One would think that in writing about literary men and matters there
would be no difficulty in finding a title for one's essay, or that any
embarrassment which might arise would be from excess of material. I
find this, however, far from being the case. 'Men of Letters,' for
example, is a heading too classical and pretentious. I do indeed
remember its being used in these modern days by the sub-editor of a
country paper, who, having quarrelled with his proprietor, and reduced
him to silence by a violent kick in the abdomen, thus addressed him: 'I
leave you and your dirty work for ever, and start to-night for London,
to take up my proper position as a Man of Letters.' But this
gentleman's case (and I hope that of his proprietor) was an exceptional
one. The term in general is too ambitious and suggestive of the author
of 'Cato,' for my humble purpose. 'Literature as a Profession,' again,
is open to objection on the question of fact. The professions do not
admit literature into their brotherhood. 'Literature, Science, and Art'
are all spoken of in the lump, and rather contemptuously (like
'reading, writing, and arithmetic'), and have no settled position
whatever. In a book of precedence, however—a charming class of work,
and much more full of humour than the peerage—I recently found
indicated for the first time the relative place of Literature in the
social scale. After a long list of Eminent Personages and Notables, the
mere perusal of which was calculated to bring the flush of pride into
my British cheek, I found at the very bottom these remarkable words,
'Burgesses, Literary Persons, and others.' Lest haughtiness should
still have any place in the breasts of these penultimates of the human
race, the order was repeated in the same delightful volume in still
plainer fashion, 'Burgesses, Literary Persons, etc.' It is something,
of course, to take precedence—in going down to dinner, for example—even
of an et cetera; but who are Burgesses? I have a dreadful suspicion
they are not gentlemen. Are they ladies? Did I ever meet a Burgess, I
wonder, coming through the rye? At all events, after so authoritative a
statement of its social position, I feel that to speak of Literature as
a profession would be an hyperbole.
On the other hand, 'The Literary Calling' is not a title that satisfies
me. For the word 'calling' implies a certain fitness; in the religious
sense it has even more significance; and it cannot be denied that there
are a good many persons who devote—well, at least, their time to
literature, who can hardly be said to have 'a call' in that direction,
nor even so much as a whisper. At the same time I will venture to
observe, notwithstanding a great deal of high-sounding twaddle talked
and written to the contrary, that it is not necessary for a man to feel
any miraculous or even extraordinary attraction to this pursuit to
succeed in it very tolerably. I remember a now distinguished personage
(in another line) who had written a very successful work, expressing
his opinion to me that unless a certain divine afflatus animated a man,
he should never take up his pen to address the public. The writing for
pay, he added (he had at least £5,000 a year of his own), was the
degradation of literature. As I had written about a dozen books myself
at the time, and most decidedly with an eye to profit, and had never
experienced much afflatus, this remark discouraged me very much.
However, as the gentleman in question did essay another volume, which
was so absolute and distinct a failure that he promptly took up another
line of business (far above that of Burgesses), it is probable he
altered his views.
Nature of course is the best guide in the matter of choosing a pursuit.
When she says 'This is your line, stick to it,' she seldom or never
makes a mistake. But, on the other hand, her speech must be addressed
to mature ears. For my part, I do not much believe in the predilections
of boyhood. I was never so simple as to wish to go to sea, but I do
remember (when between seven and eight) having a passionate longing to
become a merchant. I had no notion, however, of the preliminary stages;
the high stool in the close street; luncheon at a counter, standing (I
liked to have my meals good, plentiful, often, and in comfort, even
then); and imprisonment at the office on the eves of mail nights till
the large hours p.m. Even the full fruition of such aspirations—the
large waistcoat beginning to 'point,' (as it soon does in merchants),
heavy watchchain, and cheerful conviction of the coming scarcity of
necessaries for everybody else, would have failed to please. The sort
of merchant I wanted to be was never found in 'Post Office Directory,'
but in the 'Arabian Nights,' trading to Bussorah, chiefly in pearls and
diamonds. When the Paterfamiliases of my acquaintance instance certain
stenches and messes which their Toms and Harrys make with chemicals all
over their house, as a proof of 'their natural turn for engineering,' I
say, 'Very likely,' or 'A capital thing,' but I _think_ of that early
attraction of my own towards Bussorah. The young gentlemen never dream
of what I once heard described, in brief, as the real business life of
a scientific apprentice: 'To lie on your back with a candle in your
hand, while another fellow knocks nails into a boiler.'
