literary
man. I have never been in the rooms of a literary man before," the
Colonel said, turning away from his son to us: "excuse me, is that--that
paper really a proof-sheet?" We handed over to him that curiosity,
smiling at the enthusiasm of the honest gentleman who could admire what
to us was as unpalatable as a tart to a pastrycook.

Being with men of letters, he thought proper to make his conversation
entirely literary; and in the course of my subsequent more intimate
acquaintance with him, though I knew he had distinguished himself in
twenty actions, he never could be brought to talk of his military feats
or experience, but passed them by, as if they were subjects utterly
unworthy of notice.

I found he believed Dr. Johnson to be the greatest of men: the Doctor's
words were constantly in his mouth; and he never travelled without
Boswell's Life. Besides these, he read Caesar and Tacitus, "with
translations, sir, with translations--I'm thankful that I kept some
of my Latin from Grey Friars;" and he quoted sentences from the Latin
Grammar, apropos of a hundred events of common life, and with perfect
simplicity and satisfaction to himself. Besides the above-named books,
the Spectator, Don Quixote, and Sir Charles Grandison formed a part of
his travelling library. "I read these, sir," he used to say, "because I
like to be in the company of gentlemen; and Sir Roger de Coverley, and
Sir Charles Grandison, and Don Quixote are the finest gentlemen in the
world." And when we asked him his opinion of Fielding,--

"Tom Jones, sir; Joseph Andrews, sir!" he cried, twirling his
mustachios. "I read them when I was a boy, when I kept other bad
company, and did other low and disgraceful things, of which I'm ashamed
now. Sir, in my father's library I happened to fall in with those books;
and I read them in secret, just as I used to go in private and drink
beer, and fight cocks, and smoke pipes with Jack and Tom, the grooms
in the stables. Mrs. Newcome found me, I recollect, with one of those
books; and thinking it might be by Mrs. Hannah More, or some of that
sort, for it was a grave-looking volume: and though I wouldn't lie about
that or anything else--never did, sir; never, before heaven, have I told
more than three lies in my life--I kept my own counsel; I say, she took
it herself to read one evening; and read on gravely--for she had no more
idea of a joke than I have of Hebrew--until she came to the part about
Lady B---- an