Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/283

 264 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS recollected reading was from about the age of ten, when a book of Grecian and Roman mythology. Goldsmith's Histories of Greece and Rotnej Cervantes* Don Quixote^ Poe's Tales^ and Irving 's Conquest of Granada were his first books. Hear- ing his father read Scott's Lady of the Lake^ Howells wrote a Roman tragedy in the easy measure of that poem. Before he knew anything of English grammar, he began to study Span- ish in order that he might write the life of Cervantes. Wil- liam 's father had bought a Spanish grammar from a returned volunteer of the Mexican War; from this book, after long years of study, the boy learned the Spanish language and Eng- lish granmiar, too. He tried to imitate Poe in a story called The Devil in the Smoke-Pipes. Scott, Campbell, and Gold- smith furnished him models for poetic imitation. Mr. Howells says of this imitative spirit of his boyhood, **I have never greatly loved an author without wishing to write like him. It was a long time before I found it best to be as like myself as I could, even when I did not think so well of myself as of some others. ' ' Mr. Howells had little schooling; the printing-office of his father was his school from a very early time. Taking into account the literary knowledge of the father, and his excel- lent ideas as to the educational duties of parents, this fact was fortunate for the training of the future editor and literary artist. No habit of idleness was allowed to undermine the strength of the boy's character, and his own active mind in- cessantly gave him employment in reading, in studying lan- guage, and in his literary attempts. When William was twelve years old his father bought the Dayton Transcript, and removed his family to Dayton. Here Shakespeare was brought to the boy 's notice by a company of players such as struggled along in those days. He saw Ham" let, Macbeth, and Richard III many times over, for the com- pany was liberal with passes to the Transcript office. The paper failed after two or three years, and the family went to live in a log-cabin in the woods on the Little Miami River, where a prosperous uncle had bought a mill. During the year spent here William read Longfellow's Spanish Student and