Page:The Martyrdom of Man 1910.djvu/12

vi part of his career, it would seem that he fell at Oxford into a somewhat dissipated set, and acquired there habits which were to stand him in bad stead in after life. On leaving the University without a degree, he at first resolved on a literary career, the success of his uncle, just then risen to fame as a playwright and novelist, doubtless appearing before him as a shining example. In 1859, he published a short sketch called Charlotte and Myra, narrating the misadventures of a young gentleman who, after proposing to and being accepted by one of the twin daughters of a country squire, afterwards confuses her with her sister, and thereby exposes himself to a breach of promise action which ruins him. The story is wildly improbable, but is told with some spirit, the desire of a very young man–he was then not twenty-one–to show his acquaintance with the world and its dissipations being apparent on every page. This was followed the next year by Liberty Hall, Oxon, a novel in the then orthodox three volumes, in which Reade sets himself to describe at sufficient length the lives of a group of University men, who can hardly be any other than himself and his companions, as they appeared to his youthful eyes, and as he thought they were likely to end. Here we have the well-known types of the rowing man, the lady-killer, and the undergraduate who has held a commission in the Army for a short time, and is therefore much looked up to by his contemporaries for his superior knowledge of life. There also appear in these pages the drunkard and the gambler, and it is significant of the bent of Reade's mind at this period that none of his characters come to much good, while he indulges in many diatribes against the