"And yet it may be doubted," said I maliciously, "whether William Caxton the printer did not--" "Plague, pestilence, and fire seize William Caxton the printer, and his invention too!" cried my uncle barbarously. "When there were only a few books, at least they were good ones; and now they are so plentiful, all they do is to confound the judgment, unsettle the reason, drive the good books out of cultivation, and draw a ploughshare of innovation over every ancient landmark; seduce the women, womanize the men, upset states, thrones, and churches; rear a race of chattering, conceited, coxcombs, who can always find books in plenty to excuse them from doing their duty; make the poor discontented, the rich crotchety and whimsical, refine away the stout old virtues into quibbles and sentiments! All imagination formerly was expended in noble action, adventure, enterprise, high deeds and aspirations; now a man can but be imaginative by feeding on the false excitement of passions he never felt, dangers he never shared; and he fritters away all there is of life to spare in him upon the fictitious love-sorrows of Bond Street and St James's. Sir, chivalry ceased when the press rose! And to fasten upon me, as a forefather, out of all men who have ever lived and sinned, the very man who has most destroyed what I most valued--who, by the Lord! with his cursed invention has wellnigh got rid of respect for forefathers altogether--is a cruelty of which my brother had never been capable, if that printer's devil had not got hold of him!" That a man in this blessed nineteenth century should be such a Vandal! and that my uncle Roland should talk in a strain that Totila would have been ashamed of, within so short a time after my father's scientific and erudite oration on the Hygeiana of Books, was enough to make one despair of the progress of intellect and the perfectibility of our species. And I have no manner of doubt that, all the while, my uncle had a brace of books in his pockets, Robert Hall one of them! In truth, he had talked himself into a passion, and did not know what nonsense he was saying, poor man. But this explosion of Captain Roland's has shattered the thread of my matter. Pouff! I must take breath and begin again!