The Intellectual Life Part 4

Goethe said that "a vast abundance of objects must lie before us ere we can think upon them." Woepke felt the need of this abundance, but he did not go out of his way to find it. The objectionable seeking after knowledge is the seeking after the knowledge which does not belong to us. In vain you urge me to go in quest of sciences for which I have no natural apt.i.tude. Would you have me act like that foolish camel in the Hebrew proverb, which in going to seek horns lost his ears?

LETTER II.

TO A FRIEND WHO STUDIED MANY THINGS.

Men cannot restrict themselves in learning--Description of a Latin scholar of two generations since--What is attempted by a cultivated contemporary--Advantages of a more restricted field--Privilege of instant admission--Many pursuits cannot be kept up simultaneously--The deterioration of knowledge through neglect--What it really is--The only available knowledge that which we habitually use--Difficulty in modern education--That it is inevitably a beginning of many things and no more--The simpler education of an ancient Greek--That of Alcibiades--How the Romans were situated as to this--The privilege of limited studies belongs to the earlier ages--They learned and we attempt to learn.

It appears to be henceforth inevitable that men should be unable to restrict themselves to one or two pursuits, and you who are in most respects a very perfect specimen of what the age naturally produces in the way of culture, have studied subjects so many and so various that a mere catalogue of them would astonish your grandfather if his shade could revisit his old home. And yet your grandfather was considered a very highly cultivated gentleman according to the ideas and requirements of his time. He was an elegant scholar, but in Latin chiefly, for he said that he never read Greek easily, and indeed he abandoned that language entirely on leaving the University. But his Latin, from daily use and practice (for he let no day slip by without reading some ancient author) and from the thoroughness and accuracy of his scholars.h.i.+p, was always as ready for service as the saddled steeds of Branksome. I think he got more culture, more of the best effects of good literature, out of that one language than some polyglots get out of a dozen. He knew no modern tongue, he had not even the common pretension to read a little French, and in his day hardly anybody studied German. He had no scientific training of any kind except mathematics, in which I have heard him say that he had never been proficient. Of the fine arts his ignorance was complete, so complete that I doubt if he could have distinguished Rigaud from Reynolds, and he had never played upon any musical instrument. The leisure which he enjoyed during a long and tranquil existence he gave entirely to Latin and English literature, but of the two he enjoyed Latin the more, not with the preference of a pedant, but because it carried him more completely out of the present, and gave him the refreshment of a more perfect change. He produced on all who knew him the impression of a cultivated gentleman, which he was.

There is only an interval of one generation between you and that good Latinist, but how wide is the difference in your intellectual regimen?

You have studied--well, here is a little list of what you have studied, and probably even this is not complete:--

Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, mathematics, chemistry, mineralogy, geology, botany, the theory of music, the practice of music on two instruments, much theory about painting, the practice of painting in oil and water-color, photography, etching on copper, etc., etc., etc.

That is to say, six literatures (including English), six sciences (counting mineralogy and geology as one), and five branches or departments of the fine arts.

Omitting English literature from our total, as that may be considered to come by nature to an Englishman, though any real proficiency in it costs the leisure of years, we have here no less than sixteen different pursuits. If you like to merge the theory of music and painting in the practice of those arts, though as a branch of study the theory is really distinct, we have still fourteen pursuits, any one of which is enough to occupy the whole of one man's time. If you gave some time daily to each of these pursuits, you could scarcely give more than half an hour, even supposing that you had no professional occupation, and that you had no favorite study, absorbing time to the detriment of the rest.

Now your grandfather, though he would be considered quite an ignorant country gentleman in these days, had in reality certain intellectual advantages over his more accomplished descendant. In the first place, he entirely escaped the sense of pressure, the feeling of not having time enough to do what he wanted to do. He acc.u.mulated his learning as quietly as a stout lady acc.u.mulates her fat, by the daily satisfaction of his appet.i.te. And at the same time that he escaped the sense of pressure, he escaped also the miserable sense of imperfection. Of course he did not know Latin like an ancient Roman, but then he never met with any ancient Romans to humiliate him by too rapid and half-intelligible conversation. He met the best Latinists of his day; and felt himself a master amongst masters. Every time he went into his study, to pa.s.s delightful hours with the n.o.ble authors that he loved, he knew that his admission into that august society would be immediate and complete. He had to wait in no antechamber of mere linguistic difficulty, but pa.s.sed at once into the atmosphere of ancient thought, and breathed its delicate perfume. In this great privilege of instant admission the man of one study has always the advantage of men more variously cultivated.

