Benjamin Heath Malkin

“ The apprehensive nature of parents must shudder at the first scintillations of common sense; and fancy death to lie in ambush behind every show of intelligence, the grave to spring a mine under the feet of genius. The skill of education would but betray its victims into the clutches of the universal enemy: the pen of the writer would become a poisoned arrow ”

“ The map of Allestone, in whatever light it is viewed, is a very remarkable production. Crowded as it is with names, some absurd, but others ingenious and appropriate, it evinces an uncommon fertility of invention. The drawing is executed with care, and the propriety of the design made happily
to coincide with its whimsical and capricious humour. ”

“ It must have been just after some unlucky instance of more than common idleness that Thomas took up his pen, to have extorted from him so unfavourable a report of Benjamin's capacity and diligence. Thomas, like all those who have a just title to be critical, was ever disposed to be candid; and was never backward in bearing testimony to the merit of his brother. ”

“ God grant that your life be long, that you may keep your disposition towards us and the next little child you have! In trouble I intend to attempt in future to console myself if I can with the thoughts of your tender disposition towards us; if, as I have great confidence it will, it lasts for ever. ”

“ Those who have the rising generation under their eye, whether as parents or preceptors, may gather many a significant warning from the successes or failure of their predecessors. While we trace the actual progress of an almost infantine mind, through knowledge up to virtue, we at once ascertain an important fact. Wherever the physical and intellectual powers are endued with suitable vigour, it is within the province of education to impart an early taste for elegant and rational pursuits ”

“ Those which he has reduced by his eye, are equally accurate with what are imitated in the size of the original.
With respect to the productions of his pencil, he had now, for a considerable time, made drawing a principal source of entertainment. In the desultory pursuit of it, without any professional assistance, he had acquired no common facility of execution, and derived from nature a happy talent of original invention. It would indeed be the height of absurdity, to claim the merit of precision for his best specimens. His worst however were not devoid of something like ingenuity of design. ”

“ The history of Allestone is ushered in with so pompous a "Prospectus," that I suspect its phraseology to have been partly copied from the Proposals of some periodical publisher, which might happen to have been lying by him at the time. It is indeed a complete burlesque. He tells us, that, "No people, especially Allestonians, have been more wonderful and remarkable in the work than the Nimesbeians, having exercised their part in it with the utmost cleverness and knowledge. They are also remarkable for their attachment to the soil." ”

“ Peevishness and discontent are in some measure the accredited concomitants of sickness; so that a philosopher in health and manhood is often a child in the decay of old age. In the present case, those, whose office calls upon them to watch the effects of debility and approaching dissolution, under every variety of circumstances, will corroborate the suspicious testimony of a parent, and bear witness to the uniform gentleness, and tractable resignation of their patient. ”

“ To aim at those frivolous accomplishments of declamation and histrionic exhibition, which may manufacture pertness in a boy, but will never send a man into the world, is the reproach and folly of our present times. Not for such attainments do I contend; but for the timely cultivation of useful and substantial knowledge, stripped of its wilder, and as we may call them, forest shoots, by the urbanity and good temper of those who superintend its growth. ”

“ I had, with the partiality of a father, for a time persuaded myself, that this forbearance arose from a consciousness of the pernicious effect, which the indulgence of wild and visionary ideas might have produced upon his brain. ”

“ Next, of what merit is it to exercise the pleasantry of spring, if it takes off the necessary attention to your real exercise of mind? There, if that happened, might as well be no spring. How destitute of worth are they, who take great exercise of legs, if it takes off their attention! They might as well be shut out of the world. It is true, it is one of the most beautiful of all the seasons ”

“ He therefore enquired, "What is the opposite to a door?" His mother replied, "I know of no opposite to a door. The qualities or circumstances of persons or things, by which their resemblance or opposition is marked out, are usually expressed by adjectives. The noun substantive simply represents the person or thing itself." Thomas without hesitation interposed with this remark. "But there are opposites among nouns, you know; at least in nouns of behaviour. Guilt is a noun, and it is the opposite of innocence." ”

