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Title: Table-Talk, Essays on Men and Manners
Author: William Hazlitt
Release Date: January, 2002 [Etext #3020]
[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
Edition: 10
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TABLE-TALK
ESSAYS ON MEN AND MANNERS
by WILLIAM HAZLITT
CONTENTS
VOLUME I
1. On the Pleasure of Painting
2. The Same Subject Continued
3. On the Past and Future
4. On Genius and Common Sense
5. The Same Subject Continued
6. Character of Cobbett
7. On People With One Idea
8. On the Ignorance of the Learned
9. The Indian Jugglers
10. On Living To One's-Self
11. On Thought and Action
12. On Will-Making
13. On Certain Inconsistencies In Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses
14. The Same Subject Continued
15. On Paradox and Common-Place
16. On Vulgarity and Affectation
VOLUME II
1. On a Landscape of Nicholas Poussin
2. On Milton's Sonnets
3. On Going a Journey
4. On Coffee-House Politicians
5. On the Aristocracy of Letters
6. On Criticism
7. On Great and Little Things
8. On Familiar Style
9. On Effeminacy of Character
10. Why Distant Objects Please
11. On Corporate Bodies
12. Whether Actors Ought To Sit in the Boxes
13. On the Disadvantages of Intellectual Superiority
14. On Patronage and Puffing
15. On the Knowledge of Character
16. On the Picturesque and Ideal
17. On the Fear of Death
VOLUME I
ESSAY I
ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING
'There is a pleasure in painting which none but painters know.' In
writing, you have to contend with the world; in painting, you have only
to carry on a friendly strife with Nature. You sit down to your task,
and are happy. From the moment that you take up the pencil, and look
Nature in the face, you are at peace with your own heart. No angry
passions rise to disturb the silent progress of the work, to shake the
hand, or dim the brow: no irritable humours are set afloat: you have no
absurd opinions to combat, no point to strain, no adversary to crush, no
fool to annoy--you are actuated by fear or favour to no man. There is
'no juggling here,' no sophistry, no intrigue, no tampering with the
evidence, no attempt to make black white, or white black: but you resign
yourself into the hands of a greater power, that of Nature, with the
simplicity of a child, and the devotion of an enthusiast--'study with
joy her manner, and with rapture taste her style.' The mind is calm,
and full at the same time. The hand and eye are equally employed. In
tracing the commonest object, a plant or the stump of a tree, you learn
something every moment. You perceive unexpected differences, and
discover likenesses where you looked for no such thing. You try to set
down what you see--find out your error, and correct it. You need not
play tricks, or purposely mistake: with all your pains, you are still
far short of the mark. Patience grows out of the endless pursuit, and
turns it into a luxury. A streak in a flower, a wrinkle in a leaf, a
tinge in a cloud, a stain in an old wall or ruin grey, are seized with
avidity as the _spolia opima_ of this sort of mental warfare, and
furnish out labour for another half-day. The hours pass away untold,
without chagrin, and without weariness; nor would you ever wish to pass
them otherwise. Innocence is joined with industry, pleasure with
business; and the mind is satisfied, though it is not engaged in
thinking or in doing any mischief.[1]
I have not much pleasure in writing these _Essays_, or in reading them
afterwards; though I own I now and then meet with a phrase that I like,
or a thought that strikes me as a true one. But after I begin them, I
am only anxious to get to the end of them, which I am not sure I shall
do, for I seldom see my way a page or even a sentence beforehand; and
when I have as by a miracle escaped, I trouble myself little more about
them. I sometimes have to write them twice over: then it is necessary
to read the _proof_, to prevent mistakes by the printer; so that by the
time they appear in a tangible shape, and one can con them over with a
conscious, sidelong glance to the public approbation, they have lost
their gloss and relish, and become 'more tedious than a twice-told
tale.' For a person to read his own works over with any great delight,
he ought first to forget that he ever wrote them. Familiarity naturally
breeds contempt. It is, in fact, like poring fondly over a piece of
blank paper; from repetition, the words convey no distinct meaning to
the mind--are mere idle sounds, except that our vanity claims an
interest and property in them. I have more satisfaction in my own
thoughts than in dictating them to others: words are necessary to
explain the impression of certain things upon me to the reader, but they
rather weaken and draw a veil over than strengthen it to myself.
However I might say with the poet, 'My mind to me a kingdom is,' yet I
have little ambition 'to set a throne or chair of state in the
understandings of other men.' The ideas we cherish most exist best in a
kind of shadowy abstraction,
Pure in the last recesses of the mind,
and derive neither force nor interest from being exposed to public view.
They are old familiar acquaintance, and any change in them, arising from
the adventitious ornaments of style or dress, is little to their
advantage. After I have once written on a subject, it goes out of my
mind: my feelings about it have been melted down into words, and _then_
I forget. I have, as it were, discharged my memory of its old habitual
reckoning, and rubbed out the score of real sentiment. For the future
it exists only for the sake of others. But I cannot say, from my own
experience, that the same process takes place in transferring our ideas
to canvas; they gain more than they lose in the mechanical
transformation. One is never tired of painting, because you have to set
down not what you knew already, but what you have just discovered. In
the former case you translate feelings into words; in the latter, names
into things. There is a continual creation out of nothing going on.
With every stroke of the brush a new field of inquiry is laid open; new
difficulties arise, and new triumphs are prepared over them. By
comparing the imitation with the original, you see what you have done,
and how much you have still to do. The test of the senses is severer
than that of fancy, and an over-match even for the delusions of our
self-love. One part of a picture shames another, and you determine to
paint up to yourself, if you cannot come up to Nature. Every object
becomes lustrous from the light thrown back upon it by the mirror of
art: and by the aid of the pencil we may be said to touch and handle the
objects of sight. The air-drawn visions that hover on the verge of
existence have a bodily presence given them on the canvas: the form of
beauty is changed into a substance: the dream and the glory of the
universe is made 'palpable to feeling as well as sight.'--And see! a
rainbow starts from the canvas, with its humid train of glory, as if it
were drawn from its cloudy arch in heaven. The spangled landscape
glitters with drops of dew after the shower. The 'fleecy fools' show
their coats in the gleams of the setting sun. The shepherds pipe their
farewell notes in the fresh evening air. And is this bright vision made
from a dead, dull blank, like a bubble reflecting the mighty fabric of
the universe? Who would think this miracle of Rubens' pencil possible
to be performed? Who, having seen it, would not spend his life to do
the like? See how the rich fallows, the bare stubble-field, the scanty
harvest-home, drag in Rembrandt's landscapes! How often have I looked
at them and nature, and tried to do the same, till the very 'light
thickened,' and there was an earthiness in the feeling of the air!
There is no end of the refinements of art and nature in this respect.
One may look at the misty glimmering horizon till the eye dazzles and
the imagination is lost, in hopes to transfer the whole interminable
expanse at one blow upon the canvas. Wilson said, he used to try to
paint the effect of the motes dancing in the setting sun. At another
time, a friend, coming into his painting-room when he was sitting on the
ground in a melancholy posture, observed that his picture looked like a
landscape after a shower: he started up with the greatest delight, and
said, 'That is the effect I intended to produce, but thought I had
failed.' Wilson was neglected; and, by degrees, neglected his art to
apply himself to brandy. His hand became unsteady, so that it was only
by repeated attempts that he could reach the place or produce the effect
he aimed at; and when he had done a little to a picture, he would say to
any acquaintance who chanced to drop in, 'I have painted enough for one
day: come, let us go somewhere.' It was not so Claude left his
pictures, or his studies on the banks of the Tiber, to go in search of
other enjoyments, or ceased to gaze upon the glittering sunny vales and
distant hills; and while his eye drank in the clear sparkling hues and
lovely forms of nature, his hand stamped them on the lucid canvas to
last there for ever! One of the most delightful parts of my life was
one fine summer, when I used to walk out of an evening to catch the last
light of the sun, gemming the green slopes or russet lawns, and gilding
tower or tree, while the blue sky, gradually turning to purple and gold,
or skirted with dusky grey, hung its broad marble pavement over all, as
we see it in the great master of Italian landscape. But to come to a
more particular explanation of the subject:--
The first head I ever tried to paint was an old woman with the upper
part of the face shaded by her bonnet, and I certainly laboured [at] it
with great perseverance. It took me numberless sittings to do it. I
have it by me still, and sometimes look at it with surprise, to think
how much pains were thrown away to little purpose,--yet not altogether
in vain if it taught me to see good in everything, and to know that
there is nothing vulgar in Nature seen with the eye of science or of
true art. Refinement creates beauty everywhere: it is the grossness of
the spectator that discovers nothing but grossness in the object. Be
this as it may, I spared no pains to do my best. If art was long, I
thought that life was so too at that moment. I got in the general
effect the first day; and pleased and surprised enough I was at my
success. The rest was a work of time--of weeks and months (if need
were), of patient toil and careful finishing. I had seen an old head by
Rembrandt at Burleigh House, and if I could produce a head at all like
Rembrandt in a year, in my lifetime, it would be glory and felicity and
wealth and fame enough for me! The head l had seen at Burleigh was an
exact and wonderful facsimile of nature, and I resolved to make mine (as
nearly as I could) an exact facsimile of nature. I did not then, nor do
I now believe, with Sir Joshua, that the perfection of art consists in
giving general appearances without individual details, but in giving
general appearances with individual details. Otherwise, I had done my
work the first day. But I saw something more in nature than general
effect, and I thought it worth my while to give it in the picture.
There was a gorgeous effect of light and shade; but there was a delicacy
as well as depth in the chiaroscuro which I was bound to follow into its
dim and scarce perceptible variety of tone and shadow. Then I had to
make the transition from a strong light to as dark a shade, preserving
the masses, but gradually softening off the intermediate parts. It was
so in nature; the difficulty was to make it so in the copy. I tried,
and failed again and again; I strove harder, and succeeded as I thought.
The wrinkles in Rembrandt were not hard lines, but broken and
irregular. I saw the same appearance in nature, and strained every
nerve to give it. If I could hit off this edgy appearance, and insert
the reflected light in the furrows of old age in half a morning, I did
not think I had lost a day. Beneath the shrivelled yellow parchment
look of the skin, there was here and there a streak of the blood-colour
tinging the face; this I made a point of conveying, and did not cease to
compare what I saw with what I did (with jealous, lynx-eyed
watchfulness) till I succeeded to the best of my ability and judgment.
How many revisions were there! How many attempts to catch an expression
which I had seen the day before! How often did we try to get the old
position, and wait for the return of the same light! There was a
puckering up of the lips, a cautious introversion of the eye under the
shadow of the bonnet, indicative of the feebleness and suspicion of old
age, which at last we managed, after many trials and some quarrels, to a
tolerable nicety. The picture was never finished, and I might have gone
on with it to the present hour.[2] I used to sit it on the ground when
my day's work was done, and saw revealed to me with swimming eyes the
birth of new hopes and of a new world of objects. The painter thus
learns to look at Nature with different eyes. He before saw her 'as in
a glass darkly, but now face to face.' He understands the texture and
meaning of the visible universe, and 'sees into the life of things,' not
by the help of mechanical instruments, but of the improved exercise of
his faculties, and an intimate sympathy with Nature. The meanest thing
is not lost upon him, for he looks at it with an eye to itself, not
merely to his own vanity or interest, or the opinion of the world. Even
where there is neither beauty nor use--if that ever were--still there is
truth, and a sufficient source of gratification in the indulgence of
curiosity and activity of mind. The humblest printer is a true scholar;
and the best of scholars--the scholar of Nature. For myself, and for
the real comfort and satisfaction of the thing, I had rather have been
Jan Steen, or Gerard Dow, than the greatest casuist or philologer that
ever lived. The painter does not view things in clouds or 'mist, the
common gloss of theologians,' but applies the same standard of truth and
disinterested spirit of inquiry, that influence his daily practice, to
other subjects. He perceives form, he distinguishes character. He
reads men and books with an intuitive eye. He is a critic as well as a
connoisseur. The conclusions he draws are clear and convincing, because
they are taken from the things themselves. He is not a fanatic, a dupe,
or a slave; for the habit of seeing for himself also disposes him to
judge for himself. The most sensible men I know (taken as a class) are
painters; that is, they are the most lively observers of what passes in
the world about them, and the closest observers of what passes in their
own minds. From their profession they in general mix more with the
world than authors; and if they have not the same fund of acquired
knowledge, are obliged to rely more on individual sagacity. I might
mention the names of Opie, Fuseli, Northcote, as persons distinguished
for striking description and acquaintance with the subtle traits of
character.[3] Painters in ordinary society, or in obscure situations
where their value is not known, and they are treated with neglect and
indifference, have sometimes a forward self-sufficiency of manner; but
this is not so much their fault as that of others. Perhaps their want
of regular education may also be in fault in such cases. Richardson,
who is very tenacious of the respect in which the profession ought to be
held, tells a story of Michael Angelo, that after a quarrel between him
and Pope Julius II., 'upon account of a slight the artist conceived the
pontiff had put upon him, Michael Angelo was introduced by a bishop,
who, thinking to serve the artist by it, made it an argument that the
Pope should be reconciled to him, because men of his profession were
commonly ignorant, and of no consequence otherwise; his holiness,
enraged at the bishop, struck him with his staff, and told him, it was
he that was the blockhead, and affronted the man himself would not
offend: the prelate was driven out of the chamber, and Michael Angelo
had the Pope's benediction, accompanied with presents. This bishop had
fallen into the vulgar error, and was rebuked accordingly.'
Besides the exercise of the mind, painting exercises the body. It is a
mechanical as well as a liberal art. To do anything, to dig a hole in
the ground, to plant a cabbage, to hit a mark, to move a shuttle, to
work a pattern,--in a word, to attempt to produce any effect, and to
_succeed,_ has something in it that gratifies the love of power, and
carries off the restless activity of the mind of man. Indolence is a
delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be
happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive
tendencies of the human frame; and painting combines them both
incessantly.[4] The hand is furnished a practical test of the
correctness of the eye; and the eye, thus admonished, imposes fresh
tasks of skill and industry upon the hand. Every stroke tells as the
verifying of a new truth; and every new observation, the instant it is
made, passes into an act and emanation of the will. Every step is
nearer what we wish, and yet there is always more to do. In spite of
the facility, the fluttering grace, the evanescent hues, that play round
the pencil of Rubens and Van-dyke, however I may admire, I do not envy
them this power so much as I do the slow, patient, laborious execution
of Correggio, Leonardo da Vinci, and Andrea del Sarto, where every touch
appears conscious of its charge, emulous of truth, and where the painful
artist has so distinctly wrought,
That you might almost say his picture thought.
In the one case the colours seem breathed on the canvas as if by magic,
the work and the wonder of a moment; in the other they seem inlaid in
the body of the work, and as if it took the artist years of unremitting
labour, and of delightful never-ending progress to perfection.[5] Who
would wish ever to come to the close of such works,--not to dwell on
them, to return to them, to be wedded to them to the last? Rubens, with
his florid, rapid style, complains that when he had just learned his
art, he should be forced to die. Leonardo, in the slow advances of his,
had lived long enough!
Painting is not, like writing, what is properly understood by a
sedentary employment. It requires not indeed a strong, but a continued
and steady exertion of muscular power. The precision and delicacy of
the manual operation, makes up for the want of vehemence,--as to balance
himself for any time in the same position the rope-dancer must strain
every nerve. Painting for a whole morning gives one as excellent an
appetite for one's dinner as old Abraham Tucker acquired for his by
riding over Banstead Downs. It is related of Sir Joshua Reynolds, that
'he took no other exercise than what he used in his painting-room,'--the
writer means, in walking backwards and forwards to look at his picture;
but the act of painting itself, of laying on the colours in the proper
place and proper quantity, was a much harder exercise than this
alternate receding from and returning to the picture. This last would
be rather a relaxation and relief than an effort. It is not to be
wondered at, that an artist like Sir Joshua, who delighted so much in
the sensual and practical part of his art, should have found himself at
a considerable loss when the decay of his sight precluded him, for the
last year or two of his life, from the following up of his
profession,--'the source,' according to his own remark, 'of thirty
years' uninterrupted enjoyment and prosperity to him.' It is only those
who never think at all, or else who have accustomed themselves to brood
incessantly on abstract ideas, that never feel ennui.
To give one instance more, and then I will have done with this rambling
discourse. One of my first attempts was a picture of my father, who was
then in a green old age, with strong-marked features, and scarred with
the smallpox. I drew it out with a broad light crossing the face,
looking down, with spectacles on, reading. The book was Shaftesbury's
_Characteristics_, in a fine old binding, with Gribelin's etchings. My
father would as lieve it had been any other book; but for him to read
was to be content, was 'riches fineless.' The sketch promised well; and
I set to work to finish it, determined to spare no time nor pains. My
father was willing to sit as long as I pleased; for there is a natural
desire in the mind of man to sit for one's picture, to be the object of
continued attention, to have one's likeness multiplied; and besides his
satisfaction in the picture, he had some pride in the artist, though he
would rather I should have written a sermon than painted like Rembrandt
or like Raphael. Those winter days, with the gleams of sunshine coming
through the chapel-windows, and cheered by the notes of the
robin-redbreast in our garden (that 'ever in the haunch of winter
sings'),--as my afternoon's work drew to a close,--were among the
happiest of my life. When I gave the effect I intended to any part of
the picture for which I had prepared my colours; when I imitated the
roughness of the skin by a lucky stroke of the pencil; when I hit the
clear, pearly tone of a vein; when I gave the ruddy complexion of
health, the blood circulating under the broad shadows of one side of the
face, I thought my fortune made; or rather it was already more than
made, I might one day be able to say with Correggio, '_I also am a
painter!_' It was an idle thought, a boy's conceit; but it did not make
me less happy at the time. I used regularly to set my work in the chair
to look at it through the long evenings; and many a time did I return to
take leave of it before I could go to bed at night. I remember sending
it with a throbbing heart to the Exhibition, and seeing it hung up there
by the side of one of the Honourable Mr. Skeffington (now Sir George).
There was nothing in common between them, but that they were the
portraits of two very good-natured men. I think, but am not sure, that
I finished this portrait (or another afterwards) on the same day that
the news of the battle of Austerlitz came; I walked out in the
afternoon, and, as I returned, saw the evening star set over a poor
man's cottage with other thoughts and feelings than I shall ever have
again. Oh for the revolution of the great Platonic year, that those
times might come over again! I could sleep out the three hundred and
sixty-five thousand intervening years very contentedly!--The picture is
left: the table, the chair, the window where I learned to construe Livy,
the chapel where my father preached, remain where they were; but he
himself is gone to rest, full of years, of faith, of hope, and charity!
NOTES to ESSAY I
[1] There is a passage in Werter which contains a very pleasing
illustration of this doctrine, and is as follows:-
'About a league from the town is a place called Walheim. It is very
agreeably situated on the side of a hill: from one of the paths which
leads out of the village, you have a view of the whole country; and
there to a good old woman who sells wine, coffee, and tea there: but
better than all this are two lime-trees before the church, which spread
their branches over a little green, surrounded by barns and cottages. I
have seen few places more retired and peaceful. I send for a chair and
table from the old woman's, and there I drink my coffee and read Homer.
It was by accident that I discovered this place one fine afternoon: all
was perfect stillness; everybody was in the fields, except a little boy
about four years old, who was sitting on the ground, and holding between
his knees a child of about six months; he pressed it to his bosom with
his little arms, which made a sort of great chair for it; and
notwithstanding the vivacity which sparkled in his eyes, he sat
perfectly still. Quite delighted with the scene, I sat down on a plough
opposite, and had great pleasure in drawing this little picture of
brotherly tenderness. I added a bit of the hedge, the barn-door, and
some broken cart-wheels, without any order, just as they happened to
lie; and in about an hour I found I had made a drawing of great
expression and very correct design without having put in anything of my
own. This confirmed me in the resolution I had made before, only to
copy Nature for the future. Nature is inexhaustible, and alone forms
the greatest masters. Say what you will of rules, they alter the true
features and the natural expression.'
[2] It is at present covered with a thick slough of oil and varnish (the
perishable vehicle of the English school), like an envelope of
goldbeaters' skin, so as to be hardly visible.
[3] Men in business, who are answerable with their fortunes for the
consequences of their opinions, and are therefore accustomed to
ascertain pretty accurately the grounds on which they act, before they
commit themselves on the event, are often men of remarkably quick and
sound judgements. Artists in like manner must know tolerably well what
they are about, before they can bring the result of their observations
to the test of ocular demonstration.
[4] The famous Schiller used to say, that he found the great happiness
of life, after all, to consist in the discharge of some mechanical duty.
[5] The rich _impasting_ of Titian and Giorgione combines something of
the advantages of both these styles, the felicity of the one with the
carefulness of the other, and is perhaps to be preferred to either.
ESSAY II
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED
The painter not only takes a delight in nature, he has a new and
exquisite source of pleasure opened to him in the study and
contemplation of works of art--
Whate'er Lorraine light touch'd with soft'ning hue,
Or savage Rosa dash'd, or learned Poussin drew.
He turns aside to view a country gentleman's seat with eager looks,
thinking it may contain some of the rich products of art. There is an
air round Lord Radnor's park, for there hang the two Claudes, the
Morning and Evening of the Roman Empire--round Wilton House, for there
is Vandyke's picture of the Pembroke family--round Blenheim, for there
is his picture of the Duke of Buckingham's children, and the most
magnificent collection of Rubenses in the world--at Knowsley, for there
is Rembrandt's Handwriting on the Wall--and at Burleigh, for there are
some of Guido's angelic heads. The young artist makes a pilgrimage to
each of these places, eyes them wistfully at a distance, 'bosomed high
in tufted trees,' and feels an interest in them of which the owner is
scarce conscious: he enters the well-swept walks and echoing archways,
passes the threshold, is led through wainscoted rooms, is shown the
furniture, the rich hangings, the tapestry, the massy services of
plate--and, at last, is ushered into the room where his treasure is, the
idol of his vows--some speaking face or bright landscape! It is stamped
on his brain, and lives there thenceforward, a tally for nature, and a
test of art. He furnishes out the chambers of the mind from the spoils
of time, picks and chooses which shall have the best places--nearest his
heart. He goes away richer than he came, richer than the possessor; and
thinks that he may one day return, when he perhaps shall have done
something like them, or even from failure shall have learned to admire
truth and genius more.
My first initiation in the mysteries of the art was at the Orleans
Gallery: it was there I formed my taste, such as it is; so that I am
irreclaimably of the old school in painting. I was staggered when I saw
the works there collected, and looked at them with wondering and with
longing eyes. A mist passed away from my sight: the scales fell off. A
new sense came upon me, a new heaven and a new earth stood before me. I
saw the soul speaking in the face--'hands that the rod of empire had
swayed' in mighty ages past--'a forked mountain or blue promontory,'
--with trees upon't
That nod unto the world, and mock our eyes with air.
Old Time had unlocked his treasures, and Fame stood portress at the
door. We had all heard of the names of Titian, Raphael, Guido,
Domenichino, the Caracci--but to see them face to face, to be in the
same room with their deathless productions, was like breaking some
mighty spell--was almost an effect of necromancy! From that time I
lived in a world of pictures. Battles, sieges, speeches in parliament
seemed mere idle noise and fury, 'signifying nothing,' compared with
those mighty works and dreaded names that spoke to me in the eternal
silence of thought. This was the more remarkable, as it was but a short
time before that I was not only totally ignorant of, but insensible to
the beauties of art. As an instance, I remember that one afternoon I
was reading _The Provoked Husband_ with the highest relish, with a green
woody landscape of Ruysdael or Hobbima just before me, at which I looked
off the book now and then, and wondered what there could be in that sort
of work to satisfy or delight the mind--at the same time asking myself,
as a speculative question, whether I should ever feel an interest in it
like what I took in reading Vanbrugh and Cibber?
I had made some progress in painting when I went to the Louvre to study,
and I never did anything afterwards. I never shall forget conning over
the Catalogue which a friend lent me just before I set out. The
pictures, the names of the painters, seemed to relish in the mouth.
There was one of Titian's Mistress at her toilette. Even the colours
with which the painter had adorned her hair were not more golden, more
amiable to sight, than those which played round and tantalised my fancy
ere I saw the picture. There were two portraits by the same hand--'A
young Nobleman with a glove'--Another, 'a companion to it.' I read the
description over and over with fond expectancy, and filled up the
imaginary outline with whatever I could conceive of grace, and dignity,
and an antique gusto--all but equal to the original. There was the
Transfiguration too. With what awe I saw it in my mind's eye, and was
overshadowed with the spirit of the artist! Not to have been
disappointed with these works afterwards, was the highest compliment I
can pay to their transcendent merits. Indeed, it was from seeing other
works of the same great masters that I had formed a vague, but no
disparaging idea of these. The first day I got there, I was kept for
some time in the French Exhibition Room, and thought I should not be
able to get a sight of the old masters. I just caught a peep at them
through the door (vile hindrance!) like looking out of purgatory into
paradise--from Poussin's noble, mellow-looking landscapes to where
Rubens hung out his gaudy banner, and down the glimmering vista to the
rich jewels of Titian and the Italian school. At last, by much
importunity, I was admitted, and lost not an instant in making use of my
new privilege. It was _un beau jour_ to me. I marched delighted
through a quarter of a mile of the proudest efforts of the mind of man,
a whole creation of genius, a universe of art! I ran the gauntlet of all
the schools from the bottom to the top; and in the end got admitted into
the inner room, where they had been repairing some of their greatest
works. Here the Transfiguration, the St. Peter Martyr, and the St.
Jerome of Domenichino stood on the floor, as if they had bent their
knees, like camels stooping, to unlade their riches to the spectator.
On one side, on an easel, stood Hippolito de Medici (a portrait by
Titian), with a boar-spear in his hand, looking through those he saw,
till you turned away from the keen glance; and thrown together in heaps
were landscapes of the same hand, green pastoral hills and vales, and
shepherds piping to their mild mistresses underneath the flowering
shade. Reader, 'if thou hast not seen the Louvre thou art damned!'--for
thou hast not seen the choicest remains of the works of art; or thou
hast not seen all these together with their mutually reflected glories.
I say nothing of the statues; for I know but little of sculpture, and
never liked any till I saw the Elgin Marbles. . . . Here, for four
months together, I strolled and studied, and daily heard the warning
sound--'Quatres heures passees, il faut fermer, Citoyens'--(Ah! why did
they ever change their style?) muttered in coarse provincial French; and
brought away with me some loose draughts and fragments, which I have
been forced to part with, like drops of life-blood, for 'hard money.'
How often, thou tenantless mansion of godlike magnificence--how often
has my heart since gone a pilgrimage to thee!
It has been made a question, whether the artist, or the mere man of
taste and natural sensibility, receives most pleasure from the
contemplation of works of art; and I think this question might be
answered by another as a sort of _experimentum crucis_, namely, whether
any one out of that 'number numberless' of mere gentlemen and amateurs,
who visited Paris at the period here spoken of, felt as much interest,
as much pride or pleasure in this display of the most striking monuments
of art as the humblest student would? The first entrance into the
Louvre would be only one of the events of his journey, not an event in
his life, remembered ever after with thankfulness and regret. He would
explore it with the same unmeaning curiosity and idle wonder as he would
the Regalia in the Tower, or the Botanic Garden in the Tuileries, but
not with the fond enthusiasm of an artist. How should he? His is
'casual fruition, joyless, unendeared.' But the painter is wedded to
his art--the mistress, queen, and idol of his soul. He has embarked his
all in it, fame, time, fortune, peace of mind--his hopes in youth, his
consolation in age: and shall he not feel a more intense interest in
whatever relates to it than the mere indolent trifler? Natural
sensibility alone, without the entire application of the mind to that
one object, will not enable the possessor to sympathise with all the
degrees of beauty and power in the conceptions of a Titian or a
Correggio; but it is he only who does this, who follows them into all
their force and matchless race, that does or can feel their full value.
Knowledge is pleasure as well as power. No one but the artist who has
studied nature and contended with the difficulties of art, can be aware
of the beauties, or intoxicated with a passion for painting. No one who
has not devoted his life and soul to the pursuit of art can feel the
same exultation in its brightest ornaments and loftiest triumphs which
an artist does. Where the treasure is, there the heart is also. It is
now seventeen years since I was studying in the Louvre (and I have on
since given up all thoughts of the art as a profession), but long after
I returned, and even still, I sometimes dream of being there again--of
asking for the old pictures--and not finding them, or finding them
changed or faded from what they were, I cry myself awake! What
gentleman-amateur ever does this at such a distance of time,--that is,
ever received pleasure or took interest enough in them to produce so
lasting an impression?
But it is said that if a person had the same natural taste, and the same
acquired knowledge as an artist, without the petty interests and
technical notions, he would derive a purer pleasure from seeing a fine
portrait, a fine landscape, and so on. This, however, is not so much
begging the question as asking an impossibility: he cannot have the same
insight into the end without having studied the means; nor the same love
of art without the same habitual and exclusive attachment to it.
Painters are, no doubt, often actuated by jealousy to that only which
they find useful to themselves in painting. Wilson has been seen poring
over the texture of a Dutch cabinet-picture, so that he could not see
the picture itself. But this is the perversion and pedantry of the
profession, not its true or genuine spirit. If Wilson had never looked
at anything but megilps and handling, he never would have put the soul
of life and manners into his pictures, as he has done. Another
objection is, that the instrumental parts of the art, the means, the
first rudiments, paints, oils, and brushes, are painful and disgusting;
and that the consciousness of the difficulty and anxiety with which
perfection has been attained must take away from the pleasure of the
finest performance. This, however, is only an additional proof of the
greater pleasure derived by the artist from his profession; for these
things which are said to interfere with and destroy the common interest
in works of art do not disturb him; he never once thinks of them, he is
absorbed in the pursuit of a higher object; he is intent, not on the
means, but the end; he is taken up, not with the difficulties, but with
the triumph over them. As in the case of the anatomist, who overlooks
many things in the eagerness of his search after abstract truth; or the
alchemist who, while he is raking into his soot and furnaces, lives in a
golden dream; a lesser gives way to a greater object. But it is
pretended that the painter may be supposed to submit to the unpleasant
part of the process only for the sake of the fame or profit in view. So
far is this from being a true state of the case, that I will venture to
say, in the instance of a friend of mine who has lately succeeded in an
important undertaking in his art, that not all the fame he has acquired,
not all the money he has received from thousands of admiring spectators,
not all the newspaper puffs,--nor even the praise of the _Edinburgh
Review_,--not all these put together ever gave him at any time the same
genuine, undoubted satisfaction as any one half-hour employed in the
ardent and propitious pursuit of his art--in finishing to his heart's
content a foot, a hand, or even a piece of drapery. What is the state
of mind of an artist while he is at work? He is then in the act of
realising the highest idea he can form of beauty or grandeur: he
conceives, he embodies that which he understands and loves best: that
is, he is in full and perfect possession of that which is to him the
source of the highest happiness and intellectual excitement which he can
enjoy.
In short, as a conclusion to this argument, I will mention a
circumstance which fell under my knowledge the other day. A friend had
bought a print of Titian's Mistress, the same to which I have alluded
above. He was anxious to show it me on this account. I told him it was
a spirited engraving, but it had not the look of the original. I
believe he thought this fastidious, till I offered to show him a rough
sketch of it, which I had by me. Having seen this, he said he perceived
exactly what I meant, and could not bear to look at the print
afterwards. He had good sense enough to see the difference in the
individual instance; but a person better acquainted with Titian's manner
and with art in general--that is, of a more cultivated and refined
taste--would know that it was a bad print, without having any immediate
model to compare it with. He would perceive with a glance of the eye,
with a sort of instinctive feeling, that it was hard, and without that
bland, expansive, and nameless expression which always distinguished
Titian's most famous works. Any one who is accustomed to a head in a
picture can never reconcile himself to a print from it; but to the
ignorant they are both the same. To a vulgar eye there is no difference
between a Guido and a daub--between a penny print, or the vilest scrawl,
and the most finished performance. In other words, all that excellence
which lies between these two extremes,--all, at least, that marks the
excess above mediocrity,--all that constitutes true beauty, harmony,
refinement, grandeur, is lost upon the common observer. But it is from
this point that the delight, the glowing raptures of the true adept
commence. An uninformed spectator may like an ordinary drawing better
than the ablest connoisseur; but for that very reason he cannot like the
highest specimens of art so well. The refinements not only of execution
but of truth and nature are inaccessible to unpractised eyes. The
exquisite gradations in a sky of Claude's are not perceived by such
persons, and consequently the harmony cannot be felt. Where there is no
conscious apprehension, there can be no conscious pleasure. Wonder at
the first sights of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and
novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the
growth of taste and knowledge. 'I would not wish to have your eyes,'
said a good-natured man to a critic who was finding fault with a picture
in which the other saw no blemish. Why so? The idea which prevented
him from admiring this inferior production was a higher idea of truth
and beauty which was ever present with him, and a continual source of
pleasing and lofty contemplations. It may be different in a taste for
outward luxuries and the privations of mere sense; but the idea of
perfection, which acts as an intellectual foil, is always an addition, a
support, and a proud consolation!
Richardson, in his _Essays_, which ought to be better known, has left
some striking examples of the felicity and infelicity of artists, both
as it relates to their external fortune and to the practice of their
art. In speaking of _the knowledge of hands_, he exclaims: 'When one is
considering a picture or a drawing, one at the same time thinks this was
done by him[1] who had many extraordinary endowments of body and mind,
but was withal very capricious; who was honoured in life and death,
expiring in the arms of one of the greatest princes of that age, Francis
I., King of France, who loved him as a friend. Another is of him[2] who
lived a long and happy life, beloved of Charles V. emperor; and many
others of the first princes of Europe. When one has another in hand, we
think this was done by one[3] who so excelled in three arts as that any
of them in that degree had rendered him worthy of immortality; and one
moreover that durst contend with his sovereign (one of the haughtiest
popes that ever was) upon a slight offered to him, and extricated
himself with honour. Another is the work of him[4] who, without any one
exterior advantage but mere strength of genius, had the most sublime
imaginations, and executed them accordingly, yet lived and died
obscurely. Another we shall consider as the work of him[5] who restored
Painting when it had almost sunk; of him whom art made honourable, but
who, neglecting and despising greatness with a sort of cynical pride,
was treated suitably to the figure he gave himself, not his intrinsic
worth; which, [he] not having philosophy enough to bear it, broke his
heart. Another is done by one[6] who (on the contrary) was a fine
gentleman and lived in great magnificence, and was much honoured by his
own and foreign princes; who was a courtier, a statesman, and a painter;
and so much all these, that when he acted in either character, _that_
seemed to be his business, and the others his diversion. I say when one
thus reflects, besides the pleasure arising from the beauties and
excellences of the work, the fine ideas it gives us of natural things,
the noble way of thinking it suggest to us, an additional pleasure
results from the above considerations. But, oh! the pleasure, when a
connoisseur and lover of art has before him a picture or drawing of
which he can say this is the hand, these are the thoughts of him[7] who
was one of the politest, best-natured gentlemen that ever was; and
beloved and assisted by the greatest wits and the greatest men then in
Rome: of him who lived in great fame, honour, and magnificence, and died
extremely lamented; and missed a Cardinal's hat only by dying a few
months too soon; but was particularly esteemed and favoured by two
Popes, the only ones who filled the chair of St. Peter in his time, and
as great men as ever sat there since that apostle, if at least he ever
did: one, in short, who could have been a Leonardo, a Michael Angelo, a
Titian, a Correggio, a Parmegiano, an Annibal, a Rubens, or any other
whom he pleased, but none of them could ever have been a Raffaelle.'
The same writer speaks feelingly of the change in the style of different
artists from their change of fortune, and as the circumstances are
little known I will quote the passage relating to two of them:--
'Guido Reni, from a prince-like affluence of fortune (the just reward of
his angelic works), fell to a condition like that of a hired servant to
one who supplied him with money for what he did at a fixed rate; and
that by his being bewitched by a passion for gaming, whereby he lost
vast sums of money; and even what he got in his state of servitude by
day, he commonly lost at night: nor could he ever be cured of this
cursed madness. Those of his works, therefore, which he did in this
unhappy part of his life may easily be conceived to be in a different
style to what he did before, which in some things, that is, in the airs
of his heads (in the gracious kind) had a delicacy in them peculiar to
himself, and almost more than human. But I must not multiply instances.
Parmegiano is one that alone takes in all the several kinds of
variation, and all the degrees of goodness, from the lowest of the
indifferent up to the sublime. I can produce evident proofs of this in
so easy a gradation, that one cannot deny but that he that did this
might do that, and very probably did so; and thus one may ascend and
descend, like the angels on Jacob's ladder, whose foot was upon the
earth, but its top reached to Heaven.
'And this great man had his unlucky circumstance. He became mad after
the philosopher's stone, and did but very little in painting or drawing
afterwards. Judge what that was, and whether there was not an
alteration of style from what he had done before this devil possessed
him. His creditors endeavoured to exorcise him, and did him some good,
for be set himself to work again in his own way; but if a drawing I have
of a Lucretia be that he made for his last picture, as it probably is
(Vasari says that was the subject of it), it is an evident proof of his
decay; it is good indeed, but it wants much of the delicacy which is
commonly seen in his works; and so I always thought before I knew or
imagined it to be done in this his ebb of genius.'
We have had two artists of our own country whose fate has been as
singular as it was hard: Gandy was a portrait-painter in the beginning
of the last century, whose heads were said to have come near to
Rembrandt's, and he was the undoubted prototype of Sir Joshua Reynolds's
style. Yet his name has scarcely been heard of; and his reputation,
like his works, never extended beyond his own country. What did he
think of himself and of a fame so bounded? Did he ever dream he was
indeed an artist? Or how did this feeling in him differ from the vulgar
conceit of the lowest pretender? The best known of his works is a
portrait of an alderman of Exeter, in some public building in that city.
Poor Dan. Stringer! Forty years ago he had the finest hand and the
clearest eye of any artist of his time, and produced heads and drawings
that would not have disgraced a brighter period in the art. But he fell
a martyr (like Burns) to the society of country gentlemen, and then of
those whom they would consider as more his equals. I saw him many years
ago when he treated the masterly sketches he had by him (one in
particular of the group of citizens in Shakespeare 'swallowing the
tailor's news') as 'bastards of his genius, not his children,' and
seemed to have given up all thoughts of his art. Whether he is since
dead, I cannot say; the world do not so much as know that he ever lived!
NOTES to ESSAY II
[1] Leonardo da Vinci.
[2] Titian.
[3] Michael Angelo.
[4] Correggio.
[5] Annibal Caracci.
[6] Rubens.
[7] Raffaelle.
ESSAY III
ON THE PAST AND FUTURE
I have naturally but little imagination, and am not of a very sanguine
turn of mind. I have some desire to enjoy the present good, and some
fondness for the past; but I am not at all given to build castles in the
air, nor to look forward with much confidence or hope to the brilliant
illusions held out by the future. Hence I have perhaps been led to form
a theory, which is very contrary to the common notions and feelings on
the subject, and which I will here try to explain as well as I can.
When Sterne in the _Sentimental Journey_ told the French Minister, that
if the French people had a fault, it was that they were too serious, the
latter replied that if that was his opinion, he must defend it with all
his might, for he would have all the world against him; so I shall have
enough to do to get well through the present argument.
I cannot see, then, any rational or logical ground for that mighty
difference in the value which mankind generally set upon the past and
future, as if the one was everything, and the other nothing--of no
consequence whatever. On the other hand, I conceive that the past is as
real and substantial a part of our being, that it is as much a _bona
fide_, undeniable consideration in the estimate of human life, as the
future can possibly be. To say that the past is of no importance,
unworthy of a moment's regard, because it has gone by, and is no longer
anything, is an argument that cannot be held to any purpose; for if the
past has ceased to be, and is therefore to be accounted nothing in the
scale of good or evil, the future is yet to come, and has never been
anything. Should any one choose to assert that the present only is of
any value in a strict and positive sense, because that alone has a real
existence, that we should seize the instant good, and give all else to
the winds, I can understand what he means (though perhaps he does not
himself);[1] but I cannot comprehend how this distinction between that
which has a downright and sensible, and that which has only a remote and
airy existence, can be applied to establish the preference of the future
over the past; for both are in this point of view equally ideal,
absolutely nothing, except as they are conceived of by the mind's eye,
and are thus rendered present to the thoughts and feelings. Nay, the
one is even more imaginary, a more fantastic creature of the brain than
the other, and the interest we take in it more shadowy and gratuitous;
for the future, on which we lay so much stress, may never come to pass
at all, that is, may never be embodied into actual existence in the
whole course of events, whereas the past has certainly existed once, has
received the stamp of truth, and left an image of itself behind. It is
so far then placed beyond the possibility of doubt, or as the poet has
it,
Those joys are lodg'd beyond the reach of fate.
It is not, however, attempted to be denied that though the future is
nothing at present, and has no immediate interest while we are speaking,
yet it is of the utmost consequence in itself, and of the utmost
interest to the individual, because it will have a real existence, and
we have an idea of it as existing in time to come. Well, then, the past
also has no real existence; the actual sensation and the interest
belonging to it are both fled; but it _has had_ a real existence, and we
can still call up a vivid recollection of it as having once been; and
therefore, by parity of reasoning, it is not a thing perfectly
insignificant in itself, nor wholly indifferent to the mind whether it
ever was or not. Oh no! Far from it! Let us not rashly quit our hold
upon the past, when perhaps there may be little else left to bind us to
existence. Is it nothing to have been, and to have been happy or
miserable? Or is it a matter of no moment to think whether I have been
one or the other? Do I delude myself, do I build upon a shadow or a
dream, do I dress up in the gaudy garb of idleness and folly a pure
fiction, with nothing answering to it in the universe of things and the
records of truth, when I look back with fond delight or with tender
regret to that which was at one time to me my all, when I revive the
glowing image of some bright reality,
The thoughts of which can never from my heart?
Do I then muse on nothing, do I bend my eyes on nothing, when I turn
back in fancy to 'those suns and skies so pure' that lighted up my early
path? Is it to think of nothing, to set an idle value upon nothing, to
think of all that has happened to me, an of all that can ever interest
me? Or, to use the language of a fine poet (who is himself among my
earliest and not least painful recollections)--
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever vanish'd from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flow'r--
yet am I mocked with a lie when I venture to think of it? Or do I not
drink in and breathe again the air of heavenly truth when I but 'retrace
its footsteps, and its skirts far off adore'? I cannot say with the same
poet--
And see how dark the backward stream,
A little moment past so smiling--
for it is the past that gives me most delight and most assurance of
reality. What to me constitutes the great charm of the _Confessions_ of
Rousseau is their turning so much upon this feeling. He seems to gather
up the past moments of his being like drops of honey-dew to distil a
precious liquor from them; his alternate pleasures and pains are the
bead-roll that he tells over and piously worships; he makes a rosary of
the flowers of hope and fancy that strewed his earliest years. When he
begins the last of the _Reveries of a Solitary Walker_, 'Il y a
aujourd'hui, jour des Paques Fleuris, cinquante ans depuis que j'ai
premier vu Madame Warens,' what a yearning of the soul is implied in
that short sentence! Was all that had happened to him, all that he had
thought and felt in that sad interval of time, to be accounted nothing?
Was that long, dim, faded retrospect of years happy or miserable--a
blank that was not to make his eyes fail and his heart faint within him
in trying to grasp all that had once filled it and that had since
vanished, because it was not a prospect into futurity? Was he wrong in
finding more to interest him in it than in the next fifty years--which
he did not live to see? Or if he had, what then? Would they have been
worth thinking of, compared with the times of his youth, of his first
meeting with Madame Warens, with those times which he has traced with
such truth and pure delight 'in our heart's tables'? When 'all the life
of life was flown,' was he not to live the first and best part of it
over again, and once more be all that he then was?--Ye woods that crown
the clear lone brow of Norman Court, why do I revisit ye so oft, and
feel a soothing consciousness of your presence, but that your high tops
waving in the wind recall to me the hours and years that are for ever
fled; that ye renew in ceaseless murmurs the story of long-cherished
hopes and bitter disappointment; that in your solitudes and tangled
wilds I can wander and lose myself as I wander on and am lost in the
solitude of my own heart; and that as your rustling branches give the
loud blast to the waste below--borne on the thoughts of other years, I
can look down with patient anguish at the cheerless desolation which I
feel within! Without that face pale as the primrose with hyacinthine
locks, for ever shunning and for ever haunting me, mocking my waking
thoughts as in a dream; without that smile which my heart could never
turn to scorn; without those eyes dark with their own lustre, still bent
on mine, and drawing the soul into their liquid mazes like a sea of
love; without that name trembling in fancy's ear; without that form
gliding before me like Oread or Dryad in fabled groves, what should I
do? how pass away the listless, leaden-footed hours? Then wave, wave
on, ye woods of Tuderley, and lift your high tops in the air; my sighs
and vows uttered by our mystic voice breathe into me my former being,
and enable me to bear the thing I am!--The objects that we have known in
better days are the main props that sustain the weight of our
affections, and give us strength to await our future lot. The future is
like a dead wall or a thick mist hiding all objects from our view; the
past is alive and stirring with objects, bright or solemn, and of
unfading interest. What is it in fact that we recur to oftenest? What
subjects do we think or talk of? Not the ignorant future, but the
well-stored past. Othello, the Moor of Venice, amused himself and his
hearers at the house of Signor Brabantio by 'running through the story
of his life even from his boyish days'; and oft 'beguiled them of their
tears, when he did speak of some disastrous stroke which his youth
suffered.' This plan of ingratiating himself would not have answered if
the past had been, like the contents of an old almanac, of no use but to
be thrown aside and forgotten. What a blank, for instance, does the
history of the world for the next six thousand years present to the
mind, compared with that of the last! All that strikes the imagination
or excites any interest in the mighty scene is _what has been_![2]
***
Neither in itself, then, nor as a subject of general contemplation, has
the future any advantage over the past. But with respect to our grosser
passions and pursuits it has. As far as regards the appeal to the
understanding or the imagination, the past is just as good, as real, of
as much intrinsic and ostensible value as the future; but there is
another principle in the human mind, the principle of action or will;
and of this the past has no hold, the future engrosses it entirely to
itself. It is this strong lever of the affections that gives so
powerful a bias to our sentiments on this subject, and violently
transposes the natural order of our associations. We regret the
pleasures we have lost, and eagerly anticipate those which are to come:
we dwell with satisfaction on the evils from which we have escaped
(_Posthaec meminisse iuvabit_)--and dread future pain. The good that is
past is in this sense like money that is spent, which is of no further
use, and about which we give ourselves little concern. The good we
expect is like a store yet untouched, and in the enjoyment of which we
promise ourselves infinite gratification. What has happened to us we
think of no consequence: what is to happen to us, of the greatest. Why
so? Simply because the one is still in our power, and the other
not--because the efforts of the will to bring any object to pass or to
prevent it strengthen our attachment or aversion to that object--because
the pains and attention bestowed upon anything add to our interest in
it--and because the habitual and earnest pursuit of any end redoubles
the ardour of our expectations, and converts the speculative and
indolent satisfaction we might otherwise feel in it into real passion.
Our regrets, anxiety, and wishes are thrown away upon the past; but the
insisting on the importance of the future is of the utmost use in aiding
our resolutions and stimulating our exertions. If the future were no
more amenable to our wills than the past; if our precautions, our
sanguine schemes, our hopes and fears were of as little avail in the one
case as the other; if we could neither soften our minds to pleasure, nor
steel our fortitude to the resistance of pain beforehand; if all objects
drifted along by us like straws or pieces of wood in a river, the will
being purely passive, and as little able to avert the future as to
arrest the past, we should in that case be equally indifferent to both;
that is, we should consider each as they affected the thoughts and
imagination with certain sentiments of approbation or regret, but
without the importunity of action, the irritation of the will, throwing
the whole weight of passion and prejudice into one scale, and leaving
the other quite empty. While the blow is coming, we prepare to meet it,
we think to ward off or break its force, we arm ourselves with patience
to endure what cannot be avoided, we agitate ourselves with fifty
needless alarms about it; but when the blow is struck, the pang is over,
the struggle is no longer necessary, and we cease to harass or torment
ourselves about it more than we can help. It is not that the one
belongs to the future and the other to time past; but that the one is a
subject of action, of uneasy apprehension, of strong passion, and that
the other has passed wholly out of the sphere of action into the region
of
Calm contemplation and majestic pains.[3]
It would not give a man more concern to know that he should be put to
the rack a year hence, than to recollect that he had been put to it a
year ago, but that he hopes to avoid the one, whereas he must sit down
patiently under the consciousness of the other. In this hope he wears
himself out in vain struggles with fate, and puts himself to the rack of
his imagination every day he has to live in the meanwhile. When the
event is so remote or so independent of the will as to set aside the
necessity of immediate action, or to baffle all attempts to defeat it,
it gives us little more disturbance or emotion than if it had already
taken place, or were something to happen in another state of being, or
to an indifferent person. Criminals are observed to grow more anxious
as their trial approaches; but after their sentence is passed, they
become tolerably resigned, and generally sleep sound the night before
its execution.
It in some measure confirms this theory, that men attach more or less
importance to past and future events according as they are more or less
engaged in action and the busy scenes of life. Those who have a fortune
to make, or are in pursuit of rank and power, think little of the past,
for it does not contribute greatly to their views: those who have
nothing to do but to think, take nearly the same interest in the past as
in the future. The contemplation of the one is as delightful and real
as that of the other. The season of hope has an end; but the
remembrance of it is left. The past still lives in the memory of those
who have leisure to look back upon the way that they have trod, and can
from it 'catch-glimpses that may make them less forlorn.' The
turbulence of action, and uneasiness of desire, must point to the
future: it is only in the quiet innocence of shepherds, in the
simplicity of pastoral ages, that a tomb was found with this
inscription--'I ALSO WAS AN ARCADIAN!'
