Till shade and silence waken up as one, And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth: On panting wings through the inclement skies, Undazzled at noon day, And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes. II. Where are the blooms of Summer? In the West, Where is the pride of Summer-the green prime- Trembling-and one upon the old oak tree! Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew, Or wearing the long gloomy winter through In the smooth holly's green eternity. III. The squirrel gloats on his accomplish'd hoard; The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells; And sighs her tearful spells Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain. She sits and reckons up the dead and gone, Like a dim picture of the drowned past, In the hush'd mind's mysterious far-away, Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last Into that distance-grey upon the grey. IV. Aye, go and sit with her, and be o'ershaded Upon her forehead, like a constant care ;- To frame her cloudy prison for the soul. H. LETTERS TO A YOUNG MAN WHOSE EDUCATION HAS BY THE AUTHOR OF THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. No. II. Outline of the Work.-Notice of former Writers on the same subject. MY DEAR M.---In this, my second and last letter of preface, I shall settle the idea and the arrangement of my papers: these will be in all about seven, of which four will exhibit the materials on which the student is to work; the other three, the tools with which the workmanship is to be conducted. First, what is to be done; and secondly, how---is the natural and obvious distribution of the work: that is to say, the business is to assign, first, the end---and, secondly, the means. And, because the end should reasonably determine the means, it would seem natural that in the arrangement of the work all which relates to that should have precedency. Nevertheless, I mean to invert this order; and for the following reason: all that part of the means, which are so entirely determined by the end as to presuppose its full and circumstantial developement, may be concluded specially restricted to that individual end: in proportion to this restriction they will, therefore, be of narrow application, and are best treated in direct connection and concurrently with the object to which they are thus appropriated. On the other hand, those means or instruments of thought, which are sufficiently complex and important to claim a separate attention to themselves, are usually of such large and extensive use, that they belong indifferently to all schemes of study---and may safely be premised in any plan, however novel in its principles, or peculiar in its tendencies. What are these general instruments of study? According to my view they are three; first, Logic; secondly, Languages; thirdly, Arts of Memory. With respect to these, it is not necessary that any special end should be previously given: be his end what it may, every student must have thoughts to arrange, knowledge to transplant, and facts to FEB. 1823. record. Means, which are thus universally requisite, may safely have precedency of the end: and it will not be a preposterous order, if I dedicate my three first letters to the several subjects of Logic, Languages, and Arts of Memory; which will compose one half of my scheme: leaving to the other half, the task of unfolding the course of study for which these instruments will be available. Having thus settled the arrange ment,and implicitly, therefore, settled in part the idea or ratio of my scheme,---I shall go on to add what may be necessary to confine your expectations to the right track, and prevent them from going above or below the true character of the mark I aim at. I profess then to attempt something much higher than merely di rections for a course of reading. Not that such a work might not be of eminent service; and in particular at this time, and with a constant adaptation to the case of rich men, not literary, I am of opinion, that no more useful book could be executed than a series of letters (addressed, for example, to country gentlemen, merchants, &c.) on the formation of a library. The uses of such a treatise, however, are not those which I con template; for either it would presume and refer to a plan of study already settled; and in that light, it is a mere complement of the plan I propose to execute: or else it would attempt to involve a plan of study in the course of reading suggested: and that would be neither more nor less than to do in concreto, what it is far more convenient, as well as more philosophical to do (as I am now going to do) directly and in abstracto. A mere course of reading, therefore, is much below what I propose: on the other hand, an organon of the human understanding is as much above it: such a work is a labour for a life: that is to say, though it may take up but a small part of every day, yet could it in no other way accumulate its materials, than by keeping the mind everlastingly on the watch to seize upon such notices as may arise daily throughout a life under the favour of accident or occasion. Forty years are not too large a period for such a work; and my present work, however maturely meditated, must be executed with rapidity. Here, in fact, I do but sketch or trace in outline (ws EV TUTY meρiλaßeiv), what there it would become my duty to develope, to fill up in detail, to apply, and to illustrate on the most extensive scale. After having attempted in my first part