ORIGINAL PAPERS. FOR THE EMERALD. THE WANDERER, No. 82. CURIOSITY. It formation sought, the mode of inquiry, and a number of other incidental peculiarities, may often make a man's dignity or disgrace depend on a question. Though from its object it would seem at all times to show ignorance, it may yet be so put as to display information. may evince that the inquirer rather wanted knowledge confirmed by asWHEN curiosity is said to be "a certaining the opinion of the person certain sign of vigourous intellect," addressed, than original light comit must be understood to regard that municated; and though it require curiosity only, which is manly and information on what is made its pertinent. This remark concerns principal point, it may impart it on persons of mature age merely. For points incidental, that are really of the curiosity of infants can never be much more importance. Questions considered impertinent. To them expose mental character. They are nothing is unimportant. Every ob-proofs of its investigation or indeject has the interest of novelty and is of charming importance. livelier the eyes of a child glisten with this lambent light, and the more rapidly it plays off from its tongue, the lovelier the object, and the greater its promise of intellect. But the importance of infancy is the frivolity of age. When the indi-ing, but may discover itself in a vidual becomes a man, he loses all right to think and talk, like a chiid. He should forget the gambols of infancy, and, with other childish things, put away the interrogations of levity, and the random sallies of erratic curiosity. The An lence, of its grossness or refincnient, of its laxity or correctness. interrogation may evidence the spirit of research or supineness, intellectual vigour or imbecility, elegance or uncouthness, pedantry or polite learning. No one ornament or blemish of the human understand question. Nor is its power of exhibiting character confined to the mind. The disposition is within its reach. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” and the questions it asks sometimes betray what is the nature of that abundance. A general and constant recollection of this importance of questions would tend much to improve conversation and refine social enjoyment. It would suppress idle words tion is made, that every faculty a the mind should receive a subse vient direction. Among these cu osity has the most powerful infsence. and trivial or unmeaning inquiries. | tinction in the vocation, selected i It would operate no other constraint, life. It is therefore of the utmos than what good sense should ever importance, when once this selet maintain over folly and garrulity, feel in the presence of worth. Should indeed this be enough to strike some of our genteel circles silent as the house of death, even this state would be preferable to that jargon of high life, which is heard in these Babels of one language, these confusions of ideas ten thousand times worse than any confusion of tongues. This constraint however would not operate to deaden but give new life to conversation. It would be lopping off a few dead twigs to give the trunk fresh vigour. It might indeed introduce on some occasions a pause of silence into company, which the tongue of flippant volubility is now glad to fill. But it is quite time genteel converse was raised from the chattering of magpies to the interchange of sentiments between rational beings. Let a man bring every other faculty under complete subjection, and this alone, in the end, will frus trate all his endeavours, and defeat his objects of pursuit. He should therefore not rest satisfied with his exertions when all other powers were subdued and bound down op the object. He must clip the wings of curiosity, or it will bear away every thing in its flight. It has of ten been said and with truth, the a man must make a pleasure of busi ness, in order to succeed in the ac quisition either of fame or of fortune. He should consider his object of pursuit, the only object in nature, and see nothing, but what led to wards it. Would he reach the go! He must press forward, and not be delayed or drawn aside by any ject, however striking, that may lay in his way. Stubborn perseverance in exclusive attention to any one ob ject soon makes that object a favour The Wanderer, like Goldsmith, "parvis componere magna," delivers bis thoughts without method or connexion, and as he cannot, this hot weather, stroll far even in the reader's good company, he will here just notice the importance of giving pro-ite. It endears it by intimacyper direction to this inquisitive fac- Every object of pursuit, either use ulty, and then throw himself again ful or scientific,gains upon acquaint upon his couch, lazily crying out in ance. rather too good style for a lounger, the language of BURKE, "Leave me, oh, leave me to repose!" As LOCKE derives the first title to land from mixing labour with the soil, so a man gains title or interest in his profession or par ticular pursuit by the labour heemploys in it, and the greater the la The importance of attention to the nature and mode of the inquiries we make has been suggested.bour, the better seems the title. Be It is not every question, curiosity whatever be the means, the end starts, that is a sign of vigour of in- must be effected, or it will be utterly tellect. If it were, the sign would impossible for any individual ever often