Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of
proportion to the use they commonly serve. We are amused to read
how Ben Jonson engaged, that the dull masks with which the royal
family and nobility were to be entertained should be "grounded
upon antiquity and solid learning." Can there be any greater
reproach than an idle learning? Learn to split wood, at least.
The necessity of labor and conversation with many men and things,
to the scholar is rarely well remembered; steady labor with the
hands, which engrosses the attention also, is unquestionably the
best method of removing palaver and sentimentality out of one's
style, both of speaking and writing. If he has worked hard from
morning till night, though he may have grieved that he could not
be watching the train of his thoughts during that time, yet the
few hasty lines which at evening record his day's experience will
be more musical and true than his freest but idle fancy could
have furnished. Surely the writer is to address a world of
laborers, and such therefore must be his own discipline.
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