Boys have rarely any special aptitude for anything practical beyond
punching each others' heads, or (and these are the clever ones) for
keeping their own heads unpunched. As a rule, in short, Nature is not
demonstrative as respects our professional future.
It must nevertheless be conceded that if the boy is ever father to the
man in this respect, it is in connection with literature. Also, however
prosaic their works are fated to be, it is curious that the aspirants
for the profession below Burgesses always begin with Poetry. Even
Harriet Martineau wrote verses in early life bad enough to comfort the
soul of any respectable parent. The approach to the Temple of Literary
Fame is almost always through double gates—couplets. And yet I have
known youthful poets, apparently bound for Paternoster Row, bolt off
the course in a year or two, to the delight of their friends, and
become, of their own free will, drysalters.
There is so much talk about the 'indications of immortality in early
childhood' (of a very different kind from those referred to by
Wordsworth), and it is so much the habit of biographers to use
magnifiers when their subject is small, that it needs some courage to
avow my belief that the tastes of boys have very little significance. A
clever boy can be trained to almost anything, and an ordinary boy will
not do one thing much better than another. With the Geniuses I will
allow (for the sake of peace and quietness) that Nature is
all-powerful, but with nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand
of us, Second Nature, Use, is the true mistress; and what will
doubtless strike some people as almost paradoxical, but is nevertheless
a fact, Literature is the calling in which she has the greatest sway.
It is the fashion with that enormous class of people who don't know
what they are talking about, and who take up cuckoo-cries, to speak
contemptuously of modern literature, by which they mean (for they are
acquainted with little else) periodical literature. However small may
be its merits, it is at all events ten times as good as ancient
periodical literature used to be. A very much better authority than
myself on such a subject has lately informed us that the majority of
the old essays in the _Edinburgh Review_, at the very time when it was
supposed to be most 'trenchant,' 'masterly,' 'exhaustive,' and a number
of other splendid epithets, are so dull and weak and ignorant, that it
is impossible that they or their congeners would now find acceptance in
any periodical of repute. And with regard to all other classes of old
magazine literature, this verdict is certainly most just.
Let us take what most people suppose to be 'the extreme case,' Magazine
Poetry. Of course there is to-day a great deal of rant and twaddle
published under the name of verse in magazines; yet I could point to
scores and scores of poems that have thus appeared during the last ten
years,[5] which half a century ago would have made—and deservedly have
made—a high reputation for their authors. Such phrases as 'universal
necessity for practical exertion,' 'prosaic character of the age,'
etc., are, of course, common enough; but those who are acquainted with
such matters will, I am sure, corroborate my assertion that there was
never so much good poetry in our general literature as exists at
present. Persons of intelligence do not look for such things perhaps,
and certainly not in magazines, while persons of 'culture' are too much
occupied with old china and high art; but to humble folks, who take an
interest in their fellow-creatures, it is very pleasant to observe what
high thoughts, and how poetically expressed, are now to be found about
our feet, and, as it were, in the literary gutter. I don't compare
these writers with Byrons and Shelleys; I don't speak of them as born
poets at all. On the contrary, my argument is that second nature
(cultivation, opportunities of publication, etc.) has made them what
they are; and it is immensely creditable to her.
And what holds good of verse holds infinitely better in respect to
prose. The enormous improvement in our prose writers (I am not speaking
of geniuses, remember, but of the generality), and their great
superiority over writers of the same class half a century ago, is
mainly due to use. Sir Walter Scott, who, like most men of genuine
power, had great generosity, once observed to a brother author, 'You
and I came just in the nick of time.' He foresaw the formidable
competition that was about to take place, though he had no cause to
fear it. I think in these days he would have had cause; not that I
disbelieve in his genius, but that I venture to think he diffused it
over too large an area. In such cases genius is overpassed by the
talent which husbands its resources; in other words, Nature succumbs to
second nature, as the wife in the patriarchal days (when _she_ grew
patriarchal) succumbed to the handmaid. And after all, though we talk
so glibly about genius, and profess to feel, though we cannot express,
in what it differs from talent, are we quite so sure about this as we
would fain persuade ourselves? At all events, it cannot surely be
contended that a man of genius always writes like one; and when he does
not, his work is often inferior to the first-rate production of a man
of talent. For my own part, I am not sure whether (with the exception,
perhaps, of the highest gifts of song) the whole distinction is not
fanciful.
