Biographia Literaria

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Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe
Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart;
And fears self-willed that shunned the eye of hope;
And hope that scarce would know itself from fear;
Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,
And genius given and knowledge won in vain;
And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild,
And all which patient toil had reared, and all,
Commune with thee had opened out--but flowers
Strewed on my corpse, and borne upon my bier,
In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!

These will exist, for the future, I trust, only in the poetic strains,
which the feelings at the time called forth. In those only, gentle
reader,

Affectus animi varios, bellumque sequacis
Perlegis invidiae, curasque revolvis inanes,
Quas humilis tenero stylus olim effudit in aevo.
Perlegis et lacrymas, et quod pharetratus acuta
Ille puer puero fecit mihi cuspide vulnus.
Omnia paulatim consumit longior aetas,
Vivendoque simul morimur, rapimurque manendo.
Ipse mihi collatus enim non ille videbor;
Frons alia est, moresque alii, nova mentis imago,
Vox aliudque sonat--Jamque observatio vitae
Multa dedit--lugere nihil, ferre omnia; jamque
Paulatim lacrymas rerum experientia tersit.

CHAPTER XI

An affectionate exhortation to those who in early life feel themselves
disposed to become authors.

It was a favourite remark of the late Mr. Whitbread's, that no man
does any thing from a single motive. The separate motives, or rather
moods of mind, which produced the preceding reflections and anecdotes
have been laid open to the reader in each separate instance. But an
interest in the welfare of those, who at the present time may be in
circumstances not dissimilar to my own at my first entrance into life,
has been the constant accompaniment, and (as it were) the under-song
of all my feelings. Whitehead exerting the prerogative of his
laureateship addressed to youthful poets a poetic Charge, which is
perhaps the best, and certainly the most interesting, of his works.
With no other privilege than that of sympathy and sincere good wishes,
I would address an affectionate exhortation to the youthful literati,
grounded on my own experience. It will be but short; for the
beginning, middle, and end converge to one charge: never pursue
literature as a trade. With the exception of one extraordinary man, I
have never known an individual, least of all an individual of genius,
healthy or happy without a profession, that is, some regular
employment, which does not depend on the will of the moment, and which
can be carried on so far mechanically that an average quantum only of
health, spirits, and intellectual exertion are requisite to its
faithful discharge. Three hours of leisure, unannoyed by any alien
anxiety, and looked forward to with delight as a change and
recreation, will suffice to realize in literature a larger product of
what is truly genial, than weeks of compulsion. Money, and immediate
reputation form only an arbitrary and accidental end of literary
labour. The hope of increasing them by any given exertion will often
prove a stimulant to industry; but the necessity of acquiring them
will in all works of genius convert the stimulant into a narcotic.
Motives by excess reverse their very nature, and instead of exciting,
stun and stupify the mind. For it is one contradistinction of genius
from talent, that its predominant end is always comprised in the
means; and this is one of the many points, which establish an analogy
between genius and virtue. Now though talents may exist without
genius, yet as genius cannot exist, certainly not manifest itself,
without talents, I would advise every scholar, who feels the genial
power working within him, so far to make a division between the two,
as that he should devote his talents to the acquirement of competence
in some known trade or profession, and his genius to objects of his
tranquil and unbiassed choice; while the consciousness of being
actuated in both alike by the sincere desire to perform his duty, will
alike ennoble both. "My dear young friend," (I would say) "suppose
yourself established in any honourable occupation. From the
manufactory or counting house, from the law-court, or from having
visited your last patient, you return at evening,

Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home
Is sweetest------

to your family, prepared for its social enjoyments, with the very
countenances of your wife and children brightened, and their voice of
welcome made doubly welcome, by the knowledge that, as far as they are
concerned, you have satisfied the demands of the day by the labour of
the day. Then, when you retire into your study, in the books on your
shelves you revisit so many venerable friends with whom you can
converse. Your own spirit scarcely less free from personal anxieties
than the great minds, that in those books are still living for you!
Even your writing desk with its blank paper and all its other
implements will appear as a chain of flowers, capable of linking your
feelings as well as thoughts to events and characters past or to come;
not a chain of iron, which binds you down to think of the future and
the remote by recalling the claims and feelings of the peremptory
present. But why should I say retire? The habits of active life and
daily intercourse with the stir of the world will tend to give you
such self-command, that the presence of your family will be no
interruption. Nay, the social silence, or undisturbing voices of a
wife or sister will be like a restorative atmosphere, or soft music
which moulds a dream without becoming its object. If facts are
required to prove the possibility of combining weighty performances in
literature with full and independent employment, the works of Cicero
and Xenophon among the ancients; of Sir Thomas More, Bacon, Baxter, or
to refer at once to later and contemporary instances, Darwin and
Roscoe, are at once decisive of the question."

