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THE CAREER OF LITERARY MEN IN JOHNSON'S YOUTH. 521

which the earlier years of his manhood had been passed had given to his demeanour, and even to his moral character, some peculiarities appalling to the civilized beings who were the companions of his old age. The perverse irregularity of his hours, the slovenliness of his person, his fits of strenuous exertion, interrupted by long intervals of sluggishness, his strange abstinence, and his equally strange voracity, his active benevolence, contrasted with the constant rudeness and the occasional ferocity of his manners in society, made him, in the opinion of those with whom he lived during the last twenty years of his life, a complete original. An original he was, undoubtedly, in some respects. But if we possessed full information concerning those who shared his early hardships, we should probably find that what we call his singularities of manner were, for the most part, failings which he had in common with the class to which he belonged. He ate at Streatham Park as he had been used to eat behind the screen at St John's Gate, when he was ashamed to show his ragged clothes. He ate as it was natural that a man should eat, who, during a great part of his life, had passed the morning in doubt whether he should have food for the afternoon. The habits of his early life had accustomed him to bear privation with fortitude, but rot to taste pleasure with moderation. He could fast; but when he did not fast, he tore his dinner like a famished wolf, with the veins swelling on his forehead, and the perspiration running down his cheeks. He scarcely ever took wine, but when he drank it, he drank it greedily and in large tumblers. These were, in fact, mitigated symptoms of that same moral disease which raged with such deadly malignity in his friends Savage and Boyse. The roughness and violence which he showed in society were to be expected from a man whose temper, not naturally gentle, had been long tried by the bitterest calamities, by the want of meat, of fire, and of clothes, by the importunity of creditors, by the insolence of patrons, by that bread which is the bitterest of all food, by those stairs which are the most toilsome of all paths, by that deferred hope which makes the heart sick. Through all these things the ill-dressed, coarse, ungainly pedant had struggled manfully up to eminence and command. It was natural that, in the exercise of his power, he should be the more austere because he had himself endured, that, though his heart was undoubtedly generous and humane, his demeanour in society should be harsh and despotic. For severe distress he had sympathy, and not only sympathy, but munificent relief. But for the suffering which a harsh word inflicts upon a delicate mind he had no pity; for it was a kind of suffering which he could scarcely conceive. He would carry home on his shoulders a sick and starving girl from the streets. He turned his house into a place of refuge for a crowd of wretched old creatures who could find no other asylum; nor could all their peevishness and ingratitude weary out his benevolence. But the pangs of a wounded vanity seemed to him ridiculous; and he scarcely felt sufficient compassion even for the pangs of wounded

affection. He had seen and felt so much of sharp misery, that he was not affected by paltry vexations; and he seemed to think that everybody ought to be as much hardened to these vexations as himself. He was angry with Boswell for complaining of a headache, with Mrs Thrale for grumbling about the dust on the road, or the smell of the kitchen. These were, in his phrase, "foppish lamentations," which people ought to be ashamed to utter in a world so full of sin and sorrow. Goldsmith crying because the "Good-natured Man" had failed, inspired him with no pity. Though his own health was not good, he detested and despised valetudinarians. Pecuniary losses, unless they reduced the loser absolutely to beggary, moved him very little. People whose hearts had been softened by prosperity might weep, he said, for such events; but all that could be expected of a plain man was not to laugh. He was not much moved even by the spectacle of Lady Tavistock dying of a broken heart for the loss of her lord. Such grief he considered as a luxury reserved for the idle and the wealthy. A washerwoman, left a widow, with nine small children, would not have sobbed herself to death.

