THE AIR OF QUIET STUDY.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1557, 28 September 1912, Page 9

THE AIR OF QUIET STUDY.

The law of compensation rules in the ..Bcholar's world, as everywhere else, and .he must pay the price, for air that has been done to ease his life. There .was a time when to write about- Shakespeare, let us say, all. a man needed to do was to read Shakespeare and the available literature of Shakespeare's .day, and then to depend, on mother wit to clear up obscurities/ Now the scholar must approach . his author through an ever-thickeriing cloud of commentators. No, doubt.lie'lias Ms profit in this. Much that - baffled ; his predecessors is how. 'a commonplace; he is carried to an to speak; ,on the soulders of others.' But there' are disadvantages, too. . Folly arid conceit . ' have been industrious in.raising-as many; 'barriers as modest wisdom has- levelled paths, and the scholar -finds', that half " 'his. time ■ must be given V'to ■ reading . treatises that only .obscure the truth. • Scholarship thus grows daily' more specialised and mechanical Scholars become more professional; and are drawn into the universities as into a kind of . .factory: where the machinery for their 'work'is already established. Such .'a life has its allurements and rewards. There is a* certain inspiration ; in the very feeling that one. belongs to a great corpora•i tion of learning,-; and that one's energies help to. feed so' imposing an engine of • erudition. But .there is an accompanying loss. The old'life of the independent 6cholai, .whose library was to him,a university, has lost something of its prestige and / attracts ' tewer and. " fewer - men. The , very word amateur as/. applied to " suchfree.- .spirits has beegme lowered, and suggests less'the lover of letters than the trifler with books. , One: observes among; our professional in- £ vestigators a'growing tone. of. condescen- ' sion towards the - unattached student, a" .feeling-mide. up;half of jealousy, and half £ Of/contempt.'*./ •: ~ -, a VYet, TCithaL'the~-bld'',ldca?bt;,tn4j-gentle- | pan andf^olaf^telexSfaiiplgpgMlibbon " and a host, of othef not. ; entirely; .vanished,- and even, in . Ariierica ; ttre- coiild name' untitled men, :still>liying, who have, produced -works-in history-and. philosophy command:'the rtspect'of their less fortunatebrothers. Tof -liv-a wav.those are the" less fortunate who-are obliged by the-res ongustai or byi'soiiio.other cause- to surrender learned/leisure' . for academic routine, and the happiness of,-such" a career as that of Dr. Furiiess, now brought to an honoured end, is a v lesson-in wise living that will not soon be forgotten. It is an astonishing thing that more of those who are blessed with " Independence and who seek after pleasure in a kind of" bewildered ignorance of their needs, do not "see the joy of an intellectual purpose steadily followed year 'after year;'binding, day to day in. orderly interest, and leaving no approach to the ravaging attacks of ennui. We have not in mind the frantic pursuit of learning such as we read about in the giants of an older age—a Casaubon, for intance, by whom family and civic appeals were merely tolerated as an 1 unworthy : interruption, and who,_ only after a long day from .early morning to late night tpent in deciphering some crabbed manuscript, would write in his . Journal, hodie .vixi., We do not mean the sullen recloise, Covered with dust i Of dreaming study and pedantic rustthough there is, too, a sufficient reward for pedantic pains. The life so beautifully commended by the example of. Dr. , Fumess is rather that which fulfils the

'Aristotelian precept, "We toil that we may enjoy leisure," or, better yet, which unites toil and leisure in- so perfect a bond as to make them scarcely distinguishable one from the other. ' Such ,a 1 life is not debarred from the of other duties. In its "'even,'unhasting course it leaves time for the obligations of family . and state; it may .bring to these the large outlook and: Bane!: tolerance of; an intellect purged by sweet association with the wise and,great, and steadied by the influence of a longcherished, -unselfish purpose. Nor does 6uch'a life, deny the just relaxations of amusement; it may rather, add to them, anew zest; but its' great anil uninue pleasure is that which .comes to tTie man each: morning, as, returning to his study, "perfumed with many such daysbefore," .he sees before him.'the familiar implements, and, with free heart and unhampered energy,'enters once more* upon't'hat mental pursuit .which has become a part of his'very being. : ' Not every one—very few persons, indeed —las the means, or. perhaps the endowments, to take up that noble career of lettered ease. Those who are able so to choo?o their path may well say, as Drummond of Hawtliornden • once wrote to a friend"That I now live, that I enjoy n Sear idleness, sweet, solitariness. I have of Him, anil not from man." But the wonder remains that so few who have the ability, and even the mental«equipment, for such a life, are wise enough to select . it. To quote Drummond /again, whose "solitariness" was but a retirement into tbe neighbourhood of Edinburgh, not unlike that of our Shakespearean scholar at Wallingford: .. Swift is vour mortal race, And glassy is the field; Vast are desires not'limited by grace; 7Ti]V a weak taper, is; yhen, while it light doth yield, ueave flying joys, embrace this lasting .bliss. • —New York "Nation."