Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 405, July 1849

SEWARD.

When the written Volumes of Mind from different and distant ages of the world, from its different and distant climates, are successively unrolled before his insatiable sight and his insatiable soul!

BULLER.

Take all things in moderation.

NORTH.

No – not the sacred hunger and thirst of the soul.

BULLER.

Greed – give – give.

NORTH.

From what unknown recesses, from what unlocked fountains in the depth of his own being, shall he bring into the light of day the thoughts by means of which he shall understand Homer, Pindar, Æschylus, Demosthenes, Plato, Aristotle – DISCOURSING! Shall understand them, as the younger did the elder – the contemporaries did the contemporaries – as each sublime spirit understood – himself?

BULLER.

Did each sublime spirit always understand himself?

TALBOYS.

Urge that, Mr Buller.

NORTH.

So – and so only – to read, is to be a Scholar.

BULLER.

Then I am none.

NORTH.

I did not say you were.

BULLER.

Thank you. What do you think of that, Mr Talboys? Address Seward, sir.

NORTH.

I address you all three. Is the student smitten with the sacred love of Song? Is he sensible to the profound allurement of philosophic truth? Does he yearn to acquaint himself with the fates and fortunes of his kind? All these several desires are so many several inducements of learned study.

BULLER.

I understand that.

TALBOYS.

Ditto.

NORTH.

And another inducement to such study is – an ear sensible to the Beauty of the Music of Words – and the metaphysical faculty of unravelling the causal process which the human mind followed in imparting to a Word, originally the sign of one Thought only, the power to signify a cognate second Thought, which shall displace the first possessor and exponent, usurp the throne, and rule for ever over an extended empire in the minds, or the hearts, or the souls of men.

BULLER.

Let him have his swing, Mr Talboys.

TALBOYS.

He has it in that chair.

NORTH.

A Taste and a Genius for Words! An ear for the beautiful music of Words! A happy justness in the perception of their strict proprieties! A fine skill in apprehending the secret relations of Thought with Thought – relations along which the mind moves with creative power, to find out for its own use, and for the use of all minds to come, some hitherto uncreated expression of an idea – an image – a sentiment – a passion! These dispositions, and these faculties of the Scholar in another Mind falling in with other faculties of genius, produce a student of a different name – The Poet.

BULLER.

Oh! my dear dear sir, of Poetry we surely had enough – I don't say more than enough – a few days ago, sir.

NORTH.

Who is the Poet?

BULLER.

I beseech you let the Poet alone for this evening.

NORTH.

Well – I will. I remember the time, Seward, when there was a great clamour for a Standard of Taste. A definite measure of the indefinite!

TALBOYS.

Which is impossible.

NORTH.

And there is a great clamour for a Standard of Morals. A definite measure of the indefinite!

TALBOYS.

Which is impossible.