and
from that time there seemed no reason why Mr. Tibbets should not visit
his relations on weekdays as well as Sundays. Not a day, indeed, passed
but what he held long conversations with my father. He had much to
report of his interviews with the publishers. In these conversations he
naturally recurred to that grand idea of the "Literary Times," which had
so dazzled my poor father's imagination; and, having heated the iron,
Uncle Jack was too knowing a man not to strike while it was hot.

When I think of the simplicity my wise father exhibited in this crisis
of his life, I must own that I am less moved by pity than admiration for
that poor great-hearted student. We have seen that out of the learned
indolence of twenty years, the ambition which is the instinct of a man
of genius had emerged; the serious preparation of the Great Book for the
perusal of the world had insensibly restored the claims of that noisy
world on the silent individual. And therewith came a noble remorse that
he had hitherto done so little for his species. Was it enough to write
quartos upon the past history of Human Error? Was it not his duty, when
the occasion was fairly presented, to enter upon that present, daily,
hourly war with Error, which is the sworn chivalry of Knowledge? Saint
George did not dissect dead dragons, he fought the live one. And London,
with that magnetic atmosphere which in great capitals fills the breath
of life with stimulating particles, had its share in quickening the slow
pulse of the student. In the country he read but his old authors, and
lived with them through the gone ages. In the city, my father, during
the intervals of repose from the Great Book, and still more now that
the Great Book had come to a pause, inspected the literature of his own
time. It had a prodigious effect upon him. He was unlike the ordinary
run of scholars, and, indeed, of readers, for that matter, who, in their
superstitious homage to the dead, are always willing enough to sacrifice
the living. He did justice to the marvellous fertility of intellect
which characterizes the authorship of the present age. By the present
age, I do not only mean the present day, I commence with the century.
"What," said my father one day in dispute with Trevanion, "what
characterizes the literature of our time is its human interest. It is
true that we do not see scholars addressing scholars, but men addressing
men,--not that scholars are fewer, but that the reading