he sometimes considers the most virile writer of the century: nor
would he be quite happy unless he could find in the dark The Autocrat
of the Breakfast Table. He is much indebted to a London publisher
for a very careful edition of the Spectator, and still more to that
good bookman, Mr. Austin Dobson, for his admirable introduction. As
the bookman's father was also a bookman, for the blessing descendeth
unto the third and fourth generation, he was early taught to love De
Quincey, and although, being a truthful man, he cannot swear he has
read every page in all the fifteen volumes--roxburghe calf--yet he
knows his way about in that whimsical, discursive, but ever
satisfying writer, who will write on anything, or any person, always
with freshness and in good English, from the character of Judas
Iscariot and "Murder as a Fine Art" to the Lake Poets--there never
was a Lake school--and the Essenes. He has much to say on Homer, and
a good deal also on "Flogging in Schools"; he can hardly let go
Immanuel Kant, but if he does it is to give his views, which are not
favourable, of Wilhelm Meister; he is not above considering the art
of cooking potatoes or the question of whether human beings once had
tails, and in his theological moods he will expound St. John's
Epistles, or the principles of Christianity. The bookman, in fact,
is a quite illogical and irresponsible being, who dare not claim that
he searches for accurate information in his books as for fine gold,
and he has been known to say that that department of books of various
kinds which come under the head of "what's what," and "why's why,"
and "where's where," are not literature. He does not care, and that
may be foolish, whether he agrees with the writer, and there are
times when he does not inquire too curiously whether the writer be
respectable, which is very wrong, but he is pleased if this man who
died a year ago or three hundred years has seen something with his
own eyes and can tell him what he saw in words that still have in