exist where we should long to take that pleasure in his special look in vain for the thing signified. vocation, so essential to success This attention is necessary to secure But once fix curiosity, and the la to a man the fair reputation of his bour is over! We know the diffi general talents. But energy of cha-culties of this. We know the pleas racter arises principally from dis-ures of curiosity. They are exquis out improvement, nor any duty to be slovenly performed. In avocations of daily necessity, correctness and even elegance is desirable, but the advantages they afford are unfortunately too often pressed ou the mind by the inconveniencies resulting from a want of possession. There is no subject which so ev ite in their kind. We are loth to abridge them in their number. Still this is necessary to secure eninence. How many might have been proudly distinguished in every walk of life, had they seasonably attended to this requisition? They were just ready to snatch the bays, once within their reach, when their eyes were turned towards some-idently exemplifies these remarks thing, that looked like a laurel, and as chirography, which is oftentimes, they eluded the grasp. The way- and most frequently by men of edwardness of fancy, the spirit of pro- ucation, most miserably neglected, miscuous inquiry, the eagerness for It is with that as with the language novelty must be repressed. Want of conversation or the manner of of attention to this has materially social intercourse. Awkwardness lessened the number of our illustri- will spoil the effect of the best and ous characters in divinity, physic, most valuable matter, while eleand law. It makes individuals pig-gance and taste give attraction and mies and stints the growth of the beauty to the most dull and indifprofessions. So true is it, that curiosity, unless properly directed, instead of being as it is by nature, a certain sign of a vigourous intellect, is the cause, that all vigour of intelfect is at length completely destroyed. CHIROGRAPHY Y. To the Editors of the Emerald. rature. ferent. With these impressions I copy the subjoined remarks for your usepaper. CLARENDON. ONE of the strangest of the many inconsistencies observable in our way of thinking and acting, appears to me to be the neglect with which the mechanical art of writing is treated by men of letters.-The inability to read and write, places a man proverbially among the most uninstructed of his species; yet how many deep scholars have we whose skill in writing is so imperfect, that faculty of making themselves intelligithey may be said to be destitute of the ble upon paper. If we reflect a moment upon the vast importance of such a faculty, we shall be astonished at the indifference with which the want of it is An almost illegible hand writing would think themselves indelibly dis habitually regarded ---Persons who is either a disgraceful incapacity or graced by the wrong pronunciation of a a ridiculous affectation which ought Greek or Latin word, are not ashamed by no means to be considered as a to acknowledge that they cannot write merit in the penman. Whatever a note to a friend or a letter upon neis worth doing at all is worth doing having their meaning comprehended. cessary business with any certainty of From the noblest efforts of Nay, they sometimes take pride in their ingenuity to the bumblest exertions unskilfulness, as if it denoted that their of labour the wise man will be stren-heads had been so much occupied as to uous to mark every action with his own characteristic propriety, and suffer no opportunity to pass with well. allow no exercise to their hands. The our grammar-schools, that few of them have any provision for learning the use of the pen, any more than the practice of the common rules of arithmetic; and the necessity of scrawling exercises soon destroys any proficieney a boy may have already made in the art of penmanship. I know learned authors whose manuscripts are as difficult to make out as the legend of an ancient medal, to the utter despair of press-compositors, who can make no progress without a decypherer at their elbow. No wonder if errata abound in their publications; of which it would be but just for themselves to take the blame, instead of throwing it upon the poor printers. I fancy, Mr. Editor, from the numerous corrections I see occasionally made in your articles, you have some correspondents of this class. I revere their erudition, but am not inclined to admit, like what is said of physicians, that "the worse the scrawl, the dose the better." pher and his laborious historian, and we trust will be read with attention as well for its own merit as for its reference to a very popular and engaging performance. Em'd.] Having treasured up with won derful diligence the better part what had fallen from his late friend Johnson, in many of the conversa. tions in which he had excited or listened to Johnson's wisdom and col loquial eloquence, from the commencement of their acquaintance to the period of his friend's death, Boswell now undertook to compose a biographical account of that wise and good man, in which those treasured gleanings from his colloquial dictates should be carefully interwoven. This book was, with much care and pains, composed, conducted Lord Chesterfield, I think, has said, through the press, presented to the that any man may write well if he public. Its composition delightpleases. I am not sure, that every man, fully soothed the author's mind, with any degree of pains, could write by calling up to him in retrospec elegantly; but I doubt not that he might tive view the associates, the amusecome to write legibly, and this is the real object to be aimed at. There are ments, the conversations of the hands which look very well, yet are ex-prime years of his past life. By tremely illegible; which is often the the public it was at first sight re case with free running hands, when ceived with some measure of prewritten carelessly. And it appears to me a fault in modern penmanship, that judice against it; for who could freedom and expedition are so much suppose that he who could not make more in request than distinctness.