But all men may not dare promise themselves a sufficiency of self-
control for the imitation of those examples: though strict scrutiny
should always be made, whether indolence, restlessness, or a vanity
impatient for immediate gratification, have not tampered with the
judgment and assumed the vizard of humility for the purposes of self-
delusion. Still the Church presents to every man of learning and
genius a profession, in which he may cherish a rational hope of being
able to unite the widest schemes of literary utility with the
strictest performance of professional duties. Among the numerous
blessings of Christianity, the introduction of an established Church
makes an especial claim on the gratitude of scholars and philosophers;
in England, at least, where the principles of Protestantism have
conspired with the freedom of the government to double all its
salutary powers by the removal of its abuses.

That not only the maxims, but the grounds of a pure morality, the mere
fragments of which

------the lofty grave tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts; [43]

and that the sublime truths of the divine unity and attributes, which
a Plato found most hard to learn and deemed it still more difficult to
reveal; that these should have become the almost hereditary property
of childhood and poverty, of the hovel and the workshop; that even to
the unlettered they sound as common place, is a phaenomenon, which
must withhold all but minds of the most vulgar cast from undervaluing
the services even of the pulpit and the reading desk. Yet those, who
confine the efficiency of an established Church to its public offices,
can hardly be placed in a much higher rank of intellect. That to every
parish throughout the kingdom there is transplanted a germ of
civilization; that in the remotest villages there is a nucleus, round
which the capabilities of the place may crystallize and brighten; a
model sufficiently superior to excite, yet sufficiently near to
encourage and facilitate, imitation; this, the unobtrusive, continuous
agency of a protestant church establishment, this it is, which the
patriot, and the philanthropist, who would fain unite the love of
peace with the faith in the progressive melioration of mankind, cannot
estimate at too high a price. It cannot be valued with the gold of
Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. No mention shall be
made of coral, or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies.
The clergyman is with his parishioners and among them; he is neither
in the cloistered cell, nor in the wilderness, but a neighbour and a
family-man, whose education and rank admit him to the mansion of the
rich landholder, while his duties make him the frequent visitor of the
farmhouse and the cottage. He is, or he may become, connected, with
the families of his parish or its vicinity by marriage. And among the
instances of the blindness, or at best of the short-sightedness, which
it is the nature of cupidity to inflict, I know few more striking than
the clamours of the farmers against Church property. Whatever was not
paid to the clergyman would inevitably at the next lease be paid to
the landholder, while, as the case at present stands, the revenues of
the Church are in some sort the reversionary property of every family,
that may have a member educated for the Church, or a daughter that may
marry a clergyman. Instead of being foreclosed and immovable, it is in
fact the only species of landed property, that is essentially moving
and circulative. That there exist no inconveniences, who will pretend
to assert? But I have yet to expect the proof, that the inconveniences
are greater in this than in any other species; or that either the
farmers or the clergy would be benefited by forcing the latter to
become either Trullibers or salaried placemen. Nay, I do not hesitate
to declare my firm persuasion, that whatever reason of discontent the
farmers may assign, the true cause is this; that they may cheat the
parson, but cannot cheat the steward; and that they are disappointed,
if they should have been able to withhold only two pounds less than
the legal claim, having expected to withhold five. At all events,
considered relatively to the encouragement of learning and genius, the
establishment presents a patronage at once so effective and
unburdensome, that it would be impossible to afford the like or equal
in any but a Christian and Protestant country. There is scarce a
department of human knowledge without some bearing on the various
critical, historical, philosophical and moral truths, in which the
scholar must be interested as a clergyman; no one pursuit worthy of a
man of genius, which may not be followed without incongruity. To give
the history of the Bible as a book, would be little less than to
relate the origin or first excitement of all the literature and
science, that we now possess. The very decorum, which the profession
imposes, is favourable to the best purposes of genius, and tends to
counteract its most frequent defects. Finally, that man must be
deficient in sensibility, who would not find an incentive to emulation
in the great and burning lights, which in a long series have
illustrated the church of England; who would not hear from within an
echo to the voice from their sacred shrines,

Et Pater Aeneas et avunculus excitat Hector.

