhood, for he went to work when he was only six years old.
An attempt was made to teach him writing, whilst he was apprenticed to Begg, the drunken shoemaker. He asked leave to attend a writing school held in the evening. His master could not, or would not, understand the meaning of his request. “What!” said he, “learn to write! I suppose you will be asking to learn dancing next! What business have you with writing? Am I to be robbed of my time to enable you to learn to write?” Edward’s parents supported the application, and at last the master gave his consent. But there was always some work to do, or something to finish and carry home to the master’s customers, so that Edward rarely attended the writing school; and at the end of the quarter, he knew very little more of penmanship than he did at the beginning.
Edward had to begin at the beginning with everything. As we have already said, he knew next to nothing of books. He did not possess a single work on Natural History. He did not know the names of the birds and animals that he caught. For many years after he had begun his researches, his knowledge of natural objects was obtained by chance. He knew little of the nature and habits of the creatures that he went to seek; he scarcely knew where or how to find them. Yet his very absence of knowledge proved a source of inexhaustible pleasure to him. All that he learnt of the form, habits, and characteristics of birds and animals, was obtained by his own personal observation. His knowledge had been gathered and accumulated by himself. It was his own.
SHY AND FRIENDLESS.
It was a misfortune to Edward that, after he had attained manhood, he was so shy and friendless. He was as solitary as Wordsworth’s Wanderer. He had no friend of any sort to direct him in his studies; none even to lend him books, from which he might have obtained some assistance. He associated very little with his fellow-workers. Shoemakers were a very drunken lot. Edward, on the contrary, was sober and thoughtful. His fellow shoemakers could not understand him. They thought him an odd, wandering, unsettled creature. Why should he not, as they did, enjoy himself at the public house? Instead of doing this, Edward plodded homewards so soon as his day’s work was over.
A LOVER OF NATURE.
There was, however, one advantage which Edward possessed, and it compensated him for many difficulties. He was an intense lover of Nature. Everything that lived and breathed had charms for him. He loved the fields, the woods, the moors. The living presence of the earth was always about him, and he eagerly drank in its spirit. The bubbling brooks, the whispering trees, the aspects of the clouds, the driving wind, were all sources of delight. He felt himself free amidst the liberty of Nature.
The ocean in its devious humours,—sometimes peacefully slumbering, or laving the sands with murmuring kisses at his feet; then, full of life and motion, carrying in and out the fishermen’s boats along the shores of the Firth; or, roaring with seeming agony, dashing itself in spray against the rockbound coast,—these sights and scenes were always a source of wonderment. As his wanderings were almost invariably conducted at night, he had abundant opportunities of seeing, not only the ocean, but the heavens, in their various aspects. What were these stars so far off in the sky? Were they worlds? Were they but the outposts of the earth, from which other worlds were to be seen, far beyond the ken of the most powerful telescope?
To use Edward’s own words, “I can never succeed in describing my unbounded admiration of the works of the Almighty; not only the wonderful works which we ourselves see upon earth, but those wondrous and countless millions of orbs which roll, both near and far, in the endless immensity of space—the Home of Eternity.
“Every living thing that moves or lives, everything that grows, everything created or formed by the hand or the will of the Omnipotent, has such a fascinating charm for me, and sends such a thrill of pleasure through my whole frame, that to describe my feelings is utterly impossible.”