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CHAPTER VII.

IN WHAT RESPECTS WAS HARRIS A GREAT MAN? A PERNICIOUS conception of greatness.-Genius and talents over-estimated by the world.-Another class of heroes.Heroes of the heart.-Their fate.-The most apparent not always the most important or most interesting.-Profession of Literature.-Charles Lamb's advice thereon.-Peculiarly apt for Young India to bear in mind.-Harris's works.Patriots of all classes have a family likeness.—Harris no less a Patriot than the greatest patriot of the world.-Harris's real staff of greatness.-The rights and position of a great mind.-Difference between it and the insignificant.

A NOTION, erroneous and dangerous in its tendency, has captivated mankind, that sparkling talents and much intellectual pomp are real eminence and dignity. Want of real discernment has led to thus placing boundless faith in brilliant and magnificent minds-in fact, in mind as mind; and who does not acknowledge that this is carried to an unworthy extreme in this country-this idolatry of the human mind-this worship of the idol of endowed

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intelligence? Indeed, it cannot be otherwise in a country which lacks it to such a shameful extent, and where every writer swells himself into the importance of an author of eminence. True, we cannot find fault with the tendency; for where would our race have been had talents and genius never lent their ministering influences; what revolutions--material, intellectual, social, moral, political-do not owe their origin to the majesty of their power ?

We may award to genius and splendid talents their real worth; but it is not the less to be recollected on that account that the truly great men have been those earnest workers in the cause of humanity who, without heeding the noisy glory of the world, take their stand-point on a surer foundation than passing fame-aspiring to become known among the spirits in Heaven, if unknown among men on earth. Are they not real heroes, who lived with their hearts directed now upwards in holy communion with the music above, and then downwards, alleviating the wrongs of suffering humanity; and yet, how many such realised the true purpose of their life, even though their lot was cast in the ranks of humble life, never so much as emerging from the dull round of ordinary toil? Yes,

many have lived thus, and made no sign; and their names, without commanding any ostentation, have passed away as quietly after death as they lived in life. Ah! but does genius never sink into oblivion? Who knows but in name Occam, Acquinas, or Erasmus, who swayed the whole world of letters in their time? What has become of Salmanasius, for whom Queen Christina of Sweden prepared the fire with her own hands? How much are Cowley and Waller, in their days in the height of popularity and fame, now read and remembered? Is splendidness always in something perceptible, something great executed? Who sees the roots thrown out or the flowers growing in full verdure? No; the deepest work is always out of sight-the flower is developed, but the process is hidden: and the real man often lives unseen, without crying in the world--" See: I am here!"

Now Harris was of the latter class. So far as we can claim for him the epithet great, we are quite content that his greatness should not be anything of ostentation and noise. He did not enter life, as Coleridge says of Chatterton,

"Sublime of hope and confident of fame!"

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And even if he had the stuff, he calculated wisely in his choice. When Bernard Barton, the Quaker Poet, held the situation of a clerk in the Bank of Woodbridge, in Suffolk, he contemplated abandoning his profession for the chances of a literary life. He communicated his design to Charles Lamb, asking him for advice, and he was replied to in awful but stern truth-"Throw yourself on the world, without any rational plan of support beyond what the chance employ of booksellers would afford you! Throw yourself rather, my dear Sir, from the steep Tarpeian rock, slap-dash, headlong upon iron spokes. If you have five consolatory minutes between the desk and the bed, make much of them, and live a century in them, rather than turn slave to the booksellers. They are Turks and Tartars when they have poor authors at their beck. Hitherto you have been at arm'slength from them-come not within their grip. I have known many authors want for breadsome repining, others enjoying the blessed security of a country-house; all agreeing they had rather have been tailors, weavers-what not, rather than the things they were. I have known some starve, some go mad, one dear friend literally dying in a workhouse. Oh !

you know not-may you never know-the miseries of subsisting by authorship!"

Perhaps there may be some exaggeration here; but though the state of affairs have materially changed since Sir E. B. Lytton taught his countrymen that the world must know "it is not charity but tribute which they owe to genius," so as to give the direct lie to the bickerings of Charles Lamb, it is true to the very word in this country, where the mass wallows in ignorance, and the rich in utter apathy and luxury. Harris, in attempting at all to enter the line of authorship, should, like the majority of his young countrymen, have miscalculated his position, and wrecked himself utterly. He had no other ambition, the jealousy of the British Government having denied him; and the only one left to him was that of the common journalist, any higher aspiration than which was but coveting frustration, and drawing ridicule, contempt, and ruin. The thought moved in his mind at the early age of twenty,† *"Not so bad as we seem". play by Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, Bart.

In the beginning of 1860, the writer of these pages had some correspondence with Baboo Harrischander on a subject of some moment, when, inquiring of each other his past career, he wrote this fact.