if he understood all Aristotle, whom he was so fond of naming. He replied, But I believe; I have a learned faith, sir, And that's it makes a gentleman of my sort. Though I can speak no Greek, I love the sound on't. Hesiod, and the Greek poets, thou wouldst run mad, To me! And you do understand 'em, brother? I tell thee, no; that's not material: the sound's This is most true to nature; don't we feel it to be so in ourselves? Therefore, stranger, for the nonce, wonder not if they at the Lover's Seat are found listening sometimes to Latin and even Greek quotations, and hearing cited Aristotle and Plato; for let me tell you, the sound and the names please them, and perhaps confirm them more than if the passages had been translated into the vernacular, or less high-sounding witnesses been appealed to. The charming freshness, and as it were vernal fragrance, of these common minds, will often inspire, even in persons highly educated, when wearied with the monotonous gloom of a conventional pre-eminence, "Such comfort as do young men feel when CHAPTER XVII. ONE great advantage belonging to the view of common things, as taken from the Lover's Seat, consists, as we had occasion to remark before, in its exemption from any paradoxical and ex clusive admiration for them. While it teaches us to observe the beauty and excellence of what is constantly surrounding us in the daily phenomena of the world and human life, it does not on the other hand inspire us with a disdain for what is extraordinary, or with the remotest wish to depreciate the good that real pre-eminence of any kind may contain. The dominion over nature by scientific discoveries, and the command of ancient languages leading to a knowledge of the past, lie in the divine idea, and are ceaselessly extended by the power of that idea through the agency of all in whom it dwells. If, therefore, in the present chapter, we should seem to listen gladly to those who bear hard upon the learned and scientific classes, our intention must be understood as being directed solely to contrast with the wisdom of the common mind, the abuses and evils attending great intellectual distinction, and still more, no doubt, to corroborate the observations we have just concluded, by considering the mistakes of those who would think to disprove them by producing what has more show than reality in the pretensions of persons who, without grounds, lay claim to extraordinary mental culture. In fact, viewed largely and correctly, the existence of mental pre-eminence may itself, like the state of riches and social distinction, as we before remarked, be set down without a solecism, as constituting, in one sense, a com→ mon phenomenon; since no age, no race, no country, and perhaps no spot of inhabited earth, has ever been without it; and the recognition of this fact by the classes whose intellectual character we have just been observing, might itself have elicited our admiration, as forming one of the ordinary features of our common and least distinguished humanity; for it is the people, as we have just observed, who often are heard exclaiming, "O this learning! what a thing it is!" Ay, truly, what real learning is! for they too will make the distinction quick enough, saying, with Miramont in the Elder Brother, 66 "Tis not to be a justice of peace, as some are, And palter out your time i' the penal statutes; To hear the envious tenets controverted Between a Protestant constable and a Jesuit cobbler." No; but a general scholar, one deeply read in nature's hidden secrets, is felt by them to be entitled to their unfeigned respect; nor will they be withheld from manifesting it even by the distance which separates them from him; but they will reply to vulgar scorners of such superiority, "Because he has made his study all his pleasure, And is retired into his contemplation,- Those who admire what is common in regard to mental culture, may, however, be permitted to observe, that all who seek to distinguish themselves by attaining to the extraordinary in this sphere, do not seem to ordinary mortals to be always and necessarily much the better for it; and that the attainments themselves on which they rely for a separation from others, do not seem to them to be always and necessarily of any great value. Let us pursue these considerations in an inverted order, as the learned would say; and inquire first, briefly, whether it must always follow that the matter obtained by means of an unusual, studious, learned life, is highly beneficial. Most things are seen from the Lover's Seat in a favourable light; but there are exceptions; as we have already had proof enough, and amongst these must be reckoned some books. To please here, where there is often a troublesome little one that won't be put off with what you have in your hand, literary compositions must possess that greatest