Biographia Literaria
Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,
And genius given and knowledge won in vain;
And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild,
And all which patient toil had reared, and all,
Commune with thee had opened out--but flowers
Strewed on my corpse, and borne upon my bier,
In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!
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 invidiae, curasque revolvis inanes,
Quas humilis tenero stylus olim effudit in aevo.
Perlegis et lacrymas, et quod pharetratus acuta
Ille puer puero fecit mihi cuspide vulnus.
Omnia paulatim consumit longior aetas,
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 vitae
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 favourite 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 address
an affectionate exhortation to the youthful literati, grounded on my
own experience. It will be but short; for the 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
profession, 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 labour. 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 stupify 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 cannot 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 honourable occupation. From the manufactory
or counting house, from the law-court, or from having visited your last
patient, you return at evening,
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 voice of
welcome made doubly welcome, by the knowledge that, as far as they are
concerned, you have satisfied the demands of the day by the labour of
the day. Then, when you retire into 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 writing desk 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 stir 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 More, 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 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; [43]
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 phaenomenon, 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 efficiency 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 melioration of mankind, cannot
estimate at too high a price. It cannot 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 cloistered cell, nor in the wilderness, but a neighbour 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
farmhouse and the cottage. He is, or he may become, connected, 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 few more striking than
the clamours 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
cannot 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 be 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 favourable 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 Aeneas et avunculus excitat Hector.
But, whatever be the profession or trade chosen, the advantages are many
and important, compared with the state of a mere literary man, who in
any degree depends on the sale of his works for the necessaries and
comforts of life. In the former a man lives in sympathy with the world,
in which he lives. At least he acquires a better and quicker tact for
the knowledge of that, with which men in general can sympathize. He
learns to manage his genius more prudently and efficaciously. His