Miscellaneous Pieces, in ProseBarbauld, Mrs. (Anna Letitia)
General
Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose
Barbauld, Mrs. (Anna Letitia)
English prose literature -- 18th century
view various commodities, riches, ease, tranquillity, fame, integrity,
knowledge. Every thing is marked at a settled price. Our time, our
labour, our ingenuity, is so much ready money which we are to lay out
to the best advantage. Examine, compare, choose, reject; but stand to
your own judgment; and do not, like children, when you have purchased
one thing, repine that you do not possess another which you did not
purchase. Such is the force of well-regulated industry, that a steady
and vigorous exertion of our faculties, directed to one end, will
generally insure success. Would you, for instance, be rich? Do you
think that single point worth the sacrificing every thing else to? You
may then be rich. Thousands have become so from the lowest beginnings
by toil, and patient diligence, and attention to the minutest articles
of expence and profit. But you must give up the pleasures of leisure,
of a vacant mind, of a free unsuspicious temper. If you preserve your
integrity, it must be a coarse-spun and vulgar honesty. Those high and
lofty notions of morals which you brought with you from the schools
must be considerably lowered, and mixed with the baser alloy of a
jealous and worldly-minded prudence. You must learn to do hard, if
not unjust things; and for the nice embarrassments of a delicate and
ingenuous spirit, it is necessary for you to get rid of them as fast as
possible. You must shut your heart against the Muses, and be content
to feed your understanding with plain, houshold truths. In short, you
must not attempt to enlarge your ideas, or polish your taste, or refine
your sentiments; but must keep on in one beaten track, without turning
aside either to the right hand or to the left. “But I cannot submit to
drudgery like this--I feel a spirit above it.” ’Tis well: be above it
then; only do not repine that you are not rich.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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