Their misfortune is to be perpetually waiting in antechambers, and losing time in them. Grammars and dictionaries are antechambers, bad drawing and bad coloring are antechambers, musical practice with imperfect intonation is an antechamber. And the worst is that even when a man, like yourself for instance, of very various culture, has at one time fairly penetrated beyond the antechamber, he is not sure of admittance a year hence, because in the mean time the door may have been closed against him. The rule of each separate hall or saloon of knowledge is that he alone is to be instantly admitted who calls there every day.

The man of various pursuits does not, in any case, keep them up simultaneously; he is led by inclination or compelled by necessity to give predominance to one or another. If you have fifteen different pursuits, ten of them, at any given time, will be lying by neglected.

The metaphor commonly used in reference to neglected pursuits is borrowed from the oxidation of metal; it is said that they become rusty.

This metaphor is too mild to be exact. Rust on metal, even on polished steel, is easily guarded against by care, and a gun or a knife does not need to be constantly used to keep it from being pitted. The gunsmith and the cutler know how to keep these things, in great quant.i.ty, without using them at all. But no one can retain knowledge without using it.

The metaphor fails still more seriously in perpetuating a false conception of the deterioration of knowledge through neglect. It is not simply a loss of polish which takes place, not a loss of mere surface-beauty, but absolute disorganization, like the disorganization of a carriage when the axle-tree is taken away. A rusty thing may still be used, but a disorganized thing cannot be used until the lost organ has been replaced. There is no equivalent, amongst ordinary material losses, to the intellectual loss that we incur by ceasing from a pursuit. But we may consider neglect as an enemy who carries away the girths from our saddles, the bits from our bridles, the oars from our boats, and one wheel from each of our carriages, leaving us indeed still nominally possessors of all these aids to locomotion, but practically in the same position as if we were entirely without them. And as an enemy counts upon the delays caused by these vexations to execute his designs whilst we are helpless, so whilst we are laboring to replace the lost parts of our knowledge the occasion slips by when we most need it. The only knowledge which is available when it is wanted is that which we habitually use. Studies which from their nature cannot be commonly used are always retained with great difficulty. The study of anatomy is perhaps the best instance of this; every one who has attempted it knows with what difficulty it is kept by the memory. Anatomists say that it has to be learned and forgotten six times before it can be counted as a possession. This is because anatomy lies so much outside of what is needed for ordinary life that very few people are ever called upon to use it except during the hours when they are actually studying it. The few who need it every day remember is as easily as a man remembers the language of the country which he inhabits. The workmen in the establishment at Saint Aubin d'ecroville, where Dr. Auzoux manufactures his wonderful anatomical models, are as familiar with anatomy as a painter is with the colors on his palette. _They_ never forget it.

_Their_ knowledge is never made practically valueless by some yawning hiatus, causing temporary incompetence and delay.

To have one favorite study and live in it with happy familiarity, and cultivate every portion of it diligently and lovingly, as a small yeoman proprietor cultivates his own land, this, as to study, at least, is the most enviable intellectual life. But there is another side to the question which has to be considered.

The first difficulty for us is in our education. Modern education is a beginning of many things, and it is little more than a beginning. "My notion of educating my boy," said a rich Englishman, "is not to make him particularly clever at anything during his minority, but to make him overcome the rudimentary difficulties of many things, so that when he selects for himself his own line of culture in the future, it cannot be altogether strange to him, whatever line he may happen to select." A modern father usually allows his son to learn many things from a feeling of timidity about making a choice, if only one thing had to be chosen.