XXI. ARCHBISHOP WHATELY.

RICHARD WHATELY, the present Archbishop of Dublin, is the son of the Rev. Dr Whately of Norwich Park, Surrey, and was born in 1787. He was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, of which he was elected a Fellow; and the ability which he displayed procured for him one of the most important offices in the university, that of Bampton lecturer. In 1822 he was nominated rector of Halesworth; in 1830 he became Principal of St Alban's Hall, and Professor of Political Economy at Oxford; and in the following year he was consecrated Archbishop of Dublin. Dr Whately is one of the most conspicuous members of what is called the "Broad Church" party; is an influential writer; has always been an able and consistent advocate of liberal politics; and a distinguished promoter of university and educational reform. His works are numerous, and are all distinguished by good sense and sound reasoning; they make no pretensions to eloquence, but no one can read them without feeling himself a wiser man. His " Logic," though not very profound, is a very useful manual, so is his "Rhetoric;" his "Easy Lessons on Money Matters," and other similar works prepared for use in elementary schools, are admirable productions; and his various theological works, his " Essays on the Difficulties in the Writings of St Paul," "On the Errors of Romanism," ,” “On the Kingdom of Christ," "Bampton Lectures," &c., are all well worthy of the extensive popularity which they have enjoyed.

1. ON WAGES. ("EASY LESSONS ON MONEY MATTERS.") Some labourers are paid higher than others. A carpenter earns more than a ploughman, and a watchmaker more than either; and

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yet this is not from the one working harder than the other. And it is the same with the labour of the mind as with that of the body. A banker's clerk, who has to work hard at keeping accounts, paid so high as a lawyer or a physician. You see, from this, that the rate of wages does not depend on the hardness of the labour, but on the value of the work done. But on what does the value of the work depend! The value of each kind of work is like the value of anything else; it is greater or less according to the limitation of the supply, that is, the difficulty of procuring it. If there were no more expense, time, and trouble, in obtaining a pound of gold than a pound of copper, then gold would be of no more value than copper.

But why should the supply of watchmakers and surgeons be more limited than that of carpenters and ploughmen? That is, why is it more difficult to make a man a watchmaker than a ploughman? The chief reason is, that the education required costs a great deal more. A long time must be spent in learning the business of a watchmaker or a surgeon before a man can acquire enough skill to practise. So that, unless you have enough to support you all this time, and also to pay your master for teaching you the art, you cannot become a watchmaker or a surgeon. And no father would go to the expense of breeding up his son a surgeon or watchmaker, even though he could well afford it, if he did not expect him to earn more than a carpenter, whose education costs much less. But sometimes a father is disappointed in his expectation. If the son should turn out stupid, or idle, he would not acquire skill enough to maintain himself by his business; and then the expense of his education would be lost. For it is not the expensive education of a surgeon that causes him to be paid more for setting a man's leg than a carpenter is for mending the leg of a table; but the expensive education causes fewer people to become surgeons. It causes the supply of surgeons to be more limited, that is, confined to a few; and it is this limitation that is the cause of their being better paid. So that, you see, the value of each kind of labour is higher or lower, like that of all other things, according as the supply is limited. Natural genius will often have the same effect as the expensiveness of education, in causing one man to be better paid than another. For instance, one who has a natural genius for painting may become a very fine painter, though his education may not have cost more than that of an ordinary painter, and he will then earn, perhaps, ten times as much without working any harder at his picture than the other. But the cause why a man of natural genius is higher paid for his work than another is still the same. Men of genius are scarce; and their work, therefore, is of the more value, from their being more limited in supply. Some kinds of labour, again, are higher paid from the supply of them being limited by other causes, and not by the cost of learning them, or the natural genius they require. Any occupation that is unhealthy, or dangerous, or disagreeable, is paid the higher on that account; because

people would not otherwise engage in it. There is this kind of limitation in the supply of house-painters, miners, gunpowdermakers, and several others.

Some people fancy that it is unjust that one man should not earn as much as another who works no harder than himself. And there certainly would be a hardship if one man could force another to work for him at whatever wages he chose to pay. This is the case with those slaves who are forced to work, and are only supplied by their masters with food and other necessaries, like horses. So, also, it would be a hardship if I were to force any one to sell me anything, whether his labour, or his cloth, or cattle, or corn, at any price I might choose to fix. But there is no hardship in leaving all buyers and sellers free; the one to ask whatever price he may think fit; the other, to offer what he thinks the article worth. A labourer is a seller of labour; his employer is a buyer of labour, and both ought to be left free. If a man chooses to ask ever so high a price for his potatoes, or his corn, he is free to do so; but, then, it would be very hard that he should be allowed to force you to buy them at that price whether you would or no. In the same manner, an ordinary labourer may ask as high wages as he likes ; but it would be very hard to oblige others to employ him at that rate whether they would or not. And so the labourer himself would think if the same rule were applied to him; that is, if a tailor, and a carpenter, and a shoemaker could oblige him to employ them whether he wanted their articles or not, at whatever price they chose to fix.

