CH. III. MODES OF ENCOURAGING INTELLECTUAL PURSUITS. 459

sued their path through hopeless poverty to ends of the greatest value to mankind, have been scarcely less memorable than those of religion. But apart from all nobler and more generous considerations, it is not for the benefit of society that these fields of labour should be cultivated only by those who possess a far higher amount of self-sacrifice than is demanded in other spheres, or that men whose influence may mould the characters of succeeding generations should exercise that influence, with hearts acidulated and perhaps depraved by the pains of poverty or the sense of wrong. It is difficult to overestimate the amount of evil in the world which has sprung from vices in literature that may be distinctly traced to the circumstances of the author. Had Rousseau been a happy and a prosperous man, the whole history of modern Europe might have been changed.

A curious and valuable book might be written describing the provisions which have been made in different nations and ages for the support of these unremunerative forms of talent. In Germany at the present day the immense multiplication of professorships provides a natural sphere for their exertions; but the results of this system would have been less satisfactory had not the general simplicity of habits, the cheapness of living, and the low standard of professional remuneration made such a life hitherto attractive to able men. In England several agencies combine directly or indirectly to the same end. The vast emoluments of the Universities enable them to do something. In the eyes of a superficial economist no institution will appear more indefensible than an English fellowship to which no definite duties whatever are attached. A real statesman will probably think that something, at least, may be said for emoluments which, won by severe competition, give a young man a subsistence during the first unproductive years of a profession, render possible for him lines of study or employment from which he would otherwise be absolutely excluded, and enable him, if he desires it, during some of the best years of his life to devote his undivided energies to intellectual labours. The endowments, whether derived from public or private sources, which are attached to scientific careers, at least furnish the means of subsistence to some men who are engaged in studies of the most

transcendent importance. They are, however, miserably inadequate, and this inadequacy diverts from scientific pursuits many who are admirably fitted to follow them, compels many others to turn away from original investigation, and depresses the whole subject in the eyes of those large classes who estimate the relative importance of different branches of knowledge by the magnitude of the emoluments attached to them. Hardly any other of the great branches of human knowledge is at present so backward, tentative, and empirical as medicine, and there is not much doubt that the law of supply and demand is a main cause of the defect. Almost all the finer intellects which are devoted to this subject are turned away from independent investigations to the lucrative paths of professional practice; their time is engrossed with cases most of which could be treated quite as well by men of inferior capacity, and they do little or nothing to enlarge the bounds of our knowledge. For literature of the graver kinds the Church provides important, though indirect, assistance. In many country parishes the faithful discharge of clerical duties is quite compatible with the life of a scholar; and the valuable, dignified, and almost sinecure appointments connected with the Cathedrals are peculiarly suited for literary rewards. Solid literary attainments usually lead to them, and to the tranquil leisure which they secure we owe, perhaps, the greater number of those noble monuments of learning which are the truest glory of the Anglican Church.

The disadvantages attaching to this system of providing for literature by ecclesiastical appointments are sufficiently obvious. Such rewards are restricted to men of only one class of opinions, are offered for proficiency only in special forms of literature, and have a direct tendency to discourage independence of thought. They are open to the grave objection of constituting a gigantic system of bribery in favour of a certain class of opinions, and of inducing many who are not conscious hypocrites to stifle their doubts and act falsely with their intellects. To the poor, ambitious, and unbelieving scholar, the Church holds out prospects of the most seductive nature, and he must often hear the voice of the tempter murmuring in his ear, All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down

and worship me.' But, grave as are these disadvantages, the literary benefits resulting from Church sinecures, in my judgment, outweigh them, and they will continue to do so as long as the Church maintains her present latitude of belief, and as long as a considerable proportion of able men can conscientiously join her communion. These appointments have, as a matter of fact, produced many works of great and sterling value, which would never have been written without them, and which are of great benefit to men of all classes and opinions. They discharge a function of the utmost importance in English life, for they form the principal counterpoise to the great prizes attached to the law and to commerce, which would otherwise divert a very disproportionate amount of the talent of the community into these channels. They are especially valuable as encouraging deep research and considerable literary enterprise at a period when, under the influence of the law of supply and demand, literary talent is passing, to a most excessive and deplorable degree, into ephemeral or purely critical writing. Apart from all its other effects, valuable Church patronage, if judiciously employed, may be of inestimable intellectual advantage to the nation. An ingenious man may easily imagine institutions that would confer the same advantages without the attending evils; but ecclesiastical appointments exist; they actually discharge these functions, and it would be practically much more easy to destroy than to replace them. Strong popular enthusiasm may be speedily aroused for the defence or the destruction of an establishment, but considerations such as I am now urging are of too refined a nature ever to become popular. They are never likely to furnish election cries or party watchwords, and the creation of lucrative appointments, without adequate and engrossing duties being definitely attached to them, is too much opposed to all democratic notions to be in our day a possibility.

