iters, any
of the statements made in these papers; indeed, if such authorities were
rightly collected, there would be no occasion for my writing at all.
Even in the scattered passages referring to this subject in three books
of Carlyle's--Sartor Resartus, Past and Present, and the Latter Day
Pamphlets,--all has been said that needs to be said, and far better than
I shall ever say it again. But the habit of the public mind at present
is to require everything to be uttered diffusely, loudly, and a hundred
times over, before it will listen; and it has revolted against these
papers of mine as if they contained things daring and new, when there
is not one assertion in them of which the truth has not been for ages
known to the wisest, and proclaimed by the most eloquent of men. It
would be [I had written _will_ be; but have now reached a time of life
for which there is but one mood--the conditional,] a far greater
pleasure to me hereafter, to collect their words than to add to mine;
Horace's clear rendering of the substance of the passages in the text
may be found room for at once,

Si quis emat citharas, emptas comportet in unum
Nec studio citharae, nec Musae deditus ulli;
Si scalpra et formas non sutor, nautica vela
Aversus mercaturis, delirus et amens
Undique dicatur merito. Qui discrepat istis
Qui nummos aurumque recondit, nescius uti
Compositis; metuensque velut contingere sacrum?

[Which may be roughly thus translated:--

"Were anybody to buy fiddles, and collect a number, being in
no wise given to fiddling, nor fond of music: or if, being
no cobbler, he collected awls and lasts, or, having no mind
for sea-adventure, bought sails, every one would call him a
madman, and deservedly. But what difference is there between
such a man and one who lays by coins and gold, and does not
know how to use, when he has got them?"]

With which it is perhaps desirable also to give Xenophon's statement, it
being clearer than any English one can be, owing to the power of the
general Greek term for wealth, "useable things."

[I have cut out the Greek because I can't be troubled to correct the
accents, and am always nervous about them; here it is in English, as
well as I can do it:--

"This being so, it follows that things are only property to the man who
knows how to use them; as flutes, for instance, are property to the man
who can pipe upon them respectably; but to o