As a boy, then, I had already heard of an eternal life, promised
us through the humility of the Lord our God stooping to our pride;
and even from the womb of my mother, who greatly hoped in Thee,
I was sealed with the mark of His cross and salted with His salt.
Thou sawest, Lord, how while yet a boy, being seized on a time
with sudden oppression of the stomach, and like near to death--Thou
sawest, my God (for Thou wert my keeper), with what eagerness
and what faith I sought, from the pious care of my mother and
Thy Church, the mother of us all, the baptism of Thy Christ, my
God and Lord. Whereupon the mother of my flesh, being much troubled
(since, with a heart pure in Thy faith, she even more lovingly
travailed in birth of my salvation), would in eager haste have
provided for my consecration and cleansing by the health-giving
sacraments, confessing Thee, Lord Jesus, for the remission of
sins, unless I had suddenly recovered. And so, as if I must needs
be again polluted should I live, my cleansing was deferred, because
the defilements of sin would, after that washing, bring greater
and more perilous guilt. I then already believed: and my mother,
and the whole household, except my father: yet did not he prevail
over the power of my mother's piety in me, that as he did not
yet believe, so neither should I. For it was her earnest care
that Thou my God, rather than he, shouldest be my father; and
in this Thou didst aid her to prevail over her husband, whom she,
the better, obeyed, therein also obeying Thee, who hast so commanded.
I beseech Thee, my God, I would fain know, if so Thou willest,
for what purpose my baptism was then deferred? was it for my good
that the rein was laid loose, as it were, upon me, for me to sin?
or was it not laid loose? If not, why does it still echo in our
ears on all sides, "Let him alone, let him do as he will,
for he is not yet baptised? but as to bodily health, no one says,
"Let him be worse wounded, for he is not yet healed."
How much better then, had I been at once healed, and then, by
my friends' diligence and my own, my soul's recovered health had
been kept safe in Thy keeping who gavest it. Better truly. But
how many and great waves of temptation seemed to hang over me
after my boyhood! These my mother foresaw, and preferred to expose
to them the clay whence I might afterwards be moulded, than the
very cast, when made.
In boyhood itself, however (so much less dreaded for me than youth),
I loved not study, and hated to be forced to it. Yet I was forced;
and this was well done towards me, but I did not well, for, unless
forced, I had not learnt. But no one doth well against his will,
even though what he doth, be well. Yet neither did they well who
forced me, but what was well came to me from Thee, my God. For
they were regardless how I should employ what they forced me to
learn, except to satiate the insatiate desires of a wealthy beggary,
and a shameful glory. But Thou, by whom the very hairs of our
head are numbered, didst use for my good the error of all who
urged me to learn, and my own, who would not learn, Thou didst
use for my punishment --a fit penalty for one, so small a boy
and so great a sinner. So by those who did not well, Thou didst
well for me; and by my own sin Thou didst justly punish me. For
Thou hast commanded, and so it is, that every inordinate affection
should be its own punishment.
But why did I so much hate the Greek, which I studied as a boy?
I do not yet fully know. For the Latin I loved; not what my first
masters, but what the so-called grammarians taught me. For those
first lessons, reading, writing, and arithmetic, I thought as
great a burden and penalty as any Greek. And yet whence was this
too, but from the sin and vanity of this life, because I was flesh,
and a breath that passeth away and cometh not again? For those
first lessons were better certainly, because more certain; by
them I obtained, and still retain, the power of reading what I
find written, and myself writing what I will; whereas in the others,
I was forced to learn the wanderings of one Eneas, forgetful of
my own, and to weep for dead Dido, because she killed herself
for love; the while, with dry eyes, I endured my miserable self
dying among these things, far from Thee, O God my life.
For what more miserable than a miserable being who commiserates
not himself; weeping the death of Dido for love to Eneas, but
weeping not his own death for want of love to Thee, O God. Thou
light of my heart, Thou bread of my inmost soul, Thou Power who
givest vigour to my mind, who quickenest my thoughts, I loved
Thee not. I committed fornication against Thee, and all around
me thus fornicating there echoed "Well done! well done!"
for the friendship of this world is fornication against Thee;
and "Well done! well done!" echoes on till one is ashamed
not to be thus a man. And all this I wept not, I who wept for
Dido slain, and "seeking by the sword a stroke and wound
extreme," myself seeking the while a worse extreme, the extremest
and lowest of Thy creatures, having forsaken Thee, earth passing
into the earth. And if forbid to read all this, I was grieved
that I might not read what grieved me. Madness like this is thought
a higher and a richer learning, than that by which I learned to
read and write.
But now, my God, cry Thou aloud in my soul; and let Thy truth
tell me, "Not so, not so. Far better was that first study."
For, lo, I would readily forget the wanderings of Eneas and all
the rest, rather than how to read and write. But over the entrance
of the Grammar School is a veil drawn! true; yet is this not so
much an emblem of aught recondite, as a cloak of error. Let not
those, whom I no longer fear, cry out against me, while I confess
to Thee, my God, whatever my soul will, and acquiesce in the condemnation
of my evil ways, that I may love Thy good ways. Let not either
buyers or sellers of grammar-learning cry out against me. For
if I question them whether it be true that Eneas came on a time
to Carthage, as the poet tells, the less learned will reply that
they know not, the more learned that he never did. But should
I ask with what letters the name "Eneas" is written,
every one who has learnt this will answer me aright, as to the
signs which men have conventionally settled. If, again, I should
ask which might be forgotten with least detriment to the concerns
of life, reading and writing or these poetic fictions? who does
not foresee what all must answer who have not wholly forgotten
themselves? I sinned, then, when as a boy I preferred those empty
to those more profitable studies, or rather loved the one and
hated the other. "One and one, two", "two and two,
four"; this was to me a hateful sing-song: "the wooden
horse lined with armed men," and "the burning of Troy,"
and "Creusa's shade and sad similitude," were the choice
spectacle of my vanity.
Why then did I hate the Greek classics, which have the like tales?
For Homer also curiously wove the like fictions, and is most sweetly-vain,
yet was he bitter to my boyish taste. And so I suppose would Virgil
be to Grecian children, when forced to learn him as I was Homer.
Difficulty, in truth, the difficulty of a foreign tongue, dashed,
as it were, with gall all the sweetness of Grecian fable. For
not one word of it did I understand, and to make me understand
I was urged vehemently with cruel threats and punishments. Time
was also (as an infant) I knew no Latin; but this I learned without
fear or suffering, by mere observation, amid the caresses of my
nursery and jests of friends, smiling and sportively encouraging
me. This I learned without any pressure of punishment to urge
me on, for my heart urged me to give birth to its conceptions,
which I could only do by learning words not of those who taught,
but of those who talked with me; in whose ears also I gave birth
to the thoughts, whatever I conceived. No doubt, then, that a
free curiosity has more force in our learning these things, than
a frightful enforcement. Only this enforcement restrains the rovings
of that freedom, through Thy laws, O my God, Thy laws, from the
master's cane to the martyr's trials, being able to temper for
us a wholesome bitter, recalling us to Thyself from that deadly
pleasure which lures us from Thee.