- guise, that I will upon no account whatsoever have
you cut off your hair. Nature did not give it you for nothing, still less to cause you the headache. Mr. Eliot's hair grew so ill and bushy, that he was in the right to cut it off; but you have not the same reason. [Same date.]
Buying Books.—Mr. Harte wrote me word some
time ago, and Mr. Eliot confirms it now, that you
employ your pin-money in a very different manner
from that in which pin-money[1] is commonly lavished.
Not in gewgaws and baubles, but in buying
good and useful books. This is an excellent symptom,
and gives me very good hopes. Go on thus,
my dear boy, but for these two next years, and I
ask no more. You must then make such a figure,
and such a fortune in the world, as I wish you, and
as I have taken all these pains to enable you to do.
After that time, I allow you to be as idle as ever you
please; because I am sure that you will not then
please to be so at all. The ignorant and the weak
only are idle; but those, who have once acquired a
good stock of knowledge, always desire to increase
it. Knowledge is like power, in this respect, that
those who have the most, are most desirous of having
more. It does not clog, by possession, but in-*
- ↑ A somewhat curious use of the phrase, but well explained by Johnson.