In former times, laws used to be often made to fix the wages of labour. It was forbidden, under a penalty, that higher or lower wages should be asked or offered for each kind of labour than what the law fixed. But laws of this kind were found never to do any good; for when the rate fixed by law for farm labourers, for instance, happened to be higher than it was worth a farmer's while to give for ordinary labourers, he turned off all his workmen except a few of the best hands, and employed those on the best land only; so that less corn was raised, and many persons were out of work who would have been glad to have it at a lower rate rather than earn nothing. Then, again, when the fixed rate was lower than it would answer for a farmer to give to the best workmen, some farmers would naturally try to get these into their service by paying them privately at a higher rate. And this they could easily do (so as to escape the law) by agreeing to supply them with corn at a reduced price, or in some such way; and then the other farmers were driven to do the same thing, that they might not lose all their best workmen. So that laws of this kind come to nothing.

Labourers often suffer great hardships, from which they might save themselves by looking forward beyond the present day. They are apt to complain of others when they ought rather to blame their own imprudence. If, when a man is earning good wages, he spends all, as fast as he gets it, in thoughtless intemperance, instead of lay

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ing by something against hard times, he may afterwards have to suffer great want when he is out of work, or when wages are lower. But then he must not blame others for this, but his own improvidence. So thought the bees in the following fable:

"A grasshopper, half-starved with cold and hunger at the approach of winter, came to a well-stored bee-hive, and humbly begged the bees to relieve his wants with a few drops of honey. One of the bees asked him how he had spent his time all the summer, and why he had not laid up a store of food like them ?— "Truly," said he, "I spent my time very merrily in drinking, dancing, and singing, and never once thought of winter," "Our plan is very different," said the bee; "we work hard in the summer to lay by a store of food against the season when we foresee we shall want it; but those who do nothing but drink, and dance, and sing in the summer, must expect to starve in the winter."

2. ON GOOD READING.-(" WHATELY'S RHETORIC.")

The practical rule to be adopted in order to secure good reading, is, not only to pay no studied attention to the voice, but studiously to withdraw the thoughts from it, and to dwell as intently as possible on the sense; trusting to nature to suggest spontaneously the proper emphases and tones.

Many persons are so far impressed with the truth of the doctrine here inculcated as to acknowledge that "it is a great fault for a reader to be too much occupied with thoughts respecting his own voice;" and thus they think to steer a middle course between opposite extremes. But it should be remembered that this middle course entirely nullifies the whole advantage proposed by the plan recommended. A reader is sure to pay too much attention to his voice, not only if he pays any at all, but if he does not strenuously labour to withdraw his attention from it altogether. He who not only understands fully what he is reading, but is earnestly occupying his mind with the matter of it, will be likely to read as if he understood it, and thus to make others understand it; and, in like manner, with a view to the impressiveness of the delivery, he who not only feels it, but is exclusively absorbed with that feeling, will be likely to read as if he felt it, and to communicate the impression to his hearers. But this cannot be the case if he is occupied with the thought of what their opinion will be of his reading, and how his voice ought to be regulated; if, in short, he is thinking of himself, and, of course, in the same degree, abstracting his attention from that which ought to occupy it exclusively.

It is not, indeed, desirable that in reading the Bible, for example, or any thing which is not intended to appear as his own composition, he should deliver what are avowedly another's sentiments in the same style as if they were such as arose in his own mind; but it is desirable that he should deliver them as if he were reporting another's sentiments, which were both fully understood and felt in

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