But, whatever be the profession or trade chosen, the advantages are
many and important, compared with the state of a mere literary man,
who in any degree depends on the sale of his works for the necessaries
and comforts of life. In the former a man lives in sympathy with the
world, in which he lives. At least he acquires a better and quicker
tact for the knowledge of that, with which men in general can
sympathize. He learns to manage his genius more prudently and
efficaciously. His powers and acquirements gain him likewise more real
admiration; for they surpass the legitimate expectations of others. He
is something besides an author, and is not therefore considered merely
as an author. The hearts of men are open to him, as to one of their
own class; and whether he exerts himself or not in the conversational
circles of his acquaintance, his silence is not attributed to pride,
nor his communicativeness to vanity. To these advantages I will
venture to add a superior chance of happiness in domestic life, were
it only that it is as natural for the man to be out of the circle of
his household during the day, as it is meritorious for the woman to
remain for the most part within it. But this subject involves points
of consideration so numerous and so delicate, and would not only
permit, but require such ample documents from the biography of
literary men, that I now merely allude to it in transitu. When the
same circumstance has occurred at very different times to very
different persons, all of whom have some one thing in common; there is
reason to suppose that such circumstance is not merely attributable to
the persons concerned, but is in some measure occasioned by the one
point in common to them all. Instead of the vehement and almost
slanderous dehortation from marriage, which the Misogyne, Boccaccio
[44] addresses to literary men, I would substitute the simple advice:
be not merely a man of letters! Let literature be an honourable
augmentation to your arms; but not constitute the coat, or fill the
escutcheon!

To objections from conscience I can of course answer in no other way,
than by requesting the youthful objector (as I have already done on a
former occasion) to ascertain with strict self-examination, whether
other influences may not be at work; whether spirits, "not of health,"
and with whispers "not from heaven," may not be walking in the
twilight of his consciousness. Let him catalogue his scruples, and
reduce them to a distinct intelligible form; let him be certain, that
he has read with a docile mind and favourable dispositions the best
and most fundamental works on the subject; that he has had both mind
and heart opened to the great and illustrious qualities of the many
renowned characters, who had doubted like himself, and whose
researches had ended in the clear conviction, that their doubts had
been groundless, or at least in no proportion to the counter-weight.
Happy will it be for such a man, if among his contemporaries elder
than himself he should meet with one, who, with similar powers and
feelings as acute as his own, had entertained the same scruples; had
acted upon them; and who by after-research (when the step was, alas!
irretrievable, but for that very reason his research undeniably
disinterested) had discovered himself to have quarrelled with received
opinions only to embrace errors, to have left the direction tracked
out for him on the high road of honourable exertion, only to deviate
into a labyrinth, where when he had wandered till his head was giddy,
his best good fortune was finally to have found his way out again, too
late for prudence though not too late for conscience or for truth!
Time spent in such delay is time won: for manhood in the meantime is
advancing, and with it increase of knowledge, strength of judgment,
and above all, temperance of feelings. And even if these should effect
no change, yet the delay will at least prevent the final approval of
the decision from being alloyed by the inward censure of the rashness
and vanity, by which it had been precipitated. It would be a sort of
irreligion, and scarcely less than a libel on human nature to believe,
that there is any established and reputable profession or employment,
in which a man may not continue to act with honesty and honour; and
doubtless there is likewise none, which may not at times present
temptations to the contrary. But wofully will that man find himself
mistaken, who imagines that the profession of literature, or (to speak
more plainly) the trade of authorship, besets its members with fewer
or with less insidious temptations, than the Church, the law, or the
different branches of commerce. But I have treated sufficiently on
this unpleasant subject in an early chapter of this volume. I will
conclude the present therefore with a short extract from Herder, whose
name I might have added to the illustrious list of those, who have
combined the successful pursuit of the Muses, not only with the
faithful discharge, but with the highest honours and honourable
emoluments of an established profession. The translation the reader
will find in a note below [45]. "Am sorgfaeltigsten, meiden sie die
Autorschaft. Zu frueh oder unmaessig gebraucht, macht sie den Kopf
wueste and das Herz leer; wenn sie auch sonst keine ueble Folgen
gaebe. Ein Mensch, der nur lieset um zu druecken, lieset
wahrscheinlich uebel; und wer jeden Gedanken, der ihm aufstosst, durch
Feder and Presse versendet, hat sie in kurzer Zeit alle versandt, und
wird bald ein blosser Diener der Druckerey, ein Buchstabensetzer
werden."

