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 MASTERING PYTHON
NETWORK AUTOMATION
Automating Container Orchestration,
Configuration, and Networking with
Terraform, Calico, HAProxy, and Istio

Tim Peters
 Content
Preface
Chapter 1: Python Essentials for Networks
Role of Python in Network Programming
Overview
Factors Benefitting Networking
Learn to use Data Types
Numeric Data Types
Boolean Data Type
Sequence Data Types
Mapping Data Types
Set Data Types
Binary Data Types
Exploring Loops
For Loops
While Loops
Working with Functions
Defining Functions
Calling Functions
Default Arguments
Variable-length Arguments
Lambda Functions
Recursion
Global and Local Variables
Function Arguments
Nested Functions
Summary
Chapter 2: File Handling and Modules in Python
File Handling
Opening and Closing Files
Reading from Files
Writing to Files
Appending to Files
With Statement
Exception Handling:
Utilizing Modules
Creating a Module
Importing a Module
Built-In Modules
Creating Packages
Standard Library Modules
My First Python Script
Summary
Chapter 3: Preparing Network Automation Lab
Components of Network Automation Process
Network Devices
Network Emulator
Python Environment
Automation Scripts
Putting It All Together
Benefits of Network Automation Lab
Install NS3 Network Simulator
System Requirements
Install Required Dependencies
Download NS-3
Install Python
 Update System
Install Python
Install pip
Install paramiko, Netmiko and Nornir
Install Virtual Environment
Create Virtual Environment
Activate the Virtual Environment
Install Python Libraries in Virtual Environment
Deactivate the Virtual Environment
Install Visual Studio Code
Download and Install VS Code
Install Python Extension
Configure Python Interpreter
Create Python Project
Write Python Code
Run Python Code
Summary
Chapter 4: Configuring Libraries and Lab Components
Nornir
Architecture of Nornir
Significance of Nornir
Paramiko
Architecture of Paramiko
Significance of Paramiko
Netmiko
Architecture of Netmiko
Significance of Netmiko
PyEZ
Architecture of PyEZ
 Significance of PyEZ
Configure nornir, paramiko, netmiko and pyEZ
Installing and Configuring Nornir
Installing and Configuring Paramiko
Installing and Configuring Netmiko
Installing and Configuring PyEZ
Configure Ports
Configuring Ports on Switches
Configuring Ports on Routers
Configure Hosts
Configuring Hosts on Windows
Configuring Hosts on Linux
Configure Servers
Installing Server Operating System
Configuring Network Settings
Installing and Configuring Server Software
Configure Network Encryption
SSL/TLS
IPsec
SSH
VPN
Testing the Network Automation Environment
Test Connectivity between Hosts
Test Port Connectivity
Test SSH Connectivity
Test Network Automation Libraries
Test NS3 Emulator
Test Network Encryption
Summary
Chapter 5: Code, Test & Validate Network Automation
Understanding Network Automation Scripts
Procedure of Network Automation Scripts
Define Variables for Automation Scripts
Install Required Libraries
Import Libraries
Define Variables
Connect to Device
Send Configuration Commands
Close Connection
Create Script to Use Variables
Run the Script
Write Codes using Python Tools
Install Required Libraries and Tools
Import Libraries
Define Inventory
Define Tasks
Define Playbook
Execute the Script
Test and Validate the Script
Testing Network Automation Scripts
Set Up a Test Environment
Create Test Cases
Run the Code
Document Test Results
Debug Errors
Identify the Error or Issue
Review the Code
Use Print Statements
 Use a Debugger
Fix the Error or Issue
Validate Network Automation Scripts
Prepare the Production Environment
Deploy Code to Production Environment or Devices
Run the Code on Production Environment or Devices
Verify the Output
Summary
Chapter 6: Automation of Configuration Management
Why Configuration Management?
Need of Configuration Management
Role of Python in Configuration Management
Server Provisioning with Terraform
Set up AWS Credentials
Install Terraform
Define Terraform Configuration
Initialize Terraform
Apply Terraform Configuration
Connect to EC2 Instance
Creating Server
Testing Server
Using Python to Automate System Settings
Import Necessary Modules
Define Timezone
Execute Command to Change Timezone
Verify Setting the Timezone
Using Python to Modify Base Configurations
Using Terraform to Modify Base Configurations
Automating System Identification
 Install Terraform Module
Python Script to Retrieve System Information
Using Python to Automate Patches and Updates
Install Necessary Libraries
Check for Available Updates
Upgrade the System
Reboot the System
Schedule Regular Updates
Using Terraform to Roll Patches and Updates
Create Configuration File
Applying Configuration File
Identify Unstable and Non-compliant Configurations
Establish Connection with Device
Retrieve Running Configuration
Search Non-compliant Interfaces
Fixing Non-compliant Configurations
Summary
Chapter 7: Managing Docker and Container Networks
Docker and Containers
Docker & Container Fundmentals
Benefits & Applications
Role of Python in Containerization
Install and Configure Docker
Install Docker
Install Docker Python Module
Create Dockerfile
Build Docker Image
Run Docker Container
Test Docker Container
 Using Python to Build Docker Images
Create DockerFile
Install Dependencies
Define Command
Build Docker Image
Run Container
Running Containers
Automate Running of Containers
Install Docker SDK for Python
Import Docker SDK
Connect to Docker Daemon
Define Container Configuration
Create Container
Start the Container
Stop and Remove Containers
Container Network Management
Overview
Managing Container Networks with Docker SDK
Summary
Chapter 8: Orchestrating Container & Workloads
Container Scheduling and Workload Automation
Network Service Disocvery
Understanding etcd
Service Discovery using etcd
Install etcd
Start etcd
Register Services
Discover Services
Automate Service Discovery
Sample Program to Automate Service Discovery
Kubernetes Load Balancers
Exploring HAProxy
Manage Load Balancer Servers using HAProxy
Import Required Libraries
Define API Endpoint URLs
Define Function to Add or Remove Servers
Call Function
Sample Program to Manage Load Balancer Servers
Automate Add/Manage SSL Certificate
Using Cryptography Library to Automate SSL
Step-by-step Illustration of Sample Program
Manage Container Storage
Sample Program
Step-by-step Illustration of Sample Program
Necessity of Container Performance
Why Container Performance?
Container Performance KPIs
Setting Up Container Performance Monitoring
Install the Required Libraries
Import Required Libraries
Connect to Docker API
Get Container List
Pull Performance Metrics
Print Container Metrics
Automated Rolling of Updates
Get Current Deployment Object
Update Deployment Object
Check Status of Deployment Rollout
 Clean Up Resources
Summary
Chapter 9: Pod Networking
Pods and Pod Networking
What are Pods?
Pods beyond Containers
Networking in Pods
Setting Up Pod Network
Choose a Pod Network Provider
Install Pod Network Provider
Configure Pod Network
Verify the Pod Network
Exploring Calico
