i 
 
 ..^^^^-^«Re»v 
 
 
 J^ 
 
 1 i ^ r 'i 
 
 PN 
 
 :o 
 
 D718a 
 
 
 
 
 
 DONNE 
 
 ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE 
 A/IEMBERS OF THE NORWICH 
 ATHENAEUM, OCTOBER THE 
 17TH. 1845 
 

 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED TO THE MEMBERS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NORWICH ATHEN^UM, 
 
 October the 17th, 1845, 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM BODHAM DONNE. 
 
 ^ublisfjctJ bj) Bequest. 
 
 NORWICH : 
 
 PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY BACON AND CO. 
 FOR THE Br.NEFIT OF THE NORWICH ATHENyElM. 
 
 PRICE (id.
 
 phi 
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 My Lord, Ladies, and Gentlemen, 
 
 We assemble this evening on a highly interesting and 
 important occasion : interesting, since it shews how 
 much, even in a short time, may be accomplished by 
 desire of improvement and harmony of purpose ; and 
 important, since its results, if they continue under the 
 guidance of right principles, extend not only over the 
 present hour, but to a future pregnant with intellectual 
 and moral good. For on this, which may be called the 
 second birth- day of the Norwich Athenaeum, you re- 
 affirm the resolution which brought you together 
 originally — to provide for yourselves the means of 
 intellectual development and innocent relaxation, and 
 thus turn to good account your larger leisure and 
 increased facilities for self-culture. Nor in tliis resolu- 
 tion have you consulted your own interests alone. Your 
 Institution contains in itself not merely the fruit but 
 the seed ; it has prospective as well as present capacities 
 of usefulness; and the gratification which yourselves 
 derive from its present prosperity may justly be 
 heightened by the reflexion that the advantages you 
 receive you may also transmit to others ; that no length 
 of transmission will impair or supersede their worth ; and 
 
 i 922SS< 
 
 <^'^ 
 
 '■'O
 
 that upon the foundations you are laying to night may 
 arise the mental and moral improvement of generations 
 to come. 
 
 Your Committee has requested me to address you 
 this evening on the subject of " Literature, as a pursuit 
 honorable and beneficial both to nations and indi- 
 viduals" — a subject which recognises and may illustrate 
 some of the purposes for which your Institution exists. 
 I will not wish their choice had fallen on some one else, 
 lest I seem either to question their judgment, or 
 indifferent to the honour thus conferred upon me. But 
 I can truly say that I wish myself more competent to 
 the task I have undertaken, and that I had the power, 
 as I have the desire, to impress on your minds and 
 memories, motives and purposes, truths and examples, 
 derived from and relating to literature, such as should 
 abide with you not to-night only, but exercise a perma- 
 nent and productive influence upon you for ever. Could 
 I truly effect what I truly wish, our respective relations 
 this evening would be alike profitable to you and 
 gratifying to myself. 
 
 Literature, however, is so comprehensive a term and 
 presents so wide a field for observation, that it wdll be 
 expedient both for my limits and your patience to select 
 some particular portion or aspect of it for consideration, 
 and even to compress within strict limits the portion so 
 selected. It is neither my wish, nor would it be con- 
 sistent with the other arrangements of your Committee 
 to detain you long, and on this evening, through the 
 liberality of your friends and fellow-members, time will 
 be at least as profitably employed in looking as in 
 listening.* 
 
 * It should he gratefully recorded and remembered, that the 
 walls and fa1)les of the Assembly Room exhibited on the evening 
 of the 17th October a valuable and instructive display of works 
 of art, lent to the meeting by its many friends and patrons. This 
 liberal loan was not the least characteristic feature of the pro- 
 ceedings.
 
 In the first place, then, I am to address you neither 
 as persons wliolly unaware of the nature, the objects, or 
 the value of literature — for the existence and rapid 
 growth of this your Institution shews that you already 
 appretiate, and would, in some measure, appropriate 
 them — nor, on the other hand, as persons to whom litera- 
 ture is, or perhaps ever can be, more than a casual relaxa- 
 tion from more urgent cares and duties. In the next place 
 I shall exclude from my remarks this evening whatever 
 relates to science, which, though sometimes employing 
 literature as an adjunct, is distinct from it in its laws, 
 its objects, and its processes. And I have a stronger 
 motive for avoiding scientific topics — the hope, and I 
 may perhaps say the assurance, that they will shortly 
 be brought before you by far abler lecturers than myself. 
 As I shall not, however, in the course of my remarks 
 recur to science, it may be well for me in this place to 
 express my conviction that both in the private and 
 classified studies of your members, science will as 
 legitimately claim attention as literature, and, in some 
 respects indeed, is even the better adapted to the cir- 
 cumstances and purposes of your association.* Neither 
 shall I treat of literature in its details — almost any 
 
 * " 11 fut re^u, le 3 Avril 171G, dans 1' Academie de Bordeaux, 
 qui ne faisoit que de naitre. Le gout pour la musique et pour las 
 ouvrages de pur agremeut avoit d' abord rassemble les merabres 
 qui la formoicnt. M. de Montesquieu crut avec raison que 
 r ardeur naissante et les talents de ses confreres pourroient 
 s' exercer avec encore plus d' avantage sur les objcts de la 
 physique. II etoit persuade que la nature, si digue d' etre 
 observee partout, trouvoit aussi partout des yeux digues de la 
 voir ; qu' au contraire les ouvrages de gout ne soufFrant point de 
 nic'diocrite, et la capitale etant en cc genre le centre des lumieres 
 et des secours, il I'toit trop difficile de rassembler loin d' elle uu 
 
 assez grand nonibre d' ecrivains distingucs Heurcuse- 
 
 ment M. le due de La Force, par un prix qu' il venoit de fonder 
 a Bordeaux, avoit seconde des vues si eclairi'es et si justes. On 
 jugea qu' une experience bien faite seroit preferable <i un discours 
 foible ou a un mauvais poeme ;,et Bordeaux eut une Academie 
 des Sciences."^ — D'Alembert Eloge de Montesquieu.
 