We are ready enough in ordinary matters to allow that 'practice makes
perfect,' and the limit of that principle is yet to be found. Moreover,
the vast importance of exclusive application is almost unknown. We see
it, indeed, in men of science and in lawyers, but without recognition;
nay, socially, it is even quoted against them. The mathematician may be
very eminent, but we find him dry; the lawyer may be at the head of his
profession, but we find him dull; and it is observed on all sides how
very little great A and great B, notwithstanding the high position they
have earned for themselves in their calling, know of matters out of
their own line. On the other hand, the man of whom it was said that
'science was his forte and omniscience his foible,' has left no
enduring monument behind him; and so it must always be with mortals who
have only fifty years of thought allotted to them at the very most, and
who diffuse it. Everyone admits the value of application, but very few
are aware how its force is wasted by diffusion: it is like a volatile
essence in a bottle without a cork. When, on the other hand, it is
concentrated—you may call it 'narrowed' if you please—there is hardly
anything within its own sphere of action of which it is not capable. So
many high motives (though also some mean ones) prompt us to make broad
the bases of education, that any proposal to contract them must needs
be thankless and unpopular; but it is certain that, among the upper
classes at least, the reason why so many men are unable to make their
way in the world, is because, thanks to a too liberal education, they
are Jacks of all trades and masters of none; and even as Jacks they cut
a very poor figure.
How large and varied is the educational bill of fare set before every
young gentleman in Great Britain; and to judge by the mental stamina it
affords him in most cases, what a waste of good food it is! The dishes
are so numerous and so quickly changed, that he has no time to decide
on which he likes best. Like an industrious flea, rather than a bee, he
hops from flower to flower in the educational garden, without one
penny-worth of honey to show for it. And then—though I feel how
degrading it is to allude to so vulgar a matter—how high is the price
of admission to the feast in question! Its purveyors do not pretend to
have filled his stomach, but only to have put him in the way of filling
it for himself, whereas, unhappily, Paterfamilias discovers that that
is the very thing that they have not done. His young Hopeful at
twenty-one is almost as unable to run alone as when he first entered
the nursery. To discourse airily upon the beauties of classical
education, and on the social advantages of acquiring 'the tone' at a
public school at whatever cost, is an agreeable exercise of the
intelligence; but such arguments have been taken too seriously, and the
result is that our young gentlemen are incapable of gaining their own
living. It is not only that 'all the gates are thronged with suitors,
all the markets overflow,' but even when the candidates are so
fortunate as to attain admittance, they are still a burden upon their
fathers for years, from having had no especial preparation for the work
they have to do. Folks who can afford to spend £250 a year on their
sons at Eton or Harrow, and to add another fifty or two for their
support at the universities, do not feel this; but those who have done
it without affording it—_i.e._, by cutting and contriving, if not by
pinching and saving—feel their position very bitterly. There are
hundreds of clever young men who are now living at home and doing
nothing—or work that pays nothing, and even costs something for doing
it—who might be earning very tolerable incomes by their pen if they
only knew how, and had not wasted their young wits on Greek plays and
Latin verses; nor do I find that the attractions of such objects of
study are permanent, or afford the least solace to these young
gentlemen in their enforced leisure.
The idea of bringing young people up to Literature is doubtless
calculated to raise the eyebrows almost as much as the suggestion of
bringing them up to the Stage. The notions of Paterfamilias in this
respect are very much what they were fifty years ago. 'What! put my boy
in Grub Street? I would rather see him in his coffin.' In his mind's
eye he beholds Savage on his bunk and Chatterton on his deathbed. He
does not know that there are many hundreds of persons of both sexes who
have found out this vocation for themselves, and are diligently
pursuing it—under circumstances of quite unnecessary difficulty—to
their material advantage. He is unaware that the conditions of
literature in England have been as completely changed within a single
generation as those of locomotion.
There are, it is true, at present no great prizes in literature such as
are offered by the learned professions, but there are quite as many
small ones—competences; while, on the other hand, it is not so much of
a lottery. It is not necessary to marry an attorney's daughter, or a
bishop's, to get on in it. The calling, as it is termed (I know not
why, for it is often heavy enough), of 'light literature' is in such
contempt, through ignorance on the one hand, and arrogance on the
other, that one is almost afraid in such a connection to speak of
merit; yet merit, or, at all events, aptitude with diligence, is
certain of success in it. A great deal has been said about editors
being blind to the worth of unknown authors; but if so, they must be
also blind (and this I have never heard said of them) to their own
interests. It would be just as reasonable to accuse a recruiting
sergeant of passing by the stout six-feet fellows who wish to enlist
with him, and for each of whom—directly or indirectly—he receives
head-money. It is possible, of course, that one particular sergeant may
be drunken, or careless of his own interests, but in that case the
literary recruit has only to apply next door. The opportunities for
action in the field of literature are now so very numerous that it is
impossible that any able volunteer should be long shut out of it; and I
have observed that the complaints about want of employment come almost
solely from those unfit for service. Nay, in the ranks of the
literaryarmy there are very many who should have been excluded. Few, if
any, are there through favour; but the fact is, the work to be done is
so extensive and so varied, that there is not a sufficiency of good
candidates to do it. And of what is called 'skilled labour' among them
there is scarcely any.