Overview
Characteristics of Calico
Getting Started with Calico
Using Calico to Setup Pod Network
Routing Protocols
Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)
Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)
Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS)
Routing Information Protocol (RIP)
Exploring Cilium
Key Features of Cilium
Cilium Architecture
Install Cilium
Automation of Network Policies
Overview
Steps for Network Policies Automation
 Using Calico to Automate Network Policies
Workload Routing
Need of Workload Routing
Istio
Linkerd
Consul
Summary
Chapter 10: Implementing Service Mesh
Service-to-Service Communication
Remote Procedure Calls (RPCs)
Message-based Communication
Need of Service-to-Service
Rise of Service Mesh
Exploring Istio
Overview
Istio’s Capabilities
Installing Istio
Cluster Traffic
NodePort
LoadBalancer
Ingress
Istio Control Plane
Using Istio to Route Traffic
Metrics, Logs and Traces
Metrics
Logs
Traces
Using Grafana to Collect Metrics
Steps to Collect Metrics
Summary
 Preface
With "Mastering Python Network Automation," you can streamline
container orchestration, configuration management, and resilient
networking with Python and its libraries, allowing you to emerge as a
skilled network engineer or a strong DevOps professional.
From the ground up, this guide walks readers through setting up a
network automation lab using the NS3 network simulator and Python
programming. This includes the installation of NS3, as well as python
libraries like nornir, paramiko, netmiko, and PyEZ, as well as the
configuration of ports, hosts, and servers. This book will teach you
the skills to become a proficient automation developer who can test
and fix any bugs in automation scripts. This book examines the
emergence of the service mesh as a solution to the problems
associated with service-to-service communication over time.
This book walks you through automating various container-related
tasks in Python and its libraries, including container orchestration,
service discovery, load balancing, container storage management,
container performance monitoring, and rolling updates. Calico and
Istio are two well-known service mesh tools, and you'll find out how
to set them up and configure them to manage traffic routing,
security, and monitoring.
Additional topics covered in this book include the automation of
network policies, the routing of workloads, and the collection and
monitoring of metrics, logs, and traces. You'll also pick up some tips
and tricks for collecting and visualising Istio metrics with the help of
tools like Grafana.
In this book you will learn how to:
Use of Istio for cluster traffic management, traffic routing,
and service mesh implementation.
Utilizing Cilium and Calico to solve pod networking and
automate network policy and workload routing.
Monitoring and managing Kubernetes clusters with etcd
and HAProxy load balancers and container storage.
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
odds even) we argue (not very wisely) that a rich man must be
without ideas. This does not follow. ‘The wish is father to that
thought;’ and the thought is a spurious one. We might as well
pretend, that because a man has the advantage of us in height, he is
not strong or in good health; or because a woman is handsome, she is
not at the same time young, accomplished and well-bred. Our
fastidious self-love or our rustic prejudices may revolt at the
accumulation of advantages in others; but we must learn to submit to
the mortifying truth, which every day’s experience points out, with
what grace we may. There were those who grudged to Lord Byron the
name of a poet because he was of noble birth; as he himself could not
endure the praises bestowed upon Wordsworth, whom he considered
as a clown. He carried this weakness so far, that he even seemed to
regard it as a piece of presumption in Shakspeare to be preferred
before him as a dramatic author, and contended that Milton’s writing
an epic poem and the ‘Answer to Salmasius’ was entirely owing to
vanity—so little did he relish the superiority of the old blind
schoolmaster. So it is that one party would arrogate every advantage
to themselves, while those on the other side would detract from all in
their rivals that they do not themselves possess. Some will not have
the statue painted: others can see no beauty in the clay-model!
The man of rank and fortune, besides his chance for the common
or (now and then) an uncommon share of wit and understanding,
has it in his power to avail himself of every thing that is to be taught
of art and science; he has tutors and valets at his beck; he may
master the dead languages, he must acquire the modern ones; he
moves in the highest circles, and may descend to the lowest; the
paths of pleasure, of ambition, of knowledge, are open to him; he
may devote himself to a particular study, or skim the cream of all; he
may read books or men or things, as he finds most convenient or
agreeable; he is not forced to confine his attention to some one dry
uninteresting pursuit; he has a single hobby, or half a dozen; he is
not distracted by care, by poverty and want of leisure; he has every
opportunity and facility afforded him for acquiring various
accomplishments of body or mind, and every encouragement, from
confidence and success, for making an imposing display of them; he
may laugh with the gay, jest with the witty, argue with the wise; he
has been in courts, in colleges, and camps, is familiar with
playhouses and taverns, with the riding-house and the dissecting-
room, has been present at or taken part in the debates of both
Houses of Parliament, was in the O. P. row, and is deep in the Fancy,
understands the broadsword exercise, is a connoisseur in
regimentals, plays the whole game at whist, is a tolerable proficient
at backgammon, drives four in hand, skates, rows, swims, shoots;
knows the different sorts of game and modes of agriculture in the
different counties of England, the manufactures and commerce of
the different towns, the politics of Europe, the campaigns in Spain,
has the Gazette, the newspapers, and reviews at his fingers’ ends, has
visited the finest scenes of Nature and beheld the choicest works of
Art, and is in society where he is continually hearing or talking of all
these things; and yet we are surprised to find that a person so
circumstanced and qualified has any ideas to communicate or words
to express himself, and is not, as by patent and prescription he was
bound to be, a mere well-dressed fop of fashion or a booby lord! It
would be less remarkable if a poor author, who has none of this giddy
range and scope of information, who pores over the page till it fades
from his sight, and refines upon his style till the words stick in his
throat, should be dull as a beetle and mute as a fish, instead of
spontaneously pouring out a volume of wit and wisdom on every
subject that can be started.
An author lives out of the world, or mixes chiefly with those of his
