CHAPTER II.

Of the Adversaries of Literary Men among themselves.--Matter-of-fact
Men, and Men of Wit.--The Political Economist.--Of those who abandon
their studies.--Men in office.--The arbiters of public opinion.--Those
who treat the pursuits of literature with levity.


The pursuits of literature have been openly or insidiously lowered by
those literary men who, from motives not always difficult to penetrate,
are eager to confound the ranks in the republic of letters, maliciously
conferring the honours of authorship on that "Ten Thousand" whose recent
list is not so much a muster-roll of heroes as a table of population.[A]

Matter-of-fact men, or men of knowledge, and men of wit and taste, were
long inimical to each other's pursuits.[B] The Royal Society in its origin
could hardly support itself against the ludicrous attacks of literary
men,[C] and the Antiquarian Society has afforded them amusement.[D] Such
partial views have ceased to contract the understanding. Science yields a
new substance to literature; literature combines new associations for the
votaries of knowledge. There is no subject in nature, and in the history
of man, which will not associate with our feelings and our curiosity,
whenever genius extends its awakening hand. The antiquary, the naturalist,
the architect, the chemist, and even writers on medical topics, have in
our days asserted their claims, and discovered their long-interrupted
relationship with the great family of genius and literature.

[Footnote A: We have a Dictionary of "Ten Thousand living Authors" of our
own nation. The alphabet is fatal by its juxtapositions. In France, before