 6 
 
 department of which would speedily exhaust our time — 
 but, rapidly tracing its general features as an element, 
 an exponent, and an accompaniment of civilization, pass 
 on to its effects as an instrument of mental discipline and 
 as a source of intellectual pleasure to the individual. 
 Thus isolated from extraneous or correlative matter, and 
 so generalised as to exhibit the nature rather than the 
 extent of the subject, I may perhaps include in the 
 legitimate compass of an address the " influence of 
 literature of nations and individuals," without obscurity 
 on my part, and, I trust also, without weariness on 
 yours. 
 
 It is immaterial for our present purpose, to inquire 
 what degree of civilization the existence of literature in 
 a nation pre-supposes. Man's physical wants and social 
 relations must to a certain extent be provided for, before 
 he has leisure or inclination for the productions of the 
 mind. It is enough to know that a literature like that 
 of Athens in the age of Pericles, of Rome in that of 
 Augustus, of Italy after the revival of classical learning, 
 and of England in the reigns of Elizabeth and the 
 former Stuarts, implies the existence of freedom and 
 activity in the era which produces it. The history of 
 literature, indeed, is that of the progressive education 
 of the human mind. The master-intellects of successive 
 ages are its tutors, and since they instruct all times, and 
 are often but dimly apprehended in their own — its 
 prophets also : and their works are the inexhaustible 
 fountains and treasuries of imaginative and philosophic 
 wisdom. And, as in our planetary system, the larger 
 luminaries are begirt with satellites and secondary orbs, 
 so the master-intellects of an age are mostly attended by 
 followers and systems who imbibe and reflect their 
 central brightness, and compose in various degrees of 
 afflnity and resemblance, the literature of particular 
 eras and nations. The highest forms of literature are 
 also contemporary or nearly coincident with the most
 
 remarkable eras of history. The vigour which some 
 minds embody in action, others develope in thought. 
 The heroes of the present are accompanied by the heroes 
 of the future : their reahns are different : their mutual 
 co-presence is often unmarked at the time : but they 
 are equally children of one age. Thus the Athenian 
 drama and history sprang up from the impulse given to 
 the mind of Greece by the result of the Persian war : 
 her philosophy was cradled in the agitation of the 
 Peloponnesian war ; and her orators were nurtured and 
 nerved by the struggle with the Macedonian. The 
 revival of classical literature was immediately succeeded 
 by a second summer of Italian intellect. The discovery 
 of America and the opening of a new track to the East, 
 were presently productive of intellectual enterprize and 
 energy in Spain and Portugal, and the ashes of 
 Columbus and Cortez were scarcely cold in their urns, 
 when Cervantes, Calderon, and Camoens, conferred 
 different but equal renown upon their respective coun- 
 tries. And in the 16th and 17th centuries, there arose 
 in England, out of a combined effort for civil and 
 religious expansion, three successive generations of 
 scholars, divines, poets, and philosophers, whose names 
 are still our intellectual watch-words, whose works, 
 notwithstanding the strides which physical science has 
 since made, are still the depositaries of our loftiest 
 thought, and whose genius is the authentic measure of 
 the moral and mental grandeur of the age which gave 
 them birth. Literature, again, rescues mankind from 
 recurring childhood at certain intervals of time. When 
 the Northern nations swept over the surface of the 
 Roman empire, they trampled underfoot the whole 
 body of ancient civilization. The long wars and 
 frequent revolutions of the dark and middle ages — I use 
 these terms in their received sense, although they 
 involve grave errors — completed the work of destmction. 
 The arts of painting, sculpture, music, and architecture,
 
 8 
 
 had to commence again from their rudiments — the very 
 tradition of some sciences was lost, the process of others 
 was only partially preserved, or clumsily copied. But 
 as soon as manuscripts were brought out of their hiding- 
 places, and printing was employed in their conservation 
 and transmission, the poets, philosophers, and historians 
 of Greece and Rome conveyed instruction and delight 
 as effectually to their restorers, as they had conveyed 
 them centuries earlier to their contemporaries. Men 
 were not compelled to invent new forms of logic or 
 rhetoric, of eloquence or narrative ; the models were 
 before them, ready to embody the new ideas which 
 Christianity evolved ; the human mind was not driven 
 back again in literature to the simplicity of the savage, but 
 started on a new career of intellectual life, from an ad- 
 vanced stage of civilization. Nor let us overlook the 
 fact — for most instructive it is — that this posthumous and 
 protracted existence, was the privilege of two nations only, 
 both of which, the Hellenic and the Roman, possessed an 
 undying literature and language — and of no others. 
 Yet how small a portion did these form of the entire 
 system of ancient civilization, and nevertheless but for 
 these the records of that civilization had been obliterated 
 and consigned to perpetual dumbness. The monuments 
 of Egypt indeed attest that a great people once inhabited 
 the valley of the Nile. But of the tongue they spoke, 
 of the ideas they embodied, of the arts and polity they 
 possessed, our only knowledge is derived from the accounts 
 of strangers or enemies. In our own days the discovery 
 of the Xanthian marbles has thrown new light on the 
 civilization of the lesser Asia, but our only articulate 
 guide to their meaning is the poetry of the kindred and 
 contemporary Greeks of Europe. The quays and dock- 
 yards of Carthage were once as instinct with life and 
 speculation as those of Liverpool at this day : the Punic 
 colonies and factories extended along the shores of Spain 
 and Gaul, and from the Cape de Verd islands to Corn-
 
 wall. They were the rivals of the Etruscans and Greeks 
 in the Mediterranean, and their gallies were the first to 
 break the silence of the British and Baltic seas. But of 
 the speech, the constitution, the commercial code and 
 statistics, and the social state of Carthage we know 
 nothing beyond what their unrelenting foes of Greece 
 and Home have told us. " Oblivion," said once a dis- 
 tinguished inhabitant of this city,* blindly scattereth 
 her poppy," and its only potent enemy and antidote is 
 literature. 
 
