The Intellectual Life Part 8

This being so, it becomes a necessary part of the art of intellectual living so to order our work as to s.h.i.+eld ourselves if possible, at least during a certain portion of our time, from the evil consequences of hurry. The whole secret lies in a single word--Selection.

An excellent landscape painter told me that whatever he had to do, he always took the greatest pains to arrange his work so as never to have his tranquillity disturbed by haste. His system, which is quite applicable to many other things than landscape painting, was based on the principle of selection. He always took care to determine beforehand how much time he could devote to each sketch or study, and then, from the ma.s.s of natural facts before him, selected the most valuable facts which could be recorded in the time at his disposal. But however short that time might be, he was always perfectly cool and deliberate in the employment of it. Indeed this coolness and his skill in selection helped each other mutually, for he chose wisely because he was cool, and he had time to be cool by reason of the wisdom of his selection. In his little memoranda, done in five minutes, the lines were laid just as deliberately as the tints on an elaborate picture; the difference being in choice only, not in speed.

Now if we apply this art of selection to all our labors it will give us much of that landscape painter's enviable coolness, and enable us to work more satisfactorily. Suppose that instead of painting and sketching we have to do a great deal of reading and writing: the art is to select the reading which will be most useful to our purpose, and, in writing, to select the words which will express our meaning with the greatest clearness in a little s.p.a.ce. The art of reading is to skip judiciously.

Whole libraries may be skipped in these days, when we have the results of them in our modern culture without going over the ground again. And even of the books we decide to read, there are almost always large portions which do not concern us, and which we are sure to forget the day after we have read them. The art is to skip all that does not concern us, whilst missing nothing that we really need. No external guidance can teach us this; for n.o.body but ourselves can guess what the needs of our intellect may be. But let us select with decisive firmness, independently of other people's advice, independently of the authority of custom. In every newspaper that comes to hand there is a little bit that we ought to read; the art is to find that little bit, and waste no time over the rest.

Some studies permit the exercise of selection better than others do. A language, once undertaken, permits very little selection indeed, since you must know the whole vocabulary, or nearly so, to be able to read and speak. On the other hand, the natural sciences permit the most prudent exercise of selection. For example, in botany you may study as few plants as you choose.

In writing, the art of selection consists in giving the utmost effect to expression in the fewest words; but of this art I say little, for who can contend against an inevitable trade-necessity? Almost every author of ordinary skill could, when pressed for time, find a briefer expression for his thoughts, but the real difficulty in fulfilling literary engagements does not lie in the expression of the thought, it lies in the sufficiently rapid production of a certain quant.i.ty of copy.

For this purpose I fear that selection would be of very little use--of no more use, in fact, than in any other branch of manufacture where (if a certain standard is kept up to) quant.i.ty in sale is more important than quality of material.

LETTER V.

TO A FRIEND WHO, THOUGH HE HAD NO PROFESSION, COULD NOT FIND TIME FOR HIS VARIOUS INTELLECTUAL PURSUITS.

Compensations resulting from the necessity for time--Opportunity only exists for us so far as we have time to make use of it--This _or_ that, not this _and_ that--Danger of apparently unlimited opportunities--The intellectual training of our ancestors--Montaigne the Essayist--Reliance upon the compensations.

It has always seemed to me that the great and beautiful principle of compensation is more clearly seen in the distribution and effects of time than in anything else within the scope of our experience. The good use of one opportunity very frequently compensates us for the absence of another, and it does so because opportunity is itself so dependent upon time that, although the best opportunities may apparently be presented to us, we can make no use of them unless we are able to give them the time that they require. You, who have the best possible opportunities for culture, find a certain sadness and disappointment because you cannot avail yourself of all of them; but the truth is, that opportunity only exists for us just so far as we are able to make use of it, and our power to do so is often nothing but a question of time. If our days are well employed we are sure to have done some good thing which we should have been compelled to neglect if we had been occupied about anything else. Hence every genuine worker has rich compensations which ought to console him amply for his shortcomings, and to enable him to meet comparisons without fear.

