Page:Table-Talk (1821).djvu/183

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED.
171

they no longer exist; or when he sees the finest remains of Grecian art actually before him in the Elgin marbles, takes no other interest in them than as they lead to a learned dispute, and (which is the same thing) a quarrel about the meaning of a Greek particle. He is equally ignorant of music; he “knows no touch of it,” from the strains of the all-accomplished Mozart to the shepherd's pipe upon the mountain. His ears are nailed to his books; and deadened with the sound of the Greek and Latin tongues, and the din and smithery of school-learning. Does he know anything more of poetry? He knows the number of feet in a verse, and of acts in a play; but of the soul or spirit he knows nothing. He can turn a Greek ode into English, or a Latin epigram into Greek verse; but whether either is worth the trouble, he leaves to the critics. Does he understand “the act and practique part of life” better than “the theorique?” No. He knows no liberal or mechanic art; no trade or occupation; no game of skill or chance. Learning “has no skill in surgery,” in agriculture, in building, in working in wood or in iron; it cannot make any instrument of labour, or use it when made; it cannot handle the plough or the spade, or the chisel or the hammer; it knows nothing of hunting or hawking, fishing or shoot-