1831.] The Perplexities of a Book-Worm. 397 



vaulted over time and space with freedom and activity that they spoke 

 to the world not of first-born systems, and mathematical evidences, but 

 of results and consequences as if they came not to convert men to 

 original principles, but to converse on their application. There was a 

 freshness, a vivacity, an electricity in this that awoke me from my deep 

 reverie of years. I saw that there was yet in books a cure for my dis- 

 temper, or I imagined I saw it. I was no longer hunted from proof to 

 proof decoyed from syllogism to syllogism but felt myself flattered 

 by authors who pre-supposed me to be acquainted with the necessary 

 groundwork of the disquisition. I felt the delicacy of this compliment 

 to the age, and began to apprehend that I had lived too long in my 

 solitude. 



Enthusiasm was, as it were, re-created in me. I sat down in the 

 midst of my newly-acquired riches with the grasping avidity of the 

 miser, and I trembled lest I might be deprived, by accident, of the 

 enjoyments that now arose on every side around me. The disease that 

 had hitherto fastened sullenly upon my vitals, now seemed to take ano- 

 ther course ; and rushing to my eyes, and my cheeks, and my pulses, 

 inspired my whole frame with a glow and a palpitation to which I was 

 formerly a stranger. The freshness, and the curiosity, and the eagerness 

 of boyhood broke upon me in this my immature manhood ; my mind 

 expanded, quickened, and strengthened ; and if I was dogmatic before, 

 I now became precipitate and extravagant. But this change, although 

 it affected my feelings and my system, did not extend beyond its opera- 

 tion on my own thoughts : it had no external effect : it did not make me 

 relish society the better, nor induce me to compromise the gloom of my 

 study for the glitter of the drawing-room. I had not yet contemplated 

 my desolation. I had not yet felt that seclusion had done its work of 

 darkness upon me, and that the joy which now tingled through my 

 veins was only the gush of an embedded spring ; I only felt the selfish 

 satisfaction of a perfect communion with my own spirit, and I gloried 

 in its smothered voice. " I can never forget my knowledge," I cried, 

 " I can never forget my knowledge : friends might forsake, pleasures 

 deceive, rank and station delude me but my knowledge never ! It 

 is with me always : it will not desert me in misfortune it is that of 

 which no power can bereave me." 



The new books increased upon me quickly, even to repletion. I had 

 scarcely time, although I laboured day and night, and rarely appor- 

 tioned sufficient leisure to exercise or repose, to obtain a hasty acquaint- 

 ance with their merits. Their views of life, of science, of all that I had 

 studiously struggled to learn, were masterly, brilliant, and rapid. I 

 was carried on in a perpetual flow of ease and eloquence. They had the 

 brevity of Pericles, and the march of Gibbon : they were models rather 

 than imitations, and were capable of instructing the ancients. The 

 celerity with which books increased, and their general adaptiveness to 

 all the purposes of amusement and utility, at length struck me as being 

 a remarkable feature in the age. Intellect, abroad in the world, had 

 either advanced in seven-leagued strides, or I, being out of the world, 

 had stood still. My own deficiency, at least in promptitude and vigour, 

 pressed upon me at every reflection ; and when I looked in on the blank 

 that lay upon my heart, I concluded that I had imbibed nothing in my 

 years of solitude, and that men, who were moving up and down in cease- 

 less activity, communicating, telegraphing, invigorating and inhaling 

 new ideas, and re-combining and relieving the old, had, in reality, far 



