Robert Southey

“ Yet Daniel was one of those men, who, if disposition and aptitude were not overruled by circumstances, would have grown pale with study, instead of being bronzed and hardened by sun and wind and rain. There were in him undeveloped talents which might have raised him to distinction as an antiquary, a virtuoso of the Royal Society, a poet, or a theologian, to which ever course the bias in his ball of fortune had inclined. But he had not a particle of envy in his composition. He thought indeed that if he had had grammar learning in his youth like the curate, he would have made more use of it ”

“ I thought of all sleepy sounds and all soporific things: the flow of water, the humming of bees, the motion of a boat, the waving of a field of corn, the nodding of a mandarine's head on the chimney-piece, a horse in a mill, the opera, Mr. Humdrum's conversation, Mr. Proser's poems, Mr. Laxative's speeches, Mr. Lengthy's sermons. I tried the device of my own childhood, and fancied that the bed revolved with me round and round. Still the Doctor visited me as perseveringly as if I had been his best patient ”

“ Light lie the earth upon the bones of Richard Guy, the Schoolmaster of Ingleton! He never consumed birch enough in his vocation to have made a besom; and his ferule was never applied unless when some moral offence called for a chastisement that would be felt. There is a closer connection between good-nature and good sense than is commonly supposed. A sour ill-tempered pedagogue would have driven Daniel through the briars and brambles of the Grammar and foundered him in its sloughs; Guy led him gently along the green-sward. ”

“ Philosophy, Daniel, is of two kinds: that which relates to conduct, and that which relates to knowledge. The first teaches us to value all things at their real worth, to be contented with little, modest in prosperity, patient in trouble, equal-minded at all times. It teaches us our duty to our neighbour and ourselves. It is that wisdom of which King Solomon speaks in our rhyme-book. ”

“ This was the clock which, with few intervals, measured out by hours the life of Daniel Dove from the seventeenth year of his age, when he first set up his rest within its sound.
Perhaps of all the works of man sun-dials and church-clocks are those which have conveyed most feeling to the human heart; the clock more than the sun-dial because it speaks to the ear as well as to the eye, and by night as well as by day. Our forefathers understood this, and therefore they not only gave a Tongue to Time, but provided that he should speak often to us and remind us that the hours are passing. ”

“ Did he know that children inevitably lacerate themselves in learning this dreadful occupation? that they are frequently crippled by it? frequently lose their lives in it by suffocation, or by slow fire? that it induces a peculiar and dreadful disease? that they who survive the accumulated hardships of a childhood during which they are exposed to every kind of misery, and destitute of every kind of comfort, have at the age of seventeen or eighteen to seek their living how they can in some other employment,—for it is only by children that this can be carried on? ”

“ The bird was brought, but young Daniel had not the strength of young Gargantua; the goose, being prevented by William from drawing back, prest forward; they were by the side of the brook and the boy by this violent and unexpected movement was, as the French would say in the politest and most delicate of all languages, culbuté, or in sailors' English capsized into the water. The misfortune did not end there; for falling with his forehead against a stone, he received a cut upon the brow which left a scar as long as he lived. ”

“ In the country wherein thou livest, bad; in the town whereof thou art an inhabitant, worse; in thine own street, worser; in thine own house, worst of all. Think of it in thy family, in thy fortune, in thine intestines. In thy affairs, distressing; in thy members, painful; in thy conduct, ruinous. Order is the sanity of the mind, the health of the body, the peace of the city, the security of the state. As the beams to a house, as the bones to the microcosm of man, so is order to all things. ”

“ This sort of patience was all that Daniel could have derived from the discourses of the poor curate; and it was a lesson of which his meek and benign temper stood in no need. Nature had endowed him with this virtue, and this Sunday's discipline exercised without strengthening it. While he was, in the phrase of the Religious Public, sitting under the preacher, he obeyed to a certain extent George Herbert's precept,—that is he obeyed it as he did other laws with the existence of which he was unacquainted,—
Pleasure made no part of his speculations at any time. ”

