366 Aphorism* on Man. [ APRIL, 



LII. 



A certain bookseller wanted Northcote to write a history of art in all 

 ages and countries, and in all its ramifications and collateral bearings. 

 It would have taken a life to execute it ; but the projector thought it 

 was as easy to make the book as to draw up the title-page. Some minds 

 are as sanguine from a want of imagination, as others are from an excess 

 of it : they see no difficulty or objection in the way of what they under- 

 take, and are blind to every thing but their own interest and wishes. 



LIII. 



An outcry is raised against the distresses of literature as a tax upon 

 the public, and against the sums of money and unrepaid loans which 

 authors borrow of strangers or friends. It is not considered that but for 

 authors we should still have been in the hands of tyrants, who rioted in 

 the spoil of widows and orphans, and swept the fortunes of individuals 

 and the wealth of provinces into their pouch It will be time enough to 

 be alarmed when the Literary Fund has laid its iron grasp on fat abbey 

 lands and portly monasteries for the poor brethren of the Muses, has 

 establishments like those of the Franciscan and Dominican Friars for its 

 hoary veterans or tender novices, and has laid half the property of the 

 country under contribution. Authors are the ideal class of the present 

 day, who supply the brains of the community with " fancies and good- 

 nights," as the priests did of old ; and who cultivating no goodly vine- 

 yard of their own to satisfy the wants of the body, are sometimes entitled, 

 besides their pittance, to ask the protection of taste or liberality. After 

 all, the fees of Parnassus are trifling in comparison with the toll of 

 Purgatory. 



LIV. 



There are but few authors who should marry: they are already 

 wedded to their studies and speculations. Those who are accustomed 

 to the airy regions of poetry and romance, have a fanciful and peculiar 

 standard of perfection of their own, to which realties can seldom come 

 up ; and disappointment, indifference, or disgust, is too often the result. 

 Besides, their ideas and their intercourse with society make them fit for 

 the highest matches. If an author, baulked of the goddess of his 

 idolatry, marries an ignorant arid narrow-minded person, they have no 

 language in common : if she is a blue-stocking, they do nothing but 

 wrangle. Neither have most writers the means to maintain a wife and 

 family without difficulty. They have chosen their part, the pursuit of 

 the intellectual and abstracted; and should not attempt to force the 

 world of reality into a union with it, like mixing gold with clay. In 

 this respect, the Romish priests were perhaps wiser. " From every 

 work they challenged essoin for contemplation's sake." Yet their 

 celibacy was but a compromise with their sloth and supposed sanctity. 

 We must not contradict the course of nature, after all. 



LV. 



There is sometimes seen more natural ease and grace in a common 

 gipsy-girl than in an English court- circle. To demand a reason why, 

 is to ask why the strolling fortune-teller's hair and eyes are black, or her 

 face oval. 



