nnot understand it.'

"Allusion is here made to an important fact. David could not understand
how Abraham could possess such a love of knowledge as to lead him to
forego all social pleasures, be willing to wear a threadbare coat, live
on the coarsest fare, and labor hard all day, and sit up half the night,
for the sake of learning. But there is just that power in the love of
knowledge, and it was this that caused Lincoln to derive happiness from
doing what would have been a source of misery to David. Some of the most
marked instances of self-forgetfulness recorded are connected with the
pursuit of knowledge. Archimedes was so much in love with the studies of
his profession, that, etc., etc. Professor Heyne, of Goettingen," etc.,
etc., etc.--A clearer explanation than this we have rarely met with
outside the realm of mathematical demonstration.

A shorter example of the same judicious oversight we have when "in
rushed Nat, under great excitement, with his eyes 'as large as saucers,'
to use a hyperbole, which means only that his eyes looked very large
indeed." The impression which would have been made upon the rising
generation, had the testimony been allowed to go forth without its
corrective, that upon a certain occasion _any_ Governor's eyes were
really as large as saucers, even very small tea-saucers, is such as the
imagination refuses to dwell on.

This exuberance of illustration increases the value of these books in
another respect. To use a homely phrase, we get more than we bargained
for. Ostensibly engaged with the life of the Bobbin Boy, we are covertly
introduced to the majority of all the boys that ever were born and came
to anything. The advertised story is a kind of mother-hen who gathers
under her wings a numerous brood of biographical chicks. Quantities of
recondite erudition are poured out on the slightest provocation. Nat's
unquestioned superiority to his schoolmates evokes a disquisition for
the encouragement of dull boys, in which we are told that "the great
philosopher, Newton, was one of the dullest scholars in school when he
was twelve years old. Doctor Isaac Barrow was such a dull, pugnacious,
stupid fellow, etc., etc. The father of Doctor Adam Clarke, the
commentator, called his boy, etc. Cortina," (vernacular for Cortona,
probably,) "a renowned painter, was nicknamed, etc., etc. When the
mother of Sheridan once, etc., etc. One teacher sent Chatterton home,
etc. Napoleon and Wellington, etc., et