n April, 1837:

"We have forgotten the name of that Sidrophel who lately discovered
that the fixed stars were not single stars, but appear in the heavens
like soles at Billingsgate, in pairs; while a second astronomer, under
the influence of that competition in trade which the political
economists tell us is so advantageous to the public, professes to show
us, through his superior telescope, that the apparently single stars
are really three. Before such wondrous mandarins of science, how
continually must _homunculi_ like ourselves keep in the background,
lest we come between the wind and their nobility."

Certainly these little men ought to have kept in the background; but they
did not: and the growing reputation of the work which they assailed has
chronicled them in literary history; grubs in amber.

This important matter of inequality, which has led us so far, is one to
which the _Encyclopaedia_ is as subject as the _Cyclopaedia_; but it is not
so easily recognized as a fault. {288} We receive the first book as mainly
a collection of treatises: we know their authors, and we treat them as
individuals. We see, for instance, the names of two leading writers on
Optics, Brewster[466] and Herschel.[467] It would not at all surprise us if
either of these writers should be found criticising the other by name, even
though the very view opposed should be contained in the same _Encyclopaedia_
with the criticism. And in like manner, we should hold it no wonder if we
found some third writer not comparable to either of those we have named. It
is not so in the _Cyclopaedia_: here we do not know the author, except by
inference from a list of which we never think while consulting the work. We
do not dissent from this or that author: we blame the book.

The _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ is an old friend. Though it holds a proud
place in our present literature, yet the time was when it stood by itself,
more complete and more clear than anything which was to be found elsewhere.
There must be studious men alive in plenty who remember when they were
studious boys, what a literary luxury it was to pass a few days in the
house of a friend who had a copy of this work. The present edition is a
worthy successor of those which went before. The last three editions,
terminating in 1824, 1842, and 1861, seem to show that a lunar cycle cannot
pass without an amended and augmented edition. Detailed criticism is out o