CHAPTER CLVII.

WHICH THE READER WILL FIND LIKE A

ROASTED MAGGOT, SHORT AND SWEET.

Malum quod minimum est, id minimum est malum. PLAUTUS.

But here one of those persons who acting upon the proverbial precept which bids us look before we leap, look so long that they never leap at all, offers a demurrer.

It may be perfectly true, he observes, that a language may be learned in three hundred and ninety lessons of an hour each. But in your proposition the hour is broken into several small parts; we will throw in an additional minute, and say six such portions. What I pray you can a lesson of ten minutes be worth?

To this I reply that short lessons are best, and are specifically enjoined in the new System of Education. Dr. Bell says in his Manual of Instructions for conducting Schools, "in the beginning never prescribe a lesson or task, which the Scholar can require more than ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, to learn."

On this authority, and on the authority of experience also, I recommend short lessons. For the same reasons, or for reasons nearly or remotely related to them, I like short stages, short accounts, short speeches, and short sermons; I do not like short measure or short commons; and, like Mr. Shandy, I dislike short noses. I know nothing about the relative merit of short-horned cattle. I doubt concerning the propriety of short meals. I disapprove of short parliaments and short petticoats; I prefer puffpaste to short pie-crust; and I cut this chapter short for the sake of those readers who may like short chapters.

Take the Grammar of any modern language, and read the dialogues in it, till you are acquainted with the common connecting words, and know the principal parts of speech by sight. Then look at the declensions and the verbs - you will already have learned something of their inflections, and may now commit them to memory, or write them down. Read those lessons, which you ought to read daily — in a bible of this language, having the English bible open beside it. Your daily task will soon be either to learn the vocabulary, or to write exercises, or simply to read, according to the use which you mean to make of your new acquirement. You must learn memoriter, and exercise yourself in writing if you wish to educate your ear and your tongue for foreign service; but all that is necessary for your own instruction and delight at home may be acquired by the eye alone.

Qui mihi Discipulus es — cupis atque doceri,

try this method for ten minutes a-day, perseveringly, and you will soon be surprised at

your own progress.

Quod tibi deest, à te ipso mutuare, —

it is Cato's advice.

Ten minutes you can bestow upon a modern language, however closely you may be engaged in pursuits of immediate necessity; even tho' you should be in a public office from which Joseph Hume, or some of his worthy compeers, has moved for volu

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so, and as gratefully. Without the King's favour Wolsey could not have founded Christ Church; without the Doctor's friendship I could not have edified this monument to his memory. Without the King's favour Wolsey would never have obtained the Cardinal's hat; and had it not been for the favour, and friendship, and example of the Doctor, never should I have been entitled to wear that cap, my reasons for not wearing which have heretofore been stated,-that cap which to one who knows how to wear it becomingly, is worth more than a coronet or a mitre; and confers upon the wearer a more lasting distinction.

His happy mind, like the not less happy and not more active intellect of Humboldt King of Travellers, was excursive in its habits. To such discursive — or excursiveness I also was prone, and he who observed in me this propensity encouraged it, tempering, however, that encouragement with his wonted discretion. Let your imagination, he said, fly like the lady-bird,

North, south, and east, and west,

the precepts of my revered Mentor, and to follow his example, which I venture to hope the judicious reader will think I have done with some success. He may have likened me for the manner in which I have conducted this great argument to a gentle falcon, which, however high it may soar to command a wider region with its glance, and however far it may fly in pursuit of its quarry, returns always to the falconer's hand.

Learned and discreet reader, if you should not always discern the track of associations over which I have passed as fleetly as Camilla over the standing corn;if the story which I am relating to thee should seem in its course sometimes to double like a hare in her flight, or in her sport,- sometimes to bound forward like a jerboa, or kangaroo, and with such a bound that like Milton's Satan it overleaps all bounds; or even to skip like a flea, so as to be here, there and everywhere, taking any direction rather than that which will bring it within your catch; - learned and discreet reader, if any of these similitudes should have occurred to you, think of Pindar, read Landor's Gebir,

rest.

Perhaps it may be said therefore of his unknown friend and biographer as Passovier said of Michel de Montaigne, il estoit personnage hardy, qui se croyoit, et comme tel se laissoit aisement emporter à la beauté de son esprit; tellement que par ses ecrits il prenoit plaisir de desplaire plaisamment.

Perhaps also some one who for his own happiness is conversant with the literature of that affluent age, may apply to the said unknown what Balzac said of the same great Michael, Michael the second, (Michael Angelo was Michael the first,) Montaigne sçait bien ce qui il dit; mais, sans violer le respect qui luy est deu, je pense aussi, qu'il ne sçait pas toujours ce qu'il va dire.

Dear Reader you may not only say this of the unknown, sans violer le respect qui luy est deu, but you will pay him what he will consider both a great and a just compliment, in saying so.

For I have truly endeavoured to observe

for himself formerly, and prophetically for me, intelligenda non intellectum adfero. Would you have me plod forward like a tortoise in my narration, foot after foot in minute steps, dragging his slow tail along? Or with such deliberate preparation for progressive motion that like a snail the slime of my way should be discernible?

A bye-stander at chess who is ignorant of the game presently understands the straight and lateral movement of the rooks, the diagonal one of the bishops, and the power which the Queen possesses of using both. But the knight perplexes him, till he discovers that the knight's leap, eccentric as at first it seems, is nevertheless strictly regulated.

We speak of erratic motions among the heavenly bodies; but it is because the course they hold is far beyond our finite comprehension.