Though I by no means think that our habitual attachment to life is in
exact proportion to the value of the gift, yet I am not one of those
splenetic persons who affect to think it of no value at all. _Que peu
de chose est la vie humaine_, is an exclamation in the mouths of
moralists and philosophers, to which I cannot agree. It is little, it
is short, it is not worth having, if we take the last hour, and leave
out all that has gone before, which has been one way of looking at the
subject. Such calculators seem to say that life is nothing when it is
over, and that may in their sense be true. If the old rule--_Respice
finem_--were to be made absolute, and no one could be pronounced
fortunate till the day of his death, there are few among us whose
existence would, upon those conditions, be much to be envied. But this
is not a fair view of the case. A man's life is his whole life, not the
last glimmering snuff of the candle; and this, I say, is considerable,
and not a _little matter_, whether we regard its pleasures or its pains.
To draw a peevish conclusion to the contrary from our own superannuated
desires or forgetful indifference is about as reasonable as to say, a
man never was young because he has grown old, or never lived because he
is now dead. The length or agreeableness of a journey does not depend
on the few last steps of it, nor is the size of a building to be judged
of from the last stone that is added to it. It is neither the first nor
last hour of our existence, but the space that parts these two--not our
exit nor our entrance upon the stage, but what we do, feel, and think
while there--that we are to attend to in pronouncing sentence upon it.
Indeed it would be easy to show that it is the very extent of human
life, the infinite number of things contained in it, its contradictory
and fluctuating interests, the transition from one situation to another,
the hours, months, years spent in one fond pursuit after another; that
it is, in a word, the length of our common journey and the quantity of
events crowded into it, that, baffling the grasp of our actual
perception, make it slide from our memory, and dwindle into nothing in
its own perspective. It is too mighty for us, and we say it is nothing!
It is a speck in our fancy, and yet what canvas would be big enough to
hold its striking groups, its endless subjects! It is light as vanity,
and yet if all its weary moments, if all its head and heart aches were
compressed into one, what fortitude would not be overwhelmed with the
blow! What a huge heap, a 'huge, dumb heap,' of wishes, thoughts,
feelings, anxious cares, soothing hopes, loves, joys, friendships, it is
composed of! How many ideas and trains of sentiment, long and deep and
intense, often pass through the mind in only one day's thinking or
reading, for instance! How many such days are there in a year, how many
years in a long life, still occupied with something interesting, still
recalling some old impression, still recurring to some difficult
question and making progress in it, every step accompanied with a sense
of power, and every moment conscious of 'the high endeavour or the glad
success'; for the mind seizes only on that which keeps it employed, and
is wound up to a certain pitch of pleasurable excitement or lively
solicitude, by the necessity of its own nature. The division of the map
of life into its component parts is beautifully made by King Henry
VI.:--
Oh God! methinks it were a happy life
To be no better than a homely swain,
To sit upon a hill as I do now,
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run
How many make the hour full complete,
How many hours bring about the day,
How many days will finish up the year,
How many years a mortal man may live:
When this is known, then to divide the times;
So many hours must I tend my flock,
So many hours must I take my rest,
So many hours must I contemplate,
So many hours must I sport myself;
So many days my ewes have been with young,
So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean,
So many months ere I shall shear the fleece:
So many minutes, hours, weeks, months, and years
Past over to the end they were created,
Would bring grey hairs unto a quiet grave.
I myself am neither a king nor a shepherd: books have been my fleecy
charge, and my thoughts have been my subjects. But these have found me
sufficient employment at the time, and enough to think of for the time
to come.
The passions contract and warp the natural progress of life. They
paralyse all of it that is not devoted to their tyranny and caprice.
This makes the difference between the laughing innocence of childhood,
the pleasantness of youth, and the crabbedness of age. A load of cares
lies like a weight of guilt upon the mind: so that a man of business
often has all the air, the distraction and restlessness and hurry of
feeling of a criminal. A knowledge of the world takes away the freedom
and simplicity of thought as effectually as the contagion of its
example. The artlessness and candour of our early years are open to all
impressions alike, because the mind is not clogged and preoccupied with
other objects. Our pleasures and our pains come single, make room for
one another, and the spring of the mind is fresh and unbroken, its
aspect clear and unsullied. Hence 'the tear forgot as soon as shed, the
sunshine of the breast.' But as we advance farther, the will gets
greater head. We form violent antipathies and indulge exclusive
preferences. We make up our minds to some one thing, and if we cannot
have that, will have nothing. We are wedded to opinion, to fancy, to
prejudice; which destroys the soundness of our judgments, and the
serenity and buoyancy of our feelings. The chain of habit coils itself
round the heart, like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it. It grows rigid
and callous; and for the softness and elasticity of childhood, full of
proud flesh and obstinate tumours. The violence and perversity of our
passions come in more and more to overlay our natural sensibility and
well-grounded affections; and we screw ourselves up to aim only at those
things which are neither desirable nor practicable. Thus life passes
away in the feverish irritation of pursuit and the certainty of
disappointment. By degrees, nothing but this morbid state of feeling
satisfies us: and all common pleasures and cheap amusements are
sacrificed to the demon of ambition, avarice, or dissipation. The
machine is overwrought: the parching heat of the veins dries up and
withers the flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy; and any pause, any release
from the rack of ecstasy on which we are stretched, seems more
insupportable than the pangs which we endure. We are suspended between
tormenting desires and the horrors of _ennui_. The impulse of the will,
like the wheels of a carriage going down hill, becomes too strong for
the driver, Reason, and cannot be stopped nor kept within bounds. Some
idea, some fancy, takes possession of the brain; and however ridiculous,
however distressing, however ruinous, haunts us by a sort of fascination
through life.
Not only is this principle of excessive irritability to be seen at work
in our more turbulent passions and pursuits, but even in the formal
study of arts and sciences, the same thing takes place, and undermines
the repose and happiness of life. The eagerness of pursuit overcomes
the satisfaction to result from the accomplishment. The mind is
overstrained to attain its purpose; and when it is attained, the ease
and alacrity necessary to enjoy it are gone. The irritation of action
does not cease and go down with the occasion for it; but we are first
uneasy to get to the end of our work, and then uneasy for want of
something to do. The ferment of the brain does not of itself subside
into pleasure and soft repose. Hence the disposition to strong stimuli
observable in persons of much intellectual exertion to allay and carry
off the over-excitement. The _improvisatori_ poets (it is recorded by
Spence in his _Anecdotes of Pope_) cannot sleep after an evening's
continued display of their singular and difficult art. The rhymes keep
running in their head in spite of themselves, and will not let them
rest. Mechanics and labouring people never know what to do with
themselves on a Sunday, though they return to their work with greater
spirit for the relief, and look forward to it with pleasure all the
week. Sir Joshua Reynolds was never comfortable out of his
painting-room, and died of chagrin and regret because he could not paint
on to the last moment of his life. He used to say that he could go on
retouching a picture for ever, as long as it stood on his easel; but as
soon as it was once fairly out of the house, he never wished to see it
again. An ingenious artist of our own time has been heard to declare,
that if ever the Devil got him into his clutches, he would set him to
copy his own pictures. Thus secure, self-complacent retrospect to what
is done is nothing, while the anxious, uneasy looking forward to what is
to come is everything. We are afraid to dwell upon the past, lest it
should retard our future progress; the indulgence of ease is fatal to
excellence; and to succeed in life, we lose the ends of being!
NOTES to ESSAY III
[1] If we take away from the _present_ the moment that Is just by and
the moment that is next to come, how much of it will be left for this
plain, practical theory to rest upon? Their solid basis of sense and
reality will reduce itself to a pin's point, a hair line, on which our
moral balance-masters will have some difficulty to maintain their
footing without falling over on either side.
[2] A treatise on the Millennium is dull; but who was ever weary of
reading the fables of the Golden Age? On my once observing I should
like to have been Claude, a person said, 'they should not, for that then
by this time it would have been all over with them.' As if it could
possibly signify when we live (save and excepting the present minute),
or as if the value of human life decreased or increased with successive
centuries. At that rate, we had better have our life still to come at
some future period, and so postpone our existence century after century
_ad infinitum_.
[3] In like manner, though we know that an event must have taken place
at a distance, long before we can hear the result, yet as long as we
remain in Ignorance of it, we irritate ourselves about it, and suffer
all the agonies of suspense, as if it was still to come; but as soon as
our uncertainty is removed, our fretful impatience vanishes, we resign
ourselves to fate, and make up our minds to what has happened as well as
we can.
ESSAY IV
ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE
We hear it maintained by people of more gravity than understanding, that
genius and taste are strictly reducible to rules, and that there is a
rule for everything. So far is it from being true that the finest
breath of fancy is a definable thing, that the plainest common sense is
only what Mr. Locke would have called a _mixed mode_, subject to a
particular sort of acquired and undefinable tact. It is asked, "If you
do not know the rule by which a thing is done, how can you be sure of
doing it a second time?" And the answer is, "If you do not know the
muscles by the help of which you walk, how is it you do not fall down at
every step you take?" In art, in taste, in life, in speech, you decide
from feeling, and not from reason; that is, from the impression of a
number of things on the mind, from which impression is true and well
founded, though you may not be able to analyse or account for it in the
several particulars. In a gesture you use, in a look you see, in a tone
you hear, you judge of the expression, propriety, and meaning from
habit, not from reason or rules; that is to say, from innumerable
instances of like gestures, looks, and tones, in innumerable other
circumstances, variously modified, which are too many and too refined to
be all distinctly recollected, but which do not therefore operate the
less powerfully upon the mind and eye of taste. Shall we say that these
impressions (the immediate stamp of nature) do not operate in a given
manner till they are classified and reduced to rules, or is not the rule
itself grounded, upon the truth and certainty of that natural operation?
How then can the distinction of the understanding as to the manner in
which they operate be necessary to their producing their due and uniform
effect upon the mind? If certain effects did not regularly arise out of
certain causes in mind as well as matter, there could be no rule given
for them: nature does not follow the rule, but suggests it. Reason is
the interpreter and critic of nature and genius, not their law-giver and
judge. He must be a poor creature indeed whose practical convictions do
not in almost all cases outrun his deliberate understanding, or who does
not feel and know much more than he can give a reason for. Hence the
distinction between eloquence and wisdom, between ingenuity and common
sense. A man may be dexterous and able in explaining the grounds of his
opinions, and yet may be a mere sophist, because he only sees one-half
of a subject. Another may feel the whole weight of a question, nothing
relating to it may be lost upon him, and yet he may be able to give no
account of the manner in which it affects him, or to drag his reasons
from their silent lurking-places. This last will be a wise man, though
neither a logician nor rhetorician. Goldsmith was a fool to Dr. Johnson
in argument; that is, in assigning the specific grounds of his opinions:
Dr. Johnson was a fool to Goldsmith in the fine tact, the airy,
intuitive faculty with which he skimmed the surfaces of things, and
unconsciously formed his Opinions. Common sense is the just result of
the sum total of such unconscious impressions in the ordinary
occurrences of life, as they are treasured up in the memory, and called
out by the occasion. Genius and taste depend much upon the same
principle exercised on loftier ground and in more unusual combinations.
I am glad to shelter myself from the charge of affectation or
singularity in this view of an often debated but ill-understood point,
by quoting a passage from Sir Joshua Reynolds's _Discourses_, which is
full, and, I think, conclusive to the purpose. He says:--
'I observe, as a fundamental ground common to all the Arts with which we
have any concern in this Discourse, that they address themselves only to
two faculties of the mind, its imagination and its sensibility.
'All theories which attempt to direct or to control the Art, upon any
principles falsely called rational, which we form to ourselves upon a
supposition of what ought in reason to be the end or means of Art,
independent of the known first effect produced by objects on the
imagination, must be false and delusive. For though it may appear bold
to say it, the imagination is here the residence of truth. If the
imagination be affected, the conclusion is fairly drawn; if it be not
affected, the reasoning is erroneous, because the end is not obtained;
the effect itself being the test, and the only test, of the truth and
efficacy of the means.
'There is in the commerce of life, as in Art, a sagacity which is far
from being contradictory to right reason, and is superior to any
occasional exercise of that faculty which supersedes it and does not
wait for the slow progress of deduction, but goes at once, by what
appears a kind of intuition, to the conclusion. A man endowed with this
faculty feels and acknowledges the truth, though it is not always in his
power, perhaps, to give a reason for it; because he cannot recollect and
bring before him all the materials that gave birth to his opinion; for
very many and very intricate considerations may unite to form the
principle, even of small and minute parts, involved in, or dependent on,
a great many things:--though these in process of time are forgotten, the
right impression still remains fixed in his mind.
'This impression is the result of the accumulated experience of our
whole life, and has been collected, we do not always know how or when.
But this mass of collective observation, however acquired, ought to
prevail over that reason, which, however powerfully exerted on any
particular occasion, will probably comprehend but a partial view of the
subject; and our conduct in life, as well as in the arts, is or ought to
be generally governed by this habitual reason: it is our happiness that
we are enabled to draw on such funds. If we were obliged to enter into
a theoretical deliberation on every occasion before we act, life would
be at a stand, and Art would be impracticable.
'It appears to me therefore' (continues Sir Joshua) 'that our first
thoughts, that is, the effect which any thing produces on our minds on
its first appearance, is never to be forgotten; and it demands for that
reason, because it is the first, to be laid up with care. If this be
not done, the artist may happen to impose on himself by partial
reasoning; by a cold consideration of those animated thoughts which
proceed, not perhaps from caprice or rashness (as he may afterwards
conceit), but from the fulness of his mind, enriched with the copious
stores of all the various inventions which he had ever seen, or had ever
passed in his mind. These ideas are infused into his design, without
any conscious effort; but if he be not on his guard, he may reconsider
and correct them, till the whole matter is reduced to a commonplace
invention.
'This is sometimes the effect of what I mean to caution you against;
that is to say, an unfounded distrust of the imagination and feeling, in
favour of narrow, partial, confined, argumentative theories, and of
principles that seem to apply to the design in hand, without considering
those general impressions on the fancy in which real principles of
_sound reason_, and of much more weight and importance, are involved,
and, as it were, lie hid under the appearance of a sort of vulgar
sentiment. Reason, without doubt, must ultimately determine everything;
at this minute it is required to inform us when that very reason is to
give way to feeling.'[1]
Mr. Burke, by whom the foregoing train of thinking was probably
suggested, has insisted on the same thing, and made rather a perverse
use of it in several parts of his _Reflections on the French
Revolution_; and Windham in one of his _Speeches_ has clenched it into
an aphorism--'There is nothing so true as habit.' Once more I would
say, common sense is tacit reason. Conscience is the same tacit sense
of right and wrong, or the impression of our moral experience and moral
apprehensions on the mind, which, because it works unseen, yet
certainly, we suppose to be an instinct, implanted in the mind; as we
sometimes attribute the violent operations of our passions, of which we
can neither trace the source nor assign the reason, to the instigation
of the Devil!
I shall here try to go more at large into this subject, and to give such
instances and illustrations of it as occur to me.
One of the persons who had rendered themselves obnoxious to Government
and been included in a charge for high treason in the year 1794, had
retired soon after into Wales to write an epic poem and enjoy the
luxuries of a rural life. In his peregrinations through that beautiful
scenery, he had arrived one fine morning at the inn at Llangollen, in
the romantic valley of that name. He had ordered his breakfast, and was
sitting at the window in all the dalliance of expectation when a face
passed, of which he took no notice at the instant--but when his
breakfast was brought in presently after, he found his appetite for it
gone--the day had lost its freshness in his eye--he was uneasy and
spiritless; and without any cause that he could discover, a total change
had taken place in his feelings. While he was trying to account for
this odd circumstance, the same face passed again--it was the face of
Taylor the spy; and he was longer at a loss to explain the difficulty.
He had before caught only a transient glimpse, a passing side-view of
the face; but though this was not sufficient to awaken a distinct idea
in his memory, his feelings, quicker and surer, had taken the alarm; a
string had been touched that gave a jar to his whole frame, and would
not let him rest, though he could not at all tell what was the matter
with him. To the flitting, shadowy, half-distinguished profile that had
glided by his window was linked unconsciously and mysteriously, but
inseparably, the impression of the trains that had been laid for him by
this person;--in this brief moment, in this dim, illegible short-hand of
the mind he had just escaped the speeches of the Attorney and
Solicitor-General over again; the gaunt figure of Mr. Pitt glared by
him; the walls of a prison enclosed him; and he felt the hands of the
executioner near him, without knowing it till the tremor and disorder of
his nerves gave information to his reasoning faculties that all was not
well within. That is, the same state of mind was recalled by one
circumstance in the series of association that had been produced by the
whole set of circumstances at the time, though the manner in which this
was done was not immediately perceptible. In other words, the feeling
of pleasure or pain, of good or evil, is revived, and acts
instantaneously upon the mind, before we have time to recollect the
precise objects which have originally given birth to it.[2] The
incident here mentioned was merely, then, one case of what the learned
understand by the _association of ideas_: but all that is meant by
feeling or common sense is nothing but the different cases of the
association of ideas, more or less true to the impression of the
original circumstances, as reason begins with the more formal
development of those circumstances, or pretends to account for the
different cases of the association of ideas. But it does not follow
that the dumb and silent pleading of the former (though sometimes, nay
often, mistaken) is less true than that of its babbling interpreter, or
that we are never to trust its dictates without consulting the express
authority of reason. Both are imperfect, both are useful in their way,
and therefore both are best together, to correct or to confirm one
another. It does not appear that in the singular instance above
mentioned, the sudden impression on the mind was superstition or fancy,
though it might have been thought so, had it not been proved by the
event to have a real physical and moral cause. Had not the same face
returned again, the doubt would never have been properly cleared up, but
would have remained a puzzle ever after, or perhaps have been soon
forgot.--By the law of association as laid down by physiologists, any
impression in a series can recall any other impression in that series
without going through the whole in order; so that the mind drops the
intermediate links, and passes on rapidly and by stealth to the more
striking effects of pleasure or pain which have naturally taken the
strongest hold of it. By doing this habitually and skillfully with
respect to the various impressions and circumstances with which our
experience makes us acquainted, it forms a series of unpremeditated
conclusions on almost all subjects that can be brought before it, as
just as they are of ready application to human life; and common sense is
the name of this body of unassuming but practical wisdom. Common sense,
however, is an impartial, instinctive result of truth and nature, and
will therefore bear the test and abide the scrutiny of the most severe
and patient reasoning. It is indeed incomplete without it. By
ingrafting reason on feeling, we 'make assurance double sure.'
'Tis the last key-stone that makes up the arch...
Then stands it a triumphal mark! Then men
Observe the strength, the height, the why and when
It was erected; and still walking under,
Meet some new matter to look up, and wonder.
But reason, not employed to interpret nature, and to improve and perfect
common sense and experience, is, for the most part, a building without a
foundation. The criticism exercised by reason, then, on common sense
may be as severe as it pleases, but it must be as patient as it is
severe. Hasty, dogmatical, self-satisfied reason is worse than idle
fancy or bigoted prejudice. It is systematic, ostentatious in error,
closes up the avenues of knowledge, and 'shuts the gates of wisdom on
mankind.' It is not enough to show that there is no reason for a thing
that we do not see the reason of it: if the common feeling, if the
involuntary prejudice sets in strong in favour of it, if, in spite of
all we can do, there is a lurking suspicion on the side of our first
impressions, we must try again, and believe that truth is mightier than
we. So, in ordering a definition of any subject, if we feel a misgiving
that there is any fact or circumstance emitted, but of which we have
only a vague apprehension, like a name we cannot recollect, we must ask
for more time, and not cut the matter short by an arrogant assumption of
the point in dispute. Common sense thus acts as a check-weight on
sophistry, and suspends our rash and superficial judgments. On the
other hand, if not only no reason can be given for a thing, but every
reason is clear against it, and we can account from ignorance, from
authority, from interest, from different causes, for the prevalence of
an opinion or sentiment, then we have a right to conclude that we have
mistaken a prejudice for an instinct, or have confounded a false and
partial impression with the fair and unavoidable inference from general
observation. Mr. Burke said that we ought not to reject every
prejudice, but should separate the husk of prejudice from the truth it
encloses, and so try to get at the kernel within; and thus far he was
right. But he was wrong in insisting that we are to cherish our
prejudices 'because they are prejudices': for if all are well founded,
there is no occasion to inquire into their origin or use; and he who
sets out to philosophise upon them, or make the separation Mr. Burke
talks of in this spirit and with this previous determination, will be
very likely to mistake a maggot or a rotten canker for the precious
kernel of truth, as was indeed the case with our Political sophist.
There is nothing more distinct than common sense and vulgar opinion.
Common sense is only a judge of things that fall under common
observation, or immediately come home to the business and bosoms of men.
This is of the very essence of its principle, the basis of its
pretensions. It rests upon the simple process of feeling,--it anchors
in experience. It is not, nor it cannot be, the test of abstract,
speculative opinions. But half the opinions and prejudices of mankind,
those which they hold in the most unqualified approbation and which have
been instilled into them under the strongest sanctions, are of this
latter kind, that is, opinions not which they have ever thought, known,
or felt one tittle about, but which they have taken up on trust from
others, which have been palmed on their understandings by fraud or
force, and which they continue to hold at the peril of life, limb,
property, and character, with as little warrant from common sense in the
first instance as appeal to reason in the last. The _ultima ratio
regum_ proceeds upon a very different plea. Common sense is neither
priestcraft nor state-policy. Yet 'there's the rub that makes absurdity
of so long life,' and, at the same time, gives the sceptical
philosophers the advantage over us. Till nature has fair play allowed
it, and is not adulterated by political and polemical quacks (as it so
often has been), it is impossible to appeal to it as a defence against
the errors and extravagances of mere reason. If we talk of common
sense, we are twitted with vulgar prejudice, and asked how we
distinguish the one from the other; but common and received opinion is
indeed 'a compost heap' of crude notions, got together by the pride and
passions of individuals, and reason is itself the thrall or manumitted
slave of the same lordly and besotted masters, dragging its servile
chain, or committing all sorts of Saturnalian licenses, the moment it
feels itself freed from it.--If ten millions of Englishmen are furious
in thinking themselves right in making war upon thirty millions of
Frenchmen, and if the last are equally bent upon thinking the others
always in the wrong, though it is a common and national prejudice, both
opinions cannot be the dictate of good sense; but it may be the
infatuated policy of one or both governments to keep their subjects
always at variance. If a few centuries ago all Europe believed in the
infallibility of the Pope, this was not an opinion derived from the
proper exercise or erroneous direction of the common sense of the
people; common sense had nothing to do with it--they believed whatever
their priests told them. England at present is divided into Whigs and
Tories, Churchmen and Dissenters; both parties have numbers on their
side; but common sense and party spirit are two different things. Sects
and heresies are upheld partly by sympathy, and partly by the love of
contradiction; if there was nobody of a different way of thinking, they
would fall to pieces of themselves. If a whole court say the same
thing, this is no proof that they think it, but that the individual at
the head of the court has said it; if a mob agree for a while in
shouting the same watchword, this is not to me an example of the _sensus
communis_, they only repeat what they have heard repeated by others. If
indeed a large proportion of the people are in want of food, of
clothing, of shelter--if they are sick, miserable, scorned,
oppressed--an d if each feeling it in himself, they all say so with one
voice and one heart, and lift up their hands to second their appeal,
this I should say was but the dictate of common sense, the cry of
nature. But to waive this part of the argument, which it is needless to
push farther,--l believe that the best way to instruct mankind is not by
pointing out to them their mutual errors, but by teaching them to think
rightly on indifferent matters, where they will listen with patience in
order to be amused, and where they do not consider a definition or a
syllogism as the greatest injury you can offer them.
There is no rule for expression. It is got at solely by _feeling_, that
is, on the principle of the association of ideas, and by transferring
what has been found to hold good in one case (with the necessary
modifications) to others. A certain look has been remarked strongly
indicative of a certain passion or trait of character, and we attach the
same meaning to it or are affected in the same pleasurable or painful
manner by it, where it exists in a less degree, though we can define
neither the look itself nor the modification of it. Having got the
general clue, the exact result may be left to the imagination to vary,
to extenuate or aggravate it according to circumstances. In the
admirable profile of Oliver Cromwell after ----, the drooping eyelids,
as if drawing a veil over the fixed, penetrating glance, the nostrils
somewhat distended, and lips compressed so as hardly to let the breath
escape him, denote the character of the man for high-reaching policy and
deep designs as plainly as they can be written. How is it that we
decipher this expression in the face? First, by feeling it. And how is
it that we feel it? Not by re-established rules, but by the instinct of
analogy, by the principle of association, which is subtle and sure in
proportion as it is variable and indefinite. A circumstance, apparently
of no value, shall alter the whole interpretation to be put upon an
expression or action and it shall alter it thus powerfully because in
proportion to its very insignificance it shows a strong general
principle at work that extends in its ramifications to the smallest
things. This in fact will make all the difference between minuteness
and subtlety or refinement; for a small or trivial effect may in given
circumstances imply the operation of a great power. Stillness may be
the result of a blow too powerful to be resisted; silence may be imposed
by feelings too agonising for utterance. The minute, the trifling and
insipid is that which is little in itself, in its causes and its
consequences; the subtle and refined is that which is slight and
evanescent at first sight, but which mounts up to a mighty sum in the
end, which is an essential part of an important whole, which has
consequences greater than itself, and where more is meant than meets the
eye or ear. We complain sometimes of littleness in a Dutch picture,
where there are a vast number of distinct parts and objects, each small
in itself, and leading to nothing else. A sky of Claude's cannot fall
under this censure, where one imperceptible gradation is as it were the
scale to another, where the broad arch of heaven is piled up of
endlessly intermediate gold and azure tints, and where an infinite
number of minute, scarce noticed particulars blend and melt into
universal harmony. The subtlety in Shakespear, of which there is an
immense deal scattered everywhere up and down, is always the instrument
of passion, the vehicle of character. The action of a man pulling his
hat over his forehead is indifferent enough in itself, and generally
speaking, may mean anything or nothing; but in the circumstances in
which Macduff is placed, it is neither insignificant nor equivocal.
What! man, ne'er pull your hat upon your brows, etc.
It admits but of one interpretation or inference, that which follows
it:--
Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak,
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break.
The passage in the same play, in which Duncan and his attendants are
introduced, commenting on the beauty and situation of Macbeth's castle,
though familiar in itself, has been often praised for the striking
contrast it presents to the scenes which follow.--The same look in
different circumstances may convey a totally different expression. Thus
the eye turned round to look at you without turning the head indicates
generally slyness or suspicion; but if this is combined with large
expanded eyelids or fixed eyebrows, as we see it in Titian's pictures,
it will denote calm contemplation or piercing sagacity, without anything
of meanness or fear of being observed. In other cases it may imply
merely indolent, enticing voluptuousness, as in Lely's portraits of
women. The languor and weakness of the eyelids give the amorous turn to
the expression. How should there be a rule for all this beforehand,
seeing it depends on circumstances ever varying, and scarce discernible
but by their effect on the mind? Rules are applicable to abstractions,
but expression is concrete and individual. We know the meaning of
certain looks, and we feel how they modify one another in conjunction.
But we cannot have a separate rule to judge of all their combinations in
different degrees and circumstances, without foreseeing all those
combinations, which is impossible; or if we did foresee them, we should
only be where we are, that is, we could only make the rule as we now
judge without it, from imagination and the feeling of the moment. The
absurdity of reducing expression to a preconcerted system was perhaps
never more evidently shown than in a picture of the Judgment of Solomon
by so great a man as N. Poussin, which I once heard admired for the
skill and discrimination of the artist in making all the women, who are
ranged on one side, in the greatest alarm at the sentence of the judge,
while all the men on the opposite side see through the design of it.
Nature does not go to work or cast things in a regular mould in this
sort of way. I once heard a person remark of another, 'He has an eye
like a vicious horse.' This was a fair analogy. We all, I believe,
have noticed the look of a horse's eye just before he is going to bite
or kick. But will any one, therefore, describe to me exactly what that
look is? It was the same acute observer that said of a
self-sufficient., prating music-master, 'He talks on all subjects _at
sight_'--which expressed the man at once by an allusion to his
profession. the coincidence was indeed perfect. Nothing else could
compare with the easy assurance with which this gentleman would
volunteer an explanation of things of which he was most ignorant, but
the _nonchalance_ with which a musician sits down to a harpsichord to
play a piece he has never seen before. My physiognomical friend would
not have hit on this mode of illustration without knowing the profession
of the subject of his criticism; but having this hint given him, it
instantly suggested itself to his 'sure trailing.' The manner of the
speaker was evident; and the association of the music-master sitting
down to play at sight, lurking in his mind, was immediately called out
by the strength of his impression of the character. The feeling of
character and the felicity of invention in explaining it were nearly
allied to each other. The first was so wrought up and running over that
the transition to the last was very easy and unavoidable. When Mr. Kean
was so much praised for the action of Richard in his last struggle with
his triumphant antagonist, where he stands, after his sword is wrested
from him, with his hands stretched out, 'as if his will could not be
disarmed, and the very phantoms of his despair had a withering power,'
he said that he borrowed it from seeing the last efforts of Painter in
his fight with Oliver. This assuredly did not lessen the merit of it.
Thus it ever is with the man of real genius. He has the feeling of
truth already shrined in his own breast, and his eye is still bent on
Nature to see how she expresses herself. When we thoroughly understand
the subject it is easy to translate from one language into another.
Raphael, in muffling up the figure of Elymas the Sorcerer in his
garments, appears to have extended the idea of blindness even to his
clothes. Was this design? Probably not; but merely the feeling of
analogy thoughtlessly suggesting this device, which being so suggested
was retained and carried on, because it flattered or fell in with the
original feeling. The tide of passion, when strong, overflows and
gradually insinuates itself into all nooks and corners of the mind.
Invention (of the best kind) I therefore do not think so distinct a
thing from feeling as some are apt to imagine. The springs of pure
feeling will rise and fill the moulds of fancy that are fit to receive
it. There are some striking coincidences of colour in well-composed
pictures, as in a straggling weed in the foreground streaked with blue
or red to answer to a blue or red drapery, to the tone of the flesh or
an opening in the sky:--not that this was intended, or done by the rule
(for then it would presently become affected and ridiculous), but the
eye, being imbued with a certain colour, repeats and varies it from a
natural sense of harmony, a secret craving and appetite for beauty,
which in the same manner soothes and gratifies the eye of taste, though
the cause is not understood. _Tact, finesse_, is nothing but the being
completely aware of the feeling belonging to certain situations,
passions, etc., and the being consequently sensible to their slightest
indications or movements in others. One of the most remarkable
instances of this sort of faculty is the following story, told of Lord
Shaftesbury, the grandfather of the author of the _Characteristics_. He
had been to dine with Lady Clarendon and her daughter, who was at that
time privately married to the Duke of York (afterwards James II.), and
as he returned home with another nobleman who had accompanied him, he
suddenly turned to him, and said, 'Depend upon it, the Duke has married
Hyde's daughter.' His companion could not comprehend what he meant; but
on explaining himself, he said, 'Her mother behaved to her with an
attention and a marked respect that it is impossible to account for in
any other way; and I am sure of it.' His conjecture shortly afterwards
proved to be the truth. This was carrying the prophetic spirit of
common sense as far as it could go.
NOTES to ESSAY IV
[1] Discourse XIII. vol. ii. pp. 113-117.
[2] Sentiment has the same source as that here pointed out. Thus the
_Ranz des Vaches_, which has such an effect on the minds of the Swiss
peasantry, when its well-known sound is heard, does not merely recall to
them the idea of their country, but has associated with it a thousand
nameless ideas, numberless touches of private affection, of early hope,
romantic adventure and national pride, all which rush in (with mingled
currents) to swell the tide of fond remembrance, and make them languish
or die for home. What a fine instrument the human heart is! Who shall
touch it? Who shall fathom it? Who shall 'sound it from Its lowest
note to the top of its compass?' Who shall put his hand among the
strings, and explain their wayward music? The heart alone, when touched
by sympathy, trembles and responds to their hidden meaning!
ESSAY V
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED
Genius or originality is, for the most part, _some strong quality in the
mind, answering to and bringing out some new and striking quality in
nature._
Imagination is, more properly, the power of carrying on a given feeling
into other situations, which must be done best according to the hold
which the feeling itself has taken of the mind.[1] In new and unknown
combinations the impression must act by sympathy, and not by rule, but
there can be no sympathy where there is no passion, no original
interest. The personal interest may in some cases oppress and
circumscribe the imaginative faculty, as in the instance of Rousseau:
but in general the strength and consistency of the imagination will be
in proportion to the strength and depth of feeling; and it is rarely
that a man even of lofty genius will be able to do more than carry on
his own feelings and character, or some prominent and ruling passion,
into fictitious and uncommon situations. Milton has by allusion
embodied a great part of his political and personal history in the chief
characters and incidents of _Paradise Lost_. He has, no doubt,
wonderfully adapted and heightened them, but the elements are the same;
you trace the bias and opinions of the man in the creations of the poet.
Shakespear (almost alone) seems to have been a man of genius raised
above the definition of genius. 'Born universal heir to all humanity,'
he was 'as one, in suffering all who suffered nothing'; with a perfect
sympathy with all things, yet alike indifferent to all: who did not
tamper with Nature or warp her to his own purposes; who 'knew all
qualities with a learned spirit,' instead of judging of them by his own
predilections; and was rather 'a pipe for the Muse's finger to play what
stop she pleasd,' than anxious to set up any character or pretensions of
his own. His genius consisted in the faculty of transforming himself at
will into whatever he chose: his originality was the power of seeing
every object from the exact point of view in which others would see it.
He was the Proteus of human intellect. Genius in ordinary is a more
obstinate and less versatile thing. It is sufficiently exclusive and
self-willed, quaint and peculiar. It does some one thing by virtue of
doing nothing else: it excels in some one pursuit by being blind to all
excellence but its own. It is just the reverse of the cameleon; for it
does not borrow, but lends its colour to all about it; or like the
glow-worm, discloses a little circle of gorgeous light in the twilight
of obscurity, in the night of intellect that surrounds it. So did
Rembrandt. If ever there was a man of genius, he was one, in the proper
sense of the term. He lived in and revealed to otters a world of his
own, and might be said to have invented a new view of nature. He did
not discover things _out of_ nature, in fiction or fairy land, or make a
voyage to the moon 'to descry new lands, rivers or mountains in her
spotty globe,' but saw things _in_ nature that every one had missed
before him and gave others eyes to see them with. This is the test and
triumph of originality, not to show us what has never been, and what we
may therefore very easily never have dreamt of, but to point out to us
what is before our eyes and under our feet, though we have had no
suspicion of its existence, for want of sufficient strength of
intuition, of determined grasp of mind, to seize and retain it.
Rembrandt's conquests were not over the _ideal_, but the real. He did
not contrive a new story or character, but we nearly owe to him a fifth
part of painting, the knowledge of _chiaroscuro_--a distinct power and
element in art and nature. He had a steadiness, a firm keeping of mind
and eye, that first stood the shock of 'fierce extremes' in light and
shade, or reconciled the greatest obscurity and the greatest brilliancy
into perfect harmony; and he therefore was the first to hazard this
appearance upon canvas, and give full effect to what he saw and
delighted in. He was led to adopt this style of broad and startling
contrast from its congeniality to his own feelings: his mind grappled
with that which afforded the best exercise to its master-powers: he was
bold in act, because he was urged on by a strong native impulse.
Originality is then nothing but nature and feeling working in the mind.
A man does not affect to be original: he is so, because he cannot help
it, and often without knowing it. This extraordinary artist indeed
might be said to have had a particular organ for colour. His eye seemed
to come in contact with it as a feeling, to lay hold of it as a
substance, rather than to contemplate it as a visual object. The
texture of his landscapes is 'of the earth, earthy'--his clouds are
humid, heavy, slow; his shadows are 'darkness that may be felt,' a
'palpable obscure'; his lights are lumps of liquid splendour! There is
something more in this than can be accounted for from design or
accident: Rembrandt was not a man made up of two or three rules and
directions for acquiring genius.
I am afraid I shall hardly write so satisfactory a character of Mr.
Wordsworth, though he too, like Rembrandt, has a faculty of making
something out of nothing, that is, out of himself, by the medium through
which he sees and with which he clothes the barrenest subject. Mr.
Wordsworth is the last man to 'look abroad into universality,' if that
alone constituted genius: he looks at home into himself, and is 'content
with riches fineless.' He would in the other case be 'poor as winter,'
if he had nothing but general capacity to trust to. He is the greatest,
that is, the most original poet of the present day, only because he is
the greatest egotist. He is 'self-involved, not dark.' He sits in the
centre of his own being, and there 'enjoys bright day.' He does not
waste a thought on others. Whatever does not relate exclusively and
wholly to himself is foreign to his views. He contemplates a
whole-length figure of himself, he looks along the unbroken line of his
personal identity. He thrusts aside all other objects, all other
interests, with scorn and impatience, that he may repose on his own
being, that he may dig out the treasures of thought contained in it,
that he may unfold the precious stores of a mind for ever brooding over
itself. His genius is the effect of his individual character. He
stamps that character, that deep individual interest, on whatever he
meets. The object is nothing but as it furnishes food for internal
meditation, for old associations. If there had been no other being in
the universe, Mr. Wordsworth's poetry would have been just what it is.
If there had been neither love nor friendship, neither ambition nor
pleasure nor business in the World, the author of the _Lyrical Ballads_
need not have been greatly changed from what he is--might still have
'kept the noiseless tenour of his way,' retired in the sanctuary of his
own heart, hallowing the Sabbath of his own thoughts. With the
passions, the pursuits, and imaginations of other men he does not
profess to sympathise, but 'finds tongues in the trees, books in the
running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.' With a mind
averse from outward objects, but ever intent upon its own workings, he
hangs a weight of thought and feeling upon every trifling circumstance
connected with his past history. The note of the cuckoo sounds in his
ear like the voice of other years; the daisy spreads its leaves in the
rays of boyish delight that stream from his thoughtful eyes; the rainbow
lifts its proud arch in heaven but to mark his progress from infancy to
manhood; an old thorn is buried, bowed down under the mass of
associations he has wound about it; and to him, as he himself
beautifully says,
The meanest flow'r that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
It is this power of habitual sentiment, or of transferring the interest
of our conscious existence to whatever gently solicits attention, and is
a link in the chain of association without rousing our passions or
hurting our pride, that is the striking feature in Mr. Wordsworth's mind
and poetry. Others have left and shown this power before, as Wither,
Burns, etc., but none have felt it so intensely and absolutely as to
lend to it the voice of inspiration, as to make it the foundation of a
new style and school in poetry. His strength, as it so often happens,
arises from the excess of his weakness. But he has opened a new avenue
to the human heart, has explored another secret haunt and nook of
nature, 'sacred to verse, and sure of everlasting fame.' Compared with
his lines, Lord Byron's stanzas are but exaggerated common-place, and
Walter Scott's poetry (not his prose) old wives' fables.[2] There is no
one in whom I have been more disappointed than in the writer here spoken
of, nor with whom I am more disposed on certain points to quarrel; but
the love of truth and justice which obliges me to do this, will not
suffer me to blench his merits. Do what he can, he cannot help being an
original-minded man. His poetry is not servile. While the cuckoo
returns in the spring, while the daisy looks bright in the sun, while
the rainbow lifts its head above the storm--
Yet I'll remember thee, Glencairn,
And all that thou hast done for me!
Sir Joshua Reynolds, in endeavouring to show that there is no such thing
as proper originality, a spirit emanating from the mind of the artist
and shining through his works, has traced Raphael through a number of
figures which he has borrowed from Masaccio and others. This is a bad
calculation. If Raphael had only borrowed those figures from others,
would he, even in Sir Joshua's sense, have been entitled to the praise
of originality? Plagiarism, in so far as it is plagiarism, is not
originality. Salvator is considered by many as a great genius. He is
what they call an irregular genius. My notion of genius is not exactly
the same as theirs. It has also been made a question; whether there is
not more genius in Rembrandt's Three Trees than in all Claude Lorraine's
landscapes. I do not know how that may be; but it was enough for Claude
to have been a perfect landscape-painter.
Capacity is not the same thing as genius. Capacity may be described to
relate to the quantity of knowledge, however acquired; genius, to its
quality and the mode of acquiring it. Capacity is power over given
ideas combinations of ideas; genius is the power over those which are
not given, and for which no obvious or precise rule can be laid down.
Or capacity is power of any sort; genius is power of a different sort
from what has yet been shown. A retentive memory, a clear
understanding, is capacity, but it is not genius. The admirable
Crichton was a person of prodigious capacity; but there is no proof
(that I know) that he had an atom of genius. His verses that remain are
dull and sterile. He could learn all that was known of any subject; he
could do anything if others could show him the way to do it. This was
very wonderful; but that is all you can say of it. It requires a good
capacity to play well at chess; but, after all, it is a game of skill,
and not of genius. Know what you will of it, the understanding still
moves in certain tracks in which others have trod it before, quicker or
slower, with more or less comprehension and presence of mind. The
greatest skill strikes out nothing for itself, from its own peculiar
resources; the nature of the game is a thing determinate and fixed:
there is no royal or poetical road to checkmate your adversary. There
is no place for genius but in the indefinite and unknown. The discovery
of the binomial theorem was an effort of genius; but there was none
shown in Jedediah Buxton's being able to multiply 9 figures by 9 in his
head. If he could have multiplied 90 figures by 90 instead of 9, it
would have been equally useless toil and trouble.[3] He is a man of
capacity who possesses considerable intellectual riches: he is a man of
genius who finds out a vein of new ore. Originality is the seeing
nature differently from others, and yet as it is in itself. It is not
singularity or affectation, but the discovery of new and valuable truth.
All the world do not see the whole meaning of any object they have been
looking at. Habit blinds them to some things; short-sightedness to
others. Every mind is not a gauge and measure of truth. Nature has her
surface and her dark recesses. She is deep, obscure, and infinite. It
is only minds on whom she makes her fullest impressions that can
penetrate her shrine or unveil her _Holy of Holies_. It is only those
whom she has filled with her spirit that have the boldness or the power
to reveal her mysteries to others. But Nature has a thousand aspects,
and one man can only draw out one of them. Whoever does this is a man
of genius. One displays her force, another her refinement; one her
power of harmony, another her suddenness of contrast; one her beauty of
form, another her splendour of colour. Each does that for which he is
bast fitted by his particular genius, that is to say, by some quality of
mind into which the quality of the object sinks deepest, where it finds
the most cordial welcome, is perceived to its utmost extent, and where
again it forces its way out from the fulness with which it has taken
possession of the mind of the student. The imagination gives out what
it has first absorbed by congeniality of temperament, what it has
attracted and moulded into itself by elective affinity, as the loadstone
draws and impregnates iron. A little originality is more esteemed and
sought for than the greatest acquired talent, because it throws a new
light upon things, and is peculiar to the individual. The other is
common; and may be had for the asking, to any amount.
The value of any work is to be judged of by the quantity of originality
contained in it. A very little of this will go a great way. If
Goldsmith had never written anything but the two or three first chapters
of the _Vicar of Wakefield_ or the character of a Village Schoolmaster,
they would have stamped him a man of genius. The editors of
Encyclopedias are not usually reckoned the first literary characters of
the age. The works of which they have the management contain a great
deal of knowledge, like chests or warehouses, but the goods are not
their own. We should as soon think of admiring the shelves of a
library; but the shelves of a library are useful and respectable. I was
once applied to, in a delicate emergency, to write an article on a
difficult subject for an Encyclopedia, and was advised to take time and
give it a systematic and scientific form, to avail myself of all the
knowledge that was to be obtained on the subject, and arrange it with
clearness and method. I made answer that as to the first, I had taken
time to do all that I ever pretended to do, as I had thought incessantly
on different matters for twenty years of my life;[4] that I had no
particular knowledge of the subject in question, and no head for
arrangement; and that the utmost I could do in such a case would be,
when a systematic and scientific article was prepared, to write marginal
notes upon it, to insert a remark or illustration of my own (not to be
found in former Encyclopedias), or to suggest a better definition than
had been offered in the text. There are two sorts of writing. The
first is compilation; and consists in collecting and stating all that is
already known of any question in the best possible manner, for the
benefit of the uninformed reader. An author of this class is a very
learned amanuensis of other people's thoughts. The second sort proceeds
on an entirely different principle: instead of bringing down the account
of knowledge to the point at which it has already arrived, it professes
to start from that point on the strength of the writer's individual
reflections; and supposing the reader in possession of what is already
known, supplies deficiencies, fills up certain blanks, and quits the
beaten road in search of new tracts of observation or sources of
feeling. It is in vain to object to this last style that it is
disjointed, disproportioned, and irregular. It is merely a set of
additions and corrections to other men's works, or to the common stock
of human knowledge, printed separately. You might as well expect a
continued chain of reasoning in the notes to a book. It skips all the
trite, intermediate, level common-places of the subject, and only stops
at the difficult passages of the human mind, or touches on some striking
point that has been overlooked in previous editions. A view of a
subject, to be connected and regular, cannot be all new. A writer will
always be liable to be charged either with paradox or common-place,
either with dulness or affectation. But we have no right to demand from
any one more than he pretends to. There is indeed a medium in all
things, but to unite opposite excellencies is a task ordinarily too hard
for mortality. He who succeeds in what he aims at, or who takes the
lead in any one mode or path of excellence, may think himself very well
off. It would not be fair to complain of the style of an Encyclopedia
as dull, as wanting volatile salt; nor of the style of an Essay because
it is too light and sparkling, because it is not a _caput mortuum_. So
it is rather an odd objection to a work that it is made up entirely of
'brilliant passages'--at least it is a fault that can be found with few
works, and the book might be pardoned for its singularity. The censure
might indeed seem like adroit flattery, if it were not passed on an
author whom any objection is sufficient to render unpopular and
ridiculous. I grant it is best to unite solidity with show, general
information with particular ingenuity. This is the pattern of a perfect
style; but I myself do not pretend to be a perfect writer. In fine, we
do not banish light French wines from our tables, or refuse to taste
sparkling Champagne when we can get it because it has not the body of
Old Port. Besides, I do not know that dulness is strength, or that an
observation is slight because it is striking. Mediocrity, insipidity,
want of character is the great fault.
Mediocribus esse poetis
Non Dii, non homines, non concessere columnae.
Neither is this privilege allowed to prose-writers in our time any more
than to poets formerly.
It is not then acuteness of organs or extent of capacity that
constitutes rare genius or produces the most exquisite models of art,
but an intense sympathy with some one beauty or distinguishing
characteristic in nature. Irritability alone, or the interest taken in
certain things, may supply the place of genius in weak and otherwise
ordinary minds. As there are certain instruments fitted to perform
certain kinds of labour, there are certain minds so framed as to produce
certain _chef-d'oeuvres_ in art and literature, which is surely the best
use they can be put to. If a man had all sorts of instruments in his
shop and wanted one, he would rather have that one than be supplied with
a double set of all the others. If he had them twice over, he could
only do what he can do as it is, whereas without that one he perhaps
cannot finish any one work he has in hand. So if a man can do one thing
better than anybody else, the value of this one thing is what he must
stand or fall by, and his being able to do a hundred other things merely
_as well_ as anybody else would not alter the sentence or add to his
respectability; on the contrary, his being able to do so many other
things well would probably interfere with and encumber him in the
execution of the only thing that others cannot do as well as he, and so
far be a drawback and a disadvantage. More people, in fact, fail from a
multiplicity of talents and pretensions than from an absolute poverty of
resources. I have given instances of this elsewhere. Perhaps
Shakespear's tragedies would in some respects have been better if he had
never written comedies at all; and in that case his comedies might well
have been spared, though they must have cost us some regret. Racine, it
is said, might have rivalled Moliere in comedy; but he gave up the
cultivation of his comic talents to devote himself wholly to the tragic
Muse. If, as the French tell us, he in consequence attained to the
perfection of tragic composition, this was better than writing comedies
as well as Moliere and tragedies as well as Crebillon. Yet I count
those persons fools who think it a pity Hogarth did not succeed better
in serious subjects. The division of labour is an excellent principle
in taste as well as in mechanics. Without this, I find from Adam Smith,
we could not have a pin made to the degree of perfection it is. We do
not, on any rational scheme of criticism, inquire into the variety of a
man's excellences, or the number of his works, or his facility of
production. _Venice Preserved_ is sufficient for Otway's fame. I hate
all those nonsensical stories about Lope de Vega and his writing a play
in a morning before breakfast. He had time enough to do it after. If a
man leaves behind him any work which is a model in its kind, we have no
right to ask whether he could do anything else, or how he did it, or how
long he was about it. All that talent which is not necessary to the
actual quantity of excellence existing in the world, loses its object,
is so much waste talent or _talent to let_. I heard a sensible man say
he should like to do some one thing better than all the rest of the
world, and in everything else to be like all the rest of the world. Why
should a man do more than his part? The rest is vanity and vexation of
spirit. We look with jealous and grudging eyes at all those
qualifications which are not essential; first, because they are
superfluous, and next, because we suspect they will be prejudicial. Why
does Mr. Kean play all those harlequin tricks of singing, dancing,
fencing, etc.? They say, 'It is for his benefit.' It is not for his
reputation. Garrick indeed shone equally in comedy and tragedy. But he
was first, not second-rate in both. There is not a greater impertinence
than to ask, if a man is clever out of his profession. I have heard of
people trying to cross-examine Mrs. Siddons. I would as soon try to
entrap one of the Elgin Marbles into an argument. Good nature and
common sense are required from all people; but one proud distinction is
enough for any one individual to possess or to aspire to.
NOTES to ESSAY V
[1] I do not here speak of the figurative or fanciful exercise of the
imagination, which consists in finding out some striking object or image
to illustrate another.
[2] Mr. Wordsworth himself should not say this, and yet I am not sure he
would not.
[3] The only good thing I have ever heard come of this man's singular
faculty of memory was the following. A gentleman was mentioning his
having been sent up to London from the place where he lived to see
Garrick act. When he went back into the country he was asked what he
thought of the player and the play. 'Oh!' he said, 'he did not know: he
had only seen a little man strut about the stage and repeat 7956 words.'
We all laughed at this; but a person in one corner of the room, holding
one hand to his forehead, and seeming mightily delighted, called out,
'Ay, indeed! And pray, was he found to be correct?' This was the
supererogation of literal matter-of-fact curiosity. Jedediah Buxton's
counting the number of words was idle enough; but here was a fellow who
wanted some one to count them over again to see if he was correct.
The force of _dulness_ could no farther go!