 Even this necessarily brief and imperfect sketch of 
 the nature, the properties and the privileges of literature 
 admits of some distinct and weighty inferences. For, 
 inasmuch as literature in its highest forms is generally 
 coincident with the noblest periods of national life, it 
 follows that, in the first place — 
 
 It is a measure and standard of national character — 
 noble, worthy, and enduring according to the nobility, 
 worth, and permanence of that which it represents — 
 and, being such, it follows also that the study of litera- 
 ture is an ennobling pursuit, not merely because its 
 beauty animates or its wisdom informs the intellect of 
 the student, but likewise because it exhibits the 
 phenomena and illustrates the causes and conditions of 
 high and exemplary states of civilization. ! 
 
 And, secondly, literature is the only sure depositary 
 of national renown ; it is the arch which spans the 
 silence of centuries and rescues from the oblivious and 
 unsparing flood of time, the deeds, the thoughts, and 
 accumulated wisdom of departed lieroes and sages. 
 
 These probably will not be accounted by any of you 
 " motives weak" or grounds insufficient for regarding 
 literature as one of the chiefest elements of civilization, 
 and the study of it as an employment recompensing and 
 dignifying to every one who undertakes it. And I 
 
 * Sir Thomas Brownie Urne Buriall, chap, v.
 
 10 
 
 should now, perhaps, in strict consonance with the 
 subject in hand, proceed to make a few remarks upon 
 the effects of litcratui'e upon the individual mind 
 under its several relations to man as the depositary of 
 ideas, as the adjunct and record of civilization, and 
 as the most enduring picture of the passions, pursuits, 
 and manners of various ages ; or, in other words, I 
 should dwell on the importance of literature to every 
 one who aspires to the name and privileges of an 
 educated man. But I think that by following rather a 
 parallel than a direct course, and by viewing the possible 
 and immediate relations of literature to yourselves, as 
 members of a society existing for the purposes of self- 
 cultivation and mutual improvement, I shall most 
 satisfactorily answer the intentions of your Committee. 
 
 I am, in the first place, most anxious to impress 
 upon you that habits of mind are of much greater 
 importance than any amount of acquired knowledge, 
 that they are, in fact, the condition of attaining, organ- 
 izing, and applying it successfully. Well is it said by 
 one of our loftiest teachers, himself one of the most 
 illustrious exemplars of a " right institution" — 
 
 " who reads 
 
 Incessantly, and to his reading brings not 
 A spirit and judgment equal or superior, 
 Uncertain and unsettled still remains 
 Deep verst in books and shallow in himself." * 
 
 Learning, indeed, must in every age and under any 
 circumstances be the privilege of the few who have 
 leisure to make it their business, or who take it for their 
 profession. But every one who has occasional intervals 
 of leisure, has it in his power by the eradication of bad 
 habits and the cultivation of good, to improve his in- 
 tellectual faculties by well chosen books and studies. 
 " There is no stand or impediment in the wit," says 
 Lord Bacon in his essay on studies," but may be 
 
 * Milton Paradise Regained, B. iv, vv. 322-326.
 
 11 
 
 wrought out by fit studies : every defect of the mind 
 may have a special receipt." If on this head, therefore, 
 I enlarge this evening, the importance of the subject 
 must be my apology. 
 
 It is one of the many advantages which this and 
 similar institutions afford to their members that they 
 make them better acquainted not only with books but 
 with one another. They combine social with solitary 
 study. They elicit by contact the light diffused in 
 many minds. They accumulate in a common fund the 
 intellectual capital of many possessors. The indirect 
 benefits of classes for study are indeed little less im- 
 portant than the direct. Community of pursuit has a 
 tendency to instil sentiments of mutual respect ; for as 
 the deficiencies of one mind may be supplied from the 
 resources of another, and as the scattered rays of separate 
 knowledge converge into a common focus, each student 
 comes to regard his fellow as one whom he may some- 
 times assist and of whom he may often ask assistance. 
 A healthy emulation is thus created ; every one is 
 encouraged to add something to the common fund of 
 knowledge, and since his contribution will be sifted and 
 weighed by his class-mates, he learns to be accurate in 
 facts, cautious in assertion, patient in investigation, and 
 tolerant of difference in opinion. And thus while the 
 student's mind, unconsciously perhaps, is submitting 
 itself to a scientific discipline, his moral nature may 
 improve equally ; and with knowledge he makes also 
 the more precious acquisition of a teachable spirit and a 
 diffidence of himself not only quite consistent with, but 
 ultimately productive of self-respect. Nor should the 
 benefits of a corporate feeling in such institutions be 
 overlooked. The character of the society is made up 
 of the individual characters of its members : the public 
 position and credit of the body re-act in turn upon its 
 constituent parts ; and thus a feeling of honour, and 
 moral dignity, and even external courtesy becomes no 
 
 B
 
 12 
 
 less than study and relaxation, a result of such institu- 
 tions, and furnishes additional motives for establishing 
 and supporting them. 
 