Those who aspire to the intellectual life, but have no experience of its difficulties, very frequently envy men so favorably situated as you are.

It seems to them that all the world's knowledge is accessible to you, and that you have simply to cull its fruits as we gather grapes in a vineyard. They forget the power of Time, and the restrictions which Time imposes. "This _or_ that, not this _and_ that," is the rule to which all of us have to submit, and it strangely equalizes the destinies of men.

The time given to the study of one thing is withdrawn from the study of another, and the hours of the day are limited alike for all of us. How difficult it is to reconcile the interests of our different pursuits!

Indeed it seems like a sort of polygamy to _have_ different pursuits.

It is natural to think of them as jealous wives tormenting some Mormon prophet.

There is great danger in apparently unlimited opportunities, and a splendid compensation for those who are confined by circ.u.mstances to a narrow but fruitful field. The Englishman gets more civilization out of a farm and a garden than the Red Indian out of the s.p.a.ce encircled by his horizon. Our culture gains in thoroughness what it loses in extent.

This consideration goes far to explain the fact that although our ancestors were so much less favorably situated than we are, they often got as good an intellectual training from the literature that was accessible to them, as we from our vaster stores. We live in an age of essayists, and yet what modern essayist writes better than old Montaigne? All that a thoughtful and witty writer needs for the sharpening of his intellect, Montaigne found in the ancient literature that was accessible to him, and in the life of the age he lived in. Born in our own century, he would have learned many other things, no doubt, and read many other books, but these would have absorbed the hours that he employed not less fruitfully with the authors that he loved in the little library up in the third story of his tower, as he tells us, where he could see all his books at once, set upon five rows of shelves round about him. In earlier life he bought "this sort of furniture" for "ornament and outward show," but afterwards quite abandoned that, and procured such volumes only "as supplied his own need."

To supply our own need, within the narrow limits of the few and transient hours that we can call our own, is enough for the wise everywhere, as it was for Montaigne in his tower. Let us resolve to do as much as that, not more, and then rely upon the golden compensations.

NOTE.--"Supposing that the executive and critical powers always exist in some correspondent degree in the same person, still they cannot be cultivated to the same extent. The attention required for the development of a theory is necessarily withdrawn from the design of a drawing, and the time devoted to the realization of a form is lost to the solution of a problem."--MR. RUSKIN, _in the preface to the third volume of_ "_Modern Painters_."

In the case of Mr. Ruskin, in that of Mr. Dante Rossetti, and in all cases where the literary and artistic gifts are naturally pretty evenly balanced, the preponderance of an hour a day given to one or the other cla.s.s of studies may have settled the question whether the student was to be chiefly artist or chiefly author. The enormous importance of the distribution of time is never more clearly manifested than in cases of this kind. Mr. Ruskin might certainly have attained rank as a painter, Rossetti might have been as prolific in poetry as he is excellent. What these gifted men are now is not so much a question of talent as of time. In like manner the question whether Ingres was to be known as a painter or as a violinist was settled by the employment of hours rather than by any preponderance of faculty.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] "Being astonished at the prodigious variety and at the extent of knowledge possessed by the Germans, I begged one of my friends, Saxon by birth, and one of the foremost geologists in Europe, to tell me how his countrymen managed to know so many things. Here is his answer, nearly in his own words:--'A German (except myself, who am the idlest of men) gets up early, summer and winter, at about five o'clock. He works four hours before breakfast, sometimes smoking all the time, which does not interfere with his application. His breakfast lasts half an hour, and he remains, afterwards, another half-hour talking with his wife and playing with his children. He returns to his work for six hours, dines without hurrying himself, smokes an hour after dinner, playing again with his children, and before he goes to bed he works four hours more. He begins again every day, and never goes out. This is how it comes to pa.s.s that Oersted, the greatest natural philosopher in Germany, is at the same time the greatest physician; this is how Kant the metaphysician was one of the most learned astronomers in Europe, and how Goethe, who is at present the first and most fertile author in Germany in almost all kinds of literature, is an excellent botanist, mineralogist, and natural philosopher.'"