[4] Sir Joshua Reynolds, being asked how long it had taken him to do a
certain picture, made answer, 'All my life!.'
ESSAY VI
CHARACTER OF COBBETT
People have about as substantial an idea of Cobbett as they have of
Cribb. His blows are as hard, and he himself is as impenetrable. One
has no notion of him as making use of a fine pen, but a great
mutton-fist; his style stuns his readers, and he 'fillips the ear of the
public with a three-man beetle.' He is too much for any single
newspaper antagonist; 'lays waste' a city orator or Member of
Parliament, and bears hard upon the Government itself. He is a kind of
_fourth estate_ in the politics of the country. He is not only
unquestionably the most powerful political writer of the present day,
but one of the best writers in the language. He speaks and thinks
plain, broad, downright English. He might be said to have the clearness
of Swift, the naturalness of Defoe, and the picturesque satirical
description of Mandeville; if all such comparisons were not impertinent.
A really great and original writer is like nobody but himself. In one
sense, Sterne was not a wit, nor Shakespear a poet. It is easy to
describe second-rate talents, because they fall into a class and enlist
under a standard; but first-rate powers defy calculation or comparison,
and can be defined only by themselves. They are _sui generis_, and make
the class to which they belong. I have tried half a dozen times to
describe Burke's style without ever succeeding,--its severe
extravagance; its literal boldness; its matter-of-fact hyperboles; its
running away with a subject, and from it at the same time,--but there is
no making it out, for there is no example of the same thing anywhere
else. We have no common measure to refer to; and his qualities
contradict even themselves.
Cobbett is not so difficult. He has been compared to Paine; and so far
it is true there are no two writers who come more into juxtaposition
from the nature of their subjects, from the internal resources on which
they draw, and from the popular effect of their writings and their
adaptation (though that is a bad word in the present case) to the
capacity of every reader. But still if we turn to a volume of Paine's
(his _Common Sense_ or _Rights of Man_) we are struck (not to say
somewhat refreshed) by the difference. Paine is a much more sententious
writer than Cobbett. You cannot open a page in any of his best and
earlier works without meeting with some maxim, some antithetical and
memorable saying, which is a sort of starting-place for the argument,
and the goal to which it returns. There is not a single _bon mot_, a
single sentence in Cobbett that has ever been quoted again. If anything
is ever quoted from him, it is an epithet of abuse or a nickname. He is
an excellent hand at invention in that way, and has 'damnable iteration'
in him. What could be better than his pestering Erskine year after year
with his second title of Baron Clackmannan? He is rather too fond of
_the Sons and Daughters of Corruption_. Paine affected to reduce things
to first principles, to announce self-evident truths. Cobbett troubles
himself about little but the details and local circumstances. The first
appeared to have made up his mind beforehand to certain opinions, and to
try to find the most compendious and pointed expressions for them: his
successor appears to have no clue, no fixed or leading principles, nor
ever to have thought on a question till he sits down to write about it;
but then there seems no end of his matters of fact and raw materials,
which are brought out in all their strength and sharpness from not
having been squared or frittered down or vamped up to suit a theory--he
goes on with his descriptions and illustrations as if he would never
come to a stop; they have all the force of novelty with all the
familiarity of old acquaintance; his knowledge grows out of the subject,
and his style is that of a man who has an absolute intuition of what he
is talking about, and never thinks of anything else. He deals in
premises and speaks to evidence--the coming to a conclusion and summing
up (which was Paine's _forte_) lies in a smaller compass. The one could
not compose an elementary treatise on politics to become a manual for
the popular reader, nor could the other in all probability have kept up
a weekly journal for the same number of years with the same spirit,
interest, and untired perseverance. Paine's writings are a sort of
introduction to political arithmetic on a new plan: Cobbett keeps a
day-book, and makes an entry at full of all the occurrences and
troublesome questions that start up throughout the year. Cobbett, with
vast industry, vast information, and the utmost power of making what he
says intelligible, never seems to get at the beginning or come to the
end of any question: Paine in a few short sentences seems by his
peremptory manner 'to clear it from all controversy, past, present, and
to come.' Paine takes a bird's-eye view of things. Cobbett sticks
close to them, inspects the component parts, and keeps fast hold of the
smallest advantages they afford him. Or, if I might here be indulged in
a pastoral allusion, Paine tries to enclose his ideas in a fold for
security and repose; Cobbett lets _his_ pour out upon the plain like a
flock of sheep to feed and batten. Cobbett is a pleasanter writer for
those to read who do not agree with him; for he is less dogmatical, goes
more into the common grounds of fact and argument to which all appeal,
is more desultory and various, and appears less to be driving at a
present conclusion than urged on by the force of present conviction. He
is therefore tolerated by all parties, though he has made himself by
turns obnoxious to all; and even those he abuses read him. The
Reformers read him when he was a Tory, and the Tories read him now that
he is a Reformer. He must, I think, however, be _caviare_ to the
Whigs.[1]
If he is less metaphysical and poetical than his celebrated prototype,
he is more picturesque and dramatic. His episodes, which are numerous
as they are pertinent, are striking, interesting, full of life and
_naivete_, minute, double measure running over, but never
tedious--_nunquam sufflaminandus erat_. He is one of those writers who
can never tire us, not even of himself; and the reason is, he is always
'full of matter.' He never runs to lees, never gives us the vapid
leavings of himself, is never 'weary, stale, and unprofitable,' but
always setting out afresh on his journey, clearing away some old
nuisance, and turning up new mould. His egotism is delightful, for
there is no affectation in it. He does not talk of himself for lack of
something to write about, but because some circumstance that has
happened to himself is the best possible illustration of the subject,
and he is not the man to shrink from giving the best possible
illustration of the subject from a squeamish delicacy. He likes both
himself and his subject too well. He does not put himself before it,
and say, 'Admire me first,' but places us in the same situation with
himself, and makes us see all that he does. There is no
blindman's-buff, no conscious hints, no awkward ventriloquism, no
testimonies of applause, no abstract, senseless self-complacency, no
smuggled admiration of his own person by proxy: it is all plain and
above- board. He writes himself plain William Cobbett, strips himself
quite as naked as anybody would wish--in a word, his egotism is full of
individuality, and has room for very little vanity in it. We feel
delighted, rub our hands, and draw our chair to the fire, when we come
to a passage of this sort: we know it will be something new and good,
manly and simple, not the same insipid story of self over again. We sit
down at table with the writer, but it is to a course of rich viands,
flesh, fish, and wild-fowl, and not to a nominal entertainment, like
that given by the Barmecide in the _Arabian Nights_, who put off his
visitors with calling for a number of exquisite things that never
appeared, and with the honour of his company. Mr. Cobbett is not a
_make-believe_ writer: his worst enemy cannot say that of him. Still
less is he a vulgar one: he must be a puny, common-place critic indeed
who thinks him so. How fine were the graphical descriptions he sent us
from America: what a Transatlantic flavour, what a native gusto, what a
fine _sauce piquante_ of contempt they were seasoned with! If he had
sat down to look at himself in the glass, instead of looking about him
like Adam in Paradise, he would not have got up these articles in so
capital a style. What a noble account of his first breakfast after his
arrival in America! It might serve for a month. There is no scene on
the stage more amusing. How well he paints the gold and scarlet plumage
of the American birds, only to lament more pathetically the want of the
wild wood-notes of his native land! The groves of the Ohio that had
just fallen beneath the axe's stroke 'live in his description,' and the
turnips that he transplanted from Botley 'look green' in prose! How
well at another time he describes the poor sheep that had got the tick
and had bled down in the agonies of death! It is a portrait in the
manner of Bewick, with the strength, the simplicity, and feeling of that
great naturalist. What havoc be makes, when he pleases, of the curls of
Dr. Parr's wig and of the Whig consistency of Mr. [Coleridge?]! His
_Grammar_, too, is as entertaining as a story-book. He is too hard upon
the style of others, and not enough (sometimes) on his own.
As a political partisan no one can stand against him. With his
brandished club, like Giant Despair in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, he
knocks out their brains; and not only no individual but no corrupt
system could hold out against his powerful and repeated attacks, but
with the same weapon, swung round like a flail, that he levels his
antagonists, he lays his friends low, and puts his own party _hors de
combat_. This is a bad propensity., and a worse principle in political
tactics, though a common one. If his blows were straightforward and
steadily directed to the same object, no unpopular minister could live
before him; instead of which he lays about right and left, impartially
and remorselessly, makes a clear stage, has all the ring to himself, and
then runs out of it, just when he should stand his ground. He throws
his head into his adversary's stomach, and takes away from him all
inclination for the fight, hits fair or foul, strikes at everything, and
as you come up to his aid or stand ready to pursue his advantage, trips
up your heels or lays you sprawling, and pummels you when down as much
to his heart's content as ever the Yanguesian carriers belaboured
Rosinante with their pack-staves. 'He has the back-trick simply the
best of any man in Illyria.' He pays off both scores of old friendship
and new-acquired enmity in a breath, in one perpetual volley, one raking
fire of 'arrowy sleet' shot from his pen. However his own reputation or
the cause may suffer in consequence, he cares not one pin about that, so
that he disables all who oppose, or who pretend to help him. In fact,
he cannot bear success of any kind, not even of his own views or party;
and if any principle were likely to become popular, would turn round
against it to show his power in shouldering it on one side. In short,
wherever power is, there he is against it: he naturally butts at all
obstacles, as unicorns are attracted to oak trees, and feels his own
strength only by resistance to the opinions and wishes of the rest of
the world. To sail with the stream, to agree with the company, is not
his humour. If he could bring about a Reform in Parliament, the odds
are that he would instantly fall foul of and try to mar his own
handiwork; and he quarrels with his own creatures as soon as he has
written them into a little vogue--and a prison. I do not think this is
vanity or fickleness so much as a pugnacious disposition, that must have
an antagonistic power to contend with, and only finds itself at ease in
systematic opposition. If it were not for this, the high towers and
rotten places of the world would fall before the battering-ram of his
hard-headed reasoning; but if he once found them tottering, he would
apply his strength to prop them up, and disappoint the expectations of
his followers. He cannot agree to anything established, nor to set up
anything else in its stead. While it is established, he presses hard
against it, because it presses upon him, at least in imagination. Let
it crumble under his grasp, and the motive to resistance is gone. He
then requires some other grievance to set his face against. His
principle is repulsion, his nature contradiction: he is made up of mere
antipathies, an Ishmaelite indeed without a fellow. He is always
playing at hunt-the-slipper in politics. He turns round upon whoever is
next him. The way to wean him from any opinion, and make him conceive
an intolerable hatred against it, would be to place somebody near him
who was perpetually dinning it in his ears. When he is in England he
does nothing but abuse the Boroughmongers and laugh at the whole system;
when he is in America he grows impatient of freedom and a republic. If
he had stayed there a little longer he would have become a loyal and a
loving subject of His Majesty King George IV. He lampooned the French
Revolution when it was hailed as the dawn of liberty by millions: by the
time it was brought into almost universal ill-odour by some means or
other (partly no doubt by himself), he had turned, with one or two or
three others, staunch Buonapartist. He is always of the militant, not
of the triumphant party: so far he bears a gallant show of magnanimity.
But his gallantry is hardly of the right stamp. It wants principle; for
though he is not servile or mercenary, he is the victim of self-will.
He must pull down and pull in pieces: it is not in his disposition to do
otherwise. It is a pity; for with his great talents he might do great
things, if he would go right forward to any useful object, make thorough
stitch-work of any question, or join hand and heart with any principle.
He changes his opinions as he does his friends, and much on the same
account. He has no comfort in fixed principles; as soon as anything is
settled in his own mind, he quarrels with it. He has no satisfaction
but the chase after truth, runs a question down, worries and kills it,
then quits it like a vermin, and starts some new game, to lead him a new
dance, and give him a fresh breathing through bog and brake, with the
rabble yelping at his heels and the leaders perpetually at fault. This
he calls sport-royal. He thinks it as good as cudgel-playing or
single-stick, or anything else that has life in it. He likes the cut
and thrust, the falls, bruises, and dry blows of an argument: as to any
good or useful results that may come of the amicable settling of it, any
one is welcome to them for him. The amusement is over when the matter
is once fairly decided.
There is another point of view in which this may be put. I might say
that Mr. Cobbett is a very honest man with a total want of principle,
and I might explain this paradox thus:--I mean that he is, I think, in
downright earnest in what he says, in the part he takes at the time; but
in taking that part, he is led entirely by headstrong obstinacy,
caprice, novelty 'pique, or personal motive of some sort, and not by a
steadfast regard for truth or habitual anxiety for what is right
uppermost in his mind. He is not a fee'd, time-serving, shuffling
advocate (no man could write as he does who did not believe himself
sincere); but his understanding is the dupe and slave of his momentary,
violent, and irritable humours. He does not adopt an opinion
'deliberately or for money,' yet his conscience is at the mercy of the
first provocation he receives, of the first whim he takes in his head:
he sees things through the medium of heat and passion, not with
reference to any general principles, and his whole system of thinking is
deranged by the first object that strikes his fancy or sours his temper.
One cause of this phenomenon is perhaps his want of a regular
education. He is a self-taught man, and has the faults as well as
excellences of that class of persons in their most striking and glaring
excess. It must be acknowledged that the editor of the _Political
Register_ (the _twopenny trash_, as it was called, till a bill passed
the House to raise the price to sixpence) is not 'the gentleman and
scholar,' though he has qualities that, with a little better management,
would be worth (to the public) both those titles. For want of knowing
what has been discovered before him, he has not certain general
landmarks to refer to, or a general standard of thought to apply to
individual cases. He relies on his own acuteness and the immediate
evidence, without being acquainted with the comparative anatomy or
philosophical structure of opinion. He does not view things on a large
scale or at the horizon (dim and airy enough, perhaps)--but as they
affect himself, close, palpable, tangible. Whatever he finds out is his
own, and he only knows what he finds out. He is in the constant hurry
and fever of gestation; his brain teems incessantly with some fresh
project. Every new light is the birth of a new system, the dawn of a
new world outstripping and overreaching himself. The last opinion is
the only true one. He is wiser to-day than he was yesterday. Why
should he not be wiser to-morrow than he was to-day?--Men of a learned
education are not so sharp-witted as clever men without it; but they
know the balance of the human intellect better; if they are more stupid,
they are more steady, and are less liable to be led astray by their own
sagacity and the overweening petulance of hard-earned and late-acquired
wisdom. They do not fall in love with every meretricious extravagance
at first sight, or mistake an old battered hypothesis for a vestal,
because they are new to the ways of this old world. They do not seize
upon it as a prize, but are safe from gross imposition by being as wise
and no wiser than those who went before them.
Paine said on some occasion, 'What I have written, I have written'--as
rendering any further declaration of his principles unnecessary. Not so
Mr. Cobbett. What he has written is no rule to him what he is to write.
He learns something every day, and every week he takes the field to
maintain the opinions of the last six days against friend or foe. I
doubt whether this outrageous inconsistency, this headstrong fickleness,
this understood want of all rule and method, does not enable him to go
on with the spirit, vigour, and variety that he does. He is not pledged
to repeat himself. Every new _Register_ is a kind of new Prospectus.
He blesses himself from all ties and shackles on his understanding; he
has no mortgages on his brain; his notions are free and unencumbered.
If he was put in trammels, he might become a vile hack like so many
more. But he gives himself 'ample scope and verge enough.' He takes
both sides of a question, and maintains one as sturdily as the other.
If nobody else can argue against him, he is a very good match for
himself. He writes better in favour of Reform than anybody else; he
used to write better against it. Wherever he is, there is the tug of
war, the weight of the argument, the strength of abuse. He is not like
a man in danger of being _bed-rid_ in his faculties--he tosses and
tumbles about his unwieldy bulk, and when he is tired of lying on one
side, relieves himself by turning on the other. His shifting his point
of view from time to time not merely adds variety and greater compass to
his topics (so that the _Political Register_ is an armoury and magazine
for all the materials and weapons of political warfare), but it gives a
greater zest and liveliness to his manner of treating them. Mr. Cobbett
takes nothing for granted as what he has proved before; he does not
write a book of reference. We see his ideas in their first concoction,
fermenting and overflowing with the ebullitions of a lively conception.
We look on at the actual process, and are put in immediate possession of
the grounds and materials on which he forms his sanguine, unsettled
conclusions. He does not give us samples of reasoning, but the whole
solid mass, refuse and all.
He pours out all as plain
As downright Shippen or as old Montaigne.
This is one cause of the clearness and force of his writings. An
argument does not stop to stagnate and muddle in his brain, but passes
at once to his paper. His ideas are served up, like pancakes, hot and
hot. Fresh theories give him fresh courage. He is like a young and
lusty bridegroom that divorces a favourite speculation every morning,
and marries a new one every night. He is not wedded to his notions, not
he. He has not one Mrs. Cobbett among all his opinions. He makes the
most of the last thought that has come in his way, seizes fast hold of
it, rumbles it about in all directions with rough strong hands, has his
wicked will of it, takes a surfeit, and throws it away.--Our author's
changing his opinions for new ones is not so wonderful; what is more
remarkable is his facility in forgetting his old ones. He does not
pretend to consistency (like Mr. Coleridge); he frankly disavows all
connection with himself. He feels no personal responsibility in this
way, and cuts a friend or principle with the same decided indifference
that Antipholis of Ephesus cuts AEgeon of Syracuse. It is a hollow
thing. The only time he ever grew romantic was in bringing over the
relics of Mr. Thomas Paine with him from America to go a progress with
them through the disaffected districts. Scarce had he landed in
Liverpool when he left the bones of a great man to shift for themselves;
and no sooner did he arrive in London than he made a speech to disclaim
all participation in the political and theological sentiments of his
late idol, and to place the whole stock of his admiration and enthusiasm
towards him to the account of his financial speculations, and of his
having predicted the fate of paper-money. If he had erected a little
gold statue to him, it might have proved the sincerity of this
assertion; but to make a martyr and a patron saint of a man, and to dig
up 'his canonised bones' in order to expose them as objects of devotion
to the rabble's gaze, asks something that has more life and spirit in
it, more mind and vivifying soul, than has to do with any calculation of
pounds, shillings, and pence! The fact is, he _ratted_ from his own
project. He found the thing not so ripe as he had expected. His heart
failed him; his enthusiasm fled, and he made his retractation. His
admiration is short-lived; his contempt only is rooted, and his
resentment lasting.--The above was only one instance of his building too
much on practical _data_. He has an ill habit of prophesying, and goes
on, though still decieved. The art of prophesying does not suit Mr.
Cobbett's style. He has a knack of fixing names and times and places.
According to him, the Reformed Parliament was to meet in March 1818--it
did not, and we heard no more of the matter. When his predictions fail,
he takes no further notice of them, but applies himself to new
ones--like the country people who turn to see what weather there is in
the almanac for the next week, though it has been out in its reckoning
every day of the last.
Mr. Cobbett is great in attack, not in defence; be cannot fight an
up-hill battle. He will not bear the least punishing. If any one turns
upon him (which few people like to do) he immediately turns tail. Like
an overgrown schoolboy, he is so used to have it all his own way, that
he cannot submit to anything like competition or a struggle for the
mastery; he must lay on all the blows, and take none. He is bullying
and cowardly; a Big Ben in politics, who will fall upon others and crush
them by his weight, but is not prepared for resistance, and is soon
staggered by a few smart blows. Whenever he has been set upon, he has
slunk out of the controversy. The _Edinburgh Review_ made (what is
called) a dead set at him some years ago, to which he only retorted by
an eulogy on the superior neatness of an English kitchen-garden to a
Scotch one. I remember going one day into a bookseller's shop in Fleet
Street to ask for the _Review_, and on my expressing my opinion to a
young Scotchman, who stood behind the counter, that Mr. Cobbett might
hit as hard in his reply, the North Briton said with some alarm, 'But
you don't think, sir, Mr. Cobbett will be able to injure the Scottish
nation?' I said I could not speak to that point, but I thought he was
very well able to defend himself. He, however, did not, but has borne a
grudge to the _Edinburgh Review_ ever since, which he hates worse than
the _Quarterly_. I cannot say I do.[2]
NOTES to ESSAY VI
[1] The late Lord Thurlow used to say that Cobbett was the only writer
that deserved the name of a political reasoner.
[2] Mr. Cobbett speaks almost as well as he writes. The only time l
ever saw him he seemed to me a very pleasant man--easy of access,
affable, clear-headed, simple and mild in his manner, deliberate and
unruffled in his speech, though some of his expressions were not very
qualified. His figure is tall and portly. He has a good, sensible
face--rather full, with little grey eyes, a hard, square forehead, a
ruddy complexion, with hair grey or powdered; and had on a scarlet
broadcloth waistcoat with the flaps of the pockets hanging down, as was
the custom for gentlemen-farmers in the last century, or as we see it in
the pictures of Members of Parliament in the reign of George I. I
certainly did not think less favourably of him for seeing him.
ESSAY VII
ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA
There are people who have but one idea: at least, if they have more,
they keep it a secret, for they never talk but of one subject.
There is Major Cartwright: he has but one idea or subject of discourse,
Parliamentary Reform. Now Parliamentary Reform is (as far as I know) a
very good subject to talk about; but why should it be the only one? To
hear the worthy and gallant Major resume his favourite topic, is like
law-business, or a person who has a suit in Chancery going on. Nothing
can be attended to, nothing can be talked of but that. Now it is
getting on, now again it is standing still; at one time the Master has
promised to pass judgment by a certain day, at another he has put it off
again and called for more papers, and both are equally reasons for
speaking of it. Like the piece of packthread in the barrister's hands,
he turns and twists it all ways, and cannot proceed a step without it.
Some schoolboys cannot read but in their own book; and the man of one
idea cannot converse out of his own subject. Conversation it is not;
but a sort of recital of the preamble of a bill, or a collection of
grave arguments for a man's being of opinion with himself. It would be
well if there was anything of character, of eccentricity in all this;
but that is not the case. It is a political homily personified, a
walking common-place we have to encounter and listen to. It is just as
if a man was to insist on your hearing him go through the fifth chapter
of the Book of Judges every time you meet, or like the story of the
Cosmogony in the _Vicar of Wakefield._ It is a tine played on a
barrel-organ. It is a common vehicle of discourse into which they get
and are set down when they please, without any pain or trouble to
themselves. Neither is it professional pedantry or trading quackery: it
has no excuse. The man has no more to do with the question which he
saddles on all his hearers than you have. This is what makes the matter
hopeless. If a farmer talks to you about his pigs or his poultry, or a
physician about his patients, or a lawyer about his briefs, or a
merchant about stock, or an author about himself, you know how to
account for this, it is a common infirmity, you have a laugh at his
expense and there is no more to be said. But here is a man who goes out
of his way to be absurd, and is troublesome by a romantic effort of
generosity. You cannot say to him, 'All this may be interesting to you,
but I have no concern in it': you cannot put him off in that way. He
retorts the Latin adage upon you-_Nihil humani a me alienum puto._ He
has got possession of a subject which is of universal and paramount
interest (not 'a fee-grief, due to some single breast'), and on that
plea may hold you by the button as long as be chooses. His delight is
to harangue on what nowise regards himself: how then can you refuse to
listen to what as little amuses you? Time and tide wait for no man.
The business of the state admits of no delay. The question of Universal
Suffrage and Annual Parliaments stands first on the order of the
day--takes precedence in its own right of every other question. Any
other topic, grave or gay, is looked upon in the light of impertinence,
and sent _to Coventry._ Business is an interruption; pleasure a
digression from it. It is the question before every company where the
Major comes, which immediately resolves itself into a committee of the
whole upon it, is carried on by means of a perpetual virtual
adjournment, and it is presumed that no other is entertained while this
is pending--a determination which gives its persevering advocate a fair
prospect of expatiating on it to his dying day. As Cicero says of
study, it follows him into the country, it stays with him at home: it
sits with him at breakfast, and goes out with him to dinner. It is like
a part of his dress, of the costume of his person, without which he
would be at a loss what to do. If he meets you in the street, he
accosts you with it as a form of salutation: if you see him at his own
house, it is supposed you come upon that. If you happen to remark, 'It
is a fine day,' or 'The town is full,' it is considered as a temporary
compromise of the question; you are suspected of not going the whole
length of the principle. As Sancho, when reprimanded for mentioning his
homely favourite in the Duke's kitchen, defended himself by saying,
'There I thought of Dapple, and there I spoke of him,' so the true
stickler for Reform neglects no opportunity of introducing the subject
wherever he is. Place its veteran champion under the frozen north, and
he will celebrate sweet smiling Reform; place him under the mid-day
Afric suns, and he will talk of nothing but Reform--Reform so sweetly
smiling and so sweetly promising for the last forty years--
Dulce ridentem Lalagen,
Dulce loquentem!
A topic of this sort of which the person himself may be considered as
almost sole proprietor and patentee is an estate for life, free from all
encumbrance of wit, thought, or study, you live upon it as a settled
income; and others might as well think to eject you out of a capital
freehold house and estate as think to drive you out of it into the wide
world of common sense and argument. Every man's house is his castle;
and every man's common-place is his stronghold, from which he looks out
and smiles at the dust and heat of controversy, raised by a number of
frivolous and vexatious questions--'Rings the world with the vain stir!'
A cure for this and every other evil would be a Parliamentary Reform;
and so we return in a perpetual circle to the point from which we set
out. Is not this a species of sober madness more provoking than the
real? Has not the theoretical enthusiast his mind as much warped, as
much enslaved by one idea as the acknowledged lunatic, only that the
former has no lucid intervals? If you see a visionary of this class
going along the street, you can tell as well what he is thinking of and
will say next as the man that fancies himself a teapot or the Czar of
Muscovy. The one is as inaccessible to reason as the other: if the one
raves, the other dotes!
There are some who fancy the Corn Bill the root of all evil, and others
who trace all the miseries of life to the practice of muffling up
children in night-clothes when they sleep or travel. They will declaim
by the hour together on the first, and argue themselves black in the
face on the last. It is in vain that you give up the point. They
persist in the debate, and begin again--'But don't you see--?' These
sort of partial obliquities, as they are more entertaining and original,
are also by their nature intermittent. They hold a man but for a
season. He may have one a year or every two years; and though, while he
is in the heat of any new discovery, he will let you hear of nothing
else, he varies from himself, and is amusing undesignedly. He is not
like the chimes at midnight.
People of the character here spoken of, that is, who tease you to death
with some one idea, generally differ in their favourite notion from the
rest of the world; and indeed it is the love of distinction which is
mostly at the bottom of this peculiarity. Thus one person is remarkable
for living on a vegetable diet, and never fails to entertain you all
dinner-time with an invective against animal food. One of this
self-denying class, who adds to the primitive simplicity of this sort of
food the recommendation of having it in a raw state, lamenting the death
of a patient whom he had augured to be in a good way as a convert to his
system, at last accounted for his disappointment in a whisper--'But she
ate meat privately, depend upon it.' It is not pleasant, though it is
what one submits to willingly from some people, to be asked every time
you meet, whether you have quite left off drinking wine, and to be
complimented or condoled with on your looks according as you answer in
the negative or affirmative. Abernethy thinks his pill an infallible
cure for all disorders. A person once complaining to his physician that
he thought his mode of treatment had not answered, he assured him it was
the best in the world,--'and as a proof of it,' says he, 'I have had one
gentleman, a patient with your disorder, under the same regimen for the
last sixteen years!'--l have known persons whose minds were entirely
taken up at all times and on all occasions with such questions as the
Abolition of the Slave Trade, the Restoration of the Jews, or the
progress of Unitarianism. I myself at one period took a pretty strong
turn to inveighing against the doctrine of Divine Right, and am not yet
cured of my prejudice on that subject. How many projectors have gone
mad in good earnest from incessantly harping on one idea: the discovery
of the philosopher's stone, the finding out the longitude, or paying off
the national debt! The disorder at length comes to a fatal crisis; but
long before this, and while they were walking about and talking as
usual, the derangement of the fancy, the loss of all voluntary power to
control or alienate their ideas from the single subject that occupied
them, was gradually taking place, and overturning the fabric of the
understanding by wrenching it all on one side. Alderman Wood has, I
should suppose, talked of nothing but the Queen in all companies for the
last six months. Happy Alderman Wood! Some persons have got a
definition of the verb, others a system of short-hand, others a cure for
typhus fever, others a method for preventing the counterfeiting of
bank-notes, which they think the best possible, and indeed the only one.
Others insist there have been only three great men in the world,
leaving you to add a fourth. A man who has been in Germany will
sometimes talk of nothing but what is German: a Scotchman always leads
the discourse to his own country. Some descant on the Kantean
philosophy. There is a conceited fellow about town who talks always and
everywhere on this subject. He wears the Categories round his neck like
a pearl-chain: he plays off the names of the primary and transcendental
qualities like rings on his fingers. He talks of the Kantean system
while he dances; he talks of it while he dines; he talks of it to his
children, to his apprentices, to his customers. He called on me to
convince me of it, and said I was only prevented from becoming a
complete convert by one or two prejudices. He knows no more about it
than a pikestaff. Why then does he make so much ridiculous fuss about
it? It is not that he has got this one idea in his head, but that he
has got no other. A dunce may talk on the subject of the Kantean
philosophy with great impunity: if he opened his lips on any other he
might be found out. A French lady who had married an Englishman who
said little, excused him by saying, 'He is always thinking of Locke and
Newton.' This is one way of passing muster by following in the suite of
great names!--A friend of mine, whom I met one day in the street,
accosted me with more than usual vivacity, and said, 'Well, we're
selling, we're selling!' I thought he meant a house. 'No,' he said,
'haven't you seen the advertisement in the newspapers? I mean five and
twenty copies of the Essay.' This work, a comely, capacious quarto on
the most abstruse metaphysics, had occupied his sole thoughts for
several years, and he concluded that I must be thinking of what he was.
I believe, however, I may say I am nearly the only person that ever
read, certainly that ever pretended to understand it. It is an original
and most ingenious work, nearly as incomprehensible as it is original,
and as quaint as it is ingenious. If the author is taken up with the
ideas in his own head and no others, he has a right; for he has ideas
there that are to be met with nowhere else, and which occasionally would
not disgrace a Berkeley. A dextrous plagiarist might get himself an
immense reputation by putting them in a popular dress. Oh! how little
do they know, who have never done anything but repeat after others by
rote, the pangs, the labour, the yearnings and misgivings of mind it
costs to get at the germ of an original idea--to dig it out of the
hidden recesses of thought and nature, and bring it half-ashamed,
struggling, and deformed into the day--to give words and intelligible
symbols to that which was never imagined or expressed before! It is as
if the dumb should speak for the first time, as if things should stammer
out their own meaning through the imperfect organs of mere sense. I
wish that some of our fluent, plausible declaimers, who have such store
of words to cover the want of ideas, could lend their art to this
writer. If he, 'poor, unfledged' in this respect, 'who has scarce
winged from view o' th' nest,' could find a language for his ideas,
truth would find a language for some of her secrets. Mr. Fearn was
buried in the woods of Indostan. In his leisure from business and from
tiger-shooting, he took it into his head to look into his own mind. A
whim or two, an odd fancy, like a film before the eye, now and then
crossed it: it struck him as something curious, but the impression at
first disappeared like breath upon glass. He thought no more of it; yet
still the same conscious feelings returned, and what at first was chance
or instinct became a habit. Several notions had taken possession of his
brain relating to mental processes which he had never heard alluded to
in conversation, but not being well versed in such matters, he did not
know whether they were to be found in learned authors or not. He took a
journey to the capital of the Peninsula on purpose, bout Locke, Reid,
Stewart, and Berkeley, whom he consulted with eager curiosity when he
got home, but did not find what he looked for. He set to work himself,
and in a few weeks sketched out a rough draft of his thoughts and
observations on bamboo paper. The eagerness of his new pursuit,
together with the diseases of the climate, proved too much for his
constitution, and he was forced to return to this country. He put his
metaphysics, his bamboo manuscript, into the boat with him, and as he
floated down the Ganges, said to himself, 'If I live, this will live; if
I die, it will not be heard of.' What is fame to this feeling? The
babbling of an idiot! He brought the work home with him and twice had
it stereotyped. The first sketch he allowed was obscure, but the
improved copy he thought could not fail to strike. It did not succeed.
The world, as Goldsmith said of himself, made a point of taking no
notice of it. Ever since he has had nothing but disappointment and
vexation,--the greatest and most heart-breaking of all others--that of
not being able to make yourself understood. Mr. Fearn tells me there is
a sensible writer in the _Monthly Review_ who sees the thing in its
proper light, and says so. But I have heard of no other instance.
There are, notwithstanding, ideas in this work, neglected and
ill-treated as it has been, that lead to more curious and subtle
speculations on some of the most disputed and difficult points of the
philosophy of the human mind (such as _relation_, _abstraction_, etc.)
than have been thrown out in any work for the last sixty years, I mean
since Hume; for since his time there has been no metaphysician in this
country worth the name. Yet his _Treatise on Human Nature_, he tells
us, 'fell still-born from the press.' So it is that knowledge works its
way, and reputation lingers far behind it. But truth is better than
opinion, I maintain it; and as to the two stereotyped and unsold
editions of the Essay on Consciousness, I say, _Honi soit qui mal y
pense!'[1]--My Uncle Toby had one idea in his head, that of his
bowling-green, and another, that of the Widow Wadman. Oh, spare them
both! I will only add one more anecdote in illustration of this theory
of the mind's being occupied with one idea, which is most frequently of
a man's self. A celebrated lyrical writer happened to drop into a small
party where they had just got the novel of _Rob Roy,_ by the author of
_Waverley_. The motto in the title-page was taken from a poem of his.
This was a hint sufficient, a word to the wise. He instantly went to
the book-shelf in the next room, took down the volume of his own poems,
read the whole of that in question aloud with manifest complacency,
replaced it on the shelf, and walked away, taking no more notice of Rob
Roy than if there had been no such person, nor of the new novel than if
it had not been written by its renowned author. There was no
reciprocity in this. But the writer in question does not admit of any
merit second to his own.[2]
Mr. Owen is a man remarkable for one idea. It is that of himself and
the Lanark cotton-mills. He carries this idea backwards and forwards
with him from Glasgow to London, without allowing anything for
attrition, and expects to find it in the same state of purity and
perfection in the latter place as at the former. He acquires a
wonderful velocity and impenetrability in his undaunted transit.
Resistance to him is vain, while the whirling motion of the mail-coach
remains in his head.
Nor Alps nor Apennines can keep him out,
Nor fortified redoubt.
He even got possession, in the suddenness of his onset, of the
steam-engine of the _Times_ newspaper, and struck off ten thousand
woodcuts of the Projected Villages, which afforded an ocular
demonstration to all who saw them of the practicability of Mr. Owen's
whole scheme. He comes into a room with one of these documents in his
hand, with the air of a schoolmaster and a quack doctor mixed, asks very
kindly how you do, and on hearing you are still in an indifferent state
of health owing to bad digestion, instantly turns round and observes
that 'All that will be remedied in his plan; that indeed he thinks too
much attention has been paid to the mind, and not enough to the body;
that in his system, which he has now perfected and which will shortly be
generally adopted, he has provided effectually for both; that he has
been long of opinion that the mind depends altogether on the physical
organisation, and where the latter is neglected or disordered the former
must languish and want its due vigour; that exercise is therefore a part
of his system, with full liberty to develop every faculty of mind and
body; that two Objections had been made to his _New View of Society_,
viz. its want of relaxation from labour, and its want of variety; but
the first of these, the too great restraint, he trusted he had already
answered, for where the powers of mind and body were freely exercised
and brought out, surely liberty must be allowed to exist in the highest
degree; and as to the second, the monotony which would be produced by a
regular and general plan of co-operation, he conceived he had proved in
his _New View_ and _Addresses to the Higher Classes_, that the
co-operation he had recommended was necessarily conducive to the most
extensive improvement of the ideas and faculties, and where this was the
case there must be the greatest possible variety instead of a want of
it.' And having said this, this expert and sweeping orator takes up his
hat and walks downstairs after reading his lecture of truisms like a
playbill or an apothecary's advertisement; and should you stop him at
the door to say, by way of putting in a word in common, that Mr. Southey
seems somewhat favourable to his plan in his late Letter to Mr. William
Smith, he looks at you with a smile of pity at the futility of all
opposition and the idleness of all encouragement. People who thus swell
out some vapid scheme of their own into undue importance seem to me to
labour under water in the head--to exhibit a huge hydrocephalus! They
may be very worthy people for all that, but they are bad companions and
very indifferent reasoners. Tom Moore says of some one somewhere, 'that
he puts his hand in his breeches pocket like a crocodile.' The phrase
is hieroglyphical; but Mr. Owen and others might be said to put their
foot in the question of social improvement and reform much in the same
unaccountable manner.
I hate to be surfeited with anything, however sweet. I do not want to
be always tied to the same question, as if there were no other in the
world. I like a mind more Catholic.
I love to talk with mariners,
That come from a far countree.
I am not for 'a collusion' but 'an exchange' of ideas. It is well to
hear what other people have to say on a number of subjects. I do not
wish to be always respiring the same confined atmosphere, but to vary
the scene, and get a little relief and fresh air out of doors. Do all
we can to shake it off, there is always enough pedantry, egotism, and
self-conceit left lurking behind; we need not seal ourselves up
hermetically in these precious qualities, so as to think of nothing but
our own wonderful discoveries, and hear nothing but the sound of our own
voice. Scholars, like princes, may learn something by being incognito.
Yet we see those who cannot go into a bookseller's shop, or bear to be
five minutes in a stage-coach, without letting you know who they are.
They carry their reputation about with them as the snail does its shell,
and sit under its canopy, like the lady in the lobster. I cannot
understand this at all. What is the use of a man's always revolving
round his own little circle? He must, one should think, be tired of it
himself, as well as tire other people. A well-known writer says with
much boldness, both in the thought and expression, that 'a Lord is
imprisoned in the Bastille of a name, and cannot enlarge himself into
man'; and I have known men of genius in the same predicament. Why must
a man be for ever mouthing out his own poetry, comparing himself with
Milton, passage by passage, and weighing every line in a balance of
posthumous fame which he holds in his own hands? It argues a want of
imagination as well as common sense. Has he no ideas but what he has
put into verse; or none in common with his hearers? Why should he think
it the only scholar-like thing, the only 'virtue extant,' to see the
merit of his writings, and that 'men were brutes without them'? Why
should he bear a grudge to all art, to all beauty, to all wisdom, that
does not spring from his own brain? Or why should he fondly imagine
that there is but one fine thing in the world, namely, poetry, and that
he is the only poet in it? It will never do. Poetry is a very fine
thing; but there are other things besides it. Everything must have its
turn. Does a wise man think to enlarge his comprehension by turning his
eyes only on himself, or hope to conciliate the admiration of others by
scouting, proscribing, and loathing all that they delight in? He must
either have a disproportionate idea of himself, or be ignorant of the
world in which he lives. It is quite enough to have one class of people
born to think the universe made for them!--It seems also to argue a want
of repose, of confidence, and firm faith in a man's real pretensions, to
be always dragging them forward into the foreground, as if the proverb
held here--_Out of sight out of mind._ Does he, for instance, conceive
that no one would ever think of his poetry unless he forced it upon them
by repeating it himself? Does he believe all competition, all allowance
of another's merit, fatal to him? Must he, like Moody in the _Country
Girl_, lock up the faculties of his admirers in ignorance of all other
fine things, painting, music, the antique, lest they should play truant
to him? Methinks such a proceeding implies no good opinion of his own
genius or their taste: it is deficient in dignity and in decorum.
Surely if any one is convinced of the reality of an acquisition, he can
bear not to have it spoken of every minute. If he knows he has an
undoubted superiority in any respect, he will not be uneasy because
every one he meets is not in the secret, nor staggered by the report of
rival excellence. One of the first mathematicians and classical
scholars of the day was mentioning it as a compliment to himself that a
cousin of his, a girl from school, had said to him, 'You know [Manning]
is a very plain good sort of a young man, but he is not anything at all
out of the common.' Leigh Hunt once said to me, 'I wonder I never heard
you speak upon this subject before, which you seem to have studied a
good deal.' I answered, 'Why, we were not reduced to that, that I know
of!'--
There are persons who, without being chargeable with the vice here
spoken of, yet 'stand accountant for as great a sin'; though not dull
and monotonous, they are vivacious mannerists in their conversation, and
excessive egotists. Though they run over a thousand subjects in mere
gaiety of heart, their delight still flows from one idea, namely,
themselves. Open the book in what page you will, there is a
frontispiece of themselves staring you in the face. They are a sort of
Jacks o' the Green, with a sprig of laurel, a little tinsel, and a
little smut, but still playing antics and keeping in incessant motion,
to attract attention and extort your pittance of approbation. Whether
they talk of the town or the country, poetry or politics, it comes to
much the same thing. If they talk to you of the town, its diversions,
'its palaces, its ladies, and its streets,' they are the delight, the
grace, and ornament of it. If they are describing the charms of the
country, they give no account of any individual spot or object or source
of pleasure but the circumstance of their being there. 'With them
conversing, we forget all place, all seasons, and their change.' They
perhaps pluck a leaf or a flower, patronise it, and hand it you to
admire, but select no one feature of beauty or grandeur to dispute the
palm of perfection with their own persons. Their rural descriptions are
mere landscape backgrounds with their own portraits in an engaging
attitude in front. They are not observing or enjoying the scene, but
doing the honours as masters of the ceremonies to nature, and arbiters
of elegance to all humanity. If they tell a love-tale of enamoured
princesses, it is plain they fancy themselves the hero of the piece. If
they discuss poetry, their encomiums still turn on something genial
and unsophisticated, meaning their own style. If they enter into
politics, it is understood that a hint from them to the potentates of
Europe is sufficient. In short, as a lover (talk of what you will)
brings in his mistress at every turn, so these persons contrive to
divert your attention to the same darling object--they are, in fact, in
love with themselves, and, like lovers, should be left to keep their own
company.
NOTES to ESSAY VII
[1] Quarto poetry, as well as quarto metaphysics, does not always sell.
Going one day into a shop in Paternoster Row to see for some lines in
Mr. Wordsworth's _Excursion_ to interlard some prose with, I applied to
the constituted authorities, and asked if I could look at a copy of the
_Excursion?_ The answer was, 'Into which country, sir?'
[2] These fantastic poets are like a foolish ringer at Plymouth that
Northcote tells the story of. He was proud of his ringing, and the boys
who made a jest of his foible used to get him in the belfry and ask him,
'Well now, John, how many good ringers are there in Plymouth?' 'Two,'
he would say, without any hesitation. 'Ay, indeed! and who are they?'
'Why, first, there's myself, that's one; and-- and--' 'Well, and who's
the other?' 'Why, there's-- there's-- Ecod, I can't think of any other
but myself.' _Talk we of one Master Launcelot._ The story is of
ringers: it will do for any vain, shallow, self-satisfied egotist of
them all.
ESSAY VIII
ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED
For the more languages a man can speak,
His talent has but sprung the greater leak:
And, for the industry he has spent upon't,
Must full as much some other way discount.
The Hebrew, Chaldee, and the Syriac
Do, like their letters, set men's reason back,
And turn their wits that strive to understand It
(Like those that write the characters) left-handed.
Yet he that is but able to express
No sense at all in several languages
Will pass for learneder than he that's known
To speak the strongest reason in his own. --BUTLER.
The description of persons who have the fewest ideas of all others are
mere authors and readers. It is better to be able neither to read nor
write than to be able to do nothing else. A lounger who is ordinarily
seen with a book in his hand is (we may be almost sure) equally without
the power or inclination to attend either to what passes around him or
in his own mind. Such a one may be said to carry his understanding
about with him in his pocket, or to leave it at home on his library
shelves. He is afraid of venturing on any train of reasoning, or of
striking out any observation that is not mechanically suggested to him
by parsing his eyes over certain legible characters; shrinks from the
fatigue of thought, which, for want of practice, becomes insupportable
to him; and sits down contented with an endless, wearisome succession of
words and half-formed images, which fill the void of the mind, and
continually efface one another. Learning is, in too many cases, but a
foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less
often made use of as 'spectacles' to look at nature with, than as blinds
to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and
indolent dispositions. The book-worm wraps himself up in his web of
verbal generalities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things
reflected from the minds of others. Nature _puts him out._ The
impressions of real objects, stripped of the disguises of words and
voluminous roundabout descriptions, are blows that stagger him; their
variety distracts, their rapidity exhausts him; and he turns from the
bustle, the noise, and glare, and whirling motion of the world about him
(which he has not an eye to follow in its fantastic changes, nor an
understanding to reduce to fixed principles), to the quiet monotony of
the dead languages, and the less startling and more intelligible
combinations of the letters of the alphabet. It is well, it is
perfectly well. 'Leave me to my repose,' is the motto of the sleeping
and the dead. You might as well ask the paralytic to leap from his
chair and throw away his crutch, or, without a miracle, to 'take up his
bed and walk,' as expect the learned reader to throw down his book and
think for himself. He clings to it for his intellectual support; and
his dread of being left to himself is like the horror of a vacuum. He
can only breathe a learned atmosphere, as other men breathe common air.
He is a borrower of sense. He has no ideas of his own, and must live on
those of other people. The habit of supplying our ideas from foreign
sources 'enfeebles all internal strength of thought,' as a course of
dram-drinking destroys the tone of the stomach. The faculties of the
mind, when not exerted, or when cramped by custom and authority, become
listless, torpid, and unfit for the purposes of thought or action. Can
we wonder at the languor and lassitude which is thus produced by a life
of learned sloth and ignorance; by poring over lines and syllables that
excite little more idea or interest than if they were the characters of
an unknown tongue, till the eye closes on vacancy, and the book drops
from the feeble hand! I would rather be a wood-cutter, or the meanest
hind, that all day 'sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and at night sleeps in
Elysium,' than wear out my life so, 'twixt dreaming and awake.' The
learned author differs from the learned student in this, that the one
transcribes what the other reads. The learned are mere literary
drudges. If you set them upon original composition, their heads turn,
they don't know where they are. The indefatigable readers of books are
like the everlasting copiers of pictures, who, when they attempt to do
anything of their own, find they want an eye quick enough, a hand steady
enough, and colours bright enough, to trace the living forms of nature.
Any one who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical
education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having
had a very narrow escape. It is an old remark, that boys who shine at
school do not make the greatest figure when they grow up and come out
into the world. The things, in fact, which a boy is set to learn at
school, and on which his success depends, are things which do not
require the exercise either of the highest or the most useful faculties
of the mind. Memory (and that of the lowest kind) is the chief faculty
called into play in conning over and repeating lessons by rote in
grammar, in languages, in geography, arithmetic, etc., so that he who
has the most of this technical memory, with the least turn for other
things, which have a stronger and more natural claim upon his childish
attention, will make the most forward school-boy. The jargon containing
the definitions of the parts of speech, the rules for casting up an
account, or the inflections of a Greek verb, can have no attraction to
the tyro of ten years old, except as they are imposed as a task upon him
by others, or from his feeling the want of sufficient relish of
amusement in other things. A lad with a sickly constitution and no very
active mind, who can just retain what is pointed out to him, and has
neither sagacity to distinguish nor spirit to enjoy for himself, will
generally be at the head of his form. An idler at school, on the other
hand, is one who has high health and spirits, who has the free use of
his limbs, with all his wits about him, who feels the circulation of his
blood and the motion of his heart, who is ready to laugh and cry in a
breath, and who had rather chase a ball or a butterfly, feel the open
air in his face, look at the fields or the sky, follow a winding path,
or enter with eagerness into all the little conflicts and interests of
his acquaintances and friends, than doze over a musty spelling-book,
repeat barbarous distichs after his master, sit so many hours pinioned
to a writing-desk, and receive his reward for the loss of time and
pleasure in paltry prize-medals at Christmas and Midsummer. There is
indeed a degree of stupidity which prevents children from learning the
usual lessons, or ever arriving at these puny academic honours. But
what passes for stupidity is much oftener a want of interest, of a
sufficient motive to fix the attention and force a reluctant application
to the dry and unmeaning pursuits of school-learning. The best
capacities are as much above this drudgery as the dullest are beneath
it. Our men of the greatest genius have not been most distinguished for
their acquirements at school or at the university.
Th' enthusiast Fancy was a truant ever.
Gray and Collins were among the instances of this wayward disposition.
Such persons do not think so highly of the advantages, nor can they
submit their imaginations so servilely to the trammels of strict
scholastic discipline. There is a certain kind and degree of intellect
in which words take root, but into which things have not power to
penetrate. A mediocrity of talent, with a certain slenderness of moral
constitution, is the soil that produces the most brilliant specimens of
successful prize-essayists and Greek epigrammatists. It should not be
forgotten that the least respectable character among modern politicians
was the cleverest boy at Eton.
Learning is the knowledge of that which is not generally known to
others, and which we can only derive at second-hand from books or other
artificial sources. The knowledge of that which is before us, or about
us, which appeals to our experience, passions, and pursuits, to the
bosoms and businesses of men, is not learning. Learning is the
knowledge of that which none but the learned know. He is the most
learned man who knows the most of what is farthest removed from common
life and actual observation, that is of the least practical utility, and
least liable to be brought to the test of experience, and that, having
been handed down through the greatest number of intermediate stages, is
the most full of uncertainty, difficulties, and contradictions. It is
seeing with the eyes of others, hearing with their ears, and pinning our
faith on their understandings. The learned man prides himself in the
knowledge of names and dates, not of men or things. He thinks and cares
nothing about his next-door neighbours, but he is deeply read in the
tribes and castes of the Hindoos and Calmue Tartars. He can hardly find
his way into the next street, though he is acquainted with the exact
dimensions of Constantinople and Pekin. He does not know whether his
oldest acquaintance is a knave or a fool, but he can pronounce a pompous
lecture on all the principal characters in history. He cannot tell
whether an object is black or white, round or square, and yet he is a
professed master of the laws of optics and the rules of perspective. He
knows as much of what he talks about as a blind man does of colours. He
cannot give a satisfactory answer to the plainest question, nor is he
ever in the right in any one of his opinions upon any one matter of fact
that really comes before him, and yet he gives himself out for an
infallible judge on all these points, of which it is impossible that he
or any other person living should know anything but by conjecture. He
is expert in all the dead and in most of the living languages; but he
can neither speak his own fluently, nor write it correctly. A person of
this class, the second Greek scholar of his day, undertook to point out
several solecisms in Milton's Latin style; and in his own performance
there is hardly a sentence of common English. Such was Dr. ----. Such
is Dr. ----. Such was not Porson. He was an exception that confirmed
the general rule, a man that, by uniting talents and knowledge with
learning, made the distinction between them more striking and palpable.
