His grandfather had never ceased to impress upon him that every public man should have learned and practised thoroughly the craft of writing. This precept allied itself with the inherited ownership of a great literary journal; and very shortly after old Mr. Dilke's death the undergraduate, as he then was, began to associate himself actively with the work of the _Athenaeum_. His first published writing in it appeared on October 22nd, 1864, when he reviewed a well-known work on economics by the writer whom the Memoir styles 'that dull Frenchman, Le Play.' [Footnote: French Senator, son-in-law of the celebrated economist Michel Chevalier. He wrote works on the principles of agriculture, the application of chemistry to agriculture, and kindred subjects.] Le Play wrote from Paris to thank Sir Wentworth Dilke for a copy of the article which had been sent him, and had already attracted attention in France: "On y trouve un sentiment de vrai progrès et une intelligence de la vie pratique qui se rencontrent rarement chez nos critiques." The British Museum tickets show the course of reading which Charles Dilke was pursuing at this period: Bacon, Filmer, Mandeville, Hume, represent the older English writers on Commonwealths, ideal and actual; Crousaz, Condorcet, Diderot, Linguet, Fénelon, Helvétius, stood for the influences of eighteenth-century France. With them were writers more recondite; the _Mundus Alter et Idem_ of "Britannicus," _Barclay his Argenis_, Holberg's _Journey in the Underworld_, Sadeur's _Terre Australe Connue_, Ned Lane's _Excellencie of a Free State_, were all out-of-the-way books with an antiquarian flavour. Of recent or contemporary authors, Montalembert was included, with Proudhon, as were men whom Charles Dilke came to know personally--Émile de Girardin, Michel Chevalier, and, a close friend afterwards, Louis Blanc. Works of Mohl and Willick brought in the Germans, and a volume of the _Federalist_ introduced him to that great American commonwealth which he was soon to visit. A sheaf of dockets for works upon the Swedenborgian Association and theories complete this very extensive range of reading, which may be supplemented by the following note of his own: "Favourite books, 1864 (in themselves--for no object): "Shakespeare. "The Bible. "J. S. Mill: _Political Economy; On Liberty; Dissertations._ "Longfellow: _Evangeline_ and _Miles Standish_. "Homer: _Works_. "Tennyson: nearly all. "Plato: _Republic_. "Sir P. Sidney: _Arcadia_. "Claude Adrien Helvétius: _Works_. "Victor Hugo: _Les Misérables_. "William Godwin: _Political Justice_." He notes also in the Memoir that the reading of Mill at this period marked the beginning of Mill's influence over him. This influence was a great factor in Dilke's life, and, when it passed into a personal relation, became almost one of discipleship.