[3] The man, then, judges me worthy of death. Be it so.

PART V.

_THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY._

LETTER I.

TO A VERY RICH STUDENT.

The author of "Vathek"--The double temptation of wealth--Rich men tempted to follow occupations in which their wealth is useful--Pressure of social duties on the rich--The d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans--The rich man's time not his own--The rich may help the general intellectual advancement by the exercise of patronage--Dr.

Carpenter--Franz Woepke.

It has always seemed to me a very remarkable and noteworthy circ.u.mstance that although Mr. Beckford, the author of "Vathek," produced in his youth a story which bears all the signs of true inventive genius, he never produced anything in after-life which posterity cares to preserve.

I read "Vathek" again quite recently, to see how far my early enthusiasm for it might have been due to that pa.s.sion for orientalism which reigned amongst us many years ago, but this fresh perusal left an impression which only genius leaves. Beckford really had invention, and an extraordinary narrative power. That such faculties, after having once revealed themselves, should contentedly have remained dormant ever afterwards, is one of the most curious facts in the history of the human mind, and it is the more curious that Beckford lived to a very advanced age.

Beckford's case appears to have been one of those in which great wealth diminishes or wholly paralyzes the highest energy of the intellect, leaving the lower energies free to exert less n.o.ble kinds of activity. A refined self-indulgence became the habit of his life, and he developed simply into a dilettant. Even his love for the fine arts did not rise above the indulgence of an elegant and cultivated taste. Although he lived at the very time most favorable to the appearance of a great critic in architecture and painting, the time of a great architectural revival and of the growth of a vigorous and independent school of contemporary art, he exercised no influence beyond that of a wealthy virtuoso. His love of the beautiful began and ended in simple personal gratification; it led to no n.o.ble labor, to no elevating severity of discipline. Englishman though he was, he filled his Oriental tower with masterpieces from Italy and Holland, only to add form and color to the luxuries of his reverie, behind his gilded lattices.

And when he raised that other tower at Fonthill, and the slaves of the lamp toiled at it by torchlight to gratify his Oriental impatience, he exercised no influence upon the confusion of his epoch more durable than that hundred yards of masonry which sank into a shapeless heap whilst as yet Azrael spared its author. He to whom Nature and Fortune had been so prodigal of their gifts, he whom Reynolds painted and Mozart instructed, who knew the poets of seven literatures, culling their jewels like flowers in seven enchanted gardens--he to whom the palaces of knowledge all opened their golden gates even in his earliest youth, to whom were also given riches and length of days, for whom a thousand craftsmen toiled in Europe and a thousand slaves beyond the sea,[4]--what has this gifted mortal left as the testimony of his power, as the trace of his fourscore years upon the earth? Only the reminiscence of a vague splendor, like the fast-fading recollection of a cloud that burned at sunset, and one small gem of intellectual creation that lives like a tiny star.

If wealth had only pleasure to offer as a temptation from intellectual labor, its influence would be easier to resist. Men of the English race are often grandly strong in resistance to every form of voluptuousness; the race is fond of comfort and convenience, but it does not sacrifice its energy to enervating self-indulgence. There is, however, another order of temptations in great wealth, to which Englishmen not only yield, but yield with a satisfied conscience, even with a sense of obedience to duty. Wealth carries pleasure in her left hand, but in her right she bears honor and power. The rich man feels that he can do so much by the mere exercise of his command over the labor of others, and so little by any unaided labor of his own, that he is always strongly tempted to become, not only physically but intellectually, a director of work rather that a workman. Even his modesty, when he is modest, tends to foster his reliance on others rather than himself. All that he tries to do is done so much better by those who make it their profession, that he is always tempted to fall back upon his paying power as his most satisfactory and effective force. There are cases in which this temptation is gloriously overcome, where men of great wealth compel every one to acknowledge that their money is nothing more than a help to their higher life, like the charger that bore Wellington at Waterloo, serving him indeed usefully, but not detracting from the honor which is his due. But in these cases the life is usually active or administrative rather than intellectual. The rich man does not generally feel tempted to enter upon careers in which his command over labor is not an evident advantage, and this because men naturally seek those fields in which _all_ their superiorities tell. Even the well known instance of Lord Rosse can scarcely be considered an exception to this rule, for although he was eminent in a science which has been followed by poor men with great distinction, his wealth was of use in the construction of his colossal telescope, which gave him a clear advantage over merely professional contemporaries.

