understanding this, you can never hope to become fit for anything beyond
mere trade or agriculture. It is true, that we do (God knows!) but too
often see men have great wealth, high titles, and boundless power heaped
upon them, who can hardly write ten lines together correctly; but,
remember, it is not _merit_ that has been the cause of their
advancement; the cause has been, in almost every such case, the
subserviency of the party to the will of some government, and the
baseness of some nation who have quietly submitted to be governed by
brazen fools. Do not you imagine, that you will have luck of this sort:
do not you hope to be rewarded and honoured for that ignorance which
shall prove a scourge to your country, and which will earn you the
curses of the children yet unborn. Rely you upon your merit, and upon
nothing else. Without a knowledge of grammar, it is impossible for you
to write correctly, and it is by mere accident if you speak correctly;
and, pray bear in mind, that all well-informed persons judge of a man's
mind (until they have other means of judging) by his writing or
speaking. The labour necessary to acquire this knowledge is, indeed, not
trifling: grammar is not, like arithmetic, a science consisting of
several distinct departments, some of which may be dispensed with: it is
a whole, and the whole must be learned, or no part is learned. The
subject is abstruse: it demands much reflection and much patience: but,
when once the task is performed, it is performed _for life_, and in
every day of that life it will be found to be, in a greater or less
degree, a source of pleasure or of profit or of both together. And, what
is the labour? It consists of no bodily exertion; it exposes the student
to no cold, no hunger, no suffering of any sort. The study need subtract
from the hours of no business, nor, indeed, from the hours of necessary
exercise: the hours usually spent on the tea and coffee slops and in the
mere gossip which accompany them; those wasted hours of only _one year_,
employed in the study of English grammar, would make you a correct
speaker and writer for the rest of your life. You want no school, no
room to study in, no expenses, and no troublesome circumstances of any
sort. I learned grammar when I was a private soldier on the pay of
sixpence a day. The edge of my berth, or that of the guard-bed, was my
seat to study in; my knapsack was my book-case; a bit of board, lying on
my lap, was my writing-table; and the task did not demand any thing like
a year of my life. I had no money to purchase candle or oil; in
winter-time it was rarely that I could get any evening-light but that of
_the fire_, and only my _turn_ even of that. And if I, under such
circumstances, and without parent or friend to advise or encourage me,
accomplished this undertaking, what excuse can there be for _any youth_,
however poor, however pressed with business, or however circumstanced as
to room or other conveniences? To buy a pen or a sheet of paper I was
compelled to forego some portion of food, though in a state of
half-starvation; I had no moment of time that I could call my own; and I
had to read and to write amidst the talking, laughing, singing,
whistling and brawling of at least half a score of the most thoughtless
of men, and that too in the hours of their freedom from all control.
Think not lightly of the _farthing_ that I had to give, now and then,
for ink, pen, or paper! That farthing was, alas! a _great sum_ to me! I
was as tall as I am now; I had great health and great exercise. The
whole of the money, not expended for us at market, was _two-pence a
week_ for each man. I remember, and well I may! that upon one occasion
I, after all absolutely necessary expenses, had, on a Friday, made shift
to have a halfpenny in reserve, which I had destined for the purchase of
a _red-herring_ in the morning; but, when I pulled off my clothes at
night, so hungry then as to be hardly able to endure life, I found that
I had _lost my halfpenny_! I buried my head under the miserable sheet
and rug, and cried like a child! And, again I say, if I, under
circumstances like these, could encounter and overcome this task, is
there, can there be, in the whole world, a youth to find an excuse for
the non-performance? What youth, who shall read this, will not be
ashamed to say, that he is not able to find time and opportunity for
this most essential of all the branches of book-learning?