to put you in possession of the best method for acquiring the instruments of study; and, with respect to logic in particular, having directed a philosophic light upon its true meaning and purpose---with the ho pe of extinguishing that anarchy of errors which have possessed this ground from the time of Lord Bacon to the moment at which I write, I then, in the second division, address myself to the question of ends. Upon which word let me distinguish: upon ends, in an absolute sense, as ultimate ends, it is presumption in any man to offer counsel to another of mature age. Advice of that sort, given under whatever hollow pretences of kindness, is to be looked upon as arrogance in the most repulsive shape; and to be rejected with that sort of summary disdain, which any man not of servile nature would testify towards him who should attempt to influence his choice of a wife. A student of mature age must be presumed to be best acquainted with his own talents, and his own intellectual infirmities, with his forte" and his "foible," with his own former experience of failure or success, and with the direction in which his inclinations point. Far be it from me to violate by the spirit of my counsels a pride so reasonable, which, in truth, I hold sacred. My scheme takes a humbler ground. Ends indeed, in a secondary sense, the latter half professes to deal with: but such ends as, though bearing that character, in relation to what is purely and merely instrumental, yet again become means in relation to ends absolutely so called. The final application of your powers and knowledge it is for yourself only to determine: my pretensions in regard to that election are limited to this—that I profess to place you on a vantage ground from which you may determine more wisely, by determining from a higher point of survey. My purpose is not to map the whole course of your journey, but to serve as your guide to that station, at which you may be able to lay down your future route for yourself. The former half of my work I have already described to you: the latter half endeavours to construct such a system of study as shall combine these two advantages-1. Systematic unity; i. e. such a principle of internal connexion, as that the several parts of the plan shall furnish assistance interchangeably: 2. The largest possible compass of external relations. Some empires, you know, are built for growth: others are essentially improgressive, but are built for duration, on some principle of strong internal cohesion. Systems of knowledge, however, and schemes of study, should propose both ends :-they should take their foundations broad and deep, And lay great bases for eternity: which is the surest key to internal and systematic connexion: and, secondly, they should provide for future growth and accretion; regarding all knowledge as a nucleus and centre of accumulation for other knowledge. It is on this latter principle, by the way, that the system of education in our public schools, however otherwise defective, is justly held superior to the specious novelties of our suburban academies; for it is more radical, and adapted to a larger superstructure. Such, I say, is the character of my scheme: and by the very act of claiming for it, as one of its benefits, that it leaves you in the centre of large and comprehensive relations to other parts of knowledge; it is pretty apparent that I do not presume to suggest in what direction of these manifold relations you should afterwards advance; that, as I have now sufficiently explained, will be left to your own self-knowledge; but to your self-knowledge illumined at the point where I leave you by that other knowledge which my scheme of study professes to communicate. From this general outline of my own plan, I am led by an easy transition to a question of yours, respecting the merits of the most celebrated amongst those who have trod the same ground in past times. Excepting only a little treatise of Erasmus, de Ratione Studii, all the essays on this subject by eminent Continental writers appeared in the 17th century; and of these, a large majority before the year 1640. They were universally written in Latin; and, the Latin of that age being good, they are so far agreeable to read: beyond this, and the praise of elegance in their composition and arrangement, I have not much to say in their behalf. About the year 1645, Lewis Elzevir published a corpus of these essays; amounting in all to four-and-twenty: in point of elegance and good sense, their merits are various: thus far they differ: but, in regard to the main point, they hold a lamentable equality of pretension-being all thoroughly hollow and barren of any practical use. I cannot give you a better notion of their true place and relation to the class of works which you are in search of, than by an analogy drawn from the idea of didactic poetry, as it exists in the Roman literature and our own. So thoroughly is this The sometimes misunderstood, that I Not for the sake of any exception in its favour from the general censure here pronounced on this. body of essays, but for its extraordinary tone of passion and frantic energy, and at times of noble sentiment, cloquently expressed, I must notice as by far the most memorable of these essays of the 17th century-that of Joachim Forz Ringelberg, On the Method of Study (De Ratione Studii). It is one of those books which have been written most evidently not merely by a madman (as many thousands have) but by a madman under a high