The practice of every art subjects the artist to some particular
inconvenience, usually inflicting some malady on that member which has
been over-wrought by excess: nature abused, pursues man into his most
secret corners, and avenges herself. In the athletic exercises of the
ancient Gymnasium, the pugilists were observed to become lean from
their hips downwards, while the superior parts of their bodies, which
they over-exercised, were prodigiously swollen; on the contrary, the
racers were meagre upwards, while their feet acquired an unnatural
dimension. The secret source of life seems to be carried forwards to
those parts which are making the most continued efforts.
In all sedentary labours, some particular malady is contracted by
every worker, derived from particular postures of the body and
peculiar habits. Thus the weaver, the tailor, the painter, and the
glass-blower, have all their respective maladies. The diamond-cutter,
with a furnace before him, may be said almost to live in one; the
slightest air must be shut out of the apartment, lest it scatter away
the precious dust--a breath would ruin him!
The analogy is obvious;[58] and the author must participate in the
common fate of all sedentary occupations. But his maladies, from the
very nature of the delicate organ of thinking, intensely exercised,
are more terrible than those of any other profession; they are more
complicated, more hidden in their causes, and the mysterious union
and secret influence of the faculties of the soul over those of the
body, are visible, yet still incomprehensible; they frequently produce
a perturbation in the faculties, a state of acute irritability, and
many sorrows and infirmities, which are not likely to create much
sympathy from those around the author, who, at a glance, could have
discovered where the pugilist or the racer became meagre or monstrous:
the intellectual malady eludes even the tenderness of friendship.
The more obvious maladies engendered by the life of a student arise
from over-study. These have furnished a curious volume to Tissot, in
his treatise "On the Health of Men of Letters;" a book, however, which
chills and terrifies more than it does good.
The unnatural fixed postures, the perpetual activity of the mind, and
the inaction of the body; the brain exhausted with assiduous toil
deranging the nerves, vitiating the digestive powers, disordering its
own machinery, and breaking the calm of sleep by that previous state
of excitement which study throws us into, are some of the calamities
of a studious life: for like the ocean when its swell is subsiding,
the waves of the mind too still heave and beat; hence all the small
feverish symptoms, and the whole train of hypochondriac affections, as
well as some acute ones.[59]
Among the correspondents of the poets Hughes and Thomson, there is a
pathetic letter from a student. Alexander Bayne, to prepare his
lectures, studied fourteen hours a-day for eight months successively,
and wrote 1,600 sheets. Such intense application, which, however, not
greatly exceeds that of many authors, brought on the bodily complaints
he has minutely described, with "all the dispiriting symptoms of a
nervous illness, commonly called vapours, or lowness of spirits."
Bayne, who was of an athletic temperament, imagined he had not paid
attention to his diet, to the lowness of his desk, and his habit of
sitting with a particular compression of the body; in future all these
were to be avoided. He prolonged his life for five years, and,
perhaps, was still flattering his hopes of sharing one day in the
literary celebrity of his friends, when, to use his words, "the same
illness made a fierce attack upon me again, and has kept me in a very
bad state of inactivity and disrelish of all my ordinary amusements:"
those _amusements_ were his serious _studies_. There is a fascination
in literary labour: the student feeds on magical drugs; to withdraw
him from them requires nothing less than that greater magic which
could break his own spells. A few months after this letter was written
Bayne died on the way to Bath, a martyr to his studies.
The excessive labour on a voluminous work, which occupies a long life,
leaves the student with a broken constitution, and his sight decayed
or lost. The most admirable observer of mankind, and the truest
painter of the human heart, declares, "The corruptible body presseth
down the soul, and the earthy tabernacle weigheth down the _mind that
museth on many things_." Of this class was old Randle Cotgrave, the
curious collector of the most copious dictionary of old French and old
English words and phrases. The work is the only treasury of our
genuine idiom. Even this labour of the lexicographer, so copious and
so elaborate, must have been projected with rapture, and pursued with
pleasure, till, in the progress, "the mind was musing on many things."
