A grandmother died about the same time,
leaving little impression, because she had been little seen. The other
death was of a beloved kingfisher, by a doleful accident. When the boy
was five, he lost his playfellow and, as he says, intellectual guide,
his sister Elizabeth, eight years old, dying of hydrocephalus, after
manifesting an intellectual power which the forlorn brother recalled
with admiration and wonder for life. The impression was undoubtedly
genuine; but it is impossible to read the "Autobiographical Sketch" in
which the death and funeral of the child are described without
perceiving that the writer referred back to the period he was describing
with emotions and reflex sensations which arose in him and fell from the
pen at the moment. His father, meantime, was residing abroad, year after
year, as a condition of his living at all; and he died of pulmonary
consumption before Thomas was seven years old. The elder brother, then
twelve, was obviously too eccentric for home management, if not for all
control; and, looking no further than these constitutional cases, we are
warranted in concluding that the Opium-eater entered life under peculiar
and unfavorable conditions.
He passed through a succession of schools, and was distinguished by his
eminent knowledge of Greek. At fifteen he was pointed out by his master
(himself a ripe scholar) to a stranger in the remarkable words, "That
boy could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could address an
English one.
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