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These will exist, for the future, I trust, only in the poetic strains, which the feelings at the time called forth In those only, gentle reader,

Affectus animi varios, bellumque sequacis

Perlegis invidiæ, curasque revolvis inanes,
Quas humilis tenero stylus olim effudit in ævo.
Perlegis et lacrymas, et quod pharetratus acuta
Ille puer puero fecit mihi cuspide vulnus.
Omnia paulatim consumit longior ætas,
Vivendoque simul morimur, rapimurque manendo.
Ipse mihi collatus enim non ille videbor;
Frons alia est, moresque alii, nova mentis imago,
Vox aliudque sonat--Jamque observatio vitæ
Multa dedit-lugere nihil, ferre omnia; jamque
Paulatim lacrymas rerum experientia tersit.*

CHAPTER XI.

AN AFFECTIONATE EXHORTATION TO THOSE WHO IN EARLY LIFE FEEL THEMSELVES DISPOSED TO BECOME AUTHORS.

It was a favorite remark of the late Mr. Whitbread's, that no man does any thing from a single motive. The separate motives, or rather moods of mind, which produced the preceding reflections and anecdotes have been laid open to the reader in each separate instance. But an interest in the welfare of those, who at the present time may be in circumstances not dissimilar to my own at my first entrance into life, has been the constant accompaniment, and (as it were) the under-song of all my feelings. Whitehead exerting the prerogative of his laureateship addressed to youthful poets a poetic Charge, which is perhaps the best, and certainly the most interesting, of his works. With no other privilege than that of sympathy and sincere good wishes, I would adress an affectionate exhortation to the youthful literati, grounded on my own experience. It will be but short; for the

*[Epist. Fr. Petrarchæ Lib. i. Barbato Salmonensi, Opp. Basil, 1554, vol. ii. p. 76.—S. C.]

[See Appendix, note J.-S. C.]

[See Appendix, note K.-S. C ̧

beginning, middle, and end converge to one charge: never pursue literature as a trade. With the exception of one extraordinary man, I have never known an individual, least of all an individual of genius, healthy or happy without a pro, ession, that is, some regular employment, which does not depend on the will of the moment, and which can be carried on so far mechanically that an average quantum only of health, spirits, and intellectual exertion are requisite to its faithful discharge. Three hours of leisure, unannoyed by any alien anxiety, and looked forward to with delight as a change and recreation, will suffice to realize in literature a larger product of what is truly genial, than weeks of compulsion. Money, and immediate reputation form only an arbitrary and accidental end of literary labor. The hope of increasing them by any given exertion will often prove a stimulant to industry; but the necessity of acquiring them will in all works of genius convert the stimulant into a narcotic. Motives by excess reverse their very nature, and instead of exciting, stun and stupefy the mind. For it is one contradistinction of genius from talent, that its predominant end is always comprised in the means; and this is one of the many points, which establish an analogy between genius and virtue. Now though talents may exist without genius, yet as genius can not exist, certainly not manifest itself, without talents, I would advise every scholar, who feels the genial power working within him, so far to make a division between the two, as that he should devote his talents to the acquirement of competence in some known trade or profession, and his genius to objects of his tranquil and unbiassed choice; while the consciousness of being actuated in both alike by the sincere desire to perform his duty, will alike ennoble both. My dear young friend" (I would say), "suppose yourself established in any honorable occupation. From the manufactory or counting-house, from the law-court, or from having visited your last patient, you return at evening,

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Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home
Is sweetest

*

to your family, prepared for its social enjoyments, with the very countenances of your wife and children brightened, and their

* [From the poem to William Wordsworth. Poet. Works, VII. p. 161 S. C.]

voice of welcome made doubly welcome, by the know ledge that as far as they are concerned, you have satisfied the demands of the day by the labor of the day. Then, when you retire intc your study, in the books on your shelves you revisit so many venerable friends with whom you can converse. Your own spirit scarcely less free from personal anxieties than the great minds, that in those books are still living for you! Even your writingdesk with its blank paper and all its other implements will appear as a chain of flowers, capable of linking your feelings as well as thoughts to events and characters past or to come; not a chain of iron, which binds you down to think of the future and the remote by recalling the claims and feelings of the peremptory present. But why should I say retire? The habits of active life and daily intercourse with the study of the world will tend to give you such self-command, that the presence of your family will be no interruption. Nay, the social silence, or undisturbing voices of a wife or sister will be like a restorative atmosphere, or soft music which moulds a dream without becoming its object. If facts are required to prove the possibility of combining weighty performances in literature with full and independent employment, the works of Cicero and Xenophon among the ancients; of Sir Thomas Moore, Bacon, Baxter, or to refer at once to later and contemporary instances, Darwin and Roscoe, are at once decisive of the question.

