"ten years longer, for ten thousand pounds." He also wrote in the
same ecstatic mood to Bernard Barton: "I have scarce steadiness of
head to compose a letter," he said; "I am free! free as air! I
will live another fifty years.... Would I could sell you some of
my leisure! Positively the best thing a man can do is--Nothing;
and next to that, perhaps, Good Works." Two years--two long and
tedious years passed; and Charles Lamb's feelings had undergone an
entire change. He now discovered that official, even humdrum work
--"the appointed round, the daily task"--had been good for him,
though he knew it not. Time had formerly been his friend; it had
now become his enemy. To Bernard Barton he again wrote: "I assure
you, NO work is worse than overwork; the mind preys on itself--
the most unwholesome of food. I have ceased to care for almost
anything.... Never did the waters of heaven pour down upon a
forlorner head. What I can do, and overdo, is to walk. I am a
sanguinary murderer of time. But the oracle is silent."

No man could be more sensible of the practical importance of
industry than Sir Walter Scott, who was himself one of the most
laborious and indefatigable of men. Indeed, Lockhart says of him
that, taking all ages and countries together, the rare example of
indefatigable energy, in union with serene self-possession of mind
and manner, such as Scott's, must be sought for in the roll of
great sovereigns or great captains, rather than in that of
literary genius. Scott himself was most anxious to impress upon
the minds of his own children the importance of industry as a
means of usefulness and happiness in the world. To his son
Charles, when at school, he wrote:- "I cannot too much impress
upon your mind that LABOUR is the condition which God has imposed
on us in every station of life; there is nothing worth having that