t pace until he touch the goal. "A peerage or
Westminster Abbey!" cried Nelson in his bright, boyish, heroic manner.
These are great incentives; not for any of these, but for the plain
satisfaction of living, of being about their business in some sort or
other, do the brave, serviceable men of every nation tread down the
nettle danger, and pass flyingly over all the stumbling-blocks of
prudence. Think of the heroism of Johnson, think of that superb
indifference to mortal limitation that set him upon his dictionary, and
carried him through triumphantly until the end! Who, if he were wisely
considerate of things at large, would ever embark upon any work much
more considerable than a halfpenny post-card? Who would project a serial
novel, after Thackeray and Dickens had each fallen in midcourse? Who
would find heart enough to begin to live, if he dallied with the
consideration of death?

And, after all, what sorry and pitiful quibbling all this is! To forego
all the issues of living in a parlour with a regulated temperature--as
if that were not to die a hundred times over, and for ten years at a
stretch! As if it were not to die in one's own lifetime, and without
even the sad immunities of death! As if it were not to die, and yet be
the patient spectators of our own pitiable change! The Permanent
Possibility is preserved, but the sensations carefully held at arm's
length, as if one kept a photographic plate in a dark chamber. It is
better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser.
It is better to live and be done with it, than to die daily in the
sick-room. By all means begin your folio; even if the doctor does not
give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push
and see what can be accomplished in a week. It is not only in finished
undertakings that we ought to honour useful labour. A spirit goes out of
the man who means execution, which outlives the most untimely ending.
All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good
work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every
heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse
behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even
if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying
out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with
hope, and their mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once
tripped up and silenc