own class; which renders him pedantic and pragmatical, or gives him
a reserved, hesitating, and interdicted manner. A lord or gentleman-
commoner goes into the world, and this imparts that fluency, spirit,
and freshness to his conversation, which arises from the circulation
of ideas and from the greater animation and excitement of
unrestrained intercourse. An author’s tongue is tied for want of
somebody to speak to: his ideas rust and become obscured, from not
being brought out in company and exposed to the gaze of instant
admiration. A lord has always some one at hand on whom he can
‘bestow his tediousness,’ and grows voluble, copious, inexhaustible in
consequence: his wit is polished, and the flowers of his oratory
expanded by his smiling commerce with the world, like the figures in
tapestry, that after being thrust into a corner and folded up in
closets, are displayed on festival and gala-days. Again, the man of
fashion and fortune reduces many of those arts and mysteries to
practice, of which the scholar gains all his knowledge from books and
vague description. Will not the rules of architecture find a readier
reception and sink deeper into the mind of the proprietor of a noble
mansion, or of him who means to build one, than of the half-starved
occupier of a garret? Will not the political economist’s insight into
Mr. Ricardo’s doctrine of Rent, or Mr. Malthus’s theory of
Population, be vastly quickened by the circumstance of his
possessing a large landed estate and having to pay enormous poor-
rates? And in general is it not self-evident that a man’s knowledge of
the true interests of the country will be enlarged just in proportion to
the stake he has in it? A person may have read accounts of different
cities and the customs of different nations: but will this give him the
same accurate idea of the situation of celebrated places, of the aspect
and manners of the inhabitants, or the same lively impulse and
ardour and fund of striking particulars in expatiating upon them, as
if he had run over half the countries of Europe, for no other purpose
than to satisfy his own curiosity, and excite that of others on his
return? I many years ago looked into the Duke of Newcastle’s
‘Treatise on Horsemanship’; all I remember of it is some quaint cuts
of the Duke and his riding-master introduced to illustrate the
lessons. Had I myself possessed a stud of Arabian coursers, with
grooms and a master of the horse to assist me in reducing these
precepts to practice, they would have made a stronger impression on
my mind; and what interested myself from vanity or habit, I could
have made interesting to others. I am sure I could have learnt to ride
the Great Horse, and do twenty other things, in the time I have
employed in endeavouring to make something out of nothing, or in
conning the same problem fifty times over, as monks count over
their beads! I have occasionally in my life bought a few prints, and
hung them up in my room with great satisfaction; but is it to be
supposed possible, from this casual circumstance, that I should
compete in taste or in the knowledge of virtù with a peer of the
realm, who has in his possession the costly designs, or a wealthy
commoner, who has spent half his fortune in learning to distinguish
copies from originals? ‘A question not to be asked!’ Nor is it likely
that the having dipped into the Memoirs of Count Grammont, or of
Lady Vane in Peregrine Pickle, should enable any one to sustain a
conversation on subjects of love and gallantry with the same ease,
grace, brilliancy, and spirit as the having been engaged in a hundred
adventures of one’s own, or heard the scandal and tittle-tattle of
fashionable life for the last thirty years canvassed a hundred times.
Books may be manufactured from other books by some dull,
mechanical process: it is conversation and the access to the best
society that alone fit us for society; or ‘the act and practic part of life
must be the mistress to our theorique,’ before we can hope to shine
in mixed company, or bend our previous knowledge to ordinary and
familiar uses out of that plaster-cast mould which is as brittle as it is
formal!
There is another thing which tends to produce the same effect, viz.
that lords and gentlemen seldom trouble themselves about the
knotty and uninviting parts of a subject: they leave it to ‘the dregs of
earth’ to drain the cup or find the bottom. They are attracted by the
frothy and sparkling. If a question puzzles them, or is not likely to
amuse others, they leave it to its fate, or to those whose business it is
to contend with difficulty, and to pursue truth for its own sake. They
string together as many available, off-hand topics as they can
procure for love or money; and aided by a good person or address,
sport them with very considerable effect at the next rout or party
they go to. They do not bore you with pedantry, or tease you with
sophistry. Their conversation is not made up of moot-points or
choke-pears. They do not willingly forego ‘the feast of reason or the
flow of soul’ to grub up some solitary truth or dig for hid treasure.
They are amateurs, not professors; the patrons, not the drudges of
knowledge. An author loses half his life, and stultifies his faculties, in
hopes to find out something which perhaps neither he nor any one
else can ever find out. For this he neglects half a hundred
acquirements, half a hundred accomplishments. Aut Cæsar aut nihil.
He is proud of the discovery or of the fond pursuit of one truth—a
lord is vain of a thousand ostentatious common-places. If the latter
ever devotes himself to some crabbed study, or sets about finding out
the longitude, he is then to be looked upon as a humorist if he fails—
a genius if he succeeds—and no longer belongs to the class I have
been speaking of.
Perhaps a multiplicity of attainments and pursuits is not very
favourable to their selectness; as a local and personal acquaintance
with objects of imagination takes away from, instead of adding to,
their romantic interest. Familiarity is said to breed contempt; or at
any rate, the being brought into contact with places, persons, or
things that we have hitherto only heard or read of, removes a certain
aerial delicious veil of refinement from them, and strikes at that ideal
abstraction, which is the charm and boast of a life conversant chiefly
among books. The huddling a number of tastes and studies together
tends to degrade and vulgarise each, and to give a crude,
unconcocted, dissipated turn to the mind. Instead of stuffing it full of
gross, palpable, immediate objects of excitement, a wiser plan would
be to leave something in reserve, something hovering in airy space to
draw our attention out of ourselves, to excite hope, curiosity, wonder,
and never to satisfy it. The great art is not to throw a glare of light
upon all objects, or to lay the whole extended landscape bare at one
view; but so to manage as to see the more amiable side of things, and
through the narrow vistas and loop-holes of retreat,
‘Catch glimpses that may make us less forlorn.’