 Mental inferiority is not seldom a result of bad 
 intellectual habits or misdirection of our faculties. We 
 compare ourselves w^ith others whose memories seem 
 more retentive, or whose understandings are more active 
 than our own. The comparison is discouraging : but 
 should we therefore fancy our defects incurable, and 
 indolently acquiesce in our supposed disadvantages? 
 First let us ask ourselves whether we are in a condition 
 to judge fairly of the respective differences of our own 
 and others' powers. Have we ever really made experi- 
 ment of ourselves ? Have we ever heartily and honestly 
 attempted to discipline our understandings, to inform 
 our memories, or applied to our case any sound in- 
 tellectual diet and exercise ? If we have not, our 
 comparison is obviously one-sided — we see what others 
 have done, but we have never tried what we can do 
 ourselves. We are complaining of lameness before we 
 have attempted to walk. Our ignorance and indolence 
 are in fact drawing the conclusion, and they necessarily 
 draw a false one, because they are seeking to excuse 
 themselves. Nor is there any way of getting a true and 
 trustworthy answer to this momentous question — mo- 
 mentous, since it involves the deep responsibility of 
 neglecting talents lent us — but experiment — earnest, 
 patient, vigilant experiment. And the process of 
 experiment has this twofold advantage that, in the 
 majority of cases, it will not merely cure, but remove 
 the cause of defect, and thus afford the most satisfactory 
 of all solutions — a practical annihilation of the doubt. 
 And this is an effort in the power of every one of 
 us ; it demands no extraordinary powers of mind, no 
 unusual combination of circumstances ; it is extra 
 joriunam, beyond the reach of luck or chance. It 
 requires us to feel intellectually, as we feel morally, that
 
 13 
 
 we are responsible beings. It calls upon us to sacrifice 
 what we can so well spare — our idleness and listlessness ; 
 to awaken what is dormant, to discover what is hidden, 
 and to employ what has hitherto been inactive in our 
 minds. What should we think of a man who, in order 
 that he might avoid the duties of his station in life, 
 voluntarily shut himself up in prison or a madliouse ? 
 Bad intellectual habits are the prison of the mind, and 
 yielding to sloth or sense, the rightful empire of the 
 intellect, is an insane coercion of our moral being. But 
 I believe and will augur better things of all whom I am 
 now addressing. The existence and prosperity of your 
 institution proves you to be zealous for mental improve- 
 ment, impatient of idleness, and eager to avail yourselves 
 of your enlarged leisure and better opportunities for 
 study. The next thing therefore to consider is by what 
 means that leisure and those circumstances may generally 
 be turned to the best advantage. 
 
 " If to do," says our great poet, " were as easy as to 
 know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, 
 and poor men's cottages princes' palaces."* This is an 
 objection that meets every one who offers advice, audits 
 force is not at all lost upon myself on this occasion. On 
 this head therefore I will not only endeavour to be brief, 
 but I will exemplify rather than presume to instruct. 
 It would be useless, and indeed absurd in me, to 
 recommend to you with your imperfect leisure and oppor- 
 tunities a course of study in any department of literature 
 at all amounting to a regular plan of scholastic reading. 
 My aim will rather be to show that your very dis- 
 advantages are capable of being improved, and that 
 even broken leisure and occasional application may be 
 so managed as to yield valuable and permanent fruits of 
 knowledge. An hour or two of daily industry, under 
 the guidance of method, will in the course of a year 
 accomplish more than an idle and desultory person can 
 * Merchant of Venice, A. i. so. 2.
 
 imagine. The tortoise, we all know, won tlie race by 
 continuous efforts ; the hare lost it by thinking he had 
 plenty of time before him. The mind is in fact more 
 wearied by vacuity and restlessness than by steadiness 
 of pursuit : the change it requires is not to pass from 
 labour to idleness, but to employments that exercise 
 different faculties.* Paucity of books and interrupted 
 leisure are less evils than abundance of both with a 
 listless and irregular mode of using them. Burke, who 
 was as remarkable for the accuracy as for the extent of 
 his knowledge, said that he always read a book as if he 
 were never to see it again ; nor could he have devised a 
 better way of acquiring or retaining information. Dr. 
 Johnson, much of whose life was spent in providing for 
 the wants of the day by the labour of the day, has told 
 us that in his youth, being nearly unable to buy books, he 
 read such as he could procure so attentively, that he lite- 
 rally committed all their important matter to memory, and 
 thus, though often bookless, was never without a library. 
 Even in lighter literature, of which your library na- 
 turally contains a considerable portion, a book must be 
 very worthless indeed, and such as should not find room 
 on your shelves — if it convey no instruction worth 
 retaining — and if it does convey something useful and 
 memorable, you thereby acquire a fragment of thought 
 or fact which will attract and combine with other 
 fragments similarly acquired, until they form an organic 
 
 * " The most profitable husbandry, that which best works the 
 land without exhausting it, is by a change of crops. Longhi, 
 the great engraver of Raphael's * Marriage of the Virgin,' made it 
 a rule always to have two prints in hand, and said that turning 
 from one to the other was the only relaxation he needed. And it 
 was a maxim of the Chancellor D'Aguesseaux, "le changementde 
 1' etude est toujours un delassement pour moi." For relaxation 
 means loosening, not untying ; and when you have loosened your 
 faculties, you may soon tighten them again : but if you let them 
 lie on the ground they get entangled and knotted until it is 
 often no easy task to bring them into order." — Guesses at 
 Truth, ii. p. 17.
 
