"I assure you,
NO work is worse than overwork; the mind preys on itself--the most
unwholesome of food. I have ceased to care for almost anything.... Never
did the waters of heaven pour down upon a forlorner head. What I can
do, and overdo, is to walk. I am a sanguinary murderer of time. But the
oracle is silent."

No man could be more sensible of the practical importance of industry
than Sir Walter Scott, who was himself one of the most laborious and
indefatigable of men. Indeed, Lockhart says of him that, taking all ages
and countries together, the rare example of indefatigable energy, in
union with serene self-possession of mind and manner, such as Scott's,
must be sought for in the roll of great sovereigns or great captains,
rather than in that of literary genius. Scott himself was most anxious
to impress upon the minds of his own children the importance of industry
as a means of usefulness and happiness in the world. To his son Charles,
when at school, he wrote:--"I cannot too much impress upon your mind
that LABOUR is the condition which God has imposed on us in every
station of life; there is nothing worth having that can be had without
it, from the bread which the peasant wins with the sweat of his brow,
to the sports by which the rich man must get rid of his ENNUI.... As for
knowledge, it can no more be planted in the human mind without labour
than a field of wheat can be produced without the previous use of
the plough. There is, indeed, this great difference, that chance or
circumstances may so cause it that another shall reap what the farmer
sows; but no man can be deprived, whether by accident or misfortune, of
the fruits of his own studies; and the liberal and extended acquisitions
of knowledge which he makes are all for his own use. Labour, therefore,
my dear boy, and improve the time. In youth our steps are light, and our
minds are ductile, and knowledge is easily laid up; but if we neglect
our spring, our summers will be useless and contemptible, our harvest
will be chaff, and the winter of our old age unrespected and desolate."
[1311]

Southey was as laborious a worker as Scott. Indeed, work might almost
be said to form part of his religion. He was only nineteen when he
wrote these words:--"Nineteen years! certainly a fourth part of my life;
perhaps how great a part! and yet I have been of no service to society.
The clown who scares crows for twopence a day is a more useful man; he
preserves the bread