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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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