aghast at the wondrous amount of information which the critical authorities assure you is necessary for the accomplishment of a perfect orator. But you may say that, according to the proverb, the orator is made; the poet is born. Read, then, the works of any really firstrate poet, and you will acknowledge that there was never a more delusive lie than that which the proverb instils into the credulous ears of poetasters. It is the astonishing accumulation of ideas, certainly not inborn, but acquired alone through experience and study, which makes the most prominent characteristic of a first-rate poet. His knowledge of things, apart from the mere form of poetry, strikes you more than his melodies as a poet. Surely it is so with Homer, Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Scott. Certainly, it need not always with the poet be knowledge of books, but it is knowledge of man or of nature, only to be obtained by exerting organs of mind wholly distinct from those which are required to fabricate a rhythm and invent an expression. Whatever our intellectual calling, no kind of knowledge is antagonistic to it. All

varieties of knowledge blend with, harmonise, enrich the one kind of knowledge to which we attach our reputation.

Frequently we meet with a writer who achieves one remarkable book, and whatever other books he writes are comparative failures-echoes of the same thought, repetitions of the same creations. The reason of that stint of invention is obvious: the author has embodied certain ideas long meditated; and if his book be really great, all the best of those ideas are poured into it. In the interval between that book and the next, he has not paused to ponder new studies and gather from them new ideas, and the succeeding books comprise but the leavings of the old ideas.

A man of genius is inexhaustible only in proportion as he is always

renourishing his genius. Both in mind and body, where nourishment ceases vitality fails.

To sail round the world, you must put in at many harbours, if not for rest, at least for supplies.

To any young author of promise, in the commencement of his career, my advice is this, Till you have succeeded in working out your conception, persevere in that one conception; work it out. When you have succeeded — exhausting the best ideas that went to its completion-take care not to repeat the same experiment. Adventure some experiment wholly new; but before you so adventure, be sure that you have taken in wholly new ideas.

The wider your range of thought, the greater your chance and choice of original combinations.

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The writer who adopts this counsel is vulgarly called versatile." That is a misnomer. It is not that Genius is versatile because the objects within its scope are various. If you have twenty thousand a-year instead of one thousand, you are not versatile because you do a great many things which a man of a thousand a-year cannot do.

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According to the axioms in optics, we see everything by means of the rays of light which proceed from it." The eye is not versatile because it is sensible to the rays of light from more things than

one.

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Again, in optics, we see everything in the direction of that line which the rays approach the eye last." Genius is not versatile because in the sweep of its swift survey it sees each thing in the direction of the line in which the rays approach last to its view.

He who is always observant will be always various.

But in my recommendation to seek less in repose of thought (which is scarcely possible to the thoughtful) than in change of the objects of thought (which to all thinkers is possible), the safety from over-fatigue and exhaustion,

mental and bodily, I do not address only the children of Genius, who will take their own way, with small heed of what critics may say to them-I appeal to all sober mortals who, whatever their career or their calling, wish to make the most of themselves in this multiform trial of life.

But

We are not sent here to do merely some one thing, which we can scarcely suppose that we shall be required to do again, when, crossing the Styx, we find ourselves in eternity. Whether I am a painter, a sculptor, a poet, a romancewriter, an essayist, a politician, a lawyer, a merchant, a hatter, a tailor, a mechanic at factory or loom, it is certainly much for me in this life to do the one thing I profess to do as well as I can. when I have done that, and that thing alone, nothing more, where is my profit in the life to come? I do not believe that I shall be asked to paint pictures, carve statues, write odes, trade at Exchange, make hats or coats, or manufacture pins and cotton prints, when I am in the Empyrean. Whether I be the grandest genius on earth in a single thing, and that single thing earthy -or the poor peasant who, behind his plough, whistles for want of thought, I strongly suspect it will be all one when I pass to the Competitive Examination-yonder! On the other side of the grave a Raffaelle's occupation may be gone as well as a ploughman's. This world is a school for the education not of a faculty, but of a man. Just as in the body, if I resolve to be a rower, and only a rower, the chances are that I shall have, indeed, strong arms, but weak legs, and be stricken with blindness from the glare of the water; so in the mind, if I care but for one exercise, and do not consult the health of the mind altogether, I may, like George Morland, be a wonderful painter of pigs and pig-sties, but in all else, as a human being, be below contempt-an ignoramus and a drunkard!

We men are not fragments-we

are wholes; we are not types of single qualities-we are realities of mixed, various, countless combinations.