I hate to annihilate air and distance by the perpetual use of an

opera-glass, to run every thing into foreground, and to interpose no
medium between the thought and the object. The breath of words
stirs and plays idly with the gossamer web of fancy: the touch of
things destroys it. I have seen a good deal of authors: and I believe
that they (as well as I) would quite as lieve that I had not. Places I
have seen too, that did not answer my expectation. Pictures (that is,
some few of them) are the only things that are the better for our
having studied them ‘face to face, not in a glass darkly,’ and that in
themselves surpass any description we can give, or any notion we can
form of them. But I do not think seriously, after all, that those who
possess are the best judges of them. They become furniture, property
in their hands. The purchasers look to the price they will fetch, or
turn to that which they have cost. They consider not beauty or
expression, but the workmanship, the date, the pedigree, the school
—something that will figure in the description in a catalogue or in a
puff in a newspaper. They are blinded by silly admiration of whatever
belongs to themselves, and warped so as to eye ‘with jealous leer
malign’ all that is not theirs. Taste is melted down in the crucible of
avarice and vanity, and leaves a wretched caput mortuum of
pedantry and conceit. As to books, they ‘best can feel them who have
read them most,’ and who rely on them for their only support and
their only chance of distinction. They most keenly relish the graces of
style who have in vain tried to make them their own: they alone
understand the value of a thought who have gone through the trouble
of thinking. The privation of other advantages is not a clear loss, if it
is counterbalanced by a proportionable concentration and unity of
interest in what is left. The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the
man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame. A member of
the Roxburgh Club has a certain work (let it be the Decameron of
Boccaccio) splendidly bound, and in the old quarto edition, we will
say. In this not only his literary taste is gratified, but the pride of
property, the love of external elegance and decoration. The poor
student has only a paltry and somewhat worn copy of the same work
(or perhaps only a translation) which he picked up at a stall, standing
out of a shower of rain. What then! has not the Noble Virtuoso
doubly the advantage, and a much higher pleasure in the perusal of
the work? No; for these are vulgar and mechanical helps to the true
enjoyment of letters. From all this mock-display and idle parade of
binding and arms and dates, his unthought-of rival is precluded, and
sees only the talismanic words, feels only the spirit of the author, and
in that author reads ‘with sparkling eyes’
‘His title to a mansion in the skies.’

Oh! divine air of learning, fanned by the undying breath of genius,

still let me taste thee, free from all adventitious admixtures,
‘Pure in the last recesses of the soul!’

We are far at present from the style of Swift’s ‘Polite Conversation.’

The fashionable tone has quite changed in this respect, and almost
gone into the opposite extreme. At that period, the polite world
seems to have been nearly at a stand, in a state of intellectual
abeyance; or in the interval between the disuse of chivalrous
exercises and the introduction of modern philosophy, not to have
known how to pass its time and to have sunk into the most common-
place formality and unmeaning apathy. But lo! at a signal given, or
rather prompted by that most powerful of all calls, the want of
something to do, all rush into the lists, having armed themselves
anew with the shining panoply of science and of letters, with an
eagerness, a perseverance, a dexterity, and a success that are truly
astonishing. The higher classes have of late taken the lead almost as
much in arts as they formerly did in arms, when the last was the only
prescribed mode of distinguishing themselves from the rabble whom
they treated as serfs and churls. The prevailing cue at present is to
regard mere authors (who are not also of gentle blood) as dull,
illiterate, poor creatures, a sort of pretenders to taste and elegance,
and adventurers in intellect. The true adepts in black-letter are
knights of the shire: the sworn patentees of Parnassus are Peers of
the Realm. Not to pass for a literary quack, you must procure a
diploma from the College of Heralds. A dandy conceals a
bibliomanist: our belles are bluestockings. The Press is so entirely
monopolised by beauty, birth, or importance in the State, that an
author by profession resigns the field to the crowd of well-dressed
competitors, out of modesty or pride, is fain to keep out of sight—
‘Or write by stealth and blush to find it fame!’