“ Learning is better than house or land. As for money, enough is enough; no man can enjoy more; and the less he can be contented with the wiser and better he is likely to be. What, Daniel, does our good poet tell us in the great verse-book?
No, boy, thou canst never be as rich as the King, nor as great as the Squire; but thou mayest be a Philosopher, and that is being as happy as either.”
“A great deal happier,” said Guy. “The Squire is as far from being the happiest man in the neighbourhood, as he is from being the wisest or the best. ”

“ Wisdom and knowledge, Daniel, make the difference between man and man, and that between man and beast is hardly greater.
“These things do not always go together. There may be wisdom without knowledge, and there may be knowledge without wisdom. A man without knowledge, if he walk humbly with his God, and live in charity with his neighbours, may be wise unto salvation. A man without wisdom may not find his knowledge avail him quite so well. ”

“ Yet we are not to be blamed; for we do seriously profess to any that shall attempt the work, that he attempts the highest piece of Philosophy that is in Nature; and though we write in English, yet our matter will be as hard as Greek to some, who will think they understand us well, when they misconstrue our meaning most perversely; for is it imaginable that they who are fools in Nature should be wise in our Books, which are testimonies unto Nature? ”

“ There is nothing exceptionable in these volumes; ‘Certes,’ as Euphues Lily has said, ‘I think there be more speeches here which for gravity will mislike the foolish, than unseemly terms which for vanity, may offend the wise.’ There is nothing in them that I might not have read to Queen Elizabeth if it had been my fortune to have lived in her golden days; nothing that can by possibility taint the imagination, or strengthen one evil propensity, or weaken one virtuous principle. ”

“ There are things which we do not undervalue because we are familiar with them, but which are admired the more the more thoroughly they are known and understood; it is thus with the grand objects of nature and the finest works of art,—with whatsoever is truly great and excellent. Daniel was not deficient in imagination; but no description of places which he had never seen, however exaggerated (as such things always are) impressed him so strongly as these objects in his own neighbourhood, which he had known from childhood. ”

“ To these and their other virtues the Bishop of Chalons alluded in his late truly Gallican and Roman Catholic discourse. “The Bells,” said he, “placed like centinels on the towers, watch over us and turn away from us the temptations of the enemy of our salvation, as well as storms and tempests. They speak and pray for us in our troubles; they inform heaven of the necessities of the earth.” ”

“ Riches and rank and power appeared in his judgement to be nothing when compared to philosophy; and herein he was as true a philosopher as if he had studied in the Porch, or walked the groves of Academus.
It was not however for this,—for he was as little given to talk of his opinions as to display his reading,—but for his retired habits, and general character, and some odd practices into which his books had led him, that he was commonly called Flossofer Daniel by his neighbours. ”

“ Even to the Curate his conversation, if he had touched upon his books, would have been heathen Greek; and to speak the truth plainly, without knowing a letter of that language, he knew more about the Greeks, than nine-tenths of the clergy at that time, including all the dissenters, and than nine-tenths of the schoolmasters also.
Our good Daniel had none of that confidence which so usually and so unpleasantly characterizes self-taught men. In fact he was by no means aware of the extent of his acquirements, all that he knew in this kind having been acquired for amusement not for use. ”

“ I wish thee to pursue knowledge, because in pursuing it happiness will be found by the way. If I have said any thing now which is above thy years, it will come to mind in after time, when I am gone perhaps, but when thou mayest profit by it. ”

“ The things which the old Philosophers said and did, would appear, I dare say, as wise to us as they did to the people of their own times, if we knew why and in what circumstances they were done and said.
“Daniel, there are two sorts of men in all ranks and ways of life, the wise and the foolish; and there are a great many degrees between them. That some foolish people have called themselves Philosophers, and some wicked ones, and some who were out of their wits, is just as certain as that persons of all these descriptions are to be found among all conditions of men. ”