Therefore I say to each man, "As far as you can-partly for excellence in your special mental calling, principally for completion of your end in existence-strive, while improving your one talent, to enrich your whole capital as Man. It is in this way that you escape from that wretched narrow-mindedness which is the characteristic of every one who cultivates his specialty alone: Take any specialty; dine with a distinguished member of Parliament-the other guests all members of Parliament except yourself-you go away shrugging your shoulders. All the talk has been that of men who seem to think that there is nothing in life worth talking about but the party squabbles and jealousies of the House of Commons. Go and dine next day with an eminent authorall the guests authors except yourself. As the wine circulates, the talk narrows to the last publications, with, now and then, on the part of the least successful author present, a refining eulogium on some dead writer, in implied disparagement of some living rival. He wants to depreciate Dickens, and therefore he extols Fielding. If Fielding were alive and Dickens were dead, how he would extol Dickens! Go, the third day; dine with a trader-all the other guests being gentlemen on the Stock Exchange. A new specialty is before you; all the world seems circumscribed to scrip and the budget. In fine, whatever the calling, let men only cultivate that calling, and they are as narrow-minded as the Chinese when they place on the map of the world the Celestial Empire, with all its Tartaric villages in full detail, and out of that limit make dots and lines, with the superscription, "Deserts unknown, inhabited by barbarians!"

Nevertheless, you are not wise, if, dining with any such hosts, you do

not carry away from the talk you have heard something of value that you could not otherwise have gained. The circle of life is cut up into segments. All lines are equal if they are drawn from the centre and touch the circumference.

Every man of sound brain whom you meet, knows something worth knowing better than yourself. A man, on the whole, is a better preceptor than a book. But what scholar does not allow that the dullest book can suggest to him a new and a sound idea? Take a dull man and a dull book; if you have any brains of your own, the dull man is more instructive than the dull book. Take a great book, and its great author; how immeasurably above his book is the author, if you can coax him to confide his mind to you, and let himself out!

What would you not give to have an hour's frank talk with Shakespeare? You cannot think of your self so poorly as not to be sure that, at the end of the hour, you would have got something out of him which fifty years' study would not suffice to let you get out of his plays. Goldsmith was said by Garrick to "write like an angel and talk like poor Poll." But what does that prove-nothing more than this, that the player could not fathom the poet. A man who writes like an angel cannot always talk like poor Poll. That Goldsmith, in his peach-coloured coat, awed by a Johnson, bullied by a Boswell, talked very foolishly, I can well understand; but let any gentle reader of human brains and human hearts have got Goldsmith all to himself over a bottle of madeira, in Goldsmith's own lodg. ing-talked to Goldsmith lovingly and reverentially about The Traveller' and 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' and sure I am that he would have gone away with the conviction that there was something in the wellspring of so much genius more marvellous than its diamond-like spray-something in poor Oliver

Goldsmith immeasurably greater than those faint and fragmentary expressions of the man which yet survive in the exquisite poem, in the incomparable novel.

I remember being told by a personage who was both a very popular writer and a very brilliant converser, that the poet Campbell reminded him of Goldsmith-his conversation was so inferior to his fame. I could not deny it; for I had often met Campbell in general society, and his talk had disappointed me. Three days afterwards, Campbell asked me to come and sup with him tête-à-tête. I did so. I went at ten o'clock. I stayed till dawn; and all my recollections of the most sparkling talk I have ever heard in drawing-rooms, afford nothing to equal the riotous affluence of wit, of humour, of fancy, of genius, that the great lyrist poured forth in his wondrous monologue. Monologue it was; he had it all to himself.

If the whole be greater than a part, a whole man must be greater than that part of him which is found in a book.

As we vary our study in books, so we should vary our study in men. Among our friends and associates we should have some whose pursuits differ from our own. Nothing more conduces to liberality of judgment than facile intercourse with various minds. The commerce of intellect loves distant shores. The small retail dealer trades only with his neighbour; when the great merchant trades, he links the four quarters of the globe. Above all, maintain acquaintanceship with those who represent the common sense of the time in which you live. "It is a great thing," said Goethe, "to have something in common with the commonalty of men." We should know little of our age if we lived only with sages. On the other hand, we should never be above our age if we did not now and then listen to sages.

This is a busy world; never deem yourself superior to what Bacon

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calls the wisdom of business." If your pursuits take you somewhat aside from the practical affairs of life-if you are a poet, a scholar, an artist it is the more necessary that you should keep yourself wide awake when you deal with a tradesman or look into your accounts; for it is a popular notion that poets, scholars, and artists can be very easily cheated; and therefore more people try to cheat them than they do ordinary mortals. Even among the inferior races, the more a creature is likely to be preyed upon, the more wary and vigilant Nature designs it to be. Poet, before you sit down to surpass 'Paradise Lost,' be sure that you know the market price of mutton: you may not surpass 'Paradise Lost,' but you will certainly have to pay for your mutton! Politician, before you devote yourself to your country with the ambition to excel Mr Pitt, see that your servants don't cheat you; they cheated Mr Pitt, and, in cheating him, made one of those few dread humiliations of his august life which brought tears to his proud eyes, but no amendment in his weekly bills. Perhaps the only thing in which, O politician! you may resemble Mr Pitt, is, that your servants may cheat you; and if you are not Mr Pitt, no friends will come forward to humble you by paying your debts. Poet or politician, the more you labour for immortality, be the more on your guard that your mortal career do not close in the Queen's Bench! but especially if you be a professional man of letters, living on the profits of your pen, let your publisher know that you are as punctual and scrupulous in the fulfilment of engagements as if he were dealing with a formal clerk in the City. No genius can afford to dispense with loyalty and honour. Loyalty and honour necessitate the attention to business. Every man to whom you make a promise that you will do such and such work in a certain time, should rest assured that your word is as firm as the

Rock of Gibraltar. Confidence is the first principle of all business.