He might so easily make a wrong choice! When the inheritance of the human race was less rich, there was no embarra.s.sment of that kind. Look at the education of an ancient Greek, at the education of one of the most celebrated Athenians, a man living in the most refined and intellectual society, himself mentally and bodily the perfect type of his splendid race, an eloquent and powerful speaker, a most capable commander both by sea and land--look at the education of the brilliant Alcibiades! When Socrates gave the list of the things that Alcibiades had learned, Alcibiades could add to it no other even nominal accomplishment, and what a meagre, short catalogue it was! "But indeed I also pretty accurately know what thou hast learned; thou wilt tell me if anything has escaped my notice. Thou hast learned then thy letters ([Greek: grammata]), to play on the cithara ([Greek: kitharizein]) and to wrestle ([Greek: palaiein]), for thou hast not cared to learn to play upon the flute. This is all that thou hast learned, unless something has escaped me." The [Greek: grammata] which Alcibiades had learned with a master meant reading and writing, for he expressly says later on, that as for speaking Greek, [Greek: h.e.l.lenizein], he learned that of no other master than the people. An English education equivalent to that of Alcibiades would therefore consist of reading and writing, wrestling and guitar-playing, the last accomplishment being limited to very simple music. Such an education was possible to an Athenian (though it is fair to add that Socrates does not seem to have thought much of it) because a man situated as Alcibiades was situated in the intellectual history of the world, had no past behind him which deserved his attention more than the present which surrounded him. Simply to speak Greek, [Greek: h.e.l.lenizein], was really then the most precious of all accomplishments, and the fact that Alcibiades came by it easily does not lessen its value. Amongst a people like the Athenians, fond of intellectual talk, conversation was one of the best and readiest means of informing the mind, and certainly the very best means of developing it. It was not a slight advantage to speak the language of Socrates, and have him for a companion.

The cleverest and most accomplished Romans were situated rather more like ourselves, or at least as we should be situated if we had not to learn Latin and Greek, and if there were no modern language worth studying except French. They went to Greece to perfect themselves in Greek, and improve their accent, just as our young gentlemen go to Paris or Touraine. Still, the burden of the past was comparatively light upon their shoulders. An Englishman who had attempted no more than they were bound to attempt might be a scholar, but he would not be considered so He might be a thorough scholar in French and English,--that is, he might possess the cream of two great literatures,--but he would be spoken of as a person of defective education. It is the fas.h.i.+on, for example, to speak of Sir Walter Scott as a half-educated man, because he did not know much Greek, yet Sir Walter had studied German with success, and with his habit of extensive reading, and his immense memory, certainly knew incomparably more about the generations which preceded him than Horace knew of those which preceded the Augustan era.

The privilege of limiting their studies, from the beginning, to one or two branches of knowledge, belonged to earlier ages, and every successive acc.u.mulation of the world's knowledge has gradually lessened it. Schoolboys in our time are expected to know more, or to have attempted to learn more, than the most brilliant intellectual leaders of former times. What English parent, in easy circ.u.mstances, would be content that his son should have the education of Alcibiades, or an education accurately corresponding to that of Horace, or to that which sufficed for Shakespeare? Yet although the burdens laid upon the memory have been steadily augmented, its powers have not increased. Our brains are not better const.i.tuted than those of our forefathers, although where they learned one thing we attempt to learn six. They learned and we attempt to learn. The only hope for us is to make a selection from the attempts of our too heavily burdened youth, and in those selected studies to emulate in after-life the thoroughness of our forefathers.

LETTER III

TO A FRIEND WHO STUDIED MANY THINGS.

An idealized portrait--The scholars of the sixteenth century--Isolated students--French students of English when isolated from Englishmen--How one of them read Tennyson--Importance of sounds--Illusions of scholars.h.i.+p--Difficulty of appreciating the sense--That Latin may still be made a spoken language--The early education of Montaigne--A contemporary instance--Dream of a Latin island--Rapid corruption of a language taught artificially.