“ Yet were the fear of censure to deter those who, upon the best exercise of their discretion, think they have high instances of unknown merit to communicate, the world would lose many an instructive example, so that the page of biography must be left far too scanty, to supply materials for our researches into the economy of nature, or the condition of human life. ”

“ All this family are in perfect health except my mother, who cannot certainly be expected to be in health just a day or two after the coming of a child. But I hope your family, except your mother, have the same fortune as the chief part of my own. I am interested with the welfare of your mother, being the same about your family: for who can be interested about the whole of your family, without being interested about her? You know that people could not be so;... ”

“ If nothing is made in vain, the bud of genius and virtue, when scorched by untimely blasts, must open again in some more genial climate. All the skill of artificial temperature will scarcely keep alive the rare and delicate productions of the tropics, in these our northern latitudes: but we do not thence infer, that this debility is constitutional; or that they do not flourish unassisted, beneath the parental influence of a nearer sun.
But these Allestonian speculations were not confined to the invention of such little stories. ”

“ I intend to let him go to the famous university of Lalldab, not to be taught by Alcander, (you know who I mean) but by a famous orator, who may be named "the master of all Lalldab," but his proper name (I mean his Christian) is Adoleo de Levie."
"I am sure I should very readily let your mother see my map, &c. &c. if I could, being in connection with such a friend of mine as "she whom I am addressing;" and as soon as Frederic has received as much tuition from the orator, he shall be taught arithmetic by Dr. Scluggish, as he is a great mathematician. ”

“ The time was indeed short; but it lasted long enough to teach him the value of his own improvement, in the support it afforded him under the pressure of a severe illness, which he bore with exemplary patience and fortitude. Neither, in addition to this personal advantage, are we to overlook the record of unsophisticated philosophy, early attained and excellently applied, in so touching an instance of a mind, superior to the heaviest inflictions of pain. To compare his capacity of endurance with that of an adult under similar circumstances, would be extravagant ”

“ Yet as the latter makes his appearance here to a disadvantage, it would be unfair to let the present occasion slip without observing, that Benjamin has hitherto discovered a sufficient aptitude for learning, and a laudable thirst after knowledge. If he has not displayed his brother's superlative genius, he has already done enough to heal the wounds of pride, though those of affection can never be closed. Such a loss must ever be a subject of regret ”

“ High health sucks the contagion into its vitals, which morbid debility either escapes, or entertains in a mitigated and supportable degree. Yet are we justified, when reconciling ourselves to our lot as men, rather than arguing as philosophers, in fostering those expectations, not merely which are in their own nature proveable, but which are not actually disproved by any positive evidence. It is in this loose and popular sense only, that I mean to hazard the remark in question. ”

“ But as soon as he was weary of his sports, he generally returned, with increased avidity, to his books, his maps, or his pencil. Lounging was altogether excluded from the list of his pleasures; neither were his mind or body assailable by the hostile power of indolence, because he knew it to be the bane of all improvement.
He had acquired a most happy art in copying maps, with a neatness and accuracy, an idea of which I have no means of conveying to the reader. ”

“ After a short pause, during which he had leisure to recollect himself, and resume the philosopher, he enquired, "Where can to-morrow be now? It must be somewhere; for every thing is in some place." When he had considered a little longer, he added, "Perhaps to-morrow is in the sun."
"Learning is not so much esteemed by wise men, as it is despised by fools." On meeting with this aphorism, which struck his fancy as a mere play upon words, without any real meaning, he thus corrected it by an extemporaneous remark. ”

“ If I may be allowed to hazard an opinion, where my partiality and my feelings are so nearly concerned, I should say that the faculties of comparison and judgment were to the full as conspicuous in these devices, as imagination. In truth, the fictitious scenes which he has drawn, are borrowed principally from the natural workings of an ingenuous mind. ”

“ The new-born brother must be dropped from the clouds, or dug up out of the garden, to throw a meretricious varnish over a tale, which nature would tell in terms the most endearing, and nothing but an imagination, prurient in the extreme, could ever have represented as indelicate. ”

