On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
than they are entitled to , were they to reflect that after all their highest utility is for the most part only the amusement , and not the instruction of their fellows . There is a class of men who are much more entitled to complain . I mean the schoolmasters .
The literary author is treated as a gentleman , the schoolmaster is not . Were authors to run down something of their vanity and irritability and to make a society amongst themselves , instead of deeming that a large expenditure and mock grandeur , amidst * good society , ' were equivalent to dignity , the tales of literary distress would become less common .
Byron ' s poems produced upwards of fifteen thousand pounds , A prudent man would have turned them to still better account . Surely , one thousand pounds per annum produced in the time which the composition occupied can scarcely be called ill usage on the part of the public . How many authors are there of infinitely greater national utility , whose works would not have kept
them from starving ! Mr . Bentham to wit . The writings of Walter Scott are not of one hundredth part the importance of the writings of Mr . Bentham , yet how highly have they been paid ! The public is willing to pay more for amusement than for instruction . The principal value of the works of Scott is , that they have helped , as beautiful pictures , to humanize the people , and have enticed many to read , who otherwise would have shunned
books . But of sound morality there is scarce a jot to be found in the whole collection . It was not to be expected . The mind of Scott was warped in early youth , and it could not be expected that wisdom should be the result . But , notwithstanding the large sums of money which were paid for his copyrights , Scott lived in difficulties , and died in debt , Why was this ? The sin which besets most authors beset him also . He deemed that ostentation was dignity , and he wasted his means even before he had earned them . The
desire to vie with the feudal puppets whom he worshipped , led him into expenses which his means would not warrant , and he paid the penalty , by dying before his natural period ^ tortured in mind , and overwrought in body . But , let it never be forgotten , that he acted the partof an honest and upright man in striving to redeem his errors , and to accomplish the payment of his debts . The principle of moral honesty was strong within him , and has shed a hulo round
his memory , which will not lightly pass away . It were well if his fate might prove a beacon to those who may come after him . But it is the part of the public to enforce ( he penalty , by withholding their countenance from those , who , possessing the talents necessary to elevate the perceptions of their fellows , only hold forth the example of moral degradation . Junius Redivivus .
Untitled Article
On the Morality of Authors . 318
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1833, page 313, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2614/page/25/
-