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A word now before we conclude, about the profession itself. In many very striking ways, with much graphic emphasis of expression has it time after time been said by authors of repute, that literature is a very good ally, but a very bad reliance-that its earnings may "help out" an income, but ought not to be one's income in itself. In other words, that it ought not to be adopted as a profession, but should be followed by men who have other professions to occupy and support them. Very much of this has been uttered in bitterness of spirit; it is often the voice of splenetic unthankfulness, and too much stress is not to be laid upon its utterances. But it may be accepted as a truth, that as we practise it now, literature is either too much of a profession, or too little. If it be regarded as a mere adjunct to other more recognised vocations, it is to be feared that men neglect their proper professions and devote themselves mainly to the supplementary work. If, on the other hand, it be avowedly followed as a profession, it were well that it should be followed more advisedly and deliberately-that its responsibilities should be duly weighed and solemnly undertaken-and that it should be sued with as much consistency and regularity as any other learned profession. It in reality only differs from other professions by being open to the whole world. There are no lets and hindrances to introition-no articles to be subscribed—no probationary dinners to be eaten-no examinations to be undergone

pur

as artists or savans; nor are they so frequently honoured with some mark of titular distinction by the Crown. On the first of these points, it is to be observed, that artists are brought into immediate personal contact with the great, by the very necessities of their vocation. If great men want a portrait, or a picture, they must go to the artist's studio for it; they must make the acquaintance of the painter himself. If they want an author's works, they send to their bookseller's for them; they have, of necessity, no personal dealing with the author himself. The purchaser of a picture stands in a different relation to the artist from that which the purchaser of a book bears to the author. There is a hundredfold more to cement intimacy between the parties. In the case of savans, too, it is to be said, that through the agency of learned societies, they are much more frequently brought into proximity to the great; and that their discoveries are of a more tangible and undebatable character than the creations of literature. It is on this last account, perhaps, that they are more frequently the recipients of honorary distinctions than writers of books. A great scientific discovery or invention is not, like the merits of a book, a question of taste, or a question of party. We are speaking now merely of accidental circumstances; but how much do these accidental circumstances determine the course of human affairs. Whether it would not be well for literature-whether it might not be a stimulus and an encouragement, not merely of an intellectual, but also of a social and moral kind-if the worthy efforts of public writers were more frequently recognised by governing bodies, is a matter well worth discussing. But literary men, to earn these distinctions, must do something more than write books and fulminate leading articles. Before Captain Shandon looks for a baronetcy, he must live a few years out of the Fleet Prison; and before Mr. Bludyer looks to be a knight, he must leave off selling presentation copies at book-stalls and buying brandy-and-water with the product. But happily these are not the emeriti of the literary profession. There are men who write differently, and who live differently; and whom no titles could ennoble.

-no qualifications to be tested-no degrees to be taken-no diplomas to be granted, before the man of letters begins his practice and gathers his constituents around him. All the more honourable, therefore, to succeed in it. His competitors are, or may be, the world. There is no protection for him to claim; no exclusiveness to defend him from an overwhelming array of rivals. Any blatant quack who can find a printer may jostle him on the road. "I left no calling for this idle trade," said Pope, in one of his bitter satires; but all sorts of callings are left for it. Soldiers and divines-lawyers and physicians-all kinds of decayed and disabled men flock towards it as a Bethesda-pool, wherein they may heal all their social diseases and re-establish their broken fortunes. Doubtless this does not enhance the dignity of the profession-but it increases the difficulty and therefore the honour of succeeding in it. It is hard to battle it out against such odds, and it requires some stamina to do it. But the more advisedly a man enters the lists-the more deliberately he braces himself up for the encounter, the better are his chances of success. Literature would be a less precarious profession, if men betook themselves to it with greater forethought, instead of straggling into it by chance.