 15 
 
 whole or series, and may take their place somewhere in 
 the many-linked chain of knowledge. But our periodi- 
 cal literature is far from consisting exclusively of light 
 reading. The student of history, of statistics, of science 
 and of art will find in periodical works elaborate treatises 
 on all these subjects, which require and will repay serious 
 application, and make him no mean proficient in his 
 particular pursuit. Even therefore if your library were 
 at present restricted to periodical literature, it would 
 neither debar you from valuable acquisitions nor compel 
 you to read without purpose or method. To those 
 indeed who study with method and with an aim 
 
 " Nothing comes amiss ; 
 
 A good digestion turneth all to health."* 
 
 Next in importance to method and pm-pose in read- 
 ing is the recognition of the infinite capacity and divisi- 
 bility of time. Who ever watched the movements of a 
 clock, without being surprised at the length of live 
 minutes ? The hoarder of moments is the owner of 
 hours ; and our estate in time is large or small accord- 
 ingly as we husband and turn to use its fractional and 
 integral portions. The biographer of Kirk White men- 
 tions as an instance of the manner in which he turned 
 every moment to account — in his own phrase " coined 
 time" — that he committed to memory during his walks 
 a whole tragedy of Euripides. The late Sir David 
 Wilkie was so jealous of his moments, that he would 
 abruptly break away even from conversations upon his 
 own art, that he might not defraud his easel of his 
 casual leisure. Gibbon has recorded the delight with 
 which, in the disorder and hurry of military-quarters, 
 he devoted part of his day to Cicero : and it is one of 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds' maxims, that the pupil who 
 looked forward to a holiday in the Academy as an idle 
 
 * George Herbert.
 
 16 
 
 day, would never make an artist. The history of 
 Literature indeed abounds in examples of learning — 
 solid, arduous, and extensive learning — acquired not 
 only in broken leisure, but amid employments and dis- 
 tractions the most unfavourable to steady progress. 
 Erasmus, when a young man, too poor to afford himself 
 a lamp, read, when the nights permitted him, by moon- 
 light ; and in a letter written at a later period of his life, 
 he says, " I will first buy myself Greek books, then a 
 cloak." Johnson compiled his Dictionary — " his long 
 and painful voyage round the world of the English lan- 
 guage" — as he himself affectingly and instructively 
 records, " not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or 
 under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst in- 
 convenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow, 
 and without the patronage of the Great." Nor is the 
 present time without its examples. A blacksmith in 
 the county of Durham, whose whole education was 
 being able to read and write, taught himself, while 
 labouring at his forge, three ancient languages — Greek, 
 Latin, and Hebrew — and two modern, French and 
 Italian ; and acquired besides considerable acquaintance 
 with geometry and algebra. His method was to read 
 his daily lesson in language or mathematics from a book 
 or paper fastened to the front of his forge-chimney ; 
 and in the evening to connect these fragmentary studies 
 with what he had learned previously. Nor did he 
 meanwhile neglect his business, but maintained his wife 
 and family in honest independence.* And he would 
 probably have gone on making horse-shoes to this day, 
 had not his extraordinary studies reached the ears of 
 the present Bishop of Durham. Through his kind 
 
 * Hans Sachs, the cobbler of Nuremberg, published five folio 
 volumes of verses with double columns, and nearly as many more 
 exist in manuscript ; yet the indefatigable bard takes care to 
 inform his readers that " he never made a shoe the less, but had 
 virtuously reared a large family by the labour of his hands."
 
 17 
 
 exertions the learned blacksmith was enabled to quit 
 his anvil, and he is now a hai'dworking parish-priest in 
 his patron's diocese. Who would have predicted that 
 an itinerant teacher of music in the provinces, of foreign 
 birth, and so without help of connexions in this coun- 
 try, and entirely dependent on his pupils for support, 
 would become the most eminent astronomer of his age, 
 whose name is written not only in the annals of science, 
 but on the "unwrinkled azure" of the heavens itself. 
 Such was the late Sir William Herschel, the discoverer 
 of another member of our solar system, the planet 
 Uranus. Accident led Sir William Herschel to study 
 matliematics. He met with a problem in the science of 
 Harmonics, which required mathematical knowledge to 
 solve it. From boyhood, however, he had assiduously 
 devoted all his spare time to study, and, besides ac- 
 quiring the language of his adopted country, he had 
 taught himself, in the intervals of a busy and restless 
 life, Latin and Itahan, and, at least, the rudiments of 
 Greek. I might easily exhaust your patience with 
 examples of time 
 
 " rescued and redeemed 
 
 From the bare desert and the waste of life," 
 
 and by energy, self-denial, method, and distinct purpose, 
 converted into golden uses and hundred-fold profit.* 
 But I will rather ask why should it be impossible, nay, 
 why should there not be much hope and likelihood that 
 this Institution already contains spirits of this mould, 
 who will turn the obstacles in their path into the 
 stepping-stones of their progress, who \nll be nerved by 
 
 * " If facts are required to prove the possibility of combining 
 weiglity performances in literature with lull and independent 
 employment, the works of Cicero and Xenophon among the 
 ancients ; of Sir Thomas More, Bacon, Baxter, or to refer at 
 once to later and contemporary instances, Sir William Jones, 
 Darwin, and Roscoe are at once decisive of the question." — 
 Coleridge, Biocjrapliia Literaria i. p. 225.
 
