All of this led me to the Mystics and Quietists. I read Dr. Boardman's "History of Quakerism," which taught me that Fox grew out of Behmen; and I picked up one day Poiret's French work on the Mystics, which was quite a handbook or guide to the whole literature. But these books were but a small part of what I read; for at one time, taking another turn towards old English, I went completely through Chaucer and Gower, both in black letter, the collections of Ritson, Weber, Ellis, and I know not how many more of mediaeval ballads and romances, and very thoroughly and earnestly indeed Warton's "History of English Poetry." Then I read Sismondi's "Literature of Southern Europe" and Longfellow's "Poets and Poetry of Europe," which set me to work on Raynouard and other collections of Provencal poetry, in the knowledge of which I made some progress, and also St. Pelaye's, Le Grand's, Costello's, and other books on the Trouveurs. I translated into rhyme and sent to a magazine, of which I in after years became editor, one or two _lais_, which were rejected, I think unwisely, for they were by no means bad. Then I had a fancy for Miscellanea, and read the works of D'Israeli the elder and Burton's "Anatomy." One day I made a startling discovery, for I took at a venture from the library the black-letter first edition of the poems of Francois Villon. I was then fifteen years old. Never shall I forget the feeling, which Heine compares to the unexpected finding of a shaft of gold in a gloomy mine, which shot through me as I read for the first time these _ballades_. Now-a-days people are trained to them through second-hand sentiment. Villon has become--Heaven bless the mark!--_fashionable_! and aesthetic. I got at him "straight" out of black-letter reading in boyhood as a find of my own, and it was many, many years ere I ever met with a single soul who had heard of him. I at once translated the "Song of the Ladies of the Olden Time"; and I knew what _bon bec_ meant, which is more than one of Villon's great modern translators has done! Also _heaulmiere_, which is _not_ helmet-maker, as another supposes. I went further in this field than I have room to describe. I even read the rococo-sweet poems of Joachim du Bellay. In this year my father gave me "The Doctor," by Robert Southey, a work which I read and re-read assiduously for many years, and was guided by it to a vast amount of odd reading, Philemon Holland's translation of Pliny being one of the books. This induced me to read all of Southey's poems, which I did, not from the library, but from a bookstore, where I had free run and borrowing privileges, as I well might, since my father lost 4,000 pounds by its owner.