45. I press this matter with such earnestness, because a knowledge of
grammar is the foundation of all literature; and because without this
knowledge opportunities for writing and speaking are only occasions for
men to display their unfitness to write and speak. How many false
pretenders to erudition, have I exposed to shame merely by my knowledge
of grammar! How many of the insolent and ignorant great and powerful
have I pulled down and made little and despicable! And, with what ease
have I conveyed upon numerous important subjects, information and
instruction to millions now alive, and provided a store of both for
millions yet unborn! As to the course to be pursued in this great
undertaking, it is, first, to read the grammar from the first word to
the last, very attentively, several times over; then, to copy the whole
of it very correctly and neatly; and then to study the Chapters one by
one. And what do this reading and writing require as to time? Both
together not more than the tea-slops and their gossips for _three
months_! There are about three hundred pages in my English Grammar. Four
of those little pages in a day, which is a mere trifle of work, do the
thing in _three months_. Two hours a day are quite sufficient for the
purpose; and these may, in any _town_ that I have ever known, or in any
village, be taken from that part of the morning during which the main
part of the people are in bed. I do not like the evening-candle-light
work: it wears the eyes much more than the same sort of light in the
morning, because then the faculties are in vigour and wholly
unexhausted. But for this purpose there is sufficient of that day-light
which is usually wasted; usually gossipped or lounged away; or spent in
some other manner productive of no pleasure, and generally producing
pain in the end. It is very becoming in all persons, and particularly in
the young, to be civil, and even polite: but it becomes neither young
nor old to have an everlasting simper on their faces, and their bodies
sawing in an everlasting bow: and, how many youths have I seen who, if
they had spent, in the learning of grammar, a tenth part of the time
that they have consumed in earning merited contempt for their affected
gentility, would have laid the foundation of sincere respect towards
them for the whole of their lives!
46. _Perseverance_ is a prime quality in every pursuit, and particularly
in this. Yours is, too, the time of life to acquire this inestimable
habit. Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of
talent and of good disposition: as the race was not to the hare but to
the tortoise, so the meed of success in study is to him who is not in
haste, but to him who proceeds with a steady and even step. It is not to
a want of taste or of desire or of disposition to learn that we have to
ascribe the rareness of good scholars, so much as to the want of patient
perseverance. Grammar is a branch of knowledge; like all other things of
high value, it is of difficult acquirement: the study is dry; the
subject is intricate; it engages not the passions; and, if the _great
end_ be not kept constantly in view; if you lose, for a moment, sight of
the _ample reward_, indifference begins, that is followed by weariness,
and disgust and despair close the book. To guard against this result be
not in _haste_; keep _steadily on_; and, when you find weariness
approaching, rouse yourself, and remember, that if you give up, all that
you have done has been done in vain. This is a matter of great moment;
for out of every ten, who undertake this task, there are, perhaps, nine
who abandon it in despair; and this, too, merely for the want of
resolution to overcome the first approaches of weariness. The most
effectual means of security against this mortifying result is to lay
down a rule to write or to read a certain fixed quantity _every day_,
Sunday excepted. Our minds are not always in the same state; they have
not, at all times, the same elasticity; to-day we are full of hope on
the very same grounds which, to-morrow, afford us no hope at all: every
human being is liable to those flows and ebbs of the mind; but, if
reason interfere, and bid you _overcome the fits of lassitude_, and
almost mechanically to go on without the stimulus of hope, the buoyant
fit speedily returns; you congratulate yourself that you did not yield
to the temptation to abandon your pursuit, and you proceed with more
vigour than ever. Five or six triumphs over temptation to indolence or
despair lay the foundation of certain success; and, what is of still
more importance, fix in you the _habit of perseverance_.
47. If I have bestowed a large portion of my space on this topic, it has
been because I know, from experience as well as from observation, that
it is of more importance than all the other branches of book-learning
put together. It gives you, when you possess it thoroughly, a real and
practical superiority over the far greater part of men. How often did I
experience this even long before I became what is called an author! The
_Adjutant_, under whom it was my duty to act when I was a Serjeant
Major, was, as almost all military officers are, or at least _were_, a
very illiterate man, perceiving that every sentence of mine was in the
same form and manner as sentences in _print_, became shy of letting me
see pieces of _his_ writing. The writing of _orders_, and other things,
therefore, fell to me; and thus, though no nominal addition was made to
my pay, and no nominal addition to my authority, I acquired the latter
as effectually as if a law had been passed to confer it upon me. In
short, I owe to the possession of this branch of knowledge everything
that has enabled me to do so many things that very few other men have
done, and that now gives me a degree of influence, such as is possessed
by few others, in the most weighty concerns of the country. The
possession of this branch of knowledge raises you in your own esteem,
gives just confidence in yourself, and prevents you from being the
willing slave of the rich and the titled part of the community. It
enables you to discover that riches and titles do not confer merit; you
think comparatively little of them; and, as far as relates to you, at
any rate, their insolence is innoxious.
