further search and progress'; while written
words remain fixed, become idols even to the writer, found wooden
dogmatisms, and preserve flies of obvious error in the amber of the
truth. Last and chief, while literature, gagged with linsey-woolsey, can
only deal with a fraction of the life of man, talk goes fancy free and
may call a spade a spade. Talk has none of the freezing immunities of
the pulpit. It cannot, even if it would, become merely aesthetic or
merely classical like literature. A jest intervenes, the solemn humbug
is dissolved in laughter, and speech runs forth out of the contemporary
groove into the open fields of nature, cheery and cheering, like
schoolboys out of school. And it is in talk alone that we can learn our
period and ourselves. In short, the first duty of a man is to speak;
that is his chief business in this world; and talk, which is the
harmonious speech of two or more, is by far the most accessible of
pleasures. It costs nothing in money; it is all profit; it completes our
education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any
age and in almost any state of health.

*****

And it happens that literature is, in some ways, but an indifferent
means to such an end. Language is but a poor bull's-eye lantern
wherewith to show off the vast cathedral of the world; and yet a
particular thing once said in words is so definite and memorable, that
it makes us forget the absence of the many which remain unexpressed;
like a bright window in a distant view, which dazzles and confuses our
sight of its surroundings. There are not words enough in all Shakespeare
to express the merest fraction of a man's experience in an hour. The
speed of the eyesight and the hearing, and the continual industry of the
mind, produce; in ten minutes, what it would require a laborious volume
to shadow forth by comparisons and roundabout approaches. If verbal
logic were sufficient, life would be as plain sailing as a piece of
Euclid. But, as a matter of fact, we make a travesty of the simplest
process of thought when we put it into words; for the words are all
coloured and forsworn, apply inaccurately, and bring with them, from
former uses, ideas of praise and blame that have nothing to do with the
question in hand. So we must always see to it nearly, that we judge by
the realities of life and not by the partial terms that represent them
in man's speech; and at times of choice, we must leave words upon one
side,