Besides this natural desire to pursue careers in which their money may lessen the number of compet.i.tors, the rich are often diverted from purely intellectual pursuits by the social duties of their station, duties which it is impossible to avoid and difficult to keep within limits. The d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans (mother of the present Count of Paris) arranged her time with the greatest care so as to reserve a little of it for her own culture in uninterrupted solitude. By an exact system, and the exercise of the rarest firmness, she contrived to steal half an hour here and an hour there--enough no doubt, when employed as she employed them, to maintain her character as a very distinguished lady, yet still far from sufficient for the satisfactory pursuit of any great art or science. If it be difficult for the rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven, it is also difficult for him to secure that freedom from interruption which is necessary to fit him for his entrance into the Intellectual Kingdom. He can scarcely allow himself to be absorbed in any great study, when he reflects on all the powerful means of social influence which he is suffering to lie idle. He is sure to possess by inheritance, or to have acquired in obedience to custom, a complicated and expensive machinery for the pleasures and purposes of society. There is game to be shot; there are hunters to be exercised; great houses to be filled with guests. So much is expected of the rich man, both in business and in pleasure, that his time is not his own, and he could not quit his station if he would. And yet the Intellectual Life, in its fruitful perfection, requires, I do not say the complete abandonment of the world, but it a.s.suredly requires free and frequent s.p.a.ces of labor in tranquil solitude, "retreats" like those commanded by the Church of Rome, but with more of study and less of contemplation.

It would be useless to ask you to abdicate your power, and retreat into some hermitage with a library and a laboratory, without a thought of returning to your pleasant hall in Yorks.h.i.+re and your house in Mayfair.

You will not sell all and follow the Light, but there is a life which you may powerfully encourage, yet only partially share. Notwithstanding the increased facilities for earning a living which this age offers to the intellectual, the time that they are often compelled to give to the satisfaction of common material necessities is so much time withdrawn from the work which they alone can do. It is a lamentable waste of the highest and rarest kind of energy to compel minds that are capable of original investigation, of discovery, to occupy themselves in that mere vulgarization of knowledge, in popular lecturing and literature, which could be done just as efficiently by minds of a common order. It is an error of the present age to believe that the time for what is called patronage is altogether pa.s.sed away. Let me mention two instances to the contrary: one in which kindly help would have saved fifteen years of a n.o.ble life; another in which that kindly help did actually permit a man of exceptional endowment and equally exceptional industry to pursue investigations for which no other human being was so well qualified, and which were entirely incompatible with the earning of the daily bread.

Dr. Carpenter has lately told us that, finding it impossible to unite the work of a general pract.i.tioner with the scientific researches upon which his heart was set, he gave up nine-tenths of his time for twenty years to popular lecturing and writing, in order that he might exist and devote the other tenth to science. "Just as he was breaking down from the excessive strain upon mind and body which this life involved, an appointment was offered to Dr. Carpenter which gave him competence and sufficient leisure for the investigations which he has conducted to such important issues." Suppose that during those twenty years of struggle he _had_ broken down like many another only a little less robust--what then? A mind lost to his country and the world. And would it not have been happier for him and for us if some of those men (of whom there are more in England than in any other land), who are so wealthy that their gold is positively a burden and an enc.u.mbrance, like too many coats in summer, had helped Dr. Carpenter at least a few years earlier, in some form that a man of high feeling might honorably accept? The other example that I shall mention is that of Franz Woepke, the mathematician and orientalist. A modest pension, supplied by an Italian prince who was interested in the history of mathematics, gave Woepke that peace which is incompatible with poverty, and enabled him to live grandly in his narrow lodging the n.o.ble intellectual life. Was not this rightly and well done, and probably a much more effectual employment of the power of gold than if that Italian prince had added some rare ma.n.u.scripts to his own library without having time or knowledge to decipher them? I cannot but think that the rich may serve the cause of culture best by a judicious exercise of patronage--unless, indeed, they have within themselves the sense of that irresistible vocation which made Humboldt use his fortune as the servant of his high ambition. The Humboldts never are too rich; they possess their gold and are not possessed by it, and they are exempt from the duty of aiding others because they themselves have a use for all their powers.

