There
May Be Nothing Lofty In The Sentiment, Or Fine In The Expression,
But It Is Careless Country Talk.
Homeliness is almost as great a
merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there.
It is next to beauty, and a very high art.
Some have this merit
only. The scholar is not apt to make his most familiar
experience come gracefully to the aid of his expression. Very
few men can speak of Nature, for instance, with any truth. They
overstep her modesty, somehow or other, and confer no favor.
They do not speak a good word for her. Most cry better than they
speak, and you can get more nature out of them by pinching than
by addressing them. The surliness with which the woodchopper
speaks of his woods, handling them as indifferently as his axe,
is better than the mealy-mouthed enthusiasm of the lover of
nature. Better that the primrose by the river's brim be a yellow
primrose, and nothing more, than that it be something less.
Aubrey relates of Thomas Fuller that his was "a very working
head, insomuch that, walking and meditating before dinner, he
would eat up a penny loaf, not knowing that he did it. His
natural memory was very great, to which he added the art of
memory. He would repeat to you forwards and backwards all the
signs from Ludgate to Charing Cross." He says of Mr. John Hales,
that, "He loved Canarie," and was buried "under an altar monument
of black marble - - - - with a too long epitaph"; of Edmund
Halley, that he "at sixteen could make a dial, and then, he said,
he thought himself a brave fellow"; of William Holder, who wrote
a book upon his curing one Popham who was deaf and dumb, "he was
beholding to no author; did only consult with nature." For the
most part, an author consults only with all who have written
before him upon a subject, and his book is but the advice of so
many.
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