CHAPTER XII

A chapter of requests and premonitions concerning the perusal or
omission of the chapter that follows.

In the perusal of philosophical works I have been greatly benefited by
a resolve, which, in the antithetic form and with the allowed
quaintness of an adage or maxim, I have been accustomed to word thus:
until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant
of his understanding. This golden rule of mine does, I own, resemble
those of Pythagoras in its obscurity rather than in its depth. If
however the reader will permit me to be my own Hierocles, I trust,
that he will find its meaning fully explained by the following
instances. I have now before me a treatise of a religious fanatic,
full of dreams and supernatural experiences. I see clearly the
writer's grounds, and their hollowness. I have a complete insight into
the causes, which through the medium of his body has acted on his
mind; and by application of received and ascertained laws I can
satisfactorily explain to my own reason all the strange incidents,
which the writer records of himself. And this I can do without
suspecting him of any intentional falsehood. As when in broad day-
light a man tracks the steps of a traveller, who had lost his way in a
fog or by a treacherous moonshine, even so, and with the same tranquil
sense of certainty, can I follow the traces of this bewildered
visionary. I understand his ignorance.

On the other hand, I have been re-perusing with the best energies of
my mind the TIMAEUS of Plato. Whatever I comprehend, impresses me with
a reverential sense of the author's genius; but there is a
considerable portion of the work, to which I can attach no consistent
meaning. In other treatises of the same philosopher, intended for the
average comprehensions of men, I have been delighted with the masterly
good sense, with the perspicuity of the language, and the aptness of
the inductions. I recollect likewise, that numerous passages in this
author, which I thoroughly comprehend, were formerly no less
unintelligible to me, than the passages now in question. It would, I
am aware, be quite fashionable to dismiss them at once as Platonic
jargon. But this I cannot do with satisfaction to my own mind, because
I have sought in vain for causes adequate to the solution of the
assumed inconsistency. I have no insight into the possibility of a man
so eminently wise, using words with such half-meanings to himself, as
must perforce pass into no meaning to his readers. When in addition to
the motives thus suggested by my own reason, I bring into distinct
remembrance the number and the series of great men, who, after long
and zealous study of these works had joined in honouring the name of
Plato with epithets, that almost transcend humanity, I feel, that a
contemptuous verdict on my part might argue want of modesty, but would
hardly be received by the judicious, as evidence of superior
penetration. Therefore, utterly baffled in all my attempts to
understand the ignorance of Plato, I conclude myself ignorant of his
understanding.

In lieu of the various requests which the anxiety of authorship
addresses to the unknown reader, I advance but this one; that he will
either pass over the following chapter altogether, or read the whole
connectedly. The fairest part of the most beautiful body will appear
deformed and monstrous, if dissevered from its place in the organic
whole. Nay, on delicate subjects, where a seemingly trifling
difference of more or less may constitute a difference in kind, even a
faithful display of the main and supporting ideas, if yet they are
separated from the forms by which they are at once clothed and
modified, may perchance present a skeleton indeed; but a skeleton to
alarm and deter. Though I might find numerous precedents, I shall not
desire the reader to strip his mind of all prejudices, nor to keep all
prior systems out of view during his examination of the present. For
in truth, such requests appear to me not much unlike the advice given
to hypochondriacal patients in Dr. Buchan's domestic medicine;
videlicet, to preserve themselves uniformly tranquil and in good
spirits. Till I had discovered the art of destroying the memory a
parte post, without injury to its future operations, and without
detriment to the judgment, I should suppress the request as premature;
and therefore, however much I may wish to be read with an unprejudiced
mind, I do not presume to state it as a necessary condition.