LETTER II

TO A GENIUS CARELESS IN MONEY MATTERS.

Danger of carelessness--Inconveniences of poverty unfavorable to the Intellectual Life--Necessity advances men in industrial occupations, but disturbs and interrupts the higher intellectual life--Instances in science, literature, and art--Careers aided by wealth--Mr. Ruskin--De Saussure--Work spoiled by poverty in the doing--The central pa.s.sion of men of ability is to do their work well--The want of money the most common hindrance to excellence of work--De Senancour--Bossuet-- Sainte-Beuve--Sh.e.l.ley-- Wordsworth--Scott--Kepler--Tycho Brahe--Schiller--Goethe--Case of an eminent English philosopher, and of a French writer of school-primers--Loss of time in making experiments on public taste--_Surtout ne pas trop ecrire_--Auguste Comte--The reaction of the intellectual against money-making--Money the protector of the intellectual life.

I have been anxious for you lately, and venture to write to you about the reasons for this anxiety.

You are neither extravagant nor self-indulgent, yet it seems to me that your entire absorption in the higher intellectual pursuits has produced in you, as it frequently does, a carelessness about material interests of all kinds which is by far the most dangerous of all tempers to the pecuniary well-being of a man. Sydney Smith declared that no fortune could stand that temper long, and that we are on the high road to ruin the moment we think ourselves rich enough to be careless.

Let me observe, to begin with, that although the pursuit of wealth is not favorable to the intellectual life, the inconveniences of poverty are even less favorable to it. We are sometimes lectured on the great benefits of necessity as a stimulant to exertion, and it is implied that comfortable people would go much farther on the road to distinction if they were made uncomfortable by having to think perpetually about money.

Those who say this confound together the industry of the industrial and professional cla.s.ses, and the labors of the more purely intellectual. It is clear that when the labor a man does is of such a nature that he will be paid for it in strict proportion to the time and effort he bestows, the need of money will be a direct stimulus to the best exertion he may be capable of. In all simple industrial occupations the need of money _does_ drive a man forwards, and is often, when he feels it in early life, the very origin and foundation of his fortune. There exists, in such occupations, a perfect harmony between the present necessity and the ultimate purpose of the life. Wealth is the object of industry, and the first steps towards the possession of it are steps on the chosen path. The future captain of industry, who will employ thousands of workpeople and acc.u.mulate millions of money, is going straight to his splendid future when he gets up at five in the morning to work in another person's factory. To learn to be a builder of steam-vessels, it is necessary, even when you begin with capital, to pa.s.s through the manual trades, and you will only learn them the better if the wages are necessary to your existence. Poverty in these cases only makes an intelligent man ground himself all the better in that stern practical training which is the basis of his future career. Well, therefore, may those who have reached distinguished success in fields of practical activity extol the teachings of adversity. If it is a necessary part of your education that you should hammer rivets inside a steam-boiler, it is as well that your early habits should not be over-dainty. So it is observed that h.o.r.n.y hands, in the colonies, get gold into them sooner than white ones.

Even in the liberal professions young men get on all the better for not being too comfortably off. If you have a comfortable private income to begin with, the meagre early rewards of professional life will seem too paltry to be worth hard striving, and so you will very likely miss the more ample rewards of maturity, since the common road to success is nothing but a gradual increase. And you miss education at the same time, for practice is the best of professional educators, and many successful lawyers and artists have had scarcely any other training. The daily habit of affairs trains men for the active business of the world, and if the purpose of their lives is merely to do what they are doing or to command others to do the same things, the more closely circ.u.mstances tie them down to their work, the better.

