Cleo. About the metre of the comic poets among the ancients.
Hor. I know what you mean now; the manner of scanding and chanting those verses.
Cleo. Can you think of any thing belonging to literature, of less importance, or more useless?
Hor. Not readily.
Cleo. Yet the great contest between them, you see, is which of them understands it best, and has known it the longest. This instance, I think, hints to us how highly improbable it is, though men should act from no better principles than envy, avarice, and ambition, that when learning is once established, any part of it, even the most unprofitable, should ever be neglected in such a large opulent nation as ours is; where there are so many places of honour, and great revenues to be disposed of among scholars.
Hor. But since men are fit to serve in most places with so little capacity, as you insinuate, why should they give themselves that unnecessary trouble of studying hard, and acquiring more learning than there is occasion for?
Cleo. I thought I had answered that already; a great many, because they take delight in study and knowledge.
Hor. But there are men that labour at it with so much application, as to impair their healths, and actually to kill themselves with the fatigue of it.
Cleo. Not so many as there are that injure their healths, and actually kill themselves with hard drinking, which is the most unreasonable pleasure of the two, and a much greater fatigue. But I do not deny that there are men who take pains to qualify themselves in order to serve their country; what I insist upon is, that the number of those who do the same thing to serve themselves with little regard to their country, is infinitely greater. Mr. Hutcheson, who wrote the Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, seems to be very expert at weighing and measuring the quantities of affection, benevolence, &c. I wish that curious metaphysician would give himself the trouble, at his leisure, to weigh two things separately: First, the real love men have for their country, abstracted from selfishness. Secondly, the ambition they have of being thought to act from that love, though they feel none. I wish, I say, that this ingenious gentleman would once weigh these two asunder; and afterwards, having taken in impartially all he could find of either, in this or any other nation, show us in his demonstrative way, what proportion the quantities bore to each other.—Quisque sibi commissus est, says Seneca; and certainly, it is not the care of others, but the care of itself, which nature has trusted and charged every individual creature with. When men exert themselves in an extraordinary manner, they generally do it to be the better for it themselves; to excel, to be talked of, and to be preferred to others, that follow the same business, or court the same favours.
Hor. Do you think it more probable, that men of parts and learning should be preferred, than others of less capacity?