Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book

[116] fascinating of modern English authors had not his own library proved too much for him—the Roman Catholic Digby. The inability to cope with his own knowledge has been in his case fatal to renown; his ‘Broad Stone of Honor’ is known to many a lover of good books in America; yet when I was trying to find him in London, I discovered that Froude had never even heard his name. It is the Nemesis of learning; a man who cannot cope with his own attainments is like the Norse giant who was suffocated by his own wisdom and had to be relieved by a siphon. But even he may help others, whereas the man who writes without a background of knowledge gives but a superficial aid to anybody, although his personality considered as a mere foreground may be very charming.

When the writers of Oriental sacred books began with the creation of the world, they undoubtedly went too far for a background; it was also going too far when the House of Commons was more displeased by a false Latin quantity than by a false argument. I am perfectly willing to concede that much time has