Therefore I entreat thee, dear reader, thou who hast the eye of a hawk or of a sea gull, and the intellectual speed of a greyhound,

I HAVE heard of a man who made it a law for himself never to read any book again which had greatly pleased him on a first perusal; lest a second reading should in some degree disturb the pleasurable impression which he wished to retain of it. This person must have read only for his amusement, otherwise he would have known that a book is worth little if it deserves to be perused but once and moreover that as the same landscape appears differently at different seasons of the year, at morning and at evening, in bright weather and in cloudy, by moonlight and at noon-day, so does the same book produce a very different effect upon the same reader at different times and under different circumstances.

I have elsewhere said that the man of one book is proverbially formidable; but the man of one reading, though he should read through an ample library would never be

come so.

The studious man who at forty re-peruses books which he has read in his youth or early manhood, vivid as his recollections of them may be, finds them new, because he

less ones with which he may formerly have been delighted appear flat and unprofitable to his maturer judgment; and on the other hand sterling merit which he was before unable to appreciate, he can now understand and value, having in his acquired knowledge and habits of reflection the means of assaying it.

Sometimes a Poet, when he publishes what in America would be called a lengthy poem, with lengthy annotations, advises the reader in his preface, not to read the notes in their places, as they occur, lest they should interrupt his clear perception and enjoyment of the piece, but to read the poem by itself at first; and then, for his more full contentment, to begin again, and peruse the notes in their order, whereby he will be introduced to the more minute and recondite merits of the work.

If the poets who calculate upon many such readers are not wise in their generation, they are happy in it.

What I request of my dear readers is far more reasonable, and yet perhaps not much more likely to be granted; I request them, that in justice to themselves,-for that they may not lose any part of the pleasure which I have designed for them; and in justice to me, that I may not be defrauded of any portion of that grateful applause, which after a due perusal they will undoubtedly bestow upon the benevolent unknown; and in justice to the ever-honoured subject of these volumes,―lest a hasty and erroneous judgment of his character should be formed, when it is only partially considered; — I request that they would not dip into these volumes before they read them, nor while they are reading them, but that they would be pleased to go through the book regularly, in the order of the chapters, and that when they recommend the book to their friends, (as they will do with the friendly intention of contributing to their entertainment and instruction,) they would particularly advise them to begin at the beginning, or more accurately speaking at the seventh chapter before the beginning, and so peruse it consecutively.

So doing, reader, thou wilt perceive the method and the order of the work, developing before thee as thou readest; thou wilt then comprehend and admire the connection of the parts, and their dependence upon each other, and the coherence and beauty of the whole. Whereas were you only to dip into it here and there, you would from such a cursory and insufficient inspection come perhaps to the same conclusion, "wherein nothing was concluded" as the man did concerning Bailey's Dictionary, who upon returning the book to a neighbour from whom he had borrowed it, said that he was much obliged to him for the loan, and that he had read it through, from beginning to end, and had often been much entertained by it, and was sure that the Author must have been a very knowing person; — but added he to confess the truth, I have never been able clearly to make out what the book is about.

Now as opposite causes will sometimes produce a like effect, thou mightest, by reading this book partially, come to the same inconclusive conclusion concerning it, that our friend did by reading straight forward through Bailey's Dictionary; though considering what there is in that Dictionary, his time might have been worse employed. -I very well remember when I was some ten years old, learning from an abridgment of it as much about Abracadabra as I know I exhort thee therefore to begin ab ovo, with the ante-initial chapters, and to read the whole regularly; and this advice I give, bearing in mind what Bishop Hacket says in his life of the Lord Keeper, Archbishop Williams, when he inserts a speech of that Chancellor-Prelate's, at full length:

now.

"This he delivered, thus much: and I took counsel with myself not to abbreviate it. For it is so compact and pithy that he that likes a little, must like it all. Plutarch gives a rule for sanity to him that eats a tortoise, öŋy, ǹ μǹ öλws, “eat it up all, or not a whit." The reason assigned for this rule would look better in Plutarch's Greek than in the Episcopal English; being paraphrased it imports that a small portion

of such food is apt to produce intestinal pains; but that a hearty meal has the wholesome effect of those pills which by a delicate and beautiful euphuism of Dr. Kitchener's are called Peristaltic Persuaders. "So," proceeds the Bishop, "the speech of a great orator is instructive when it is entire: pinch it into an epitome, you mangle the meaning and avile the eloquence."

CHAPTER CLXI.

WESLEY AND THE DOCTOR OF THE SAME OPINION UPON THE SUBJECT OF THESE CHAPTERS. A STUPENDOUS EXAMPLE OF CYCLOPÆDIAN STOLIDITY.

A good razor never hurts, or scratches. Neither would good wit, were men as tractable as their chins. But instead of parting with our intellectual bristles quietly, we set them up, and wriggle. Who can wonder then if we are cut to the bone? GUESSES AT TRUTH.

BоTH Mr. Wesley and Dr. Dove, who, much as they differed concerning Methodism, agreed remarkably well in their general method of thinking, would have maintained the morality and propriety of shaving, against all objections founded upon the quantity of time expended in that practice. If the one had preached or the other descanted on the 27th verse of the 19th Chapter of Leviticus, each would have shown that no general application could be made of the prohibition therein contained. But what would they have said to the following physical argument which is gravely advanced in Dr. Abraham Rees's New Cyclopædia?

"The practice of cutting the hair of the head and the beard is attended with a prodigious increase of the secretion of the matter of hair. It is ascertained that a man of fifty years of age will have cut from his head above thirteen feet, or twice his own length of hair; and of his beard, in the last twenty-five years of the same period — above eight feet. The hair likewise, besides this enormous length, will be thicker than if it had been left uncut, and must lose most of its juices by evaporation, from having its tube and the ends of its fibres always ex