that such men could do without instruction, the cases are so few, that they would in nowise affect the general question. The highest oratorical genius is of the very rarest occurrence it is as rare as the epic or dramatic, if not more so there being but two or three tolerably perfect specimens to be found in the whole cabinet of history. The great question is, how to improve to the utmost the talents of those who must be public speakers, but who yet have no pretensions to the inspiration of genius; - on whom, in truth, no one ever suspects that the mantle either of Demosthenes or of Cicero has descended. Nor should it ever be forgotten, (for it powerfully confirms the correctness of the views now insisted upon,) that though the constitution of mind which is necessary for the highest eloquence, is very seldom to be met with, there is no faculty whatever which admits of such indefinite growth and development, or in which perseverance and diligence will do so much, as that of public speaking.

456

THE VANITY AND GLORY OF
LITERATURE.

WHEN a man has once resolved upon a subject, — then, 'for a text,' says Sterne, 'Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, is as good as any in the Bible.' Without pretending to be so easily satisfied as that very accommodating divine, we shall choose, for our present text, the London Catalogue;' nor shall we be without grave precedents, both in his discourses and in those of much better theologians, if we should ultimately allow the text to play but an insignificant part in the sermon.

Our readers will readily surmise that it is not our intention to criticise this curious volume, or to trouble them with any specimens of its contents. But though we have little to say of it, it has a great deal to say to us; and, in truth, there are few productions of the press more suggestive of instructive and profitable reflection. Still, as it only conveys wisdom in broken and stammering accents, we must endeavour, according to our ability, to give clearer utterance to some of the lessons it teaches.

This closely printed book contains 542 pages; and, after all, comprises a catalogue of but a small fraction of the literature of the time; in fact, only the titles

* Edinburgh Review,' April, 1849.

The London Catalogue of Books published in Great Britain, with their Sizes, Prices, and Publishers' Names, from 1814 to 1846. London: 8vo. pp. 542.

of the new works, and new editions of old works, which have issued from the British press between the years 1814 and 1846; and not all of these. To this prodigious mass each day is adding fresh accumulations; and it is impossible not to speculate a little on the probable consequences.

Some may perhaps, at first, be inclined to predict that mankind will in time be oppressed by the excess of their intellectual wealth; and that, operating like the gold of Villa Rica, (to which it would seem that we might soon have to add that of California,) the superabundance of the precious metal may lead to the impoverishment and ruin of the countries so equivocally blest. It may be feared that a superficial and flimsy knowledge, gained by reading a very little on an infinity of subjects, without prolonged and systematic attention to any, will be the ultimate result; and such knowledge, it can hardly be disputed, will be in effect much the same as ignorance. Singular, if the very means by which we take security against a second invasion of barbarism, should, by its excess of activity, bring about a condition not very much better! A mill will not go,' such reasoners will say, 'if there be no water; but it will be as effectually stopped if there be too much.' In brief, it may seem to be one of those cases, if ever there was one, in which old Hesiod's paradoxical maxim applies that 'the half is more than the whole;' or, for that matter, a much smaller fraction.

And this dreaded result would certainly be realised, if men were to attempt to make their studies at all commensurate with the increase of books. Compelled to read something of every thing, it is certain they would know nothing of any thing. In fact, we see this tendency more or less exemplified in the case of

vast numbers, who, without definite purpose or selection of topics, spend such time as they can give to the improvement of their minds and the acquisition of knowledge, in little else than the casual perusal of fragments of all sorts of books; who live on the scraps of an infinite variety of broken meats which they have stuffed into their beggar's wallet; scraps which, after all, only just keep them from absolute starvation. There are not a few men who would have been learned, if not wise, had the paragraphs and pages they have actually read, been on welldefined subjects, and mutually connected; but who, as it is, possess nothing beyond fragments of uncertain, inaccurate, ill-remembered, unsystematised information; and at the best are entitled only to the praise of being very artificially and elaborately ignorant: they differ from the utterly uncultivated, only as a parrot who talks without understanding what it says, differs from a parrot who cannot talk at all.

But this tendency, though it must attend the unlimited increase of books, and though we see it often most unhappily realised in individual cases, is, for the most part, readily corrected. The majority of men will, as heretofore, only read what answers their purpose on the particular subjects which necessity or inclination prompts them to cultivate; while many of those who are not thus protected by circumstances, will be as effectually secured from such dangers by a sound education. That must be our safeguard against the formation of the pernicious habit of desultory reading; — and against an ambitious, but illjudged attempt at obtaining encyclopædic knowledge. This last ambition, indeed, is but a more laborious path to the same conclusion; and robs the mind at once both of that mental discipline which will always

follow the thorough investigation of a limited class of subjects, and of that really accurate knowledge which such a limited survey alone can ever securely impart. The field of knowledge does not admit of universal conquerors: according to the happy saying of Sydney Smith, -if science is their forte, omniscience is their foible.

At all events, one thing is clear: to guard against this danger will demand, as time rolls on, an increasing attention to the prime object of all education,— the formation of sound habits of mind-the discipline of the faculties, a thing of infinitely more consequence than the mere variety of the information attained. There will also be required efforts, more and more strenuous, to digest and systematise, from time to time, the ever-growing accumulations of literature; and to provide the best possible clues through this immense and bewildering labyrinth, or rather through the several parts of it: for who can thread the whole?

Nor are the best modes of pursuing study unworthy of attention. Indeed a very useful book (if we could get a Leibnitz or a Gibbon to compose it) might be written on the art of reading books' in the most profitable manner. If students had patience for it, we are convinced that a much deeper and better compacted knowledge (though the progress might be slower) would be obtained by a more thorough adherence to the maxim so warmly approved by the great historian just mentioned, 'multum legere, potius quam multa,' and by a constant habit of examining the scope and context of the authors referred to on any important points. The knowledge thus acquired, partly from the trouble it gives, partly from the many associations suggested by the collation of different writers, and the comparison of different styles and