Alas! the Muses are shy and wild; and though they will haunt, like
skylarks, on the bleakest northern moor as cheerfully as on the sunny
hills of Greece, and rise thence singing into the heaven of heavens, yet
they are hard to tempt into a gilded cage, however amusingly made and
plentifully stored with comforts. Royal societies, associations of
savants, and the like, are good for many things, but not for the
breeding of art and genius: for they are things which cannot be bred.
Such institutions are excellent for physical science, when, as among us
now, physical science is going on the right method: but where, as in
Alexandria, it was going on an utterly wrong method, they stereotype the
errors of the age, and invest them with the prestige of authority, and
produce mere Sorbonnes, and schools of pedants. To literature, too,
they do some good, that is, in a literary age--an age of reflection
rather than of production, of antiquarian research, criticism,
imitation, when book-making has become an easy and respectable pursuit
for the many who cannot dig, and are ashamed to beg. And yet, by adding
that same prestige of authority, not to mention of good society and
Court favour, to the popular mania for literature, they help on the
growing evil, and increase the multitude of prophets who prophesy out of
their own heart and have seen nothing.
Pages:
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48