can apply himself. Just consider
the situation. Here is your man of letters, tender-hearted as Cowper,
who would not count upon his list of friends the man who tramples
heedlessly upon a worm; as light of sleep and abhorrent of noise as
Beattie, who denounces chanticleer for his lusty proclamation of morning
to his own and the neighbouring farmyards in terms that would be
unmeasured if applied to Nero; as alive to blame as Byron, who declared
that the praise of the greatest of the race could not take the sting from
the censure of the meanest. Fancy the sufferings of a creature so built
and strung in a world which creaks so vilely on its hinges as this! Will
such a man confront a dun with an imperturbable countenance? Will he
throw himself back in his chair and smile blandly when his chamber is
lanced through and through by the notes of a street bagpiper? When his
harrassed brain should be solaced by music, will he listen patiently to
stupid remarks? I fear not. The man of letters suffers keenlier than
people suspect from sharp, cruel noises, from witless observations, from
social misconceptions of him of every kind, from hard utilitarian wisdom,
and from his own good things going to the grave unrecognised and
unhonoured. And, forced to live by his pen, to extract from his brain
bread and beer, clothing, lodging, and income-tax, I am not surprised
that he is oftentimes nervous, querulous, impatient. Thinking of these
things, I do not wonder at Hazlitt's spleen, at Charles Lamb's punch, at
Coleridge's opium. I think of the days spent in writing, and of the
nights which repeat the day in dream, and in which there is no
refreshment. I think of the brain which must be worked out at length; of
Scott, when the wand of the enchanter was broken, writing poor romances;
of Southey sitting vacantly in his library, and drawing a feeble
satisfaction from the faces of his books. And for the man of letters
there is more than the mere labour: he writes his book, and has
frequently the mortification of seeing it neglected or torn to pieces.
Above all men, he longs for sympathy, recognition, applause. He respects
his fellow-creatures, because he beholds in him a possible reader. To
write a book, to send it forth to the world and the critics, is to a
sensitive person like plunging mother-naked into tropic waters where
sharks abound. It is true that, like death, the terror of criticism
lives most in apprehension; still, to hav