178 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



fact, as he afterwards recalled, that his young brain was even. then 

 troubled at times with the " malady of thought," as he lost himself 

 in the mazes of revery or speculation about God and creation — 

 "those obstinate questionings of sense and outward things," which 

 the philosophical poet of England has described as the natural 

 misgivings of a "creature moving about in worlds not realized." 

 "Delight and liberty," as was natural to a bright boy in the full 

 flush of his animal spirits, still remained the simple creed of his 

 childhood, until one day his pet rabbit escaped from its warren 

 and ran into an opening in the foundation of the village church. 

 Finding the hole sufficiently large to admit of pushing his person 

 through it, he followed on all fours in eager pursuit of the fugitive, 

 when his eyes were attracted in a certain direction by a glimmer 

 of light, and groping his way toward it, beneath the church, he 

 discovered that it proceeded from a crevice which led into the vesti- 

 bule of the building, and which opened immediately behind a 

 book-case that had been placed in the vestibule, as the depository of 

 the village library. Working his way to the front of the book-case, 

 he found himself in the presence of all the literature stored on its 

 shelves, and on his taking down the first book which struck liis eye, 

 it proved to be Brooke's Fool of Quality, a work of fiction in 

 which views of practical life and traits of mysticid piety are artfully 

 blended, insomuch that even John Wesley was inclined to except 

 it from the mito-da-fe which, after the manner of the curate and 

 barber in the story of Don Quixote, he would have gladly per- 

 formed upon the less edifying products of the novel-writing imagi- 

 nation. Poring f)ver the pages of this fascinating volume, young 

 l^enry forgot the rabbit in quest of which he had crept beneath 

 the church. It was the first book he had ever read with zest, 

 because it was the first book he had ever read at the impulse of his 

 "own sweet will." Mrs. Browning has told us that we get no 

 good from a book by being ungenerous with it, by calculating 

 profits — "so much help by so much reading." 



"It is raUier when 



We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge 

 Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's i)rofound, 

 Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth — 

 'Tis then we get the riglit good from a book." 