But in the higher intellectual pursuits the necessity for immediate earning has an entirely different result. It comes, not as an educator, but as an interruption or suspension of education. All intellectual lives, however much they may differ in the variety of their purposes, have at least this purpose in common, that they are mainly devoted to self-education of one kind or another. An intellectual man who is forty years old is as much at school as an Etonian of fourteen, and if you set him to earn more money than that which comes to him without especial care about it, you interrupt his schooling, exactly as selfish parents used to do when they sent their young children to the factory and prevented them from learning to read. The idea of the intellectual life is an existence pa.s.sed almost entirely in study, yet preserving the results of its investigations. A day's writing will usually suffice to record the outcome of a month's research.

Necessity, instead of advancing your studies, stops them. Whenever her harsh voice speaks it becomes your duty to shut your books, put aside your instruments, and do something that will fetch a price in the market. The man of science has to abandon the pursuit of a discovery to go and deliver a popular lecture a hundred miles off, for which he gets five pounds and his railway fare. The student of ancient literature has to read some feeble novel, and give three days of a valuable life to write an anonymous review which will bring him two pounds ten. The artist has to leave his serious picture to manufacture "pot-boilers,"

which will teach him nothing, but only spoil his hands and vitiate the public taste. The poet suspends his poem (which is promised to a publisher for Christmas, and will be spoiled in consequence by hurry at the last) in order to write newspaper articles on subjects of which he has little knowledge and in which he takes no interest. And yet these are instances of those comparatively happy and fortunate needy who are only compelled to suspend their intellectual life, and who can cheer themselves in their enforced labor with the hope of shortly renewing it.

What of those others who are pushed out of their path forever by the buffets of unkindly fortune? Many a fine intellect has been driven into the deep quagmire, and has struggled in it vainly till death came, which but for that grim necessity might have scaled the immortal mountains.

This metaphor of the mountains has led me, by a natural a.s.sociation of ideas, to think of a writer who has added to our enjoyment of their beauty, and I think of him the more readily that his career will serve as an ill.u.s.tration--far better than any imaginary career--of the very subject which just now occupies my mind. Mr. Ruskin is not only one of the best instances, but he is positively the very best instance except the two Humboldts, of an intellectual career which has been greatly aided by material prosperity, and which would not have been possible without it. This does not in the least detract from the merit of the author of "Modern Painters," for it needed a rare force of resolution, or a powerful instinct of genius, to lead the life of a severe student under every temptation to indolence. Still it is true that Mr. Ruskin's career would have been impossible for a poor man, however gifted. A poor man would not have had access to Mr. Ruskin's materials, and one of his chief superiorities has always been an abundant wealth of material. And if we go so far as to suppose that the poor man might have found other materials perhaps equivalent to these, we know that he could not have turned them to that n.o.ble use. The poor critic would be immediately absorbed in the ocean of anonymous periodical literature; he could not find time for the incubation of great works. "Modern Painters," the result of seventeen years of study, is not simply a work of genius but of genius seconded by wealth. Close to it on my shelves stand four volumes which are the monument of another intellectual life devoted to the investigation of nature. De Saussure, whom Mr. Ruskin reverences as one of his ablest teachers, and whom all sincere students of nature regard as a model observer, pursued for many laborious years a kind of life which was not, and could not be, self-supporting in the pecuniary sense. Many other patient laborers, who have not the celebrity of these, work steadily in the same way, and are enabled to do so by the possession of independent fortune. I know one such who gives a whole summer to the examination of three or four acres of mountain-ground, the tangible result being comprised in a few memoranda, which, considered as literary material, might (in the hands of a skilled professional writer) just possibly be worth five pounds.

