Studies, whatever they may be, always considered, by some a waste of time—The classical languages—The higher mathematics—The accomplishments—Indirect uses of different studies—Influence of music—Studies indirectly useful to authors—What induced Mr. Roscoe to write the lives of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Leo X.
Whatever you study, some one will consider that particular study a foolish waste of time.
If you were to abandon successively every subject of intellectual labor which had, in its turn, been condemned by some adviser as useless, the result would be simple intellectual nakedness. The classical languages, to begin with, have long been considered useless by the majority of practical people—and pray, what to shopkeepers, doctors, attorneys, artists, can be the use of the higher mathematics? And if these studies, which have been conventionally classed as serious studies, are considered unnecessary notwithstanding the tremendous authority of custom, how much the more are those studies exposed to a like contempt which belong to the category of accomplishments! What is the use of drawing, for it ends in a worthless sketch? Why should we study music when after wasting a thousand hours the amateur cannot satisfy the ear? A quoi bon modern languages when the accomplishment only enables us to call a waiter in French or German who is sure to answer us in English? And what, when it is not your trade, can be the good of dissecting animals or plants?
To all questionings of this kind there is but one reply. We work for culture. We work to enlarge the intelligence, and to make it a better and more effective instrument. This is our main purpose; but it may be added that even for our special labors it is always difficult to say beforehand exactly what will turn out in the end to be most useful. What, in appearance, can be more entirely outside the work of a landscape painter than the study of ancient history? and yet I can show you how an interest in ancient history might indirectly be of great service to a landscape painter. It would make him profoundly feel the human associations of many localities which to an ignorant man would be devoid of interest or meaning; and this human interest in the scenes where great events have taken place, or which have been distinguished by the habitation of illustrious men in other ages, is in fact one of the great fundamental motives of landscape painting. It has been very much questioned, especially by foreign critics, whether the interest in botany which is taken by some of the more cultivated English landscape painters is not for them a false direction and wrong employment of the mind; but a landscape painter may feel his interest in vegetation infinitely increased by the accurate knowledge of its laws, and such an increase of interest would make him work more zealously, and with less danger of weariness and ennui, besides being a very useful help to the memory in retaining the authentic vegetable forms. It may seem more difficult to show the possible utility of a study apparently so entirely outside of other studies as music is: and yet music has an important influence on the whole of our emotional nature, and indirectly upon expression of all kinds. He who has once learned the self-control of the musician, the use of piano and forte, each in its right place, when to be lightly swift or majestically slow, and especially how to keep to the key once chosen till the right time has come for changing it; he who has once learned this knows the secret of the arts. No painter, writer, orator, who had the power and judgment of a thoroughly cultivated musician, could sin against the broad principles of taste.
More than all other men have authors reason to appreciate the indirect utilities of knowledge that is apparently irrelevant. Who can tell what knowledge will be of most use to them? Even the very greatest of authors are indebted to miscellaneous reading, often in several different languages, for the suggestion of their most original works, and for the light which has kindled many a shining thought of their own. And authors who seem to have less need than others of an outward help, poets whose compositions might appear to be chiefly inventive and emotional, novelists who are free from the restraints and the researches of the historian, work up what they know into what they write; so that if you could remove every line which is based on studies outside the strict limits of their art, you would blot out half their compositions. Take the antiquarian element out of Scott, and see how many of his works could never have been written. Remove from Goldsmith’s brain the recollection of his wayward studies and strange experiences, and you would remove the rich material of the “Traveller” and the Essays, and mutilate even the immortal “Vicar of Wakefield.” Without a classical education and foreign travel, Byron would not have composed “Childe Harold;” without the most catholic interest in the literature of all the ages, and of many different peoples from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, our contemporary William Morris would never have conceived, and could not have executed, that strong work “The Earthly Paradise.” It may not seem necessary to learn Italian, yet Mr. Roscoe’s celebrity as an author was due in the first place to his private fondness for Italian literature. He did not learn Italian in order that he might write his biographies, but he wrote about Lorenzo and Leo because he had mastered Italian, and because the language led him to take an interest in the greatest house of Florence. The way in which authors are led by their favorite studies indirectly to the great performance of their lives has never been more clearly illustrated than in this instance.
When William Roscoe was a young man he had for his friend Francis Holden, nephew of Mr. Richard Holden, a schoolmaster in Liverpool. Francis Holden was a young man of uncommon culture, having at the same time really sound scholarship in several languages, and an ardent enthusiasm for literature. He urged Roscoe to study languages, and used especially, in their evening walks together, to repeat to him passages from the noblest poets of Italy. In this way Roscoe was led to attempt Italian, and, having once begun, went on till he had mastered it. “It was in the course of these studies,” says his biographer, “that he first formed the idea of writing the Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici.”
LETTER V.
TO A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN WHO REGRETTED THAT HIS SON HAD THE TENDENCIES OF A DILETTANT.
Inaccuracy of the common distinction between amateur pursuits and more serious studies—All of us are amateurs in many things—Prince Albert—The Emperor Napoleon III.—Contrast between general and professional education—The price of high accomplishment.