Now what is true of a month's or a year's issue of new books,
seems to me with a little qualification true of the age. The
_stock-writers_, (for the honesty of the literary class has given
this population a name,) vastly out-number the thinking men. One
man, two men, -- possibly, three or four, -- have cast behind them
the long-descended costume of the academy, and the expectations of
fashion, and have said, This world is too fair, this world comes home
too near to me than that I should walk a stranger in it, and live at
second-hand, fed by other men's doctrines, or treading only in their
steps; I feel a higher right herein, and will hearken to the Oracle
myself. Such have perceived the extreme poverty of literature, have
seen that there was not and could not be help for the fervent soul,
except through its own energy. But the great number of those who
have voluminously ministered to the popular tastes were men of
talents, who had some feat which each could do with words, but who
have not added to wisdom or to virtue. Talent amuses; Wisdom
instructs. Talent shows me what another man can do; Genius acquaints
me with the spacious circuits of the common nature.
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