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Untitled Article
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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.
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Untitled Article
light shining upon small subjects , a sort of flickering Will-o ' -the-wisp , powerless to burn , but sufficiently annoying by unfixing tbe sight , like the scrap of looking-glass in the hand of a waggish boy . He is a man who literally deals in letters , and good naturedly transposes them into all sorts of forms , in order to amuse idle people . Ideas of his own he has none , he runs about and gets them at second-hand , but seldom knows how to use them rightly , and he never ventures upon many at a time , for fear his mistakes should be too glaring . He has a deadly aversion to politics , and political knowledge ; to the latter , because it is all ' Greek and Latin to him ; to the former , because he knows by experience that they offer more excitement than his lucubrations , and take customers away from his shop . He therefore tries to persuade every body that thev are a low pursuit . Towards his
customers , the public , he is civil in general , and somewhat apt to be sycophantic , but beware that thou become not his friend or acquaintance , more especially if the disease of writing take hold of thee , and still more especially if the consciousness of the power of knowledge and judgment , and the desire of being useful to thy fellows , imperatively force thee to write . In the spirit of his trade—rivalry , the litterateur is more jealous than a beauty , a mindless beauty , whose charms are fast failing . His best friend he would c damn with faint
praise / did he mark any thing of shining talent in him . Envy , hatred , and malice , and all uncharitableness , are the canker-worms of his existence . But remember that his living depends upon his notoriety , and his dinings-out will be diminished by any increase in the numbers of the clique . He is eaten up with pride , and looks down with contempt upon all whom , he calls 4 low people , ' that is to say , those who get their living , not by a 4 profession / but a business , or who wield any tool but a pen . While he is doing the business of a mountebank for people ' s amusement , the overweening creature deems that he is
performing the business of instruction , mistaking animal feelings for the essentials of mind . He is pragmatic as an ape , and dogmatic as a pacha . He thinks that what he writes is a sort of needful lubrication for the axis of the world , without which there would be such an accumulation of friction as to alter the seasons . He is especially annoyed at the pretensions of tradespeople , and thinks it scandalous that they should make larger profits than authors , whom he holds to be 80 immeasurably their superiors , as scarcely to be named in the same breatli with them . All people of one hobby or pursuit , are disgusting
enough ; the shoemaker will talk about the price of leather , the discourse of the carpenter is thickly sprinkled with sawdust , the tailor cannot separate himself from the fashion of garments , the timber dealer must exult over the last trick he played a customer , the gravedigger thinks of turning out for an increased price , as the stature of human beings is on the increase , owing to tbe lessening of disease ; the horse dealer , the horse-hair dealer , the tanner of horse-hides , the horse-shoer , the stable keeper , and the groom , all in short connected in the remotest degree with horses in every quarter of the world , continue to be born cheats as usual , and to talk of nothing but roguery ; the coffin-maker tells for the fiftieth time the story of his cheating the dead man , by putting feather-edged boards into his last box-coat , and
Untitled Article
Juvenile Lessons * 681
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1833, page 681, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2624/page/21/
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