m in his
own room--a privilege enjoyed by scarce any one else--and even invited
to borrow his books. His room--a dark and melancholy chamber, grey with
dust--always contained a number of curious but not very rare things,
which he had picked up in his walks--prettily coloured fungi--vegetable
monstrosities of the commoner kind, such as "fause craws' nests," and
flattened twigs of pine--and with these, as the representatives of
another department of natural science, fragments of semi-transparent
quartz or of glittering feldspar, and sheets of mica a little above the
ordinary size. But the charm of the apartment lay in its books. Francie
was a book-fancier, and lacked only the necessary wealth to be in the
possession of a very pretty collection. As it was, he had some curious
volumes; among others, a first-edition copy of the "Nineteen Years'
Travels of William Lithgow," with an ancient woodcut, representing the
said William in the background, with his head brushing the skies, and,
far in front, two of the tombs which covered the heroes of Ilium, barely
tall enough to reach half-way to his knee, and of the length, in
proportion to the size of the traveller, of ordinary octavo volumes. He
had black-letter books, too, on astrology, and on the planetary
properties of vegetables; and an ancient book on medicine, that
recommended as a cure for the toothache a bit of the jaw of a suicide,
well triturated; and, as an infallible remedy for the falling-sickness,
an ounce or two of the brains of a young man, carefully dried over the
fire. Better, however, than these, for at least my purpose, he had a
tolerably complete collection of the British essayists, from Addison to
Mackenzie, with the "Essays" and "Citizen of the World" of Goldsmith;
several interesting works of travels and voyages, translated from the
French; and translations from the German, of Lavater, Zimmerman, and
Klopstock. He had a good many of the minor poets too; and I was enabled
to cultivate, mainly from his collection, a tolerably adequate
acquaintance with the wits of the reign of Queen Anne. Poor Francie was
at bottom a kindly and honest man; but the more intimately one knew him,
the more did the weakness and brokenness of his intellect appear. His
mind was a labyrinth without a clue, in whose recesses there lay stored
up a vast amount of book-knowledge, that could never be found when
wanted, and was of no sort of use to himself, or any one else. I got
sufficient