Lord Byron used to boast that he could bring forward a dozen young
men of fashion who could beat all the regular authors at their several
weapons of wit or argument; and though I demur to the truth of the
assertion, yet there is no saying till the thing is tried. Young
gentlemen make very pretty sparrers, but are not the ‘ugliest
customers’ when they take off the gloves. Lord Byron himself was in
his capacity of author an out-and-outer; but then it was at the
expense of other things, for he could not talk except in short
sentences and sarcastic allusions, he had no ready resources; all his
ideas moulded themselves into stanzas, and all his ardour was
carried off in rhyme. The channel of his pen was worn deep by habit
and power; the current of his thoughts flowed strong in it, and
nothing remained to supply the neighbouring flats and shallows of
miscellaneous conversation, but a few sprinklings of wit or gushes of
spleen. An intense purpose concentrated and gave a determined
direction to his energies, that ‘held on their way, unslacked of
motion.’ The track of his genius was like a volcanic eruption, a
torrent of burning lava, full of heat and splendour and headlong fury,
that left all dry, cold, hard, and barren behind it! To say nothing of a
host of female authors, a bright galaxy above our heads, there is no
young lady of fashion in the present day, scarce a boarding-school
girl, that is not mistress of as many branches of knowledge as would
set up half-a-dozen literary hacks. In lieu of the sampler and the
plain-stitch of our grandmothers, they have so many hours for
French, so many for Italian, so many for English grammar and
composition, so many for geography and the use of the globes, so
many for history, so many for botany, so many for painting, music,
dancing, riding, &c. One almost wonders how so many studies are
crammed into the twenty-four hours; or how such fair and delicate
creatures can master them without spoiling the smoothness of their
brows, the sweetness of their tempers, or the graceful simplicity of
their manners. A girl learns French (not only to read, but to speak it)
in a few months, while a boy is as many years in learning to construe
Latin. Why so? Chiefly because the one is treated as a bagatelle or
agreeable relaxation; the other as a serious task or necessary evil.
Education, a very few years back, was looked upon as a hardship, and
enforced by menaces and blows, instead of being carried on (as now)
as an amusement and under the garb of pleasure, and with the
allurements of self-love. It is found that the products of the mind
flourish better and shoot up more quickly in the sunshine of good-
humour and in the air of freedom, than under the frowns of
sullenness, or the shackles of authority. ‘The labour we delight in
physics pain.’ The idlest people are not those who have most leisure-
time to dispose of as they choose: take away the feeling of
compulsion, and you supply a motive for application, by converting a
toil into a pleasure. This makes nearly all the difference between the
hardest drudgery and the most delightful exercise—not the degree of
exertion, but the motive and the accompanying sensation. Learning
does not gain proselytes by the austerity or awfulness of its looks. By
representing things as so difficult, and as exacting such dreadful
sacrifices, and to be acquired under such severe penalties, we not
only deter the student from the attempt, but lay a dead-weight upon
the imagination, and destroy that cheerfulness and alacrity of spirit
which is the spring of thought and action. But to return.—An author
by profession reads a few works that he intends to criticise and cut
up ‘for a consideration,’—a bluestocking by profession reads all that
comes out to pass the time or satisfy her curiosity. The author has
something to say about Fielding, Richardson, or even the Scotch
novels: but he is soon distanced by the fair critic or overwhelmed
with the contents of whole Circulating Libraries poured out upon his
head without stint or intermission. He reads for an object and to live;
she for the sake of reading or to talk. Be this as it may, the idle reader
at present reads twenty times as many books as the learned one. The
former skims the surface of knowledge, and carries away the striking
points and a variety of amusing details, while the latter reserves
himself for great occasions, or perhaps does nothing under the
pretence of having so much to do.
‘From every work he challenges essoine,
For contemplation’s sake.’

The literati of Europe threaten at present to become the Monks of

letters, and from having taken up learning as a profession, to live on
the reputation of it. As gentlemen have turned authors, authors seem
inclined to turn gentlemen; and enjoying the otium cum dignitate, to
be much too refined and abstracted to condescend to the subordinate
or mechanical parts of knowledge. They are too wise in general to be
acquainted with anything in particular; and remain in a proud and
listless ignorance of all that is within the reach of the vulgar. They are
not, as of old, walking libraries or Encyclopædias, but rather certain
faculties of the mind personified. They scorn the material and
instrumental branches of inquiry, the husk and bran, and affect only
the fine flour of literature—they are only to be called in to give the
last polish to style, the last refinement to thought. They leave it to
their drudges, the Reading Public, to accumulate the facts, to arrange
the evidence, to make out the data, and like great painters whose
pupils have got in the ground-work and the established proportions
of a picture, come forward to go over the last thin glazing of the
colours, or throw in the finer touches of expression. On my excusing
myself to N—— for some blunder in history, by saying, ‘I really had
not time to read,’—he said, ‘No, but you have time to write!’ And once
a celebrated critic taking me to task as to the subject of my pursuits,
and receiving regularly the same answer to his queries, that I knew
nothing of chemistry, nothing of astronomy, of botany, of law, of
politics, &c. at last exclaimed somewhat impatiently—‘What the devil
is it, then, you do know?’ I laughed, and was not very much
disconcerted at the reproof, as it was just.
Modern men of letters may be divided into three classes; the mere
scholar or book-worm, all whose knowledge is taken from books,
and who may be passed by as an obsolete character, little inquired
after—the literary hack or coffee-house politician, who gets his
information mostly from hearsay, and who makes some noise
indeed, but the echo of it does not reach beyond his own club or
circle—and the man of real or of pretended genius, who aims to draw
upon his own resources of thought or feeling, and to throw a new
light upon nature and books. This last personage (if he acts up to his
supposed character) has too much to do to lend himself to a variety
of pursuits, or to lay himself out to please in all companies. He has a
task in hand, a vow to perform; and he cannot be diverted from it by
incidental or collateral objects. All the time that he does not devote
to this paramount duty, he should have to himself, to repose, to lie
fallow, to gather strength and recruit himself. A boxer is led into the
lists that he may not waste a particle of vigour needlessly; and a
leader in Parliament, on the day that he is expected to get up a grand
attack or defence, is not to be pestered with the ordinary news of the
day. So an author (who is, or would be thought original) has no time
for spare accomplishments or ornamental studies. All that he
intermeddles with must be marshalled to bear upon his purpose. He
must be acquainted with books and the thoughts of others, but only
so far as to assist him on his way, and ‘to take progression from
them.’ He starts from the point where they left off. All that does not
aid him in his new career goes for nothing, is thrown out of the
account; or is a useless and splendid incumbrance. Most of his time
he passes in brooding over some wayward hint or suggestion of a
thought, nor is he bound to give any explanation of what he does
with the rest. He tries to melt down truth into essences—to express
some fine train of feeling, to solve some difficult problem, to start
what is new, or to perfect what is old; in a word, not to do what
others can do (which in the division of mental labour he holds to be
unnecessary), but to do what they all with their joint efforts cannot
do. For this he is in no hurry, and must have the disposal of his
leisure and the choice of his subject. The public can wait. He deems
with a living poet, who is an example of his own doctrine—
——‘That there are powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.’

Or I have sometimes thought that the dalliance of the mind with

Fancy or with Truth might be described almost in the words of
Andrew Marvell’s address ‘To his Coy Mistress:‘—
 ‘Had we but world enough and time,
This toying, Lady, were no crime;
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk and pass our love’s long day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My contemplative love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart:
For, lady, you deserve this state;
Nor would I love at lower rate!’

