The rector kindly allowed his clerk
the run of his well-stocked library. Hinton devoured the books greedily.
So receptive and imitative was his intellect that his conversation, his
deportment, even his spirit, became imbued with the individuality of the
author whose writings he had been studying. After reading Dr. Johnson's
works his conversation became sententious and dogmatic. _Lord
Chesterfield's Letters_ produced an airiness and jauntiness that were
quite foreign to his nature. His favourite authors were Jeremy Taylor,
Bacon, and Milton. After many months reverential communion with these
Goliaths of literature he became pensive and contemplative, and his
manner more chastened and severe. The secluded village in which he dwelt
had been his birthplace, and there he remained to the day of his death.
He knew nothing of the outer world, and the rector found his intercourse
with a man so original, fresh, and untainted a real pleasure. He was
physically timid, and the account of a voyage across the Channel or a
journey by coach filled him with dread. One day he said to Mr. Young,
"Am I, reverend sir, to understand that you voluntarily trust your
perishable body to the outside of a vehicle, of the soundness of which
you know nothing, and suffer yourself to be drawn to and fro by four
strange animals, of whose temper you are ignorant, and are willing to
be driven by a coachman of whose capacity and sobriety you are
uninformed?" On being assured that such was the case, he concluded that
"the love of risk and adventure must be a very widely-spread instinct,
seeing that so many people are ready to expose themselves to such
fearful casualties.
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