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haustion, is shortened, or rendered miserable by such alternations; and the victim becomes accessary to his own sufferings.

These are, indeed, extreme cases, yet are they cases in point; in all, are the offenders held responsible for their crimes or errors, but nevertheless are they entitled to our pity.)

In a word, if the literary man consume his strength and spirits in his study, forego all necessary exercise, keep his mind continually on the stretch, and even, at his meals, deprive the digestive organs of that nervous energy which is then essential to their healthy action; if the proteiform symptoms of dyspepsia at last make their appearance, and the innumerable anomalous sufferings which, under the name of nervous and stomachic ailments, derange the viscera, and rack the joints of the invalid; if by constant application, the blood is continually determined to the brain, and the calibre of the vessels enlarged to the extent of causing pressure or effusion in that vital organ; in any case, if the mischief there is allowed to proceed slowly and steadily, perhaps for years, (as in the case of Swift,) giving rise to a long train of nervous miseries-to hypochondria in its gloomiest form, or mania in its wildest mood, or paralysis in the expressionless aspect of fatuity, (that frequent termination of the literary career;)

who can deny that the sufferer has, in a great measure, drawn the evil on himself, but who will not admit that his infirmities of mind and body are entitled to indulgence and compassion?

The errors of genius demand no less. "A vigorous mind," says Burke, "is as necessarily accompanied by violent passions, as a great fire with great heat." And to such a mind, whatever be its frailties, the just and the charitable will be inclined to deem it, like poor Burns,

"Misled by fancy's meteor ray,

By passion driven,

But yet the light that led astray,
Was light from heaven."

VOL. I.

3

CHAPTER II.

ADVANTAGES OF LITERARY PURSUITS.

A DISTINCTION has been made between literary men and men of letters; the former title has been given to authors, the latter to the general scholar and lover of science.

In these volumes the term literary is applied to all persons who make books, the business of their lives, or who are addicted to studious habits; and our observations apply to those who think too much on any subject, whether that subject be connected with legal, polemical, or medical erudition.

Literature of late years has become so general a pursuit, that it is no small stock of knowledge which enables a man to keep pace with public information: go into what society we may, we are sure of meeting some individual with all the honours of recent authorship thick upon him.

It is the purport of this chapter to point out the use and the abuse of studious habits and literary temperaments. Perhaps the greatest of the advantages are those which are least ob

vious to the observer. It is not denied by many, that every facility afforded to the acquisition of knowledge is an advancement of the public good; and, moreover, an avoidance of the mischief which leisure unoccupied inflicts on life.

But the latter benefit is generally overlooked only because the tendency is natural to underrate the importance of familiar facts. It surely is not the least advantage of literary employment that it enables us to live in a state of blissful ignorance of our next-door neighbour's fortune, faith and politics; that it produces a state of society which admits of no invasion on domestic privacy, and furnishes us with arms against ennui, which supersede the necessity of a standing army of elderly female moralists, and domestic politicians. In large cities, at least, literature occupies the ground which politics and scandal keep possession of in small ones; in the time of Tacitus the evil was common to the communities of both:

"Vitium parvis magnisque civitatibus commune
Ignorantium et invidiam.”

Leisure, it seems, had no better occupation ere "the art of multiplying manuscripts through the intervention of machinery" was discovered; but in these days of book-publishing celebrity, when

the Press pours volumes on the town with the velocity of Perkin's steam-gun, one has hardly sufficient leisure to acquire a knowledge even of the names of those "dread counterfeits" of dead men's thoughts, which living plagiarism is continually recasting and sending forth. The grand distinction between metropolitan and provincial society, is the dearth of literature in the latter. In country towns every individual has a portion of his time to devote to country politics, or, as he thinks, to the affairs of his country; and these matters engross too much of his attention to allow him either time or taste for books. If we analyze the bane of all provincial society, the result of the painful investigation is to leave no other ingredients in the crucible of the mind, than politics and scandal. The former is confined to no one portion of country life-it pervades the whole; it constitutes half the business of existence; it forms the first of all its recreations, and embroils a neighbourhood of perhaps the kindest hearted beings in perpetual heart-burnings. But however useful and pleasant it may be to devote attention to public matters, to the affairs of kingdoms, or contested counties, to suffer these subjects to absorb all the faculties of the mind, is to indulge in a passion which becomes the pest of society. Politics may be the profession of Mr.

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