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Untitled Article
and all the other hashes by which the pedagogue prematurely makes a boy " Toby or not Toby , what a happy new year would be that in which Shakspeare should first open upon the soul , like love upon the heart , or nature on the eyes . It cannot be helped ; there are a few cases of the ignorance which is bliss , because it dies in the revelation of a wisdom whose sun-burst on the soul is its own unfading memorial ; but
generally the mischief of imperfect acquaintance is irreparable . Pemberton ' s Lectures are the best alleviation ; such lectures as those which he delivered at Southampton Buildings last Autumn . There was matter in them to awake the senses whose perception had been dulled by the verbal familiarity which anticipates appreciation . Happily the immortals when they re-appear , do not always " cast their shadows before ; "
Beaumont and Fletcher are unspoiled ; the beautiful brethren whose graceful advance to the mind ' s portal " made a sunshine in the shady place " as they came closely linked together , with the princely band of Elizabethan bards trooping in their train . Children that have the run of libraries become sophisticated
thereby , and lose all sense by tasting before their palate is sufficiently matured . Else might each great author become an epoch in their lives . They might chronicle their being by
such dates us , when they were just turning Milton ; or were hetiveen Poj ) e and Spencer years of age . Nor are they the great works only that look sublime in the retrospect ; whatever gives a stimulus will form an era ; and that may be done by very inferior productions coming at a happy juncture . We knew a boy who never forgot ( he was self-taught ) his first feeling ( at school it might have been a Hogging ) of
Bonnycastle ' s Algebra . Five-and-thirty years , or more , have not obliterated the year , the day , the hour , in which he made his purchase at a book-stall ; nor the sensations of that long slow walk through the streets homewards with his prize , during which he mastered the signs , and the definitions , and the
notation , and the mode of working , until he was nearl y ripe for simple equations before his trance was broken . Iwen the stilted triteness of the preface was eloquence in his ears through many a long year , which not vainly presented other models to his admiring contemplation ; he yet realizes the time when the enthusiasm of humility imbibed the wise announcei 4
ment that application and industry may supply the place of genius and invention / ' and how , proceeding with the sentence , " and even the creative faculty itself , ' &c , he stood amazed at the author ' s temerity . As happy us that year was to him , may the new year be to many a mechanic ' s boy .
The new year will not turn out well unless some good be done in it . Happiness must have the broad seal of utility to stamp its worth . We are not of those who desire to be , or to
Untitled Article
S New Year .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1836, page 8, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2653/page/8/
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