es; impassioned arguments, pleadings, and an appeal
to take it at the most wonderfully low price. Then we have desirable
information, dealing with topics of varied kind, and assurances that
material would here be found for dealing conveniently with every known
subject. Still, what a surprise that use was not made of "the immortal
Pickwick" in whose pages these peculiar advantages were more successfully
and permanently set forth and illustrated by one most telling example
furnished by no other than Mr. Pott himself, the redoubtable editor of
the _Eatanswill Gazette_. To him and to no other is due the credit of
being the first to show practically _how to use_ the Encyclopedia. He
has furnished a _principle_ which is worth all the lengthy exhortations
of the _Times_ itself.

Pott seems to have kept the work in his office, and to have used it for
his articles in a highly ingenious fashion. For three months had he been
supplying a series of papers, which he assures us "appeared at
intervals," and which excited "such general--I may say, such universal
attention and admiration." A fine tribute surely to the Encyclopedia.
For recollect Pott's was a newspaper. The _Times_ folk say nothing of
this important view. Poor, simple Mr. Pickwick had not seen the articles
because he was busy travelling about and had no time for reading.
(Probably Pott would have put him on the "free list" of his paper, but
for the awkward Winkle flirtation which broke up the intimacy). Nay, he
might have had "the revolving book case," which would handily contain
_all_ the volumes.

And what were these articles? "They appeared in the form of a
_copious_"--mark the word!--"review of a work on Chinese Metaphysics." It
had need to be copious therefor, for it is a very large subject. Mr.
Pickwick himself must have been very familiar with the Encyclopedia, for
he at once objected that he was not aware that so abstruse a topic was
dealt with in its pages. He had perhaps consulted the book, say, at
Garraway's Coffee House, for, alas! the good man was not able to have a
library of his own, living, as he did, in lodgings or at the "George and
Vulture." Mr. Pott, however, who also knew the work well, had then to
confess that there was no such subject treated separately in it. But the
articles were from the pen of his critic (not from his own), "who
_crammed_ for it, to use a technical but expressive term; he read up for
the subject, at my desire, in