A mere scholar, who knows nothing but books, must be ignorant even of
them. 'Books do not teach the use of books.' How should he know
anything of a work who knows nothing of the subject of it? The learned
pedant is conversant with books only as they are made of other books,
and those again of others, without end. He parrots those who have
parroted others. He can translate the same word into ten different
languages, but he knows nothing of the _thing_ which it means in any one
of them. He stuffs his head with authorities built on authorities, with
quotations quoted from quotations, while he locks up his senses, his
understanding, and his heart. He is unacquainted with the maxims and
manners of the world; he is to seek in the characters of individuals.
He sees no beauty in the face of nature or of art. To him 'the mighty
world of eye and ear' is hid; and 'knowledge,' except at one entrance,
'quite shut out.' His pride takes part with his ignorance; and his
self-importance rises with the number of things of which be does not
know the value, and which he therefore despises as unworthy of his
notice. He knows nothing of pictures,--'Of the colouring of Titian, the
grace of Raphael, the purity of Domenichino, the _corregioscity_ of
Correggio, the learning of Poussin, the airs of Guido, the taste of the
Caracci, or the grand contour of Michael Angelo,'--of all those glories
of the Italian and miracles of the Flemish school, which have filled the
eyes of mankind with delight, and to the study and imitation of which
thousands have in vain devoted their lives. These are to him as if they
had never been, a mere dead letter, a by-word; and no wonder, for he
neither sees nor understands their prototypes in nature. A print of
Rubens' Watering-place or Claude's Enchanted Castle may be hanging on
the walls of his room for months without his once perceiving them; and
if you point them out to him he will turn away from them. The language
of nature, or of art (which is another nature), is one that he does not
understand. He repeats indeed the names of Apelles and Phidias, because
they are to be found in classic authors, and boasts of their works as
prodigies, because they no longer exist; or when he sees the finest
remains of Grecian art actually before him in the Elgin Marbles, takes
no other interest in them than as they lead to a learned dispute, and
(which is the same thing) a quarrel about the meaning of a Greek
particle. He is equally ignorant of music; he 'knows no touch of it,'
from the strains of the all-accomplished Mozart to the shepherd's pipe
upon the mountain. His ears are nailed to his books; and deadened with
the sound of the Greek and Latin tongues, and the din and smithery of
school-learning. Does he know anything more of poetry? He knows the
number of feet in a verse, and of acts in a play; but of the soul or
spirit he knows nothing. He can turn a Greek ode into English, or a
Latin epigram into Greek verse; but whether either is worth the trouble
he leaves to the critics. Does he understand 'the act and practique
part of life' better than 'the theorique'? No. He knows no liberal or
mechanic art, no trade or occupation, no game of skill or chance.
Learning 'has no skill in surgery,' in agriculture, in building, in
working in wood or in iron; it cannot make any instrument of labour, or
use it when made; it cannot handle the plough or the spade, or the
chisel or the hammer; it knows nothing of hunting or hawking, fishing or
shooting, of horses or dogs, of fencing or dancing, or cudgel-playing,
or bowls, or cards, or tennis, or anything else. The learned professor
of all arts and sciences cannot reduce any one of them to practice,
though he may contribute an account of them to an Encyclopedia. He has
not the use of his hands nor of his feet; he can neither run, nor walk,
nor swim; and he considers all those who actually understand and can
exercise any of these arts of body or mind as vulgar and mechanical
men,--though to know almost any one of them in perfection requires long
time and practice, with powers originally fitted, and a turn of mind
particularly devoted to them. It does not require more than this to
enable the learned candidate to arrive, by painful study, at a doctor's
degree and a fellowship, and to eat, drink, and sleep the rest of his
life!
The thing is plain. All that men really understand is confined to a
very small compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they
have an opportunity to know, and motives to study or practise. The rest
is affectation and imposture. The common people have the use of their
limbs; for they live by their labour or skill. They understand their
own business and the characters of those they have to deal with; for it
is necessary that they should. They have eloquence to express their
passions, and wit at will to express their contempt and provoke
laughter. Their natural use of speech is not hung up in monumental
mockery, in an obsolete language; nor is their sense of what is
ludicrous, or readiness at finding out allusions to express it, buried
in collections of _Anas_. You will hear more good things on the outside
of a stage-coach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a
twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that
famous university; and more _home_ truths are to be learnt from
listening to a noisy debate in an alehouse than from attending a formal
one in the House of Commons. An elderly country gentlewoman will often
know more of character, and be able to illustrate it by more amusing
anecdotes taken from the history of what has been said, done, and
gossiped in a country town for the last fifty years, than the best
bluestocking of the age will be able to glean from that sort of learning
which consists in an acquaintance with all the novels and satirical
poems published in the same period. People in towns, indeed, are
woefully deficient in a knowledge of character, which they see only _in
the bust_, not as a whole-length. People in the country not only know
all that has happened to a man, but trace his virtues or vices, as they
do his features, in their descent through several generations, and solve
some contradiction in his behaviour by a cross in the breed half a
century ago. The learned know nothing of the matter, either in town or
country. Above all, the mass of society have common sense, which the
learned in all ages want. The vulgar are in the right when they judge
for themselves; they are wrong when they trust to their blind guides.
The celebrated nonconformist divine, Baxter, was almost stoned to death
by the good women of Kidderminster, for asserting from the pulpit that
'hell was paved with infants' skulls'; but, by the force of argument,
and of learned quotations from the Fathers, the reverend preacher at
length prevailed over the scruples of his congregation, and over reason
and humanity.
Such is the use which has been made of human learning. The labourers in
this vineyard seem as if it was their object to confound all common
sense, and the distinctions of good and evil, by means of traditional
maxims and preconceived notions taken upon trust, and increasing in
absurdity with increase of age. They pile hypothesis on hypothesis,
mountain high, till it is impossible to come at the plain truth on any
question. They see things, not as they are, but as they find them in
books, and 'wink and shut their apprehensions up,' in order that they
may discover nothing to interfere with their prejudices or convince them
of their absurdity. It might be supposed that the height of human
wisdom consisted in maintaining contradictions and rendering nonsense
sacred. There is no dogma, however fierce or foolish, to which these
persons have not set their seals, and tried to impose on the
understandings of their followers as the will of Heaven, clothed with
all the terrors and sanctions of religion. How little has the human
understanding been directed to find out the true and useful! How much
ingenuity has been thrown away in the defence of creeds and systems!
How much time and talents have been wasted in theological controversy,
in law, in politics, in verbal criticism, in judicial astrology, and in
finding out the art of making gold! What actual benefit do we reap from
the writings of a Laud or a Whitgift, or of Bishop Bull or Bishop
Waterland, or Prideaux' Connections, or Beausobre, or Calmet, or St.
Augustine, or Puffendord, or Vattel, or from the more literal but
equally learned and unprofitable labours of Scaliger, Cardan, and
Scioppius? How many grains of sense are there in their thousand folio
or quarto volumes? What would the world lose if they were committed to
the flames to-morrow? Or are they not already 'gone to the vault of all
the Capulets'? Yet all these were oracles in their time, and would have
scoffed at you or me, at common sense and human nature, for differing
with them. It is our turn to laugh now.
To conclude this subject. The most sensible people to be met with in
society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they
see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things
ought to be. Women have often more of what is called _good sense_ than
men. They have fewer pretensions; are less implicated in theories; and
judge of objects more from their immediate and involuntary impression on
the mind, and, therefore, more truly and naturally. They cannot reason
wrong; for they do not reason at all. They do not think or speak by
rule; and they have in general more eloquence and wit, as well as sense,
on that account. By their wit, sense, and eloquence together, they
generally contrive to govern their husbands. Their style, when they
write to their friends (not for the booksellers), is better than that of
most authors.--Uneducated people have most exuberance of invention and
the greatest freedom from prejudice. Shakespear's was evidently an
uneducated mind, both in the freshness of his imagination and in the
variety of his views; as Milton's was scholastic, in the texture both of
his thoughts and feelings. Shakespear had not been accustomed to write
themes at school in favour of virtue or against vice. To this we owe
the unaffected but healthy tone of his dramatic morality. If we wish to
know the force of human genius we should read Shakespear. If we wish to
see the insignificance of human learning we may study his commentators.
NOTES to ESSAY VIII
No notes for this essay.
ESSAY IX
THE INDIAN JUGGLERS
Coming forward and seating himself on the ground in his white dress and
tightened turban, the chief of the Indian Jugglers begins with tossing
up two brass balls, which is what any of us could do, and concludes with
keeping up four at the same time, which is what none of us could do to
save our lives, nor if we were to take our whole lives to do it in. Is
it then a trifling power we see at work, or is it not something next to
miraculous? It is the utmost stretch of human ingenuity, which nothing
but the bending the faculties of body and mind to it from the tenderest
infancy with incessant, ever anxious application up to manhood can
accomplish or make even a slight approach to. Man, thou art a wonderful
animal, and thy ways past finding out! Thou canst do strange things,
but thou turnest them to little account!--To conceive of this effort of
extraordinary dexterity distracts the imagination and makes admiration
breathless. Yet it costs nothing to the performer, any more than if it
were a mere mechanical deception with which he had nothing to do but to
watch and laugh at the astonishment of the spectators. A single error
of a hairsbreadth, of the smallest conceivable portion of time, would be
fatal: the precision of the movements must be like a mathematical truth,
their rapidity is like lightning. To catch four balls in succession in
less than a second of time, and deliver them back so as to return with
seeming consciousness to the hand again; to make them revolve round him
at certain intervals like the planets in their spheres; to make them
chase one another like sparkles of fire, or shoot up like flowers or
meteors; to throw them behind his back and twine them round his neck
like ribbons or like serpents; to do what appears an impossibility, and
to do if with all the ease, the grace, the carelessness imaginable; to
laugh at, to play with the glittering mockeries; to follow them with his
eye as if he could fascinate them with its lambent fire, or as if he had
only to see that they kept time with the music on the stage,--there is
something in all this which he who does not admire may be quite sure he
never really admired anything in the whole course of his life. It is
skill surmounting difficulty, and beauty triumphing over skill. It
seems as if the difficulty once mastered naturally resolved itself into
ease and grace, and as if to be overcome at all, it must be overcome
without an effort. The smallest awkwardness or want of pliancy or
self-possession would stop the whole process. It is the work of
witchcraft, and yet sport for children. Some of the other feats are
quite as curious and wonderful, such as the balancing the artificial
tree and shooting a bird from each branch through a quill; though none
of them have the elegance or facility of the keeping up of the brass
balls. You are in pain for the result, and glad when the experiment is
over; they are not accompanied with the same unmixed, unchecked delight
as the former; and I would not give much to be merely astonished without
being pleased at the game time. As to the swallowing of the sword, the
police ought to interfere to prevent it. When I saw the Indian Juggler
do the same things before, his feet were bare, and he had large rings on
the toes, which kept turning round all the time of the performance, as
if they moved of themselves.--The hearing a speech in Parliament drawled
or stammered out by the Honourable Member or the Noble Lord; the ringing
the changes on their common-places, which any one could repeat after
them as well as they, stirs me not a jot, shakes not my good opinion of
myself; but the seeing the Indian Jugglers does. It makes me ashamed of
myself. I ask what there is that I can do as well as this? Nothing.
What have I been doing all my life? Have I been idle, or have I nothing
to show for all my labour and pains? Or have I passed my time in
pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill
and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts,
and looking for causes in the dark and not finding them? Is there no
one thing in which I can challenge competition, that I can bring as an
instance of exact perfection in which others cannot find a flaw? The
utmost I can pretend to is to write a description of what this fellow
can do. I can write a book: so can many others who have not even
learned to spell. What abortions are these Essays! What errors, what
ill-pieced transitions, what crooked reasons, what lame conclusions!
How little is made out, and that little how ill! Yet they are the best
I can do. I endeavour to recollect all I have ever observed or thought
upon a subject, and to express it as nearly as I can. Instead of
writing on four subjects at a time, it is as much as I can manage to
keep the thread of one discourse clear and unentangled. I have also
time on my hands to correct my opinions, and polish my periods; but the
one I cannot, and the other I will not do. I am fond of arguing: yet
with a good deal of pains and practice it is often as much as I can do
to beat my man; though he may be an indifferent hand. A common fencer
would disarm his adversary in the twinkling of an eye, unless he were a
professor like himself. A stroke of wit will sometimes produce this
effect, but there is no such power or superiority in sense or reasoning.
There is no complete mastery of execution to be shown there; and you
hardly know the professor from the impudent pretender or the mere
clown.[1]
I have always had this feeling of the inefficacy and slow progress of
intellectual compared to mechanical excellence, and it has always made
me somewhat dissatisfied. It is a great many years since I saw Richer,
the famous rope-dancer, perform at Sadler's Wells. He was matchless in
his art, and added to his extraordinary skill exquisite ease, and
unaffected, natural grace. I was at that time employed in copying a
half-length picture of Sir Joshua Reynolds's; and it put me out of
conceit with it. How ill this part was made out in the drawing! How
heavy, how slovenly this other was painted! I could not help saying to
myself, 'If the rope-dancer had performed his task in this manner,
leaving so many gaps and botches in his work, he would have broken his
neck long ago; I should never have seen that vigorous elasticity of
nerve and precision of movement!'--Is it, then, so easy an undertaking
(comparatively) to dance on a tight-rope? Let any one who thinks so get
up and try. There is the thing. It is that which at first we cannot do
at all which in the end is done to such perfection. To account for this
in some degree, I might observe that mechanical dexterity is confined to
doing some one particular thing, which you can repeat as often as you
please, in which you know whether you succeed or fail, and where the
point of perfection consists in succeeding in a given undertaking.--In
mechanical efforts you improve by perpetual practice, and you do so
infallibly, because the object to be attained is not a matter of taste
or fancy or opinion, but of actual experiment, in which you must either
do the thing or not do it. If a man is put to aim at a mark with a bow
and arrow, he must hit it or miss it, that's certain. He cannot deceive
himself, and go on shooting wide or falling short, and still fancy that
he is making progress. No distinction between right and wrong, between
true and false, is here palpable; and he must either correct his aim or
persevere in his error with his eyes open, for which there is neither
excuse nor temptation. If a man is learning to dance on a rope, if he
does not mind what he is about he will break his neck. After that it
will be in vain for him to argue that he did not make a false step. His
situation is not like that of Goldsmith's pedagogue:-
In argument they own'd his wondrous skill,
And e'en though vanquish'd, he could argue still.
Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace,
defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no
opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no
being off your guard (or you must take the consequences)--neither is
there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice. If the Indian
Juggler were to play tricks in throwing up the three case-knives, which
keep their positions like the leaves of a crocus in the air, he would
cut his fingers. I can make a very bad antithesis without cutting my
fingers. The tact of style is more ambiguous than that of double-edged
instruments. If the Juggler were told that by flinging himself under
the wheels of the Juggernaut, when the idol issues forth on a gaudy day,
he would immediately be transported into Paradise, he might believe it,
and nobody could disprove it. So the Brahmins may say what they please
on that subject, may build up dogmas and mysteries without end, and not
be detected; but their ingenious countryman cannot persuade the
frequenters of the Olympic Theatre that he performs a number of
astonishing feats without actually giving proofs of what he says.--There
is, then, in this sort of manual dexterity, first a gradual aptitude
acquired to a given exertion of muscular power, from constant
repetition, and in the next place, an exact knowledge how much is still
wanting and necessary to be supplied. The obvious test is to increase
the effort or nicety of the operation, and still to find it come true.
The muscles ply instinctively to the dictates of habit. Certain
movements and impressions of the hand and eye, having been repeated
together an infinite number of times, are unconsciously but unavoidable
cemented into closer and closer union; the limbs require little more
than to be put in motion for them to follow a regular track with ease
and certainty; so that the mere intention of the will acts
mathematically like touching the spring of a machine, and you come with
Locksley in _Ivanhoe_, in shooting at a mark, 'to allow for the wind.'
Further, what is meant by perfection in mechanical exercises is the
performing certain feats to a uniform nicety, that is, in fact,
undertaking no more than you can perform. You task yourself, the limit
you fix is optional, and no more than human industry and skill can
attain to; but you have no abstract, independent standard of difficulty
or excellence (other than the extent of your own powers). Thus he who
can keep up four brass balls does this _to perfection_; but he cannot
keep up five at the same instant, and would fail every time he attempted
it. That is, the mechanical performer undertakes to emulate himself,
not to equal another.[2] But the artist undertakes to imitate another,
or to do what Nature has done, and this it appears is more difficult,
viz. to copy what she has set before us in the face of nature or 'human
face divine,' entire and without a blemish, than to keep up four brass
balls at the same instant, for the one is done by the power of human
skill and industry, and the other never was nor will be. Upon the
whole, therefore, I have more respect for Reynolds than I have for
Richer; for, happen how it will, there have been more people in the
world who could dance on a rope like the one than who could paint like
Sir Joshua. The latter was but a bungler in his profession to the
other, it is true; but then be had a harder taskmaster to obey, whose
will was more wayward and obscure, and whose instructions it was more
difficult to practise. You can put a child apprentice to a tumbler or
rope-dancer with a comfortable prospect of success, if they are but
sound of wind and limb; but you cannot do the same thing in painting.
The odds are a million to one. You may make indeed as many Haydons and
H----s as you put into that sort of machine, but not one Reynolds
amongst them all, with his grace, his grandeur, his blandness of gusto,
'in tones and gestures hit,' unless you could make the man over again.
To snatch this grace beyond the reach of art is then the height of
art--where fine art begins, and where mechanical skill ends. The soft
suffusion of the soul, the speechless breathing eloquence, the looks
'commercing with the skies,' the ever-shifting forms of an eternal
principle, that which is seen but for a moment, but dwells in the heart
always, and is only seized as it passes by strong and secret sympathy,
must be taught by nature and genius, not by rules or study. It is
suggested by feeling, not by laborious microscopic inspection; in
seeking for it without, we lose the harmonious clue to it within; and in
aiming to grasp the substance, we let the very spirit of art evaporate.
In a word, the objects of fine art are not the objects of sight, but as
these last are the objects of taste and imagination, that is, as they
appeal to the sense of beauty, of pleasure, and of power in the human
breast, and are explained by that finer sense, and revealed in their
inner structure to the eye in return. Nature is also a language.
Objects, like words, have a meaning; and the true artist is the
interpreter of this language, which he can only do by knowing its
application to a thousand other objects in a thousand other situations.
Thus the eye is too blind a guide of itself to distinguish between the
warm or cold tone of a deep-blue sky; but another sense acts as a
monitor to it and does not err. The colour of the leaves in autumn
would be nothing without the feeling that accompanies it; but it is that
feeling that stamps them on the canvas, faded, seared, blighted,
shrinking from the winter's flaw, and makes the sight as true as touch--
And visions, as poetic eyes avow,
Cling to each leaf and hang on every bough.
The more ethereal, evanescent, more refined and sublime part of art is
the seeing nature through the medium of sentiment and passion, as each
object is a symbol of the affections and a link in the chain of our
endless being. But the unravelling this mysterious web of thought and
feeling is alone in the Muse's gift, namely, in the power of that
trembling sensibility which is awake to every change and every
modification of its ever-varying impressions, that
Thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line.
This power is indifferently called genius, imagination, feeling, taste;
but the manner in which it acts upon the mind can neither be defined by
abstract rules, as is the case in science, nor verified by continual,
unvarying experiments, as is the case in mechanical performances. The
mechanical excellence of the Dutch painters in colouring and handling is
that which comes the nearest in fine art to the perfection of certain
manual exhibitions of skill. The truth of the effect and the facility
with which it is produced are equally admirable. Up to a certain point
everything is faultless. The hand and eye have done their part. There
is only a want of taste and genius. It is after we enter upon that
enchanted ground that the human mind begins to droop and flag as in a
strange road, or in a thick mist, benighted and making little way with
many attempts and many failures, and that the best of us only escape
with half a triumph. The undefined and the imaginary are the regions
that we must pass like Satan, difficult and doubtful, 'half flying, half
on foot.' The object in sense is a positive thing, and execution comes
with practice.
Cleverness is a certain _knack_ or aptitude at doing certain things,
which depend more on a particular adroitness and off-hand readiness than
on force or perseverance, such as making puns, making epigrams, making
extempore verses, mimicking the company, mimicking a style, etc.
Cleverness is either liveliness and smartness, or something answering to
_sleight of hand_, like letting a glass fall sideways off a table, or
else a trick, like knowing the secret spring of a watch.
Accomplishments are certain external graces, which are to be learned
from others, and which are easily displayed to the admiration of the
beholder, viz. dancing, riding, fencing, music, and so on. These
ornamental acquirements are only proper to those who are at ease in mind
and fortune. I know an individual who, if he had been born to an estate
of five thousand a year, would have been the most accomplished gentleman
of the age. He would have been the delight and envy of the circle in
which he moved--would have graced by his manners the liberality flowing
from the openness of his heart, would have laughed with the women, have
argued with the men, have said good things and written agreeable ones,
have taken a hand at piquet or the lead at the harpsichord, and have set
and sung his own verses--nugae canorae--with tenderness and spirit; a
Rochester without the vice, a modern Surrey! As it is, all these
capabilities of excellence stand in his way. He is too versatile for a
professional man, not dull enough for a political drudge, too gay to be
happy, too thoughtless to be rich. He wants the enthusiasm of the poet,
the severity of the prose-writer, and the application of the man of
business. Talent differs from genius as voluntary differs from
involuntary power. Ingenuity is genius in trifles; greatness is genius
in undertakings of much pith and moment. A clever or ingenious man is
one who can do anything well, whether it is worth doing or not; a great
man is one who can do that which when done is of the highest importance.
Themistocles said he could not play on the flute, but that he could
make of a small city a great one. This gives one a pretty good idea of
the distinction in question.
Greatness is great power, producing great effects. It is not enough
that a man has great power in himself; he must show it to all the world
in a way that cannot be hid or gainsaid. He must fill up a certain idea
in the public mind. I have no other notion of greatness than this
twofold definition, great results springing from great inherent energy.
The great in visible objects has relation to that which extends over
space; the great in mental ones has to do with space and time. No man
is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness
is the page of history. Nothing can be said to be great that has a
distinct limit, or that borders on something evidently greater than
itself. Besides, what is short-lived and pampered into mere notoriety
is of a gross and vulgar quality in itself. A Lord Mayor is hardly a
great man. A city orator or patriot of the day only show, by reaching
the height of their wishes, the distance they are at from any true
ambition. Popularity is neither fame nor greatness. A king (as such)
is not a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own. He
merely wields the lever of the state, which a child, an idiot, or a
madman can do. It is the office, not the man we gaze at. Any one else
in the same situation would be just as much an object of abject
curiosity. We laugh at the country girl who having seen a king
expressed her disappointment by saying, 'Why, he is only a man!' Yet,
knowing this, we run to see a king as if he was something more than a
man.--To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great
purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness. To throw a
barleycorn through the eye of a needle, to multiply nine figures by nine
in the memory, argues definite dexterity of body and capacity of mind,
but nothing comes of either. There is a surprising power at work, but
the effects are not proportionate, or such as take hold of the
imagination. To impress the idea of power on others, they must be made
in some way to feel it. It must be communicated to their understandings
in the shape of an increase of knowledge, or it must subdue and overawe
them by subjecting their wills. Admiration to be solid and lasting must
be founded on proofs from which we have no means of escaping; it is
neither a slight nor a voluntary gift. A mathematician who solves a
profound problem, a poet who creates an image of beauty in the mind that
was not there before, imparts knowledge and power to others, in which
his greatness and his fame consists, and on which it reposes. Jedediah
Buxton will be forgotten; but Napier's bones will live. Lawgivers,
philosophers, founders of religion, conquerors and heroes, inventors and
great geniuses in arts and sciences, are great men, for they are great
public benefactors, or formidable scourges to mankind. Among ourselves,
Shakespear, Newton, Bacon, Milton, Cromwell, were great men, for they
showed great power by acts and thoughts, that have not yet been
consigned to oblivion. They must needs be men of lofty stature, whose
shadows lengthen out to remote posterity. A great farce-writer may be a
great man; for Moliere was but a great farce-writer. In my mind, the
author of _Don Quixote_ was a great man. So have there been many
others. A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the
world as he found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes
greatness. This will apply to all displays of power or trials of skill
which are confined to the momentary, individual effort, and construct no
permanent image or trophy of themselves without them. Is not an actor
then a great man, because 'he dies and leaves the world no copy'? I
must make an exception for Mrs. Siddons, or else give up my definition
of greatness for her sake. A man at the top of his profession is not
therefore a great man. He is great in his way, but that is all, unless
he shows the marks of a great moving intellect, so that we trace the
master-mind, and can sympathise with the springs that urge him on. The
rest is but a craft or _mystery_. John Hunter was a great man--_that_
any one might see without the smallest skill in surgery. His style and
manner showed the man. He would set about cutting up the carcass of a
whale with the same greatness of gusto that Michael Angelo would have
hewn a block of marble. Lord Nelson was a great naval commander; but
for myself, I have not much opinion of a seafaring life. Sir Humphry
Davy is a great chemist, but I am not sure that he is a great man. I am
not a bit the wiser for any of his discoveries, nor I never met with any
one that was. But it is in the nature of greatness to propagate an idea
of itself, as wave impels wave, circle without circle. It is a
contradiction in terms for a coxcomb to be a great man. A really great
man has always an idea of something greater than himself. I have
observed that certain sectaries and polemical writers have no higher
compliment to pay their most shining lights than to say that "Such a one
was a considerable man in his day." Some new elucidation of a text sets
aside the authority of the old interpretation, and a "great scholar's
memory outlives him half a century," at the utmost. A rich man is not a
great man, except to his dependents and his steward. A lord is a great
man in the idea we have of his ancestry, and probably of himself, if we
know nothing of him but his title. I have heard a story of two bishops,
one of whom said (speaking of St. Peter's at Rome) that when he first
entered it, he was rather awe-struck, but that as he walked up it, his
mind seemed to swell and dilate with it, and at last to fill the whole
building: the other said that as he saw more of it, he appeared to
himself to grow less and less every step he took, and in the end to
dwindle into nothing. This was in some respects a striking picture of a
great and little mind; for greatness sympathises with greatness, and
littleness shrinks into itself. The one might have become a Wolsey; the
other was only fit to become a Mendicant Friar--or there might have been
court reasons for making him a bishop. The French have to me a
character of littleness in all about them; but they have produced three
great men that belong to every country, Moliere, Rabelais, and
Montaigne.
To return from this digression, and conclude Essay. A singular instance
of manual dexterity was shown in the person of the late John Cavanaugh,
whom I have several times seen. His death was celebrated at the time in
an article in the _Examiner_ newspaper (Feb. 7, 1819), written
apparently between jest and earnest; but as it is _pat_ to our purpose,
and falls in with my own way of considering such subjects, I shall here
take leave to quote it:--
'Died at his house in Burbage Street, St. Giles's, John Cavanagh, the
famous hand fives-player. When a person dies who does any one thing
better than any one else in the world, which so many others are trying
to do well, it leaves a gap in society. It is not likely that any one
will now see the game of fives played in its perfection for many years
to come--for Cavanagh is dead, and has not left his peer behind him. It
may be said that there are things of more importance than striking a
ball against a wall--there are things, indeed, that make more noise and
do as little good, such as making war and peace, making speeches and
answering them, making verses and blotting them, making money and
throwing it away. But the game of fives is what no one despises who has
ever played at it. It is the finest exercise for the body, and the best
relaxation for the mind. The Roman poet said that "Care mounted behind
the horseman and stuck to his skirts." But this remark would not have
applied to the fives-player. He who takes to playing at fives is twice
young. He feels neither the past nor future "in the instant." Debts,
taxes, "domestic treason, foreign levy, nothing can touch him further."
He has no other wish, no other thought, from the moment the game begins,
but that of striking the ball, of placing it, of _making_ it! This
Cavanagh was sure to do. Whenever he touched the ball there was an end
of the chase. His eye was certain, his hand fatal, his presence of mind
complete. He could do what he pleased, and he always knew exactly what
to do. He saw the whole game, and played it; took instant advantage of
his adversary's weakness, and recovered balls, as if by a miracle and
from sudden thought, that every one gave for lost. He had equal power
and skill, quickness and judgment. He could either outwit his
antagonist by finesse, or beat him by main strength. Sometimes, when he
seemed preparing to send the ball with the full swing of his arm, he
would by a slight turn of his wrist drop it within an inch of the line.
In general, the ball came from his hand, as if from a racket, in a
straight, horizontal line; so that it was in vain to attempt to overtake
or stop it. As it was said of a great orator that he never was at a
loss for a word, and for the properest word, so Cavanagh always could
tell the degree of force necessary to be given to a ball, and the
precise direction in which it should be sent. He did his work with the
greatest ease; never took more pains than was necessary; and while
others were fagging themselves to death, was as cool and collected as if
he had just entered the court. His style of play was as remarkable as
his power of execution. He had no affectation, no trifling. He did not
throw away the game to show off an attitude or try an experiment. He
was a fine, sensible, manly player, who did what he could, but that was
more than any one else could even affect to do. His blows were not
undecided and ineffectual--lumbering like Mr. Wordsworth's epic poetry,
nor wavering like Mr. Coleridge's lyric prose, nor short of the mark
like Mr. Brougham's speeches, nor wide of it like Mr. Canning's wit, nor
foul like the _Quarterly_, nor _let_ balls like the _Edinburgh Review_.
Cobbett and Junius together would have made a Cavanagh. He was the best
_up-hill_ player in the world; even when his adversary was fourteen, he
would play on the same or better, and as he never flung away the game
through carelessness and conceit, he never gave it through laziness or
want of heart. The only peculiarity of his play was that he never
_volleyed_, but let the balls hop; but if they rose an inch from the
ground he never missed having them. There was not only nobody equal,
but nobody second to him. It is supposed that he could give any other
player half the game, or beat him with his left hand. His service was
tremendous. He once played Woodward and Meredith together (two of the
best players in England) in the Fives-court, St. Martin's street, and
made seven and twenty aces following by services alone--a thing unheard
of. He another time played Peru, who was considered a first-rate
fives-player, a match of the best out of five games, and in the three
first games, which of course decided the match, Peru got only one ace.
Cavanagh was an Irishman by birth, and a house-painter by profession.
He had once laid aside his working-dress, and walked up, in his smartest
clothes, to the Rosemary Branch to have an afternoon's pleasure. A
person accosted him, and asked him if he would have a game. So they
agreed to play for half a crown a game and a bottle of cider. The first
game began--it was seven, eight, ten, thirteen, fourteen, all. Cavanagh
won it. The next was the same. They played on, and each game was
hardly contested. "There," said the unconscious fives-player, "there
was a stroke that Cavanagh could not take: I never played better in my
life, and yet I can't win a game. I don't know how it is!" However,
they played on, Cavanagh winning every game, and the bystanders drinking
the cider and laughing all the time. In the twelfth game, when Cavanagh
was only four, and the stranger thirteen, a person came in and said,
"What! are you here, Cavanagh?" The words were no sooner pronounced
than the astonished player let the hall drop from his hand, and saying,
"What! have I been breaking my heart all this time to beat Cavanagh?"
refused to make another effort. "And yet, I give you my word," said
Cavanagh, telling the story with some triumph, "I played all the while
with my clenched fist."--He used frequently to ploy matches at
Copenhagen House for wagers and dinners. The wall against which they
play is the same that supports the kitchen-chimney, and when the wall
resounded louder than usual, the cooks exclaimed, "Those are the
Irishman's balls," and the joints trembled on the spit!--Goldsmith
consoled himself that there were places where he too was admired: and
Cavanagh was the admiration of all the fives-courts where he ever
played. Mr. Powell, when he played matches in the Court in St.
Martin's Street, used to fill his gallery at half a crown a head with
amateurs and admirers of talent in whatever department it is shown. He
could not have shown himself in any ground in England but he would have
been immediately surrounded with inquisitive gazers, trying to find out
in what part of his frame his unrivalled skill lay, as politicians
wonder to see the balance of Europe suspended in Lord Castlereagh's
face, and admire the trophies of the British Navy lurking under Mr.
Croker's hanging brow. Now Cavanagh was as good-looking a man as the
Noble Lord, and much better looking than the Right Hon. Secretary. He
had a clear, open countenance, and did not look sideways or down, like
Mr. Murray the bookseller. He was a young fellow of sense, humour, and
courage. He once had a quarrel with a waterman at Hungerford Stairs,
and, they say, served him out in great style. In a word, there are
hundreds at this day who cannot mention his name without admiration, as
the best fives-player that perhaps ever lived (the greatest excellence
of which they have any notion); and the noisy shout of the ring happily
stood him in stead of the unheard voice of posterity!--The only person
who seems to have excelled as much in another way as Cavanagh did in his
was the late John Davies, the racket-player. It was remarked of him
that he did not seem to follow the ball, but the ball seemed to follow
him. Give him a foot of wall, and he was sure to make the ball. The
four best racket-players of that day were Jack Spines, Jem Harding,
Armitage, and Church. Davies could give any one of these two hands a
time, that is, half the game, and each of these, at their best, could
give the best player now in London the same odds. Such are the
gradations in all exertions of human skill and art. He once played four
capital players together, and beat them. He was also a first-rate
tennis-player and an excellent fives-player. In the Fleet or King's
Bench he would have stood against Powell, who was reckoned the best
open-ground player of his time. This last-mentioned player is at
present the keeper of the Fives-court, and we might recommend to him for
a motto over his door, "Who enters here, forgets himself, his country,
and his friends." And the best of it is, that by the calculation of the
odds, none of the three are worth remembering!--Cavanagh died from the
bursting of a blood-vessel, which prevented him from playing for the
last two or three years. This, he was often heard to say, he thought
hard upon him. He was fast recovering, however, when he was suddenly
carried off, to the regret of all who knew him. As Mr. Peel made it a
qualification of the present Speaker, Mr. Manners Sutton, that he was an
excellent moral character, so Jack Cavanagh was a zealous Catholic, and
could not be persuaded to eat meat on a Friday, the day on which he
died. We have paid this willing tribute to his memory.
Let no rude hand deface it,
And his forlorn "_Hic Jacet_."'
NOTES to ESSAY IX
[1] The celebrated Peter Pindar (Dr. Wolcot) first discovered and
brought out the talents of the late Mr. Opie the painter. He was a poor
Cornish boy, and was out at work in the fields when the poet went in
search of him. 'Well, my lad, can you go and bring me your very best
picture?' The other flew like lightning, and soon came back with what
he considered as his masterpiece. The stranger looked at it, and the
young artist, after waiting for some time without his giving any
opinion, at length exclaimed eagerly, 'Well, what do you think of it?'
'Think of it?' said Wolcot; 'Why, I think you ought to be ashamed of
it--that you, who might do so well, do no better!' The same answer
would have applied to this artist's latest performances, that had been
suggested by one of his earliest efforts.
[2] If two persons play against each other at any game, one of them
necessarily fails.
ESSAY X
ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF[1]
Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,
Or by the lazy Scheldt or wandering Po.
I never was in a better place or humour than I am at present for writing
on this subject. I have a partridge getting ready for my supper, my
fire is blazing on the hearth, the air is mild for the season of the
year, I have had but a slight fit of indigestion to-day (the only thing
that makes me abhor myself), I have three hours good before me, and
therefore I will attempt it. It is as well to do it at once as to have
it to do for a week to come.
If the writing on this subject is no easy task, the thing itself is a
harder one. It asks a troublesome effort to ensure the admiration of
others: it is a still greater one to be satisfied with one's own
thoughts. As I look from the window at the wide bare heath before me,
and through the misty moonlight air see the woods that wave over the top
of Winterslow,
While Heav'n's chancel-vault is blind with sleet,
my mind takes its flight through too long a series of years, supported
only by the patience of thought and secret yearnings after truth and
good, for me to be at a loss to understand the feeling I intend to write
about; but I do not know that this will enable me to convey it more
agreeably to the reader.
Lady Grandison, in a letter to Miss Harriet Byron, assures her that 'her
brother Sir Charles lived to-himself'; and Lady L. soon after (for
Richardson was never tired of a good thing) repeats the same
observation; to which Miss Byron frequently returns in her answers to
both sisters, 'For you know Sir Charles lives to himself,' till at
length it passes into a proverb among the fair correspondents. This is
not, however, an example of what I understand by _living to one's-self_,
for Sir Charles Grandison was indeed always thinking of himself; but by
this phrase I mean never thinking at all about one's-self, any more than
if there was no such person in existence. The character I speak of is
as little of an egotist as possible: Richardson's great favourite was as
much of one as possible. Some satirical critic has represented him in
Elysium 'bowing over the _faded_ hand of Lady Grandison' (Miss Byron
that was)--he ought to have been represented bowing over his own hand,
for he never admired any one but himself, and was the God of his own
idolatry.--Neither do I call it living to one's-self to retire into a
desert (like the saints and martyrs of old) to be devoured by wild
beasts nor to descend into a cave to be considered as a hermit, nor to
got to the top of a pillar or rock to do fanatic penance and be seen of
all men. What I mean by living to one's-self is living in the world, as
in it, not of it: it is as if no one know there was such a person, and
you wished no one to know it: it is to be a silent spectator of the
mighty scene of things, not an object of attention or curiosity in it;
to take a thoughtful, anxious interest in what is passing in the world,
but not to feel the slightest inclination to make or meddle with it. It
is such a life as a pure spirit might be supposed to lead, and such an
interest as it might take in the affairs of men, calm, contemplative,
passive, distant, touched with pity for their sorrows, smiling at their
follies without bitterness, sharing their affections, but not troubled
by their passions, not seeking their notice, nor once dreamt of by them.
He who lives wisely to himself and to his own heart looks at the busy
world through the loop-holes of retreat, and does not want to mingle in
the fray. 'He hears the tumult, and is still.' He is not able to mend
it, nor willing to mar it. He sees enough in the universe to interest
him without putting himself forward to try what he can do to fix the
eyes of the universe upon him. Vain the attempt! He reads the clouds,
he looks at the stars, he watches the return of the seasons, the falling
leaves of autumn, the perfumed breath of spring, starts with delight at
the note of a thrush in a copse near him, sits by the fire, listens to
the moaning of the wind, pores upon a book, or discourses the freezing
hours away, or melts down hours to minutes in pleasing thought. All
this while he is taken up with other things, forgetting himself. He
relishes an author's style without thinking of turning author. He is
fond of looking at a print from an old picture in the room, without
teasing himself to copy it. He does not fret himself to death with
trying to be what he is not, or to do what he cannot. He hardly knows
what he is capable of, and is not in the least concerned whether he
shall ever make a figure in the world. He feels the truth of the
lines--
The man whose eye is ever on himself,
Doth look one, the least of nature's works;
One who might move the wise man to that scorn
Which wisdom holds unlawful ever.
He looks out of himself at the wide, extended prospect of nature, and
takes an interest beyond his narrow pretensions in general humanity. He
is free as air, and independent as the wind. Woe be to him when he
first begins to think what others say of him. While a man is contented
with himself and his own resources, all is well. When he undertakes to
play a part on the stage, and to persuade the world to think more about
him than they do about themselves, he is got into a track where he will
find nothing but briars and thorns, vexation and disappointment. I can
speak a little to this point. For many years of my life I did nothing
but think. I had nothing else to do but solve some knotty point, or dip
in some abstruse author, or look at the sky, or wander by the pebbled
seaside--
To see the children sporting on the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore
I cared for nothing, I wanted nothing. I took my time to consider
whatever occurred to me, and was in no hurry to give a sophistical
answer to a question--there was no printer's devil waiting for me. I
used to write a page or two perhaps in half a year; and remember
laughing heartily at the celebrated experimentalist Nicholson, who told
me that in twenty years he had written as much as would make three
hundred octavo volumes. If I was not a great author, I could read with
ever fresh delight, 'never ending, still beginning,' and had no occasion
to write a criticism when I had done. If I could not paint like Claude,
I could admire 'the witchery of the soft blue sky' as I walked out, and
was satisfied with the pleasure it gave me. If I was dull, it gave me
little concern: if I was lively, I indulged my spirits. I wished well
to the world, and believed as favourably of it as I could. I was like a
stranger in a foreign land, at which I looked with wonder, curiosity,
and delight, without expecting to be an object of attention in return.
I had no relations to the state, no duty to perform, no ties to bind me
to others: I had neither friend nor mistress, wife nor child. I lived
in a world of contemplation, and not of action.
This sort of dreaming existence is the best. He who quits it to go in
search of realities generally barters repose for repeated
disappointments and vain regrets. His time, thoughts, and feelings are
no longer at his own disposal. From that instant he does not survey the
objects of nature as they are in themselves, but looks asquint at them
to see whether he cannot make them the instruments of his ambition,
interest, or pleasure; for a candid, undesigning, undisguised simplicity
of character, his views become jaundiced, sinister, and double: he takes
no farther interest in the great changes of the world but as he has a
paltry share in producing them: instead of opening his senses, his
understanding, and his heart to the resplendent fabric of the universe,
he holds a crooked mirror before his face, in which he may admire his
own person and pretensions, and just glance his eye aside to see whether
others are not admiring him too. He no more exists in the impression
which 'the fair variety of things' makes upon him, softened and subdued
by habitual contemplation, but in the feverish sense of his own upstart
self-importance. By aiming to fix, he is become the slave of opinion.
He is a tool, a part of a machine that never stands still, and is sick
and giddy with the ceaseless motion. He has no satisfaction but in the
reflection of his own image in the public gaze--but in the repetition of
his own name in the public ear. He himself is mixed up with and spoils
everything. I wonder Buonaparte was not tired of the N. N.'s stuck all
over the Louvre and throughout France. Goldsmith (as we all know) when
in Holland went out into a balcony with some handsome Englishwomen, and
on their being applauded by the spectators, turned round and said
peevishly, 'There are places where I also am admired.' He could not
give the craving appetite of an author's vanity one day's respite. I
have seen a celebrated talker of our own time turn pale and go out of
the room when a showy-looking girl has come into it who for a moment
divided the attention of his hearers.--Infinite are the mortifications
of the bare attempt to emerge from obscurity; numberless the failures;
and greater and more galling still the vicissitudes and tormenting
accompaniments of success--
Whose top to climb
Is certain falling, or so slippery, that
The fear's as bad as falling.
'Would to God,' exclaimed Oliver Cromwell, when he was at any time
thwarted by the Parliament, 'that I had remained by my woodside to tend
a flock of sheep, rather than have been thrust on such a government as
this!' When Buonaparte got into his carriage to proceed on his Russian
expedition, carelessly twirling his glove, and singing the air,
'Malbrook to the war is going,' he did not think of the tumble he has
got since, the shock of which no one could have stood but himself. We
see and hear chiefly of the favourites of Fortune and the Muse, of great
generals, of first-rate actors, of celebrated poets. These are at the
head; we are struck with the glittering eminence on which they stand,
and long to set out on the same tempting career,--not thinking how many
discontented half-pay lieutenants are in vain seeking promotion all
their lives, and obliged to put up with 'the insolence of office, and
the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes'; how many
half-starved strolling players are doomed to penury and tattered robes
in country places, dreaming to the last of a London engagement; how many
wretched daubers shiver and shake in the ague-fit of alternate hopes and
fears, waste and pine away in the atrophy of genius, or else turn
drawing-masters, picture-cleaners, or newspaper-critics; how many
hapless poets have sighed out their souls to the Muse in vain, without
ever getting their effusions farther known than the Poet's Corner of a
country newspaper, and looked and looked with grudging, wistful eyes at
the envious horizon that bounded their provincial fame!--Suppose an
actor, for instance, 'after the heart-aches and the thousand natural
pangs that flesh is heir to,' _does_ get at the top of his profession,
he can no longer bear a rival near the throne; to be second or only
equal to another is to be nothing: he starts at the prospect of a
successor, and retains the mimic sceptre with a convulsive grasp:
perhaps as he is about to seize the first place which he has long had in
his eye, an unsuspected competitor steps in before him, and carries off
the prize, leaving him to commence his irksome toil again. He is in a
state of alarm at every appearance or rumour of the appearance of a new
actor: 'a mouse that takes up its lodgings in a cat's ear'[2] has a
mansion of peace to him: he dreads every hint of an objection, and least
of all, can forgive praise mingled with censure: to doubt is to insult;
to discriminate is to degrade: he dare hardly look into a criticism
unless some one has tasted it for him, to see that there is no offence
in it: if he does not draw crowded houses every night, he can neither
eat nor sleep; or if all these terrible inflections are removed, and he
can 'eat his meal in peace,' he then becomes surfeited with applause and
dissatisfied with his profession: he wants to be something else, to be
distinguished as an author, a collector, a classical scholar, a man of
sense and information, and weighs every word he utters, and half
retracts it before he utters it, lest if he were to make the smallest
slip of the tongue it should get buzzed abroad that _Mr. ---- was only
clever as an actor!_ If ever there was a man who did not derive more
pain than pleasure from his vanity, that man, says Rousseau, was no
other than a fool. A country gentleman near Taunton spent his whole
life in making some hundreds of wretched copies of second-rate pictures,
which were bought up at his death by a neighbouring baronet, to whom
Some Demon whisper'd, L----, have a taste!
A little Wilson in an obscure corner escaped the man of _virtu_, and was
carried off by a Bristol picture-dealer for three guineas, while the
muddled copies of the owner of the mansion (with the frames) fetched
thirty, forty, sixty, a hundred ducats a piece. A friend of mine found
a very fine Canaletti in a state of strange disfigurement, with the
upper part of the sky smeared over and fantastically variegated with
English clouds; and on inquiring of the person to whom it belonged
whether something had not been done to it, received for answer 'that a
gentleman, a great artist in the neighbourhood, had retouched some parts
of it.' What infatuation! Yet this candidate for the honours of the
pencil might probably have made a jovial fox-hunter or respectable
justice of the peace it he could only have stuck to what nature and
fortune intended him for. Miss ---- can by no means be persuaded to
quit the boards of the theatre at ----, a little country town in the
West of England. Her salary has been abridged, her person ridiculed,
her acting laughed at; nothing will serve--she is determined to be an
actress, and scorns to return to her former business as a milliner.
Shall I go on? An actor in the same company was visited by the
apothecary of the place in an ague-fit, who, on asking his landlady as
to his way of life, was told that the poor gentleman was very quiet and
gave little trouble, that he generally had a plate of mashed potatoes
for his dinner, and lay in bed most of his time, repeating his part. A
young couple, every way amiable and deserving, were to have been
married, and a benefit-play was bespoke by the officers of the regiment
quartered there, to defray the expense of a license and of the
wedding-ring, but the profits of the night did not amount to the
necessary sum, and they have, I fear, 'virgined it e'er since'! Oh, for
the pencil of Hogarth or Wilkie to give a view of the comic strength of
the company at ----, drawn up in battle-array in the _Clandestine
Marriage,_ with a _coup d'oeil_ of the pit, boxes, and gallery, to cure
for ever the love of the _ideal_, and the desire to shine and make
holiday in the eyes of others, instead of retiring within ourselves and
keeping our wishes and our thoughts at home!--Even in the common affairs
of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how little security have we
when we trust our happiness in the hands of others! Most of the friends
I have seen have turned out the bitterest enemies, or cold,
uncomfortable acquaintance. Old companions are like meats served up too
often, that lose their relish and their wholesomeness. He who looks at
beauty to admire, to adore it, who reads of its wondrous power in
novels, in poems, or in plays, is not unwise; but let no man fall in
love, for from that moment he is 'the baby of a girl.' I like very well
to repeat such lines as these in the play of _Mirandola_--
With what a waving air she goes
Along the corridor! How like a fawn!
Yet statelier. Hark! No sound, however soft,
Nor gentlest echo telleth when she treads,
But every motion of her shape doth seem
Hallowed by silence.
But however beautiful the description, defend me from meeting with the
original!
The fly that sips treacle
Is lost in the sweets;
So he that tastes woman
Ruin meets.
The song is Gay's, not mine, and a bitter-sweet it is. How few out of
the infinite number of those that marry and are given in marriage wed
with those they would prefer to all the world! nay, how far the greater
proportion are joined together by mere motives of convenience, accident,
recommendation of friends, or indeed not unfrequently by the very fear
of the event, by repugnance and a sort of fatal fascination! yet the tie
is for life, not to be shaken off but with disgrace or death: a man no
longer lives to himself, but is a body (as well as mind) chained to
another, in spite of himself--
Like life and death in disproportion met.
So Milton (perhaps from his own experience) makes Adam exclaim in the
vehemence of his despair,
For either
He never shall find out fit mate, but such
As some misfortune brings him or mistake
Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain
Through her perverseness, but shall sea her gain'd
By a far worse; or it she love, withheld
By parents; or his happiest choice too late
Shall meet, already link'd and wedlock-bound
To a fell adversary, his hate and shame;
Which infinite calamity shall cause
To human life, and household peace confound.
If love at first sight were mutual, or to be conciliated by kind
offices; if the fondest affection were not so often repaid and chilled
by indifference and scorn; if so many lovers both before and since the
madman in Don Quixote had not 'worshipped a statue, hunted the wind,
cried aloud to the desert'; if friendship were lasting; if merit were
renown, and renown were health, riches, and long life; or if the homage
of the world were paid to conscious worth and the true aspirations after
excellence, instead of its gaudy signs and outward trappings, then
indeed I might be of opinion that it is better to live to others than
one's-self; but as the case stands, I incline to the negative side of
the question.[3]
I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bow'd
To its idolatries a patient knee--
Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles--nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo; in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such; I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filled my mind which thus itself subdued.
I have not loved the world, nor the world me--
But let us part fair foes; I do believe,
Though I have found them not, that there may be
Words which are things--hopes which will not deceive,
And virtues which are merciful nor weave
Snares for the failing: I would also deem
O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve;
That two, or one, are almost what they seem--
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream.