The question 'What can you do?' put by an editor to an aspirant,
generally astonishes him very much. The aspirant is ready to do
anything, he says, which the other will please to suggest. 'But what is
your line in literature? What can you do best—not tragedies in blank
verse, I hope?' Perhaps the aspirant here hangs his head; he _has_
written tragedies. In which case there is good hope for him, because it
shows a natural bent. But he generally replies that he has written
nothing as yet except that essay on the genius of Cicero (at which the
editor has already shaken his head), and that defence of Mary Queen of
Scots. Or perhaps he has written some translations of Horace, which he
is surprised to find not a novelty; or some considerations upon the
value of a feudal system. At four-and-twenty, in short, he is but an
overgrown schoolboy. He has been taught, indeed, to acquire knowledge
of a certain sort, but not the habit of acquiring; he has been taught
to observe nothing; he is ignorant upon all the subjects that interest
his fellow-creatures, and in his new ambition is like one who
endeavours to attract an audience without having anything to tell them.
He knows some Latin, a little Greek, a very little French, and a very
very little of what are called the English classics. He has read a few
recent novels perhaps, but of modern English literature, and of that
(to him at least) most important branch of it, English journalism, he
knows nothing. His views and opinions are those of a public school,
which are by no means in accordance with those of the great world of
readers; or he is full of the class prejudices imbibed at college. In
short, he may be as vigorous as a Zulu, with the materials of a
first-rate soldier in him, but his arms are only a club and an assegai,
and are of no service. Why should he not be fitted out in early life
with literary weapons of precision, and taught the use of them?
I say, again, that poor Paterfamilias looking hopelessly about him,
like Quintus Curtius in the riddle, for 'a nice opening for a young
man,' is totally ignorant of the opportunities, if not for fame and
fortune, at least for competency and comfort, that Literature now
offers to a clever lad. He looks round him; he sees the Church leading
nowhere, with much greater certainty of expense than income, and
demanding a huge sum for what is irreverently termed 'gate money;' he
sees the Bar, with its high road leading indeed to the woolsack, but
with a hundred by-ways leading nowhere in particular, and full of
turnpikes—legal tutors, legal fees, rents of chambers, etc.—which he
has to defray; he sees Physic, at which Materfamilias sniffs and turns
her nose up. 'Her Jack, with such agreeable manners, to become a
saw-bones! Never!' He sees the army, and thinks, since Jack has such
great abilities, it seems a pity to give him a red coat, which costs
also considerably more than a black one; And how is Jack to live upon
his pay?
After all, indeed, however prettily one puts it, the question is with
him, not so much '_What_ is my Jack to be?' as '_How_ is my Jack to
live?' To one who has any gift of humour there are few things more
amusing than to observe how this vulgar, but really rather important
inquiry, is ignored by those who take the subject of modern education
in hand. They are chiefly schoolmasters, who are not so deep in their
books but that they can spare a glance or two in the direction of their
banker's account; or fellows of colleges who have no children, and
therefore never feel the difficulties of supporting them. Heaven forbid
that so humble an individual as myself should question their wisdom, or
say anything about them that should seem to smack of irreverence; but I
do believe that (with one or two exceptions I have in my mind) the
system they have introduced among us is the Greatest Humbug in the
universe. In the meantime poor Paterfamilias (who is the last man, they
flatter themselves, to find this out) stands with his hands (and very
little else) in his pockets, regarding his clever offspring, and
wondering what he shall do with him. He remembers to have read about a
man on his deathbed, who calls his children about him and thanks God,
though he has left them nothing to live upon, he has given them a good
education, and tries to extract comfort from the reminiscence. That he
has spent money enough upon Jack's education is certain; something
between two or three thousand pounds in all at least, the interest of
which, it strikes him, would be very convenient just now to keep him.
But unfortunately the principal is gone and Jack isn't.