Not only do narrow pecuniary means often render high intellectual enterprises absolutely impossible, but they do what is frequently even more trying to the health and character, they permit you to undertake work that would be worthy of you if you might only have time and materials for the execution of it, and then spoil it in the doing. An intellectual laborer will bear anything except that. You may take away the very table he is writing upon, if you let him have a deal board for his books and papers; you may take away all his fine editions, if you leave him common copies that are legible; you may remove his very candlestick, if you leave him a bottle-neck to stick his candle in, and he will go on working cheerfully still. But the moment you do anything to spoil the quality of the work itself, you make him irritable and miserable. "You think," says Sir Arthur Helps, "to gain a good man to manage your affairs because he happens to have a small share in your undertaking. It is a great error. You want him to do something well which you are going to tell him to do. If he has been wisely chosen, and is an able man, his pecuniary interest in the matter will be mere dust in the balance, when compared with the desire which belongs to all such men to do their work well." Yes, this is the central pa.s.sion of all men of true ability, _to do their work well_; their happiness lies in that, and not in the amount of their profits, or even in their reputation. But then, on the other hand, they suffer indescribable mental misery when circ.u.mstances compel them to do their work less well than they know that, under more favorable circ.u.mstances, they would be capable of doing it. The want of money is, in the higher intellectual pursuits, the most common hindrance to thoroughness and excellence of work. De Senancour, who, in consequence of a strange concatenation of misfortunes, was all his life struggling in shallows, suffered not from the privations themselves, but from the vague feeling that they stunted his intellectual growth; and any experienced student of human nature must be aware that De Senancour was right. With larger means he would have seen more of the world, and known it better, and written of it with riper wisdom. He said that the man "who only saw in poverty the direct effect of the money-privation, and only compared, for instance, an eight-penny dinner to one that cost ten s.h.i.+llings, would have no conception of the true nature of misfortune, for not to spend money is the least of the evils of poverty." Bossuet said that he "had no attachment to riches, and still if he had only what is barely necessary, if he felt himself narrowed, he would lose more than half his talents." Sainte-Beuve said, "Only think a little what a difference there is in the starting point and in the employment of the faculties between a Duc de Luynes and a Senancour." How many of the most distinguished authors have been dependent upon private means, not simply for physical sustenance, but for the opportunities which they afforded of gaining that experience of life which was absolutely essential to the full growth of their mental faculties. Sh.e.l.ley's writings brought him no profit whatever, and without a private income he could not have produced them, for he had not a hundred buyers. Yet his _whole time_ was employed in study or in travel, which for him was study of another kind, or else in the actual labor of composition. Wordsworth tried to become a London journalist and failed. A young man called Raisley Calvert died and left him 900_l._; this saved the poet in Wordsworth, as it kept him till the publication of the "Lyrical Ballads," and afterwards other pieces of good luck happened to him, so that he could think and compose at leisure. Scott would not venture to devote himself to literature until he had first secured a comfortable income outside of it. Poor Kepler struggled with constant anxieties, and told fortunes by astrology for a livelihood, saying that astrology as the daughter of astronomy ought to keep her mother; but fancy a man of science wasting precious time over horoscopes! "I supplicate you," he writes to Moestlin, "if there is a situation vacant at Tubingen, do what you can to obtain it for me, and let me know the prices of bread and wine and other necessaries of life, for my wife is not accustomed to live on beans." He had to accept all sorts of jobs; he made almanacs, and served any one who would pay him.

His only tranquil time for study was when he lived in Styria, on his wife's income, a tranquillity that did not last for long, and never returned. How different is this from the princely ease of Tycho Brahe, who labored for science alone, with all the help that the ingenuity of his age could furnis.h.!.+ There is the same contrast, in a later generation, between Schiller and Goethe. Poor Schiller "wasting so much of his precious life in literary hack-work, translating French books for a miserable pittance;" Goethe, fortunate in his pecuniary independence as in all the other great circ.u.mstances of his life, and this at a time when the pay of authors was so miserable that they could hardly exist by the pen. Schiller got a s.h.i.+lling a page for his translations. Merck the publisher offered three pounds sterling for a drama of Goethe. "If Europe praised me," Goethe said, "what has Europe done for me? Nothing.