Literary character of men of genius : drawn from their own feelings and confessions / by Isaac Disraeli.
- Isaac D'Israeli
- Date:
- [1881?]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Literary character of men of genius : drawn from their own feelings and confessions / by Isaac Disraeli. Source: Wellcome Collection.
36/488 page 16
![passions, has been struck out of the system of our political economists. Tt is, however, only among their “ unproduc- tive labourers” that wc shall find those men of leisure, whose habitual pursuits are consumed in the development of thought and the gradual accessions of knowledge; those men of wliom the sage of J udea declares, that “ It is he who hath little liusiness who shall become wise : how can he get wisdom that lioldeth the plough, and whose talk is of bullocks ? But TitiiY,”—the men of leisure and study,—“ will maintain THE STATE OF THE WOULD!” The prosperity and the happi- ness of a people include something more evident and more jicrmanent than “ the Wealth of a Nation.”* There is a more formidable class of men of genius who are heartless to the interests of literature. Like Counelius Aoiuri’A, who wrote on “ the vanity of the arts and sciences,” many of these are only tracing in the arts which they have abandoned their own inconstant tempers, their feeble tastes, and their disordered judgments. But, with others of this class, study has usually served as the instrument, not as the object, of tlicir ascent; it was the ladder which they once climbed, but it was not the eastern star which guided and in- spii'cd. Such literary characters were WAii]!UUTON,t Wat- * Since this murmur has been uttered against the degrading views of o:me of those theorist.?, it afforded me pleasure to observe that Mr. Mal- thus has fully sanctioned its justness. On this head, at least, Afr. Malthus has amply confuted his stubborn and tasteless brothers. Alluding to the productions of genius, this writer observes, that, “to estimate the value of Nkwton’s discoveries, or the delight communicated by Shakspearb and Milton, by the price at which their works have sold, would be but a ]>3or measure of the degree in which they have elevated and enclnanted their country.”—Principles of Pol. Econ. p. 48. And hence he acknow- Ic-lges, that “some unproductive labour is of much more me and impor- tance than productive labour, but is incapable of being the subject of the gi'oss calculations which relate to national wealth ; contributing to other sources of happiness besides those which are derived from matter.” Po- litical economists would have smiled with contempt on the querulous PoRSON, who once observed, that “it seemed to him very hard, that with all his critical knowledge of Greek, he could not get a hundred pounds.” They would have demonstrated to the learned Grecian, that this was just as it ought to be ; the .siime occurrence had even hapjiened to Homer in his own country, where Greek ought to have fetched a higher price than in E-.gland ; but, that both might have obtained this hundred pounds, had tb“ Grecian bard and the Greek professor been employed at the same Btooking frame together, instead of the “Iliad.” '■ j’;r a full disquisition of the character and career of AVarhurton, .sco the c.'i-say in “ Quarrels of Authors.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24851590_0036.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
