LITERATURE AND LABOUR. 81 



on the side of the somewhat higher class may serve to 

 conceal the fact, it is on the part of the labouring man 

 that the real advantage lies. The mercantile accountant 

 or law-clerk, bent over his desk, his faculties concentrated 

 on his columns of figures, or on the pages which he has 

 been carefully engrossing, and unable to proceed one step 

 in his work without devoting to it all his attention, is in 

 greatly less favourable circumstances than the plough- 

 man or operative mechanic, whose mind is free though 

 his body labours, and who thus finds in the very rudeness 

 of his employment a compensation for its humble and 

 laborious character. And it will be found that the 

 humbler of the two classes is much more largely repre- 

 sented in our literature than the class by one degree less 

 humble. Ranged against the poor clerk of Nottingham, 

 Henry Kirke White, and the still more hapless Edinburgh 

 engrossing clerk, Robert Ferguson, with a very few others, 

 we find in our literature a numerous and vigorous phalanx 

 composed of men such as the Ayrshire Ploughman, the 

 Ettrick Shepherd, the Eifeshire Eoresters, the sailors 

 Dampier and Ealconer, Bunyan, Bloomfield, Ramsay, 

 Tannahill, Alexander Wilson, John Clare, Allan Cun- 

 ningham, and Ebenezer Elliot. And I was taught at 

 this time to recognize the simple principle on which the 

 greater advantages lie on the side of the humbler class/ 

 The unfavourable influence of his new occupation on his 

 literary activity proved to be of temporary nature. ' Gra- 

 dually/ he proceeds, ' I became more inured to a seden- 

 tary life, my mind recovered its spring, and my old 

 ability returned of employing my leisure hours, as be- 

 fore, in intellectual exertion/ 



Once more, therefore, we may pronounce him happy. 

 A time which, to him, seemed doubtless long, was still 

 to elapse before his union with Miss Eraser, but the 



VOL. II. 6 



