1831 .] The Perplexities of a Book- Worm. 395 



every page, were in him softened away into sweetness, and tenderness, 

 and heroism. I shall never forget my sensations when I first read " The 

 Robbers.'' It was a winter's night, and I sat as usual in my solitude. 

 My temper had been crossed by some petty incident during the day, and 

 I had shut myself in to quarrel with the first book I put my hand on 

 that book was "The Robbers." As I proceeded a few pages, the interest of 

 the drama enchained my attention the pathetic circumstances of the 

 principal characters the sympathy you are made, right or wrong, to feel 

 for Charles Moor his splendid achievements, his generosity, his 

 unhappy fate, his struggling virtue, breaking out through guilt and 

 ill-doing, his final retribution, horrible and calamitous, just yet lament- 

 able all, crowding upon me in every scene, and thickening and growing 

 with a terrible reality about me, so completely absorbed me, that when I 

 laid down the book, I fancied it was a weakness, but it proved how 

 powerful the writing was I fancied I beheld the gallant ranger of 

 Bohemia, the desperate outlaw Moor, Charles Moor and the name 

 yet thrills through my veins I fancied I beheld him seated upon a chair 

 before me, gazing coldly and sternly into rny face ! I had courage for a 

 moment to look upon his lineaments, and they were there, for a moment, 

 wan, and manly, and noble, as Schiller has described them ; but in the 

 next moment the mist cleared from my eyes, and the vision wreathed 

 away into darkness ! This is a fact ; but it occurred to a solitary man, 

 nervous, perhaps, in his solitude, and more susceptible than other men 

 to the influences of imagination. 



I had ever mingled but little in the world, and grew into manhood, 

 comparatively ignorant of its customs, and entirely untouched by its 

 seductions : and I had now passed over the time when I might have 

 been ductile enough to learn and adapt. It was too late to move out 

 of my retirement and begin life : my habits were formed my disposi- 

 tion, such as it was, was based upon settled phlegm and confirmed 

 nausea : I could not turn back upon the past and say, " Rise not upon 

 my memory/' nor to the future, " Be, as if the past had never been." 

 I felt the disease at my heart it made the whole world a vacuum to 

 me and I would have shaken it from me, if I could but that was not 

 within my bidding. That which I had allowed to control me, I could 

 not now control : it was beyond the reach of my powers, and I did not 

 covet it. I was like one labouring under a spell, which he felt of 

 which he was thoroughly conscious but which wielded him at plea- 

 sure, as a giant would toy with an infant. I often revisited the scene 

 of my first impressions ; and there it was as vivid and spirit-subduing 

 as ever ; and then I would fly from it to my chamber but I was com- 

 panionless ; and my books .came round me like spectres and shadows, 

 and I grappled with them, and they swung round me, like the booming 

 of the dark waters round a ship that had lost its chart, night after 

 night. 



I had read much and constantly, and fatigue and tedium grew upon 

 over-feeding. Yet my appetite was not diminished, it was my palate 

 that demanded stimulants. I looked for variety in every form in which 

 it could be sought. I had already collated and arranged all my books : 

 I had thrown them into every possible classification; chronologically, 

 and according to their species and their genus ; I had exhausted every 

 description of solid reading I could obtain, and was glad to find an 

 excuse for seeking refuge amongst the lighter and less profitable authors. 

 In theology, at last, I discovered the absence of obesity ; and even in 



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