48. Hoping that I have said enough to induce you to set resolutely about
the study of _grammar_, I might here leave the subject of _learning_;
arithmetic and grammar, both _well learned_, being as much as I could
wish in a mere youth. But these need not occupy the whole of your spare
time; and, there are other branches of learning which ought immediately
to follow. If your own calling or profession require book-study, books
treating of that are to be preferred to all others; for, the first
thing, the first object in life, is to secure the honest means of
obtaining sustenance, raiment, and a state of being suitable to your
rank, be that rank what it may: excellence in your own calling is,
therefore, the first thing to be aimed at. After this may come _general
knowledge_, and of this, the first is a thorough knowledge of _your own
country_; for, how ridiculous is it to see an English youth engaged in
reading about the customs of the Chinese or of the Hindoos, while he is
content to be totally ignorant of those of Kent or of Cornwall! Well
employed he must be in ascertaining how Greece was divided and how the
Romans parcelled out their territory, while he knows not, and apparently
does not want to know, how England came to be divided into counties,
hundreds, parishes and tithings.
49. GEOGRAPHY naturally follows Grammar; and you should begin with that
of this kingdom, which you ought to understand well, perfectly well,
before you venture to look abroad. A rather slight knowledge of the
divisions and customs of other countries is, generally speaking,
sufficient; but, not to know these full well, as far as relates to our
own country, is, in one who pretends to be a gentleman or a scholar,
somewhat disgraceful. Yet how many men are there, and those called
_gentlemen_ too, who seem to think that counties and parishes, and
churches and parsons, and tithes and glebes, and manors and courts-leet,
and paupers and poor-houses, all grew up in England, or dropped down
upon it, immediately after Noah's flood! Surely, it is necessary for
every man, having any pretensions to scholarship, to know _how these
things came_; and, the sooner this knowledge is acquired the better;
for, until it be acquired, you read the _history_ of your country in
vain. Indeed, to communicate this knowledge is one main part of the
business of history; but it is a part which no historian, commonly so
called, has, that I know of, ever yet performed, except, in part,
myself, in the History of the PROTESTANT REFORMATION. I had read HUME'S
History of England, and the Continuation by SMOLLETT; but, in 1802, when
I wanted to write on the subject of the _non-residence of the clergy_, I
found, to my great mortification, that I knew nothing of the foundation
of the office and the claims of the parsons, and that I could not even
guess at the _origin of parishes_. This gave a new turn to my inquiries;
and I soon found the romancers, called historians, had given me no
information that I could rely on, and, besides, had done, apparently,
all they could to keep me in the dark.
50. When you come to HISTORY, begin also with that _of your own
country_; and here it is my bounden duty to put you _well on your
guard_; for in this respect we are _peculiarly_ unfortunate, and for the
following reasons, to which I beg you to attend. Three _hundred years
ago_, the religion of England had been, during _nine hundred years_, the
Catholic religion: the Catholic clergy possessed about a third part of
all the lands and houses, which they held _in trust_ for their own
support, for the _building and repairing of churches_, and for the
relief of the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger; but, at the
time just mentioned, the king and the aristocracy changed the religion
to _Protestant_, took the estates of the church and the poor _to
themselves as their own property_, and _taxed the people at large_ for
the building and repairing of churches and for the relief of the poor.
This great and terrible change, effected partly by force against the
people and partly by the most artful means of deception, gave rise to a
series of efforts, which has been continued from that day _to this_, to
cause us all to believe, _that that change was for the better_, that it
was for _our good_; and that, _before that time_, our forefathers were a
set of the most miserable slaves that the sun ever warmed with his
beams. It happened, too, that the _art of printing_ was not discovered,
or, at least, it was very little understood, until about the time when
this change took place; so that the books relating to former times were
confined to manuscript; and, besides, even these manuscript libraries
were destroyed with great care by those who had made the change and had
grasped the property of the poor and the church. Our '_Historians_,' as
they are called, have written under _fear_ of the powerful, or have been
_bribed_ by them; and, generally speaking, both at the same time; and,
accordingly, their works are, as far as they relate to former times,
masses of lies unmatched by any others that the world has ever seen.