The aspiring poet or prose-writer undertakes to do a certain thing;

and if he succeeds, it is enough. While he is intent upon that or
asleep, others may amuse themselves how they can with any topic
that happens to be afloat and all the eloquence they are masters of,
so that they do not disturb the champion of truth, or the proclaimer
of beauty to the world. The Conversation of Lords, on the contrary, is
to this like a newspaper to a book—the latter treats well or ill of one
subject, and leads to a conclusion on one point; the other is made up
of all sorts of things jumbled together, debates in parliament, law-
reports, plays, operas, concerts, routs, levees, fashions, auctions, the
last fight, foreign news, deaths, marriages, and crim-cons,
bankruptcies, and quack medicines; and a large allowance is
frequently to be made, besides the natural confusion of the subjects,
for cross-readings in the speaker’s mind![11] Or, to take another
illustration, fashionable conversation has something theatrical or
melo-dramatic in it; it is got up for immediate effect, it is calculated
to make a great display, there is a profusion of paint, scenery, and
dresses, the music is loud, there are banquets and processions, you
have the dancers from the Opera, the horses from Astley’s, and the
elephant from Exeter ‘Change, the stage is all life, bustle, noise and
glare, the audience brilliant and delighted, and the whole goes off in
a blaze of phosphorus; but the dialogue is poor, the story
improbable, the critics shake their heads in the pit, and the next day
the piece is damned!
In short, a man of rank and fortune takes the adventitious and
ornamental part of letters, the obvious, popular, fashionable, that
serves to amuse at the time, or minister to the cravings of vanity,
without laying a very heavy tax on his own understanding, or the
patience of his hearers. He furnishes his mind as he does his house,
with what is showy, striking, and of the newest pattern: he mounts
his hobby as he does his horse, which is brought to his door for an
airing, and which (should it prove restive or sluggish) he turns away
for another; or like a child at a fair, gets into a round-about of
knowledge, till his head becomes giddy, runs from sight to sight,
from booth to booth, and like the child, goes home loaded with
trinkets, gewgaws, and rattles. He does not pore and pine over an
idea (like some poor hypochondriac) till it becomes impracticable,
unsociable, incommunicable, absorbed in mysticism, and lost in
minuteness: he is not upon oath never to utter anything but oracles,
but rattles away in a fine careless hair-brained dashing manner, hit
or miss, and succeeds the better for it. Nor does he prose over the
same stale round of politics and the state of the nation (with the
coffee-house politician), but launches out with freedom and gaiety
into whatever has attraction and interest in it, ‘runs the great circle,
and is still at home.’ He is inquisitive, garrulous, credulous,
sanguine, florid,—neither pedantic nor vulgar. Neither is he
intolerant, exclusive, bigoted to one set of opinions or one class of
individuals. He clothes an abstract theory with illustrations from his
own experience and observation, hates what is dry and dull, and
throws in an air of high health, buoyant spirits, fortune and splendid
connections to give animation and vividness to what perhaps might
otherwise want it. He selects what is palpable without being gross or
trivial, lends it colour from the flush of success, and elevation from
the distinctions of rank. He runs on and never stops for an answer,
rather dictating to others than endeavouring to ascertain their
opinions, solving his own questions, improving upon their hints, and
bearing down or precluding opposition by a good-natured loquacity
or stately dogmatism. All this is perhaps more edifying as a subject of
speculation than delightful in itself. Shakspeare somewhere says—‘A
man’s mind is parcel of his fortunes,’—and I think the inference will
be borne out in the present case. I should guess that in the prevailing
tone of fashionable society or aristocratic literature would be found
all that variety, splendour, facility, and startling effect which
corresponds with external wealth, magnificence of appearance, and a
command of opportunity; while there would be wanting whatever
depends chiefly on intensity of pursuit, on depth of feeling, and on
simplicity and independence of mind joined with straitened fortune.
Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession
pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it. Accordingly,
we find but one really great name (Lord Bacon) in this rank of
English society, where superiority is taken for granted, and reflected
from outward circumstances. The rest are in the second class. Lord
Bolingbroke, whom Pope idolized (and it pains me that all his idols
are not mine) was a boastful empty mouther! I never knew till the
other day, that Lord Bolingbroke was the model on which Mr. Pitt
formed himself. He was his Magnus Apollo; and no wonder. The late
Minister used to lament it as the great desideratum of English
literature, that there was no record anywhere existing of his speeches
as they were spoken, and declared that he would give any price for
one of them reported as speeches were reported in the newspapers in
our time. Being asked which he thought the best of his written
productions, he would answer, raising his eyebrows and deepening
the tones of his voice to a sonorous bass—‘Why, undoubtedly, Sir, the
Letter to Sir William Wyndham is the most masterly of all his
writings, and the first composition for wit and eloquence in the
English language;‘—and then he would give his reasons at great
length and con amore, and say that Junius had formed himself
entirely upon it. Lord Bolingbroke had, it seems, a house next-door
to one belonging to Lord Chatham at Walham-Green; and as the
gardens joined, they could hear Lord Bolingbroke walking out with
the company that came to see him in his retirement, and elaborately
declaiming politics to the old lords and statesmen that were with
him, and philosophy to the younger ones. Pitt learned this story from
his father when a boy. This account, interesting in itself, was to me
the more interesting and extraordinary, as it had always appeared to
me that Mr. Pitt was quite an original, sui generis,
‘As if a man were author of himself,
And own’d no other kin’—
 that so far from having a model or idol that he looked up to and
grounded himself upon, he had neither admiration nor
consciousness of any thing existing out of himself, and that he lived
solely in the sound of his own voice and revolved in the circle of his
own hollow and artificial periods. I have it from the same authority
that he thought Cobbett the best writer and Horne Tooke the
cleverest man of the day. His hatred of Wyndham was excessive and
mutual.—Perhaps it may be said that Lord Chatham was a first-rate
man in his way, and I incline to think it; but he was a self-made man,
bred in a camp, not in a court, and his rank was owing to his talents.
[12]
 ON A SUN-DIAL

The New Monthly Magazine.]

