2 HEROES OF INVENTION AND DISCO VER V. 



ment of the study of languages merely as such, we may just 

 remark that the observation is, perhaps, not quite so profound 

 as it is plausible. So long as one mind differs from another, 

 there will always be much difference of sentiment as to the 

 comparative claims upon our regard of that, on the one hand, 

 which addresses itself principally to the taste or the imagination, 

 and that, on the other, which makes its appeal to the under- 

 standing only. But it is, at any rate, to be remembered that, 

 in confining the epithet useful, as is commonly done, to the 

 latter, it is intended to describe it as the useful only pre- 

 eminently, and not exclusively. The agreeable or the graceful 

 is plainly also useful. The study of language and style, there- 

 fore, cannot with any propriety be denounced as a mere waste 

 of time ; but, on the contrary, is well fitted to beconie to the 

 mind a source both of enjoyment and of power. So great, 

 indeed, is the influence of diction upon the common feelings of 

 mankind, that no literary work, it may be safely asserted, has 

 ever acquired a permanent reputation and popularity, or, in 

 other words, produced any wide and enduring effect, which was 

 not distinguished by the graces of its style. Their deficiency, 

 in this respect, has been at least one of the causes of the com- 

 parative oblivion into which Mr. Boyle's own writings have 

 fallen, and, doubtless, weakened the efficacy of such of them as 

 aimed at anything beyond a bare statement of facts, even in his 

 own day. It was this especially which exposed some of his 

 moral lucubrations to Swift's annihilating ridicule. 



On being brought home from Eton, Boyle, who was his 

 father's favourite son, was placed under the care of a neighbour- 

 ing clergyman, who, instructing him, he says, " both with care and 

 civility, soon brought him to renew his first acquaintance with 

 the Roman tongue, and to improve it so far that in that Ian- 