Sweet verse embalms the spirit of sour misanthropy; but woe betide the
ignoble prose-writer who should thus dare to compare notes with the
world, or tax it roundly with imposture.
If I had sufficient provocation to rail at the public, as Ben Jonson did
at the audience in the Prologues to his plays, I think I should do it in
good set terms, nearly as follows:--There is not a more mean, stupid,
dastardly, pitiful, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than
the Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is afraid of itself.
From its unwieldy, overgrown dimensions, it dreads the least opposition
to it, and shakes like isinglass at the touch of a finger. It starts at
its own shadow, like the man in the Hartz mountains, and trembles at the
mention of its own name. It has a lion's mouth, the heart of a hare,
with ears erect and sleepless eyes. It stands 'listening its fears.'
It is so in awe of its own opinion that it never dares to form any, but
catches up the first idle rumour, lest it should be behindhand in its
judgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the sound of its own
voice. The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from
ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private
judgment, so that, in short, the public ear is at the mercy of the first
impudent pretender who chooses to fill it with noisy assertions, or
false surmises, or secret whispers. What is said by one is heard by
all; the supposition that a thing is known to all the world makes all
the world believe it, and the hollow repetition of a vague report drowns
the 'still, small voice' of reason. We may believe or know that what is
said is not true; but we know or fancy that others believe it,--we dare
not contradict or are too indolent to dispute with them, and therefore
give up our internal, and, as we think, our solitary conviction to a
sound without substance, without proof, and often without meaning. Nay
more, we may believe and know not only that a thing is false, but that
others believe and know it to be so, that they are quite as much in the
secret of the imposture as we are, that they see the puppets at work,
the nature of the machinery, and yet if any one has the art or power to
get the management of it, he shall keep possession of the public ear by
virtue of a cant phrase or nickname, and by dint of effrontery and
perseverance make all the world believe and repeat what all the world
know to be false. The ear is quicker than the judgment. We know that
certain things are said; by that circumstance alone, we know that they
produce a certain effect on the imagination of others, and we conform to
their prejudices by mechanical sympathy, and for want of sufficient
spirit to differ with them. So far then is public opinion from resting
on a broad and solid basis, as the aggregate of thought and feeling in a
community, that it is slight and shallow and variable to the last
degree--the bubble of the moment; so that we may safely say the public
is the dupe of public opinion, not its parent. The public is
pusillanimous and cowardly, because it is weak. It knows itself to be a
great dunce, and that it has no opinions but upon suggestion. Yet it is
unwilling to appear in leading-strings, and would have it thought that
its decisions are as wise as they are weighty. It is hasty in taking up
its favourites, more hasty in laying them aside, lest it should be
supposed deficient in sagacity in either case. It is generally divided
into two strong parties, each of which will allow neither common sense
nor common honesty to the other side. It reads the _Edinburgh_ and
_Quarterly Reviews_, and believes them both--or if there is a doubt,
malice turns the scale. Taylor and Hessey told me that they had sold
nearly two editions of the _Characters of Shakespear's Plays_ in about
three months, but that after the _Quarterly Review_ of them came out
they never sold another copy. The public, enlightened as they are, must
have known the meaning of that attack as well as those who made it. It
was not ignorance then, but cowardice, that led them to give up their
own opinion. A crew of mischievous critics at Edinburgh having affixed
the epithet of the _Cockney School_ to one or two writers born in the
metropolis, all the people in London became afraid of looking into their
works, lest they too should be convicted of cockneyism. Oh, brave
public! This epithet proved too much for one of the writers in
question, and stuck like a barbed arrow in his heart. Poor Keats! What
was sport to the town was death to him. Young, sensitive, delicate, he
was like
A bud bit by an envious worm,
Ere he could spread his sweet leaves to the air
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun;
and unable to endure the miscreant cry and idiot laugh, withdrew to sigh
his last breath in foreign climes. The public is as envious and
ungrateful as it is ignorant, stupid, and pigeon-livered--
A huge-sized monster of ingratitudes.
It reads, it admires, it extols, only because it is the fashion, not
from any love of the subject or the man. It cries you up or runs you
down out of mere caprice and levity. If you have pleased it, it is
jealous of its own involuntary acknowledgment of merit, and seizes the
first opportunity, the first shabby pretext, to pick a quarrel with you
and be quits once more. Every petty caviller is erected into a judge,
every tale-bearer is implicitly believed. Every little, low, paltry
creature that gaped and wondered, only because others did so, is glad to
find you (as he thinks) on a level with himself. An author is not then,
after all, a being of another order. Public admiration is forced, and
goes against the grain. Public obloquy is cordial and sincere: every
individual feels his own importance in it. They give you up bound hand
and foot into the power of your accusers. To attempt to defend yourself
is a high crime and misdemeanor, a contempt of court, an extreme piece
of impertinence. Or if you prove every charge unfounded, they never
think of retracing their error or making you amends. It would be a
compromise of their dignity; they consider themselves as the party
injured, and resent your innocence as an imputation on their judgment.
The celebrated Bub Doddington, when out of favour at court, said 'he
would not _justify_ before his sovereign: it was for Majesty to be
displeased, and for him to believe himself in the wrong!' The public
are not quite so modest. People already begin to talk of the Scotch
Novels as overrated. How then can common authors be supposed to keep
their heads long above water? As a general rule, all those who live by
the public starve, and are made a by-word and a standing jest into the
bargain. Posterity is no better (not a bit more enlightened or more
liberal), except that you are no longer in their power, and that the
voice of common fame saves them the trouble of deciding on your claims.
The public now are the posterity of Milton and Shakespear. Our
posterity will be the living public of a future generation. When a man
is dead, they put money in his coffin, erect monuments to his memory,
and celebrate the anniversary of his birthday in set speeches. Would
they take any notice of him if he were living? No!--I was complaining
of this to a Scotchman who had been attending a dinner and a
subscription to raise a monument to Burns. He replied he would sooner
subscribe twenty pounds to his monument than have given it him while
living; so that if the poet were to come to life again, he would treat
him just as he was treated in fact. This was an honest Scotchman. What
_he_ said, the rest would do.
Enough: my soul, turn from them, and let me try to regain the obscurity
and quiet that I love, 'far from the madding strife,' in some
sequestered corner of my own, or in some far-distant land! In the
latter case, I might carry with me as a consolation the passage in
Bolinbroke's _Reflections on Exile,_ in which he describes in glowing
colours the resources which a man may always find within himself, and of
which the world cannot deprive him:--
'Believe me, the providence of God has established such an order in the
world, that of all which belongs to us the least valuable parts can
alone fall under the will of others. Whatever is best is safest; lies
out of the reach of human power; can neither be given nor taken away.
Such is this great and beautiful work of nature, the world. Such is the
mind of man, which contemplates and admires the world, whereof it makes
the noblest part. These are inseparably ours, and as long as we remain
in one we shall enjoy the other. Let us march therefore intrepidly
wherever we are led by the course of human accidents. Wherever they
lead us, on what coast soever we are thrown by them, we shall not find
ourselves absolutely strangers. We shall feel the same revolution of
seasons, and the same sun and moon[4] will guide the course of our year.
The same azure vault, bespangled with stars, will be everywhere spread
over our heads. There is no part of the world from whence we may not
admire those planets which roll, like ours, in different orbits round
the same central sun; from whence we may not discover an object still
more stupendous, that army of fixed stars hung up in the immense space
of the universe, innumerable suns whose beams enlighten and cherish the
unknown worlds which roll around them: and whilst I am ravished by such
contemplations as these, whilst my soul is thus raised up to heaven, it
imports me little what ground I tread-upon.'
NOTES to ESSAY X
[1] Written at Winterslow Hut, January 18-19, 1821.
[2] Webster's _Duchess of Malfy._
[3] Shenstone and Gray were two men, one of whom pretended live to
himself, and the other really did so. Gray shrunk from the public gaze
(he did not even like his portrait to be prefixed to his works) into his
own thoughts and indolent musings; Shenstone affected privacy that he
might be sought out by the world; the one courted retirement in order to
enjoy leisure and repose, as the other coquetted with it merely to be
interrupted with the importunity of visitors and the flatteries of
absent friends.
[4] Plut. of Banishment. He compares those who cannot live out of their
own country to the simple people who fancied the moon of Athens was a
finer moon than that of Corinth,
Labentem coelo quae ducitis annum. --VIRG. _Georg._
ESSAY XI
ON THOUGHT AND ACTION
Those persons who are much accustomed to abstract contemplation are
generally unfitted for active pursuits, and _vice versa_. I myself am
sufficiently decided and dogmatical in my opinions, and yet in action I
am as imbecile as a woman or a child. I cannot set about the most
indifferent thing without twenty efforts, and had rather write one of
these Essays than have to seal a letter. In trying to throw a hat or a
book upon a table, I miss it; it just reaches the edge and falls back
again, and instead of doing what I mean to perform, I do what I intend
to avoid. Thought depends on the habitual exercise of the speculative
faculties; action, on the determination of the will. The one assigns
reasons for things, the other puts causes into act. Abraham Tucker
relates of a friend of his, an old special pleader, that once coming out
of his chambers in the Temple with him to take a walk, he hesitated at
the bottom of the stairs which way to go--proposed different directions,
to Charing Cross, to St. Paul's--found some objection to them all, and
at last turned back for want of a casting motive to incline the scale.
Tucker gives this as an instance of professional indecision, or of that
temper of mind which having been long used to weigh the reasons for
things with scrupulous exactness, could not come to any conclusion at
all on the spur of the occasion, or without some grave distinction to
justify its choice. Louvet in his Narrative tells us, that when several
of the Brisotin party were collected at the house of Barbaroux (I think
it was) ready to effect their escape from the power of Robespierre, one
of them going to the window and finding a shower of rain coming on,
seriously advised their stopping till the next morning, for that the
emissaries of government would not think of coming in search of them in
such bad weather. Some of them deliberated on this wise proposal, and
were nearly taken. Such is the effeminacy of the speculative and
philosophical temperament, compared with the promptness and vigour of
the practical! It is on such unequal terms that the refined and
romantic speculators on possible good and evil contend with their
strong-nerved, remorseless adversaries, and we see the result.
Reasoners in general are undecided, wavering, and sceptical, or yield at
last to the weakest motive as most congenial to their feeble habit of
soul.[1]
Some men are mere machines. They are put in a go-cart of business, and
are harnessed to a profession--yoked to Fortune's wheels. They plod on,
and succeed. Their affairs conduct them, not they their affairs. All
they have to do is to let things take their course, and not go out of
the beaten road. A man may carry on the business of farming on the same
spot and principle that his ancestors have done for many generations
before him without any extraordinary share of capacity: the proof is, it
is done every day, in every county and parish in the kingdom. All that
is necessary is that he should not pretend to be wiser than his
neighbours. If he has a grain more wit or penetration than they, if his
vanity gets the start of his avarice only half a neck, if he has ever
thought or read anything upon the subject, it will most probably be the
ruin of him. He will turn theoretical or experimental farmer, and no
more need be said. Mr. Cobbett, who is a sufficiently shrewd and
practical man, with an eye also to the main chance, had got some notions
in his head (from Tull's _Husbandry_) about the method of sowing
turnips, to which he would have sacrificed not only his estate at
Botley, but his native county of Hampshire itself, sooner than give up
an inch of his argument. 'Tut! will you baulk a man in the career of
his humour?' Therefore, that a man may not be ruined by his humours, he
should be too dull and phlegmatic to have any: he must have 'no figures
nor no fantasies which busy thought draws in the brains of men.' The
fact is, that the ingenuity or judgment of no one man is equal to that
of the world at large, which is the fruit of the experience and ability
of all mankind. Even where a man is right in a particular notion, he
will be apt to overrate the importance of his discovery, to the
detriment of his affairs. Action requires co-operation, but in general
if you set your face against custom, people will set their faces against
you. They cannot tell whether you are right or wrong, but they know
that you are guilty of a pragmatical assumption of superiority over them
which they do not like. There is no doubt that if a person two hundred
years ago had foreseen and attempted to put in practice the most
approved and successful methods of cultivation now in use, it would have
been a death-blow to his credit and fortune. So that though the
experiments and improvements of private individuals from time to time
gradually go to enrich the public stock of information and reform the
general practice, they are mostly the ruin of the person who makes them,
because he takes a part for the whole, and lays more stress upon the
single point in which he has found others in the wrong than on all the
rest in which they are substantially and prescriptively in the right.
The great requisite, it should appear, then, for the prosperous
management of ordinary business is the want of imagination, or of any
ideas but those of custom and interest on the narrowest scale; and as
the affairs of the world are necessarily carried on by the common run of
its inhabitants, it seems a wise dispensation of Providence that it
should be so. If no one could rent a piece of glebe-land without a
genius for mechanical inventions, or stand behind a counter without a
large benevolence of soul, what would become of the commercial and
agricultural interests of this great (and once flourishing) country?--I
would not be understood as saying that there is not what may be called a
genius for business, an extraordinary capacity for affairs, quickness
and comprehension united, an insight into character, an acquaintance
with a number of particular circumstances, a variety of expedients, a
tact for finding out what will do: I grant all this (in Liverpool and
Manchester they would persuade you that your merchant and manufacturer
is your only gentleman and scholar)--but still, making every allowance
for the difference between the liberal trader and the sneaking
shopkeeper, I doubt whether the most surprising success is to be
accounted for from any such unusual attainments, or whether a man's
making half a million of money is a proof of his capacity for thought in
general. It is much oftener owing to views and wishes bounded but
constantly directed to one particular object. To succeed, a man should
aim only at success. The child of Fortune should resign himself into
the hands of Fortune. A plotting head frequently overreaches itself: a
mind confident of its resources and calculating powers enters on
critical speculations, which in a game depending so much on chance and
unforeseen events, and not entirely on intellectual skill, turn the odds
greatly against any one in the long run. The rule of business is to
take what you can get, and keep what you have got; or an eagerness in
seizing every opportunity that offers for promoting your own interest,
and a plodding, persevering industry in making the most of the
advantages you have already obtained, are the most effectual as well as
the safest ingredients in the composition of the mercantile character.
The world is a book in which the _Chapter of Accidents_ is none of the
least considerable; or it is a machine that must be left, in a great
measure, to turn itself. The most that a worldly-minded man can do is
to stand at the receipt of custom, and be constantly on the lookout for
windfalls. The true devotee in this way waits for the revelations of
Fortune as the poet waits for the inspiration of the Muse, and does not
rashly anticipate her favours. He must be neither capricious nor
wilful. I have known people untrammelled in the ways of business, but
with so intense an apprehension of their own interest, that they would
grasp at the slightest possibility of gain as a certainty, and were led
into as many mistakes by an overgriping, usurious disposition as they
could have been by the most thoughtless extravagance.--We hear a great
outcry about the want of judgment in men of genius. It is not a want of
judgment, but an excess of other things. They err knowingly, and are
wilfully blind. The understanding is out of the question. The profound
judgment which soberer people pique themselves upon is in truth a want
of passion and imagination. Give them an interest in anything, a sudden
fancy, a bait for their favourite foible, and who so besotted as they?
Stir their feelings, and farewell to their prudence! The understanding
operates as a motive to action only in the silence of the passions. I
have heard people of a sanguine temperament reproached with betting
according to their wishes, instead of their opinion who should win; and
I have seen those who reproached them do the very same thing the instant
their own vanity or prejudices are concerned. The most mechanical
people, once thrown off their balance, are the most extravagant and
fantastical. What passion is there so unmeaning and irrational as
avarice itself? The Dutch went mad for tulips, and ---- ---- for love!
To return to what was said a little way back, a question might be
started, whether as thought relates to the whole circumference of things
and interests, and business is confined to a very small part of them,
viz. to a knowledge of a man's own affairs and the making of his own
fortune, whether a talent for the latter will not generally exist in
proportion to the narrowness and grossness of his ideas, nothing drawing
his attention out of his own sphere, or giving him an interest except in
those things which he can realise and bring home to himself in the most
undoubted shape? To the man of business all the world is a fable but
the Stock Exchange: to the money-getter nothing has a real existence
that he cannot convert into a tangible feeling, that he does not
recognise as property, that he cannot 'measure with a two-foot rule or
count upon ten fingers.' The want of thought, of imagination, drives
the practical man upon immediate realities: to the poet or philosopher
all is real and interesting that is true or possible, that can reach in
its consequences to others, or be made a subject of curious speculation
to himself!
But is it right, then, to judge of action by the quantity of thought
implied in it, any more than it would be to condemn a life of
contemplation for being inactive? Or has not everything a source and
principle of its own, to which we should refer it, and not to the
principles of other things? He who succeeds in any pursuit in which
others fail may be presumed to have qualities of some sort or other
which they are without. If he has not brilliant wit, he may have solid
sense; if he has not subtlety of understanding, he may have energy and
firmness of purpose; if he has only a few advantages, he may have
modesty and prudence to make the most of what he possesses. Propriety
is one great matter in the conduct of life; which, though, like a
graceful carriage of the body, it is neither definable nor striking at
first sight, is the result of finely balanced feelings, and lends a
secret strength and charm to the whole character.
Quicquid agit, quoquo vestigia vertit,
Componit furtim, subsequiturque decor.
There are more ways than one in which the various faculties of the mind
may unfold themselves. Neither words nor ideas reducible to words
constitute the utmost limit of human capacity. Man is not a merely
talking nor a merely reasoning animal. Let us then take him as he is,
instead of 'curtailing him of nature's fair proportions' to suit our
previous notions. Doubtless, there are great characters both in active
and contemplative life. There have been heroes as well as sages,
legislators and founders of religion, historians and able statesmen and
generals, inventors of useful arts and instruments and explorers of
undiscovered countries, as well as writers and readers of books. It
will not do to set all these aside under any fastidious or pedantic
distinction. Comparisons are odious, because they are impertinent, and
lead only to the discovery of defects by making one thing the standard
of another which has no relation to it. If, as some one proposed, we
were to institute an inquiry, 'Which was the greatest man, Milton or
Cromwell, Buonaparte or Rubens?' we should have all the authors and
artists on one side, and all the military men and the whole diplomatic
body on the other, who would set to work with all their might to pull in
pieces the idol of the other party, and the longer the dispute
continued, the more would each grow dissatisfied with his favourite,
though determined to allow no merit to any one else. The mind is not
well competent to take in the full impression of more than one style of
excellence or one extraordinary character at once; contradictory claims
puzzle and stupefy it; and however admirable any individual may be in
himself and unrivalled in his particular way, yet if we try him by
others in a totally opposite class, that is, if we consider not what he
was but what he was not, he will be found to be nothing. We do not
reckon up the excellences on either side, for then these would satisfy
the mind and put an end to the comparison: we have no way of exclusively
setting up our favourite but by running down his supposed rival; and for
the gorgeous hues of Rubens, the lofty conceptions of Milton, the deep
policy and cautious daring of Cromwell, or the dazzling exploits and
fatal ambition of the modern chieftain, the poet is transformed into a
pedant, the artist sinks into a mechanic, the politician turns out no
better than a knave, and the hero is exalted into a madman. It is as
easy to get the start of our antagonist in argument by frivolous and
vexatious objections to one side of the question as it is difficult to
do full and heaped justice to the other. If I am asked which is the
greatest of those who have been the greatest in different ways, I
answer, the one that we happen to be thinking of at the time; for while
that is the case, we can conceive of nothing higher. If there is a
propensity in the vulgar to admire the achievements of personal prowess
or instances of fortunate enterprise too much, it cannot be denied that
those who have to weigh out and dispense the meed of fame in books have
been too much disposed, by a natural bias, to confine all merit and
talent to the productions of the pen, or at least to those works which,
being artificial or abstract representations of things, are transmitted
to posterity, and cried up as models in their kind. This, though
unavoidable, is hardly just. Actions pass away and are forgotten, or
are only discernible in their effects; conquerors, statesmen, and kings
live but by their names stamped on the page of history. Hume says
rightly that more people think about Virgil and Homer (and that
continually) than ever trouble their heads about Caesar or Alexander.
In fact, poets are a longer-lived race than heroes: they breathe more of
the air of immortality. They survive more entire in their thoughts and
acts. We have all that Virgil or Homer did, as much as if we had lived
at the same time with them: we can hold their works in our hands, or lay
them on our pillows, or put them to our lips. Scarcely a trace of what
the others did is left upon the earth, so as to be visible to common
eyes. The one, the dead authors, are living men, still breathing and
moving in their writings. The others, the conquerors of the world, are
but the ashes in an urn. The sympathy (so to speak) between thought and
thought is more intimate and vital than that between thought and action.
Thought is linked to thought as flame kindles into flame: the tribute
of admiration to the manes of departed heroism is like burning incense
in a marble monument. Words, ideas, feelings, with the progress of time
harden into substances: things, bodies, actions, moulder away, or melt
into a sound, into thin air!--Yet though the Schoolmen in the Middle
Ages disputed more about the texts of Aristotle than the battle of
Arbela, perhaps Alexander's Generals in his lifetime admired his pupil
as much and liked him better. For not only a man's actions are effaced
and vanish with him; his virtues and generous qualities die with him
also: his intellect only is immortal and bequeathed unimpaired to
posterity. Words are the only things that last for ever.
If, however, the empire of words and general knowledge is more durable
in proportion as it is abstracted and attenuated, it is less immediate
and dazzling: if authors are as good after they are dead as when they
were living, while living they might as well be dead: and moreover with
respect to actual ability, to write a book is not the only proof of
taste, sense, or spirit, as pedants would have us suppose. To do
anything well, to paint a picture, to fight a battle, to make a plough
or a threshing-machine, requires, one would think, as much skill and
judgment as to talk about or write a description of it when done. Words
are universal, intelligible signs, but they are not the only real,
existing things. Did not Julius Caesar show himself as much of a man in
conducting his campaigns as in composing his Commentaries? Or was the
Retreat of the Ten Thousand under Xenophon, or his work of that name,
the most consummate performance? Or would not Lovelace, supposing him
to have existed and to have conceived and executed all his fine
stratagems on the spur of the occasion, have been as clever a fellow as
Richardson, who invented them in cold blood? If to conceive and
describe an heroic character is the height of a literary ambition, we
can hardly make it out that to be and to do all that the wit of man can
feign is nothing. To use means to ends; to set causes in motion; to
wield the machine of society; to subject the wills of others to your
own; to manage abler men than yourself by means of that which is
stronger in them than their wisdom, viz. their weakness and their folly;
to calculate the resistance of ignorance and prejudice to your designs,
and by obviating, to turn them to account; to foresee a long, obscure,
and complicated train of events, of chances and openings of success; to
unwind the web of others' policy and weave your own out of it; to judge
of the effects of things, not in the abstract, but with reference to all
their bearings, ramifications, and impediments; to understand character
thoroughly; to see latent talent or lurking treachery; to know mankind
for what they are, and use them as they deserve; to have a purpose
steadily in view, and to effect it after removing every obstacle; to
master others and be true to yourself,--asks power and knowledge, both
nerves and brain.
Such is the sort of talent that that may be shown and that has been
possessed by the great leaders on the stage of the world. To accomplish
great things argues, I imagine, great resolution: to design great things
implies no common mind. Ambition is in some sort genius. Though I
would rather wear out my life in arguing a broad speculative question
than in caballing for the election to a wardmote, or canvassing for
votes in a rotten borough, yet I should think that the loftiest
Epicurean philosopher might descend from his punctilio to identify
himself with the support of a great principle, or to prop a falling
state. This is what the legislators and founders of empire did of old;
and the permanence of their institutions showed the depth of the
principles from which they emanated. A tragic poem is not the worse for
acting well: if it will not bear this test it savours of effeminacy.
Well-digested schemes will stand the touchstone of experience. Great
thoughts reduced to practice become great acts. Again, great acts grow
out of great occasions, and great occasions spring from great
principles, working changes in society, and tearing it up by the roots.
But I still conceive that a genius for actions depends essentially on
the strength of the will rather than on that of the understanding; that
the long-headed calculation of causes and consequences arises from the
energy of the first cause, which is the will setting others in motion
and prepared to anticipate the results; that its sagacity is activity
delighting in meeting difficulties and adventures more than half-way,
and its wisdom courage not to shrink from danger, but to redouble its
efforts with opposition. Its humanity, if it has much, is magnanimity
to spare the vanquished, exulting in power but not prone to mischief,
with good sense enough to be aware of the instability of fortune, and
with some regard to reputation. What may serve as a criterion to try
this question by is the following consideration, that we sometimes find
as remarkable a deficiency of the speculative faculty coupled with great
strength of will and consequent success in active life as we do a want
of voluntary power and total incapacity for business frequently joined
to the highest mental qualifications. In some cases it will happen that
'to be wise is to be obstinate.' If you are deaf to reason but stick to
your own purposes, you will tire others out, and bring them over to your
way of thinking. Self-will and blind prejudice are the best defence of
actual power and exclusive advantages. The forehead of the late king
was not remarkable for the character of intellect, but the lower part of
his face was expressive of strong passions and fixed resolution.
Charles Fox had an animated, intelligent eye, and brilliant, elastic
forehead (with a nose indicating fine taste), but the lower features
were weak, unsettled, fluctuating, and without _purchase_--it was in
them the Whigs were defeated. What a fine iron binding Buonaparte had
round his face, as if it bad been cased in steel! What sensibility
about the mouth! What watchful penetration in the eye! What a smooth,
unruffled forehead! Mr. Pitt, with little sunken eyes, had a high,
retreating forehead, and a nose expressing pride and aspiring
self-opinion: it was on that (with submission) that he suspended the
decisions of the House of Commons and dangled the Opposition as he
pleased. Lord Castlereagh is a man rather deficient than redundant in
words and topics. He is not (any more than St. Augustine was, in the
opinion of La Fontaine) so great a wit as Rabelais, nor is he so great a
philosopher as Aristotle; but he has that in him which is not to be
trifled with. He has a noble mask of a face (not well filled up in the
expression, which is relaxed and dormant) with a fine person and manner.
On the strength of these he hazards his speeches in the House. He has
also a knowledge of mankind, and of the composition of the House. He
takes a thrust which he cannot parry on his shield--is 'all tranquillity
and smiles' under a volley of abuse, sees when to pay a compliment to a
wavering antagonist, soothes the melting mood of his hearers, or gets up
a speech full of indignation, and knows how to bestow his attentions on
that great public body, whether he wheedles or bullies, so as to bring
it to compliance. With a long reach of undefined purposes (the result
of a temper too indolent for thought, too violent for repose) he has
equal perseverance and pliancy in bringing his objects to pass. I would
rather be Lord Castlereagh, as far as a sense of power is concerned
(principle is out of the question), than such a man as Mr. Canning, who
is a mere fluent sophist, and never knows the limit of discretion, or
the effect which will be produced by what he says, except as far as
florid common-places may be depended on. Buonaparte is referred by Mr.
Coleridge to the class of active rather than of intellectual characters;
and Cowley has left an invidious but splendid eulogy on Oliver Cromwell,
which sets out on much the same principle. 'What,' he says, 'can be
more extraordinary than that a person of mean birth, no fortune, no
eminent qualities of body, which have sometimes, or of mind, which have
often, raised men to the highest dignities, should have the courage to
attempt, and the happiness to succeed in, so improbable a design as the
destruction of one of the most ancient and most solidly-founded
monarchies upon the earth? That he should have the power or boldness to
put his prince and master to an open and infamous death; to banish that
numerous and strongly-allied family; to do all this under the name and
wages of a Parliament; to trample upon them too as he pleased, and spurn
them out of doors when he grow weary of them; to raise up a new and
unheard-of monster out of their ashes; to stifle that in the very
infancy, and set up himself above all things that ever were called
sovereign in England; to oppress all his enemies by arms, and all his
friends afterwards by artifice; to serve all parties patiently for a
while, and to command them victoriously at last; to overrun each corner
of the three nations, and overcome with equal facility both the riches
of the south and the poverty of the north; to be feared and courted by
all foreign princes, and adopted a brother to the Gods of the earth; to
call together Parliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them again
with the breath of his mouth; to be humbly and daily petitioned that be
would please to be hired, at the rate of two millions a year, to be the
master of those who had hired him before to be their servant; to have
the estates and lives of three kingdoms as much at his disposal as was
the little inheritance of his father, and to be as noble and liberal in
the spending of them; and lastly (for there is no end of all the
particulars of his glory), to bequeath all this with one word to his
posterity; to die with peace at home, and triumph abroad; to be buried
among kings, and with more than regal solemnity; and to leave a name
behind him, not to be extinguished but with the whole world; which as it
is now too little for his praises, so might have been too for his
conquests, if the short line of his human life could have been stretched
out to the extent of his immortal designs!'
Cromwell was a bad speaker and a worse writer. Milton wrote his
despatches for him in elegant and erudite Latin; and the pen of the one,
like the sword of the other, was 'sharp and sweet.' We have not that
union in modern times of the heroic and literary character which was
common among the ancients. Julius Caesar and Xenophon recorded their
own acts with equal clearness of style and modesty of temper. The Duke
of Wellington (worse off than Cromwell) is obliged to get Mr. Mudford to
write the History of his Life. Sophocles, AEschylus, and Socrates were
distinguished for their military prowess among their contemporaries,
though now only remembered for what they did in poetry and philosophy.
Cicero and Demosthenes, the two greatest orators of antiquity, appear to
have been cowards: nor does Horace seem to give a very favourable
picture of his martial achievements. But in general there was not that
division in the labours of the mind and body among the Greeks and Romans
that has been introduced among us either by the progress of civilisation
or by a greater slowness and inaptitude of parts. The French, for
instance, appear to unite a number of accomplishments, the literary
character and the man of the world, better than we do. Among us, a
scholar is almost another name for a pedant or a clown: it is not so
with them. Their philosophers and wits went into the world and mingled
in the society of the fair. Of this there needs no other proof than the
spirited print of most of the great names in French literature, to whom
Moliere is reading a comedy in the presence of the celebrated Ninon de
l'Enclos. D'Alembert, one of the first mathematicians of his age, was a
wit, a man of gallantry and letters. With us a learned man is absorbed
in himself and some particular study, and minds nothing else. There is
something ascetic and impracticable in his very constitution, and he
answers to the description of the Monk in Spenser--
From every work he challenged essoin
For contemplation's sake.
Perhaps the superior importance attached to the institutions of
religion, as well as the more abstracted and visionary nature of its
objects, has led (as a general result) to a wider separation between
thought and action in modern times.
Ambition is of a higher and more heroic strain than avarice. Its
objects are nobler, and the means by which it attains its ends less
mechanical.
Better be lord of them that riches have,
Than riches have myself, and be their servile slave.
The incentive to ambition is the love of power; the spur to avarice is
either the fear of poverty or a strong desire of self-indulgence. The
amassers of fortunes seem divided into two opposite classes--lean,
penurious-looking mortals, or jolly fellows who are determined to get
possession of, because they want to enjoy, the good things of the world.
The one have famine and a workhouse always before their eyes; the
others, in the fulness of their persons and the robustness of their
constitutions, seem to bespeak the reversion of a landed estate, rich
acres, fat beeves, a substantial mansion, costly clothing, a chine and
curkey, choice wines, and all other good things consonant to the wants
and full-fed desires of their bodies. Such men charm fortune by the
sleekness of their aspects and the goodly rotundity of their honest
faces, as the others scare away poverty by their wan, meagre looks. The
last starve themselves into riches by care and carking; the first eat,
drink, and sleep their way into the good things of this life. The
greatest number of _warm_ men in the city are good, jolly follows. Look
at Sir William -----. Callipash and callipee are written in his face:
he rolls about his unwieldy bulk in a sea of turtle-soup. How many
haunches of venison does he carry on his back! He is larded with jobs
and contracts: he is stuffed and swelled out with layers of bank-notes
and invitations to dinner! His face hangs out a flag of defiance to
mischance: the roguish twinkle in his eye with which he lures half the
city and beats Alderman ----- hollow, is a smile reflected from heaps of
unsunned gold! Nature and Fortune are not so much at variance as to
differ about this fellow. To enjoy the good the Gods provide us is to
deserve it. Nature meant him for a Knight, Alderman, and City Member;
and Fortune laughed to see the goodly person and prospects of the
man![2] I am not, from certain early prejudices, much to admire the
ostentatious marks of wealth (there are persons enough to admire them
without me)--but I confess, there is something in the look of the old
banking-houses in Lombard Street, the posterns covered with mud, the
doors opening sullenly and silently, the absence of all pretence, the
darkness and the gloom within, the gleaming of lamps in the day-time,
Like a faint shadow of uncertain light,
that almost realises the poetical conception of the cave of Mammon in
Spenser, where dust and cobwebs concealed the roofs and pillars of solid
gold, and lifts the mind quite off its ordinary hinges. The account of
the manner in which the founder of Guy's Hospital accumulated his
immense wealth has always to me something romantic in it, from the same
force of contrast. He was a little shop-keeper, and out of his savings
bought Bibles and purchased seamen's tickets in Queen Anne's wars, by
which he left a fortune of two hundred thousand pounds. The story
suggests the idea of a magician; nor is there anything in the _Arabian
Nights_ that looks more like a fiction.
NOTES to ESSAY XI
[1] When Buonaparte left the Chamber of Deputies to go and fight his
last fatal battle, he advised them not to be debating the forms of
Constitutions when the enemy was at their gates. Benjamin Constant
thought otherwise. He wanted to play a game at _cat's-cradle_ between
the Republicans and Royalists, and lost his match. He did not care, so
that he hampered a more efficient man than himself.
[2] A thorough fitness for any end implies the means. Where there is a
will, there is a way. A real passion, an entire devotion to any object,
always succeeds. The strong sympathy with what we wish and imagine
realises it, dissipates all obstacles, and removes all scruples. The
disappointed lover may complain as much as he pleases. He was himself
to blame. He was a half-witted, _wishy-washy_ fellow. His love might
be as great as he makes it out; but it was not his ruling passion. His
fear, his pride, his vanity was greater. Let any one's whole soul be
steeped in this passion; let him think and care for nothing else; let
nothing divert, cool, or intimidate him; let the _ideal_ feeling become
an actual one and take possession of his whole faculties, looks, and
manner; let the same voluptuous hopes and wishes govern his actions in
the presence of his mistress that haunt his fancy in her absence, and I
will answer for his success. But I will not answer for the success of
'a dish of skimmed milk' in such a case.--I could always get to see a
fine collection of pictures myself. The fact is, I was set upon it.
Neither the surliness of porters nor the impertinence of footmen could
keep me back. I had a portrait of Titian in my eye, and nothing could
put me out in my determination. If that had not (as it were) been
looking on me all the time I was battling my way, I should have been
irritated or disconcerted, and gone away. But my liking to the end
conquered my scruples or aversion to the means. I never understood the
Scotch character but on these occasions. I would not take 'No' for an
answer. If I had wanted a place under government or a writership to
India, I could have got it from the same importunity, and on the same
terms.
ESSAY XII
ON WILL-MAKING
Few things show the human character in a more ridiculous light than the
circumstance of will-making. It is the latest opportunity we have of
exercising the natural perversity of the disposition, and we take care
to make a good use of it. We husband it with jealousy, put it off as
long as we can, and then use every precaution that the world shall be no
gainer by our deaths. This last act of our lives seldom belies the
former tenor of them for stupidity, caprice, and unmeaning spite. All
that we seem to think of is to manage matters so (in settling accounts
with those who are so unmannerly as to survive us) as to do as little
good, and to plague and disappoint as many people, as possible.
Many persons have a superstition on the subject of making their last
will and testament, and think that when everything is ready signed and
sealed, there is nothing further left to delay their departure. I have
heard of an instance of one person who, having a feeling of this kind on
his mind, and being teased into making his will by those about him,
actually fell ill with pure apprehension, and thought he was going to
die in good earnest, but having executed the deed over-night, awoke, to
his great surprise, the next morning, and found himself as well as ever
he was.[1]
An elderly gentleman possessed of a good estate and the same idle
notion, and who found himself in a dangerous way, was anxious to do this
piece of justice to those who remained behind him, but when it came to
the point, his heart failed him, and his nervous fancies returned in
full force. Even on his death-bed he still held back and was averse to
sign what he looked upon as his own death-warrant, and just at the last
gasp, amidst the anxious looks and silent upbraidings of friends and
relatives that surrounded him, be summoned resolution to hold out his
feeble hand, which was guided by others, to trace his name, and he fell
back--a corpse! If there is any pressing reason for it, that is, if any
particular person would be relieved from a state of harassing
uncertainty or materially benefited by their making a will, the old and
infirm (who do not like to be put out of their way) generally make this
an excuse to themselves for putting it off to the very last moment,
probably till it is too late; or where this is sure to make the greatest
number of blank faces, contrive to give their friends the slip, without
signifying their final determination in their favour. Where some
unfortunate individual has been kept long in suspense, who has been
perhaps sought out for that very purpose, and who may be in a great
measure dependent on this as a last resource, it is nearly a certainty
that there will be no will to be found; no trace, no sign to discover
whether the person dying thus intestate ever had any intention of the
sort, or why they relinquished it. This is to bespeak the thoughts and
imaginations of others for victims after we are dead, as well as their
persons and expectations for hangers-on while we are living. A
celebrated beauty of the middle of the last century, towards its close,
sought out a female relative, the friend and companion of her youth, who
had lived during the forty years of their separation in rather
straitened circumstances, and in a situation which admitted of some
alleviations. Twice they met after that long lapse of time--once her
relation visited her in the splendour of a rich old family mansion, and
once she crossed the country to become an inmate of the humble dwelling
of her early and only remaining friend. What was this for? Was it to
revive the image of her youth in the pale and careworn face of her
friend? Or was it to display the decay of her charms and recall her
long-forgotten triumphs to the memory of the only person who could bear
witness to them? Was it to show the proud remains of herself to those
who remembered or had often heard what she was--her skin like shrivelled
alabaster, her emaciated features chiselled by Nature's finest hand, her
eyes that, when a smile lighted them up, still shone like diamonds, the
vermilion hues that still bloomed among wrinkles? Was it to talk of
bone-lace, of the flounces and brocades of the last century, of
race-balls in the year '62, and of the scores of lovers that had died at
her feet, and to set whole counties in a flame again, only with a dream
of faded beauty? Whether it was for this, or whether she meant to leave
her friend anything (as was indeed expected, all things considered, not
without reason), nobody knows--for she never breathed a syllable on the
subject herself, and died without a will. The accomplished coquette of
twenty, who had pampered hopes only to kill them, who had kindled
rapture with a look and extinguished it with a breath, could find no
better employment at seventy than to revive the fond recollections and
raise up the drooping hopes of her kinswoman only to let them fall--to
rise no more. Such is the delight we have in trifling with and
tantalising the feelings of others by the exquisite refinements, the
studied sleights of love or friendship!
Where a property is actually bequeathed, supposing the circumstances of
the case and the usages of society to leave a practical discretion to
the testator, it is most frequently in such portions as can be of the
least service. Where there is much already, much is given; where much
is wanted, little or nothing. Poverty invites a sort of pity, a
miserable dole of assistance; necessity, neglect and scorn; wealth
attracts and allures to itself more wealth by natural association of
ideas or by that innate love of inequality and injustice which is the
favourite principle of the imagination. Men like to collect money into
large heaps in their lifetime; they like to leave it in large heaps
after they are dead. They grasp it into their own hands, not to use it
for their own good, but to hoard, to lock it up, to make an object, an
idol, and a wonder of it. Do you expect them to distribute it so as to
do others good; that they will like those who come after them better
than themselves; that if they were willing to pinch and starve
themselves, they will not deliberately defraud their sworn friends and
nearest kindred of what would be of the utmost use to them? No, they
will thrust their heaps of gold and silver into the hands of others (as
their proxies) to keep for them untouched, still increasing, still of no
use to any one, but to pamper pride and avarice, to glitter in the huge,
watchful, insatiable eye of fancy, to be deposited as a new offering at
the shrine of Mammon, their God,--this is with them to put it to its
intelligible and proper use; this is fulfilling a sacred, indispensable
duty; this cheers them in the solitude of the grave, and throws a gleam
of satisfaction across the stony eye of death. But to think of
frittering it down, of sinking it in charity, of throwing it away on the
idle claims of humanity, where it would no longer peer in monumental
pomp over their heads,--and that, too, when on the point of death
themselves, _in articulo mortis,_ oh! it would be madness, waste,
extravagance, impiety!--Thus worldlings feel and argue without knowing
it; and while they fancy they are studying their own interest or that of
some booby successor, their _alter idem,_ are but the dupes and puppets
of a favourite idea, a phantom, a prejudice, that must be kept up
somewhere (no matter where), if it still plays before and haunts their
imagination, while they have sense or understanding left to cling to
their darling follies.
There was a remarkable instance of this tendency _to the heap,_ this
desire to cultivate an abstract passion for wealth, in a will of one of
the Thelussons some time back. This will went to keep the greater part
of a large property from the use of the natural heirs and next-of-kin
for a length of time, and to let it accumulate at compound interest in
such a way and so long, that it would at last mount up in value to the
purchase-money of a whole county. The interest accruing from the funded
property or the rent of the lands at certain periods was to be employed
to purchase other estates, other parks and manors in the neighbourhood
or farther off, so that the prospect of the future demesne that was to
devolve at some distant time to the unborn lord of acres swelled and
enlarged itself, like a sea, circle without circle, vista beyond vista,
till the imagination was staggered and the mind exhausted. Now here was
a scheme for the accumulation of wealth and for laying the foundation of
family aggrandisement purely imaginary, romantic--one might almost say,
disinterested. The vagueness, the magnitude, the remoteness of the
object, the resolute sacrifice of all immediate and gross advantages,
clothe it with the privileges of an abstract idea, so that the project
has the air of a fiction or of a story in a novel. It was an instance
of what might be called posthumous avarice, like the love of posthumous
fame. It had little more to do with selfishness than if the testator
had appropriated the same sums in the same way to build a pyramid, to
construct an aqueduct, to endow a hospital, or effect any other
patriotic or merely fantastic purpose. He wished to heap up a pile of
wealth (millions of acres) in the dim horizon of future years, that
could be of no use to him or to those with whom he was connected by
positive and personal ties, but as a crotchet of the brain, a gewgaw of
the fancy.[2] Yet to enable himself to put this scheme in execution, he
had perhaps toiled and watched all his life, denied himself rest, food,
pleasure, liberty, society, and persevered with the patience and
self-denial of a martyr. I have insisted on this point the more, to
show how much of the imaginary and speculative there is interfused even
in those passions and purposes which have not the good of others for
their object, and how little reason this honest citizen and builder of
castles in the air would have had to treat those who devoted themselves
to the pursuit of fame, to obloquy and persecution for the sake of truth
and liberty, or who sacrificed their lives for their country in a just
cause, as visionaries and enthusiasts, who did not understand what was
properly due to their own interest and the securing of the main chance.
Man is not the creature of sense and selfishness, even in those pursuits
which grow out of that origin, so much as of imagination, custom,
passion, whim, and humour.
I have heard of a singular instance of a will made by a person who was
addicted to a habit of lying. He was so notorious for this propensity
(not out of spite or cunning, but as a gratuitous exercise of invention)
that from a child no one could ever believe a syllable he uttered. From
the want of any dependence to be placed on him, he became the jest and
by-word of the school where he was brought up. The last act of his life
did not disgrace him; for, having gone abroad, and falling into a
dangerous decline, he was advised to return home. He paid all that he
was worth for his passage, went on ship-board, and employed a few
remaining days be had to live in making and executing his will; in which
he bequeathed large estates in different parts of England, money in the
funds, rich jewels, rings, and all kinds of valuables to his old friends
and acquaintance, who, not knowing how far the force of nature could go,
were not for some time convinced that all this fairy wealth had never
had an existence anywhere but in the idle coinage of his brain, whose
whims and projects were no more!--The extreme keeping in this character
is only to be accounted for by supposing such an original constitutional
levity as made truth entirely indifferent to him, and the serious
importance attached to it by others an object of perpetual sport and
ridicule!
The art of will-making chiefly consists in baffling the importunity of
expectation. I do not so much find fault with this when it is done as a
punishment and oblique satire on servility and selfishness. It is in
that case _Diamond cut Diamond_--a trial of skill between the
legacy-hunter and the legacy-maker, which shall fool the other. The
cringing toad-eater, the officious tale-bearer, is perhaps well paid for
years of obsequious attendance with a bare mention and a mourning-ring;
nor can I think that Gil Blas' library was not quite as much as the
coxcombry of his pretensions deserved. There are some admirable scenes
in Ben Jonson's _Volpone,_ showing the humours of a legacy-hunter, and
the different ways of fobbing him off with excuses and assurances of not
being forgotten. Yet it is hardly right, after all, to encourage this
kind of pitiful, barefaced intercourse without meaning to pay for it, as
the coquette has no right to jilt the lovers she has trifled with.
Flattery and submission are marketable commodities like any other, have
their price, and ought scarcely to be obtained under false pretences.
If we see through and despise the wretched creature that attempts to
impose on our credulity, we can at any time dispense with his services:
if we are soothed by this mockery of respect and friendship, why not pay
him like any other drudge, or as we satisfy the actor who performs a
part in a play by our particular desire? But often these premeditated
disappointments are as unjust as they are cruel, and are marked with
circumstances of indignity, in proportion to the worth of the object.
The suspecting, the taking it for granted that your name is down in the
will, is sufficient provocation to have it struck out: the hinting at an
obligation, the consciousness of it on the part of the testator, will
make him determined to avoid the formal acknowledgment of it at any
expense. The disinheriting of relations is mostly for venial offences,
not for base actions: we punish out of pique, to revenge some case in
which we been disappointed of our wills, some act of disobedience to
what had no reasonable ground to go upon; and we are obstinate in
adhering to our resolution, as it was sudden and rash, and doubly bent
on asserting our authority in what we have least right to interfere in.
It is the wound inflicted upon our self-love, not the stain upon the
character of the thoughtless offender, that calls for condign
punishment. Crimes, vices may go unchecked or unnoticed; but it is the
laughing at our weaknesses, or thwarting our humours, that is never to
be forgotten. It is not the errors of others, but our own
miscalculations, on which we wreak our lasting vengeance. It is
ourselves that we cannot forgive. In the will of Nicholas Gimcrack the
virtuoso, recorded in the _Tatler,_ we learn, among other items, that
his eldest son is cut off with a single cockleshell for his undutiful
behaviour in laughing at his little sister whom his father kept
preserved in spirits of wine. Another of his relations has a collection
of grasshoppers bequeathed him, as in the testator's opinion an adequate
reward and acknowledgment due to his merit. The whole will of the said
Nicholas Gimcrack, Esq., is a curious document and exact picture of the
mind of the worthy virtuoso defunct, where his various follies,
littlenesses, and quaint humours are set forth as orderly and distinct
as his butterflies' wings and cockle-shells and skeletons of fleas in
glass cases.[3] We often successfully try, in this way, to give the
finishing stroke to our pictures, hang up our weaknesses in perpetuity,
and embalm our mistakes in the memories of others.
Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries,
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.
I shall not speak here of unwarrantable commands imposed upon survivors,
by which they were to carry into effect the sullen and revengeful
purposes of unprincipled men, after they had breathed their last; but we
meet with continual examples of the desire to keep up the farce (if not
the tragedy) of life after we, the performers in it, have quitted the
stage, and to have our parts rehearsed by proxy. We thus make a caprice
immortal, a peculiarity proverbial. Hence we see the number of legacies
and fortunes left on condition that the legatee shall take the name and
style of the testator, by which device we provide for the continuance of
the sounds that formed our names, and endow them with an estate, that
they may be repeated with proper respect. In the _Memoirs of an
Heiress_ all the difficulties of the plot turn on the necessity imposed
by a clause in her uncle's will that her future husband should take the
family name of Beverley. Poor Cecilia! What delicate perplexities she
was thrown into by this improvident provision; and with what minute,
endless, intricate distresses has the fair authoress been enabled to
harrow up the reader on this account! There was a Sir Thomas Dyot in
the reign of Charles II. who left the whole range of property which
forms Dyot Street, in St. Giles's, and the neighbourhood, on the sole
and express condition that it should be appropriated entirely to that
sort of buildings, and to the reception of that sort of population,
which still keeps undisputed, undivided possession of it. The name was
changed the other day to George Street as a more genteel appellation.
which, I should think, is an indirect forfeiture of the estate. This
Sir Thomas Dyot I should be disposed to put upon the list of old English
worthies--as humane, liberal, and no flincher from what he took in his
head. He was no common-place man in his line. He was the best
commentator on that old-fashioned text--'The foxes have holes, and the
birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay
his head.' We find some that are curious in the mode in which they
shall be buried, and others in the place. Lord Camelford had his
remains buried under an ash tree that grew on one of the mountains in
Switzerland; and Sir Francis Bourgeois had a little mausoleum built for
him in the college at Dulwich, where he once spent a pleasant, jovial
day with the masters and wardens.[4] It is, no doubt, proper to attend,
except for strong reasons to the contrary, to these sort of requests;
for by breaking faith with the dead we loosen the confidence of the
living. Besides, there is a stronger argument: we sympathise with the
dead as well as with the living, and are bound to them by the most
sacred of all ties, our own involuntary follow-feeling with others!
Thieves, as a last donation, leave advice to their friends, physicians a
nostrum, authors a manuscript work, rakes a confession of their faith in
the virtue of the sex--all, the last drivellings of their egotism and
impertinence. One might suppose that if anything could, the approach
and contemplation of death might bring men to a sense of reason and
self-knowledge. On the contrary, it seems only to deprive them of the
little wit they had, and to make them even more the sport of their
wilfulness and shortsightedness. Some men think that because they are
going to be hanged, they are fully authorised to declare a future state
of rewards and punishments. All either indulge their caprices or cling
to their prejudices. They make a desperate attempt to escape from
reflection by taking hold of any whim or fancy that crosses their minds,
or by throwing themselves implicitly on old habits and attachments.
