They are everywhere. Just now coming up Great Russell Street I loitered
outside a print shop. There they were as usual—Hogarth’s Idle and
Virtuous Apprentices. The idle apprentice is certainly Scylla, but is
not the virtuous apprentice just as much Charybdis? Is he so greatly
preferable? Is not the right thing somewhere between the two? And does
not the art of good living consist mainly in a fine perception of when to
edge towards the idle and when towards the virtuous apprentice?
When John Bunyan (or Richard Baxter, or whoever it was) said “There went
John Bunyan, but for the grace of God” (or whatever he did say), had he a
right to be so cock-sure that the criminal on whom he was looking was not
saying much the same thing as he looked upon John Bunyan? Does any one
who knows me doubt that if I were offered my choice between a bishopric
and a halter, I should choose the halter? I believe half the bishops
would choose the halter themselves if they had to do it over again.