action. The cultivation of a single talent, in the spare minutes of the busy and humblest employment, may exercise the most important influence upon our future prosperity, and happiness, and fame. But this talent must be ready for production at a moment's warning. The history of one of the most popular English poets of the eighteenth century will illustrate the remark. Prior, on the death of his father, was brought up by his uncle, who sent him to Westminster School, where he remained until the trade of his relative, a vintner, required some additional energy to conduct it; and young Prior was taken from the school to the tavern. He obeyed the call of gratitude and affection; but amid all the sordid duties of his situation he retained a love of the classical pursuits which he acquired at Westminster. Horace was the companion of his leisure hours. It happened that the famous Earl of Dorset frequented the tavern kept by Prior's uncle, and during one of his occasional visits a dispute arose between that nobleman and his companions respecting a passage in the Latin lyrist. A gentleman of the company suggested that a young man lived in the house who might be able to decide the question. Prior was called into the room, and immediately obtained the patronage of Dorset by the ready accuracy and taste of his scholarship. In a short time, the vintner's nephew was on his road to Cambridge. His subsequent history is familiar to all; from academic he rose to political distinction; and the boy, who had been removed from school to serve in a tavern, became so important an actor in the scenes of history, that Swift informed a friend,* "Prior is just come over from France for a few days; stocks rise at his coming." A few hours spent over the poetry of Horace were the simple instruments of his elevation.

XVII. An employment of spare minutes implies the presence and the nurture of an industrious spirit. Literature is not like science, strictly inductive; its mysteries are not to be unfolded by thoughtful scholars tracing on the obscure hints dropped by

October 28, 1712. Butler's Anal. p. ii. c. 3.

A

the hand of nature† or of man. basket left upon the ground, and overgrown by the acanthus, suggests the Corinthian capital; the contemplation of the sun's rays along a wall produces the achromatic telescope; the movements of a frog reveal the wonders of electricity and galvanism; and an idle boy unexpectedly shews the way to the most important improvement of the steam-engine.‡ Nothing like this ever happened, or can happen, in literature. The Iliad stands at the beginning, not at the close, of the history of letters; the curtain of the drama rises instead of falling, with the Agamemnon of Eschylus; Chatham borrows from Demosthenes instead of adding to him; Robertson and Southey have not. heightened the pictures of Livy; Montesquieu has not outgazed the sagacity of Tacitus. Education cannot create genius; intellectual and natural prodigies grow of themselves.

Literature is not inductive with relation to its creators; it is strictly so with relation to its students. The stars of heaven are not more remote from the understanding of a child, than the stars of literature from the comprehension of the uncultivated intellect. The multiplication-table and the grammar respectively teach the first steps; every new acquisition increases the number. Taste itself is only the sum of a long series of processes of reflection. These chains of induction will of course be linked with greater or less rapidity, according as the faculties of the mind possess greater or less quickness and tenacity of apprehension. Sir Isaac Newton told Coates that he had perceived a peculiar property of the ellipse without having gone through any intermediate connexions of argument and analysis; Pascal solved the problems of Euclid without any effort; and Mrs. Somerville unconsciously unfolded the mysteries of algebra. But these luminaries of intellect are our guides, not our models; we have not their light, because we are placed at remoter distances from the orb of Genius. But every person can practise the patient diligence, though he may want the piercing sagacity of Pascal.

Lord Brougham.

Hogarth commences his delineations of sin with a sketch of a boy playing on a tombstone. The illustration may serve also for intellectual degradation. Industry should be

the companion of childhood. It is especially expedient to form and cultivate a habit of attention and reflection in the dawn of our days. Gassendi informs us, in his minute and elegant life of Peiresc,* that he always read with a pen by his side, and underlined every difficult passage, that he might recur to it again. The profound scholar Ruhnken adopted a similar practice; and Wyttenbach gives an interesting account of his method of reading a Greek book. Without these habits of attention and reflection, reading is only an occupation, not an employment. Reading, at most, to adopt the sentiment of an old writer, can only elevate our mind to that of the author whom we peruse; whilst meditation lifts us upon his shoulders, and enables us to see farther than he ever saw, or could see. "Salmasius," said Gibbon, "read as much as Grotius; but the first became a pedant, and the second a philosopher." Leibnitz discovered in the intellectual system of Cudworth extensive erudition, but little reflection; and Bolingbroke considered that the incessant toil of reading afforded him no intervals for meditation. The advice of a most learned and eloquent scholar of one in whom the piles of knowledge were kindled by the fire of imagination— cannot be too constantly present to the memory. Proportion an hour's meditation to an hour's reading, and thus dispirit the book into the scholar. In the natural world we see the polyp taking its colour from the food that nourishes it. To a certain extent, the same phenomenon will commonly occur in the operation of the intellect. Meditation, acting as it were upon the organisation of the mind, assimilates its nourishment; and this mysterious operation in a healthy understanding is not apparent. Winckelman mentions, that in the statue of Hercules, the expiring effort of antique sculpture-the veins

