CHAPTER X. ON THE CULTIVATION OF A LITERARY TASTE. "EGO multos homines excellenti animo, ac virtute fuisse, et sine doctrinâ, naturæ ipsius habitu prope divino, per seipsos et moderatos, et graves, extitisse fateor. Etiam illud adjungo, sæpius ad laudem atque virtutem naturam sine doctrinâ, quam sine naturâ valuisse doctrinam. Atque idem ego contendo, cum ad naturameximiam atque illustrem accesserit ratio quædam conformatioque doctrinæ, tum illud nescio quid præclarum ac singulare solere existere. Quod si non hic tantus fructus ostenderetur, et si ex his studiis delectatio sola peteretur; tamen, ut opinor, hanc animi remissionem humanissimam ac liberatissimam judicaretis. Hæc studia adolescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium ac solatium præbent, delectant domi, non impediunt foris, pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur." THIS eloquent passage, in praise of literature, has been often quoted and admired. Many a scholar, since the words were first spoken by the Roman orator, in his oration for Archias, has exulted and gloried in the noble sentiments. Few greater benefits could be conferred upon the young, than to create in them, if possible, a literary taste. This is an advantage which, in youth, they may not be able to estimate; but in after life, I am mistaken if they do not greatly attach to it much importance. If you succeed in cultivating in a young man such a taste, I will tell you what you may be the means of saving him from. You may, possibly, be the instrument of guarding him against low and vicious pursuits. You may save him from lounging about and devoting his morning to the kennel and the stable, from the contamination of making a companion of the groom and the huntsman; you may, perhaps, save him from losing his fortune at a gaming-table-or what is nearly as bad, breaking his neck at a steeple-chase; you may, probably, rescue him from the degradation of lounging in a cigardivan, killing the time, drinking liqueres, and smoking cigars, and striving to imagine himself a very important personage whilst all men of common sense are looking at him with mingled pity and contempt. You cannot have any acquaintance with town-haunts, but you will instantly recognise a class of young men, such as I describe; look at the crowded door of yon' confectioner's shop, and the knot collected around it; listen to the stale joke, the profane jest, the unmeaning laugh—amid fumes and draughts that certainly do not serve to brighten the wit, and this repeated, day after day, in sickening routine, and you have the lives of many of our young men. And is it nothing, if we could, by early instilling a love of useful study, save the youth of our land from a life like this, useless to man, and far worse than useless in the sight of God? And you must know but little of the country, if you are not able to fix, in your mind's eye, upon more than one young man, whose daily course is, after breakfast, to lounge into the stable, and kill a little time in dilating upon the merits of a horse, or other subjects far less innocent, with a full enjoyment and participation in the coarse humour of his friend, the groom. If he had been early taught the pleasures of mental improvement, is it likely that the stable should be the atmosphere he would wish to breathe, or Dick and Tom the companions of his choice? Let me take you to visit my acquaintance, Mr. ——, and introduce you to his sons; for anything I can say to the contrary, nature may not have been niggard to them, and they might have been made intelligent and clever, a credit to society. View them in their daily occupation, either strolling through the fields with a gun upon their shoulder, or hallooing after the pack; strive to lead to some rational conversation, by introducing a literary subject, and they meet you with a vacant stare, which says (if it mean anything), what can he be talking about? "With this brain of feathers, and this wit of lead," what can we expect from these young men as they advance in years? Why, absolutely nothing, that betokens sense or intelligence. Had that father attended, as he ought to have done, to the education of his sons, they might have been saved from some vicious pursuits, and induced to bestow their attention upon worthier objects than their horses and dogs; their language might have been elevated above mere slang; and they might have learned at least to spell and write with correctness and perspicuity. Does the father, in this, acquit himself to his sons? His object is, to make them country gentlemen; but in doing so, it is surely not necessary to leave them boors. Does he make them better cultivators of the soil, by leaving them wild and uncultivated in their own understandings? His present indulgence is dearly purchased at the expense of their future respectability. But enough of them, and of the tribe to which they belong. The gentleman (and is he rarely to be met with?) of no occupation, whose reading is limited to the newspaper, the racing calendar, and army list-and who, in order to relieve his hours of ennui, has recourse to his club and the billiard-table-would surely have found his leisure as profitably, and perhaps full as pleasantly, occupied, if he had acquired and brought with him, from school or college, a love of the studies in which he was there supposed to be engaged. There is some little improvement in the education of the country gentleman, since the days of the "Spectator," who, when introducing a Latin quotation, was in the habit of slyly adding: "Which I must now translate for the benefit of the ladies and the country gentlemen;" but the instances of this cultivated taste are, alas! few. "The schoolmaster with his primer," has been but little abroad amongst them; and Jack Cade himself, could have had no reasonable handle of accusation, so far as they are concerned, for their love of books, or have "it proved to their face, that they have men about them, that usually talk of a noun and a verb, and such abominable words, as no Christian ear can endure to hear." Yet, it must be unnecessary to remark, that a love of literature would have enlarged their understandings, amused and solaced many a weary or listless moment, and saved them from other occupations, ruinous alike to soul and body. Examples, where the love of letters has been the delight and consolation of men, crowd upon the mind, and rouse the stagnant powers to imitation. "How charming is divine Philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets, Where no crude surfeit reigns." So sung Milton; and if it had not been for his books and the studies of his youth, how miserable had been the lot of the blind old man! Happy for him that he had stored his mind with treasures of knowledge, that when he was Dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon- Without all hope of day," he was not left to vacuity, but could— "Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary mov'd There is something very pleasing in the satisfaction with which Horace looks forward to the winter, as the time of his escape from Rome, and the assiduities of his great friends there, when he could enjoy in quiet retirement, his literary ease. "Quando si bruma nives Albanis illinet agris, Ad mare descendet vates tuus, et sibi parcet, "But when the snow on Alba's plains shall lie, The love of reading amounted to a passion in Gibbon, from his boyish days, when "immersed in the passage of the Goths over the Danube the summons of the dinner bell reluctantly dragged him from his intellectual feast;" till long afterwards, when he acknowledged, that his books constituted the chief pleasure of his life, and that "he would not give up his love of reading for the wealth of the Indies." "The miseries of a vacant life," says he, 66 were never known to a man, whose hours were insufficient for the inexhaustible pleasures of study." Gibbon, however, was a retired scholar, devoted to his books, and cannot be brought forward for general imitation for the busy world, with its professions, and thousand occupations, must be carried on, and such men might theorise, but could never practically further it in its progress. I mention him, merely as a strong instance of the pleasure to be derived from reading. Petrarch led a life very far from being inactive, and was yet most eager to learn the Greek language, which was in that age a very uncommon attainment. He struggled on through many difficulties, without proper assistance to guide him in the intricacies of the way; and we are at last informed by his eloquent historian : “The manifold avocations of Petrarch, love and friendship, his various correspondence and frequent journeys, the Roman laurel, and his elaborate compositions, in prose and verse, in Latin and Italian, diverted him from a foreign idiom; and as he advanced in life, the attainment of the Greek language was the object of his wishes rarther than of his hopes." The joint eloquence of Petrarch, and Gibbon, while dilating on him in one of his brightest pages, is so remarkable, that I must here insert it :-"When he was about 50 years of age, a Byzantine ambassador, his friend, and a a master of both tongues, presented him with a copy of Homer; and the answer of Petrarch is at once expressive of his eloquence, gratitude, and regret. After celebrating the generosity of the donor, and the value of a gift more precious in his estimation than gold or rubies, he thus |