[October, 1827.
‘To carve out dials quaintly, point by point.’
Shakespeare.

Horas non numero nisi serenas—is the motto of a sun-dial near

Venice. There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the
thought unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most classical. ‘I
count only the hours that are serene.’ What a bland and care-
dispelling feeling! How the shadows seem to fade on the dial-plate as
the sky lours, and time presents only a blank unless as its progress is
marked by what is joyous, and all that is not happy sinks into
oblivion! What a fine lesson is conveyed to the mind—to take no note
of time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect
the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright and gentle
moments, turning always to the sunny side of things, and letting the
rest slip from our imaginations, unheeded or forgotten! How
different from the common art of self-tormenting! For myself, as I
rode along the Brenta, while the sun shone hot upon its sluggish,
slimy waves, my sensations were far from comfortable; but the
reading this inscription on the side of a glaring wall in an instant
restored me to myself; and still, whenever I think of or repeat it, it
has the power of wafting me into the region of pure and blissful
abstraction. I cannot help fancying it to be a legend of Popish
superstition. Some monk of the dark ages must have invented and
bequeathed it to us, who, loitering in trim gardens and watching the
silent march of time, as his fruits ripened in the sun or his flowers
scented the balmy air, felt a mild languor pervade his senses, and
having little to do or to care for, determined (in imitation of his sun-
dial) to efface that little from his thoughts or draw a veil over it,
making of his life one long dream of quiet! Horas non numero nisi
serenas—he might repeat, when the heavens were overcast and the
gathering storm scattered the falling leaves, and turn to his books
and wrap himself in his golden studies! Out of some such mood of
mind, indolent, elegant, thoughtful, this exquisite device (speaking
volumes) must have originated.
Of the several modes of counting time, that by the sun-dial is
perhaps the most apposite and striking, if not the most convenient or
comprehensive. It does not obtrude its observations, though it
‘morals on the time,’ and, by its stationary character, forms a
contrast to the most fleeting of all essences. It stands sub dio—under
the marble air, and there is some connexion between the image of
infinity and eternity. I should also like to have a sunflower growing
near it with bees fluttering round.[13] It should be of iron to denote
duration, and have a dull, leaden look. I hate a sun-dial made of
wood, which is rather calculated to show the variations of the
seasons, than the progress of time, slow, silent, imperceptible,
chequered with light and shade. If our hours were all serene, we
might probably take almost as little note of them, as the dial does of
those that are clouded. It is the shadow thrown across, that gives us
warning of their flight. Otherwise, our impressions would take the
same undistinguishable hue; we should scarce be conscious of our
existence. Those who have had none of the cares of this life to harass
and disturb them, have been obliged to have recourse to the hopes
and fears of the next to enliven the prospect before them. Most of the
methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe, been the
contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, finding time hang
heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of
it. The hour-glass is, I suspect, an older invention; and it is certainly
the most defective of all. Its creeping sands are not indeed an unapt
emblem of the minute, countless portions of our existence; and the
manner in which they gradually slide through the hollow glass and
diminish in number till not a single one is left, also illustrates the
way in which our years slip from us by stealth: but as a mechanical
invention, it is rather a hindrance than a help, for it requires to have
the time, of which it pretends to count the precious moments, taken
up in attention to itself, and in seeing that when one end of the glass
is empty, we turn it round, in order that it may go on again, or else all
our labour is lost, and we must wait for some other mode of
ascertaining the time before we can recover our reckoning and
proceed as before. The philosopher in his cell, the cottager at her
spinning-wheel must, however, find an invaluable acquisition in this
‘companion of the lonely hour,’ as it has been called,[14] which not
only serves to tell how the time goes, but to fill up its vacancies. What
a treasure must not the little box seem to hold, as if it were a sacred
deposit of the very grains and fleeting sands of life! What a business,
in lieu of other more important avocations, to see it out to the last
sand, and then to renew the process again on the instant, that there
may not be the least flaw or error in the account! What a strong sense
must be brought home to the mind of the value and irrecoverable
nature of the time that is fled; what a thrilling, incessant
consciousness of the slippery tenure by which we hold what remains
of it! Our very existence must seem crumbling to atoms, and running
down (without a miraculous reprieve) to the last fragment. ‘Dust to
dust and ashes to ashes’ is a text that might be fairly inscribed on an
hour-glass: it is ordinarily associated with the scythe of Time and a
Death’s head, as a Memento mori; and has, no doubt, furnished
many a tacit hint to the apprehensive and visionary enthusiast in
favour of a resurrection to another life!
The French give a different turn to things, less sombre and less
edifying. A common and also a very pleasing ornament to a clock, in
Paris, is a figure of Time seated in a boat which Cupid is rowing
along, with the motto, L’Amour fait passer le Tems—which the wits
again have travestied into Le Tems fait passer L’Amour. All this is
ingenious and well; but it wants sentiment. I like a people who have
something that they love and something that they hate, and with
whom every thing is not alike a matter of indifference or pour passer
le tems. The French attach no importance to any thing, except for the
moment; they are only thinking how they shall get rid of one
sensation for another; all their ideas are in transitu. Every thing is
detached, nothing is accumulated. It would be a million of years
before a Frenchman would think of the Horas non numero nisi
serenas. Its impassioned repose and ideal voluptuousness are as far
from their breasts as the poetry of that line in Shakspeare—‘How
sweet the moonlight sleeps upon that bank!’ They never arrive at the
classical—or the romantic. They blow the bubbles of vanity, fashion,
and pleasure; but they do not expand their perceptions into
refinement, or strengthen them into solidity. Where there is nothing
fine in the ground-work of the imagination, nothing fine in the
superstructure can be produced. They are light, airy, fanciful (to give
them their due)—but when they attempt to be serious (beyond mere
good sense) they are either dull or extravagant. When the volatile salt
has flown off, nothing but a caput mortuum remains. They have