It is a wondrous advantage to a man, in every pursuit or avocation, to secure an adviser in a sensible woman. In woman there is at once a subtle delicacy of tact, and a plain soundness of judgment, which are rarely combined to an equal degree in man. A woman, if she be really your friend, will have a sensitive regard for your character, honour, repute. She will seldom counsel you to do a shabby thing, for a woman-friend always desires to be proud of you. At the same time, her constitutional timidity makes her more cautious than your male friend. She, therefore, seldom counsels you to do an imprudent thing. By female friendships I mean pure friendships - those in which there is no admixture of the passion of love, except in the married state. A man's best female friend is a wife of good sense and good heart, whom he loves, and who loves him. If he have that, he need not seek elsewhere. But supposing the man to be without such helpmate, female friendships he must still have, or his intellect will be without a garden, and there will be many an unheeded gap even in its strongest fence. Better and safer, of course, such friendships where disparities of years or circumstances put the idea of love out of the question. Middle life has rarely this advantage; youth and old age have. We may have female friendships with those much older, and those much younger, than ourselves. Molière's old housekeeper was a great help to his genius; and Montaigne's philosophy takes both a gentler and a loftier character of wisdom from the date in which he finds, in Marie de Gournay, an adopted daughter,

certainly beloved by me," says the Horace of essayists, "with more than paternal love, and involved in my solitude and retirement, as one of the best parts of my being." Female friendship, indeed, is to man "præsidium et dulce decus"-bulwark, sweetener, ornament of his

existence. To his mental culture it is invaluable; without it all his knowledge of books will never give him knowledge of the world.

In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern. New books revive and re-decorate old ideas; old books suggest and invigorate new ideas.

It is a great preservative to a high standard in taste and achievement, to take every year some one great book as an especial study, not only to be read, but to be conned, studied, brooded over; to go into the country with it, travel with it, be devotedly faithful to it, be without any other book for the time; compel yourself thus to read it again and again. Who can be dull enough to pass long days in the intimate, close, familiar intercourse with some transcendent mind, and not feel the benefit of it when he returns to the common world?

But whatever standard of mental excellence you thus form in your study of the Excellent, never, if you wish to be wise, let your standard make you intolerant to any other defects but your own. The surest sign of wisdom is charity; and the best charity is that which never ostentatiously parades itself as charity. For your idea of man as he ought to be, always look upward; but to judge aright man as he is, never affect to stoop. Look your fellow-man straight in the face. Learn all you possibly can; and when you have learned that all, I repeat it, you will never converse with any man of sound brain who does not know something worth knowing better than yourself.

Sir Walter Scott, in a letter to Joanna Baillie, says, "I never heard of a stranger that utterly baffled all efforts to engage him in conversation except one, whom an acquaintance of mine met in a stagecoach. * My friend, who piqued himself on his talents for conversa

tion, assailed this tortoise on all hands, but in vain; and at length descended to expostulation.

"I have talked to you, my friend, on all the ruling subjects,-literature, farming, merchandise, gaming, game-laws, horse-races, suits at law, politics, and swindling, and blasphemy, and philosophy-is there any one subject that you will favour me by opening upon?' The wight writhed his countenance into a grin. 'Sir,' said he, 'can you say anything clever about bend-leather?'

"There," says Sir Walter, "I own I should have been as much nonplussed as my acquaintance."

I venture to doubt that modest assertion. Sir Walter would have perceived that he had not there to teach, but to learn; and I am quite certain that before the end of the journey, he would have extracted from the traveller all that the traveller could have told him about bend-leather. And if Sir Walter had learned all about bend-leather -what then? What then? would have been sure to have come out in one of his books, suggested some felicity in humour, or sported into some playful novelty in character, which would have made the whole reading world merrier and wiser.

It

It is not knowledge that constitutes the difference between the man who adds to the uses and embellishments of life, and the man who leaves the world just as he found it. The difference between the two consists in the reproduction of knowledge-in the degree to which the mind appropriates, tests, experimentalises on, all the waifs of idea which are borne to it from the minds of others.

A certain nobleman, very proud of the extent and beauty of his pleasure-grounds, chancing one day to call on a small squire, whose garden might cover about half an acre, was greatly struck with the brilliant colours of his neighbour's flowers. "Ay, my Lord, the flowers are well