“ At the time of his illness, his little brother Frederic was about half a year old. From the hour of this child's birth, Thomas, as may be seen by some of the foregoing letters, watched his progress with more than a brother's pleasure. He very frequently used to speak of the delight he should experience in instructing "the nice little Frederic," when he should be old enough to be taught. ”

“ With all becoming diffidence, on a subject so enveloped and mysterious as that of life or death, we venture to place it among those accidents in the system, to which the old and young, the healthy and infirm, are without exemption and alike exposed. ”

“ In this manner did he amuse himself, and ward off the sense of his own situation, during the wearisome hours of his lingering illness. His questions and remarks served occasionally to enliven the melancholy of his friends, till the recurrence of the conviction, that the present bond of union was on the point of being rent asunder, again brought their thoughts to their original tenor of regret and grief. ”

“ These blots of light and dark, as being the result of labour, are always clumsy and indefinite; the effect of rubbing out and putting in, like the progress of a blind man, or of one in the dark, who feels his way, but does not see it. These are not so. Even the copy from Raphael's Cartoon of St. Paul preaching, is a firm, determinate outline, struck at once, as Protogenes struck his line, when he meant to make himself known to Apelles. The map of Allestone has the same character of the firm and determinate. ”

“ A very few weeks after the event, which gave occasion to the following pages, a gentleman, better known in the field of science and politics, than in the circle of domestic charities, indulged himself in a summary of the treatment, by means of which parental vanity is led to baffle its own hopes, and to exhaust the sap of life in the very springtime of its rising, while it forces the forward shoots of intellect into an unseasonable luxuriance. ”

“ The greatest possible latitude will readily be allowed to a father, who adopts this motto, when speaking in private of a heavy and recent loss: the propriety with which he may venture to interest the public in its personal application, when time has wrested from him the plea of a pardonable rashness, must depend on the facts which he has to produce, and the fidelity with which he brings them forward. ”

“ Where severe labour is exerted, to produce by artificial culture an early and abundant harvest, in a soil of moderate fertility, the avarice of the husbandman is not more pernicious to the glebe which he ransacks and exhausts, than the effect of such a discipline to the human frame: on the contrary, when the strength of the natural genius is not miscalculated, but its energy discreetly managed, and directed to its proper objects, the experiment will be found equally safe and satisfactory ”

“ Kept in the rear, and reserved for the heat and confusion of the battle, they take the lover of novelty by surprise: had they been drawn out on the roll of regular forces, the device on their banner would have shocked the public eye, by the open defiance of correct feeling, by the utter subversion of morals and happiness. ”

“ In the Latin language, thousands more are of the feminine gender, than I know. Some are masculine, some neuter. I know a good deal of geography, and I shall be very glad, too, when I know a great deal more; for geography, I find, is a very clever thing for me to know. I know a deal of Latin. ”

“ When the illness of any friend had led us to speak generally on the subject, we had been accustomed to represent it as an occurrence, to which we must all, at some time or other, look forward, as likely to happen to ourselves. ”

“ The map is therefore not so much to be looked at for the neatness of its appearance, and the symmetry of its proportions; but as an exercise of the mind comparing the propriety of its own nascent ideas and inventions, with the performances of adult artists, founded on observation and authority. ”

“ Little points of interest or information, which might be supposed to have impressed his mind with a transient sentiment, or to have struck accidentally in unison with the innate pleasure of knowledge, were equally present to his reflective powers, as when they first attracted his notice.
He frequently complained of pain, particularly during the dressing of his blister, and his other wounds towards the close of his illness. His sensations at these times were frequently most acute. ”

“ His frame was neither agitated by convulsion, nor his faculties stupified by the drowsy tendency of his dropsical affection. It may indeed be affirmed, without danger of a paradoxical deviation from the sobriety of truth, that he excited more admiration under circumstances, from which human nature is apt to revolt, than had fallen to his share in the full career of mental and bodily improvement. ”