―116―

life of the student.

In an essay, by Dr. Hawkesworth,
in which he has happily imitated
the style of his illustrious associate,
he has no less successfully exposed
the vulgar error, that the life of a
student is a life of ease and indo-
lence. There are few opinions
more specious to the careless ob-
server, and yet there is none more
lamentably false. They who listen
with rapture, in the short intervals
of leisure which they enjoy from a
laborious business, to the soft har-
mony of Pope, or the majestic pe-
riod of Johnson, imagine it the in-
spiration of a willing muse. But
that the fact is not so, the furrowed
brow and the enfeebled frame of
the student daily evince. Those
happy expressions which sparkle as
the effusions of the moment, are
really produced by the most elabo-
rate thought, and are not presented
to the reader until they have under-
gone an anxious and painful revi-
sion.

The multitudes that support life
by corporal labour, and eat their
bread in the sweat of their brow,
commonly regard inactivity as idle-
ness; and have no conception that
weariness may be contracted in an
elbow chair, by now and then peep-
ing into a book, and musing the
rest of the day: the sedentary and
studious, therefore, raise their envy
or contempt, as they appear either
to possess the conveniences of life
by the mere bounty of fortune, or to
suffer the want of them by refusing
to work. It is, however, certain,

that to think is to labour; and that
as the body is affected by the exer-
cise of the mind, the fatigue of the
study is not les than that of the
field or the manufactory. But the
labour of the mind, though it be
equally wearisome with that of the
body, is not attended with the same
advantages. Exercise gives health,
vigour, and cheerfulness, sound
sleep, and a keen appetite: the ef-
fects of sedentary thoughtfulness are
diseases that shorten and embitter
life; interrupted rest, tasteless meals,
perpetual langour, and careless anx-
iety.

There is scarcely any character
so much the object of envy as that
of a successful writer. But those
who only see him in company, or
hear encomiums on his merit, form
a very erroneous opinion of his hap-
piness. They conceive him as per-
petually enjoying the triumphs of
intellectual superiority; as display-
ing the luxuriancy of his fancy, and
the variety of his knowledge to si-
lent admiration; or listening in vo-
luptuous indolence to the music of
praise. But they know not that
these lucid intervals are short and
few, that much the greater part
of his life is passed in solitude and
anxiety; that his hours glide away
unnoticed, and the day, like the
night, is contracted to a moment by
the intense application of the mind
to its object; locked up from every
eye, and lost even to himself, he is
reminded that he lives, only by the
necessities of life; he then starts up
as from a dream, and regrets that
the day has passed unenjoyed, with-
out affording means of happiness to
the morrow.

So far the essayist; and however
melancholy a picture he may have
drawn, it is yet a faithful represen-
tation of what every student has un-
dergone in his toilsome but delight-
ful journey to the Temple of Fame.

The recluse, who does not easily
assimilate with the herd of mankind,
and whose manners with difficulty
bend to the peculiarities of others,
is not likely to have many real
friends. His enjoyments, therefore,

―117―

must be solitary, lone, and melan-
choly. His only friend is himself.
As he sits immersed in reverie by
his midnight fire, and hears the wild
gusts of rain fitfully careering over
the plain, he listens sadly attentive;
and as the intonations of the howling
blast articulate to his enthusiastic
ear, he converses with the spirits
of the departed, while, between
each dreary pause of the storm, he
holds solitary communion with him-
self. Such is the social intercourse
of the recluse.

Few students, as “they trim the
midnight lamp,” will read the fol-
lowing lines without some idea of
the gloomy feelings of the author:

	Nor undelightful is the solemn noon of     night——
	——Lo, all is motionless around!
	Roars not the rushing wind; the sons     of men,
	And every beast, in mute oblivion lie;
	All Nature's hush'd in silence and in     sleep.
	Oh, then how fearful is it to reflect
	No being wakes but me!——

Wharton's Pleasures of Melan-
choly, from which this extract is
made, was first printed in 1745…..
Although it abounds with nervous
passages, and every where indicates
the pen of a poet, it is unaccountably
neglected.