An old man is twice a child: the dying man becomes the property of his
family. He has no choice left, and his voluntary power is merged in old
saws and prescriptive usages. The property we have derived from our
kindred reverts tacitly to them; and not to let it take its course is a
sort of violence done to nature as well as custom. The idea of
property, of something in common, does not mix cordially with
friendship, but is inseparable from near relationship. We owe a return
in kind, where we feel no obligation for a favour; and consign our
possessions to our next-of-kin as mechanically as we lean our heads on
the pillow, and go out of the world in the same state of stupid
amazement that we came into it!. . ._Caetera desunt._
NOTES to ESSAY XII
[1] A poor woman at Plymouth who did not like the formality, or could
not afford the expense of a will, thought to leave what little property
she had in wearing apparel and household moveables to her friends and
relations, _viva voce_, and before Death stopped her breath. She gave
and willed away (of her proper authority) her chair and table to one,
her bed to another, an old cloak to a third, a night-cap and petticoat
to a fourth, and so on. The old crones sat weeping round, and soon
after carried off all they could lay their hands upon, and left their
benefactress to her fate. They were no sooner gone than she
unexpectedly recovered, and sent to have her things back again; but not
one of them could she get, and she was left without a rag to her back,
or a friend to condole with her.
[2] The law of primogeniture has its origin in the principle here
stated, the desire of perpetuating some one palpable and prominent proof
of wealth and power.
[3] It is as follows:
'The Will of a Virtuoso.
I, Nicholas Gimcrack, being in sound Health of Mind, but in great
Weakness of Body, do by this my Last Will and Testament bequeath my
worldly Goods and Chattels in Manner following:--
Imprimis, To my dear Wife,
One Box of Butterflies,
One Drawer of Shells,
A Female Skeleton,
A Dried Cockatrice.
Item, To my Daughter Elizabeth,
My Receipt for preserving dead Caterpillars,
As also my Preparations of Winter May-Dew, and Embrio Pickle.
Item, to my little Daughter Fanny,
Three Crocodiles' Eggs.
And upon the Birth of her first Child, if she marries with her Mother's
Consent,
The Nest of a Humming Bird.
Item, To my eldest Brother, as an acknowledgment for the Lands he has
vested in my Son Charles, I bequeath
My last Year's Collection of Grasshoppers.
Item, To his Daughter Susanna, being his only Child, I bequeath my
English Weeds pasted on Royal Paper,
With my large Folio of Indian Cabbage.
Having fully provided for my Nephew Isaac, by making over to him some
years since
A horned Searaboeus,
The Skin of a Rattle-Snake, and
The Mummy of an Egyptian King,
I make no further Provision for him in this my Will.
I My eldest Son John having spoken disrespectfully of his little Sister,
whom I keep by me in Spirits of Wine, and in many other Instances
behaved himself undutifully towards me, I do disinherit, and wholly cut
off from any Part of this my Personal Estate, by giving him a single
Cockle-Shell.
To my Second Son Charles, I give and bequeath all my Flowers, Plants,
Minerals, Mosses, Shells, Pebbles, Fossils, Beetles, Butterflies,
Caterpillars, Grasshoppers, and Vermin, not above specified : As also my
Monsters, both wet and dry, making the said Charles whole and sole
Executor of this my Last Will and Testament, he paying or causing to be
paid the aforesaid Legacies within the Space of Six Months after my
Decease. And I do hereby revoke all other Wills whatsoever by me
formerly made.'--_Tatler,_ vol. iv. No. 216.
[4] Kellerman lately left his heart to be buried in the field of Valmy,
where the first great battle was fought in the year 1792, in which the
Allies were repulsed. Oh! might that heart prove the root from which
the tree of Liberty may spring up and flourish once more, as the basil
tree grew and grew from the cherished head of Isabella's lover!
ESSAY XIII
ON CERTAIN INCONSISTENCIES IN SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES
The two chief points which Sir Joshua aims at in his _Discourses_ are to
show that excellence in the Fine Arts is the result of pains and study
rather than of genius, and that all beauty, grace, and grandeur are to
be found, not in actual nature, but in an idea existing in the mind. On
both these points he appears to have fallen into considerable
inconsistencies or very great latitude of expression, so as to make it
difficult to know what conclusion to draw from his various reasonings.
I shall attempt little more in this Essay than to bring together several
passages that, from their contradictory import, seem to imply some
radical defect in Sir Joshua's theory, and a doubt as to the possibility
of placing an implicit reliance on his authority.
To begin with the first of these subjects, the question of original
genius. In the Second Discourse, 'On the Method of Study,' Sir Joshua
observes towards the end:
'There is one precept, however, in which I shall only be opposed by the
vain, the ignorant, and the idle. I am not afraid that I shall repeat
it too often. You must have no dependence on your own genius. If you
have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate
abilities, industry will supply their deficiency. Nothing is denied to
well-directed labour; nothing is to be obtained without it. Not to
enter into metaphysical discussions on the nature or essence of genius,
I will venture to assert that assiduity unabated by difficulty, and a
disposition eagerly directed to the object of its pursuit, will produce
effects similar to those which some call the result of _natural
powers.'_
The only tendency of the maxim here laid down seems to be to lure those
students on with the hopes of excellence who have no chance of
succeeding, and to deter those who have from relying on the only prop
and source of real excellence--the strong bent and impulse of their
natural powers. Industry alone can only produce mediocrity; but
mediocrity in art is not worth the trouble of industry. Genius, great
natural powers, will give industry and ardour in the pursuit of their
proper object, but not if you divert them from that object into the
trammels of common-place mechanical labour. By this method you
neutralise all distinction of character--make a pedant of the blockhead
and a drudge of the man of genius. What, for instance, would have been
the effect of persuading Hogarth or Rembrandt to place no dependence on
their own genius, and to apply themselves to the general study of the
different branches of the art and of every sort of excellence, with a
confidence of success proportioned to their misguided efforts, but to
destroy both those great artists? 'You take my house when you do take
the prop that doth sustain my house!' You undermine the superstructure
of art when you strike at its main pillar and support, confidence and
faith in nature. We might as well advise a person who had discovered a
silver or a lead mine on his estate to close it up, or the common farmer
to plough up every acre he rents in the hope of discovering hidden
treasure, as advise the man of original genius to neglect his particular
vein for the study of rules and the imitation of others, or try to
persuade the man of no strong natural powers that he can supply their
deficiency by laborious application. Sir Joshua soon after, in the
Third Discourse, alluding to the terms, _inspiration, genius, gusto,_
applied by critics and orators to painting, proceeds:
'Such is the warmth with which both the Ancients and Moderns speak of
this divine principle of the art; but, as I have formerly observed,
enthusiastic admiration seldom promotes knowledge. Though a student by
such praise may have his attention roused and a desire excited of
running in this great career, yet it is possible that what has been said
to excite may only serve to deter him. He examines his own mind, and
perceives there nothing of that divine inspiration with which, he is
told, so many others have been favoured. He never travelled to heaven
to gather new ideas; and he finds himself possessed of no other
qualifications than what mere common observation and a plain
understanding can confer. Thus he becomes gloomy amidst the splendour
of figurative declamation, and thinks it hopeless to pursue an object
which he supposes out of the reach of human industry.'
Yet presently after he adds:
'It is not easy to define in what this great style consists; nor to
describe by words the proper means of acquiring it, _if the mind of the
student should be at all capable of such an acquisition._ Could we
teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and
genius.'
Here, then, Sir Joshua admits that it is a question whether the student
is likely _to be at all capable of such an acquisition_ as the higher
excellencies of art, though he had said in the passage just quoted above
that it is within the reach of constant assiduity and of a disposition
eagerly directed to the object of its pursuit to effect all that is
usually considered as the result of natural powers. Is the theory which
our author means to inculcate a mere delusion, a mere arbitrary
assumption? At one moment Sir Joshua attributes the hopelessness of the
student to attain perfection to the discouraging influence of certain
figurative and overstrained expressions, and in the next doubts his
capacity for such an acquisition under any circumstances. Would he have
him hope against hope, then? If he 'examines his own mind and finds
nothing there of that divine inspiration with which he is told so many
others have been favoured,' but which he has never felt himself; if 'he
finds himself possessed of no other qualifications' for the highest
efforts of genius and imagination 'than what mere common observation and
a plain understanding can confer,' be may as well desist at once from
'ascending the brightest heaven of invention':--if the very idea of the
divinity of art deters instead of animating him, if the enthusiasm with
which others speak of it damps the flame in his own breast, he had
better not enter into a competition where he wants the first principle
of success, the daring to aspire and the hope to excel. He may be
assured he is not the man. Sir Joshua himself was not struck at first
by the sight of the masterpieces of the great style of art, and he seems
unconsciously to have adopted this theory to show that he might still
have succeeded in it but for want of due application. His hypothesis
goes to this--to make the common run of his readers fancy they can do
all that can be done by genius, and to make the mail of genius believe
he can only do what is to be done by mechanical rules and systematic
industry. This is not a very feasible scheme; nor is Sir Joshua
sufficiently clear and explicit in his reasoning in support of it.
In speaking of Carlo Maratti, he confesses the inefficiency of this
doctrine in a very remarkable manner:--
'Carlo Maratti succeeded better than those I have first named, and I
think owes his superiority to the extension of his views: besides his
master Andrea Sacchi, he imitated Raffaelle, Guido, and the Caraccis.
It is true, there is nothing very captivating in Carlo Maratti; but this
proceeded from a want which cannot be completely supplied; that is, want
of strength of parts. _In this certainly men are not equal;_ and a man
can bring home wares only in proportion with the capital with which he
goes to market. Carlo, by diligence, made the most of what he had; but
there was undoubtedly a heaviness about him, which extended itself
uniformly to his invention, expression, his drawing, colouring, and the
general effect of his pictures. The truth is, he never equalled any of
his patterns in any one thing, and he added little of his own.'
Here, then, Reynolds, we see, fairly gives up the argument. Carlo,
after all, was a heavy hand; nor could all his diligence and his making
the most of what he had make up for the want of 'natural powers.' Sir
Joshua's good sense pointed out to him the truth in the individual
instance, though he might be led astray by a vague general theory.
Such, however, is the effect of a false principle that there is an
evident bias in the artist's mind to make genius lean upon others for
support, instead of trusting to itself and developing its own
incommunicable resources. So in treating in the Twelfth Discourse of
the way in which great artists are formed, Sir Joshua reverts very
nearly to his first position:
'The daily food and nourishment of the mind of an Artist is found in the
great works of his predecessors. There is no other way for him to
become great himself. _Serpens, nigi serpentem comederit, non fit
draco._ Raffaelle, as appears from what has been said, had carefully
studied the works of Masaccio, and indeed there was no other, if we
except Michael Angelo (whom he likewise imitated),[1] so worthy of his
attention; and though his manner was dry and hard, his compositions
formal, and not enough diversified, according to the custom of Painters
in that early period, yet his works possess that grandeur and simplicity
which accompany, and even sometimes proceed from, regularity and
hardness of manner. We must consider the barbarous state of the arts
before his time, when skill in drawing was so little understood, that
the best of the painters could not even foreshorten the foot, but every
figure appeared to stand upon his toes, and what served for drapery had,
from the hardness and smallness of the folds, too much the appearance of
cords clinging round the body. He first introduced large drapery,
flowing in an easy and natural manner; indeed, he appears to be the
first who discovered the path that leads to every excellence to which
the art afterwards arrived, and may therefore be justly considered as
one of the Great Fathers of Modern Art.
'Though I have been led on to a longer digression respecting this great
painter than I intended, yet I cannot avoid mentioning another
excellence which he possessed in a very eminent degree: he was as much
distinguished among his contemporaries for his diligence and industry
_as he was for the natural faculties of his mind._ We are told that his
whole attention was absorbed in the pursuit of his art, and that he
acquired the name of Masaccio from his total disregard to his dress, his
person, and all the common concerns of life. He is indeed _a signal
instance of what well-directed diligence_ will do in a short time: he
lived but twenty-seven years, yet in that short space carried the art so
far beyond what it had before reached, that he appears to stand alone as
a model for his successors. Vasari gives a long catalogue of painters
and sculptors who formed their taste and learned their art by studying
his works; among those, he names Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci,
Pietro Perugino, Raffaelle, Bartholomeo, Andrea del Sarto, Il Rosso, and
Pierino del Vaga.'
Sir Joshua here again halts between two opinions. He tells us the names
of the painters who formed themselves upon Masaccio's style: he does not
tell us on whom he formed himself. At one time the natural faculties of
his mind were as remarkable as his industry; at another he was only a
signal instance of what well-directed diligence will do in a short time.
Then again, 'he appears to have been the first who discovered the path
that leads to every excellence to which the Art afterwards arrived,'
though he is introduced in an argument to show that 'the daily food and
nourishment of the mind of the Artist must be found in the works of his
predecessors.' There is something surely very wavering and
unsatisfactory in all this.
Sir Joshua, in another part of his work, endeavours to reconcile and
prop up these contradictions by a paradoxical sophism which I think
turns upon himself. He says: 'I am on the contrary persuaded, that by
imitation only' (by which he has just explained himself to mean the
study of other masters), 'variety, and even originality of invention is
produced. I will go further: even genius, at least, what is so called,
is the child of imitation. But as this appears to be contrary to the
general opinion, I must explain my position before I enforce it.
'Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellencies which are
out of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts can
teach, and which no industry can acquire.
'This opinion of the impossibility of acquiring those beauties which
stamp the work with the character of genius, supposes that it is
something more fixed than in reality it is, and that we always do and
ever did agree in opinion with respect to what should be considered as
the characteristic of genius. But the truth is, that the _degree_ of
excellence which proclaims _Genius_ is different in different times and
different places; and what shows it to be so is, that mankind have often
changed their opinion upon this matter.
'When the Arts were in their infancy, the power of merely drawing the
likeness of any object was considered as one of its greatest efforts.
The common people, ignorant of the principles of art, talk the same
language even to this day. But when it was found that every man could
be taught to do this, and a great deal more, merely by the observance of
certain precepts, the name of Genius then shifted its application, and
was given only to him who added the peculiar character of the object he
represented--to him who had invention, expression, grace, or dignity; in
short, those qualities or excellencies, the power of producing which
could not _then_ be taught by any known and promulgated rules.
'We are very sure that the beauty of form, the expression of the
passions, the art of composition, even the power of giving a general air
of grandeur to a work, is at present very much under the dominion of
rules. These excellencies were heretofore considered merely as the
effects of genius; and justly, if genius is not taken for inspiration,
but as the effect of close observation and experience.'
Sir Joshua began with undertaking to show that 'genius was the child of
the imitation of others, and now it turns out not to be inspiration
indeed, but the effect of close observation and experience.' The whole
drift of this argument appears to be contrary to what the writer
intended, for the obvious inference is that the essence of genius
consists entirely, both in kind and degree, in the single circumstance
of originality. The very same things are or are not genius, according
as they proceed from invention or from mere imitation. In so far as a
thing is original, as it has never been done before, it acquires and it
deserves the appellation of genius: in so far as it is not original, and
is borrowed from others or taught by rule, it is not, neither is it
called, genius. This does not make much for the supposition that genius
is a traditional and second-hand quality. Because, for example, a man
without much genius can copy a picture of Michael Angelo's, does it
follow that there was no genius in the original design, or that the
inventor and copyist are equal? If indeed, as Sir Joshua labours to
prove, mere imitation of existing models and attention to established
rules could produce results exactly similar to those of natural powers,
if the progress of art as a learned profession were a gradual but
continual accumulation of individual excellence, instead of being a
sudden and almost miraculous start to the highest beauty and grandeur
nearly at first, and a regular declension to mediocrity ever after, then
indeed the distinction between genius and imitation would be little
worth contending for; the causes might be different, the effects would
be the same, or rather skill to avail ourselves of external advantages
would be of more importance and efficacy than the most powerful internal
resources. But as the case stands, all the great works of art have been
the offspring of individual genius, either projecting itself before the
general advances of society or striking out a separate path for itself;
all the rest is but labour in vain. For every purpose of emulation or
instruction we go back to the original inventors, not to those who
imitated, and, as it is falsely pretended, improved upon their models:
or if those who followed have at any time attained as high a rank or
surpassed their predecessors, it was not from borrowing their
excellencies, but by unfolding new and exquisite powers of their own, of
which the moving principle lay in the individual mind, and not in the
stimulus afforded by previous example and general knowledge. Great
faults, it is true, may be avoided, but great excellencies can never be
attained in this way. If Sir Joshua's hypothesis of progressive
refinement in art was anything more than a verbal fallacy, why does he
go back to Michael Angelo as the God of his idolatry? Why does he find
fault with Carlo Maratti for being heavy? Or why does he declare as
explicitly as truly, that 'the judgment, after it has been long passive,
by degrees loses its power of becoming active when exertion is
necessary'?--Once more to point out the fluctuation in Sir Joshua's
notions on this subject of the advantages of natural genius and
artificial study, he says, when recommending the proper objects of
ambition to the young artist:
'My advice in a word is this: keep your principal attention fixed upon
the higher excellencies. If you compass them, and compass nothing more,
you are still in the first class. We may regret the innumerable
beauties which you may want; you may be very imperfect, but still you
are an imperfect artist of the highest order.'
This is the Fifth Discourse. In the Seventh our artist seems to waver,
and flings a doubt on his former decision, whereby 'it loses some
colour.'
'Indeed perfection in an inferior style may be reasonably preferred to
mediocrity in the highest walks of art. A landscape of Claude Lorraine
_may_[2] be preferred to a history by Luca Giordano: but hence appears
the necessity of the connoisseur's knowing in what consists the
excellency of each class, in order to judge how near it approaches to
perfection.'
As he advances, however, he grows bolder, and altogether discards his
theory of judging of the artist by the class to which he belongs--'But
we have the sanction of all mankind,' he says, 'in preferring genius in
a lower rank of art to feebleness and insipidity in the highest.' This
is in speaking of Gainsborough. The whole passage is excellent, and, I
should think, conclusive against the general and factitious style of art
on which he insists so much at other times.
'On this ground, however unsafe, I will venture to prophesy, that two of
the last distinguished painters of that country, I mean Pompeio Battoni
and Rafaelle Mengs, however great their names may at present sound in
our ears,[3] will very soon fall into the rank of Imperiale, Sebastian
Concha, Placido Constanza, Musaccio, and the rest of their immediate
predecessors; whose names, though equally renowned in their lifetime,
are now fallen into what is little short of total oblivion. I do not
say that those painters were not superior to the artist I allude to,[4]
and whose loss we lament, in a certain routine of practice, which, to
the eyes of common observers, has the air of a learned composition, and
bears a sort of superficial resemblance to the manner of the great men
who went before them. I know this perfectly well; but I know likewise,
that a man looking for real and lasting reputation must unlearn much of
the common-place method so observable in the works of the artists whom I
have named. For my own part, I confess, I take more interest in and am
more captivated with the powerful impression of nature, which
Gainsborough exhibited in his portraits and in his landscapes, and the
interesting simplicity and elegance of his little ordinary
beggar-children, than with any of the works of that school, since the
time of Andrea Sacchi, or perhaps we may say Carlo Maratti: two painters
who may truly be said to be ULTIMI ROMANORUM.
'I am well aware how much I lay myself open to the censure and ridicule
of the academical professors of other nations in preferring the humble
attempts of Gainsborough to the works of those regular graduates in the
great historical style. _But we have the sanction of all mankind in
preferring genius in a lower rank of art to feebleness and insipidity in
the highest.'_
Yet this excellent artist and critic had said but a few pages before
when working upon his theory--'For this reason I shall beg leave to lay
before you a few thoughts on the subject; to throw out some hints that
may lead your minds to an opinion (which I take to be the true one) that
Painting is not only not to be considered as an imitation operating by
deception, but that it is, and ought to be, in many points of view and
strictly speaking, no imitation at all of external nature. Perhaps it
ought to be as far removed from the vulgar idea of imitation as the
refined, civilised state in which we live is removed from a gross state
of nature; and those who have not cultivated their imaginations, which
the majority of mankind certainly have not, may be said, in regard to
arts, to continue in this state of nature. Such men will always prefer
imitation' (the imitation of nature) 'to that excellence which is
addressed to another faculty that they do not possess; but these are not
the persons to whom a painter is to look, any more than a judge of
morals and manners ought to refer controverted points upon those
subjects to the opinions of people taken from the banks of the Ohio or
from New Holland.'
In opposition to the sentiment here expressed that 'Painting is and
ought to be, in many points of view and strictly speaking, no imitation
at all of external nature,' it is emphatically said in another place:
'Nature is and must be the fountain which alone is inexhaustible, and
from which all excellences must originally flow.'
I cannot undertake to reconcile so many contradictions, nor do I think
it an easy task for the student to derive any simple or intelligible
clue from these conflicting authorities and broken hints in the
prosecution of his art. Sir Joshua appears to have imbibed from others
(Burke or Johnson) a spurious metaphysical notion that art was to be
preferred to nature, and learning to genius, with which his own good
sense and practical observation were continually at war, but from which
he only emancipates himself for a moment to relapse into the same error
again shortly after.[5] The conclusion of the Twelfth Discourse is, I
think, however, a triumphant and unanswerable denunciation of his own
favourite paradox on the objects and study of art.
'Those artists' (he says with a strain of eloquent truth) 'who have
quitted the service of nature (whose service, when well understood, is
perfect freedom) and have put themselves under the direction of I know
not what capricious fantastical mistress, who fascinates and overpowers
their whole mind, and from whose dominion there are no hopes of their
being ever reclaimed (since they appear perfectly satisfied, and not at
all conscious of their forlorn situation), like the transformed
followers of Comus,
Not once perceive their foul disfigurement;
But boast themselves more comely than before.
'Methinks such men who have found out so short a path have no reason to
complain of the shortness of life and the extent of art; since life is
so much longer than is wanted for their improvement, or is indeed
necessary for the accomplishment of their idea of perfection.[6] On the
contrary, he who recurs to nature, at every recurrence renews his
strength. The rules of art he is never likely to forget; they are few
and simple: but Nature is refined, subtle, and infinitely various,
beyond the power and retention of memory; it is necessary therefore to
have continual recourse to her. In this intercourse there is no end of
his improvement: the longer he lives, the nearer he approaches to the
true and perfect idea of Art.'
NOTES to ESSAY XIII
[1] How careful is Sir Joshua, even in a parenthesis, to insinuate the
obligations of this great genius to others, as if he would have been
nothing without them.
[2] If Sir Joshua had an offer to exchange a Luca Giordano in his
collection for a Claude Lorraine, he would not have hesitated long about
the preference.
[3] Written in 1788.
[4] Gainsborough.
[5] Sir Joshua himself wanted academic skill and patience In the details
of his profession. From these defects he seems to have been alternately
repelled by each theory and style of art, the simply natural and
elaborately scientific, as it came before him; and in his impatience of
each, to have been betrayed into a tissue of inconsistencies somewhat
difficult to unravel.
[6] He had been before speaking of Boucher, Director of the French
Academy, who told him that 'when he was young, studying his art, he
found it necessary to use models, but that he had left them off for many
years.'
ESSAY XIV
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED
The first inquiry which runs through Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses is
whether the student ought to look at nature with his own eyes or with
the eyes of others, and on the whole, he apparently inclines to the
latter. The second question is what is to be understood by nature;
whether it is a general and abstract idea, or an aggregate of
particulars; and he strenuously maintains the former of these positions.
Yet it is not easy always to determine how far or with what precise
limitations he does so.
The first germ of his speculations on this subject is to be found in two
papers in the _Idler._ In the last paragraph of the second of these, he
says:
'If it has been proved that the painter, by attending to the invariable
and general ideas of nature, produces beauty, he must, by regarding
minute particularities and accidental discrimination, deviate from the
universal rule, and pollute his canvas with deformity.'
In answer to this, I would say that deformity is not the being varied in
the particulars, in which all things differ (for on this principle all
nature, which is made up of individuals, would be a heap of deformity),
but in violating general rules, in which they all or almost all agree.
Thus there are no two noses in the world exactly alike, or without a
great variety of subordinate parts, which may still be handsome, but a
face without any nose at all, or a nose (like that of a mask) without
any particularity in the details, would be a great deformity in art or
nature. Sir Joshua seems to have been led into his notions on this
subject either by an ambiguity of terms, or by taking only one view of
nature. He supposes grandeur, or the general effect of the whole, to
consist in leaving out the particular details, because these details are
sometimes found without any grandeur of effect, and he therefore
conceives the two things to be irreconcilable and the alternatives of
each other. This is very imperfect reasoning. If the mere leaving out
the detail constituted grandeur, any one could do this: the greatest
dauber would at that rate be the greatest artist. A house or sign
painter might instantly enter the lists with Michael Angelo, and might
look down on the little, dry, hard manner of Raphael. But grandeur
depends on a distinct principle of its own, not on a negation of the
parts; and as it does not arise from their omission, so neither is it
incompatible with their insertion or the highest finishing. In fact, an
artist may give the minute particulars of any object one by one and with
the utmost care, and totally neglect the proportions, arrangement, and
general masses, on which the effect of the whole more immediately
depends; or he may give the latter, viz. the proportions and arrangement
of the larger parts and the general masses of light and shade, and leave
all the minuter parts of which those parts are composed a mere blotch,
one general smear, like the first crude and hasty getting in of the
groundwork of a picture: he may do either of these, or he may combine
both, that is, finish the parts, but put them in their right places, and
keep them in due subordination to the general effect and massing of the
whole. If the exclusion of the parts were necessary to the grandeur of
the whole composition, if the more entire this exclusion, if the more
like a _tabula rasa,_ a vague, undefined, shadowy and abstracted
representation the picture was, the greater the grandeur, there could
be no danger of pushing this principle too far, and going the full
length of Sir Joshua's theory without any restrictions or mental
reservations. But neither of these suppositions is true. The greatest
grandeur may coexist with the most perfect, nay with a microscopic
accuracy of detail, as we see it does often in nature: the greatest
looseness and slovenliness of execution may be displayed without any
grandeur at all either in the outline or distribution of the masses of
colour. To explain more particularly what I mean. I have seen and
copied portraits by Titian, in which the eyebrows were marked with a
number of small strokes, like hairlines (indeed, the hairs of which they
were composed were in a great measure given)--but did this destroy the
grandeur of expression, the truth of outline, arising from the
arrangement of these hair-lines in a given form? The grandeur, the
character, the expression remained, for the general form or arched and
expanded outline remained, just as much as if it had been daubed in with
a blacking-brush: the introduction of the internal parts and texture
only added delicacy and truth to the general and striking effect of the
whole. Surely a number of small dots or lines may be arranged into the
form of a square or a circle indiscriminately; the square or circle,
that is, the larger figure, remains the same, whether the line of which
it consists is broken or continuous; as we may see in prints where the
outlines, features, and masses remain the same in all the varieties of
mezzotinto, dotted and lined engraving. If Titian in marking the
appearance of the hairs had deranged the general shape and contour of
the eyebrows, he would have destroyed the look of nature; but as he did
not, but kept both in view, he proportionably improved his copy of it.
So, in what regards the masses of light and shade, the variety, the
delicate transparency and broken transitions of the tints is not
inconsistent with the greatest breadth or boldest contrasts. If the
light, for instance, is thrown strongly on one side of a face, and the
other is cast into deep shade, let the individual and various parts of
the surface be finished with the most scrupulous exactness both in the
drawing and in the colours, provided nature is not exceeded, this will
not nor cannot destroy the force and harmony of the composition. One
side of the face will still have that great and leading distinction of
being seen in shadow, and the other of being seen in the light, let the
subordinate differences be as many and as precise as they will. Suppose
a panther is painted in the sun: will it be necessary to leave out the
spots to produce breadth and the great style, or will not this be done
more effectually by painting the spots of one side of his shaggy coat as
they are seen in the light, and those of the other as they really appear
in natural shadow? The two masses are thus preserved completely, and no
offence is done to truth and nature. Otherwise we resolve the
distribution of light and shade into _local colouring._ The masses, the
grandeur exist equally in external nature with the local differences of
different colours. Yet Sir Joshua seems to argue that the grandeur, the
effect of the whole object, is confined to the general idea in the mind,
and that all the littleness and individuality is in nature. This is an
essentially false view of the subject. This grandeur, this general
effect, is indeed always combined with the details, or what our
theoretical reasoner would designate as _littleness_ in nature: and so
it ought to be in art, as far as art can follow nature with prudence and
profit. What is the fault of Denner's style?--It is, that he does _not_
give this combination of properties: that he gives only one view of
nature; that he abstracts the details, the finishing, the curiosities of
natural appearances from the general result, truth, and character of the
whole, and in finishing every part with elaborate care, totally loses
sight of the more important and striking appearance of the object as it
presents itself to us in nature. He gives every part of a face; but the
shape, the expression, the light and shade of the whole is wrong, and as
far as can be from what is natural. He gives an infinite variety of
tints of the human face, nor are they subjected to any principle of
light and shade. He is different from Rembrandt or Titian. The English
schools, formed on Sir Joshua's theory, give neither the finishing of
the parts nor the effect of the whole, but an inexplicable dumb mass
without distinction or meaning. They do not do as Denner did, and think
that not to do as he did is to do as Titian and Rembrandt did; I do not
know whether they would take it as a compliment to be supposed to
imitate nature. Some few artists, it must be said, have 'of late
reformed this indifferently among us! Oh! let them reform it
altogether!' I have no doubt they would if they could; but I have some
doubts whether they can or not.--Before I proceed to consider the
question of beauty and grandeur as it relates to the selection of form,
I will quote a few passages from Sir Joshua with reference to what has
been said on the imitation of particular objects. In the Third
Discourse he observes: 'I will now add that nature herself is not to be
too closely copied. . . . A mere copier of nature _can never produce
anything great; can never raise and enlarge the conceptions, or warm the
heart of the spectator._ The wish of the genuine painter must be more
extensive: instead of endeavouring to amuse mankind with the minute
neatness of his imitations, he must endeavour to improve them by the
grandeur of his ideas; instead of seeking praise by deceiving the
superficial sense of the spectator, he must strive for fame by
captivating the imagination.'
From this passage it would surely seem that there was nothing in nature
but minute neatness and superficial effect: nothing great in _her_
style, for an imitator of it can produce nothing great; nothing 'to
enlarge the conceptions or warm the heart of the spectator.'
What word hath passed thy lips, Adam severe!
All that is truly grand or excellent is a figment of the imagination, a
vapid creation out of nothing, a pure effect of overlooking and scorning
the minute neatness of natural objects. This will not do. Again, Sir
Joshua lays it down without any qualification that--
'The whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists in being able to get
above all singular forms, local customs, peculiarities, and _details_ of
every kind.'
Yet we find him acknowledging a different opinion.
'I am very ready to allow' (he says, in speaking of history-painting)
'that _some_ circumstances of minuteness and particularity _frequently_
tend to give an air of truth to a piece, and _to interest the spectator
in an extraordinary manner._ Such circumstances therefore cannot wholly
be rejected; but if there be anything in the Art which requires peculiar
nicety of discernment, it is the disposition of these minute,
circumstantial parts, which, according to the judgment employed in the
choice, become so useful to truth or so injurious to grandeur.'
That's true; but the sweeping clause against 'all particularities and
details of every kind' is clearly got rid of. The undecided state of
Sir Joshua's feelings on this subject of the incompatibility between the
whole and the details is strikingly manifested in two short passages
which follow each other in the space of two pages. Speaking of some
pictures of Paul Veronese and Rubens as distinguished by the dexterity
and the unity of style displayed in them, he adds:
'It is by this, and this alone, that the mechanical power is ennobled,
and raised much above its natural rank. And it appears to me that with
propriety it acquires this character, as an instance of that superiority
with which mind predominates over matter, by contracting into one whole
what nature has made multifarious.'
This would imply that the principle of unity and integrity is only in
the mind, and that nature is a heap of disjointed, disconnected
particulars, a chaos of points and atoms. In the very next page the
following sentence occurs:
'As painting is an art, they' (the ignorant) 'think they ought to be
pleased in proportion as they see that art ostentatiously displayed;
they will from this supposition prefer neatness, high finishing, and
gaudy corlouring, to the truth, simplicity, and unity of nature.'
Before, neatness and high finishing were supposed to belong exclusively
to the littleness of nature, but here truth, simplicity, and unity are
her characteristics. Soon after, Sir Joshua says: 'I should be sorry if
what has been said should be understood to have any tendency to
encourage that carelessness which leaves work in an unfinished state. I
commend nothing for the want of exactness; I mean to point out that kind
of exactness which is the best, and which is alone truly to be so
esteemed.' This Sir Joshua has already told us consists in getting
above 'all particularities and details of every kind.' Once more we
find it stated that--
'It is in vain to attend to the variation of tints, if in that attention
the general hue of flesh is lost; or to finish ever so minutely the
parts, if the masses are not observed, or the whole not well put
together.'
Nothing can be truer; but why always suppose the two things at variance
with each other?
'Titian's manner was then new to the world, but that unshaken truth on
which it is founded has fixed it as a model to all succeeding painters;
and those who will examine into the artifice will find it to consist in
the power of generalising, and in the shortness and simplicity of the
means employed.'
Titian's real excellence consisted in the power of generalising and of
_individualising_ at the same time: if it wore merely the former, it
would be difficult to account for the error immediately after pointed
out by Sir Joshua. He says in the very next paragraph:
'Many artists, as Vasari likewise observes, have ignorantly imagined
they are imitating the manner of Titian when they leave their colours
rough and neglect the detail; but not possessing the principles on which
he wrought, they have produced what he calls _goffe pitture_--absurd,
foolish pictures.'
Many artists have also imagined they were following the directions of
Sir Joshua when they did the same thing, that is, neglected the detail,
and produced the same results--vapid generalities, absurd, foolish
pictures.
I will only give two short passages more, and have done with this part
of the subject. I am anxious to confront Sir Joshua with his own
authority:
'The advantage of this method of considering objects (as a whole) is
what I wish now more particularly to enforce. At the same time I do not
forget that a painter must have the power of contracting as well as
dilating his sight; because he that does not at all express particulars
expresses nothing; yet it is certain that a nice discrimination of
minute circumstances and a punctilious delineation of them, whatever
excellence it may have (and I do not mean to detract from it), never did
confer on the artist the character of Genius.'
At page 53 we find the following words:
'Whether it is the human figure, an animal, or even inanimate objects,
there is nothing, however unpromising in appearance. but may be raised
into dignity, convey sentiment. and produce emotion, in the hands of a
Painter of genius. What was said of Virgil, that he threw even the dung
about the ground with an air of dignity, may be applied to Titian;
whatever he touched, however naturally mean, and habitually familiar, by
a kind of magic he invested with grandeur and importance.'--No, not by
magic, but by seeking and finding in individual nature, and combined
with details of every kind, that grace and grandeur and unity of effect
which Sir Joshua supposes to be a mere creation of the artist's brain!
Titian's practice was, I conceive, to give general appearances with
individual forms and circumstances: Sir Joshua's theory goes too often,
and in its prevailing bias, to separate the two things as inconsistent
with each other, and thereby to destroy or bring into question that
union of striking effect with accuracy of resemblance in which the
essence of sound art (as far as relates to imitation) consists.
Farther, as Sir Joshua is inclined to merge the details of individual
objects in general effect, so he is resolved to reduce all beauty or
grandeur in natural objects to a central form or abstract idea of a
certain class, so as to exclude all peculiarities or deviations from
this ideal standard as unfit subjects for the artist's pencil, and as
polluting his canvas with deformity. As the former principle went to
destroy all exactness and solidity in particular things, this goes to
confound all variety, distinctness, and characteristic force in the
broader scale of nature. There is a principle of conformity in nature
or of something in common between a number of individuals of the same
class, but there is also a principle of contrast, of discrimination and
identity, which is equally essential in the system of the universe and
in the structure of our ideas both of art and nature. Sir Joshua would
hardly neutralise the tints of the rainbow to produce a dingy grey, as a
medium or central colour; why, then, should he neutralise all features,
forms, etc., to produce an insipid monotony? He does not indeed
consider his theory of beauty as applicable to colour, which he well
understood, but insists upon and literally enforces it as to form and
ideal conceptions, of which he knew comparatively little, and where his
authority is more questionable. I will not in this place undertake to
show that his theory of a middle form (as the standard of taste and
beauty) is not true of the outline of the human face and figure or other
organic bodies, though I think that even there it is only one principle
or condition of beauty; but I do say that it has little or nothing to do
with those other capital parts of painting, colour, character,
expression, and grandeur of conception. Sir Joshua himself contends
that 'beauty in creatures of the same species is the medium or centre of
all its various forms'; and he maintains that grandeur is the same
abstraction of the species in the individual. Therefore beauty and
grandeur must be the same thing, which they are not; so that this
definition must be faulty. Grandeur I should suppose to imply something
that elevates and expands the mind, which is chiefly power or magnitude.
Beauty is that which soothes and melts it; and its source, I apprehend,
is a certain harmony, softness, and gradation of form, within the limits
of our customary associations, no doubt, or of what we expect of certain
species, but not independent of every other consideration. Our critic
himself confesses of Michael Angelo, whom he regards as the pattern of
the great or sublime style, that 'his people are a superior order of
beings: there is nothing about them, nothing in the air of their actions
or their attitudes, or the style or cast of their limbs or features,
that reminds us of their belonging to our own species. Raffaelle's
imagination is not so elevated; his figures are not so much disjoined
from our own diminutive race of beings, though his ideas are chaste,
noble, and of great conformity to their subjects. Michael Angelo's
works have a strong, peculiar, and marked character: they seem to
proceed from his own mind entirely, and that mind so rich and abundant
that he never needed, or seemed to disdain to look abroad for foreign
help. Raffaelle's materials are generally borrowed, though the noble
structure is his own."[1] How does all this accord with the same
writer's favourite theory that all beauty, all grandeur, and all
excellence consist in an approximation to that central form or habitual
idea of mediocrity, from which every deviation is so much deformity and
littleness? Michael Angelo's figures are raised above our diminutive
race of beings, yet they are confessedly the standard of sublimity in
what regards the human form. Grandeur, then, admits of an exaggeration
of our habitual impressions; and 'the strong, marked, and peculiar
character which Michael Angelo has at the same time given to his works'
does not take away from it. This is fact against argument. I would
take Sir Joshua's word for the goodness of a picture, and for its
distinguishing properties, sooner than I would for an abstract
metaphysical theory. Our artist also speaks continually of high and low
subjects. There can be no distinction of this kind upon his principle,
that the standard of taste is the adhering to the central form of each
species, and that every species is in itself equally beautiful. The
painter of flowers, of shells, or of anything else, is equally elevated
with Raphael or Michael, if he adheres to the generic or established
form of what he paints: the rest, according to this definition, is a
matter of indifference. There must therefore be something besides the
central or customary form to account for the difference of dignity, for
the high and low style in nature or in art. Michael Angelo's figures,
we are
told, are more than ordinarily grand; why, by the same rule, may not
Raphael's be more than ordinarily beautiful, have more than ordinary
softness, symmetry, and grace?--Character and expression are still less
included in the present theory. All character is a departure from the
common-place form; and Sir Joshua makes no scruple to declare that
expression destroys beauty. Thus he says:
'If you mean to preserve the most perfect beauty _in its most perfect
state,_ you cannot express the passions, all of which produce distortion
and deformity, more or less, in the most beautiful faces.'
He goes on: 'Guido, from want of choice in adapting his subject to his
ideas and his powers, or from attempting to preserve beauty where it
could not be preserved, has in this respect succeeded very ill. His
figures are often engaged in subjects that required great expression;
yet his Judith and Holofernes, the daughter of Herodias with the
Baptist's head, the Andromeda, and some even of the Mothers of the
Innocents, have little more expression than his Venus attired by the
Graces.'
What a censure is this passed upon Guido, and what a condemnation of his
own theory, which would reduce and level all that is truly great and
praiseworthy in art to this insipid, tasteless standard, by setting
aside as illegitimate all that does riot come within the middle, central
form! Yet Sir Joshua judges of Hogarth as he deviates from this
standard, not as he excels in individual character, which he says is
only good or tolerable as it partakes of general nature; and he might
accuse Michael Angelo and Raphael, the one for his grandeur of style,
the other for his expression; for neither are what he sets up as the
goal of perfection--I will just stop to remark here that Sir Joshua has
committed himself very strangely in speaking of the character and
expression to be found in the Greek statues. He says in one place:
'I cannot quit the Apollo without making one observation on the
character of this figure. He is supposed to have just discharged his
arrow at the Python; and by the head retreating a little towards the
right shoulder, he appears attentive to its effect. What I would
remark is the difference of this attention from that of the Discobolus,
who is engaged in the same purpose, watching the effect of his Discus.
The graceful, negligent, though animated air of the one, and the vulgar
eagerness of the other, furnish an instance of the judgment of the
ancient Sculptors _in their nice discrimination of character._ They are
both equally true to nature, and equally admirable.' After a few
observations on the limited means of the art of sculpture, and the
inattention of the ancients to almost everything but form, we meet with
the following passage:--
'Those who think Sculpture can express more than we have allowed may
ask, by what means we discover, at the first glance, the character that
is represented in a Bust, a Cameo, or Intaglio? I suspect it will be
found, on close examination, by him who is resolved not to see more
than he really does see, that the figures are distinguished by their
_insignia_ more than by any variety of form or beauty. Take from Apollo
his Lyre, from Bacchus his Thyrsus and Vine-leaves, and Meleager the
Boar's Head, and there will remain little or no difference in their
characters. In a Juno, Minerva, or Flora, the idea of the artist seems
to have gone no further than representing perfect beauty, and afterwards
adding the proper attributes, with a total indifference to which they
gave them.'
[What, then, becomes of that 'nice discrimination of character' for
which our author has just before celebrated them?]
'Thus John De Bologna, after he had finished a group of a young man
holding up a young woman in his arms, with an old man at his feet,
called his friends together, to tell him what name he should give it,
and it was agreed to call it The Rape of the Sabines; and this is the
celebrated group which now stands before the old Palace at Florence.
The figures have the same general expression which is to be found in
most of the antique Sculpture; and yet it would be no wonder if future
critics should find out delicacy of expression which was never intended,
and go so far as to see, in the old man's countenance, the exact
relation which he bore to the woman who appears to be taken from him.'
So it is that Sir Joshua's theory seems to rest on an inclined plane,
and is always glad of an excuse to slide, from the severity of truth and
nature, into the milder and more equable regions of insipidity and
inanity; I am sorry to say so, but so it appears to me.
I confess, it strikes me as a self-evident truth that variety or
contrast is as essential a principle in art and nature as uniformity,
and as necessary to make up the harmony of the universe and the
contentment of the mind. Who would destroy the shifting effects of
light and shade, the sharp, lively opposition of colours in the same or
in different objects, the streaks in a flower, the stains in a piece of
marble, to reduce all to the same neutral, dead colouring, the same
middle tint? Yet it is on this principle that Sir Joshua would get rid
of all variety, character, expression, and picturesque effect in forms,
or at least measure the worth or the spuriousness of all these according
to their reference to or departure from a given or average standard.
Surely, nature is more liberal, art is wider than Sir Joshua's theory.
Allow (for the sake of argument) that all forms are in themselves
indifferent, and that beauty or the sense of pleasure in forms can
therefore only arise from customary association, or from that middle
impression to which they all tend: yet this cannot by the same rule
apply to other things. Suppose there is no capacity in form to affect
the mind except from its corresponding to previous expectation, the same
thing cannot be said of the idea of power or grandeur. No one can say
that the idea of power does not affect the mind with the sense of awe
and sublimity. That is, power and weakness, grandeur and littleness,
are not indifferent things, the perfection of which consists in a medium
between both. Again, expression is not a thing indifferent in itself,
which derives its value or its interest solely from its conformity to a
neutral standard. Who would neutralise the expression of pleasure and
pain? or say that the passions of the human mind--pity, love, joy,
sorrow, etc.--are only interesting to the imagination and worth the
attention of the artist, as he can reduce them to an equivocal state
which is neither pleasant nor painful, neither one thing nor the other?
Or who would stop short of the utmost refinement, precision, and force
in the delineation of each? Ideal expression is not neutral expression,
but extreme expression. Again, character is a thing of peculiarity, of
striking contrast, of distinction, and not of uniformity. It is
necessarily opposed to Sir Joshua's exclusive theory, and yet it is
surely a curious and interesting field of speculation for the human
mind. Lively, spirited discrimination of character is one source of
gratification to the lover of nature and art, which it could not be if
all truth and excellence consisted in rejecting individual traits.
Ideal character is not common-place, but consistent character marked
throughout, which may take place in history or portrait. Historical
truth in a picture is the putting the different features of the face or
muscles of the body into consistent action. The picturesque altogether
depends on particular points or qualities of an object, projecting as it
were beyond the middle line of beauty, and catching the eye of the
spectator. It was less, however, my intention to hazard any
speculations of my own than to confirm the common-sense feelings on the
subject by Sir Joshua's own admissions in different places. In the
Tenth Discourse, speaking of some objections to the Apollo, he has these
remarkable words:--
'In regard to the last objection (viz. that the lower half of the figure
is longer than just proportion allows) it must be remembered that Apollo
is here in the exertion of _one of his peculiar powers,_ which is
swiftness; he has therefore that proportion which is best adapted to
that character. This is no more incorrectness than when there is given
to a Hercules an extraordinary swelling and strength of muscles.'
Strength and activity then do not depend on the middle form; and the
middle form is to be sacrificed to the representation of these positive
qualities. Character is thus allowed not only to be an integrant part
of the antique and classical style of art, but even to take precedence
of and set aside the abstract idea of beauty. Little more would be
required to justify Hogarth in his Gothic resolution, that if he were to
make a figure of Charon, he would give him bandy legs, because watermen
are generally bandy-legged. It is very well to talk of the abstract
idea of a man or of a God, but if you come to anything like an
intelligible proposition, you must either individualise and define, or
destroy the very idea you contemplate. Sir Joshua goes into this
question at considerable length in the Third Discourse:
'To the principle I have laid down, that the idea of beauty in each
species of beings is an invariable one, it may he objected,' he says,
'that in every particular species there are various central forms, which
are separate and distinct from each other, and yet are undeniably
beautiful; that in the human figure, for instance. the beauty of
Hercules is one, of the Gladiator another, of the Apollo another, which
makes so many different ideas of beauty. It is true, indeed, that these
figures are each perfect in their kind, though of different characters
and proportions; but still none of them is the representation of an
individual, but of a class. And as there is one general form, which, as
I have said, belongs to the human kind at large, so in each of these
classes there is one common idea which is the abstract of the various
individual forms belonging to that class. Thus, though the forms of
childhood and age differ exceedingly, there is a common form in
childhood, and a common form in age, which is the more perfect as it is
remote from all peculiarities. But I must add further, that though the
most perfect forms of each of the general divisions of the human figure
are ideal, and superior to any individual form of that class, yet the
highest perfection of the human figure is not to be found in any of
them. It is not in the Hercules, nor in the Gladiator, nor in the
Apollo; but in that form which is taken from all, and which partakes
equally of the activity of the Gladiator, of the delicacy of the Apollo,
and of the muscular strength of the Hercules. For perfect beauty in any
species must combine all the characters which are beautiful in that
species. It cannot consist in any one to the exclusion of the rest: no
one, therefore, must be predominant, that no one may be deficient.'
Sir Joshua here supposes the distinctions of classes and character to be
necessarily combined with the general leading idea of a middle form.
This middle form is not to confound age, sex, circumstance, under one
sweeping abstraction; but we must limit the general ideas by certain
specific differences and characteristic marks, belonging to the several
subordinate divisions and ramifications of each class. This is enough
to show that there is a principle of individuality as well as of
abstraction inseparable from works of art as well as nature. We are to
keep the human form distinct from that of other living beings, that of
men from that of women; we are to distinguish between age and infancy,
between thoughtfulness and gaiety, between strength and softness. Where
is this to stop? But Sir Joshua turns round upon himself in this very
passage, and says: 'No: we are to unite the strength of the Hercules
with the delicacy of the Apollo; for perfect beauty in any species must
combine all the characters which are beautiful in that species.' Now if
these different characters are beautiful in themselves, why not give
them for their own sakes and in their most striking appearances, instead
of qualifying and softening them down in a neutral form; which must
produce a compromise, not a union of different excellences. If all
excess of beauty, if all character is deformity, then we must try to
lose it as fast as possible in other qualities. But if strength is an
excellence, if activity is an excellence, if delicacy is an excellence,
then the perfection, i.e. the highest degree of each of these qualities,
cannot be attained but by remaining satisfied with a less degree of the
rest. But let us hear what Sir Joshua himself advances on this subject
in another part of the _Discourses:_
'Some excellences bear to be united, and are improved by union: others
are of a discordant nature, and the attempt to unite them only produces
a harsh jarring of incongruent principles. The attempt to unite
contrary excellences (of form, for instance[2]) in a single figure can
never escape degenerating into the monstrous but by sinking into the
insipid; by taking away its marked character, and weakening its
expression.
'Obvious as these remarks appear, there are many writers on our art who,
not being of the profession and consequently not knowing what can or
cannot be done, have been very liberal of absurd praises in their
description of favourite works. They always find in them what they are
resolved to find. They praise excellences that can hardly exist
together; and, above all things, are fond of describing with great
exactness the expression of a mixed passion, which more particularly
appears to me out of the reach of our art.[3]
'Such are many disquisitions which I have read on some of the Cartoons
and other pictures of Raffaelle, where the critics have described their
own imaginations; or indeed where the excellent master himself may have
attempted this expression of passions above the powers of the art, and
has, therefore, by an indistinct and imperfect marking, left room for
every imagination with equal probability to find a passion of his own.
What has been, and what can be done in the art, is sufficiently
difficult: we need not be mortified or discouraged at not being able to
execute the conceptions of a romantic imagination. Art has its
boundaries, though imagination has none. We can easily, like the
ancients, suppose a Jupiter to be possessed of all those powers and
perfections which the subordinate Deities were endowed with separately.
Yet when they employed their art to represent him, they confined his
character to majesty alone. Pliny, therefore, though we are under great
obligations to him for the information he has given us in relation to
the works of the ancient artists, is very frequently wrong when he
speaks of them, which he does very often, in the style of many of our
modern connoisseurs. He observes that in a statue of Paris, by
Euphranor, you might discover at the same time three different
characters: the dignity of a Judge of the Goddesses, the Lover of Helen,
and the Conqueror of Achilles. A statue in which you endeavour to unite
stately dignity, youthful elegance, and stern valour, must surely
possess none of these to any eminent degree.
