Labour,
therefore, my dear boy, and improve the time. In youth our steps
are light, and our minds are ductile, and knowledge is easily laid
up; but if we neglect our spring, our summers will be useless and
contemptible, our harvest will be chaff, and the winter of our old
age unrespected and desolate." (11)
Southey was as laborious a worker as Scott. Indeed, work might
almost be said to form part of his religion. He was only nineteen
when he wrote these words:- "Nineteen years! certainly a fourth
part of my life; perhaps how great a part! and yet I have been of
no service to society. The clown who scares crows for twopence a
day is a more useful man; he preserves the bread which I eat in
idleness." And yet Southey had not been idle as a boy--on the
contrary, he had been a most diligent student. He had not only
read largely in English literature, but was well acquainted,
through translations, with Tasso, Ariosto, Homer, and Ovid. He
felt, however, as if his life had been purposeless, and he
determined to do something. He began, and from that time forward
he pursued an unremitting career of literary labour down to the
close of his life--"daily progressing in learning," to use his
own words--"not so learned as he is poor, not so poor as proud,
not so proud as happy."
The maxims of men often reveal their character. (12) That of Sir
Walter Scott was, "Never to be doing nothing.
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