Knowledge, insignificant and vapid as Mrs. Barbauld's books convey, it seems must come to a child in the shape of knowledge; and his empty noddle must be turned with conceit of his own powers when he has learnt that a horse is an animal, and Billy is better than a horse, and such like, instead of _that beautiful interest in wild tales_, which made the child a man, while all the time he suspected himself to be no bigger than a child.