 18 
 
 difficulty, and trample on disadvantage.* Nor let it be 
 objected — "our day's occupation, when we come hither, 
 is over; we seek relaxation, not fresh toils." Those 
 who avail themselves of this plea, will not reap the full 
 benefit of this Institution. And though I am aware 
 that it is unreasonable to expect the majority, or even a 
 large minority of its members to be earnest students, as 
 well as that innocent relaxation is among our most 
 legitimate objects, still it is desirable for the Society 
 generally, and for the individuals themselves, that the 
 number of persons reaping its full benefits be as large as 
 possible. Upon all such — and as I cannot divine how- 
 many such there may be, I include all whom I am now 
 addressing— upon all such therefore I would earnestly 
 impress the value of the opportunities within their reach. 
 By the earlier suspension of business, a certain portion 
 of leisure is now secured to you — a point of union is 
 provided in the premises now your own — you have at 
 least the nidiments of a library — ^j^ou have classes and 
 instructors ; and the presence of so many distinguished, 
 so many enlightened, so many aiding and contributing 
 friends of your Institution in this room, shews too that 
 you have the encouragement of hearty sympathy and 
 
 *"I first learned to read," says Stone, the self-educated 
 mathematician, when relating the history of his acquirements to 
 the Duke of Argyle — " the masons were then at work upon your 
 house. I approached them one day, and observed that the 
 architect used a rule and compasses, and that he made calcula- 
 tions. I inquired what might be the use and meaning of these 
 things, and I was informed that there was a science called 
 arithmetic. I purchased a book of arithmetic, and I learned it. 
 I was told that there was another science called geometry : I 
 bought the necessary books : and I learned geometry. By 
 reading, I found there were good books in these two sciences in 
 Latin ; I bought a dictionary and learned Latin. I understood, 
 also, that there were good books of the same kind in French ; 
 I bought a dictionary and I learned French. And this, my 
 Lord, is what I have done ; it seems to me that we may learn 
 everything when we know the twenty-four letters of the alphabet."
 
 19 
 
 cordial co-operation. If from the forge, tlie loom, the 
 sheep-fold, and the counter, have risen up, unaided and 
 uncheered, some who, like Simpson and Ferguson, have 
 smoothed the paths, or like Kepler, have enlarged the 
 boundaries of science, or like Alexander Murray, with 
 only the commonest rudiments of education, have in a 
 short life exhausted libraries ; it is surely no vain wish, 
 no idle hope, that some of you also, possessing advantages 
 to which they were strangers, may emulate, not indeed 
 their genius, for that is a gift and privilege from the 
 Supreme Mind — but their energy, resolution, and in- 
 dustry, and, more than all, their unwearied strife with 
 the treacherous suggestions of sloth and the active 
 allurements of sense. So doing, though it is very 
 possible you may none of you attain distinction, it is 
 certain you will win for yourselves an exceeding re- 
 compense in the growth, the health, and the mastery of 
 the mind, and equally certain that you will accomplish 
 and illustrate the objects of your institution, and add to 
 the many extant another proof that no circumstances are 
 so adverse, no leisure so scanty, no life so pre-occupied 
 as utterly to preclude the culture and improvement of 
 the intellectual powers.* 
 
 The examples I have cited of intellectual energy are 
 indeed those of men who wrote and taught as well as 
 read and learnt. But the argument is equally cogent, 
 even if deprived of this accidental result. It is not 
 
 * " It may contirm and supply the text to add the following 
 words of Lord Chatham. " You have the true clue to guide 
 you in the maxim, that the use of learning is to render a man 
 more wise and virtuous, not merely to make him more learned. 
 Made tud virtute : go on by this golden rule, and you cannot 
 fail to become everything your heart prompts you to wish to be. 
 With application and diligence, tliere is nothing you may not 
 conquer. Be assured, whatever you take from pleasure, amuse- 
 ments, or indolence, for these first few years of your life, will 
 repay you a hundred-fold in the pleasures, honours, and 
 advantages of all the remainder of your days."
 
 20 
 
 desirable, were it possible, that even scholars by pro- 
 fession should generally look to authorship as a 
 necessary end of their studies ; much less therefore the 
 casual and interrupted reader. To most men the 
 education of the individual mind is surely a sufficient 
 motive for exertion. High, indeed, is the office of 
 teacher, and every writer assumes that he is able to 
 teach something — but how few in any age rightfully 
 arrogate, how many rashly invade the office, and by 
 their ill-considered and hardy venture, miss not only 
 the mark at which they unwisely aim, but the good also 
 which they might legitimately and securely win. That 
 good in diffisrent degrees is within reach of you all. 
 You can all be learners ; and so wide and various 
 is the world of literature that you may be learners all 
 your lives without exhausting any one province of it, 
 but not without acquiring intellectual wealth, and, still 
 better, intellectual habits of which at the beginning of 
 your studies you can form no idea, but of which at each 
 step onward you will be more distinctly conscious and 
 capable. By practice attention becomes a living power 
 — memory a more faithful guardian and depositary — 
 and the understanding a more obedient and effective 
 instrument. Faculties which indolence stifled or un- 
 certainty dissipated will re -organise themselves, for as 
 exercise and temperance are to the body so is discipline 
 to the mind, not merely the best preserver of the 
 faculties we consciously possess, but the best restorer 
 also of powers we have let slumber as though we 
 possessed them not. And surely it is a worthy 
 ambition, a salutary impulse, and a cheering thought 
 that the great minds which have irradiated the world in 
 time past should not leave us wholly in eclipse and 
 shadow. Let it not be merely by accident of birth that 
 we are the countrymen of Shakspere, Bacon, and 
 Newton ; but let us strive by honest labour and loving 
 reverence to pay them in our different degrees intel-
 
 21 
 
 lectual homage, by filling our memories and under- 
 standings from their ever fresh and flowing streams. It 
 is not only the poet or philosopher who is privileged 
 to say — 
 
 "My heritage how excellent — my field how broad and fair — 
 Time is my field wherein I work — and I am Time's co-heir — " 
 
 since every one who aspires to appropriate to himself a 
 portion, however small, of the wide domain of know- 
 ledge has his share in this inheritance ; and perhaps not 
 the less precious and grateful to himself at least, because 
 it has been won in hours of relaxation. 
 
