I imagine that, which is the work not of Nichols but of a contributor, to be the perfect description of the perfect schoolmaster. One sees what a terror would such a man strike into the heart and knees of the young. It was a dull day for English readers (I think) when the description of the person was first considered unnecessary. We rarely get it now. Among the anecdotes of Mr. Budworth (and I may say here that Nichols' _Literary Anecdotes_, in spite of its title, is poorer in anecdotes than almost any book I ever opened) is this, referring to a social and more or less unbending, if not convivial, evening at that model's house. Mr. Budworth, I should first say, was a vegetarian. "Among other topics of conversation, Mr. Martin took the freedom to ask Mr. Budworth, what his sentiments were respecting the lawfulness or unlawfulness of eating blood. His reply was nearly in the following terms: 'I have read the authors on both sides of the question; those who wrote in favour of the prohibition had the greatest weight with me, and therefore I have always abstained from eating it.'" Boswell, I suppose, made the record of this kind of conversation possible. I wish it had not gone out; but with hero-worship (of which it was a symptom) it has passed. We seem to have grown too critical for such hero-worship any more; the minor dictator, being no longer able to induce people to take him at his own valuation, has either become merely a grumbler or has diminished into a man and a brother. Another possessor of the higher dignity--but a very different man from Mr. Budworth, although his contemporary--was John Baskerville (noble name!), the Birmingham printer of the Bible whose spacious page one occasionally and very joyfully observes on the lectern of such village churches as one has the luck to find open. Baskerville printed the Bible like an angel, but he did not esteem its matter. He was, in fact, a very determined agnostic, and in his last will and testament he provided for the persistence of his hostility to accepted dogma. John Baskerville is thus described by a friend of Nichols: "In regard to his private character, he was much of a humorist, idle in the extreme; but his invention was of the true Birmingham model, active. He could well design, but procured others to execute: wherever he found merit, he caressed it: he was remarkably polite to the stranger, fond of show; a figure rather of the smaller size, and delighted to adorn that figure with gold lace. Although constructed with the light timbers of a frigate, his movement was stately as a ship of the line."