about a man on his deathbed, who calls his children about him and thanks God, though he has left them nothing to live upon, he has given them a good education, and tries to extract comfort from the reminiscence.  That he has spent money enough upon Jack’s education is certain; something between two or three thousand pounds in all at least, the interest of which, it strikes him, would be very convenient just now to keep him.  But unfortunately the principal is gone and Jack isn’t.

Now suppose—­for one may suppose anything, however ridiculous—­he had spent two or three hundred pounds at the very most, and brought him up to the Calling of Literature.  He believes, perhaps, that it is only geniuses that succeed in it (in which case I know more geniuses than I had any idea of), and he doesn’t think Jack a genius, though Jack’s mother does.  Or, as is more probable, he regards it as a hand-to-mouth calling, which to-day gives its disciples a five-pound note, and to-morrow five pence.  He calls to mind a saying about Literature being a good stick, but not a good crutch—­an excellent auxiliary, but no permanent support; but he forgets the all-important fact that the remark was made half a century ago.

Poor blind Paterfamilias—­shall I couch you?  If the operation is successful, I am sure you will thank me for it; but, on the other hand, I foresee I shall incur the greatest enmities.  Should I encourage clever Jack, and, what is worse, a thousand Jacks who are not clever, to enter upon this vocation, what will editors say to me?  I shall have to go about, perhaps, guarded with two policemen with revolvers, like an Irish gentleman on his landed estate.  ’Is not the flood of rubbish to which we are already subjected,’ I hear them crying, ’bad enough, without your pulling up the sluices of universal stupidity?’ My suggestion, however, is intended to benefit them by clearing away the rubbish, and inducing a clearer and deeper stream for the turning of their mills.  At the same time I confess that the lessening of Paterfamilias’s difficulties is my main object.  What I would open his eyes to is the fact that a calling, of the advantages of which he has no knowledge, does present itself to clever Jack, which will cost him nothing but pens, ink, and paper to enter upon, and in which, if he has been well trained for it, he will surely be successful, since so many succeed in it without any training at all.  Why should not clever Jack have this in view as much as the ignes fatui of woolsacks and mitres?  If it has no lord chancellorships, it has plenty of county court appointments; if it has no bishoprics, it has plenty of benefices—­and really, as times go, some pretty fat ones.