We have come upon a passage which is omitted from the 'Confessions,' and
as it is, in every way, characteristic, we shall give it:
My studies have now been long interrupted. I cannot read to myself with
any pleasure, hardly with a moment's endurance. Yet I read aloud
sometimes for the pleasure of others--because reading is an
accomplishment of mine, and, in the slang use of the word
'accomplishment' as a superficial and ornamental attainment, almost the
only one I possess--and, formerly, if I had any vanity at all connected
with any endowment or attainment of mine, it was with this; for I had
observed that no accomplishment was so rare. Players are the worst
readers of all; ---- reads vilely, and Mrs. ----, who is so celebrated,
can read nothing well but dramatic compositions--Milton she cannot read
sufferably. People in general read poetry without any passion at all, or
else overstep the modesty of nature and read not like scholars. Of late,
if I have felt moved by anything in books, it has been by the grand
lamentations of 'Samson Agonistes,' or the great harmonies of the
Satanic speaker in 'Paradise Regained,' when read aloud by myself. A
young lady sometimes comes and drinks tea with us. At her request and
M----'s I now and then read W----'s poems to them. (W----, by-the-bye,
is the only poet I ever met who could read his own verses. Blank verse
he reads admirably.)
This, then, has been the extent of my reading for upwards of sixteen
months. It frets me to enter those rooms of my cottage in which the
books stand. In one of them, to which my little boy has access, he has
found out a use for some of them. Somebody has given him a bow and
arrows--God knows who, certainly not I, for I have not energy or
ingenuity to invent a walking-stick--thus equipped for action, he rears
up the largest of the folios that he can lift, places them on a
tottering base, and then shoots until he brings down the enemy. He often
presses me to join him; and sometimes I consent, and we are both engaged
together in these intellectual labours. We build up a pile, having for
its base some slender modern metaphysician, ill able (poor man!) to
sustain such a weight of philosophy. Upon this we place the Dutch
quartos of Descartes and Spinoza; then a third story of Schoolmen in
folio--the Master of Sentences, Suarez, Picus Mirandula, and the
Telemonian bulk of Thomas Aquinas; and when the whole architecture seems
firm and compact, we finish our system of metaphysics by roofing the
whole with Duval's enormous Aristotle. So far there is some
pleasure--building up is something, but what is that to destroying? Thus
thinks, at least, my little companion, who now, with the wrath of the
Pythian Apollo, assumes his bow and arrows; plants himself in the
remotest corner of the room, and prepares his fatal shafts. The
bow-string twangs, flights of arrows are in the air, but the Dutch
impregnability of the Bergen-op-Zooms at the base receives the few which
reach the mark, and they recoil without mischief done. Again the
baffled archer collects his arrows, and again he takes his station. An
arrow issues forth, and takes effect on a weak side of Thomas. Symptoms
of dissolution appear--the cohesion of the system is loosened--the
Schoolmen begin to totter; the Stagyrite trembles; Philosophy rocks to
its centre; and, before it can be seen whether time will do anything to
heal their wounds, another arrow is planted in the schism of their
ontology; the mighty structure heaves--reels--seems in suspense for one
moment, and then, with one choral crash--to the frantic joy of the young
Sagittary--lies subverted on the floor! Kant and Aristotle, Nominalists
and Realists, Doctors Seraphic or Irrefragable, what cares he? All are
at his feet--the Irrefragable has been confuted by his arrows, the
Seraphic has been found mortal, and the greatest philosopher and the
least differ but according to the brief noise they have made.
For nearly two years I believe that I read no book but one, and I owe it
to the author, Mr. Ricardo, to make grateful record of it.
And then he proceeds:
Suddenly, in 1818, a friend in Edinburgh sent me down Mr. Ricardo's
book, etc.