of all merits,-natural and unpretending beauty. They must resemble the book by Willis, of which Lowell says, in his fable for the critics, "No volume I know to read under a tree More truly delicious than his A l'Abri, With the shadows of leaves flowing over your book, The page that bears that is a rare one indeed." well elsewhere, As for learning, the fact is, a man may do very as well as here, with a very little of it; and, perhaps, if he should be found out, the discovery will not disparage him half as much as a display of his acquisitions would have done. "Come, now," says Charron, "take these grand, learned, and beautiful speeches, discourses, lectures, and books, that are so much admired, produced by the greatest men of the age,what does all that amount to? It is only a pile heaped up of allegations strung together, gathered from others, or stolen here and there from pages already printed, with a few changes and adjustments, and that is the whole of it." Mate, you need not blush; for you began by acknowledging that our present reading was all made up this way. "How much better is it," continues Charron, "to hear a peasant, a working-man, or a tradesman, speaking in his low manner of expression, uttering truths quite fresh and raw, without art or refinement, and giving good and useful advice, the product of a healthy, strong, and solid judgment *!" Learning," says Hazlitt, "is the knowledge of that which ́is not generally known to others, and which none but the learned know. He is the most learned man who knows the most of what is farthest removed from common life and actual observation, that is, of the least practical utility." Thus, for the texture, colour, names, and uses of the silk, half silk and linen garments of antiquity, we are referred to the profound, diffuse, and obscure researches of the great Salmasius, who was ignorant of the most common trades of Dijon or Leyden. A poet describes such men well, 66 "A wight of mickle wealth and mickle fame, And eagerly pursues imaginary joys." "Learned men," says Malebranche, "study in order to obtain a chimerical grandeur in the imagination of other men; they make of their head a kind of cabinet of curiosities, in which they heap up, tout ce qui peut paroitre rare et extraordinaire,' for the purpose of exciting admiration +." They have somewhat of the spirit of the old alchymist, who would not have the † Recherch. Pref. * De la Sagesse, i. 41. simple learn what they knew and make it vulgar; and who "clear'd to their disciples that Sisyphus was damn'd to roll the ceaseless stone only because he would have made theirs common." Erudition of this kind often reduces men to such a mental state, that they can only breathe a learned atmosphere as other men breathe common air. They have some knowledge, perhaps, that few, or no one else, possesses; for these people, who tease you to death with some idea, generally differ in their favourite notion from the rest of the world; and, indeed, it is the love of distinction which is mostly at the bottom of this peculiarity. Lorenzo Benoni says of a certain Professor, "He was exclusive in his admiration of the classics; and he would positively work himself up to the point of weeping over 'Fons Blandusiæ splendidior vitro,' while the beauties of Shakspeare and Schiller left him unmoved." There are men more Ciceronian than Cicero, more pagan than Homer or Virgil; and what do they, after all, but make themselves ridiculous? Among pedants, whose knowledge is little better than illusion, grammarians, as Erasmus playfully says, hold the first rank, than which race of men nothing can be more calamitous, or more afflicted, if it were not for the folly which blinds them to the wretchedness of their own state, not obnoxious to five curses only, névre karάpais, as the Greek epigram indicates, but to six hundred, growing old in ceaseless and unprofitable studies. "I knew," he adds, a certain πολυτεχνότατον Grecian Latinist, mathematician, and philosopher, a sexagenarian, who, neglecting all other things, spent his years in the study of grammar, thinking that he would be supremely happy if he could only live long enough to discover how the eight parts of speech should be distinguished, which no Greek or Latin scholar had hitherto done. The least mistake as to the use of adverbs or conjunctions he would regard as a 'casus belli.' Then, since there are as many grammars as grammarians, nay, more, for my Aldus more than five times gave one grammar; fearing each time lest any one should get the start of him in correcting an error, the occupation provided for such men seems endless as well as unprofitable. As for authors in general," he continues, "they who write learnedly for a few learned men only, seem to me more to be pitied than envied, considering how they torment themselves. They add, they change, |