But all men may not dare promise themselves a sufficiency of self-control for the imitation of those examples; though strict scrutiny should always be made, whether indolence, restlessness, or a vanity impatient for immediate gratification, have not tampered with the judgment and assumed the vizard of humility for the purposes of self-delusion. Still the Church presents to every man of learning and genius a profession, in which he may cherish a rational hope of being able to unite the widest schemes of literary utility with the strictest performance of professional duties.* Among the numerous blessings of Christianity, the introduction of an established Church makes an especial claim on the gratitude of scholars and philosophers; in England, at least, where the principles of Protestantism have conspired with the freedom

* [All that follows, as far as "expected to withhold five” in the following paragraph, with but very little difference, is to be found in the Church and State, VI. 70-72.—S. C.]

of the government to double all its salutary powers by the removal of its abuses.

That not only the maxims, but the grounds of a pure morality. the mere fragments of which

the lofty grave tragedians taught

In chorus or iambic, teachers best

Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts ;*

and that the sublime truths of the divine unity and attributes,
which a Plato found most hard to learn and deemed it still more
difficult to reveal; that these should have become the almost
hereditary property of childhood and poverty, of the hovel and
the workshop; that even to the unlettered they sound as common
place, is a phænomenon which must withhold all but minds of
the most vulgar cast from undervaluing the services even of the
pulpit and the reading desk. Yet those, who confine the effi-
ciency of an established Church to its public offices, can hardly
be placed in a much higher rank of intellect.
That to every
parish throughout the kingdom there is transplanted a germ of
civilization; that in the remotest villages there is a nucleus,
round which the capabilities of the place may crystallize and
brighten; a model sufficiently superior to excite, yet sufficiently
near to encourage and facilitate imitation; this, the unobtrusive,
continuous agency of a protestant church establishment, this it
is, which the patriot, and the philanthropist, who would fain
unite the love of peace with the faith in the progressive meliora-
tion of mankind, can not estimate at too high a price. It can not
be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the
sapphire. No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls: for
the price of wisdom is above rubies.† The clergyman is with
his parishioners and among them; he is neither in the clois-
tered cell, nor in the wilderness, but a neighbor and a family-
man, whose education and rank admit him to the mansion of the
rich landholder, while his duties make him the frequent visitor of
the farm-house and the cottage. He is, or he may become, con-
nected with the families of his parish or its vicinity by marriage.
And among the instances of the blindness, or at best of the short
sightedness, which it is the nature of cupidity to inflict, I know
* Paradise Regained. Book iv. 1. 261. † [Job xxviii. 16, 18.—S. C.]

few more striking than the clamors of the farmers against Church property. Whatever was not paid to the clergyman would inevitably at the next lease be paid to the landholder, while, as the case at present stands, the revenues of the Church are in some sort the reversionary property of every family, that may have a member educated for the Church, or a daughter that may marry a clergyman. Instead of being foreclosed and immovable, it is in fact the only species of landed property, that is essentially moving and circulative. That there exist no inconveniences, who will pretend to assert ? But I have yet to expect the proof, that the inconveniences are greater in this than in any other species; or that either the farmers or the clergy would be benefited by forcing the latter to become either Trullibers or salaried placemen. Nay, I do not hesitate to declare my firm persuasion, that whatever reason of discontent the farmers may assign, the true cause is this that they may cheat the parson, but can not cheat the steward; and that they are disappointed, if they should have been able to withhold only two pounds less than the legal claim, having expected to withhold five. At all events, considered relatively to the encouragement of learning and genius, the establishment presents a patronage at once so effective and unburdensome, that it would be impossible to afford the like or equal in any but a Christian and Protestant country. There is scarce a department of human knowledge without some bearing on the various critical, historical, philosophical and moral truths, in which the scholar must be interested as a clergyman; no one pursuit worthy of a man of genius, which may not be followed without incongruity. To give the history of the Bible as a book, would Ne little less than to relate the origin or first excitement of all the literature and science, that we now possess. The very decorum which the profession imposes, is favorable to the best purposes of genius, and tends to counteract its most frequent defects. Finally, that man must be deficient in sensibility, who would not find an incentive to emulation in the great and burning lights, which in a long series have illustrated the church of England; who would not hear from within an echo to the voice from their sacred shrines,

Et Pater Æneas et avunculus excitat Hector.*

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