The extent of my daring is to suggest one criterion, by which it may
be rationally conjectured beforehand, whether or no a reader would
lose his time, and perhaps his temper, in the perusal of this, or any
other treatise constructed on similar principles. But it would be
cruelly misinterpreted, as implying the least disrespect either for
the moral or intellectual qualities of the individuals thereby
precluded. The criterion is this: if a man receives as fundamental
facts, and therefore of course indemonstrable and incapable of further
analysis, the general notions of matter, spirit, soul, body, action,
passiveness, time, space, cause and effect, consciousness, perception,
memory and habit; if he feels his mind completely at rest concerning
all these, and is satisfied, if only he can analyse all other notions
into some one or more of these supposed elements with plausible
subordination and apt arrangement: to such a mind I would as
courteously as possible convey the hint, that for him the chapter was
not written.

Vir bonus es, doctus, prudens; ast haud tibi spiro.

For these terms do in truth include all the difficulties, which the
human mind can propose for solution. Taking them therefore in mass,
and unexamined, it required only a decent apprenticeship in logic, to
draw forth their contents in all forms and colours, as the professors
of legerdemain at our village fairs pull out ribbon after ribbon from
their mouths. And not more difficult is it to reduce them back again
to their different genera. But though this analysis is highly useful
in rendering our knowledge more distinct, it does not really add to
it. It does not increase, though it gives us a greater mastery over,
the wealth which we before possessed. For forensic purposes, for all
the established professions of society, this is sufficient. But for
philosophy in its highest sense as the science of ultimate truths, and
therefore scientia scientiarum, this mere analysis of terms is
preparative only, though as a preparative discipline indispensable.

Still less dare a favourable perusal be anticipated from the
proselytes of that compendious philosophy, which talking of mind but
thinking of brick and mortar, or other images equally abstracted from
body, contrives a theory of spirit by nicknaming matter, and in a few
hours can qualify its dullest disciples to explain the omne scibile by
reducing all things to impressions, ideas, and sensations.

But it is time to tell the truth; though it requires some courage to
avow it in an age and country, in which disquisitions on all subjects,
not privileged to adopt technical terms or scientific symbols, must be
addressed to the Public. I say then, that it is neither possible nor
necessary for all men, nor for many, to be philosophers. There is a
philosophic (and inasmuch as it is actualized by an effort of freedom,
an artificial) consciousness, which lies beneath or (as it were)
behind the spontaneous consciousness natural to all reflecting beings.
As the elder Romans distinguished their northern provinces into Cis-
Alpine and Trans-Alpine, so may we divide all the objects of human
knowledge into those on this side, and those on the other side of the
spontaneous consciousness; citra et trans conscientiam communem. The
latter is exclusively the domain of pure philosophy, which is
therefore properly entitled transcendental, in order to discriminate
it at once, both from mere reflection and representation on the one
hand, and on the other from those flights of lawless speculation
which, abandoned by all distinct consciousness, because transgressing
the bounds and purposes of our intellectual faculties, are justly
condemned, as transcendent [46]. The first range of hills, that
encircles the scanty vale of human life, is the horizon for the
majority of its inhabitants. On its ridges the common sun is born and
departs. From them the stars rise, and touching them they vanish. By
the many, even this range, the natural limit and bulwark of the vale,
is but imperfectly known. Its higher ascents are too often hidden by
mists and clouds from uncultivated swamps, which few have courage or
curiosity to penetrate. To the multitude below these vapours appear,
now as the dark haunts of terrific agents, on which none may intrude
with impunity; and now all aglow, with colours not their own, they are
gazed at as the splendid palaces of happiness and power. But in all
ages there have been a few, who measuring and sounding the rivers of
the vale at the feet of their furthest inaccessible falls have
learned, that the sources must be far higher and far inward; a few,
who even in the level streams have detected elements, which neither
the vale itself nor the surrounding mountains contained or could
supply [47]. How and whence to these thoughts, these strong
probabilities, the ascertaining vision, the intuitive knowledge may
finally supervene, can be learnt only by the fact. I might oppose to
the question the words with which [48] Plotinus supposes Nature to
answer a similar difficulty. "Should any one interrogate her, how she
works, if graciously she vouchsafe to listen and speak, she will
reply, it behoves thee not to disquiet me with interrogatories, but to
understand in silence, even as I am silent, and work without words."

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