51. The great object of these lies always has been to make the main body
of the people believe, that the nation is now more happy, more populous,
more powerful, _than it was before it was Protestant_, and thereby to
induce us to conclude, that it was _a good thing for us_ that the
aristocracy should take to themselves the property of the poor and the
church, and make the people at large _pay taxes for the support of
both_. This has been, and still is, the great object of all those heaps
of lies; and those lies are continually spread about amongst us in all
forms of publication, from heavy folios down to halfpenny tracts. In
refutation of those lies we have only very few and rare ancient books to
refer to, and their information is incidental, seeing that their authors
never dreamed of the possibility of the lying generations which were to
come. We have the ancient acts of parliament, the common-law, the
customs, the canons of the church, and _the churches themselves_; but
these demand _analyses_ and _argument_, and they demand also a _really
free press_, and _unprejudiced and patient readers_. Never in this
world, before, had truth to struggle with so many and such great
disadvantages!
52. To refute lies is not, at present, my business; but it is my
business to give you, in as small a compass as possible, one striking
proof that they are lies; and thereby to put you well upon your guard
for the whole of the rest of your life. The opinion sedulously
inculcated by these '_historians_' is this; that, before the
_Protestant_ times came, England was, comparatively, an insignificant
country, _having few people in it, and those few wretchedly poor and
miserable_. Now, take the following _undeniable facts_. All the parishes
in England are now (except where they have been _united_, and two,
three, or four, have been made into one) in point of _size_, what they
were _a thousand years ago_. The county of Norfolk is the best
cultivated of any one in England. This county has _now_ 731 parishes;
and the number was formerly greater. Of these parishes 22 _have now no
churches at all_; 74 contain less than 100 souls each: and 268 have _no
parsonage-houses_. Now, observe, every parish had, in old times, a
church and a parsonage-house. The county contains 2,092 square miles;
that is to say, something less than 3 square miles to each parish, and
that is 1,920 statute acres of land; and the _size_ of each parish is,
on an average, that of a piece of ground about one mile and a half each
way; so that the churches are, even now, on an average, only about _a
mile and a half from each other_. Now, the questions for you to put to
yourself are these: Were churches formerly built and kept up _without
being wanted_, and especially by a poor and miserable people? Did these
miserable people build 74 churches out of 731, each of which 74 had not
a hundred souls belonging to it? Is it a sign of an augmented
population, that 22 churches out of 731 have tumbled down and been
effaced? Was it a country _thinly_ inhabited by miserable people that
could build and keep a church in every piece of ground a mile and a half
each way, besides having, in this same county, 77 monastic
establishments and 142 free chapels? Is it a sign of augmented
population, ease and plenty, that, out of 731 parishes, 268 have
suffered the parsonage houses to fall into ruins, and their sites to
become patches of nettles and of brambles? Put these questions calmly to
yourself: common sense will dictate the answers; and truth will call for
an expression of your indignation against the lying historians and the
still more lying population-mongers.
LETTER II
TO A YOUNG MAN
53. In the foregoing Letter, I have given my advice to a Youth. In
addressing myself to you, I am to presume that you have entered upon
your present stage of life, having acted upon the precepts contained in
that letter; and that, of course, you are a sober, abstinent,
industrious and well-informed young man. In the succeeding letters,
which will be addressed to the _Lover_, the _Husband_, the _Father_ and
the _Citizen_, I shall, of course, have to include my notion of your
duties as a _master_, and as a person employed by _another_. In the
present letter, therefore, I shall confine myself principally to the
conduct of a young man with regard to the management of his means, or
money.
