XV.


DISEASES OF SMALL AUTHORSHIP

Particular callings, it is known, encourage particular diseases. There
is a painter's colic: the Sheffield grinder falls a victim to the
inhalation of steel dust: clergymen so often have a certain kind of sore
throat that this otherwise secular ailment gets named after them. And
perhaps, if we were to inquire, we should find a similar relation
between certain moral ailments and these various occupations, though
here in the case of clergymen there would be specific differences: the
poor curate, equally with the rector, is liable to clergyman's sore
throat, but he would probably be found free from the chronic moral
ailments encouraged by the possession of glebe and those higher chances
of preferment which follow on having a good position already. On the
other hand, the poor curate might have severe attacks of calculating
expectancy concerning parishioners' turkeys, cheeses, and fat geese, or
of uneasy rivalry for the donations of clerical charities.

Authors are so miscellaneous a class that
their personified diseases, physical and moral,
might include the whole procession of human
disorders, led by dyspepsia and ending in
madness--the awful Dumb Show of a world-historic
tragedy. Take a large enough area
of human life and all comedy melts into
tragedy, like the Fool's part by the side of
Lear. The chief scenes get filled with erring