The character of a scholar not unfrequently dwindles down into the
shadow of a shade, till nothing is left of it but the mere bookworm.
There is often something amiable as well as enviable in this last
character. I know one such instance, at least. The person I mean has an
admiration for learning, if he is only dazzled by its light. He lives
among old authors, if he does not enter much into their spirit. He
handles the covers, and turns over the page, and is familiar with the
names and dates. He is busy and self-involved. He hangs like a film and
cobweb upon letters, or is like the dust upon the outside of knowledge,
which should not be rudely brushed aside. He follows learning as its
shadow; but as such, he is respectable. He browses on the husk and
leaves of books, as the young fawn browses on the bark and leaves of
trees. Such a one lives all his life in a dream of learning, and has
never once had his sleep broken by a real sense of things. He believes
implicitly in genius, truth, virtue, liberty, because he finds the names
of these things in books. He thinks that love and friendship are the
finest things imaginable, both in practice and theory. The legend of
good women is to him no fiction. When he steals from the twilight of his
cell, the scene breaks upon him like an illuminated missal, and all the
people he sees are but so many figures in a _camera obscura_. He reads
the world, like a favourite volume, only to find beauties in it, or like
an edition of some old work which he is preparing for the press, only to
make emendations in it, and correct the errors that have inadvertently
slipt in. He and his dog Tray are much the same honest, simple-hearted,
faithful, affectionate creatures--if Tray could but read! His mind
cannot take the impression of vice: but the gentleness of his nature
turns gall to milk. He would not hurt a fly. He draws the picture of
mankind from the guileless simplicity of his own heart: and when he
dies, his spirit will take its smiling leave, without having ever had an
ill thought of others, or the consciousness of one in itself.--W.
HAZLITT. _On the Conversation of Authors._