Then came the melancholy doubt, that drops mildew from its enveloping
wings over the voluminous labour of a laborious author, whether he be
wisely consuming his days, and not perpetually neglecting some higher
duties or some happier amusements. Still the enchanted delver sighs,
and strikes on in the glimmering mine of hope. If he live to complete
the great labour, it is, perhaps, reserved for the applause of the
next age; for, as our great lexicographer exclaimed, "In this gloom of
solitude I have protracted my work, till those whom I wished to please
have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty
sounds;" but, if it be applauded in his own, that praise has come too
late for him whose literary labour has stolen away his sight. Cotgrave
had grown blind over his dictionary, and was doubtful whether this
work of his laborious days and nightly vigils was not a superfluous
labour, and nothing, after all, but a "poor bundle of words." The
reader may listen to the gray-headed martyr addressing his patron,
Lord Burghley:
"I present to your lordship an account of the _expense of many hours_,
which, in your service, and to mine own benefit, _might have been
otherwise employed_. My desires have aimed at more substantial marks;
but _mine eyes_ failed them, and forced me to _spend out their vigour
in this bundle of words_, which may be unworthy of your lordship's
great patience, and, perhaps, _ill-suited to the expectation of
others_."
A great number of young authors have died of over-study. An
intellectual enthusiasm, accompanied by constitutional delicacy, has
swept away half the rising genius of the age. Curious calculators have
affected to discover the average number of infants who die under the
age of five years: had they investigated those of the children of
genius who perish before their thirtieth year, we should not be
less amazed at this waste of man. There are few scenes more
afflicting, nor which more deeply engage our sympathy, than that
of a youth, glowing with the devotion of study, and resolute to
distinguish his name among his countrymen, while death is stealing on
him, touching with premature age, before he strikes the last blow.
The author perishes on the very pages which give a charm to his
existence. The fine taste and tender melancholy of Headley, the
fervid genius of Henry Kirke White, will not easily pass away; but
how many youths as noble-minded have not had the fortune of Kirke
White to be commemorated by genius, and have perished without their
fame! Henry Wharton is a name well known to the student of English
literature; he published historical criticisms of high value; and he
left, as some of the fruits of his studies, sixteen volumes of
MS., preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth. These
great labours were pursued with the ardour that only could have
produced them; the author had not exceeded his thirtieth year when
he sank under his continued studies, and perished a martyr to
literature. Our literary history abounds with instances of the sad
effects of an over indulgence in study: that agreeable writer,
Howel, had nearly lost his life by an excess of this nature,
studying through long nights in the depth of winter. This severe study
occasioned an imposthume in his head; he was eighteen days without
sleep; and the illness was attended with many other afflicting
symptoms. The eager diligence of Blackmore, protracting his studies
through the night, broke his health, and obliged him to fly to a
country retreat. Harris, the historian, died of a consumption by
midnight studies, as his friend Hollis mentions. I shall add a
recent instance, which I myself witnessed: it is that of John
Macdiarmid. He was one of those Scotch students whom the golden
fame of Hume and Robertson attracted to the metropolis. He mounted the
first steps of literary adventure with credit; and passed through
the probation of editor and reviewer, till he strove for more
heroic adventures. He published some volumes, whose subjects
display the aspirings of his genius: "An Inquiry into the Nature of
Civil and Military Subordination;" another into "the System of
Military Defence." It was during these labours I beheld this
inquirer, of a tender frame, emaciated, and study-worn, with
hollow eyes, where the mind dimly shone like a lamp in a tomb. With
keen ardour he opened a new plan of biographical politics. When, by
one who wished the author was in better condition, the dangers of
excess in study were brought to his recollection, he smiled, and,
with something of a mysterious air, talked of unalterable confidence
in the powers of his mind; of the indefinite improvement in our
faculties: and, with this enfeebled frame, considered himself
capable of continuous labour. His whole life, indeed, was one
melancholy trial. Often the day cheerfully passed without its meal,
but never without its page. The new system of political biography
was advancing, when our young author felt a paralytic stroke. He
afterwards resumed his pen; and a second one proved fatal. He lived
just to pass through the press his "Lives of British Statesmen," a
splendid quarto, whose publication he owed to the generous temper
of a friend, who, when the author could not readily procure a
publisher, would not see the dying author's last hope disappointed.
Some research and reflection are combined in this literary and
civil history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but it
was written with the blood of the author, for Macdiarmid died of
over-study and exhaustion.
Among the maladies of poor authors, who procure a precarious existence
by their pen, one, not the least considerable, is their old age; their
flower and maturity of life were shed for no human comforts; and old
age is the withered root. The late THOMAS MORTIMER, the compiler,
among other things, of that useful work, "The Student's Pocket
Dictionary," felt this severely--he himself experienced no abatement
of his ardour, nor deficiency in his intellectual powers, at near the
age of eighty;--but he then would complain "of the paucity of literary
employment, and the preference given to young adventurers." Such is
the _youth_, and such the _old age_ of ordinary authors!