172 president's address — section Ji 



made to the Treasury for some assistance to Robert Burns, 

 and Pitt, who was lavishing money like water in resistance 

 to France, spending- twenty millions in the absolutely useless 

 Walcheren Expedition under the command of his incompetent 

 brother, refused the httle subsidy to the poet, using the words 

 that I have quoted. Whether Pitt was right or not in the 

 refusal, they are noble words — not so noble, perhaps, in the 

 mouth of Power refusing to assist, as in the mouth of 

 Literature, putting from her pensions and endowments, 

 places and titles, for fear lest in the days to come public and 

 collective patronage should assume the functions once 

 performed, to literature's serious detriment, by private 

 patronage. 



" And mark what ills the scholar's life assail, 

 Toil, envy, want, the garret, and the gaol." 



So, in his sonorous English, wrote Dr. Johnson in the first 

 edition of his " Vanity of Human Wishes." But the garret is 

 only a special form of the want which precedes it. A new 

 sting was added to the line in the later form that Dr, 

 Johnson, fresh from his experience with Lord Chesterfield, 

 gave it : — 



" Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol." 

 Literature having once, and thanks partly to Johnson 

 himself, shaken itself free from the fetters of patronage, will 

 not readily — will never, if wise — put on the old chains 

 re-cast. Of literature the public is the patron — perhaps a 

 day may come when Science can make the same claim. 

 " Literature will take care of itself." " Yes," added Mr. 

 Southey, according to a well-known passage in Carlyle, " it 

 will take care of itself; and of you, too, if you do not look 

 to it ! " It sounds a somewhat truculent threat on the lips 

 of the blameless Southey. The tone is different from that of 

 a greater ]3oet, expecting an assault upon the city where he 

 dwelt : — 



" He can requite thee, for he knows the charms 



That call fame on such gentle acts as these ; 



And he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas 

 Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms." 



There is a sense in which a literary man surrounded by 

 the scientific may fairly add, " and of you, too." When men 

 of science press, as they sometimes do, for the extrusion 

 from our educational courses of the humanities (excuse the 

 good old term — it is not so much pedantic as Scotch, and 

 very expressive), then 1 venture humbly to maintain that 



