midnight
I was now thrown again utterly on my own resources . I read and re-read Milton 's `` Poems '' and Virgil 's `` Æneid '' for six more months at every spare moment ; thus spending over them , I suppose , all in all , far more time than most gentlemen have done . I found , too , in the last volume of Milton , a few of his select prose works : the `` Areopagitica , '' the `` Defence of the English People , '' and one or two more , in which I gradually began to take an interest ; and , little of them as I could comprehend , I was awed by their tremendous depth and power , as well as excited by the utterly new trains of thought into which they led me . Terrible was the amount of bodily fatigue which I had to undergo in reading at every spare moment , while walking to and fro from my work , while sitting up , often from midnight till dawn , stitching away to pay for the tallow-candle which I burnt , till I had to resort to all sorts of uncomfortable contrivances for keeping myself awake , even at the expense of bodily pain -- Heaven forbid that I should weary my readers by describing them ! Young men of the upper classes , to whom study -- pursue it as intensely as you will -- is but the business of the day , and every spare moment relaxation ; little you guess the frightful drudgery undergone by a man of the people who has vowed to educate himself , -- to live at once two lives , each as severe as the whole of yours , -- to bring to the self-imposed toil of intellectual improvement , a body and brain already worn out by a day of toilsome manual labour . I did it . God forbid , though , that I should take credit to myself for it .