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But unless under some very peculiar circumstances, it is not worth a clever man's while to strive for such success.

DISPUTATION AND CRITICISM.

A GREAT deal of disputation goes on in this world because people have not definite notions about the point at which they are respectively aiming. Boswell tells a good story about Johnson setting him right one day in a matter of this kind. Boswell related a dispute, as he calls it, which took place between Goldsmith and Dodsley about the poetry of the age they lived in. After mentioning what had been said on both sides-a knack in which Boswell ex

celled-Johnson passed judgment upon the matter by declaring that both disputants had said the same thing, the difference between them being only in the manner of saying it. But that our listeners may judge whether the sage pronounced rightly, they must hear what the matter of dispute was, and how each side handled it. Goldsmith had asserted that there was no poetry produced in the age he lived in. Dodsley resisted this dictum, and appealed to his own collection in disproof of it. Though, said he, "you cannot find in the poetry of this age a Palace, like Dryden's ode on St. Cecilia's Day, yet you have villages composed of very pretty

houses;" and then he mentioned particularly "The Spleen." Upon this statement Johnson pronounced the judgment that Dodsley had given up the question." He and Goldsmith," continued the Doctor, "said the same thing, only he said it in a softer manner than Goldsmith did, for he acknowledged there was no poetry, nothing that towered above the common mark. You may find wit and humour in verse, and yet no poetry. Hudibras has a profusion of these, yet it is not to be reckoned a poem. The Spleen, in Dodsley's collection, on which you say he chiefly rested, is not poetry."

Let every one carefully note that people may be disputing, and have all the anger which disputation is so likely to call up, when in truth they are saying the same thing. Therefore, when you have to do with an adversary who thinks that he differs with you, and thereupon assails you, try whether you cannot, by putting his own statements into another shape, though not precisely the same shape as that with which he quarrels, find herein a standing place of mutual agreement. This is what the syllogistic reasoners do when they find a middle termsomething to which both ends of the argument clearly bear the relation of truth, and from which, therefore, the just relation of the end to the beginning is inferred. In very many cases of dispute it may be found either that the adversaries are saying the same thing in a different

way, or they are saying the same thing to a considerable extent; and, if the agreement to this extent can be shown, ten to one but the attraction of this newly discovered sympathy will overcome all the repelling power of the remaining small portion of actual difference, and the dispute will be at an end.

The disputation here alluded to is that which arises and is pursued in honesty and good faith. That which grows out of wilful misrepresentation and obstinately asserted lies, is another matter. Disputation properly so called, ceases in such cases, and the business of an honest man becomes that of exposure and rebuke. But if you discharge this business honestly, and with energy, you will be called "bitter," "ill-natured," "abusive," " illiberal," "uncharitable," and a thousand other epithets besides, which the perpetrators of things false or foolish would much rather call you, than reform the error of their ways. For this there is no help, but to bear the reproaches with as much patience as you can, recollecting that you are contending for truth, and not with the small design of becoming agreeable to those who cannot bear or do not like truth. The pervading characteristic of all society in this age is a small, busy, self-sufficiency. "No grandeur now in nature or in book delights us;" some little conceit, or plan, or stratagem-some stroke of cleverness or stoop of meanness-some little bit of flattery

well applied to a discovered weakness-some fortunate revival of a forgotten joke some successful impudence on a small scale-some felicitous accession of finery. Such are the things upon which the great crowd of those who think themselves "somebody" are apt to plume themselves. The two most rare things are real candour and real modesty.

The plea in behalf of charity and moderation, addressed to those who engage in the work of exposure and rebuke, as regards public affairs and public men, deserves some words of separate consideration. An honest man can hardly get out a few earnest words of condemnation without being told that he should not speak thusthat charity should lead him to take other views. Very good kind of people use this language, but it is weak-very weak. Bishop Burnet speaks very well and very wisely upon this matter when he says, that "whatever moderation or charity we may owe to men's persons we owe none at all to their errors, and to that frame which is built on, and supported by, them." This is the common sense of the matter, and religious charity is perfectly consistent with common sense. You may be called hasty and violent, because you earnestly attack certain conduct of which, with all your heart, you disapprove. But it is they who reproach you who are really hasty and violent. They presume, because you

attack the error, that you hate and are desirous of injuring the person or the persons whose errors you attack. This is the presumption of a weak and narrow mind. Many a man, who seems all fierceness when denouncing the conduct which his heart condemns, would sooner die than inflict personal harm upon those whose conduct he rebukes, or treat them with anything but courtesy and kindness in personal intercourse with them. Truth and courtesy are not really at variance; but in these days of narrow mental vision, and of loose morality, every one who does not sacrifice truth to puffery or to compliment of that which he disapproves, is called unkind, discourteous, and severe. All this, as I have said, cannot be helped, and must be endured.

DECAY OF THE MIND.

IN the whole range of English poetry there is not, perhaps, any single couplet so pregnant with painful observation, and so suggestive of melancholy reflection, as that one of Samuel Johnson in which he refers to the closing scenes of the lives of Marlborough and Swift. These were undoubtedly the greatest men of their time in arms and in literature-they did more than any

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