“He was a great economist of time. He knew the value of minutes. The disposal of his hours, both of labour and of repose, was a matter of systematic arrangement; and the arrangement was determined on the principle that it is a calamity to lose the smallest portion of time. He did not deem it sufficient to provide against the loss of a day or an hour; he took effectual means to prevent the occurrence of any such calamity to him. But he did more: he was careful to provide against the loss of even a single minute; and there is on record no example of a human being who lived more habitually under the practical consciousness that his days are numbered, and that ‘the night cometh in which no man can work.’” It should, however, be added, that Mr. Bentham’s lot in life was a happy one. Even though he did not enjoy a widely diffused reputation in his own country, and his peculiar views exposed him to the attacks of contemporary writers, his easy circumstances and excellent health enabled him to devote his whole time and energies to those pursuits which exercised his highest faculties, and were to him a rich and unfailing source of the most delightful excitement. His retired habits likewise preserved him from personal contact with any but those who valued his acquaintance; and as for the writers who spoke of him with ridicule and contempt, he never read them, and therefore they never disturbed the serenity of his mind, or ruffled the tranquil surface of his contemplative and happy life. It would be well for public writers if they possessed more of such equanimity as Mr. Bentham’s, to shield them from the venom of adverse criticism and the attacks of those dishonest critics who abuse every indication of success which they conceive to stand in the way of their own advancement. We have something of the old leaven of Grub-street in our times, though the name is blotted out from our metropolitan streetology. It is true that the patronage of great men is no longer valued by men of letters,—it is but as dust in the balance against the weight of public opinion,—but something of the old trade of factious criticism which Swift, Pope, and Warburton so mercilessly exposed, has survived even to our days. Mr. Thackeray, to our thinking one of the most masculine and unaffected writers of his day, has well described the Grub-street association of “author and rags—author and dirt—author and gin,” such as were the literary hacks of the reign of George II.; but literature now takes its rank with other learned professions. --------------------- Footnote 58: Fontenelle attributed his longevity to a good course of strawberry eating every season: his only ailment was fever in the spring; when he used to say, “If I can only hold out till strawberries come in, I shall get well.” His long life may, however, rather be attributed to his insensibility, of which he himself boasted: he was rarely known to laugh or cry. Footnote 59: