But above all, the whole world almost of minds, as far as we regard intellectual efforts, may be divided into two classes of the Busy-indolent and Lazy-indolent. To both alike all Thinking is painful, and all attempts to rouse them to think, whether in the re-examination of their existing convictions, or for the reception of new light, are irritating. "It _may_ all be very deep and clever; but really one ought to be quite sure of it before one wrenches one's brain to find out what it is. I take up a Book as a Companion, with whom I can have an easy cheerful chit-chat on what we both know beforehand, or else matters of fact. In our leisure hours we have a right to relaxation and amusement."
Well! but in their _studious_ hours, when their bow is to be bent, when they are _apud Musas_, or amidst the Muses? Alas! it is just the same! The same craving for _amusement_, that is, to be away from the Muses! for relaxation, that is, the unbending of a bow which in fact had never been strung! There are two ways of obtaining their applause. The first is: Enable them to reconcile in one and the same occupation the love of Sloth and the hatred of Vacancy! Gratify indolence, and yet save them from _ennui_--in plain English, from themselves! For, spite of their antipathy to _dry_ reading, the keeping company with themselves is, after all, the insufferable annoyance: and the true secret of their dislike to a work of thought and inquiry lies in its tendency to make them acquainted with their own permanent Being. The other road to their favour is, to introduce to them their own thoughts and predilections, tricked out in the _fine_ language, in which it would gratify their vanity to express them in their own conversation, and with which they can imagine themselves _showing off:_ and this (as has been elsewhere remarked) is the characteristic difference between the second-rate writers of the last two or three generations, and the same class under Elizabeth and the Stuarts. In the latter we find the most far-fetched and singular thoughts in the simplest and most native language; in the former, the most obvious and common-place thoughts in the most far-fetched and motley language. But lastly, and as the _sine quâ non_ of their patronage, a sufficient arc must be left for the Reader's mind to _oscillate_ in--freedom of choice,