"With the exception of one extraordinary man, I have never known an individual, least of all an individual of genius, healthy or happy without a profession, i.e., some regular employment, which does not depend on the will of the moment, and which can be carried on so far mechanically, that an average quantum only of health, spirits, and intellectual exertion are requisite to its faithful discharge. Three hours of leisure, unannoyed by any alien anxiety, and looked forward to with delight as a change and recreation, will suffice to realize in literature a larger product of what is truly genial, than weeks of compulsion. Money, and immediate reputation form only an arbitrary and accidental end of literary labour. The hope of increasing them by any given exertion will often prove a stimulant to industry; but the necessity of acquiring them will, in all works of genius, convert the stimulant into a narcotic. Motives by excess reverse their very nature, and instead of exciting, stun and stupify the mind; for it is one contra-distinction of genius from talent, that its predominant end is always comprised in the means; and this is one of the many points, which establish an analogy between genius and virtue. Now, though talents may exist without genius, yet, as genius cannot exist, certainly not manifest itself, without talents, I would advise every scholar, who feels the genial power working within him, so far to make a division between the two, as that he should devote his talents to the acquirement of competence in some known trade or profession, and his genius to objects of his tranquil and unbiassed choice; while the consciousness of being actuated in both alike by the sincere desire to perform his duty, will alike ennoble both. "My dear young friend," (I would say), "suppose yourself established in any honourable occupation. From the manufactory or counting-house, from the law-court, or from having visited your last patient, you return at evening,
to your family, prepared for its social enjoyments, with the very countenances of your wife and children brightened, and their voice of welcome made doubly welcome by the knowledge that, as far as they are concerned, you have satisfied the demands of the day, by the labour of the day. Then, when you retire into your study, in the books on your shelves, you revisit so many venerable friends with whom you can converse. Your own spirit scarcely less free from personal anxieties than the great minds, that in those books are still living for you! Even your writing-desk, with its blank paper and all its other implements, will appear as a chain of flowers, capable of linking your feelings, as well as thoughts to events, and characters, past or to come: not a chain of iron which binds you down to think of the future and the remote, by recalling the claims and feelings of the peremptory present: but why should I say retire? The habits of active life and daily intercourse with the stir of the world, will tend to give you such self command, that the presence of your family will be no interruption. Nay, the social silence, or undisturbing voices of a wife or sister will be like a restorative atmosphere, or soft music which moulds a dream without becoming its object. If facts are required to prove the possibility of combining weighty performances in literature with full and independent employment, the works of Cicero and Xenophon among the ancients; of Sir Thomas Moore, Bacon, Baxter, or, to refer at once to later and contemporary instances, Darwin and Roscoe, are at once decisive of the question."'Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of home
Is sweetest...'
'Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of home
Is sweetest...'
Biog. Lit.
Tale and novel writing of second-rate order, somewhat spiced and stimulating, are sure to succeed, and carry 'of course' popularity with their success, by advertising the writer. Of this there is an instance in Coleridge's own works. The
Zapoyla
, entitled a