 You have already formed, I understand, classes for 
 the cultivation of Latin, French, and English Literature, 
 and I may therefore, perhaps not unseasonably, offer a 
 few remarks upon the method and benefits of studying 
 languages. In reading our mother-tongue, it is scarcely 
 possible where the eye takes in so much and so rapidly 
 at once, to analyse with sufficient accuracy the mechani- 
 cal structure of speech, to detect the often capricious 
 and even unconcious associations of habitual words and 
 idioms, and sift with proper rigour and suspicion the 
 fallacies that lurk in specious or faulty diction. But 
 in the unfamiliarity of a foreign tongue, these causes 
 of error are much lessened, since the student is com- 
 pelled literally to weigh the words he reads, to count 
 the links and articulations of speech, and by this neces- 
 sary attention to the organ of expression is brought to 
 examine, and as it were exenterate the thought itself. 
 Thus in any sound study of language he is learning two 
 lessons at the same time, one in grammar, another in 
 the philosophy of mind, and hence, in spite of the 
 change of manners and ideas, the study of ancient 
 lanffuaffes is retained as an clement of education. The 
 process by which they are acquired is a mental exercise 
 of the highest value, and its effect will remain even 
 after the particular study is laid aside. I will illustrate 
 what I have just said by reading to you the account
 
 22 
 
 which a celebrated scholar gives of his method of study- 
 ing Greek at a somewhat late period of life. For Greek 
 you have merely to substitute Latin or French. The 
 method and its advantages will equally apply. 
 
 " I began upon Homer. When a boy I had studied 
 about a hundred lines of the first book of the Iliad. 
 This book I finished in two months, but more as a 
 task than as a pleasure. I did not yet recognise that 
 divine genius. Many other youth, as I happen to know, 
 have had the same experience. I read Xenophon in con- 
 nexion with Homer, devoting the greater part of my time 
 to his works. I made use of a Latin version, which was ad- 
 vantageous to one of my age, but is never so in schools. 
 All the works of Xenophon, the Memorabilia excepted, 
 which I had studied before, I read four times in four 
 months. I now thought that I could read any author 
 with equal ease. I took up Demosthenes. I had a 
 copy without a Latin translation. Darkness itself ! But 
 I had learned not to be frightened in setting out. I 
 went on. I found greater difficulties than I had ever 
 had before, both in the words and in the length of the 
 sentences. At last, with much ado, I reached the end 
 of the first Olynthiac oration. I then read it a second 
 and a third time. Every thing now appeared plain and 
 clear. Still I did not yet perceive the fire of eloquence 
 for which he is distinguished, I hesitated whether to 
 proceed to the second oration or again read the first. I 
 resolved to do the latter. How salutary are the effects 
 of such a review ! As I read, an altogether new and 
 unknown feeling took possession of me. In this manner, 
 I read in the course of three months most of the orations 
 of Demosthenes. Afterwards I studied other great 
 authors with far more profit, carrying leaves from their 
 works in my pocket that I might read them at all 
 times."* 
 
 * Wyttenbach's " Early Studies."
 
 23 
 
 Now for Homer and Demosthenes substitute a page 
 of Pascal or Racine, of Virgil or Sallust, or if your 
 studies are confined to your own language, of Shake- 
 spere, Milton, or Burke, construe them, parse them, 
 recur to them as frequently and commit them to memory 
 as fondly as Wyttenbach his Greek masters, and you 
 also will, like him, in your English and French studies 
 gradually become conscious of an increased ability to 
 understand and enjoy great writers, and with that ability 
 you will gain a closer insight into the process of thought 
 itself, a nicer sense of harmony and proportion, and a 
 logical clearness and readier connnand of language for 
 yourselves. 
 
 That this process is capable of application to English, 
 and has been adopted with the happiest results, is shewn 
 by the example of Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, like 
 many perhaps whom I am now addressing, had not the 
 advantage of scholastic training in early youth ; but he 
 sedulously made up in after-life for this deficiency, and 
 is remarkable for the strength, perspicuity, and simple 
 grace of his English style. The following is the exercise 
 he adopted and recommends. 
 
 *' About this time," he says," I met with an odd 
 volume of the Spectator ; I had never before seen any 
 of them. I bought it, and read it over and over, and 
 was much delighted with it. I thought the writing ex- 
 cellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With that 
 view, I took some of the papers, and making short hints 
 of the sentiments in each sentence, laid them by a few 
 days; and then without looking at the book, tried to 
 complete the papers again, - by expressing each hinted 
 sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed 
 before, in any sviitable words that should occur to me. 
 Then I compared my Spectator with the original, dis- 
 covered some of my faults and corrected them. But I 
 found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recol- 
 lecting and using them, which I tliought I should have
 
 24 
 
 acquired before that time if I had gone on making 
 verses" — (this refers to an earlier practice of Franklin's) 
 " therefore I took some of the tales in the Spectator, and 
 turned them into verse ; and, after a time when I had 
 pretty well forgotten the prose turned them back again. 
 I also sometimes jumbled my collection of hints into 
 confusion : and after some weeks, endeavoured to reduce 
 them into the best order, before I began to form the full 
 sentences and complete the subject. This was to teach 
 me method in the arrangement of the thoughts. By 
 comparing my thoughts as before with the original, I 
 discovered many faults and corrected them ; but I some- 
 times had the pleasure to fancy that in certain particu- 
 lars of small consequence, I had been fortunate enough 
 to improve the method and the language ; and this en- 
 couraged me to think that I might in time, come to be 
 a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely 
 ambitious." 
 
