Thus

stitution resembling that of horses. They were centaurs; heroic intellects with brutal capacities of body. What partiality in nature! In general, a man has reason to think himself well off in the great lottery of this life if he draws the prize of a healthy stomach without a mind, or the prize of a fine intellect with a crazy stomach; but that any man should draw both is truly astonishing, and, I suppose, happens only once in a century. far (as, indeed, much further) they agreed. The points of difference were many, and not less remarkable. Two I shall allege as pertinent to the matter before me. First, I remarked that Leibnitz, however anxious to throw out his mind upon the whole encyclopædia of human research, yet did not forget to pay the price at which only any right to be thus discursive can be earned. He sacrificed to the austerer muses. Knowing that God geometrizes eternally, he rightly supposed that in the universal temple Mathesis must furnish the master-key which would open most shrines. The Englishman, on the contrary, I remarked to have been too self-indulgent, and almost a voluptuary in his studies; sparing himself all toil, and thinking, apparently, to evade the necessity of artificial power by an extraordinary exertion of his own native power. Neither as a boy nor as a man had he submitted to any regular study or discipline of thought. His choice of subjects

had lain too much amongst those dependent upon politics, or rather fleeting interests; and, when this had not happened, yet never amongst those which admitted of continuous thinking and study, and which support the spirits by perpetual influxes of pleasure, from the constant sense of success and difficulty overcome. As to the use of books, the German had been a discursive reader, the Englishman a desultory reader.

Secondly, I remarked that Leibnitz was always cheerful and obliging, most courteous and communicative to his fellow-labourers in literature or science; with a single exception (which rests, I think, as the sole stain upon his memory), just, and even generously just, to the claims of others; uncensorious, and yet patient of censure; willing to teach, and most willing to be taught. Our English contemporary was not, I think, naturally less amiable than Leibnitz; and therefore I ascribe it to his unfortunate plan of study leaving him, of necessity, too often with no subjects for intellectual exertion but such as cannot be pursued successfully, unless in a state of genial spirits that we find him continually in ill-humour, distempered and untuned with uncharitable feelings; directing too harsh and acrimonious a spirit of criticism always against the age in which he lives, sometimes even

against individuals; querulous* under criticism, almost to the extent of believing himself the object of conspiracies and organized persecution; finally (which to me is far the gloomiest part of the picture), he neither will consent to believe that any man of his own age (at least of his own country) can teach him anything,—professing all his obligations to those who are dead, or else to some rusty old German; nor, finally, will he consent to teach others, with the simpleminded magnanimity of a scholar, who should not seek to mystify and perplex his pupil, or to illuminate only with half-lights, nor put himself on his guard against his reader, or against a per

That this appears on the very face of his writings, may be inferred from a German work, published about two years ago, by a Hamburg barrister (I think)-Mr. Jacobs. The subject of the book is, the Modern Literature of England, with the lives, etc., of the most popular authors. It is made up in a great measure from English literary journals, but not always; and in the particular case of the author now alluded to, Mr. Jacobs imputes to him not merely too lively a sensitiveness to censure, but absolutely a" Wasserscheue" (hydrophobia) with regard to reviewers and critics. How Mr. Jacobs came to use so strong an expression, or this particular expression. I cannot guess; unless it were that he had happened to see (which, however, does not appear) in a work of this eloquent Englishman the following picturesque sentence: "By an unconscionable extension of the old adage, 'Noscitur a socio,' my friends are never under the waterfall of criticism, but I must be wet through with the spray." Spray, indeed! I wish some of us knew no more of these angry cataracts than their spray.

son seeking to grow as knowing as himself, On the contrary, who should rejoice to believe-if he could believe it-that all the world knew as much as himself; and should adopt as his motto (which I make it my pride to have done from my earliest days) the simple grandeur of that line in Chaucer's description of his scholar:

"That gladly would he learn and gladly teach."

Such were the two features of difference which I had occasion perpetually to remark between two great scholars, in many other features so closely resembling each other. In general these two features would be thought to exist independently; but, with my previous theory of the necessity, in all cases, that with studies of so uncertain and even morbid an effect upon the spirits as literature, should be combined some analytic exercise of inevitable healthy action, in this respect it was natural that I should connect them in my mind as cause and effect; and, in that view, they gave a double attention to Mr. Coleridge's advice where it agrees with mine, and to mine where it differs from his.

Thus far I have considered Mr. Coleridge's advice simply as it respects the student. But the object of his studies is also entitled to some consideration. If it were better for the literary body that all should pursue a profession as their ipyov

(or business), and literature as 2 παρεργον (an accessary, or mere by-business), how far is literature itself likely to benefit by such an arrangement? Mr. Coleridge insists upon it that it will; and at page 225 he alleges seven names, to which at page 233 he adds an eighth, of celebrated men, who "have shown the possibility of combining weighty performances in literature with full and independent employment," On various grounds it would be easy, I think, to cut down the list, as a list any way favourable for Mr. Coleridge's purpose, to one name, viz,, that of Lord Bacon. But, waiving his examples, let us consider his arguments. The main business, the pyov, after exhausting a man's powers during the day, is supposed to leave three hours at night for the παρεργον. Now we are to consider that our bright ideal of a literatus may chance to be married, in fact Mr. Coleridge agrees to allow him a wife. Let us suppose a wife, therefore; and the more so, because else he will perhaps take one without our permission. I ask, then, what portion of these three hours is our student to give up to the pleasure of his wife's company at ́any time, I take it for granted that he would wish to spend the evening with her. Well, if you think so (says Mr. Coleridge, in effect, who had at first supposed the learned man to "retire into his study"), in fact he need not retire. How