infinite crotchets and caprices with their clocks and watches, which
seem made for any thing but to tell the hour—gold-repeaters,
watches with metal covers, clocks with hands to count the seconds.
There is no escaping from quackery and impertinence, even in our
attempts to calculate the waste of time. The years gallop fast enough
for me, without remarking every moment as it flies; and farther, I
must say I dislike a watch (whether of French or English
manufacture) that comes to me like a footpad with its face muffled,
and does not present its clear, open aspect like a friend, and point
with its finger to the time of day. All this opening and shutting of
dull, heavy cases (under pretence that the glass-lid is liable to be
broken, or lets in the dust or air and obstructs the movement of the
watch), is not to husband time, but to give trouble. It is mere
pomposity and self-importance, like consulting a mysterious oracle
that one carries about with one in one’s pocket, instead of asking a
common question of an acquaintance or companion. There are two
clocks which strike the hour in the room where I am. This I do not
like. In the first place, I do not want to be reminded twice how the
time goes (it is like the second tap of a saucy servant at your door
when perhaps you have no wish to get up): in the next place, it is
starting a difference of opinion on the subject, and I am averse to
every appearance of wrangling and disputation. Time moves on the
same, whatever disparity there may be in our mode of keeping count
of it, like true fame in spite of the cavils and contradictions of the
critics. I am no friend to repeating watches. The only pleasant
association I have with them is the account given by Rousseau of
some French lady, who sat up reading the New Heloise when it first
came out, and ordering her maid to sound the repeater, found it was
too late to go to bed, and continued reading on till morning. Yet how
different is the interest excited by this story from the account which
Rousseau somewhere else gives of his sitting up with his father
reading romances, when a boy, till they were startled by the swallows
twittering in their nests at day-break, and the father cried out, half
angry and ashamed—‘Allons, mon fils; je suis plus enfant que toi!’ In
general, I have heard repeating watches sounded in stage-coaches at
night, when some fellow-traveller suddenly awaking and wondering
what was the hour, another has very deliberately taken out his watch,
and pressing the spring, it has counted out the time; each petty
stroke acting like a sharp puncture on the ear, and informing me of
the dreary hours I had already passed, and of the more dreary ones I
had to wait till morning.
The great advantage, it is true, which clocks have over watches and
other dumb reckoners of time is, that for the most part they strike
the hour—that they are as it were the mouth-pieces of time; that they
not only point it to the eye, but impress it on the ear; that they ‘lend
it both an understanding and a tongue.’ Time thus speaks to us in an
audible and warning voice. Objects of sight are easily distinguished
by the sense, and suggest useful reflections to the mind; sounds,
from their intermittent nature, and perhaps other causes, appeal
more to the imagination, and strike upon the heart. But to do this,
they must be unexpected and involuntary—there must be no trick in
the case—they should not be squeezed out with a finger and a thumb;
there should be nothing optional, personal in their occurrence; they
should be like stern, inflexible monitors, that nothing can prevent
from discharging their duty. Surely, if there is any thing with which
we should not mix up our vanity and self-consequence, it is with
Time, the most independent of all things. All the sublimity, all the
superstition that hang upon this palpable mode of announcing its
flight, are chiefly attached to this circumstance. Time would lose its
abstracted character, if we kept it like a curiosity or a jack-in-a-box:
its prophetic warnings would have no effect, if it obviously spoke
only at our prompting, like a paltry ventriloquism. The clock that
tells the coming, dreaded hour—the castle bell, that ‘with its brazen
throat and iron tongue, sounds one unto the drowsy ear of night’—
the curfew, ‘swinging slow with sullen roar’ o’er wizard stream or
fountain, are like a voice from other worlds, big with unknown
events. The last sound, which is still kept up as an old custom in
many parts of England, is a great favourite with me. I used to hear it
when a boy. It tells a tale of other times. The days that are past, the
generations that are gone, the tangled forest glades and hamlets
brown of my native country, the woodsman’s art, the Norman
warrior armed for the battle or in his festive hall, the conqueror’s
iron rule and peasant’s lamp extinguished, all start up at the
clamorous peal, and fill my mind with fear and wonder. I confess,
nothing at present interests me but what has been—the recollection
of the impressions of my early life, or events long past, of which only
the dim traces remain in a smouldering ruin or half-obsolete custom.
That things should be that are now no more, creates in my mind the
most unfeigned astonishment. I cannot solve the mystery of the past,
nor exhaust my pleasure in it. The years, the generations to come,
are nothing to me. We care no more about the world in the year 2300
than we do about one of the planets. Even George IV. is better than
the Earl of Windsor. We might as well make a voyage to the moon as
think of stealing a march upon Time with impunity. De non
apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio. Those who are to
come after us and push us from the stage seem like upstarts and
pretenders, that may be said to exist in vacuo, we know not upon
what, except as they are blown up with vain and self-conceit by their
patrons among the moderns. But the ancients are true and bonâ-fide
people, to whom we are bound by aggregate knowledge and filial ties,
and in whom seen by the mellow light of history we feel our own
existence doubled and our pride consoled, as we ruminate on the
vestiges of the past. The public in general, however, do not carry this
speculative indifference about the future to what is to happen to
themselves, or to the part they are to act in the busy scene. For my
own part, I do; and the only wish I can form, or that ever prompts
the passing sigh, would be to live some of my years over again—they
would be those in which I enjoyed and suffered most!
The ticking of a clock in the night has nothing very interesting nor
very alarming in it, though superstition has magnified it into an
omen. In a state of vigilance or debility, it preys upon the spirits like
the persecution of a teazing pertinacious insect; and haunting the
imagination after it has ceased in reality, is converted into the death-
watch. Time is rendered vast by contemplating its minute portions
thus repeatedly and painfully urged upon its attention, as the ocean
in its immensity is composed of water-drops. A clock striking with a
clear and silver sound is a great relief in such circumstances, breaks
the spell, and resembles a sylph-like and friendly spirit in the room.
Foreigners, with all their tricks and contrivances upon clocks and
time-pieces, are strangers to the sound of village bells, though