them in others. He looked only on the sunshine. Hazlitt, speaking of him
in his "Conversation of Authors," says, "He lives amongst the old authors,
if he does not enter much into their spirit. He handles the covers, and
turns over the pages, and is familiar with the names and dates. He is busy
and self-involved. He hangs like a film and cobweb upon letters, or is
like the dust upon the outside of knowledge, which should not too rudely
be brushed aside. He follows learning as its shadow, but as such he is
respectable. He browses on the husks and leaves of books." And Lamb says,
"The gods, by denying him the very faculty of discrimination, have
effectually cut off every seed of envy in his bosom."

Dyer was very thin and short in person, and was extremely near-sighted;
and his motions were often (apparently) spasmodic. His means of living
were very scanty; he subsisted mainly by supervising the press, being
employed for that purpose by booksellers when they were printing Greek or
Latin books. He dwelt in Clifford's Inn, "like a dove in an asp's nest,"
as Charles Lamb wittily says; and he might often have been seen with a
classical volume in his hand, and another in his pocket, walking slowly
along Fleet Street or its neighborhood, unconscious of gazers, cogitating
over some sentence, the correctness of which it was his duty to determine.
You might meet him murmuring to himself in a low voice, and apparently
tasting the flavor of the words.

Dyer's knowledge of the drama (which formed part of the subject of his
first publication) may be guessed, by his having read Shakespeare, "an
irregular genius," and having dipped into Rowe and Otway, but never having
heard of any other writers in that class. In absence of mind, he probably
exceeded every other living man. Lamb has set forth one instance (which I
know to be a fact) of Dyer's forgetfulness, in his "Oxford in the
Vacation;" and to this various others might be added, such as his emptying