In your answer to my letter about the multiplicity of modern studies you tell me that my portrait of your grandfather is considerably idealized, and that, notwithstanding all the respect which you owe to his memory, you have convincing proof in his ma.n.u.script annotations to Latin authors that his scholars.h.i.+p cannot have been quite so thorough as I represented it. You convey, moreover, though with perfect modesty in form, the idea that you believe your own Latin superior to your grandfather's, notwithstanding the far greater variety of your studies. Let me confess that I _did_ somewhat idealize that description of your grandfather's intellectual life. I described rather a life which might have been than a life which actually was. And even this "might have been" is problematical. It may be doubted whether any modern has ever really mastered Latin. The most that can be said is that a man situated like your grandfather, without a profession, without our present temptation to scatter effort in many pursuits, and who made Latin scholars.h.i.+p his unique intellectual purpose, would probably go nearer to a satisfactory degree of attainment than we whose time and strength have been divided into so many fragments. But the picture of a perfect modern Latinist is purely ideal, and the prevalent notion of high attainment in a dead language is not fixed enough to be a standard, whilst if it were fixed it would certainly be a very low standard. The scholars of this century do not write Latin except as a mere exercise; they do not write books in Latin, and they never speak it at all. They do not use the language actively; they only read it, which is not really using it, but only seeing how other men have used it. There is the same difference between reading a language and writing or speaking it that there is between looking at pictures intelligently and painting them. The scholars of the sixteenth century spoke Latin habitually, and wrote it with ease and fluency. "Nicholas Grouchy," says Montaigne, "who wrote a book _de Comitiis Romanorum_; William Guerente, who has written a commentary upon Aristotle; George Buchanan, that great Scotch poet; and Marc Anthony Muret, whom both France and Italy have acknowledged for the best orator of his time, my domestic tutors (at college), have all of them often told me that I had in my infancy that language so very fluent and ready that they were afraid to enter into discourse with me." This pa.s.sage is interesting for two reasons; it shows that the scholars of that age spoke Latin; but it proves at the same time that they cannot have been really masters of the language, since they were "afraid to enter into discourse" with a clever child. Fancy an Englishman who professed to be a French scholar and yet "was afraid to enter into discourse" with a French boy, for fear he should speak too quickly! The position of these scholars relatively to Latin was in fact too isolated for it to have been possible that they should reach the point of mastery. Suppose a society of Frenchmen, in some secluded little French village where no Englishman ever penetrates, and that these Frenchmen learn English from dictionaries, and set themselves to speak English with each other, without anybody to teach them the colloquial language or its p.r.o.nunciation, without ever once hearing the sound of it from English lips, what sort of English would they create amongst themselves? This is a question that I happen to be able to answer very accurately, because I have known two Frenchmen who studied English literature just as the Frenchmen of the sixteenth century studied the literature of ancient Rome. One of them, especially, had attained what would certainly in the case of a dead language be considered a very high degree of scholars.h.i.+p indeed. Most of our great authors were known to him, even down to the close critical comparison of different readings. Aided by the most powerful memory I ever knew, he had ama.s.sed such stores that the acquisitions, even of cultivated Englishmen, would in many cases have appeared inconsiderable beside them. But he could not write or speak English in a manner tolerable to an Englishman; and although he knew nearly all the words in the language, it was dictionary knowledge, and so different from an Englishman's apprehension of the same words that it was only a sort of pseudo-English that he knew, and not our living tongue. His appreciation of our authors, especially of our poets, differed so widely from English criticism and English feeling that it was evident he did not understand them as we understand them. Two things especially proved this: he frequently mistook declamatory versification of the most mediocre quality for poetry of an elevated order; whilst, on the other hand, his ear failed to perceive the music of the musical poets, as Byron and Tennyson. How _could_ he hear their music, he to whom our English sounds were all unknown? Here, for example, is the way he read "Claribel:"--

"At ev ze bittle bommess Azvart ze zeeket lon At none ze veeld be ommess Aboot ze most edston At meedneeg ze mon commess An lokez dovn alon Ere songg ze lintveet svelless Ze clirvoic-ed mavi dvelless Ze fledgling srost lispess Ze s...o...b..oos vav ootvelless Ze babblang ronnel creespess Ze ollov grot replee-ess Vere Claribel lovlee-ess."

This, as nearly as I have been able to render it in English spelling, was the way in which a French gentleman of really high culture was accustomed to read English poetry to himself. Is it surprising that he should have failed to appreciate the music of our musical verse? He did not, however, seem to be aware that there existed any obstacle to the accuracy of his decisions, but gave his opinion with a good deal of authority, which might have surprised me had I not so frequently heard Latin scholars do exactly the same thing. My French friend read "Claribel" in a ridiculous manner; but English scholars all read Latin poetry in a manner not less ridiculous. You laugh to hear "Claribel"

