live?' To one who has any gift of humour there are few things more
amusing than to observe how this vulgar, but really rather important
inquiry, is ignored by those who take the subject of modern education in
hand. They are chiefly schoolmasters, who are not so deep in their books
but that they can spare a glance or two in the direction of their
banker's account; or fellows of colleges who have no children, and
therefore never feel the difficulties of supporting them. Heaven forbid
that so humble an individual as myself should question their wisdom, or
say anything about them that should seem to smack of irreverence; but I
do believe that (with one or two exceptions I have in my mind) the
system they have introduced among us is the Greatest Humbug in the
universe. In the meantime poor Paterfamilias (who is the last man, they
flatter themselves, to find this out) stands with his hands (and very
little else) in his pockets, regarding his clever offspring, and
wondering what he shall do with him. He remembers to have read about a
man on his deathbed, who calls his children about him and thanks God,
though he has left them nothing to live upon, he has given them a good
education, and tries to extract comfort from the reminiscence. That he
has spent money enough upon Jack's education is certain; something
between two or three thousand pounds in all at least, the interest of
which, it strikes him, would be very convenient just now to keep him.
But unfortunately the principal is gone and Jack isn't.

Now suppose--for one may suppose anything, however ridiculous--he had
spent two or three hundred pounds at the very most, and brought him up
to the Calling of Literature. He believes, perhaps, that it is only
geniuses that succeed in it (in which case I know more geniuses than I
had any idea of), and he doesn't think Jack a genius, though Jack's
mother does. Or, as is more probable, he regards it as a hand-to-mouth
calling, which to-day gives its disciples a five-pound note, and