until many present felt a little uncomfortable.
Scott said, "Well, I have lately read in a provincial paper some
verses which I think better than most of their sort." He then recited
the lines "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter" which are now so famous. The
eulogist of Coleridge refused to allow the verses any merit. To Scott
he addressed a series of questions--"Surely you must own that this is
bad?" "Surely you cannot call this anything but poor?" At length
Coleridge quietly broke in, "For Heaven's sake, leave Mr. Scott alone!
I wrote the poem." This cruel blow put an end to mutual admiration in
that quarter for some time.

Byron, Southey, Wordsworth, Jeffrey--all in their several
fashions--regarded literature as a serious pursuit, and they were
followed by the "illustrious obscure" ones whose names are now sunk in
the night. How the whirligig of time sweeps us through change after
change! Any of us can buy for shillings books which would have cost
our predecessors pounds; we can have access to all the wit, poetry,
and learning of our generation at a cost of three guineas a year. For
little more than a shilling per week any reader who lives far away in
the country can have relays of books sent him at the rate of fifteen
volumes per relay. Very satisfactory. Most satisfactory too are the
Board-school libraries, from which a million children obtain the best
and noblest of literature without money and without price. Still there
remains the fact that any man who sat down and wrote long letters on
literary subjects would be looked upon as light-headed. We are too
clever to be in earnest, and the expenditure of earnestness on such a
subject as literature is regarded as evidence of pedantry or folly, or
both. Those men of former days knew their few books thoroughly and
loved them wisely; we know our many books only in a smattering way,
and we do not love them at all. When Mr. Mark Pattison suggested that
a well-to-do man reasonably expend 10 per cent. of his income on
books, he roused a burst of kindly laughter, and it was suggested that
solitary confinement would do him a great deal of good. That was a
fine trenchant mode of looking at the matter. When, in meditative
hours, I compare the two generations of readers, I think that the
mental health of the old school and the new school may be compared
respectively with the bodily health of sober sturdy countrymen and
effete satiated gourmands of the town. The countrymen has no great