read with a foreign p.r.o.nunciation, and you see at once the absurdity of affecting to judge of it as poetry before the reader has learned to p.r.o.nounce the sounds; but you do not laugh to hear Latin poetry read with a foreign p.r.o.nunciation, and you do not perceive that we are all of us disqualified, by our profound ignorance of the p.r.o.nunciation of the ancient Romans, for any competent criticism of their verse. In all poetry, in all oratory, in much of the best and most artistic prose-writing also, sound has a great influence upon sense: a great deal is conveyed by it, especially in the way of feeling. If we do not thoroughly know and practise the right p.r.o.nunciation (and by the right p.r.o.nunciation I mean that which the author himself _thought in_ whilst he wrote), we miss those delicate tones and cadences which are in literature like the modulations of the voice in speech. Nor can we properly appreciate the artistic choice of beautiful names for persons and places unless we know the sounds of them quite accurately, and have already in our minds the a.s.sociations belonging to the sounds. Names which are selected with the greatest care by our English poets, and which hold their place like jewels on the finely-wrought texture of the verse, lose all their value when they are read with a vicious foreign p.r.o.nunciation. So it must be with Latin poetry when read by an Englishman, and it is probable that we are really quite insensible to the delicate art of verbal selection as it was practised by the most consummate masters of antiquity.

I know that scholars think that they hear the Roman music still; but this is one of the illusions of scholars.h.i.+p. In each country Latin scholars have adopted a conventional style of reading, and the sounds which are in conformity with that style seem to them to be musical, whilst other than the accepted sounds seem ridiculous, and grate harshly on the unaccustomed ear. The music which the Englishman hears, or imagines that he hears, in the language of ancient Rome, is certainly not the music which the Roman authors intended to note in words. It is as if my Frenchman, having read "Claribel" in his own way, had affirmed that he heard the music of the verse. If he heard music at all, it was not Tennyson's.

Permit me to add a few observations about sense. My French friend certainly understood English in a very remarkable manner for a student who had never visited our country; he knew the dictionary meaning of every word he encountered, and yet there ever remained between him and our English tongue a barrier or wall of separation, hard to define, but easy to perceive. In the true deep sense he never understood the language. He studied it, laid regular siege to it, mastered it to all appearance, yet remained, to the end, outside of it. His observations, and especially his unfavorable criticisms, proved this quite conclusively. Expressions often appeared to him faulty, in which no English reader would see anything to remark upon; it may be added that (by way of compensation) he was unable to appreciate the oddity of those intentionally quaint turns of expression which are invented by the craft of humorists. It may even be doubted whether his English was of any ascertainable use to him. He might probably have come as near to an understanding of our authors by the help of translations, and he could not converse in English, for the spoken language was entirely unintelligible to him. An acquisition of this kind seems scarcely an adequate reward for the labor that it costs. Compared with living Englishmen my French friend was nowhere, but if English had been a dead language, he would have been looked up to as a very eminent scholar, and would have occupied a professor's chair in the university.

A little more life might be given to the study of Latin by making it a spoken language. Boys might be taught to speak Latin in their schooldays with the modern Roman p.r.o.nunciation, which, though probably a deviation from the ancient, is certainly nearer to it than our own. If colloquial Latin were made a subject of special research, it is likely that a sufficiently rich phrase-book might be constructed from the plays. If this plan were pursued throughout Europe (always adopting the Roman p.r.o.nunciation) all educated men would possess a common tongue which might be enriched to suit modern requirements without any serious departure from cla.s.sical construction. The want of such a system as this was painfully felt at the council of the Vatican, where the a.s.sembled prelates discovered that their Latin was of no practical use, although the Roman Catholic clergy employ Latin more habitually than any other body of men in the world. That a modern may be taught to think in Latin, is proved by the early education of Montaigne, and I may mention a much more recent instance. My brother-in-law told me that, in the spring of 1871, a friend of his had come to stay with him accompanied by his little son, a boy seven years old. This child spoke Latin with the utmost fluency, and he spoke nothing else. What I am going to suggest is a Utopian dream, but let us suppose that a hundred fathers could be found in Europe, all of this way of thinking, all resolved to submit to some inconvenience in order that their sons might speak Latin as a living language. A small island might be rented near the coast of Italy, and in that island Latin alone might be permitted. Just as the successive governments of France maintain the establishments of Sevres and the Gobelins to keep the manufactures of porcelain and tapestry up to a recognized high standard of excellence, so this Latin island might be maintained to give more vivacity to scholars.h.i.+p. If there were but one little corner of ground on the wide earth where pure Latin was constantly spoken, our knowledge of the cla.s.sic writers would become far more sympathetically intimate. After living in the Latin island we should think in Latin as we read, and read without translating.

