Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/187

 had a more painful and prolonged experience than either. His father was a man of such oddity and perversity that it must have required all the son's filial duty in later years not to introduce him in a novel. He would have been more interesting as a model than the gentleman who stood for Micawber, though certainly without Micawber's peculiar claims to be attractive. He was a man of ability and learning, who had ruined good prospects at the bar by a singular facility for quarrelling with his bread and butter. By way of retrieving his position, he had taken to farming, of which he was absolutely ignorant; and when he got into the inevitable difficulties, he set about compiling a gigantic Encyclopædia Ecclesiastica, for which he was equally incompetent, and which would have ruined a publisher had any such person been forthcoming. He was most anxious, his son assures us, to do his duty to his family, but equally misguided in his plans for their welfare. Anthony's chief recollections at least were of standing in a convenient position while his amiable parent was shaving, so that his hair might be pulled at any slip in Latin grammar, and of being knocked down for stupidity by a folio Bible. It was all meant in kindness, but only produced