The higher and better class is worthy of blame; the lower and worse class is worthy of praise. The higher men are to be reproved for not taking up things in which they could do some good: the lower men are to be commended for taking up things in which they can do no great harm. The circle problem is like Peter is like Peter Peebles's lawsuit:—
'"But, Sir, I should really spoil any cause thrust on me so hastily."—"Ye cannot spoil it, Alan," said my father, "that is the very cream of the business, man,—…the case is come to that pass that Stair or Arniston could not mend it, and I don't think even you, Alan, can do it much harm."'
I am strongly reminded of the monks in the darker part of the Middle Ages. To a certain proportion of them, perhaps two out of five, we are indebted for the preservation of literature, and their contemporaries for good teaching and mitigation of social evils. But the remaining three were the fleas and flies and thistles and briars with whom the satirist lumps them, about a century before the Reformation:—
Thystlis and breris crescentia gramina lædunt.
Christe nolens guerras qui cuncta pace tueris,
Destrue per terras breris, flen, flyys, and freris.
Flen, flyys, and freris, foul falle hem thys fyften yeris,
For non that her is lovit flen, flyys, ne freris.
I should not be quite so savage with my second class. Taken together, they may be made to give useful warning to those who are engaged in learning under better auspices: aye, even useful hints; for bad things are very often only good things spoiled or hints My plan is that of a predecessor in the time of Edward the Second:—
Artes frugi reddere melioris vitæ.
To this end I have spoken with freedom of books as books, of opinions as opinions, of ignorance as ignorance, of presumption as presumption and of writers as I judge may be fairly inferred from what they have written. Some—to whom I am therefore under great obligation—have permitted me to enlarge my plan by assaults to which I have alluded; assaults which allow a privilege of retort, of which I have availed myself; assaults which give my readers a right of partnership in the amusement which I myself have received.
