To understand
the works of celebrated authors, to comprehend
their systems, and retain their reasonings, is a
task more than equal to common intellects; and
he is by no means to be accounted useless or idle,
who has stored his mind with acquired knowledge,
and can detail it occasionally to others who have
less leisure or weaker abilities.
Persius has justly observed, that knowledge is
nothing to him who is not known by others to
possess it[k]: to the scholar himself it is nothing
with respect either to honor or advantage, for the
world cannot reward those qualities which are
concealed from it; with respect to others it is nothing,
because it affords no help to ignorance or errour.
[k] Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter.
Sat. i. 27.
It is with justice, therefore, that in an
accomplished character, Horace unites just sentiments
with the power of expressing them; and he that
has once accumulated learning, is next to consider,
how he shall most widely diffuse and most agreeably
impart it.
A ready man is made by conversation. He that
buries himself among his manuscripts, "besprent,"
as Pope expresses it, "with learned dust," and
wears out his days and nights in perpetual research
and solitary meditation, is too apt to lose in his
elocution what he adds to his wisdom; and when
he comes into the world, to appear overloaded with
his own notions, like a man armed with weapons
which he cannot wield.
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