are invisible. The robust frame of Genius is nourished by channels equally secret from the common eye. To this nourishment the study of foreign languages will contribute; but it is a study which must be restrained within moderate limits, and directed with caution to a particular object.

6

When Warburton recommended a youthful friend to the notice of Hurd, he requested him to check the student's ardour in the acquisition of languages. "Were I," wrote Warburton,§"to be the reformer of Westminster school, I would order that every boy should have impressed on his Accidence, in great letters of gold, as on the back of the Horn-book, that oracle of Hobbes, ' Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools."" A knowledge of languages, as generally embraced in the scheme of modern education, is only a fringe upon the scholar's garment, and frequently conceals the awkward movements of an uncultivated mind. Living languages, as they are called, are chiefly studied with reference to society; they form the currency of fashionable life. But however agreeable or even beneficial this employment of them may be, it is obviously not their only nor their most important use. A language is really valuable, as it supplies ideas; as it becomes a channel to conduct a new stream of thoughts into the memory. Italian should be acquired, not to visit the Opera, but to read Dante; the ear should be familiarised with French idioms, not to enjoy the coteries of Paris, but to appreciate Bossuet. When Johnson's pension was granted, he exclaimed that if it had been bestowed twenty years earlier he would have gone to Constantinople to learn Arabic, as Pococke did. In this spirit the acquisition of a language belongs to the Pleasures, Objects, and Advantages of Literature, but in no other. And in every language thus investigated, the tree of Beauty with all its branches of wisdom, and fancy, and grace, will be easily discovered. Under those boughs let the student sit. Nor will he be obliged to wander far for the

+ Goodman. § September 23, 1750.

And in speaking of the study of languages, let me not omit to mention the delight and the improvement which are to be derived from reading at least the Greek Scriptures in their original tongue. It is one of the graceful tales of classic fiction that Ulysses escaped the enchantment of the Syrens by binding himself to the mast, but that Orpheus overcame their charm by singing the praises of the gods. The great art of the Christian student will always be applied to extract out of every book instruction and comfort, but he will look for his moral protection and consolation only to one. He will prepare himself for the little voyage of the day by searching the Scriptures. When we remember the illumination which learning has shed upon the dark places of Truth, we shall feel with Benson, that fanaticism, however ardent its endeavours, will never succeed in banishing Literature from the household of Faith. Every student cannot, of course, be familiarly acquainted with the interpretation, the illustration, or the criticism of the Scriptures; but it is in the power of a large number to acquire

some

knowledge of the most important works which good and learned men have devoted to that sacred subject. Take, for example, the following list. A few hours of the Sabbath day, devoted to the study of these books, will furnish the busiest man with an answer to every inquiry as to the nature and grounds of his belief:

1. D'Oyley and Mant's Notes to the Bible.

2. Lowth on Hebrew Poetry.
3. Bishop Jebb's Sacred Litera-

ture.

4. Bishop Gray's Key to the Old Testament.

5. Bishop Percy's Key to the New. 6. Paley's Hora Paulinæ.

Evidences of Christianity. 7. Bishop Butler's Analogy. 8. Burnet, or Beveridge, on the Articles.

9. Bishop Pearson on the Creed. 10. Bishop Marsh's Lectures. 11. Horne's Introduction to the Scriptures.

12. Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History.