But this is dreaming. It is too certain that on returning from the Latin island into the atmosphere of modern colleges an evil change would come over our young Latinists like that which came upon the young Montaigne when his father sent him to the college of Guienne, "at that time the best and most flouris.h.i.+ng in France." Montaigne tells us that, notwithstanding all his father's precautions, the place "was a college still." "My Latin," he adds, "_immediately grew corrupt, and by discontinuance I have since lost all manner of use of it._" If it were the custom to speak Latin, it would be the custom to speak it badly; and a master of the language would have to conform to the evil usages around him. Our present state of ignorance has the charm of being silent, except when old-fas.h.i.+oned gentlemen in the House of Commons quote poetry which they cannot p.r.o.nounce to hearers who cannot understand it.

NOTE.--An English orator quoted from Cicero the sentence "Non intelligunt homines quam magnum vectigal sit parsimonia." He made the second vowel in _vectigal_ short, and the House laughed at him; he tried again and p.r.o.nounced it with the long sound of the English _i_, on which the critical body he addressed was perfectly satisfied. But if a Roman had been present it is probable that, of the two, the short English _i_ would have astonished his ears the less, for our short _i_ does bear some resemblance to the southern _i_ whereas our long i resembles no single letter in any alphabet of the Latin family of languages. We are scrupulously careful to avoid what we call false quant.i.ties, we are quite utterly and ignorantly unscrupulous about false sounds. One of the best instances is the well-known "veni, vidi, vici," which we p.r.o.nounce very much as if it had been written _vinai_, _vaidai_, _vaisai_, in Italian letters.

LETTER IV.

TO A STUDENT OF LITERATURE.

Studies, whatever they may be, always considered, by some a waste of time--The cla.s.sical languages--The higher mathematics--The accomplishments--Indirect uses of different studies--Influence of music--Studies indirectly useful to authors--What induced Mr. Roscoe to write the lives of Lorenzo de' Medici and Leo X.

Whatever you study, some one will consider that particular study a foolish waste of time.

If you were to abandon successively every subject of intellectual labor which had, in its turn, been condemned by some adviser as useless, the result would be simple intellectual nakedness. The cla.s.sical languages, to begin with, have long been considered useless by the majority of practical people--and pray, what to shopkeepers, doctors, attorneys, artists, can be the use of the higher mathematics? And if these studies, which have been conventionally cla.s.sed as serious studies, are considered unnecessary notwithstanding the tremendous authority of custom, how much the more are those studies exposed to a like contempt which belong to the category of accomplishments! What is the use of drawing, for it ends in a worthless sketch? Why should we study music when after wasting a thousand hours the amateur cannot satisfy the ear?

A _quoi bon_ modern languages when the accomplishment only enables us to call a waiter in French or German who is sure to answer us in English?

And what, when it is not your trade, can be the good of dissecting animals or plants?

To all questionings of this kind there is but one reply. We work for culture. We work to enlarge the intelligence, and to make it a better and more effective instrument. This is our main purpose; but it may be added that even for our special labors it is always difficult to say beforehand exactly what will turn out in the end to be most useful.

What, in appearance, can be more entirely outside the work of a landscape painter than the study of ancient history? and yet I can show you how an interest in ancient history might indirectly be of great service to a landscape painter. It would make him profoundly feel the human a.s.sociations of many localities which to an ignorant man would be devoid of interest or meaning; and this human interest in the scenes where great events have taken place, or which have been distinguished by the habitation of ill.u.s.trious men in other ages, is in fact one of the great fundamental motives of landscape painting. It has been very much questioned, especially by foreign critics, whether the interest in botany which is taken by some of the more cultivated English landscape painters is not for them a false direction and wrong employment of the mind; but a landscape painter may feel his interest in vegetation infinitely increased by the accurate knowledge of its laws, and such an increase of interest would make him work more zealously, and with less danger of weariness and _ennui_, besides being a very useful help to the memory in retaining the authentic vegetable forms. It may seem more difficult to show the possible utility of a study apparently so entirely outside of other studies as music is: and yet music has an important influence on the whole of our emotional nature, and indirectly upon expression of all kinds. He who has once learned the self-control of the musician, the use of _piano_ and _forte_, each in its right place, when to be lightly swift or majestically slow, and especially how to keep to the key once chosen till the right time has come for changing it; he who has once learned this knows the secret of the arts. No painter, writer, orator, who had the power and judgment of a thoroughly cultivated musician, could sin against the broad principles of taste.

