From 'Shakespeare, the Man,' etc.
The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people that
can write know anything. In general, an author has always lived in a
room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the
style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of
employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to
see. His life is a vacuum. The mental habits of Robert Southey, which
about a year ago were so extensively praised in the public journals, are
the type of literary existence, just as the praise bestowed on them
shows the admiration excited by them among literary people. He wrote
poetry (as if anybody could) before breakfast; he read during breakfast.
He wrote history until dinner; he corrected proof-sheets between dinner
and tea; he wrote an essay for the Quarterly afterwards; and after
supper, by way of relaxation, composed 'The Doctor'--a lengthy and
elaborate jest. Now, what can any one think of such a life?--except how
clearly it shows that the habits best fitted for communicating
information, formed with the best care, and daily regulated by the best
motives, are exactly the habits which are likely to afford a man the
least information to communicate. Southey had no events, no experiences.
His wife kept house and allowed him pocket-money, just as if he had been
a German professor devoted to accents, tobacco, and the dates of
Horace's amours....
The critic in the 'Vicar of Wakefield' lays down that you should
_always_ say that the picture would have been better if the painter had
taken more pains; but in the case of the practiced literary man, you
should often enough say that the writings would have been much better if
the writer had taken less pains. He says he has devoted his life to the
subject; the reply is, "Then you have taken the best way to prevent your
making anything of it. Instead of reading studiously what Burgersdicius
and Aenesidemus said men were, you should have gone out yourself and
seen (if you can see) what they are." But there is a whole class of
minds which prefer the literary delineation of objects to the actual
eyesight of them. Such a man would naturally think literature more
instructive than life. Hazlitt said of Mackintosh, "He might like to
read an _account_ of India; but India itself, with its burning, shining
face, would be a mere blank, an endless waste to him. Persons of this
class have no more to say to a matter of fact staring them in the face,
without a label in its mouth, than they would to a hippopotamus."...
After all, the original way of writing books may turn out to be the
best. The first author, it is plain, could not have taken anything from
books, since there were no books for him to copy from; he looked at
things for himself. Anyhow the modern system fails, for where are the
amusing books from voracious students and habitual writers?
Moreover, in general, it will perhaps be found that persons devoted to
mere literature commonly become devoted to mere idleness. They wish to
produce a great work, but they find they cannot. Having relinquished
everything to devote themselves to this, they conclude on trial that
this is impossible; they wish to write, but nothing occurs to them:
therefore they write nothing and they do nothing. As has been said, they
have nothing to do; their life has no events, unless they are very poor;
with any decent means of subsistence, they have nothing to rouse them
from an indolent and musing dream. A merchant must meet his bills, or he
is civilly dead and uncivilly remembered; but a student may know nothing
of time, and be too lazy to wind lip his watch.