To Gilbert, a printed page was as the fountain of life; he loved literature passionately, and hungered to know the history of man’s mind through all the ages.  This distinguished him markedly from the not uncommon working man who zealously pursues some chosen branch of study.  Such men ordinarily take up subjects of practical bearing; physical science is wont to be their field; or if they study history it is from the point of view of current politics.  Taste for literature pure and simple, and disinterested love of historical search, are the rarest things among the self-taught; naturally so, seeing how seldom they come of anything but academical tillage of the right soil.  The average man of education is fond of literature because the environment of his growth has made such fondness a second nature.  Gilbert had conceived his passion by mere grace.  It had developed in him slowly.  At twenty years he was a young fellow of seemingly rather sluggish character, without social tendencies, without the common ambitions of his class, much given to absence of mind.  About that time he came across one of the volumes of the elder D’Israeli, and, behold, he had found himself.  Reading of things utterly unknown to him, he was inspired with strange delights; a mysterious fascination drew him on amid names which were only a sound; a great desire was born in him, and its object was seen in every volume that met his eye.  Had he then been given means and leisure, he would have become at the least a man of noteworthy learning.  No such good fortune awaited him.  Daily his thirteen hours went to the manufacture of candles, and the evening leisure, with one free day in the week, was all he could ever hope for.

At five-and-twenty he had a grave illness.  Insufficient rest and ceaseless trouble of spirit brought him to death’s door.  For a long time it seemed as if he must content himself with earning his bread.  He had no right to call upon others to bear the burden of his needs.  His brother; a steady hard-headed mechanic, who was doing well in the Midlands and had just married, spoke to him with uncompromising common sense; if he chose to incapacitate himself, he must not look to his relatives to support him.  Silently Gilbert acquiesced; silently he went back to the factory, and, when he came home of nights, sat with eyes gazing blankly before him.  His mother lived with him, she and his sister; the latter went out to work; all were dependent upon the wages of the week.  Nearly a year went by, during which Gilbert did not open a book.  It was easier for him, he said, not to read at all than to measure his reading by the demands of his bodily weakness.  He would have sold his handful of books, sold them in sheer bitterness of mind, but this his mother interfered to prevent.