can be had without it, from the bread which the peasant wins with
the sweat of his brow, to the sports by which the rich man must
get rid of his ENNUI.... As for knowledge, it can no more be
planted in the human mind without labour than a field of wheat can
be produced without the previous use of the plough. There is,
indeed, this great difference, that chance or circumstances may so
cause it that another shall reap what the farmer sows; but no man
can be deprived, whether by accident or misfortune, of the fruits
of his own studies; and the liberal and extended acquisitions of
knowledge which he makes are all for his own use. Labour,
therefore, my dear boy, and improve the time. In youth our steps
are light, and our minds are ductile, and knowledge is easily laid
up; but if we neglect our spring, our summers will be useless and
contemptible, our harvest will be chaff, and the winter of our old
age unrespected and desolate." (11)

Southey was as laborious a worker as Scott. Indeed, work might
almost be said to form part of his religion. He was only nineteen
when he wrote these words:- "Nineteen years! certainly a fourth
part of my life; perhaps how great a part! and yet I have been of
no service to society. The clown who scares crows for twopence a
day is a more useful man; he preserves the bread which I eat in
idleness." And yet Southey had not been idle as a boy--on the
contrary, he had been a most diligent student. He had not only
read largely in English literature, but was well acquainted,
through translations, with Tasso, Ariosto, Homer, and Ovid. He
felt, however, as if his life had been purposeless, and he
determined to do something. He began, and from that time forward
he pursued an unremitting career of literary labour down to the
close of his life--"daily progressing in learning," to use his