54. Be you in what line of life you may, it will be amongst your
misfortunes if you have not time properly to attend to this matter; for
it very frequently happens, it has happened to thousands upon thousands,
not only to be ruined, according to the common acceptation of the word;
not only to be made poor, and to suffer from poverty, in consequence of
want of attention to pecuniary matters; but it has frequently, and even
generally, happened, that a want of attention to these matters has
impeded the progress of science, and of genius itself. A man, oppressed
with pecuniary cares and dangers, must be next to a miracle, if he have
his mind in a state fit for intellectual labours; to say nothing of the
temptations, arising from such distress, to abandon good principles, to
suppress useful opinions and useful facts; and, in short, to become a
disgrace to his kindred, and an evil to his country, instead of being an
honour to the former and a blessing to the latter. To be poor and
independent, is very nearly an impossibility.
55. But, then, poverty is not a positive, but a relative term. BURKE
observed, and very truly, that a labourer who earned a sufficiency to
maintain him as a labourer, and to maintain him in a suitable manner; to
give him a sufficiency of good food, of clothing, of lodging, and of
fuel, ought not to be called _a poor man_; for that, though he had
little riches, though his, _compared_ with that of a lord, was a state
of poverty, it was not a state of poverty in itself. When, therefore, I
say that poverty is the cause of a depression of spirit, of inactivity
and of servility in men of literary talent, I must say, at the same
time, that the evil arises from their own fault; from their having
created for themselves imaginary wants; from their having indulged in
unnecessary enjoyments, and from their having caused that to be poverty,
which would not have been poverty, if they had been moderate in their
enjoyments.
56. As it may be your lot (such has been mine) to live by your literary
talent, I will here, before I proceed to matter more applicable to
persons in other states of life, observe, that I cannot form an idea of
a mortal more wretched than a man of real talent, compelled to curb his
genius, and to submit himself in the exercise of that genius, to those
whom he knows to be far inferior to himself, and whom he must despise
from the bottom of his soul. The late Mr. WILLIAM GIFFORD, who was the
son of a shoemaker at ASHBURTON in Devonshire; who was put to school and
sent to the university at the expense of a generous and good clergyman
of the name of COOKSON, and who died, the other day, a sort of
whipper-in of MURRAY'S QUARTERLY REVIEW; this was a man of real genius;
and, to my certain personal knowledge, he detested, from the bottom of
his soul, the whole of the paper-money and Boroughmongering system, and
despised those by whom the system was carried on. But, he had imaginary
wants; he had been bred up in company with the rich and the extravagant;
expensive indulgences had been made necessary to him by habit; and, when
in the year 1798, or thereabouts, he had to choose between a bit of
bacon, a scrag of mutton, and a lodging at ten shillings a week, on the
one side, and made-dishes, wine, a fine house and a footman on the other
side, he chose the latter. He became the servile Editor of CANNING'S
Anti-jacobin newspaper; and he, who had more wit and learning than all
the rest of the writers put together, became the miserable tool in
circulating their attacks upon everything that was hostile to a system
which he deplored and detested. But he secured the made-dishes, the
wine, the footman and the coachman. A sinecure as '_clerk of the Foreign
Estreats_,' gave him 329_l._ a year, a double commissionership of the
lottery gave him 600_l._ or 700_l._ more; and, at a later period, his
Editorship of the Quarterly Review gave him perhaps as much more. He
rolled in his carriage for several years; he fared sumptuously; he was
buried at _Westminster Abbey_, of which his friend and formerly his
brother pamphleteer in defence of PITT was the _Dean_; and never is he
to be heard of more! Mr. GIFFORD would have been full as happy; his
health would have been better, his life longer, and his name would have
lived for ages, if he could have turned to the bit of bacon and scrag of
mutton in 1798; for his learning and talents were such, his reasonings
so clear and conclusive, and his wit so pointed and keen, that his
writings must have been generally read, must have been of long duration!
and, indeed, must have enabled him (he being always a single man) to
live in his latter days in as good style as that which he procured by
becoming a sinecurist, a pensioner and a _hack_, all which he was from
the moment he lent himself to the Quarterly Review. Think of the
mortification of such a man, when he was called upon to justify the
power-of-imprisonment bill in 1817! But to go into particulars would be
tedious: his life was a life of luxurious misery, than which a worse is
not to be imagined.