Now suppose—for one may suppose anything, however ridiculous—he had
spent two or three hundred pounds at the very most, and brought him up
to the Calling of Literature. He believes, perhaps, that it is only
geniuses that succeed in it (in which case I know more geniuses than I
had any idea of), and he doesn't think Jack a genius, though Jack's
mother does. Or, as is more probable, he regards it as a hand-to-mouth
calling, which to-day gives its disciples a five-pound note, and
to-morrow five pence. He calls to mind a saying about Literature being
a good stick, but not a good crutch—an excellent auxiliary, but no
permanent support; but he forgets the all-important fact that the
remark was made half a century ago.
Poor blind Paterfamilias—shall I couch you? If the operation is
successful, I am sure you will thank me for it; but, on the other hand,
I foresee I shall incur the greatest enmities. Should I encourage
clever Jack, and, what is worse, a thousand Jacks who are not clever,
to enter upon this vocation, what will editors say to me? I shall have
to go about, perhaps, guarded with two policemen with revolvers, like
an Irish gentleman on his landed estate. 'Is not the flood of rubbish
to which we are already subjected,' I hear them crying, 'bad enough,
without your pulling up the sluices of universal stupidity?' My
suggestion, however, is intended to benefit them by clearing away the
rubbish, and inducing a clearer and deeper stream for the turning of
their mills. At the same time I confess that the lessening of
Paterfamilias's difficulties is my main object. What I would open his
eyes to is the fact that a calling, of the advantages of which he has
no knowledge, _does_ present itself to clever Jack, which will cost him
nothing but pens, ink, and paper to enter upon, and in which, if he has
been well trained for it, he will surely be successful, since so many
succeed in it without any training at all. Why should not clever Jack
have this in view as much as the _ignes fatui_ of woolsacks and mitres?
If it has no lord chancellorships, it has plenty of county court
appointments; if it has no bishoprics, it has plenty of benefices—and
really, as times go, some pretty fat ones.
On your breakfast-table, good Paterfamilias, there lies, every morning,
a newspaper, and on Saturday perhaps there are two or three. When you
go out in the street, you are pestered to buy half a score more of
them. In your club reading-room there are a hundred different journals.
When you travel by the railway you see at every station a provincial
newspaper of more or less extensive circulation. Has it never struck
you that to supply these publications with their leading articles,
there must be an immense staff of persons called journalists,
professing every description of opinion, and advocating every
conceivable policy? And do you suppose these gentry only get £70 a year
for their work, like a curate; or £60, like a sub-lieutenant; or that
they have to pay three times those sums for the privilege of belonging
to the press, as a barrister does for belonging to his inn? Again, in
London at least, there are as many magazines as newspapers, containing
every kind of literature, the very contributors of which are so
numerous, that they form a public of themselves. That seems at the
first blush to militate against my suggestion, but though contributors
are so common, and upon the whole so good—indeed, considering the
conditions under which they labour, so wonderfully good—they are not (I
have heard editors say) so good as they might be, supposing (for
example) they knew a little of science, history, politics, English
literature, and especially of the art of composition, before they
volunteered their services. At present the ranks of journalistic and
periodical literature are largely recruited from the failures in other
professions. The bright young barrister who can't get a brief takes to
literature as a calling, just as the man who has 'gone a cropper' in
the army takes to the wine-trade. And what æons of time, and what
millions of money, have been wasted in the meanwhile!
The announcement written on the gates of all the recognised professions
in England is the same that would-be travellers read on the faces of
the passengers on the underground railway after office hours: 'Our
number is complete, and our room is limited.' In literature, on the
contrary, though its vehicles may seem as tightly packed, substitution
can be effected. There may be persons travelling on that line in the
first-class who ought to be in the third, and indeed have no reasonable
pretext for being there at all. And if clever Jack could show his
ticket, he would turn them out of it.
Again, so far from the space being limited, it is continually
enlarging, and that out of all proportion to those who have tickets. We
hear from its enemies that the Church is doomed, and from its friends
that it is in danger; there is a small but energetic party who are bent
on reducing the Army, and even on doing away with it; nay, so wicked
and presumptuous has human nature grown, that mutterings are heard and
menaces uttered against the delay and exactions of the Law itself;
whereas Literature has no foes, and is enlarging its boundaries in all
directions. It is all 'a-growing and a-blowing,' as the peripatetic
gardeners say of their plants; but, unlike their wares, it has its
roots deep in the soil and is an evergreen. Its promise is golden, and
its prospects are boundless for every class of writer.