It is of little use to discourse upon the responsibilities of literature, or to inquire why of many professions it is the only unrestricted one-why, although more injury may be done by a false teacher through the press, than by a false preacher in the pulpit, or a false exponent of the law, or an ignorant practitioner of physic, the profession and practice of literature may be resorted to unrestrainedly by any quack or demirep in the country. We are contented to take the evil with the good of "unlicensed printing." But we should be glad to see the profession of literature more generally recognised as a profession-we should be glad if the professors took more pains to exalt it. Take it for all in all, with all its drawbacks, and all its abuses, it is a great, a noble, and a delightful profession. It has pleasures, and privileges, and immunities of its own. A life of literature is not all bright sky and warm sunshine: but how much of both there is-how much that is bright and genial to keep the heart warm and the feelings fresh, and to make a glory in shady places. In the midst of sickness and sorrow it may be a toil and a trialbut it is a solace too; perhaps less a toil and more a solace than any other profession, save that which brings a man immediately into communion with his Maker. It is always more or less hard to work invitá Minervá. "We know," writes Mr. Thackeray, "how the life of any hack, legal or literary, in a curacy, or in a marching regiment, or a merchant's desk, is full of routine and tedious description. One day's labour resembles another

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much too closely. A literary man has often to work for his bread against time, or against his will, of in spite of his health, or of his indolence, or of his repugnance to the subject on which he is called to exert himself, just like any other daily toiler." But no worse than any other daily toilers. "Pegasus," it is true, "often does his work with panting sides and trembling knees,"—and not seldom, we are afraid, does he pant and tremble by reason of his own irregularities. "There is no reason," continues Mr. Thackeray, "why this animal should be exempt from labour, or illness, or decay, any more than any of the other creatures of God's world." There is no reason why they should be "exempt from the prose duties of this daily-bread-wanting, tax-paying life, and not be made to work and pay like their neighbours.' The common ills of life beset the literary profession, as they beset all others; but it has many high privileges of its own. Men generally betake themselves to it, because they love literature; and, in spite of all toil, of all drudgery, of all suffering, how many are truthful to their first loves. If a man pursues his vocation worthily, great are its gains to the latest day of his life. It is no small thing to influence public opinion-to guide men to light from darkness, to truth from error-to inform the ignorant, to solace the unhappy, to afford high intellectual enjoyment to the few, or healthy recreation to the many. Of all professions, worthily pursued, it is the least selfish. It brings the worker for his daily bread into constant fellowship and communion with thousands of his fellow-creatures. Thousands are indebted to him for a share of the instruction and amusement of their lives. There is not a moment of the day in which he may not, without flattery, encourage the belief that some eyes are fixed and some understandings intent upon what he has written perhaps, that hundreds or thousands are drinking at his well. These are among its highest privileges. Of its mere worldly gains we have elsewhere spoken. These are not so scanty but that the profession of literature may be prudently adopted, at the outset of life, by men whose vocation is unmistakably to it. If it were thoughtfully and designedly entered, with a due sense of its risks and its responsibilities, there would be fewer unworthy professors. As it is, the profession is unjustly called to account for what in no way belongs to it-for what is inherent in the natural character of men, who abandon other professions, and fling themselves, with all their irregularities, into the courts of literature. For what Mr. Thackeray has written about the habits of literary men, the profession has every reason to be grateful. He has not spared the rod; but he has used it in a loving spirit. We do not, as we have shown, agree with him on all points; but we do concur with him in the main-and if the points of

difference between us were many more than they are, we should still be assured that what he has written on this subject, as on all others, has been dictated by the convictions of an honest and manly nature; and that the author of Vanity Fair and Pendennis is no more a flunkey than he is a fool.*

In a letter addressed by Mr. Thackeray to the Morning Chronicle, his feelings and opinions are more fully and explicitly revealed than in the pages of his novel. He there stands upon his defence; and we think his vindication complete. We cannot better occupy the remainder of this page than by inserting here the concluding passages of the letter, which are very manly and very convincing :

