Johnsons; yet how many men at this day are assailed
by incessant demands on their mental powers, which only a productiveness
like his could suitably supply! There is a demand for a reckless
originality of thought, and a sparkling plausibility of argument, which he
would have despised, even if he could have displayed; a demand for crude
theory and unsound philosophy, rather than none at all. It is a sort of
repetition of the "Quid novi?" of the Areopagus, and it must have an
answer. Men must be found who can treat, where it is necessary, like the
Athenian sophist, _de omni scibili_,

"Grammaticus, Rhetor, Geometres, Pictor, Aliptes,
Augur, Schoenobates, Medicus, Magus, omnia novit."

I am speaking of such writers with a feeling of real sympathy for men who
are under the rod of a cruel slavery. I have never indeed been in such
circumstances myself, nor in the temptations which they involve; but most
men who have had to do with composition must know the distress which at
times it occasions them to have to write--a distress sometimes so keen and
so specific that it resembles nothing else than bodily pain. That pain is
the token of the wear and tear of mind; and, if works done comparatively
at leisure involve such mental fatigue and exhaustion, what must be the
toil of those whose intellects are to be flaunted daily before the public
in full dress, and that dress ever new and varied, and spun, like the
silkworm's, out of themselves! Still whatever true sympathy we may feel
for the ministers of this dearly purchased luxury, and whatever sense we
may have of the great intellectual power which the literature in question
displays, we cannot honestly close our eyes to its direct evil.

One other remark suggests itself, which is the last I shall think it
necessary to make. The authority, which in former times was lodged in
Universities, now resides in very great measure in that literary world, as
it is called, to which I have been referring. This is not satisfactory,
if, as no one can deny, its teaching be so offhand, so ambitious, so
changeable. It increases the seriousness of the mischief, that so very
large a portion of its writers are anonymous, for irresponsible power
never can be any thing but a great evil; and, moreover, that, even when
they are known, they can give no better guarantee for the philosophical
truth of their principles than their popularity at the moment, and their
happy conformity in ethical character to the