Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
"'For example, you, Bobus Higgins, sausage-maker on the great
scale, who are raising such a clamour for this aristocracy of
talent, what is it that you do, in that big heart of yours,
chiefly in very fact pay reverence to? Is it to talent,
intrinsic manly worth of any kind, you unfortunate Bobus? The
manliest man that you saw going in a ragged coat, did you ever
reverence him; did you so much as know that he was a manly man
at all, till his coat grew better? Talent! I understand you to
be able to worship the fame of talent, the power, cash,
celebrity, or other success of talent; but the talent itself is
a thing you never saw with eyes. Nay, what is it in yourself
that you are proudest of, that you take most pleasure in
surveying, meditatively, in thoughtful moments? Speak now, is
it the bare Bobus, stript of his very name and shirt, and
turned loose upon society, that you admire and thank heaven
for; or Bobus, with his cash-accounts, and larders dropping
fatness, with his respectabilities, warm garnitures, and pony
chaise, admirable in some measure to certain of the flunkey
species? Your own degree of worth and talent, is it of
_infinite_ value to you; or only of finite--measurable by the
degree of currency, and conquest of praise or pudding, it has
brought you to? Bobus, you are in a vicious circle, rounder
than one of your own sausages; and will never vote for or
promote any talent, except what talent or sham-talent has
already _got_ itself voted for!'--We here cut short the
_Indicator_; all readers perceiving whither he now tends."--P.
39.
In the chapter, also, on Democracy, we have notions expressed upon
_liberty_ which would make little impression--would be very distasteful
to any audience assembled for the usual excitement of political oratory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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