6 INTRODUCTION. 



by the wayside to the creation of a groat firm, gathering a Land 

 of writers to its aid in producing, printing, and distributing 

 journals and books by millions through the world, all of them 

 wholesome and instructive, all aiding in the development of 

 men by healthy training of their minds. 



When a man does only one thing, however stupid he may be, 

 if he keep on doing it, there are many ready to accept him as a 

 master in his art. If he have a wide interest in all that touches 

 him as man ; if he fix his mind with a keen intellectual activity 

 on whatever is most worth attention in the world about him ; 

 if he be as ready to study the great poet of his country and 

 write a Life of Burns, as to inquire into the life of ]^^ature and 

 explore sea margins; if it be at the same time known that ho 

 is shrewd and energetic as a man of business, and head of a 

 great commercial firm ; if he be gifted also with skill as a 

 writer, which he is proud to use in bringing knowledge of all 

 kinds within reach of the half-tanght — what is the world to 

 make of him, the world that wants for every man a neat label 

 devised in about ten words of a simple sentence which shall 

 represent what is to be said of him b}^ those who wish to appear 

 well informed ? 



There are few things in the world, if any — certainly there is 

 not a man or woman in the world — whose nature can be told 

 or character described in a few sentences. To understand a 

 man fully, we must know all that he did and why each thing 

 was done, all that he wrote and why each piece was written ; 

 how the surroundings of his life affected tone and character of 

 thought or action ; what, in each instance, determined action, 

 and at every stage of life what was his age ; for the wisdom of a 

 man of thirty-five may be the folly of a man of seventy. And 

 when all is known that we can know of another human worker 

 — at most half the truth mixed with a little error — the result is 

 a body of impressions that lio label can express. We may talk 

 of Eobert Chambers's capacity in any way we please; call him 

 a Popular Writer who might have been a famous Geologist, if 

 he had not been a Tublislier or a INlan of Letters ; say he might 

 have been a lanious Man of Letters, if he had not been a 

 Publisher or a Man of Science, and if his desire for the world's 

 welfare had not led him to address the million instead of the 

 select critical few. It really does not matter what wc say of 