'From hence it appears that there is much difficulty as well as danger
in an endeavour to concentrate in a single subject those various powers
which, rising from various points, naturally move in different
directions.'
What real clue to the art or sound principles of judging the student can
derive from these contradictory statements, or in what manner it is
possible to reconcile them one to the other, I confess I am at a loss to
discover. As it appears to me, all the varieties of nature in the
infinite number of its qualities, combinations, characters, expressions,
incidents, etc., rise from distinct points or centres and must move in
distinct directions, as the forms of different species are to be
referred to a separate standard. It is the object of art to bring them
out in all their force, clearness, and precision, and not to blend them
into a vague, vapid, nondescript _ideal_ conception, which pretends to
unite, but in reality destroys. Sir Joshua's theory limits nature and
paralyses art. According to him, the middle form or the average of our
various impressions is the source from which all beauty, pleasure,
interest, imagination springs. I contend, on the contrary, that this
very variety is good in itself, nor do I agree with him that the whole
of nature as it exists in fact is stark naught, and that there is
nothing worthy of the contemplation of a wise man but that _ideal
perfection_ which never existed in the world nor even on canvas. There
is something fastidious and sickly in Sir Joshua's system. His code of
taste consists too much of negations, and not enough of positive,
prominent qualities. It accounts for nothing but the beauty of the
common Antique, and hardly for that. The merit of Hogarth, I grant, is
different from that of the Greek statues; but I deny that Hogarth is to
be measured by this standard or by Sir Joshua's middle forms: he has
powers of instruction and amusement that, 'rising from a different
point, naturally move in a different direction,' and completely attain
their end. It would be just as reasonable to condemn a comedy for not
having the pathos of a tragedy or the stateliness of an epic poem. If
Sir Joshua Reynolds's theory were true, Dr. Johnson's _Irene_ would be a
better tragedy than any of Shakespear's.
The reasoning of the _Discourses_ is, I think, then, deficient in the
following particulars:
1. It seems to imply that general effect in a picture is produced by
leaving out the details, whereas the largest masses and the grandest
outline are consistent with the utmost delicacy of finishing in the
parts.
2. It makes no distinction between beauty and grandeur, but refers both
to an _ideal_ or middle form, as the centre of the various forms of the
species, and yet inconsistently attributes the grandeur of Michael
Angelo's style to the superhuman appearance of his prophets and
apostles.
3. It does not at any time make mention of power or magnitude in an
object as a distinct source of the sublime (though this is acknowledged
unintentionally in the case of Michael Angelo, etc.), nor of softness or
symmetry of form as a distinct source of beauty, independently of,
though still in connection with another source arising from what we are
accustomed to expect from each individual species.
4. Sir Joshua's theory does not leave room for character, but rejects it
as an anomaly.
5. It does not point out the source of expression, but considers it as
hostile to beauty; and yet, lastly, he allows that the middle form,
carried to the utmost theoretical extent, neither defined by character,
nor impregnated by passion, would produce nothing but vague, insipid,
unmeaning generality.
In a word, I cannot think that the theory here laid down is clear and
satisfactory, that it is consistent with itself, that it accounts for
the various excellences of art from a few simple principles, or that the
method which Sir Joshua has pursued in treating the subject is, as he
himself expresses it, 'a plain and honest method.' It is, I fear, more
calculated to baffle and perplex the student in his progress than to
give him clear lights as to the object he should have in view, or to
furnish him with strong motives of emulation to attain it.
NOTES to ESSAY XIV
[1] The Fifth Discourse.
[2] These are Sir Joshua's words.
[3] I do not know that; but I do not think the two passions could be
expressed by expressing neither or something between both.
ESSAY XV
ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE
I have been sometimes accused of a fondness for paradoxes, but I cannot
in my own mind plead guilty to the charge. I do not indeed swear by an
opinion because it is old; but neither do I fall in love with every
extravagance at first sight because it is new. I conceive that a thing
may have been repeated a thousand times without being a bit more
reasonable than it was the first time: and I also conceive that an
argument or an observation may be very just, though it may so happen
that it was never stated before: but I do not take it for granted that
every prejudice is ill-founded; nor that every paradox is self-evident,
merely because it contradicts the vulgar opinion. Sheridan once said of
some speech in his acute, sarcastic way, that 'it contained a great deal
both of what was new and what was true: but that unfortunately what was
new was not true, and what was true was not new.' This appears to me to
express the whole sense of the question. I do not see much use in
dwelling on a common-place, however fashionable or well established: nor
am I very ambitious of starting the most specious novelty, unless I
imagine I have reason on my side. Originality implies independence of
opinion; but differs as widely from mere singularity as from the tritest
truism. It consists in seeing and thinking for one's-self: whereas
singularity is only the affectation of saying something to contradict
other people, without having any real opinion of one's own upon the
matter. Mr. Burke was an original, though an extravagant writer: Mr.
Windham was a regular manufacturer of paradoxes.
The greatest number of minds seem utterly incapable of fixing on any
conclusion, except from the pressure of custom and authority: opposed to
these there is another class less numerous but pretty formidable, who in
all their opinions are equally under the influence of novelty and
restless vanity. The prejudices of the one are counterbalanced by the
paradoxes of the other; and folly, 'putting in one scale a weight of
ignorance, in that of pride,' might be said to 'smile delighted with the
eternal poise.' A sincere and manly spirit of inquiry is neither
blinded by example nor dazzled by sudden flashes of light. Nature is
always the same, the storehouse of lasting truth, and teeming with
inexhaustible variety; and he who looks at her with steady and
well-practised eyes will find enough to employ all his sagacity, whether
it has or has not been seen by others before him. Strange as it may
seem, to learn what an object is, the true philosopher looks at the
object itself, instead of turning to others to know what they think or
say or have heard of it, or instead of consulting the dictates of his
vanity, petulance, and ingenuity to see what can be said against their
opinion, and to prove himself wiser than all the rest of the world. For
want of this the real powers and resources of the mind are lost and
dissipated in a conflict of opinions and passions, of obstinacy against
levity, of bigotry against self-conceit, of notorious abuses against
rash innovations, of dull, plodding, old-fashioned stupidity against
new-fangled folly, of worldly interest against headstrong egotism, of
the incorrigible prejudices of the old and the unmanageable humours of
the young; while truth lies in the middle, and is overlooked by both
parties. Or as Luther complained long ago, 'human reason is like a
drunken man on horseback: set it up on one side, and it tumbles over on
the other.'--With one sort, example, authority, fashion, ease, interest,
rule all: with the other, singularity, the love of distinction, mere
whim, the throwing off all restraint and showing an heroic disregard of
consequences, an impatient and unsettled turn of mind, the want of
sudden and strong excitement, of some new play-thing for the
imagination, are equally 'lords of the ascendant,' and are at every step
getting the start of reason, truth, nature, common sense, and feeling.
With one party, whatever is, is right: with their antagonists, whatever
is, is wrong. These swallow every antiquated absurdity: those catch at
every new, unfledged project--and are alike enchanted with the
velocipedes or the French Revolution. One set, wrapped up in
impenetrable forms and technical traditions, are deaf to everything that
has not been dinned in their ears, and in those of their forefathers,
from time immemorial: their hearing is _thick_ with the same old saws,
the same unmeaning form of words, everlastingly repeated: the others
pique themselves on a jargon of their own, a Babylonish dialect, crude,
unconcocted, harsh, discordant, to which it is impossible for any one
else to attach either meaning or respect. These last turn away at the
mention of all usages, creeds, institutions of more than a day's
standing as a mass of bigotry, superstition, and barbarous ignorance,
whose leaden touch would petrify and benumb their quick, mercurial,
'apprehensive, forgetive' faculties. The opinion of to-day supersedes
that of yesterday: that of to-morrow supersedes, by anticipation, that
of to-day. The wisdom of the ancients, the doctrines of the learned,
the laws of nations, the common sentiments of morality, are to them like
a bundle of old almanacs. As the modern politician always asks for this
day's paper, the modern sciolist always inquires after the latest
paradox. With him instinct is a dotard, nature a changeling, and common
sense a discarded by-word. As with the man of the world, what everybody
says must be true, the citizen of the world has quite a different notion
of the matter. With the one, the majority; 'the powers that be' have
always been in the right in all ages and places, though they have been
cutting one another's throats and turning the world upside down with
their quarrels and disputes from the beginning of time: with the other,
what any two people have ever agreed in is an error on the face of it.
The credulous bigot shudders at the idea of altering anything in
'time-hallowed' institutions; and under this cant phrase can bring
himself to tolerate any knavery or any folly, the Inquisition, Holy Oil,
the Right Divine, etc.;--the more refined sceptic will laugh in your
face at the idea of retaining anything which has the damning stamp of
custom upon it, and is for abating all former precedents, 'all trivial,
fond records,' the whole frame and fabric of society as a nuisance in
the lump. Is not this a pair of wiseacres well matched? The one
stickles through thick and thin for his own religion and government: the
other scouts all religions and all governments with a smile of ineffable
disdain. The one will not move for any consideration out of the broad
and beaten path: the other is continually turning off at right angles,
and losing himself in the labyrinths of his own ignorance and
presumption. The one will not go along with any party: the other always
joins the strongest side. The one will not conform to any common
practice: the other will subscribe to any thriving system. The one is
the slave of habit: the other is the sport of caprice. The first is
like a man obstinately bed-rid: the last is troubled with St. Vitus's
dance. He cannot stand still, he cannot rest upon any conclusion. 'He
never is--but always to be _right.'_
The author of the Prometheus Unbound (to take an individual instance of
the last character) has a fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, a
maggot in his brain, a hectic flutter in his speech, which mark out the
philosophic fanatic. He is sanguine-complexioned and shrill-voiced. As
is often observable in the case of religious enthusiasts, there is a
slenderness of constitutional stamina, which renders the flesh no match
for the spirit. His bending, flexible form appears to take no strong
hold of things, does not grapple with the world about him, but slides
from it like a river--
And in its liquid texture mortal wound
Receives no more than can the fluid air.
The shock of accident, the weight of authority make no impression on his
opinions, which retire like a feather, or rise from the encounter unhurt
through their own buoyancy. He is clogged by no dull system of
realities, no earth-bound feelings, no rooted prejudices, by nothing
that belongs to the mighty trunk and hard husk of nature and habit, but
is drawn up by irresistible levity to the regions of mere speculation
and fancy, to the sphere of air and fire, where his delighted spirit
floats in 'seas of pearl and clouds of amber.' There is no _caput
mortuum_ of worn-out, threadbare experience to serve as ballast to his
mind; it is all volatile intellectual salt of tartar, that refuses to
combine its evanescent, inflammable essence with anything solid or
anything lasting. Bubbles are to him the only realities:--touch them,
and they vanish. Curiosity is the only proper category of his mind, and
though a man in knowledge, he is a child in feeling. Hence he puts
everything into a metaphysical crucible to judge of it himself and
exhibit it to others as a subject of interesting experiment, without
first making it over to the ordeal of his common sense or trying it on
his heart. This faculty of speculating at random on all questions may
in its overgrown and uninformed state do much mischief without intending
it, like an overgrown child with the power of a man. Mr. Shelley has
been accused of vanity--I think he is chargeable with extreme levity;
but this levity is so great that I do not believe he is sensible of its
consequences. He strives to overturn all established creeds and
systems; but this is in him an effect of constitution. He runs before
the most extravagant opinions; but this is because he is held back by
none of the merely mechanical checks of sympathy and habit. He tampers
with all sorts of obnoxious subjects; but it is less because he is
gratified with the rankness of the taint than captivated with the
intellectual phosphoric light they emit. It would seem that he wished
not so much to convince or inform as to shock the public by the tenor of
his productions; but I suspect he is more intent upon startling himself
with his electrical experiments in morals and philosophy; and though
they may scorch other people, they are to him harmless amusements, the
coruscations of an Aurora Borealis, that 'play round the head, but do
not reach the heart.' Still I could wish that he would put a stop to
the incessant, alarming whirl of his voltaic battery. With his zeal,
his talent, and his fancy, he would do more good and less harm if he
were to give, up his wilder theories, and if he took less pleasure in
feeling his heart flutter in unison with the panic-struck apprehensions
of his readers. Persons of this class, instead of consolidating useful
and acknowledged truths, and thus advancing the cause of science and
virtue, are never easy but in raising doubtful and disagreeable
questions, which bring the former into disgrace and discredit. They are
not contented to lead the minds of men to an eminence overlooking the
prospect of social amelioration, unless, by forcing them up slippery
paths and to the utmost verge of possibility, they can dash them down
the precipice the instant they reach the promised Pisgah. They think it
nothing to hang up a beacon to guide or warn, if they do not at the same
time frighten the community like a comet. They do not mind making their
principles odious, provided they can make themselves notorious. To win
over the public opinion by fair means is to them an insipid,
common-place mode of popularity: they would either force it by harsh
methods, or seduce it by intoxicating potions. Egotism, petulance,
licentiousness, levity of principle (whatever be the source) is a bad
thing in any one, and most of all in a philosophical reformer. Their
humanity, their wisdom, is always 'at the horizon.' Anything new,
anything remote, anything questionable, comes to them in a shape that is
sure of a cordial welcome--a welcome cordial in proportion as the object
is new, as it is apparently impracticable, as it is a doubt whether it
is at all desirable. Just after the final failure, the completion of
the last act of the French Revolution, when the legitimate wits were
crying out, 'The farce is over, now let us go to supper,' these
provoking reasoners got up a lively hypothesis about introducing the
domestic government of the Nayrs into this country as a feasible set-off
against the success of the Borough-mongers. The practical is with them
always the antipodes of the ideal; and like other visionaries of a
different stamp, they date the Millennium or New Order of Things from
the Restoration of the Bourbons. 'Fine words butter no parsnips,' says
the proverb. 'While you are talking of marrying, I am thinking of
hanging,' says Captain Macheath. Of all people the most tormenting are
those who bid you hope in the midst of despair, who, by never caring
about anything but their own sanguine, hair-brained Utopian schemes,
have at no time any particular cause for embarrassment and despondency
because they have never the least chance of success, and who by
including whatever does not hit their idle fancy, kings, priests,
religion, government, public abuses or private morals, in the same
sweeping clause of ban and anathema, do all they can to combine all
parties in a common cause against them, and to prevent every one else
from advancing one step farther in the career of practical improvement
than they do in that of imaginary and unattainable perfection.
Besides, all this untoward heat and precocity often argues rottenness
and a falling-off. I myself remember several instances of this sort of
unrestrained license of opinion and violent effervescence of sentiment
in the first period of the French Revolution. Extremes meet: and the
most furious anarchists have since become the most barefaced apostates.
Among the foremost of these I might mention the present poet-laureate
and some of his friends. The prose-writers on that side of the
question--Mr. Godwin, Mr. Bentham, etc.--have not turned round in this
extraordinary manner: they seem to have felt their ground (however
mistaken in some points), and have in general adhered to their first
principles. But 'poets (as it has been said) have _such seething
brains,_ that they are disposed to meddle with everything, and mar all.
They make bad philosophers and worse politicians.[1] They live, for the
most part, in an ideal world of their own; and it would perhaps be as
well if they were confined to it. Their flights and fancies are
delightful to themselves and to everybody else: but they make strange
work with matter of fact; and if they were allowed to act in public
affairs, would soon turn the world the wrong side out. They indulge
only their own flattering dreams or superstitious prejudices, and make
idols or bugbears of whatever they please, caring as little for history
or particular facts as for general reasoning. They are dangerous
leaders and treacherous followers. Their inordinate vanity runs them
into all sorts of extravagances; and their habitual effeminacy gets them
out of them at any price. Always pampering their own appetite for
excitement, and wishing to astonish others, their whole aim is to
produce a dramatic effect, one way or other--to shock or delight the
observers; and they are apparently as indifferent to the consequences of
what they write as if the world were merely a stage for them to play
their fantastic tricks on, and to make their admirers weep. Not less
romantic in their servility than their independence, and equally
importunate candidates for fame or infamy, they require only to be
distinguished, and are not scrupulous as to the means of distinction.
Jacobins or Anti-Jacobins--outrageous advocates for anarchy and
licentiousness, or flaming apostles of political persecution--always
violent and vulgar in their opinions, they oscillate, with a giddy and
sickening motion, from one absurdity to another, and expiate the follies
of youth by the heartless vices of advancing age. None so ready as they
to carry every paradox to its most revolting and ridiculous excess--none
so sure to caricature, in their own persons, every feature of the
prevailing philosophy! In their days of blissful innovation, indeed,
the philosophers crept at their heels like hounds, while they darted on
their distant quarry like hawks; stooping always to the lowest game;
eagerly snuffing up the most tainted and rankest scents; feeding their
vanity with a notion of the strength of their digestion of poisons, and
most ostentatiously avowing whatever would most effectually startle the
prejudices of others.[2] Preposterously seeking for the stimulus of
novelty in abstract truth, and the eclat of theatrical exhibition in
pure reason, it is no wonder that these persons at last became disgusted
with their own pursuits, and that, in consequence of the violence of the
change, the most inveterate prejudices and uncharitable sentiments have
rushed in to fill up the void produced by the previous annihilation of
common sense, wisdom, and humanity!'
I have so far been a little hard on poets and reformers. Lest I should
be thought to have taken a particular spite to them, I will try to make
them the _amende honorable_ by turning to a passage in the writings of
one who neither is nor ever pretended to be a poet or a reformer, but
the antithesis of both, an accomplished man of the world, a courtier,
and a wit, and who has endeavoured to move the previous question on all
schemes of fanciful improvement, and all plans of practical reform, by
the following declaration. It is in itself a finished _common-place;_
and may serve as a test whether that sort of smooth, verbal reasoning
which passes current because it excites no one idea in the mind, is much
freer from inherent absurdity than the wildest paradox.
'My lot,' says Mr. Canning in the conclusion of his Liverpool speech,
'is cast under the British Monarchy. Under that I have lived; under
that I have seen my country flourish;[3] under that I have seen it enjoy
as great a share of prosperity, of happiness, and of glory as I believe
any modification of human society to be capable of bestowing; and I am
not prepared to sacrifice or to hazard the fruit of centuries of
experience, of centuries of struggles, and of more than one century of
liberty, as perfect as ever blessed any country upon the earth, for
visionary schemes of ideal perfectibility, for doubtful experiments even
of possible improvement.'[4]
Such is Mr. Canning's common-place; and in giving the following answer
to it, I do not think I can be accused of falling into that extravagant
and unmitigated strain of paradoxical reasoning with which I have
already found so much fault.
The passage, then, which the gentleman here throws down as an effectual
bar to all change, to all innovation, to all improvement, contains at
every step a refutation of his favourite creed. He is not 'prepared to
sacrifice or to hazard the fruit of centuries of experience, of
centuries of struggles, and of one century of liberty, for visionary
schemes of ideal perfectibility.' So here are centuries of experience
and centuries of struggles to arrive at one century of liberty; and yet,
according to Mr. Canning's general advice, we are never to make any
experiments or to engage in any struggles either with a view to future
improvement, or to recover benefits which we have lost. Man (they
repeat in our cars, line upon line, precept upon precept) is always to
turn his back upon the future, and his face to the past. He is to
believe that nothing is possible or desirable but what he finds already
established to his hands in time-worn institutions or inveterate abuses.
His understanding is to be buried in implicit creeds, and he himself is
to be made into a political automaton, a go-cart of superstition and
prejudice, never stirring hand or foot but as he is pulled by the wires
and strings of the state-conjurers, the legitimate managers and
proprietors of the show. His powers of will, of thought, and action are
to be paralysed in him, and he is to be told and to believe that
whatever is, must be. Perhaps Mr. Canning will say that men were to
make experiments and to resolve upon struggles formerly, but that now
they are to surrender their understandings and their rights into his
keeping. But at what period of the world was the system of political
wisdom _stereotyped,_ like Mr. Cobbett's _Gold against Paper,_ so as to
admit of no farther alterations or improvements, or correction of errors
of the press? When did the experience of mankind become stationary or
retrograde, so that we must act from the obsolete inferences of past
periods, not from the living impulse of existing circumstances, and the
consolidated force of the knowledge and reflection of ages up to the
present instant, naturally projecting us forward into the future, and
not driving us back upon the past? Did Mr. Canning never hear, did he
never think, of Lord Bacon's axiom, 'That those times are the ancient
times in which we live, and not those which, counting backwards from
ourselves, _ordine retrogrado,_ we call ancient'? The latest periods
must necessarily have the advantage of the sum-total of the experience
that has gone before them, and of the sum-total of human reason exerted
upon that experience, or upon the solid foundation of nature and
history, moving on in its majestic course, not fluttering in the empty
air of fanciful speculation, nor leaving a gap of centuries between us
and the long-mouldered grounds on which we are to think and act. Mr.
Canning cannot plead with Mr. Burke that no discoveries, no improvements
have been made in political science and institutions; for he says we
have arrived through centuries of experience and of struggles at one
century of liberty. Is the world, then, at a stand? Mr. Canning knows
well enough that it is in ceaseless progress and everlasting change, but
he would have it to be the change from liberty to slavery, the progress
of corruption, not of regeneration and reform. Why, no longer ago than
the present year, the two epochs of November and January last presented
(he tells us in this very speech) as great a contrast in the state of
the country as any two periods of its history the most opposite or most
remote. Well then, are our experience and our struggles at an end? No,
he says, 'the crisis is at hand for every man to take part for or
against the institutions of the British Monarchy.' His part is taken:
'but of this be sure, to do aught good will never be his task!' He will
guard carefully against all possible improvements, and maintain all
possible abuses sacred, impassive, immortal. He will not give up the
fruit of centuries of experience, of struggles, and of one century at
least of liberty, since the Revolution of I688, for any doubtful
experiments whatever. We are arrived at the end of our experience, our
struggles, and our liberty--and are to anchor through time and eternity
in the harbour of passive obedience and non-resistance. We (the people
of England) will tell Mr. Canning frankly what we think of his
magnanimous and ulterior resolution. It is our own; and it has been the
resolution of mankind in all ages of the world. No people, no age, ever
threw away the fruits of past wisdom, or the enjoyment of present
blessings, for visionary schemes of ideal perfection. It is the
knowledge of the past, the actual infliction of the present, that has
produced all changes, all innovations, and all improvements--not (as is
pretended) the chimerical anticipation of possible advantages, but the
intolerable pressure of long-established, notorious, aggravated, and
growing abuses. It was the experience of the enormous and disgusting
abuses and corruptions of the Papal power that produced the Reformation.
It was the experience of the vexations and oppressions of the feudal
system that produced its abolition after centuries of sufferings and of
struggles. It was the experience of the caprice and tyranny of the
Monarch that extorted _Magna Charta_ at Runnymede. It was the
experience of the arbitrary and insolent abuse of the prerogative in the
reigns of the Tudors and the first Stuarts that produced the resistance
to it in the reign of Charles I. and the Grand Rebellion. It was the
experience of the incorrigible attachment of the same Stuarts to Popery
and Slavery, with their many acts of cruelty, treachery, and bigotry,
that produced the Revolution, and set the House of Brunswick on the
Throne. It was the conviction of the incurable nature of the abuse,
increasing with time and patience, and overcoming the obstinate
attachment to old habits and prejudices,--an attachment not to be rooted
out by fancy or theory, but only by repeated, lasting, and
incontrovertible proofs,--that has abated every nuisance that ever was
abated, and introduced every innovation and every example of revolution
and reform. It was the experience of the abuses, licentiousness, and
innumerable oppressions of the old Government in France that produced
the French Revolution. It was the experience of the determination of
the British Ministry to harass, insult, and plunder them, that produced
the Revolution of the United States. Away then with this miserable cant
against fanciful theories, and appeal to acknowledged experience! Men
never act against their prejudices but from the spur of their feelings,
the necessity of their situations--their theories are adapted to their
practical convictions and their varying circumstances. Nature has
ordered it so, and Mr. Canning, by showing off his rhetorical paces, by
his 'ambling and lisping and nicknaming God's creatures,' cannot invert
that order, efface the history of the past, or arrest the progress of
the future.--Public opinion is the result of public events and public
feelings; and government must be moulded by that opinion, or maintain
itself in opposition to it by the sword. Mr. Canning indeed will not
consent that the social machine should in any case receive a different
direction from what it has had, 'lest it should be hurried over the
precipice and dashed to pieces.' These warnings of national ruin and
terrific accounts of political precipices put one in mind of Edgar's
exaggerations to Gloster; they make one's hair stand on end in the
perusal but the poor old man, like poor old England, could fall no lower
than he was. Mr. Montgomery, the ingenious and amiable poet, after he
had been shut up in solitary confinement for a year and a half for
printing the Duke of Richmond's Letter on Reform, when he first walked
out into the narrow path of the adjoining field, was seized with an
apprehension that he should fall over it, as if he had trod on the brink
of an abrupt declivity. The author of the loyal Speech at the Liverpool
Dinner has been so long kept in the solitary confinement of his
prejudices, and the dark cells of his interest and vanity, that he is
afraid of being dashed to pieces if he makes a single false step, to the
right or the left, from his dangerous and crooked policy. As to
himself, his ears are no doubt closed to any advice that might here be
offered him; and as to his country, he seems bent on its destruction.
If, however, an example of the futility of all his projects and all his
reasonings on a broader scale, 'to warn and scare, be wanting,' let him
look at Spain, and take leisure to recover from his incredulity and his
surprise. Spain, as Ferdinand, as the Monarchy, has fallen from its
pernicious height, never to rise again: Spain, as Spain, as the Spanish
people, has risen from the tomb of liberty, never (it is to be hoped) to
sink again under the yoke of the bigot and the oppressor!
NOTES to ESSAY XV
[1] As for politics, I think poets are _tories_ by nature, supposing
them to be by nature poets. The love of an individual person or family,
that has worn a crown for many successions, is an inclination greatly
adapted to the fanciful tribe. On the other hand, mathematicians,
abstract reasoners of no manner of attachment to persons, at least to
the visible part of them, but prodigiously devoted to the ideas of
virtue, liberty, and so forth, are generally _whigs._ It happens
agreeably enough to this maxim, that the whigs are friends to that wise,
plodding, unpoetical people, the Dutch.'--_Shenstone's Letters,_ p. 105.
[2] To give the modern reader _un petit apercu_ of the tone of literary
conversation about five or six and twenty years ago, I remember being
present in a large party composed of men, women, and children, in which
two persons of remarkable candour and ingenuity were labouring (as hard
as if they had been paid for it) to prove that all prayer was a mode of
dictating to the Almighty, and an arrogant assumption of superiority. A
gentleman present said, with great simplicity and _naivete,_ that there
was one prayer which did not strike him as coming exactly under this
description, and being asked what that was made answer, 'The
Samaritan's--"Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner!"' This appeal by no
means settled the sceptical dogmatism of the two disputants, and soon
after the proposer of the objection went away; on which one of them
observed with great marks of satisfaction and triumph--'I am afraid we
have shocked that gentleman's prejudices.' This did not appear to me at
that time quite the thing and this happened in the year I794.--Twice has
the iron entered my soul. Twice have the dastard, vaunting, venal Crew
gone over it: once as they went forth, conquering and to conquer, with
reason by their side, glittering like a falchion, trampling on
prejudices and marching fearlessly on in the work of regeneration; once
again when they returned with retrograde steps, like Cacus's oxen
dragged backward by the heels, to the den of Legitimacy, 'rout on rout,
confusion worse confounded,' with places and pensions and the _Quarterly
Review_ dangling from their pockets, and shouting, 'Deliverance for
mankind,' for 'the worst, the second fall of man.' Yet I have endured
all this marching and countermarching of poets, philosophers, and
politicians over my head as well as I could, like 'the camomile that
thrives, the more 'tis trod upon.' By Heavens, I think, I'll endure it
no longer!
[3] _Troja fuit._
[4] _Mr. Canning's Speech at the Liverpool Dinner, given in celebration
of his Re-election,_ March I8, I820. Fourth edition, revised and
corrected.
ESSAY XVI
ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION
Few subjects are more nearly allied than these two--vulgarity and
affectation. It may be said of them truly that 'thin partitions do
their bounds divide.' There cannot be a surer proof of a low origin or
of an innate meanness of disposition than to be always talking and
thinking of being genteel. One must feel a strong tendency to that
which one is always trying to avoid: whenever we pretend, on all
occasions, a mighty contempt for anything, it is a pretty clear sign
that we feel ourselves very nearly on a level with it. Of the two
classes of people, I hardly know which is to be regarded with most
distaste, the vulgar aping the genteel, or the genteel constantly
sneering at and endeavouring to distinguish themselves from the vulgar.
These two sets of persons are always thinking of one another; the lower
of the higher with envy, the more fortunate of their less happy
neighbours with contempt. They are habitually placed in opposition to
each other; jostle in their pretensions at every turn; and the same
objects and train of thought (only reversed by the relative situation of
either party) occupy their whole time and attention. The one are
straining every nerve, and outraging common sense, to be thought
genteel; the others have no other object or idea in their heads than not
to be thought vulgar. This is but poor spite; a very pitiful style of
ambition. To be merely not that which one heartily despises is a very
humble claim to superiority: to despise what one really is, is still
worse. Most of the characters in Miss Burney's novels--the Branghtons,
the Smiths, the Dubsters, the Cecilias, the Delvilles, etc.--are well
met in this respect, and much of a piece: the one half are trying not to
be taken for themselves, and the other half not to be taken for the
first. They neither of them have any pretensions of their own, or real
standard of worth. 'A feather will turn the scale of their
avoirdupois'; though the fair authoress was not aware of the
metaphysical identity of her principal and subordinate characters.
Affectation is the master-key to both.
Gentility is only a more select and artificial kind of vulgarity. It
cannot exist but by a sort of borrowed distinction. It plumes itself up
and revels in the homely pretensions of the mass of mankind. It judges
of the worth of everything by name, fashion, and opinion; and hence,
from the conscious absence of real qualities or sincere satisfaction in
itself, it builds its supercilious and fantastic conceit on the
wretchedness and wants of others. Violent antipathies are always
suspicious, and betray a secret affinity. The difference between the
'Great Vulgar and the Small' is mostly in outward circumstances. The
coxcomb criticises the dress of the clown, as the pedant cavils at the
bad grammar of the illiterate, or the prude is shocked at the
backslidings of her frail acquaintance. Those who have the fewest
resources in themselves naturally seek the food of their self-love
elsewhere. The most ignorant people find most to laugh at in strangers:
scandal and satire prevail most in country-places; and a propensity to
ridicule every the slightest or most palpable deviation from what we
happen to approve, ceases with the progress of common sense and
decency.[1] True worth does not exult in the faults and deficiencies of
others; as true refinement turns away from grossness and deformity,
instead of being tempted to indulge in an unmanly triumph over it.
Raphael would not faint away at the daubing of a signpost, nor Homer
hold his head the higher for being in the company of a Grub Street bard.
Real power, real excellence, does not seek for a foil in inferiority;
nor fear contamination from coming in contact with that which is coarse
and homely. It reposes on itself, and is equally free from spleen and
affectation. But the spirit of gentility is the mere essence of spleen
and affectation; of affected delight in its own would-be qualifications,
and of ineffable disdain poured out upon the involuntary blunders or
accidental disadvantages of those whom it chooses to treat as its
inferiors. Thus a fashionable Miss titters till she is ready to burst
her sides at the uncouth shape of a bonnet or the abrupt drop of a
curtsey (such as Jeanie Deans would make) in a country-girl who comes to
be hired by her Mamma as a servant; yet to show how little foundation
there is for this hysterical expression of her extreme good opinion of
herself and contempt for the untutored rustic, she would herself the
next day be delighted with the very same shaped bonnet if brought her by
a French milliner and told it was all the fashion, and in a week's time
will become quite familiar with the maid, and chatter with her (upon
equal terms) about caps and ribbons and lace by the hour together.
There is no difference between them but that of situation in the kitchen
or in the parlour: let circumstances bring them together, and they fit
like hand and glove. It is like mistress, like maid. Their talk, their
thoughts, their dreams, their likings and dislikes are the same. The
mistress's head runs continually on dress and finery, so does the
maid's: the young lady longs to ride in a coach and six, so does the
maid, if she could; Miss forms a _beau-ideal_ of a lover with black eyes
and rosy cheeks, which does not differ from that of her attendant; both
like a smart man, the one the footman and the other his master, for the
same reason; both like handsome furniture and fine houses; both apply
the terms shocking and disagreeable to the same things and persons; both
have a great notion of balls, plays, treats, song-books, and love-tales;
both like a wedding or a christening, and both would give their little
fingers to see a coronation--with this difference, that the one has a
chance of getting a seat at it, and the other is dying with envy that
she has not. Indeed, this last is a ceremony that delights equally the
greatest monarch and the meanest of his subjects--the vilest of the
rabble. Yet this which is the height of gentility and consummation of
external distinction and splendour, is, I should say, a vulgar ceremony.
For what degree of refinement, of capacity, of virtue is required in
the individual who is so distinguished, or is necessary to his enjoying
this idle and imposing parade of his person? Is he delighted with the
stage-coach and gilded panels? So is the poorest wretch that gazes at
it. Is he struck with the spirit, the beauty, and symmetry of the eight
cream-coloured horses? There is not one of the immense multitude who
flock to see the sight from town or country, St. Giles's or Whitechapel,
young or old, rich or poor, gentle or simple, who does not agree to
admire the same object. Is he delighted with the yeomen of the guard,
the military escort, the groups of ladies, the badges of sovereign
power, the kingly crown, the marshal's truncheon and the judge's robe,
the array that precedes and follows him, the crowded streets, the
windows hung with eager looks? So are the mob, for they 'have eyes and
see them!' There is no one faculty of mind or body, natural or
acquired, essential to the principal figure in this procession more than
is common to the meanest and most despised attendant on it. A waxwork
figure would answer the same purpose: a Lord Mayor of London has as much
tinsel to be proud of. I would rather have a king do something that no
one else has the power or magnanimity to do, or say something that no
one else has the wisdom to say, or look more handsome, more thoughtful,
or benign than any one else in his dominions. But I see nothing to
raise one's idea of him in his being made a show of: if the pageant
would do as well without the man, the man would do as well without the
pageant! Kings have been declared to be 'lovers of low company'; and
this maxim, besides the reason sometimes assigned for it, viz. that they
meet with less opposition to their wills from such persons, will I
suspect be found to turn at last on the consideration I am here stating,
that they also meet with more sympathy in their tastes. The most
ignorant and thoughtless have the greatest admiration of the baubles,
the outward symbols of pomp and power, the sound and show, which are the
habitual delight and mighty prerogative of kings. The stupidest slave
worships the gaudiest tyrant. The same gross motives appeal to the same
gross capacities, flatter the pride of the superior and excite the
servility of the dependant; whereas a higher reach of moral and
intellectual refinement might seek in vain for higher proofs of internal
worth and inherent majesty in the object of its idolatry, and not
finding the divinity lodged within, the unreasonable expectation raised
would probably end in mortification on both sides!--There is little to
distinguish a king from his subjects but the rabble's shout--if he loses
that and is reduced to the forlorn hope of gaining the suffrages of the
wise and good, he is of all men the most miserable.--But enough of this.
'I like it,' says Miss Branghton[2] in _Evelina_ (meaning the opera),
'because it is not vulgar.' That is, she likes it, not because there is
anything to like in it, but because other people are prevented from
liking or knowing anything about it. Janus Weathercock, Esq., laugheth
to scorn and spitefully entreateth and hugely condemneth my dramatic
criticisms in the _London,_ for a like exquisite reason. I must
therefore make an example of him _in terrorem_ to all such hypercritics.
He finds fault with me and calls my taste vulgar, because I go to
Sadler's Wells ('a place he has heard of'--0 Lord, sir!)--because I
notice the Miss Dennetts, 'great favourites with the Whitechapel
orders'--praise Miss Valancy, 'a bouncing Columbine at Ashley's and them
there places, as his barber informs him' (has he no way of establishing
himself in his own good opinion but by triumphing over his barber's bad
English?)--and finally, because I recognised the existence of the Coburg
and the Surrey theatres, at the names of which he cries 'Faugh' with
great significance, as if he had some personal disgust at them, and yet
he would be supposed never to have entered them. It is not his cue as a
well-bred critic. _C'est beau ca._ Now this appears to me a very
crude, unmeaning, indiscriminate, wholesale, and vulgar way of thinking.
It is prejudicing things in the lump, by names and places and classes,
instead of judging of them by what they are in themselves, by their real
qualities and shades of distinction. There is no selection, truth, or
delicacy in such a mode of proceeding. It is affecting ignorance, and
making it a title to wisdom. It is a vapid assumption of superiority.
It is exceeding impertinence. It is rank coxcombry. It is nothing in
the world else. To condemn because the multitude admire is as
essentially vulgar as to admire because they admire. There is no
exercise of taste or judgment in either case: both are equally repugnant
to good sense, and of the two I should prefer the good-natured side. I
would as soon agree with my barber as differ from him; and why should I
make a point of reversing the sentence of the Whitechapel orders? Or
how can it affect my opinion of the merits of an actor at the Coburg or
the Surrey theatres, that these theatres are in or out of the Bills of
Mortality? This is an easy, short-hand way of judging, as gross as it
is mechanical. It is not a difficult matter to settle questions of
taste by consulting the map of London, or to prove your liberality by
geographical distinctions. Janus jumbles things together strangely. If
he had seen Mr. Kean in a provincial theatre, at Exeter or Taunton, he
would have thought it vulgar to admire him; but when he had been stamped
in London, Janus would no doubt show his discernment and the subtlety of
his tact for the display of character and passion by not being behind
the fashion. The Miss Dennetts are 'little unformed girls,' for no
other reason than because they danced at one of the minor theatres: let
them but come out on the opera boards, and let the beauty and fashion of
the season greet them with a fairy shower of delighted applause, and
they would outshine Milanie 'with the foot of fire.' His gorge rises at
the mention of a certain quarter of the town: whatever passes current in
another, he 'swallows total grist unsifted, husks and all.' This is not
taste, but folly. At this rate, the hackney-coachman who drives him, or
his horse Contributor whom he has introduced as a select personage to
the vulgar reader, knows as much of the matter as he does.--In a word,
the answer to all this in the first instance is to say what vulgarity
is. Now its essence, I imagine, consists in taking manners, actions,
words, opinions on trust from others, without examining one's own
feelings or weighing the merits of the case. It is coarseness or
shallowness of taste arising from want of individual refinement,
together with the confidence and presumption inspired by example and
numbers. It may be defined to be a prostitution of the mind or body to
ape the more or less obvious defects of others, because by so doing we
shall secure the suffrages of those we associate with. To affect a
gesture, an opinion, a phrase, because it is the rage with a large
number of persons, or to hold it in abhorrence because another set of
persons very little, if at all, better informed cry it down to
distinguish themselves from the former, is in either case equal
vulgarity and absurdity. A thing is not vulgar merely because it is
common. 'Tis common to breathe, to see, to feel, to live. Nothing is
vulgar that is natural, spontaneous, unavoidable. Grossness is not
vulgarity, ignorance is not vulgarity, awkwardness is not vulgarity; but
all these become vulgar when they are affected and shown off on the
authority of others, or to fall in with _the fashion_ or the company we
keep. Caliban is coarse enough, but surely he is not vulgar. We might
as well spurn the clod under our feet and call it vulgar. Cobbett is
coarse enough, but he is not vulgar. He does not belong to the herd.
Nothing real, nothing original, can be vulgar; but I should think an
imitator of Cobbett a vulgar man. Emery's Yorkshireman is vulgar,
because he is a Yorkshireman. It is the cant and gibberish, the cunning
and low life of a particular district; it has 'a stamp exclusive and
provincial.' He might 'gabble most brutishly' and yet not fall under
the letter of the definition; but 'his speech bewrayeth him,' his
dialect (like the jargon of a Bond Street lounger) is the damning
circumstance. If he were a mere blockhead, it would not signify; but he
thinks himself a _knowing hand,_ according to the notions and practices
of those with whom he was brought up, and which he thinks _the go_
everywhere. In a word, this character is not the offspring of untutored
nature but of bad habits; it is made up of ignorance and conceit. It
has a mixture of _slang_ in it. All slang phrases are for the same
reason vulgar; but there is nothing vulgar in the common English idiom.
Simplicity is not vulgarity; but the looking to affectation of any sort
for distinction is. A cockney is a vulgar character, whose imagination
cannot wander beyond the suburbs of the metropolis; so is a fellow who
is always thinking of the High Street, Edinburgh. We want a name for
this last character. An opinion is vulgar that is stewed in the rank
breath of the rabble; nor is it a bit purer or more refined for having
passed through the well-cleansed teeth of a whole court. The inherent
vulgarity is in having no other feeling on any subject than the crude,
blind, headling, gregarious notion acquired by sympathy with the mixed
multitude or with a fastidious minority, who are just as insensible to
the real truth, and as indifferent to everything but their own frivolous
and vexatious pretensions. The upper are not wiser than the lower
orders because they resolve to differ from them. The fashionable have
the advantage of the unfashionable in nothing but the fashion. The true
vulgar are the _servum pecus imitatorum_--the herd of pretenders to what
they do not feel and to what is not natural to them, whether in high or
low life. To belong to any class, to move in any rank or sphere of
life, is not a very exclusive distinction or test of refinement.
Refinement will in all classes be the exception, not the rule; and the
exception may fall out in one class as well as another. A king is but
an hereditary title. A nobleman is only one of the House of Peers. To
be a knight or alderman is confessedly a vulgar thing. The king the
other day made Sir Walter Scott a baronet, but not all the power of the
Three Estates could make another Author of _Waverley_. Princes, heroes,
are often commonplace people: Hamlet was not a vulgar character, neither
was Don Quixote. To be an author, to be a painter, is nothing. It is a
trick, it is a trade.
An author! 'tis a venerable name:
How few deserve it, yet what numbers claim!
Nay, to be a Member of the Royal Academy or a Fellow of the Royal
Society is but a vulgar distinction; but to be a Virgil, a Milton, a
Raphael, a Claude, is what fell to the lot of humanity but once! I do
not think they were vulgar people; though, for anything I know to the
contrary, the first Lord of the Bedchamber may be a very vulgar man; for
anything I know to the contrary, he may not be so.--Such are pretty much
my notions of gentility and vulgarity.
There is a well-dressed and an ill-dressed mob, both which I hate. _Odi
profanum vulgus, et arceo._ The vapid affectation of the one to me is
even more intolerable than the gross insolence and brutality of the
other. If a set of low-lived fellows are noisy, rude, and boisterous to
show their disregard of the company, a set of fashionable coxcombs are,
to a nauseous degree, finical and effeminate to show their thorough
breeding. The one are governed by their feelings, however coarse and
misguided, which is something; the others consult only appearances,
which are nothing, either as a test of happiness or virtue. Hogarth in
his prints has trimmed the balance of pretension between the downright
blackguard and the _soi-disant_ fine gentleman unanswerably. It does
not appear in his moral demonstrations (whatever it may do in the
genteel letter-writing of Lord Chesterfield or the chivalrous rhapsodies
of Burke) that vice by losing all its grossness loses half its evil. It
becomes more contemptible, not less disgusting. What is there in
common, for instance, between his beaux and belles, his rakes and his
coquettes, and the men and women, the true heroic and ideal characters
in Raphael? But his people of fashion and quality are just upon a par
with the low, the selfish, the _unideal_ characters in the contrasted
view of human life, and are often the very same characters, only
changing places. If the lower ranks are actuated by envy and
uncharitableness towards the upper, the latter have scarcely any
feelings but of pride, contempt, and aversion to the lower. If the poor
would pull down the rich to get at their good things, the rich would
tread down the poor as in a wine-press, and squeeze the last shilling
out of their pockets and the last drop of blood out of their veins. If
the headstrong self-will and unruly turbulence of a common alehouse are
shocking, what shall we say to the studied insincerity, the insipid want
of common sense, the callous insensibility of the drawing-room and
boudoir? I would rather see the feelings of our common nature (for they
are the same at bottom) expressed in the most naked and unqualified way,
than see every feeling of our nature suppressed, stifled, hermetically
sealed under the smooth, cold, glittering varnish of pretended
refinement and conventional politeness. The one may be corrected by
being better informed; the other is incorrigible, wilful, heartless
depravity. I cannot describe the contempt and disgust I have felt at
the tone of what would be thought good company, when I have witnessed
the sleek, smiling, glossy, gratuitous assumption of superiority to
every feeling of humanity, honesty, or principle, as a part of the
etiquette, the mental and moral _costume_ of the table, and every
profession of toleration or favour for the lower orders, that is, for
the great mass of our fellow-creatures, treated as an indecorum and
breach of the harmony of well-regulated society. In short, I prefer a
bear-garden to the adder's den; or, to put this case in its extremest
point of view, I have more patience with men in a rude state of nature
outraging the human form than I have with apes 'making mops and mows' at
the extravagances they have first provoked. I can endure the brutality
(as it is termed) of mobs better than the inhumanity of courts. The
violence of the one rages like a fire; the insidious policy of the other
strikes like a pestilence, and is more fatal and inevitable. The slow
poison of despotism is worse than the convulsive struggles of anarchy.
'Of all evils,' says Hume, 'anarchy is the shortest lived.' The one may
'break out like a wild overthrow'; but the other from its secret, sacred
stand, operates unseen, and undermines the happiness of kingdoms for
ages, lurks in the hollow cheek, and stares you in the face in the
ghastly eye of want and agony and woe. It is dreadful to hear the noise
and uproar of an infuriated multitude stung by the sense of wrong and
maddened by sympathy; it is more appalling to think of the smile
answered by other gracious smiles, of the whisper echoed by other
assenting whispers, which doom them first to despair and then to
destruction. Popular fury finds its counterpart in courtly servility.
If every outrage is to be apprehended from the one, every iniquity is
deliberately sanctioned by the other, without regard to justice or
decency. The word of a king, 'Go thou and do likewise,' makes the
stoutest heart dumb: truth and honesty shrink before it.[3] If there
are watchwords for the rabble, have not the polite and fashionable their
hackneyed phrases, their fulsome, unmeaning jargon as well? Both are to
me anathema!
To return to the first question, as it regards individual and private
manners. There is a fine illustration of the effects of preposterous
and affected gentility in the character of Gertrude, in the old comedy
of _Eastward Hoe,_ written by Ben Jonson, Marston, and Chapman in
conjunction. This play is supposed to have given rise to Hogarth's
series of prints of the Idle and Industrious Apprentice; and there is
something exceedingly Hogarthian in the view both of vulgar and of
genteel life here displayed. The character of Gertrude, in particular,
the heroine of the piece, is inimitably drawn. The mixture of vanity
and meanness, the internal worthlessness and external pretence, the
rustic ignorance and fine lady-like airs, the intoxication of novelty
and infatuation of pride, appear like a dream or romance, rather than
anything in real life. Cinderella and her glass slipper are
common-place to it. She is not, like Millamant (a century afterwards),
the accomplished fine lady, but a pretender to all the foppery and
finery of the character. It is the honeymoon with her ladyship, and her
folly is at the full. To be a wife, and the wife of a knight, are to
her pleasures 'worn in their newest gloss,' and nothing can exceed her
raptures in the contemplation of both parts of the dilemma. It is not
familiarity, but novelty, that weds her to the court. She rises into
the air of gentility from the ground of a city life, and flutters about
there with all the fantastic delight of a butterfly that has just
changed its caterpillar state. The sound of My Lady intoxicates her
with delight, makes her giddy, and almost turns her brain. On the bare
strength of it she is ready to turn her father and mother out of doors,
and treats her brother and sister with infinite disdain and judicial
hardness of heart. With some speculators the modern philosophy has
deadened and distorted all the natural affections; and before abstract
ideas and the mischievous refinements of literature were introduced,
nothing was to be met with in the primeval state of society but
simplicity and pastoral innocence of manners--
And all was conscience and tender heart
This historical play gives the lie to the above theory pretty broadly,
yet delicately. Our heroine is as vain as she is ignorant, and as
unprincipled as she is both, and without an idea or wish of any kind but
that of adorning her person in the glass, and being called and thought a
lady, something superior to a citizen's wife.[4] She is so bent on
finery that she believes in miracles to obtain it, and expects the
fairies to bring it her.[5] She is quite above thinking of a
settlement, jointure, or pin-money. She takes the will for the deed all
through the piece, and is so besotted with this ignorant, vulgar notion
of rank and title as a real thing that cannot be counterfeited that she
is the dupe of her own fine stratagems, and marries a gull, a dolt, a
broken adventurer for an accomplished and brave gentleman. Her meanness
is equal to her folly and her pride (and nothing can be greater), yet
she holds out on the strength of her original pretensions for a long
time, and plays the upstart with decency and imposing consistency.
Indeed, her infatuation and caprices are akin to the flighty perversity
of a disordered imagination; and another turn of the wheel of good or
evil fortune would have sent her to keep company with Hogarth's
_Merveilleuses_ in Bedlam, or with Decker's group of coquettes in the
same place.--The other parts of the play are a dreary lee-shore, like
Cuckold's Point on the coast of Essex, where the preconcerted shipwreck
takes place that winds up the catastrophe of the piece. But this is
also characteristic of the age, and serves as a contrast to the airy and
factitious character which is the principal figure in the plot. We had
made but little progress from that point till Hogarth's time, if Hogarth
is to be believed in his description of city manners. How wonderfully
we have distanced it since!
Without going into this at length, there is one circumstance 1 would
mention in which I think there has been a striking improvement in the
family economy of modern times--and that is in the relation of
mistresses and servants. After visits and finery, a married woman of
the old school had nothing to do but to attend to her housewifery. She
had no other resource, no other sense of power, but to harangue and lord
it over her domestics. Modern book-education supplies the place of the
old-fashioned system of kitchen persecution and eloquence. A well-bred
woman now seldom goes into the kitchen to look after the
servants:--formerly what was called a good manager, an exemplary
mistress of a family, did nothing but hunt them from morning to night,
from one year's end to another, without leaving them a moment's rest,
peace, or comfort. Now a servant is left to do her work without this
suspicious and tormenting interference and fault-finding at every step,
and she does it all the better. The proverbs about the mistress's eye,
etc., are no longer held for current. A woman from this habit, which at
last became an uncontrollable passion, would scold her maids for fifty
years together, and nothing could stop her: now the temptation to read
the last new poem or novel, and the necessity of talking of it in the
next company she goes into, prevent her--and the benefit to all parties
is incalculable.
