To treat all subjects in the
highest, the most honourable, and the pluckiest spirit,
consistent with the fact, is the first duty of a writer. If
he be well paid, as I am glad to hear he is, this duty
becomes the more urgent, the neglect of it the more
disgraceful. And perhaps there is no subject on which a man
should speak so gravely as that industry, whatever it may be,
which is the occupation or delight of his life; which is his
tool to earn or serve with; and which, if it be unworthy,
stamps himself as a mere incubus of dumb and greedy bowels on
the shoulders of labouring humanity. On that subject alone
even to force the note might lean to virtue's side. It is to
be hoped that a numerous and enterprising generation of
writers will follow and surpass the present one; but it would
be better if the stream were stayed, and the roll of our old,
honest English books were closed, than that esurient book-
makers should continue and debase a brave tradition, and
lower, in their own eyes, a famous race. Better that our
serene temples were deserted than filled with trafficking and
juggling priests.
There are two just reasons for the choice of any way of life:
the first is inbred taste in the chooser; the second some
high utility in the industry selected. Literature, like any
other art, is singularly interesting to the artist; and, in a
degree peculiar to itself among the arts, it is useful to
mankind. These are the sufficient justifications for any
young man or woman who adopts it as the business of his life.
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