If you are lame, and deaf, and blind, MRS. THRALE. 105. On Study. STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is for privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of, particulars one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots, and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience; for natural abilities require study, as natural plants need pruning; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for studies teach not their own use this wise men learn by observation. Read not to contradict and refute, not to believe and take for granted, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in part; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, or extracts of them may be made by others; but that should be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are like common distilled waters -flashy things. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not BACON. 106. The Passions. WHEN Music, heavenly maid, was young, Sweet lessons of her forceful art, Each for madness ruled the hour Would prove his own expressive power. First Fear his hand, its skill to try, Amid the chords bewildered laid, Next Anger rushed; his eyes, on fire, In one rude clash he struck the lyre, And swept with hurried hand the strings. With woful measures, wan Despair Low, sullen sounds his grief beguiled; -- But thou, O Hope, with eyes so fair, And from the rocks, the woods, the vale, And Hope, enchanted, smiled, and waved her golden hair. And longer had she sung - but, with a frown, Revenge impatient rose; He threw his blood-stained sword in thunder down, The war-denouncing trumpet took, And blew a blast so loud and dread, Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woe. The doubling drum with furious heat; And though sometimes, each dreary pause between, Her soul-subduing voice applied, Yet still he kept his wild, unaltered mien, While each strained ball of sight seemed bursting from his head. Thy numbers, Jealousy, to nought were fixed Sad proof of thy distressful state Of differing themes the veering song was mixed; And now it courted Love; now, raving, called on Hate. With eyes upraised, as one inspired, In notes by distance made more sweet, Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole, Or o'er some haunted streams with fond delay, — Round a holy calm diffusing, Love of peace, and lonely musing, — In hollow murmurs died away. But, O, how altered was its sprightlier tone, When Cheerfulness, a nymph of healthiest hue, Her bow across her shoulder flung, Her buskins gemmed with morning dew, Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket rung! The oak-crowned sisters, and their chaste-eyed queen, Peeping from forth their alleys green; Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear, And Sport leaped up and seized his beechen spear. Last came Joy's ecstatic trial: He, with viny crown advancing, First to the lively pipe his hand addressed; But soon he saw the brisk, awakening viol, Whose sweet, entrancing voice he loved the best. They would have thought, who heard the strain, They saw in Tempe's vale her native maids, Amidst the festal sounding shades, To some unwearied minstrel dancing; As if he would the charming air repay, COLLINS 107. The Distressed Father. HENRY NEWBERRY, a lad of thirteen years, and Edward Chidley, aged seventeen, were fully committed for trial, charged with stealing a silver teapot from the house of a gentleman in Grosvenor Place. There was nothing extraordinary in the circumstances of the robbery. The younger lad was observed to go into the house, whilst his companion kept watch, and they were caught endeavoring to conceal the teapot under some rubbish in the Five Fields; but the case was made peculiarly interesting by the unsophisticated distress of Newberry's father. The poor old man, who, it seems, had been a soldier, and was at this time a journeyman pavier, refused at first to believe that his son had committed the crime inputed to him, and was very clamorous against the witnesses; but, as their evidence proceeded, he himself appeared to become gradually convinced. He listened with intense anxiety to the various details; and when they were finished, he fixed his eyes in silence, for a second or two, upon his son; and, turning to the magistrate, with his eyes swimming in tears, he exclaimed, "I have carried him many a score miles on my knapsack, your honor!" There was something so deeply pathetic in the tone with which this fond reminiscence was uttered by the old soldier, |