More than all other men have authors reason to appreciate the indirect utilities of knowledge that is apparently irrelevant. Who can tell what knowledge will be of most use to _them_? Even the very greatest of authors are indebted to miscellaneous reading, often in several different languages, for the suggestion of their most original works, and for the light which has kindled many a s.h.i.+ning thought of their own.

And authors who seem to have less need than others of an outward help, poets whose compositions might appear to be chiefly inventive and emotional, novelists who are free from the restraints and the researches of the historian, work up what they know into what they write; so that if you could remove every line which is based on studies outside the strict limits of their art, you would blot out half their compositions. Take the antiquarian element out of Scott, and see how many of his works could never have been written. Remove from Goldsmith's brain the recollection of his wayward studies and strange experiences, and you would remove the rich material of the "Traveller" and the Essays, and mutilate even the immortal "Vicar of Wakefield." Without a cla.s.sical education and foreign travel, Byron would not have composed "Childe Harold;" without the most catholic interest in the literature of all the ages, and of many different peoples from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, our contemporary William Morris would never have conceived, and could not have executed, that strong work "The Earthly Paradise." It may not seem necessary to learn Italian, yet Mr. Roscoe's celebrity as an author was due in the first place to his private fondness for Italian literature. He did not learn Italian in order that he might write his biographies, but he wrote about Lorenzo and Leo because he had mastered Italian, and because the language led him to take an interest in the greatest house of Florence. The way in which authors are led by their favorite studies indirectly to the great performance of their lives has never been more clearly ill.u.s.trated than in this instance.

When William Roscoe was a young man he had for his friend Francis Holden, nephew of Mr. Richard Holden, a schoolmaster in Liverpool.

Francis Holden was a young man of uncommon culture, having at the same time really sound scholars.h.i.+p in several languages, and an ardent enthusiasm for literature. He urged Roscoe to study languages, and used especially, in their evening walks together, to repeat to him pa.s.sages from the n.o.blest poets of Italy. In this way Roscoe was led to attempt Italian, and, having once begun, went on till he had mastered it. "It was in the course of these studies," says his biographer, "that he first formed the idea of writing the Life of Lorenzo de' Medici."

LETTER V.

TO A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN WHO REGRETTED THAT HIS SON HAD THE TENDENCIES OF A DILETTANT.

Inaccuracy of the common distinction between amateur pursuits and more serious studies--All of us are amateurs in many things--Prince Albert--The Emperor Napoleon III.--Contrast between general and professional education--The price of high accomplishment.

I agree with you that amateurs.h.i.+p, as generally practised, may be a waste of time, but the common distinction between amateur pursuits and serious studies is inconsistent. A painter whose art is imperfect and who does not work for money is called an amateur; a scholar who writes imperfect Latin, not for money, escapes the imputation of amateurs.h.i.+p, and is called a learned man. Surely we have been blinded by custom in these things. Ideas of frivolity are attached to imperfect acquirement in certain directions, and ideas of gravity to equally imperfect acquirement in others. To write bad Latin poetry is not thought to be frivolous, but it is considered frivolous to compose imperfectly and unprofessionally in other fine arts.

Yet are we not all of us amateurs in those pursuits which const.i.tuted our education--amateurs at the best, if we loved them, and even inferior to amateurs if we disliked them? We have not sounder knowledge or more perfect skill in the ancient languages than Prince Albert had in music.

We know something of them, yet in comparison with perfect mastery such as that of a cultivated old Greek or Roman, our scholars.h.i.+p is at the best on a level with the musical scholars.h.i.+p of a cultivated amateur like the Prince Consort.

If the essence of dilettantism is to be contented with imperfect attainment, I fear that all educated people must be considered dilettants.

It is narrated of the Emperor Napoleon III. that in answer to some one who inquired of his Majesty whether the Prince Imperial was a musician, he replied that he discouraged dilettantism, and "did not wish his son to be a Coburg." But the Emperor himself was quite as much a dilettant as Prince Albert; though their dilettantism did not lie in the same directions. The Prince was an amateur musician and artist; the Emperor was an amateur historian, an amateur scholar, and antiquary. It may be added that Napoleon III. indulged in another and more dangerous kind of amateurs.h.i.+p. He had a taste for amateur generals.h.i.+p, and the consequences of his indulgence of this taste are known to every one.