Among the means of encouraging the higher intellectual influences, direct Government patronage was in the early part of the eighteenth century conspicuous, and it was bestowed, on the whole, with much disregard of party considerations. Whigs and Tories were in this respect about equally liberal, the Whigs Somers and Montague, and the Tories Harley and

St. John being, perhaps, the ministers to whom literature owed most. It was the received opinion of the time that it was part of the duty of an English minister to encourage the development of promising talent, and that a certain proportion of the places and pensions at his disposal should be applied to this purpose. No doubt, this system was sometimes abused, and sometimes had a bad effect upon the character of the recipient; but in itself it implied no degradation. Many of the kinds of labour assisted were of such a nature as to leave no room for sycophancy, and could not otherwise have been carried on, and the practical results were in general eminently beneficial. The splendid efflorescence of genius under Queen Anne was in a very great degree due to ministerial encouragement, which smoothed the path of many whose names and writings are familiar in countless households, where the statesmen of that day are almost forgotten. Among those who obtained assistance from the Government, either in the form of pensions, appointments, or professional promotion, were Newton and Locke, Addison, Swift, Steele, Prior, Gay, Rowe, Congreve, Tickell, Parnell, and Phillips, while a secret pension was offered to Pope, who was legally disqualified by his religion from receiving Government favours. Upon the accession of the Hanoverian dynasty, however, Governmental encouragement of literature almost absolutely ceased. It is somewhat singular that the son of the Electress Sophia, who had been the devoted friend of Leibnitz, and the nephew of Elizabeth of Bavaria, who had been the most ardent disciple of Descartes, should have proved himself, beyond all other English sovereigns, indifferent to intellectual interests; but George I. never exhibited any trace of the qualities that had made his mother one of the most brilliant, and his aunt one of the most learned, women in Europe. The influence of Walpole was in this respect still more fatal. Himself wholly destitute of literary tastes, he was altogether indifferent to this portion of the national development, and he looked upon the vast patronage at his disposal merely as a means of Parliamentary corruption, of aggrandising his own family, or of providing for the younger sons of the aristocracy. It has been said that one of the great distinctions between ancient and modern political theories

is, that in the one the ends proposed were chiefly moral, and in the other almost exclusively material; and this last description, though it does not apply to every portion of English history, was eminently true of the reigns of George I. and of his

successor.

It can never be a matter of indifference to a country what qualities lead naturally to social eminence, and it was a necessary consequence of this neglect of literature that a great change passed over the social position of its possessors. Formerly high intellectual attainments counted in society for almost as much as rank or wealth. Addison had been made a Secretary of State. Prior had been despatched on important embassies. Swift had powerfully influenced the policy of a ministry. Steele was a conspicuous Member of Parliament. Gay was made Secretary to the English ambassador at the Court of Hanover. In the reign of the first two Georges all this changed. The Government, if it helped any authors, helped only those who would employ their talents in the lowest forms of party libel, and even then on the most penurious scale. The public was still too small to make literature remunerative. The great nobles, who took their tone from the Court and Government, no longer patronised it, and the men of the highest genius or of the greatest learning were the slaves of mercenary booksellers, wasted the greater part of their lives in the most miserable literary drudgery, lived in abject poverty, and rarely came in contact with the great, except in the character of suppliants. It was in the reign of George I. that Steele, struck down by the ingratitude of the party he had so faithfully served, closed a career, which had been pre-eminently useful to his country, in poverty and neglect; that Ockley concluded his History of the Saracens' in a debtors' prison; that Bingham composed the greater part of his invaluable work on the Antiquities of the Christian Church' in such necessity that it was with the utmost difficulty he could obtain the books that were indispensable to his task. It was in the reign of George II. that Savage used to wander by night through the streets of London for want of a lodging, that Johnson spent more than thirty years in penury, drudgery, or debt, that Thomson was deprived by Lord Hardwicke of the small place