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

powers and acquirements gain him likewise more real admiration; for they

surpass the legitimate expectations of others. He is something besides

an author, and is not therefore considered merely as an author. The

hearts of men are open to him, as to one of their own class; and

whether he exerts himself or not in the conversational circles of

his acquaintance, his silence is not attributed to pride, nor his

communicativeness to vanity. To these advantages I will venture to add

a superior chance of happiness in domestic life, were it only that it is

as natural for the man to be out of the circle of his household during

the day, as it is meritorious for the woman to remain for the most part

within it. But this subject involves points of consideration so numerous

and so delicate, and would not only permit, but require such ample

documents from the biography of literary men, that I now merely allude

to it in transitu. When the same circumstance has occurred at very

different times to very different persons, all of whom have some one

thing in common; there is reason to suppose that such circumstance is

not merely attributable to the persons concerned, but is in some measure

occasioned by the one point in common to them all. Instead of the

vehement and almost slanderous dehortation from marriage, which the

Misogyne, Boccaccio [44] addresses to literary men, I would substitute

the simple advice: be not merely a man of letters! Let literature be an

honourable augmentation to your arms; but not constitute the coat, or

fill the escutcheon!

To objections from conscience I can of course answer in no other way,

than by requesting the youthful objector (as I have already done on

a former occasion) to ascertain with strict self-examination, whether

other influences may not be at work; whether spirits, “not of health,”

and with whispers “not from heaven,” may not be walking in the twilight

of his consciousness. Let him catalogue his scruples, and reduce them to

a distinct intelligible form; let him be certain, that he has read with

a docile mind and favourable dispositions the best and most fundamental

works on the subject; that he has had both mind and heart opened to the

great and illustrious qualities of the many renowned characters, who

had doubted like himself, and whose researches had ended in the clear

conviction, that their doubts had been groundless, or at least in no

proportion to the counter-weight. Happy will it be for such a man, if

among his contemporaries elder than himself he should meet with

one, who, with similar powers and feelings as acute as his own,

had entertained the same scruples; had acted upon them; and who by

after-research (when the step was, alas! irretrievable, but for that

very reason his research undeniably disinterested) had discovered

himself to have quarrelled with received opinions only to embrace

errors, to have left the direction tracked out for him on the high road

of honourable exertion, only to deviate into a labyrinth, where when he

had wandered till his head was giddy, his best good fortune was finally

to have found his way out again, too late for prudence though not too

late for conscience or for truth! Time spent in such delay is time

won: for manhood in the meantime is advancing, and with it increase of

knowledge, strength of judgment, and above all, temperance of feelings.

And even if these should effect no change, yet the delay will at least

prevent the final approval of the decision from being alloyed by

the inward censure of the rashness and vanity, by which it had been

precipitated. It would be a sort of irreligion, and scarcely less than

a libel on human nature to believe, that there is any established and

reputable profession or employment, in which a man may not continue to

act with honesty and honour; and doubtless there is likewise none, which

may not at times present temptations to the contrary. But wofully will

that man find himself mistaken, who imagines that the profession of

literature, or (to speak more plainly) the trade of authorship, besets

its members with fewer or with less insidious temptations, than the

Church, the law, or the different branches of commerce. But I have

treated sufficiently on this unpleasant subject in an early chapter of

this volume. I will conclude the present therefore with a short extract

from Herder, whose name I might have added to the illustrious list of

those, who have combined the successful pursuit of the Muses, not only

with the faithful discharge, but with the highest honours and honourable

emoluments of an established profession. The translation the reader

will find in a note below [45]. “Am sorgfaeltigsten, meiden sie die

Autorschaft. Zu frueh oder unmaessig gebraucht, macht sie den Kopf

wueste and das Herz leer; wenn sie auch sonst keine ueble Folgen gaebe.

Ein Mensch, der nur lieset um zu druecken, lieset wahrscheinlich uebel;

und wer jeden Gedanken, der ihm aufstosst, durch Feder and Presse

versendet, hat sie in kurzer Zeit alle versandt, und wird bald ein

blosser Diener der Druckerey, ein Buchstabensetzer werden.”