-The up a moderate octavo, without instiffer, more upright hands of our an- troducing into it a number of trifles cestors were more easily read; and I unworthy to be written or read, repeat, that legibility is the fundamental should have furnished out two coquality of good writing, to which every pious quartos of the biography of a single man of letters, otherwise thar by filling them with trifles to sense, in the proportion of a bag of chaf to a few grains of wheat? But every reader was soon pleasingly disap [The reading world, at all times interested in whatever is connected with pointed, This work was quickly the "Man-mountain" of literature, found to exhibit an inimitably faith the sage of Litchfield, has been late-ful picture of the mingled geniu ly notified of an intention to repub- and weakness, of the virtues and th lish the memoirs of his life from the vices, the sound sense and the pe pen of James Boswell. From the dantry, the benignity and the pas biography of the last gentleman we extract an account of this interesting sionate harshness, of the great are work. In an entertaining manner it excellent, although not consum gives a view of the eccentric philoso- mately perfect man, the train e thing else should be sacrificed, SELECTED FOR THE EMERALD. ern, could boast. It did not indeed present its author to the world in another light than as a genius of the second class; yet it seemed to rank him nearer to the first than to the third. This estimation of the character of Boswell's Life of Johnson, formed by the best critics soon after its publication, seems to have been since fully confirmed. I am well persuaded that not one even of the most successful of his contem have produced a work equally replete with charmingly amusive elegance and wisdom.. For the Emerald. DESULTORY SELECTIONS, AND ORIGINAL REMARKS. = whose life it endeavoured to unfold. ¡ such a master-piece in its particu It appeared to be filled with a rich lar species, as perhaps the literature store of his genuine dictates, so elo- of no other nation, ancient or modquent and wise, that they need hardly shun comparison with the most elaborate of those works which he himself published. Johnson was seen in it, not as a solitary figure, but associated with those groupes of his distinguished contemporaries with which it was his good fortune, in all the latter and more illustrious years of his life, often to meet and to converse. It displayed many fine specimens of that proportion in which, in the latter part of the eigh-poraries at the Scottish bar could teenth century, literature and philosophical wisdom were liable to be carelessly intermingled in the ordinary conversation of the best company in Britain. It preserved a thousand precious anecdotical memorials of the state of arts, manners, and policy among us during this period, such as must be invaluable to the philosophers and antiquarians of a future age. It gave, in the most pleasing mode of institution, and in many different points of view, almost all the elementary practical principles both of taste and of moral science. It showed the colloquial tattle of Boswell duly chastened by the grave and rounded eloquence of Johnson. It presented a collection of a number of the most elaborate of Johnson's smaller occasional compositions, which might otherwise perhaps have been entirely lost to future times. Shewing Boswell's skill in literary composition, his general acquaintance with learning and science, his knowledge of the manners, the fortunes, and the actuating principles of mankind, to have been greatly extended and improved since the time when he wrote his Account of Corsica, it exalted the character of his talents in the estimation of he world; and was reckoned to be Y 2 PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS. No one who ever had any con-nexion with a literary journal will deny the force of the following remark, and no scholar will peruse it without admiring the elegant manner in which it is made. "The task of a Journalist is often invidious and often irksome. Without a spirit of candour among the various tribes of readers, vain is every attempt to please. Captiousness cavils, fanatibut, in the manly exhortation of of EDcism whines, and party prejudice yells; MUND BURKE, “ I applaud us when we run; console us when we fall; cheer us when we recover: but let us pass on-for God's sake let us pass on." Port Folio. Where shall we find in the pages of modern eloquence a more beautiful metaphor or thought than in the following sentence from CURRAN ? more correct sume to tell the viceroy that the pre. He would not have the Press pre rogative of mercy is a trust for the ben. |