“ He is a buckler to them that walk uprightly.
“He keepeth the paths of judgement and preserveth the way of his Saints.
“Then shalt thou understand righteousness and judgement and equity; yea, every good path.
“When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul;
“Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee,
“To deliver thee from the way of the evil.
“Daniel, my son,” after a pause he pursued, “thou art a diligent good lad. God hath given thee a tender and a dutiful heart; keep it so, and it will be a wise one, for thou hast the beginning of wisdom. ”

“ The Bhow Begum laid down her snuff-box and replied, entering into the feeling, as well as echoing the words, “It ought to be written in a book,—certainly it ought.”
They may talk as they will of the dead languages. Our auxiliary verbs give us a power which the ancients, with all their varieties of mood, and inflections of tense, never could attain. “It must be written in a book,” said I, encouraged by her manner. The mood was the same, the tense was the same; but the gradation of meaning was marked in a way which a Greek or Latin grammarian might have envied as well as admired. ”

“ The Pilgrim's Progress was a godmother's present to his son: the odd volumes of Rabelais he had picked up at Kendal, at a sale, in a lot with Ripley Revived and Plutarch's Morals: the others he had inherited.
Daniel had looked into all these books, read most of them, and believed all that he read, except Rabelais, which he could not tell what to make of. He was not however one of those persons who complacently suppose every thing to be nonsense, which they do not perfectly comprehend, or flatter themselves that they do. ”

“ Who was the Doctor?
Can it then be necessary to ask?—Alas the vanity of human fame! Vanity of vanities, all is Vanity! “How few,” says Bishop Jeremy Taylor, “have heard of the name of Veneatapadino Ragium! He imagined that there was no man in the world that knew him not: how many men can tell me, that he was the King of Narsinga?” ”

“ Never indeed was any man more contented with doing his duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him. And well he might be so, for no man ever passed through the world with less to disquiet or to sour him. Bred up in habits which secured the continuance of that humble but sure independance to which he was born, he had never known what it was to be anxious for the future. ”

“ But Justice is found to be so fast asleep that no calling can awaken her. Mors then advises her to summon Veritas; alas! unhappy Veritas enters complaining of pains from head to foot and in all the intermediate parts, within and without; she is dying and entreats that Nature will call some one to confess her. But who shall be applied to?—Kings? They will not come.—Nobles? Veritas is a hateful personage to them.—Bishops, or mitred Abbots? They have no regard for Truth.—Some Saint from the desert? Nature knows not where to find one! ”

“ Natural feeling, when natural feeling is not corrupted, leads men to regard persons in his condition with a compassion not unmixed with awe. It is common with the country people when they speak of such persons to point significantly at the head and say 'tis not all there;—words denoting a sense of the mysteriousness of our nature which perhaps they feel more deeply on this than on any other occasion. No outward and visible deformity can make them so truly apprehend how fearfully and wonderfully we are made.
William Dove's was not a case of fatuity. ”

“ Internally the change had been greater; for the same business not being continued there after the Doctor's decease, the shop had been converted into a sitting room, and the very odour of medicine had passed away. But I will not allow myself to dwell upon this melancholy subject. The world is full of mutations; and there is hardly any that does not bring with it some regret at the time,—and alas, more in the retrospect! ”

“ HOW TO MAKE GOLD.
William had heard so much about experiments that it is not surprising he should have been for making some himself. It was well indeed for his family that the speculative mind, which lay covered rather than concealed under the elder Daniel's ruminating manners, and quiet contented course of life, was not quickened by his acquaintance with the schoolmaster into an experimental and dangerous activity, instead of being satisfied with theoretical dreams. ”

“ But the application which Homo makes of all this, is the very reverse to what his mother intended: he infers that seeing he must die at last, live how he will, the best thing he can do is to make a merry life of it, so away he goes to dance and revel and enjoy himself: and Terra concludes with the mournful observation that men will still pursue their bane, unmindful of their latter end. ”