onage, I have
never met him, and I believe him to be mythical. It is true, no doubt,
that many learned people are dull; but there is no indication whatever
that they are dull because they are learned. True dullness is seldom
acquired; it is a natural grace, the manifestations of which, however
modified by education, remain in substance the same. Fill a dull man to
the brim with knowledge, and he will not become less dull, as the
enthusiasts for education vainly imagine; but neither will he become
duller, as Mr. Harrison appears to suppose. He will remain in essence
what he always has been and always must have been. But whereas his
dullness would, if left to itself, have been merely vacuous, it may have
become, under cureful cultivation, pretentious and pedantic.

I would further point out to you that while there is no ground in
experience for supposing that a keen interest in those facts which Mr.
Harrison describes as "merely curious" has any stupefying effect upon
the mind, or has any tendency to render it insensible to the higher
things of literature and art, there is positive evidence that many of
those who have most deeply felt the charm of these higher things have
been consumed by that omnivorous appetite for knowledge which excites
Mr. Harrison's especial indignation. Dr. Johnson, for instance, though
deaf to some of the most delicate harmonies of verse, was without
question a very great critic. Yet in Dr. Johnson's opinion, literary
history, which is for the most part composed of facts which Mr. Harrison
would regard as insignificant, about authors whom he would regard as
pernicious, was the most delightful of studies. Again, consider the case
of Lord Macaulay. Lord Macaulay did everything Mr. Harrison says he
ought not to have done. From youth to age he was continuously occupied
in "gorging and enfeebling" his intellect, by the unlimited consumption
of every species of literature, from the masterpieces of the age of
Pericles to the latest rubbish from the circulating library. It is not
told of him that his intellect suffered by the process; and though it
will hardly be claimed for him that he was a great critic, none will
deny that he possessed the keenest susceptibilities for literary
excellence in many languages and in every form. If Englishmen and
Scotchmen do not satisfy you, I will take a Frenchman. The most
accomplished critic whom France has produced is, by general admission,
Ste.-Beuve. His capacity for