 There is a contingent advantage in this practice of 
 recurring to a few good authors. It is the maxim upon 
 which Quintilian so often insists — optimos quidem et 
 statim et semper. It checks a propensity common to 
 us all to wander from book to book, mistaking a ci'aving 
 for novelty for an appetite for knowledge, and, as 
 Coleridge excellently phrases it, " combining the relief 
 of vacuity with the gratification of indolence." The 
 Greeks had a sensible proverb — "wide reading is no 
 reading" — and Hobbes, the philosopher of Malmesbury, 
 used to boast that he read only four authors. Homer, 
 Thucydides, EucKd, and Don Quixote. " If I had 
 read," he was accustomed to say, *' as much as some 
 others, I should have been as ignorant as they are."* 
 Without limiting our studies so strictly as this frugal 
 reader, but copious writer, we may be certain that little 
 real value is derived by persons in general from wide 
 
 • Encyclop. Britann. Dissert, first, p. 45.
 
 25 
 
 and various reading. Still greater is the mischief pro- 
 duced by unconnected and promiscuous reading, which 
 is sure in a greater or less degree to enervate where it 
 does not inflate the mind. *' A moderate number of 
 volumes, if only they be judiciously chosen, will suffice 
 for the attainment of every wise and desirable purpose. 
 An excellent book is like a well chosen and well-tended 
 fruit tree. Its fruits are not of one season only. With 
 the due and natural intervals we may recur to it from 
 year to year, and it will supply the same nourishment 
 and the sanie gratification, if only we ourselves return 
 to it with the same healthful appetite. "f 
 
 In acquiring a foreign language there is a method so 
 highly recommended by the highest authorities — among 
 whom it will suffice to mention Cicero, Sir Willliam 
 Jones, and the historians Robertson and Gibbon — and, 
 at the same time so easy of application, that, before I 
 turn from this part of the subject, I am desirous to 
 describe it briefly to you. I refer to the practice of 
 double translation by which the idiom of another 
 lancfuajre and the resources of our own are by the same 
 effort acquired and developed. And here again I can 
 not do better than avail myself of the example of an 
 eminent writer who himself adopted and illustrated the 
 method in his own studies. 
 
 " In my French and Latin studies," says Gibbon, " I 
 adopted an excellent method, which, from my own suc- 
 cess, I would recommend to the imitation of students. 
 I chose some classic wTiter, such as Cicero and Vertot, 
 the most approved for purity and elegance of style. I 
 translated, for instance, an epistle of Cicero's into 
 French ; and after throwing it aside till the words and 
 phrases were obliterated from my memory, I re-trans- 
 lated my French into such Latin as I could find ; and 
 then compared each sentence of my imperfect version 
 
 ■f Coleridge, Literary Remains, vol. 1, p. 63.
 
 26 
 
 with the ease, the grace, the propriety of the Roman 
 orator. A similar experiment was made on several 
 pages of the Revolutions of Vertot ; I turned them into 
 Latin, re-turned after a sufficient interval into my own 
 French, and again scrutinized the resemblance or dis- 
 similitude of the copy and the original. By degrees I 
 was less ashamed — by degrees I was more satisfied with 
 myself : and I persevered in the practice of these 
 double translations, which filled several books, till I had 
 acquired the knowledge of both idioms, and the com- 
 mand at least of a correct style."* 
 
 I trust I have now said enough, however imperfectly 
 I have said it, to convince you that literature may justly 
 divide with science and with art the possession of the 
 human intellect ; and enough also to show how much real 
 proo-ress may be made even with imperfect means and 
 opportunities by well-employed leisure and judicious 
 method. But I should ill-discharge the office imposed 
 upon me this evening, were I to sit down without 
 attempting to impress upon you that literature has a 
 higher worth and import than the acquirement of know- 
 ledo-e and loftier duties than even the pursuit or pro- 
 duction of ideal beauty or philosophic truth. With the 
 expansion and corroboration of our mental powers our 
 mental duties and responsibilities embrace a wider 
 sphere and acquire a more distinct consciousness. As 
 we become more aware of the immensity of knowledge, 
 we must, if we feel and reason rightly, become also 
 more distrustful of ourselves, more tolerant of others, 
 more teachable, readier to aid, to sympathise, to impart, 
 more resolute to subject the senses to the mind, the 
 mind to the conscience, or our progress will be worth- 
 less, our labour in vain. But if we do gather these 
 genuine fruits of cultivated intellect, and vigilantly 
 reject whatever is merely specious and spurious, it is 
 
 * Gibbon — " Memoir of my Life and Writings."
 
 27 
 
 certain that our moral development will keep pace with 
 our mental, and that study will make us not only learned 
 but wise — wise in perceiving and discriminating what 
 we owe to ourselves and what to others in the conduct 
 of our temporal relations, and wise also in discerning the 
 limits and the functions of the intellect, and in sub- 
 mitting them to obedience and faith when they touch 
 the confines of that wisdom which unaided reason could 
 not discover, which erring reason will never stain or 
 obscure, and to which science, literature, and art, truly 
 understood and truly followed, by their proper instinct 
 and tendency, ultimately converge as to their primal 
 source and centre. 
 
 v^. n. 'b- 
 
 Bacon and Co. Mercury Office, Norwich.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Form L9-Serie8 4939 
 
 UNIV 
 
 . OF CALiF. LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF C ALIFORrjiA I OS Ar.'.Eufc 
 
 L 007 774 675 8 
 
 Ijr SODTHFRN REGIONAL L"- 
 
 AA 000 614 011 5 
 
 J
 
 ^"^^t 
 
 IX' 
 
 ■-^VA''^*' 
 
 .^■:^mimmm 
 
 -^^^1 
 
 .:|