20. The student, enflamed by this encouragement, sets forward in the new path, and proceeds a few steps with great alacrity; but he soon finds asperities and intricacies of which he has not been forewarned, and imagining that none ever were so entangled or fatigued before him, sinks suddenly into despair, and desists as from an expedition in which fate opposes him. Thus his terrors are multiplied by his hopes, and he is defeated without resistance, because he had no expectation of an enemy.
21. Of these treacherous instructors, the one destroys industry, by declaring that industry is vain, the other by representing it as needless: the one cuts away the root of hope, the other raises it only to be blasted. The one confines his pupil to the shore, by telling him that his wreck is certain; the other sends him to sea without preparing him for tempests.
22. False hopes and false terrors, are equally to be avoided. Every man who proposes to grow eminent by learning, should carry in his mind, at once, the difficulty of excellence, and the force of industry; and remember that fame is not conferred but as the recommence of labour, and that labour, vigorously continued, has not often failed of its reward.
Fortitude founded upon the fear of God.
GUARDIAN, No. 167.
1. Looking over the late edition of Monsieur Boileau's works, I was very much pleased with the article which he has added to his notes on the translation of Longinus. He there tells us, that the sublime in writing rises either from the nobleness of the thought, the magnificence of the words, or the harmonious and lively turn of the phrase, and that the perfect sublime rises from all these three in conjunction together. He produces an instance of this perfect sublime in four verses from the Athalia of Monsieur Racine.
2. When Abner, one of the chief officers of the court, represents to Joad the high priest, that the queen was incensed against him, the high priest, not in the least terrified at the news, returns this answer:
Celui que met un frein à la fureur des flots,
Scait aussi des méchans arréter les complots;
Soumis avecs respect à sa volutté sainte,
Je crains Dieu, cher Abner, & n'ai point d'autre crainte.
3. 'He who ruleth the raging of the sea, knows also how to check the designs of the ungodly. I submit myself with reverence to his holy will. O Abner! I fear my God, and I fear none but him.' Such a thought gives no less a solemnity to human nature, than it does to good writing.