"That I have a prejudice against running into debt and drunkenness and disorderly life, and against quackery and falsehood in my profession, I own; and that I like to have a laugh at those pretenders in it who write confidential news about fashion and politics for provincial gobemouches; but I am not aware of feeling any malice in describing this weakness, or of doing anything wrong in exposing the former vices. Have they never existed amongst literary men? Have their talents never been urged as a plea for improvidence, and their very faults adduced as a consequence of their genius? The only moral that I, as a writer, wished to hint in the descriptions against which you protest, was, that it was the duty of a literary man, as well as of every other, to practise regularity and sobriety, to love his family, and to pay his tradesmen. Nor is the picture I have drawn 'a caricature which I condescend to,' any more than it is a wilful and insidious design on my part to flatter the non-literary class.' If it be a caricature, it is the result of a natural perversity of vision, not of an artful desire to mislead; but my attempt was to tell the truth, and I meant to tell it not unkindly. I have seen the bookseller whom Bludyer robbed of his books: I have carried money, and from a noble brother man-of-letters, to some one not unlike Shandon in prison, and have watched the beautiful devotion of his wife in that dreary place. Why are these things not to be described, if they illustrate, as they appear to me to do, that strange and awful struggle of good and wrong which takes place in our hearts and in the world? It may be that I work out my moral ill, or it may be possibly that the critic of the Examiner fails in apprehension. My efforts as an artist come perfectly within his province as a censor; but when Mr. Examiner says of a gentleman that he is 'stooping to flatter a public prejudice,' which public prejudice does not exist, I submit that he makes a charge which is as absurd as it is unjust; and am thankful that it repels itself. And, instead of accusing the public of persecuting and disparaging us as a class, it seems to me that men of letters had best silently assume that they are as good as any other gentlemen; nor raise piteous controversies upon a question which all people of sense must take to be settled. If I sit at your table, I suppose that I am my neighbour's equal, as that he is mine. If I begin straightway with a protest of Sir, I am a literary man, but I would have you to know I am as good as you,' which of us is it that questions the dignity of the literary profession—my neighbour who would like to eat his soup in quiet, or the man of letters who commences the argument? And I hope that a comic writer, because he describes one author as improvident, and another as a parasite, may not only be guiltless of a desire to vilify his profession, but may really have its honour at heart. If there are no spendthrifts or parasites among us, the satire becomes unjust; but if such exist, or have existed, they are as good subjects for comedy as men of other callings. I never heard that the Bar felt itself aggrieved because Punch chose to describe Mr. Dunup's notorious state of insolvency; or that the picture of Stiggins, in 'Pickwick,' was intended as an insult to all Dissenters; or that all the attorneys in the empire were indignant at the famous history of the firm of ‘Quirk, Gammon, and Snapp :' are we to be passed over because we are faultless, or because we cannot afford to be laughed at ? And if every character in a story is to represent a class, not an individual-if every bad figure is to have its obliged contrast of a good one, and a balance of vice and virtue is to be struck-novels, I think, would become impossible, as they would be intolerably stupid and unnatural; and there would be a lamentable end of writers and readers of such compositions."

6

The English Language.

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ART. III.-1. The English Language. By R. G. LATHAM, M.D., late Professor of the English Language and Literature, University College, London. Second Edition. London, 1848. 2. Outlines of English Literature. By T. B. SHAW, B.A., Professor of English Literature in the Imperial Alexander Lyceum of St. Petersburg. London, 1849.

3. The Rise, Progress, and Present Structure of the English Language. By the Rev. M. HARRISON, A.M. London, 1848.

THE fact is now generally acknowledged that-owing to whatever cause, whether to want of skill, or of care, or of lovethe laws of the English tongue have (great and small) been oftener and more glaringly broken, and that by some of its best writers, than those of almost any other refined language. It is therefore gratifying to see, from the number of works which are now devoted to this subject, that greater attention is bestowed upon the principles of our language than at any former time. Three of these works head our paper; whereof the first is by far the ablest, the second (of which only one chapter is allotted to the language) is perhaps the most readable, and the third is the latest and most practical.

Commending them to our readers, we shall take leave of these books for the present, and turn to a part of the field they have but slightly touched upon; inquiring what have been the past, and what are the present tendencies of the English tongue, with regard to the matter it employs, and whether these may be deemed for good or evil.

Our countrymen have always been prone to overlook the inborn strength of their own language, and to draw on the riches of a foreign element. In the thirteenth century, Robert of Gloucester could utter the taunt, that nowhere but in England did men slight their mother tongue

'I ween there be ne man in world contreyes' none

That ne holdeth to their kind (natural) speech, but England lone ;' and it might have been uttered many times since. For instance, looking into any newspaper of the day, we find ourselves entreated to buy Antigropelos, Euknemida, Rypophagon, and so forth; and we afterwards find that these are not, as would be expected, the names of unknown curiosities from a far land, but of things not more uncommon than ridingboots, gaiters, and shaving soap. These are but the bolder tokens of deeprooted evil; of great affectation, of false delicacy, of greater love to a foreign language than to our own, of mistrust in the powers of