In some excellent articles on Modern Literature in _Blackwood's
Magazine_ the other day, this subject was touched upon with respect to
fiction, and might well have filled a greater space, for the growth of
that description of literature of late years is simply marvellous.
Curiously enough, though France originated the _feuilleton_, it was
from America and our own colonies that England seems to have taken the
idea of publishing novels in newspapers. It was a common practice in
Australia long before we adopted it; and, what is also curious, it was
first acclimatised among us by our provincial papers. The custom is
rapidly gaining ground in London, but in the country there is now
scarcely any newspaper of repute which does not enlist the aid of
fiction to attract its readers. Many of them are contented with very
poor stuff, for which they pay a proportional price; but others club
together with other newspapers—the operation has even received the
technical term of 'forming a syndicate'—and are thereby enabled to
secure the services of popular authors; while the newspapers thus
arranged for are published at a good distance from one another, so as
not to interfere with each other's circulation. Country journals, which
are not so ambitious, instead of using an inferior article, will often
purchase the 'serial right,' as it is called, of stories which have
already appeared elsewhere, or have passed through the circulating
libraries. Nay, the novelist who has established a reputation has many
more strings to his bow: his novel, thus published in the country
newspapers, also appears coincidently in the same serial shape in
Australia, Canada, and other British colonies, leaving the three-volume
form and the cheap editions 'to the good.' And what is true of fiction
is in a less degree true of other kinds of literature. Travels are
'gutted,' and form articles in magazines, illustrated by the original
plates; lectures, after having served their primary purpose, are
published in a similar manner; even scientific works now appear first
in the magazines which are devoted to science before performing their
mission of 'popularising' their subject.
When speaking of the growth of readers, I have purposely not mentioned
America. For the present the absence of copyright there is destroying
both author and publisher; but the wheels of justice, though tardy, are
making way there. In a few years that great continent of readers will
be legitimately added to the audience of the English author, and those
that have stolen will steal no more.
Nor, in our own country, must we fail to take notice of the
establishment of School Boards. A generation hence we shall have a
reading public almost as numerous as in America; even the very lowest
classes will have acquired a certain culture which will beget demands
both for journalists and 'literary persons.' The harvest will be
plenteous indeed, but unless my advice be followed in some shape or
another, the labourers will be comparatively few and superlatively
inadequate.
I am well aware how mischievous, as well as troublesome, would be the
encouragement of mediocrity; and in stating these promising facts I
have no such purpose in my mind. On the contrary, there is an immense
amount of mediocrity already in literature, which I think my
proposition of training up 'clever Jack' to that calling would
discourage. I have no expectation of establishing a manufactory for
genius—and indeed, for reasons it is not necessary to specify, I would
not do it if I could. But whereas all kinds of 'culture' have been
recommended to the youth of Great Britain (and certainly with no limit
as to the expense of acquisition), the cultivation of such natural
faculties as imagination and humour (for example) has never been
suggested. The possibility of such a thing will doubtless be denied. I
am quite certain, however, that they are capable of great development,
and that they may be brought to attain, if not perfection, at all
events a high degree of excellence. The proof, to those who choose to
look for it, is plain enough even as matters stand. Use and opportunity
are already producing scores of examples of it; if supplemented by
early education they might surely produce still more.
There is so great and general a prejudice against special studies, that
I must humbly conclude there is something in it. On the other hand, I
know a large number of highly—that is broadly—educated persons, who are
desperately dull. 'But would they have been less dull,' it may be
asked, 'if they were also ignorant?' Yes, I believe they would. They
have swallowed too much for digestions naturally weak; they have become
inert, conceited, oppressive to themselves and others—Prigs. And I
think that even clever young people suffer in a less degree from the
same cause. Some one has written, 'Information is always useful.' This
reminds me of the married lady, fond of bargains, who once bought a
door-plate at a sale with 'Mr. Wilkins' on it. Her own name was Jones,
but the doorplate was very cheap, and her husband, she argued, _might_
die, and then she might marry a man of the name of Wilkins. 'Depend
upon it, everything comes in useful,' she said, 'if you only keep it
long enough.'
This is what I venture to doubt. I have myself purchased several
door-plates (quite as burthensome, but not so cheap as that good
lady's), which have been of no sort of use to me, and are still on
hand.
[5] I take up a half-yearly volume of a magazine (price 1½d. weekly)
addressed to the middle classes, and find in it, at haphazard, the
five following pieces, the authors of which are anonymous: