I have before now pointed out that we English do not, like the
foreigners, use this word in a good sense as well as in a bad sense.
A liberal and intelligent eagerness about the things of the mind may be
meant by a foreigner when he speaks of curiosity, but with us the word
always conveys a certain notion of frivolous and unedifying activity.
In the _Quarterly Review,_ some little time ago, was an estimate of the
celebrated French critic, M. Sainte-Beuve, and a very inadequate
estimate it in my judgment was. And its inadequacy consisted chiefly
in this: that in our English way it left out of sight the double sense
really involved in the word _curiosity,_ thinking enough was said to
stamp M. Sainte-Beuve with blame if it was said that he was impelled
in his operations as a critic by curiosity, and omitting either to
perceive that M. Sainte-Beuve himself, and many other people with him,
would consider that this was praiseworthy and not blameworthy,
or to point out why it ought really to be accounted worthy of blame and
not of praise. For as there is a curiosity about intellectual matters
which is futile, and merely a disease, so there is certainly a
curiosity,---a desire after the things of the mind simply for their own
sakes and for the pleasure of seeing them as they are,---which is,
in an intelligent being, natural and laudable.
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