nd learning, which is such a prevalent feature of our day, is very
prejudicial to the advance of knowledge itself. There is pleasure in
following up this history; but as a matter of fact, it leaves the mind,
not empty indeed, but without any power of its own, just because it
makes it so full. Whoever has felt the desire, not to fill up his mind,
but to strengthen it, to develop his faculties and aptitudes, and
generally, to enlarge his powers, will have found that there is nothing
so weakening as intercourse with a so-called litterateur, on a matter of
knowledge on which he has not thought at all, though he knows a thousand
little facts appertaining to its history and literature. It is like
reading a cookery-book when you are hungry. I believe that so-called
literary history will never thrive amongst thoughtful people, who are
conscious of their own worth and the worth of real knowledge. These
people are more given to employing their own reason than to troubling
themselves to know how others have employed theirs. The worst of it is
that, as you will find, the more knowledge takes the direction of
literary research, the less the power of promoting knowledge becomes;
the only thing that increases is pride in the possession of it. Such
persons believe that they possess knowledge in a greater degree than
those who really possess it. It is surely a well-founded remark, that
knowledge never makes its possessor proud. Those alone let themselves be
blown out with pride, who incapable of extending knowledge in their own
persons, occupy themselves with clearing up dark points in its history,
or are able to recount what others have done. They are proud, because
they consider this occupation, which is mostly of a mechanical nature,
the practice of knowledge. I could illustrate what I mean by examples,
but it would be an odious task.

Still, I wish some one would attempt a _tragical_ history of literature,
giving the way in which the writers and artists, who form the proudest
possession of the various nations which have given them birth, have been
treated by them during their lives. Such a history would exhibit the
ceaseless warfare, which what was good and genuine in all times and
countries has had to wage with what was bad and perverse. It would tell
of the martyrdom of almost all those who truly enlightened humanity, of
almost all the great masters of every kind of art: it would show us how,
with few exceptions, they were tormente