To read the Scriptures in their original tongue, is not the privilege of many; but of the New Testament, and of St. Paul's Epistles in particular, it may be affirmed, that no person can fully understand their deep and suggestive spirit, unless he has acquired some knowledge of the Greek language. In the Epistles of St. Paul almost every word is a picture, which enlarges as the eye lingers upon it. A few verbal illustrations, and those familiar to every scholar, can only be produced. In the Epistle to the Romans (viii. 26), the Apostle speaks of the Spirit helping our infirmities; the word, rendered helpeth, expresses the action of a friend assisting another to raise a burden, by supporting it on the other side. The word (2 Cor. xiii. 6) adoxiμos, which our version explains by reprobates, describes persons who were unable to give any testimony or proof (with a reference to the trial of gold) of the indwelling power of Christ. St. Paul tells the Galatians (v. 7) that they did run well, and inquires who hindered them that they should not obey the truth. It is a metaphorical expression taken from a person crossing the course, in the Olympic games, and so intercepting the progress of the runner. Commentators have noticed the force imparted to the description given by St. James of the fragility of human riches and dignity, by the employment of the past tense, a circumstance not regarded in our version. Virgil has produced a similar effect by a change of tense in his wonderful description of a tempest in the first Georgic.

XVIII. The sciences have no legitimate place among the pleasures of literature; pleasures, indeed, they give, but of a different order. Every attempt to prove the influence of mathematical investigation upon the poetical mind has been unsuccessful. It has, however, been often renewed. Black supposes Tasso to have derived from scientific researches that methodical and lucid arrangement of his poem, in which he is considered to have excelled Ariosto. The names of Virgil and Milton have also been mentioned with considerable emphasis; by the former of whom mathematics are said to have been com

bined with medicine, and by the latter with music. The example of Virgil is a weak one. Like Gray, whom he appears to have resembled in the painful elaborateness of composition, and the retiring fastidiousness of taste, he carried his inquiries over every path of learning, and amused the curiosity of his learned leisure with scientific inquiry. To ascribe the harmony of the Eneid to the mathematics of Virgil, is to assign the rural pictures of the Elegy and Odes to the botany of Gray.

Milton's allusion to his scientific Occupations occurs in the second Defence, where he speaks of relieving the retirement of Horton and the perusal of Greek and Latin authors, by occasional visits to London for the purpose of purchasing books, or learning any new discovery in mathematics or music. But the illustrations, which these sciences supplied to his poetry, are only valuable when they are obvious, and displease the eye of taste in exact proportion as they become intricate. Johnson

thought it unnecessary to mention his ungraceful use of terms of art, because they are easily remarked, and generally censured. If Milton had been entirely ignorant of science, he would have produced a completer poem.

Black conceives that the fantastic disarrangement of Ariosto bewildered the fancy of Spenser, and weakened the interest by destroying the unity of his poem. But if science could have furnished a rudder to guide him through those intermingling streams of thought, Spenser possessed an ample store.

It has been related of a celebrated mathematician, that while he never was able to discover any sublimity in Paradise Lost, the perusal of the queries at the end of Newton's Optics always seemed to make his hair stand on end, and his blood run cold.*

Gibbon rejoiced that he had, at an early period of life, abandoned mathematical demonstrations.

One inherent defect seems to exist in all mathematical studies; they occupy the mind without filling it; they exercise the reason without nourish

ing it. As a substitute for philosophical researches, they are not only nothing, but they are worse than nothing. Burnet has placed this objection in a clear light :

'Learning, chiefly in mathematical sciences, can so swallow up and fix one's thought, as to possess it entirely for some time; but when that amusement is over, nature will return, and be where it was, being rather diverted than overcome by such speculations."

It was, perhaps, for this, among other reasons, that Bossuet excluded science from the circle of theological study; and Fénélon turned with disgust from what he called les attraits diaboliques de géometrie.

Let me here interpose one word of caution. I do not speak of science considered in itself, as the mother of discoveries, the contributor to civilisation, the ameliorator of suffering; but of science as bearing upon the human mind; as affecting the cultivation of the taste, the regulation of the appetites, the government of the heart. Gray, who despised the mathematical pursuits of Cambridge, is reported to have lamented his ignorance in maturer life. Without inquiring into the foundation of this assertion, it may be at once admitted that the science of method will always be beneficial to a full mind like Gray's. The misfortune of science, early and exclusively cultivated, is that it finds the mind empty and leaves it so. It is an elaborate mechanism to convey water, with no water to convey. In every country Imagination, in its noblest form, has preceded science. Homer sang, and Eschylus painted, before Aristotle had given a single rule.

Warton has not forgotten to notice this circumstance in reference to the condition of England in the thirteenth century:-" Nor is it science alone, even if founded on truth, that will polish nations. For this purpose the powers of the imagination must be awakened and exerted, to teach elegant feelings and to heighten our natural sensibilities." Science has its own objects, and pleasures, and duties.

It is the business of science, if with Mr. Davies,† I may venture to apply