paroxysm of his malady: and, omitting a few instances of affectation and puerility, it is highly affecting. It appears that the author, though not thirty years of age at the date of his book, was afflicted with the gravel; according to his own belief incurably; and much of the book was actually written in darkness (on waxen tablets, or on wooden tablets, with a stylus formed of charred bones) during the sleepless nights of pain consequent upon his disease. "Etas abiit," says he, "reditura nunquam-Ah! nunquam reditura! Tametsi annum nunc solùm trigesimum ago, spem tamen ademit calculi morbus." And again: "Sic interim meditantem calculi premunt, ut gravi ipsa dolore mæreat mens, et plerumque noctes abducat insomnes angor." Towards the end it is that he states the remarkable circumstances under which the book was composed. "Bonam partem libri hujus in tenebris scripsi, quando somnus me ob calculi dolorem reliquerat; idque quum sol adversa nobis figeret vestigia, nocte vagante in medio cœlo. Deerat lumen; verum tabulas habeo, quibus etiam in tenebris utor." It is singular that so interesting a book should no where have been noticed to my knowledge in English literature, except, indeed, in a slight and inaccurate way, by Dr. Vicesimus Knox, in his Winter Evening Lucubrations. must have presided in the compo sition of the various essays of the 17th century, addressed to students: the subject was felt to be austere and unattractive, and almost purely scholastic: it was the ambition of the writers, therefore, to show that they could present it in a graceful shape and that, under their treat ment, the subject might become interesting to the reader, as an arena, upon which skill was exhibited, baffling or evading difficulties,-even at the price of all benefit to the anxious and earnest disciple. Spartam nactus es, was their motto, hanc exorna: and like Cicero, in his Idea of an Orator, with relation to the practical duties of the forum; or Lord Shaftesbury, with relation to the accurate know ledge of the academic philosophy; they must be supposed deliberately to have made a selection from the arts or doctrines before them, for the sake of a beautiful composition which should preserve all its parts in har mony, and only secondarily (if at all) to have regarded the interests of the student. By all of them the invitation held out was not so much Indocti discant, as Ament meminisse periti. In our own country there have been numerous "letters," &c. on this interesting subject; but not one that has laid any hold on the public mind, except the two works of Dr. Watts, especially that upon the "Improvement of the Mind." Being the most imbecile of books, it must have owed its success, 1. To the sectarian zeal of his party in religion-his fellows and his followers: 2. To the fact of its having gained for its author, from two Scotch universities, the highest degree they could bestow: 3. To the distinguished honour of having been adopted as a lecture book (q. as an examination book?) by both English universities: 4. To the extravagant praise of Dr. Johnson, amongst whose infirmities it was to praise warmly, when he was flattered by the sense of his own great superiority in powers and knowledge. Dr. Johnson supposes it to have been modelled on Locke's Conduct of the Understand ing; but surely this is as ludicrous as to charge, upon Silence, any claborate imitation of Mr. Justice Shallow. That Silence may have borrow ed from another man half of a joke, or echoed the rear of his laughter, is possible; but of any more grave or laborious attempts to rob he stands ludicrously acquitted by the exemplary imbecility of his nature. No: Dr. Watts did not steal from Mr. Locke: in matters of dulness a man is easily original: and I suppose that even Feeble or Shadow might have had credit for the effort necessary to the following counsels, taken at random from Dr. Watts, at the page where the book has happened to fall open. 1. Get a distinct and comprehensive knowledge of the subject which you treat of; survey it on all sides, and make yourself perfect master of it: then (then! what then?-Think of Feeble making an inference. Well, then,") you will have all the sentiments that relate to it in your view. 2. Be well skilled in the language which you speak. 3. Acquire a variety of words, a copia verborum. Let your memory be rich in synonymous terms, P. 228. edit. 1817. Well done, most magnanimous Feeble.-Such counsels, I suppose that any man might have produced; and you will not wish to see criticised. Let me rather inquire, what common defect it is which has made the works of much more ingenious men, and in particular that of Locke, utterly useless for the end proposed. The error in these books is the same which occurs in books of ethics, and which has made them more or less useless for any practical purpose. As it is important to put an end to all delusion in matters of such grave and general concern as the improve ment of our understandings, or the moral valuation of actions; and as I repeat that the delusion here alluded to has affected both equally (so far as they can be affected by the books written professedly to assist them), it may be worth while to spend a few lines in exposing it. I believe that you are so far acquainted with the structure of a syllogism as to know how to distinguish between the major and minor proposition: there is, indeed, a technical rule which makes it impossible to err; but you will have no need of that, if you once apprehend the ra |