David had served him, once or twice, in Half Street, and had sent a special notice of his start and his intentions to Benet's Park, the Driffields' 'place.' Lord Driffield's first visit left him quivering with excitement, for the earl had a way of behaving as though everybody else were not only his social, but his intellectual equal--even a lad of twenty, with his business to learn. He would sit pleasantly smoking and asking questions--a benevolent, shabby person, eager to be informed. Then, when David had fallen into the trap, and was holding forth--proud, it might be, of certain bits of knowledge which no one else in Manchester possessed--Lord Driffield would throw in a gentle comment, and then another and another, till the trickle became a stream, and the young man would fall blankly listening, his mouth opening wider and wider. When it was over, and the earl, with his draggled umbrella, his disappeared, David sat, crouched on his wooden stool, consumed with hot ambition and wonder. How could a man know so much--and an earl, who didn't want it? For a few hours, at any rate, his self-conceit was dashed. He realised dimly what it might be to know as the scholar knows. And that night, when he had shut the shutters, he vowed to himself, as he gathered his books about him, that five hours was enough sleep for a strong man; that _learn_ he must and should, and that some day or other he would hold his own, even with Lord Driffield.
How he loved his evenings--the paraffin lamp glaring beside him, the crackling of the coal in his own fire, the book on his knee! Ancrum had kept his promise, and was helping him with his Greek; but his teaching hardly kept pace with the boy's enthusiasm and capacity. The _voracity_ with which he worked at his Thucydides and Homer left the lame minister staring and sighing. The sound of the lines, the roll of the _oi_'s and _ou_'s was in David's ear all day, and to learn a dozen irregular verbs in the interval between two customers was like the gulping of a dainty.
Meanwhile, as he collected his English poets he read them. And here was a whole new world. For in his occupation with the Encyclopaedists he had cared little for poetry. The reaction against his Methodist fit had lasted long, had developed a certain contempt for sentiment, a certain love for all sharp, dry, calculable things, and for the tone of _irony_ in particular. But in such a nature such a phase was sure to pass, and it was passing. Burns, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson--now he was making acquaintance piecemeal with them all, as the precious volumes turned up, which he was soon able to place with a precision which tore them too soon out of his hands. The Voltairean temper in him was melting, was passing into something warmer, subtler, and more restless.