NOTES to ESSAY XVI
[1] If a European, when he has cut off his beard and put false hair on
his head, or bound up his own natural hair in regular hard knots, as
unlike nature as he could possibly make it; and after having rendered
them immovable by the help of the fat of hogs, has covered the whole
with flour, laid on by a machine with the utmost regularity; if when
thus attired he issues forth, and meets with a Cherokee Indian, who has
bestowed as much time at his toilet, and laid on with equal care and
attention his yellow and red oker on particular parts of his forehead or
cheeks, as he judges most becoming; whoever of these two despises the
other for this attention to the fashion of his country, whichever first
feels himself provoked to laugh, is the barbarian.'--Sir Joshua
Reynolds's _Discourses,_ vol. i. pp. 231, 232.
[2] This name was originally spelt Braughton in the manuscript, and was
altered to Branghton by a mistake of the printer. Branghton, however,
was thought a good name for the occasion and was suffered to stand.
'Dip it in the ocean,' as Sterne's barber says of the buckle, 'and it
will stand!'
[3] A lady of quality, in allusion to the gallantries of a reigning
prince, being told, 'I suppose it will be your turn next?' said, 'No, I
hope not; for you know it is impossible to refuse!'
[4] '_Gertrude._ For the passion of patience, look if Sir Petronel
approach. That sweet, that fine, that delicate, that--for love's sake,
tell me if he come. Oh, sister Mill, though my father be a low-capt
tradesman, yet I must be a lady, and I praise God my mother must call me
madam. Does he come? Off with this gown for shame's sake, off with
this gown! Let not my knight take me in the city cut, in any hand!
Tear't! Pox on't (does he come?), tear't off! _Thus while she sleeps,
I sorrow for her sake._ (Sings.)
_Mildred._ Lord, sister, with what an immodest impatiency and
disgraceful scorn do you put off your city-tire! I am sorry to think
you imagine to right yourself in wronging that which hath made both you
and us.
_Ger._ I tell you, I cannot endure it: I must be a lady: do you wear
your quoiff with a London licket! your stamel petticoat with two guards!
the buffin gown with the tuftafitty cap and the velvet lace! I must be
a lady, and I will be a lady. I like some humours of the city dames
well; to eat cherries only at an angel a pound; good: to dye rich
scarlet black; pretty: to line a grogram gown clean through with velvet;
tolerable: their pure linen, their smocks of three pound a smock, are to
be borne withal: but your mincing niceries, taffity pipkins, durance
petticoats, and silver bodkins--God's my life! as I shall be a lady, I
cannot endure it.
_Mil._ Well, sister, those that scorn their nest oft fly with a sick
wing.
_Ger._ Bow-bell! Alas! poor Mill, when I am a lady, I'll pray for thee
yet i'faith; nay, and I'll vouchsafe to call thee sister Mill still; for
thou art not like to be a lady as I am, yet surely thou art a creature
of God's making, and may'st peradventure be saved as soon as I (does he
come?). _And ever and anon she doubled in her song._
_Mil._ Now (lady's my comfort), what a profane ape's here!
Enter SIR PETRONEL FLASH, MR. TOUCHSTONE, and MRS. TOUCHSTONE.
_Ger._ Is my knight come? 0 the lord, my band! Sister, do my cheeks
look well? Give me a little box o' the ear, that I may seem to blush.
Now, now! so, there, there! here he is! 0 my dearest delight! Lord,
lord! and how does my knight?
_Touchstone._ Fie, with more modesty.
_Ger._ Modesty! why, I am no citizen now. Modesty! am I not to be
married? You're best to keep me modest, now I am to be a lady.
_Sir Petronel._ Boldness is a good fashion and court-like.
_Ger._ Aye, in, a country lady I hope it is, as I shall be. And how
chance ye came no sooner, knight?
_Sir Pet._ Faith, I was so entertained in the progress with one Count
Epernoun, a Welch knight: we had a match at baloon too with my Lord
Whackum for four crowns.
_Ger._ And when shall's be married, my knight?
_Sir Pet._ I am come now to consummate: and your father may call a poor
knight son-in-law.
_Mrs. Touchstone._ Yes, that he is a knight: I know where he had money
to pay the gentlemen ushers and heralds their fees. Aye, that he is a
knight: and so might you have been too, if you had been aught else but
an ass, as well as some of your neighbours. An I thought you would not
ha' been knighted, as I am an honest woman, I would ha' dubbed you
myself. I praise God, I have wherewithal. But as for you, daughter--
_Ger._ Aye, mother, I must be a lady to-morrow; and by your leave,
mother (I speak it not without my duty, but only in the right of my
husband), I must take place of you, mother.
_Mrs. Touch._ That you shall, lady-daughter; and have a coach as well
as I.
_Ger._ Yes, mother; but my coach-horses must take the wall of your
coach-horses.
_Touch._ Come, come, the day grows low; 'tis supper time: and, sir,
respect my daughter; she has refused for you wealthy and honest matches,
known good men.
_Ger._ Body o' truth, citizen, citizens! Sweet knight, as soon as ever
we are married, take me to thy mercy, out of this miserable city.
Presently: carry me out of the scent of Newcastle coal and the hearing
of Bow-bell, I beseech thee; down with me, for God's sake.'-Act I. Scene
i.
This dotage on sound and show seemed characteristic of that age (see
_New Way to Pay Old Debts,_ etc.)--as if in the grossness of sense, and
the absence of all intellectual and abstract topics of thought and
discourse (the thin, circulating medium of the present day) the mind was
attracted without the power of resistance to the tinkling sound of its
own name with a title added to it, and the image of its own person
tricked out in old-fashioned finery. The effect, no doubt, was also
more marked and striking from the contrast between the ordinary penury
and poverty of the age and the first and more extravagant demonstrations
of luxury and artificial refinement.
[5] _'Gertrude._ Good lord, that there are no fairies nowadays, Syn.
_Syndefy._ Why, Madam?
_Ger._ To do miracles, and bring ladies money. Sure, if we lay in a
cleanly house, they would haunt it, Synne? I'll sweep the chamber soon
at night, and set a dish of water o' the hearth. A fairy may come and
bring a pearl or a diamond. We do not know, Synne: or there may be a
pot of gold hid in the yard, if we had tools to dig for't. Why may not
we two rise early i' the morning, Synne, afore anybody is up, and find a
jewel i' the streets worth a hundred pounds? May not some great
court-lady, as she comes from revels at midnight, look out of her coach,
as 'tis running, and lose such a jewel, and we find it? ha!
_Syn._ They are pretty waking dreams, these.
_Ger._ Or may not some old usurer be drunk overnight with a bag of
money, and leave it behind him on a stall? For God's sake, Syn, let's
rise to-morrow by break of day, and see. I protest, la, if I had as
much money as an alderman, I would scatter some on't i' the streets for
poor ladies to find when their knights were laid up. And now I remember
my song of the Golden Shower, why may not I have such a fortune? I'll
sing it, and try what luck I shall have after it.'--Act V. Scene i.'
VOLUME II
ESSAY I
ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN
And blind Orion hungry for the morn.
Orion, the subject of this landscape, was the classical Nimrod; and is
called by Homer, 'a hunter of shadows, himself a shade.' He was the son
of Neptune; and having lost an eve in some affray between the Gods and
men, was told that if he would go to meet the rising sun he would
recover his sight. He is represented setting out on his journey, with
men on his shoulders to guide him, a bow in his hand, and Diana in the
clouds greeting him. He stalks along, a giant upon earth, and reels and
falters in his gait, as if just awakened out of sleep, or uncertain of
his way;--you see his blindness, though his back is turned. Mists rise
around him, and veil the sides of the green forests; earth is dank and
fresh with dews, the 'gray dawn and the Pleiades before him dance,' and
in the distance are seen the blue hills and sullen ocean. Nothing was
ever more finely conceived or done. It breathes the spirit of the
morning; its moisture, its repose, its obscurity, waiting the miracle of
light to kindle it into smiles; the whole is, like the principal figure
in it, 'a forerunner of the dawn.' The same atmosphere tinges and
imbues every object, the same dull light 'shadowy sets off' the face of
nature: one feeling of vastness, of strangeness, and of primeval forms
pervades the painter's canvas, and we are thrown back upon the first
integrity of things. This great and learned man might be said to see
nature through the glass of time; he alone has a right to be considered
as the painter of classical antiquity. Sir Joshua has done him justice
in this respect. He could give to the scenery of his heroic fables that
unimpaired look of original nature, full, solid, large, luxuriant,
teeming with life and power; or deck it with all the pomp of art, with
tempyles and towers, and mythologic groves. His pictures 'denote a
foregone conclusion.' He applies Nature to his purposes, works out her
images according to the standard of his thoughts, embodies high
fictions; and the first conception being given, all the rest seems to
grow out of and be assimilated to it, by the unfailing process of a
studious imagination. Like his own Orion, he overlooks the surrounding
scene, appears to 'take up the isles as a very little thing, and to lay
the earth in a balance.' With a laborious and mighty grasp, he puts
nature into the mould of the ideal and antique; and was among painters
(more than any one else) what Milton was among poets. There is in both
something of the same pedantry, the same stiffness, the same elevation,
the same grandeur, the same mixture of art and nature, the same richness
of borrowed materials, the same unity of character. Neither the poet
nor the painter lowered the subjects they treated, but filled up the
outline in the fancy, and added strength and reality to it; and thus not
only satisfied, but surpassed the expectations of the spectator and the
reader. This is held for the triumph and the perfection of works of
art. To give us nature, such as we see it, is well and deserving of
praise; to give us nature, such as we have never seen, but have often
wished to see it, is better, and deserving of higher praise. He who can
show the world in its first naked glory, with the hues of fancy spread
over it, or in its high and palmy state, with the gravity of history
stamped on the proud monuments of vanished empire,--who, by his 'so
potent art,' can recall time past, transport us to distant places, and
join the regions of imagination (a new conquest) to those of
reality,--who shows us not only what Nature is, but what she has been,
and is capable of,--he who does this, and does it with simplicity, with
truth, and grandeur, is lord of Nature and her powers; and his mind is
universal, and his art the master-art!
There is nothing in this 'more than natural,' if criticism could be
persuaded to think so. The historic painter does not neglect or
contravene Nature, but follows her more closely up into her fantastic
heights or hidden recesses. He demonstrates what she would be in
conceivable circumstances and under implied conditions. He 'gives to
airy nothing a local habitation,' not 'a name.' At his touch, words
start up into images, thoughts become things. He clothes a dream, a
phantom, with form and colour, and the wholesome attributes of reality.
_His_ art is a second nature; not a different one. There are those,
indeed, who think that not to copy nature is the rule for attaining
perfection. Because they cannot paint the objects which they have they
have, they fancy themselves qualified to paint the ideas which they have
not seen. But it is possible to fail in this latter and more difficult
style of imitation, as well as in the former humbler one. The
detection, it is true, is not so easy, because the objects are not so
nigh at hand to compare, and therefore there is more room both for false
pretension and for self-deceit. They take an epic motto or subject, and
conclude that the spirit is implied as a thing of course. They paint
inferior portraits, maudlin lifeless faces, without ordinary expression,
or one look, feature, or particle of nature in them, and think that this
is to rise to the truth of history. They vulgarise and degrade whatever
is interesting or sacred to the mind, and suppose that they thus add to
the dignity of their profession. They represent a face that seems as if
no thought or feeling of any kind had ever passed through it, and would
have you believe that this is the very sublime of expression, such as it
would appear in heroes, or demigods of old, when rapture or agony was
raised to its height. They show you a landscape that looks as if the
sun never shone upon it, and tell you that it is not modern--that so
earth looked when Titan first kissed it with his rays. This is not the
true ideal. It is not to fill the moulds of the imagination, but to
deface and injure them; it is not to come up to, but to fall short of
the poorest conception in the public mind. Such pictures should not be
hung in the same room with that of Orion.[1]
Poussin was, of all painters, the most poetical. He was the painter of
ideas. No one ever told a story half so well, nor so well knew what was
capable of being told by the pencil. He seized on, and struck off with
grace and precision, just that point of view which would be likely to
catch the reader's fancy. There is a significance, a consciousness in
whatever he does (sometimes a vice, but oftener a virtue) beyond any
other painter. His Giants sitting on the tops of craggy mountains, as
huge themselves, and playing idly on their Pan's-pipes, seem to have
been seated there these three thousand years, and to know the beginning
and the end of their own story. An infant Bacchus or Jupiter is big
with his future destiny. Even inanimate and dumb things speak a
language of their own. His snakes, the messengers of fate, are inspired
with human intellect. His trees grow and expand their leaves in the
air, glad of the rain, proud of the sun, awake to the winds of heaven.
In his Plague of Athens, the very buildings seem stiff with horror. His
picture of the Deluge is, perhaps, the finest historical landscape in
the world. You see a waste of waters, wide, interminable the sun is
labouring, wan and weary, up the sky the clouds, dull and leaden, lie
like a load upon the eye, and heaven and earth seem commingling into one
confused mass! His human figures are sometimes 'o'erinformed' with this
kind of feeling. Their actions have too much gesticulation, and the set
expression of the features borders too much on the mechanical and
caricatured style. In this respect they form a contrast to Raphael's,
whose figures never appear to be sitting for their pictures, or to be
conscious of a spectator, or to have come from the painter's hand. In
Nicolas Poussin, on the contrary, everything seems to have a distinct
understanding with the artist; 'the very stones prate of their
whereabout'; each object has its part and place assigned, and is in a
sort of compact with the rest of the picture. It is this conscious
keeping, and, as it were, _internal_ design, that gives their peculiar
character to the works of this artist. There was a picture of Aurora in
the British Gallery a year or two ago. It was a suffusion of golden
light. The Goddess wore her saffron-coloured robes, and appeared just
risen from the gloomy bed of old Tithonus. Her very steeds, milk-white,
were tinged with the yellow dawn. It was a personification of the
morning. Poussin succeeded better in classic than in sacred subjects.
The latter are comparatively heavy, forced, full of violent contrasts of
colour, of red, blue, and black, and without the true prophetic
inspiration of the characters. But in his pagan allegories and fables
he was quite at home. The native gravity and native levity of the
Frenchman were combined with Italian scenery and an antique gusto, and
gave even to his colouring an air of learned indifference. He wants, in
one respect, grace, form, expression; but he has everywhere sense and
meaning, perfect costume and propriety. His personages always belong to
the class and time represented, and are strictly versed in the business
in hand. His grotesque compositions in particular, his Nymphs and
Fauns, are superior (at least, as far as style is concerned) even to
those of Rubens. They are taken more immediately out of fabulous
history. Rubens' Satyrs and Bacchantes have a more jovial and
voluptuous aspect, are more drunk with pleasure, more full of animal
spirits and riotous impulses; they laugh and bound along--
Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring:
but those of Poussin have more of the intellectual part of the
character, and seem vicious on reflection, and of set purpose. Rubens'
are noble specimens of a class; Poussin's are allegorical abstractions
of the same class, with bodies less pampered, but with minds more
secretly depraved. The Bacchanalian groups of the Flemish painter were,
however, his masterpieces in composition. Witness those prodigies of
colour, character, and expression at Blenheim. In the more chaste and
refined delineation of classic fable, Poussin was without a rival.
Rubens, who was a match for him in the wild and picturesque, could not
pretend to vie with the elegance and purity of thought in his picture of
Apollo giving a poet a cup of water to drink, nor with the gracefulness
of design in the figure of a nymph squeezing the juice of a bunch of
grapes from her fingers (a rosy wine-press) which falls into the mouth
of a chubby infant below. But, above all, who shall celebrate, in terms
of fit praise, his picture of the shepherds in the Vale of Tempe going
out in a fine morning of the spring, and coming to a tomb with this
inscription: ET EGO IN ARCADIA VIXI! The eager curiosity of some, the
expression of others who start back with fear and surprise, the clear
breeze playing with the branches of the shadowing trees, 'the valleys
low, where the mild zephyrs use,' the distant, uninterrupted, sunny
prospect speak (and for ever will speak on) of ages past to ages yet to
come![2]
Pictures are a set of chosen images, a stream of pleasant thoughts
passing through the mind. It is a luxury to have the walls of our rooms
hung round with them, and no less so to have such a gallery in the mind,
to con over the relies of ancient art bound up 'within the book and
volume of the brain, unmixed (if it were possible) with baser matter!'
A life passed among pictures, in the study and the love of art, is a
happy noiseless dream: or rather, it is to dream and to be awake at the
same time; for it has all 'the sober certainty of waking bliss,' with
the romantic voluptuousness of a visionary and abstracted being. They
are the bright consummate essences of things, and 'he who knows of these
delights to taste and interpose them oft, is not unwise!'--The Orion,
which I have here taken occasion to descant upon, is one of a collection
of excellent pictures, as this collection is itself one of a series from
the old masters, which have for some years back embrowned the walls of
the British Gallery, and enriched the public eye. What hues (those of
nature mellowed by time) breathe around as we enter! What forms are
there, woven into the memory! What looks, which only the answering
looks of the spectator can express! What intellectual stores have been
yearly poured forth from the shrine of ancient art! The works are
various, but the names the same--heaps of Rembrandts frowning from the
darkened walls, Rubens' glad gorgeous groups, Titians more rich and
rare, Claudes always exquisite, sometimes beyond compare, Guido's
endless cloying sweetness, the learning of Poussin and the Caracci, and
Raphael's princely magnificence crowning all. We read certain letters
and syllables in the Catalogue, and at the well-known magic sound a
miracle of skill and beauty starts to view. One might think that one
year's prodigal display of such perfection would exhaust the labours of
one man's life; but the next year, and the next to that, we find another
harvest reaped and gathered in to the great garner of art, by the same
immortal hands--
Old GENIUS the porter of them was;
He letteth in, he letteth out to wend.--
Their works seem endless as their reputation--to be many as they are
complete--to multiply with the desire of the mind to see more and more
of them; as if there were a living power in the breath of Fame, and in
the very names of the great heirs of glory 'there were propagation too'!
It is something to have a collection of this sort to count upon once a
year; to have one last, lingering look yet to come. Pictures are
scattered like stray gifts through the world; and while they remain,
earth has yet a little gilding left, not quite rubbed off, dishonoured,
and defaced. There are plenty of standard works still to be found in
this country, in the collections at Blenheim, at Burleigh, and in those
belonging to Mr. Angerstein, Lord Grosvenor, the Marquis of Stafford,
and others, to keep up this treat to the lovers of art for many years;
and it is the more desirable to reserve a privileged sanctuary of this
sort, where the eye may dote, and the heart take its fill of such
pictures as Poussin's Orion, since the Louvre is stripped of its
triumphant spoils, and since he who collected it, and wore it as a rich
jewel in his Iron Crown, the hunter of greatness and of glory, is
himself a shade!
NOTES to ESSAY I
[1] Everything tends to show the manner in which a great artist is
formed. If any person could claim an exemption from the careful
imitation of individual objects, it was Nicolas Poussin. He studied the
antique, but he also studied nature. 'I have often admired,' says
Vignuel do Marville, who knew him at a late period of his life, 'the
love he had for his art. Old as he was, I frequently saw him among the
ruins of ancient Rome, out in the Campagna, or along the banks of the
Tyber, sketching a scene that had pleased him; and I often met him with
his handkerchief full of stones, moss, or flowers, which he carried
home, that he might copy them exactly from nature. One day I asked him
how he had attained to such a degree of perfection as to have gained so
high a rank among the great painters of Italy? He answered, "I HAVE
NEGLECTED NOTHING."'--_See his Life lately published._ It appears from
this account that he had not fallen Into a recent error, that Nature
puts the man of genius out. As a contrast to the foregoing description,
I might mention, that I remember an old gentleman once asking Mr. West
In the British Gallery if he had ever been at Athens? To which the
President made answer, No; nor did he feel any great desire to go; for
that he thought he had as good an idea of the place from the Catalogue
as he could get by living there for any number of years. What would he
have said, if any one had told him he could get as good an idea of the
subject of one of his great works from reading the Catalogue of it, as
from seeing the picture itself? Yet the answer was characteristic of
the genius of the painter.
[2] Poussin has repeated this subject more than once, and appears to
have revelled in its witcheries. I have before alluded to it, and may
again. It is hard that we should not be allowed to dwell as often as we
please on what delights us, when things that are disagreeable recur so
often against our will.
ESSAY II
ON MILTON'S SONNETS
The great object of the Sonnet seems to be, to express in musical
numbers, and as it were with undivided breath, some occasional thought
or personal feeling, 'some fee-grief due to the poet's breast.' It is a
sigh uttered from the fulness of the heart, an involuntary aspiration
born and dying in the same moment. I have always been fond of Milton's
Sonnets for this reason, that they have more of this personal and
internal character than any others; and they acquire a double value when
we consider that they come from the pen of the loftiest of our poets.
Compared with _Paradise_ Lost, they are like tender flowers that adorn
the base of some proud column or stately temple. The author in the one
could work himself up with unabated fortitude 'to the height of his
great argument'; but in the other he has shown that he could condescend
to men of low estate, and after the lightning and the thunderbolt of his
pen, lets fall some drops of natural pity over hapless infirmity,
mingling strains with the nightingale's, 'most musical, most
melancholy.' The immortal poet pours his mortal sorrows into our
breasts, and a tear falls from his sightless orbs on the friendly hand
he presses. The Sonnets are a kind of pensive record of past
achievements, loves, and friendships, and a noble exhortation to himself
to bear up with cheerful hope and confidence to the last. Some of them
are of a more quaint and humorous character; but I speak of those only
which are intended to be serious and pathetical.--I do not know indeed
but they may be said to be almost the first effusions of this sort of
natural and personal sentiment in the language. Drummond's ought
perhaps to be excepted, were they formed less closely on the model of
Petrarch's, so as to be often little more than translations of the
Italian poet. But Milton's Sonnets are truly his own in allusion,
thought, and versification. Those of Sir Philip Sydney, who was a great
transgressor in his way, turn sufficiently on himself and his own
adventures; but they are elaborately quaint and intricate, and more like
riddles than sonnets. They are 'very tolerable and not to be endured.'
Shakespear's, which some persons better informed in such matters than I
can pretend to be, profess to cry up as 'the divine, the matchless, what
you will,'--to say nothing of the want of point or a leading, prominent
idea in most of them, are I think overcharged and monotonous, and as to
their ultimate drift, as for myself, I can make neither head nor tail of
it. Yet some of them, I own, are sweet even to a sense of faintness,
luscious as the woodbine, and graceful and luxuriant like it. Here is
one:
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing;
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem'd it winter still, and you away,
As with your shadow, I with these did play.
I am not aware of any writer of Sonnets worth mentioning here till long
after Milton, that is, till the time of Warton and the revival of a
taste for Italian and for our own early literature. During the rage for
French models the Sonnet had not been much studied. It is a mode of
composition that depends entirely on _expression,_ and this the French
and artificial style gladly dispenses with, as it lays no particular
stress on anything--except vague, general common-places. Warton's
Sonnets are undoubtedly exquisite, both in style and matter; they are
poetical and philosophical effusions of very delightful sentiment; but
the thoughts, though fine and deeply felt, are not, like Milton's
subjects, identified completely with the writer, and so far want a more
individual interest. Mr. Wordsworth's are also finely conceived and
high-sounding Sonnets. They mouth it well, and are said to be sacred to
Liberty. Brutus's exclamation, 'Oh Virtue, I thought thee a substance,
but I find thee a shadow,' was not considered as a compliment, but as a
bitter sarcasm. The beauty of Milton's Sonnets is their sincerity, the
spirit of poetical patriotism which they breathe. Either Milton's or
the living bard's are defective in this respect. There is no Sonnet of
Milton's on the Restoration of Charles II. There is no Sonnet of Mr.
Wordsworth's corresponding to that of 'the poet blind and bold' 'On the
late Massacre in Piedmont.' It would be no niggard praise to Mr.
Wordsworth to grant that he was either half the man or half the poet
that Milton was. He has not his high and various imagination, nor his
deep and fixed principle. Milton did not worship the rising sun, nor
turn his back on a losing and fallen cause.
Such recantation had no charms for him!
Mr. Southey has thought proper to put the author of _Paradise Lost_ into
his late Heaven, on the understood condition that he is 'no longer to
kings and to hierarchs hostile.' In his lifetime he gave no sign of
such an alteration; and it is rather presumptuous in the poet-laureate
to pursue the deceased antagonist of Salmasius into the other world to
compliment him with his own infirmity of purpose. It is a wonder he did
not add in a note that Milton called him aside to whisper in his ear
that he preferred the new English hexameters to his own blank verse!
Our first of poets was one of our first of men. He was an eminent
instance to prove that a poet is not another name for the slave of power
and fashion, as is the case with painters and musicians--things without
an opinion--and who merely aspire to make up the pageant and show of the
day. There are persons in common life who have that eager curiosity and
restless admiration of bustle and splendour, that sooner than not be
admitted on great occasions of feasting and luxurious display, they will
go in the character of livery-servants to stand behind the chairs of the
great. There are others who can so little bear to be left for any
length of time out of the grand carnival and masquerade of pride and
folly, that they will gain admittance to it at the expense of their
characters as well as of a change of dress. Milton was not one of
these. He had too much of the _ideal_ faculty in his composition, a
lofty contemplative principle, and consciousness of inward power and
worth, to be tempted by such idle baits. We have plenty of chanting and
chiming in among some modern writers with the triumphs over their own
views and principles; but none of a patient resignation to defeat,
sustaining and nourishing itself with the thought of the justice of
their cause, and with firm-fixed rectitude. I do not pretend to defend
the tone of Milton's political writings (which was borrowed from the
style of controversial divinity), or to say that he was right in the
part he took,--I say that he was consistent in it, and did not convict
himself of error: he was consistent in it in spite of danger and
obloquy, 'on evil days though fallen, and evil tongues,' and therefore
his character has the salt of honesty about it. It does not offend in
the nostrils of posterity. He had taken his part boldly and stood to it
manfully, and submitted to the change of times with pious fortitude,
building his consolations on the resources of his own mind and the
recollection of the past, instead of endeavouring to make himself a
retreat for the time to come. As an instance of this we may take one of
the best and most admired of these Sonnets, that addressed to Cyriac
Skinner, on his own blindness:--
Cyriac, this three years' day, these eyes, though clear,
To outward view, of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light their seeing have forgot,
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun or moon or stars throughout the year,
Or man or woman. Yet I argue not
Against Heav'n's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The conscience, Friend, to have lost them overply'd
In liberty's defence, my noble task,
Of which all Europe talks from side to side.
This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask,
Content though blind, had I no better guide.
Nothing can exceed the mild, subdued tone of this Sonnet, nor the
striking grandeur of the concluding thought. It is curious to remark
what seems to be a trait of character in the two first lines. From
Milton's care to inform the reader that 'his eyes wore still clear, to
outward view, of spot or blemish,' it would be thought that he had not
yet given up all regard to personal appearance; a feeling to which his
singular beauty at an earlier age might he supposed naturally enough to
lead. Of the political or (what may be called) his _State-Sonnets,_
those to Cromwell, to Fairfax, and to the younger Vane are full of
exalted praise and dignified advice. They are neither familiar nor
servile. The writer knows what is due to power and to fame. He feels
the true, unassumed equality of greatness. He pays the full tribute of
admiration for great acts achieved, and suggests becoming occasion to
deserve higher praise. That to Cromwell is a proof how completely our
poet maintained the erectness of his understanding and spirit in his
intercourse with men in power. It is such a compliment as a poet might
pay to a conqueror and head of the state without the possibility of
self-degradation:
Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud,
Not of war only, but detractions rude,
Guided by faith and matchless fortitude,
To peace and truth thy glorious way hast plough'd,
And on the neck of crowned fortune proud
Hast rear'd God's trophies and his work pursued
While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbrued,
And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud,
And Worcester's laureat wreath. Yet much remains
To conquer still; peace hath her victories
No less renown'd than war: new foes arise
Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains;
Help us to save free conscience from the paw
Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw.
The most spirited and impassioned of them all, and the most inspired
with a sort of prophetic fury, is the one entitled, 'On the late
Massacre in Piedmont.'
Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones
Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones,
Forgot not: in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that roll'd
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To Heav'n. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundred fold, who having learn'd thy way
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
In the Nineteenth Sonnet, which is also 'On his blindness,' we see the
jealous watchfulness of his mind over the use of his high gifts, and the
beautiful manner in which he satisfies himself that virtuous thoughts
and intentions are not the least acceptable offering to the Almighty:
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent,
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
Doth God exact day-labour, light denied,
I fondly ask: But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.
Those to Mr. Henry Lawes _on his Airs,_ and to Mr. Lawrence, can never
be enough admired. They breathe the very soul of music and friendship.
Both have a tender, thoughtful grace; and for their lightness, with a
certain melancholy complaining intermixed, might be stolen from the harp
of Aeolus. The last is the picture of a day spent in social retirement
and elegant relaxation from severer studies. We sit with the poet at
table and hear his familiar sentiments from his own lips afterwards:--
Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,
Now that the fields are dank and ways are mire,
Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire
Help waste a sullen day, what may be won
From the hard season gaining? Time will run
On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire
The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire
The lily and rose, that neither sow'd nor spun.
What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise
To hear the lute well-touched, or artful voice
Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?
He who of these delights can judge, and spare
To interpose them oft, is not unwise.
In the last, 'On his deceased Wife,' the allusion to Alcestis is
beautiful, and shows how the poet's mind raised and refined his thoughts
by exquisite classical conceptions, and how these again were enriched by
a passionate reference to actual feelings and images. It is this rare
union that gives such voluptuous dignity and touching purity to Milton's
delineation of the female character:--
Methought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.
Mine, as whom wash'd from spot of child-bed taint
Purification in the old law did save,
And such, as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heav'n without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:
Her face was veil'd, yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined
So clear, as in no face with more delight:
But O as to embrace me she inclined,
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.
There could not have been a greater mistake or a more unjust piece of
criticism than to suppose that Milton only shone on great subjects, and
that on ordinary occasions and in familiar life his mind was unwieldy,
averse to the cultivation of grace and elegance, and unsusceptible of
harmless pleasures. The whole tenor of his smaller compositions
contradicts this opinion, which, however, they have been cited to
confirm. The notion first got abroad from the bitterness (or vehemence)
of his controversial writings, and has been kept up since with little
meaning and with less truth. His Letters to Donatus and others are not
more remarkable for the display of a scholastic enthusiasm than for that
of the most amiable dispositions. They are 'severe in youthful virtue
unreproved.' There is a passage in his prose-works (the Treatise on
Education) which shows, I think, his extreme openness and proneness to
pleasing outward impressions in a striking point of view. 'But to
return to our own institute,' he says, 'besides these constant exercises
at home, there is another opportunity of gaining experience to be won
from pleasure itself abroad. _In those vernal seasons of the year, when
the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against
Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing
with Heaven and earth._ I should not therefore be a persuader to them
of studying much then, but to ride out in companies with prudent and
well-staid guides, to all quarters of the land,' etc. Many other
passages might be quoted, in which the poet breaks through the
groundwork of prose, as it were, by natural fecundity and a genial,
unrestrained sense of delight. To suppose that a poet is not easily
accessible to pleasure, or that he does not take an interest in
individual objects and feelings, is to suppose that he is no poet; and
proceeds on the false theory, which has been so often applied to poetry
and the Fine Arts, that the whole is not made up of the particulars. If
our author, according to Dr. Johnson s account of him, could only have
treated epic, high-sounding subjects, he would not have been what he
was, but another Sir Richard Blackmore.--I may conclude with observing,
that I have often wished that Milton had lived to see the Revolution of
1688. This would have been a triumph worthy of him, and which he would
have earned by faith and hope. He would then have been old, but would
not have lived in vain to see it, and might have celebrated the event in
one more undying strain!
NOTES to ESSAY II
No notes for this essay
ESSAY III
ON GOING A JOURNEY
One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey; but I
like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors,
nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when
alone.
The fields his study, nature was his book.
I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. When I am
in the country I wish to vegetate like the country. I am not for
criticising hedge-rows and black cattle. I go out of town in order to
forget the town and all that is in it. There are those who for this
purpose go to watering-places, and carry the metropolis with them. I
like more elbow-room and fewer encumbrances. I like solitude, when I
give myself up to it, for the sake of solitude; nor do I ask for
a friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper solitude is sweet.
The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do,
just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be free of all
impediments and of all inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind much
more to get rid of others. It is because I want a little
breathing-space to muse on indifferent matters, where Contemplation
May plume her feathers and let grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort
Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd,
that I absent myself from the town for a while, without feeling at a
loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend in a
postchaise or in a Tilbury, to exchange good things with, and vary the
same stale topics over again, for once let me have a truce with
impertinence. Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green
turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march
to dinner--and then to thinking! It is hard if I cannot start some game
on these lone heaths. I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing for joy. From the
point of yonder rolling cloud I plunge into my past being, and revel
there, as the sun-burnt Indian plunges headlong into the wave that wafts
him to his native shore. Then long-forgotten things, like 'sunken wrack
and sumless treasuries,' burst upon my eager sight, and I begin to feel,
think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by
attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence
of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence. No one likes puns,
alliterations, antitheses, argument, and analysis better than I do; but
I sometimes had rather be without them. 'Leave, oh, leave me to my
repose!' I have just now other business in hand, which would seem idle
to you, but is with me 'very stuff o' the conscience.' Is not this wild
rose sweet without a comment? Does not this daisy leap to my heart set
in its coat of emerald? Yet if I wore to explain to you the
circumstance that has so endeared it to me, you would only smile. Had I
not better then keep it to myself, and let it serve me to brood over,
from here to yonder craggy point, and from thence onward to the
far-distant horizon? I should be but bad company all that way, and
therefore prefer being alone. I have heard it said that you may, when
the moody fit comes on, walk or ride on by yourself, and indulge your
reveries. But this looks like a breach of manners, a neglect of others,
and you are thinking all the time that you ought to rejoin your party.
'Out upon such half-faced fellowship,' say I. I like to be either
entirely to myself, or entirely at the disposal of others; to talk or be
silent, to walk or sit still, to be sociable or solitary. I was pleased
with an observation of Mr. Cobbett's, that 'he thought it a bad French
custom to drink our wine with our meals, and that an Englishman ought to
do only one thing at a time.' So I cannot talk and think, or indulge in
melancholy musing and lively conversation by fits and starts. 'Let me
have a companion of my way,' says Sterne, 'were it but to remark how the
shadows lengthen as the sun declines.' It is beautifully said; but, in
my opinion, this continual comparing of notes interferes with the
involuntary impression of things upon the mind, and hurts the sentiment.
If you only hint what you feel in a kind of dumb show, it is insipid:
if you have to explain it, it is making a toil of a pleasure. You
cannot read the book of nature without being perpetually put to the
trouble of translating it for the benefit of others. I am for this
synthetical method on a journey in preference to the analytical. I am
content to lay in a stock of ideas then, and to examine and anatomise
them afterwards. I want to see my vague notions float like the down of
the thistle before the breeze, and not to have them entangled in the
briars and thorns of controversy. For once, I like to have it all my
own way; and this is impossible unless you are alone, or in such company
as I do not covet. I have no objection to argue a point with any one
for twenty miles of measured road, but not for pleasure. If you remark
the scent of a bean-field crossing the road, perhaps your
fellow-traveller has no smell. If you point to a distant object,
perhaps he is short-sighted, and has to take out his glass to look at
it. There is a feeling in the air, a tone in the colour of a cloud,
which hits your fancy, but the effect of which you are unable to account
for. There is then no sympathy, but an uneasy craving after it, and a
dissatisfaction which pursues you on the way. and in the end probably
produces ill-humour. Now I never quarrel with myself, and take all my
own conclusions for granted till I find it necessary to defend them
against objections. It is not merely that you may not be of accord on
the objects and circumstances that present themselves before you--these
may recall a number of objects, and lead to associations too delicate
and refined to be possibly communicated to others. Yet these I love to
cherish, and sometimes still fondly clutch them, when I can escape from
the throng to do so. To give way to our feelings before company seems
extravagance or affectation; and, on the other hand, to have to unravel
this mystery of our being at every turn, and to make others take an
equal interest in it (otherwise the end is not answered), is a task to
which few are competent. We must 'give it an understanding, but no
tongue.' My old friend Coleridge, however, could do both. He could go
on in the most delightful explanatory way over hill and dale a summer's
day, and convert a landscape into a didactic poem or a Pindaric ode.
'He talked far above singing.' If I could so clothe my ideas in
sounding and flowing words, I might perhaps wish to have some one with
me to admire the swelling theme; or I could be more content, were it
possible for me still to hear his echoing voice in the woods of
All-Foxden.[1] They had 'that fine madness in them which our first
poets had'; and if they could have been caught by some rare instrument,
would have breathed such strains as the following:--
Here be woods as green
As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet
As when smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet
Face of the curled streams, with flow'rs as many
As the young spring gives, and as choice as any;
Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells,
Arbours o'ergrown with woodbines, caves and dells;
Choose where thou wilt, whilst I sit by and sing,
Or gather rushes to make many a ring
For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love,
How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove,
First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes
She took eternal fire that never dies;
How she convey'd him softly in a sleep,
His temples bound with poppy, to the steep
Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night,
Gilding the mountain with her brother's light,
To kiss her sweetest.[2]
Had I words and images at command like these, I would attempt to wake
the thoughts that lie slumbering on golden ridges in the evening clouds:
but at the sight of nature my fancy, poor as it is, droops and closes up
its leaves, like flowers at sunset. I can make nothing out on the spot:
I must have time to collect myself.
In general, a good thing spoils out-of-door prospects: it should he
reserved for Table-talk. Lamb is for this reason, I take it, the worst
company in the world out of doors; because he is the best within. I
grant there is one subject on which it is pleasant to talk on a journey,
and that is, what one shall have for supper when we get to our inn at
night. The open air improves this sort of conversation or friendly
altercation, by setting a keener edge on appetite. Every mile of the
road heightens the flavour of the viands we expect at the end of it.
How fine it is to enter some old town, walled and turreted, just at
approach of nightfall, or to come to some straggling village, with the
lights streaming through the surrounding gloom; and then, after
inquiring for the best entertainment that the place affords, to 'take
one's ease at one's inn'! These eventful moments in our lives' history
are too precious, too full of solid, heartfelt happiness to be frittered
and dribbled away in imperfect sympathy. I would have them all to
myself, and drain them to the last drop: they will do to talk of or to
write about afterwards. What a delicate speculation it is, after
drinking whole goblets of tea--
The cups that cheer, but not inebriate--
and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit considering what we
shall have for supper--eggs and a rasher, a rabbit smothered in onions,
or an excellent veal-cutlet! Sancho in such a situation once fixed on
cow-heel; and his choice, though he could not help it, is not to be
disparaged. Then, in the intervals of pictured scenery and Shandean
contemplation, to catch the preparation and the stir in the kitchen
[getting ready for the gentleman in the parlour]. _Procul, O procul
este profani!_ These hours are sacred to silence and to musing, to be
treasured up in the memory, and to feed the source of smiling thoughts
hereafter. I would not waste them in idle talk; or if I must have the
integrity of fancy broken in upon, I would rather it were by a stranger
than a friend. A stranger takes his hue and character from the time and
place; he is a part of the furniture and costume of an inn. If he is a
Quaker, or from the West Riding of Yorkshire, so much the better. I do
not even try to sympathise with him, and he breaks no squares. [How I
love to see the camps of the gypsies, and to sigh my soul into that sort
of life. If I express this feeling to another, he may qualify and spoil
it with some objection.] I associate nothing with my travelling
companion but present objects and passing events. In his ignorance of
me and my affairs, I in a manner forget myself. But a friend reminds
one of other things, rips up old grievances, and destroys the
abstraction of the scene. He comes in ungraciously between us and our
imaginary character. Something is dropped in the course of conversation
that gives a hint of your profession and pursuits; or from having some
one with you that knows the less sublime portions of your history, it
seems that other people do. You are no longer a citizen of the world;
but your 'unhoused free condition is put into circumspection and
confine.' The incognito of an inn is one of its striking
privileges--'lord of one's self, uncumbered with a name.' Oh! it is
great to shake off the trammels of the world and of public opinion--to
lose our importunate, tormenting, everlasting personal identity in the
elements of nature, and become the creature of the moment, clear of all
ties--to hold to the universe only by a dish of sweetbreads, and to owe
nothing but the score of the evening--and no longer seeking for applause
and meeting with contempt, to be known by no other title than _the
Gentleman in the parlour!_ One may take one's choice of all characters
in this romantic state of uncertainty as to one's real pretensions, and
become indefinitely respectable and negatively right-worshipful. We
baffle prejudice and disappoint conjecture; and from being so to others,
begin to be objects of curiosity and wonder even to ourselves. We are
no more those hackneyed common-places that we appear in the world; an
inn restores us to the level of nature, and quits scores with society!
I have certainly spent some enviable hours at inns--sometimes when I
have been left entirely to myself, and have tried to solve some
metaphysical problem, as once at Witham Common, where I found out the
proof that likeness is not a case of the association of ideas--at other
times, when there have been pictures in the room, as at St. Neot's (I
think it was), where I first met with Gribelin's engravings of the
Cartoons, into which I entered at once, and at a little inn on the
borders of Wales, where there happened to be hanging some of Westall's
drawings, which I compared triumphantly (for a theory that I had, not
for the admired artist) with the figure of a girl who had ferried me
over the Severn, standing up in a boat between me and the twilight--at
other times I might mention luxuriating in books, with a peculiar
interest in this way, as I remember sitting up half the night to read
_Paul and Virginia,_ which I picked up at an inn at Bridgewater, after
being drenched in the rain all day; and at the same place I got through
two volumes of Madame D'Arblay's _Camilla._ It was on the 10th of April
1798 that I sat down to a volume of the _New Eloise,_ at the inn at
Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken. The letter I
chose was that in which St. Preux describes his feelings as he first
caught a glimpse from the heights of the Jura of the Pays de Vaud, which
I had brought with me as a _bon bouche_ to crown the evening with. It
was my birthday, and I had for the first time come from a place in the
neighbourhood to visit this delightful spot. The road to Llangollen
turns off between Chirk and Wrexham; and on passing a certain point you
come all at once upon the valley, which opens like an amphitheatre,
broad, barren hills rising in majestic state on either side, with 'green
upland swells that echo to the bleat of flocks' below, and the river Dee
babbling over its stony bed in the midst of them. The valley at this
time 'glittered green with sunny showers,' and a budding ash-tree dipped
its tender branches in the chiding stream. How proud, how glad I was to
walk along the high road that overlooks the delicious prospect,
repeating the lines which I have just quoted from Mr. Coleridge's poems!
But besides the prospect which opened beneath my feet, another also
opened to my inward sight, a heavenly vision, on which were written, in
letters large as Hope could make them, these four words, LIBERTY,
GENIUS, LOVE, VIRTUE; which have since faded into the light of common
day, or mock my idle gaze.
The beautiful is vanished, and returns not.
Still I would return some time or other to this enchanted spot; but I
would return to it alone. What other self could I find to share that
influx of thoughts, of regret, and delight, the fragments of which I
could hardly conjure up to myself, so much have they been broken and
defaced. I could stand on some tall rock, and overlook the precipice of
years that separates me from what I then was. I was at that time going
shortly to visit the poet whom I have above named. Where is he now?
Not only I myself have changed; the world, which was then new to me, has
become old and incorrigible. Yet will I turn to thee in thought, O
sylvan Dee, in joy, in youth and gladness as thou then wert; and thou
shalt always be to me the river of Paradise, where I will drink of the
waters of life freely!
There is hardly anything that shows the short-sightedness or
capriciousness of the imagination more than travelling does. With
change of place we change our ideas; nay, our opinions and feelings. We
can by an effort indeed transport ourselves to old and long-forgotten
scenes, and then the picture of the mind revives again; but we forget
those that we have just left. It seems that we can think but of one
place at a time. The canvas of the fancy is but of a certain extent,
and if we paint one set of objects upon it, they immediately efface
every other. We cannot enlarge our conceptions, we only shift our point
of view. The landscape bares its bosom to the enraptured eye, we take
our fill of it, and seem as if we could form no other image of beauty or
grandeur. We pass on, and think no more of it: the horizon that shuts
it from our sight also blots it from our memory like a dream. In
travelling through a wild barren country I can form no idea of a woody
and cultivated one. It appears to me that all the world must be barren,
like what I see of it. In the country we forget the town, and in town
we despise the country. 'Beyond Hyde Park,' says Sir Topling Flutter,
'all is a desert.' All that part of the map that we do not see before
us is blank. The world in our conceit of it is not much bigger than a
nutshell. It is not one prospect expanded into another, county joined
to county, kingdom to kingdom, land to seas, making an image voluminous
and vast; the mind can form no larger idea of space than the eye can
take in at a single glance. The rest is a name written in a map, a
calculation of arithmetic. For instance, what is the true signification
of that immense mass of territory and population known by the name of
China to us? An inch of pasteboard on a wooden globe, of no more
account than a China orange! Things near us are seen of the size of
life: things at a distance are diminished to the size of the
understanding. We measure the universe by ourselves, and even
comprehend the texture of our being only piecemeal. In this way,
however, we remember an infinity of things and places. The mind is like
a mechanical instrument that plays a great variety of tunes, but it must
play them in succession. One idea recalls another, but it at the same
time excludes all others. In trying to renew old recollections, we
cannot as it were unfold the whole web of our existence; we must pick
out the single threads. So in coming to a place where we have formerly
lived, and with which we have intimate associations, every one must have
found that the feeling grows more vivid the nearer we approach the spot,
from the mere anticipation of the actual impression: we remember
circumstances, feelings, persons, faces, names that we had not thought
of for years; but for the time all the rest of the world is
forgotten!--To return to the question I have quitted above:
I have no objection to go to see ruins, aqueducts, pictures, in company
with a friend or a party, but rather the contrary, for the former reason
reversed. They are intelligible matters, and will bear talking about.
The sentiment here is not tacit, but communicable and overt. Salisbury
Plain is barren of criticism, but Stonehenge will bear a discussion
antiquarian, picturesque, and philosophical. In setting out on a party
of pleasure, the first consideration always is where we shall go to: in
taking a solitary ramble, the question is what we shall meet with by the
way. 'The mind is its own place'; nor are we anxious to arrive at the
end of our journey. I can myself do the honours indifferently well to
works of art and curiosity. I once took a party to Oxford with no mean
eclat--showed them that seat of the Muses at a distance,
With glistering spires and pinnacles adorn'd--
descanted on the learned air that breathes from the grassy quadrangles
and stone walls of halls and colleges--was at home in the Bodleian; and
at Blenheim quite superseded the powdered Cicerone that attended us, and
that pointed in vain with his wand to commonplace beauties in matchless
pictures. As another exception to the above reasoning, I should not
feel confident in venturing on a journey in a foreign country without a
companion. I should want at intervals to hear the sound of my own
language. There is an involuntary antipathy in the mind of an
Englishman to foreign manners and notions that requires the assistance
of social sympathy to carry it off. As the distance from home
increases, this relief, which was at first a luxury, becomes a passion
and an appetite. A person would almost feel stifled to find himself in
the deserts of Arabia without friends and countrymen: there must he
allowed to be something in the view of Athens or old Rome that claims
the utterance of speech; and I own that the Pyramids are too mighty for
any single contemplation. In such situations, so opposite to all one's
ordinary train of ideas, one seems a species by one's-self, a limb torn
off from society, unless one can meet with instant fellowship and
support. Yet I did not feel this want or craving very pressing once,
when I first set my foot on the laughing shores of France. Calais was
peopled with novelty and delight. The confused, busy murmur of the
place was like oil and wine poured into my ears; nor did the mariners'
hymn, which was sung from the top of an old crazy vessel in the harbour,
as the sun went down, send an alien sound into my soul. I only breathed
the air of general humanity. I walked over 'the vine-covered hills and
gay regions of France,' erect and satisfied; for the image of man was
not cast down and chained to the foot of arbitrary thrones: I was at no
loss for language, for that of all the great schools of painting was
open to me. The whole is vanished like a shade. Pictures, heroes,
glory, freedom, all are fled: nothing remains but the Bourbons and the
French people!--There is undoubtedly a sensation in travelling into
foreign parts that is to be had nowhere else; but it is more pleasing at
the time than lasting. It is too remote from our habitual associations
to be a common topic of discourse or reference, and, like a dream or
another state of existence, does not piece into our daily modes of life.
It is an animated but a momentary hallucination. It demands an effort
to exchange our actual for our ideal identity; and to feel the pulse of
our old transports revive very keenly, we must 'jump' all our present
comforts and connections. Our romantic and itinerant character is not
to be domesticated. Dr. Johnson remarked how little foreign travel
added to the facilities of conversation in those who had been abroad.
In fact, the time we have spent there is both delightful, and in one
sense instructive; but it appears to be cut out of our substantial,
downright existence, and never to join kindly on to it. We are not the
same, but another, and perhaps more enviable individual, all the time we
are out of our own country. We are lost to ourselves, as well as our
friends. So the poet somewhat quaintly sings:
Out of my country and myself I go.
Those who wish to forget painful thoughts, do well to absent themselves
for a while from the ties and objects that recall them; but we can be
said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us birth. I
should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life in
travelling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend
afterwards at home!
NOTES to ESSAY III
[1] Near Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire, where the author of this Essay
visited Coleridge in 1798. He was there again in 1803.
[2] Fletcher's 'Faithful Shepherdess,' i. 3 (Dyce's _Beaumont and
Fletcher,_ ii. 38, 39).
ESSAY IV
ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS
There is a set of people who fairly come under this denomination. They
spend their time and their breath in coffee-houses and other places of
public resort, hearing or repeating some new thing. They sit with a
paper in their hands in the morning, and with a pipe in their mouths in
the evening, discussing the contents of it. The _Times,_ the _Morning
Chronicle,_ and the _Herald_ are necessary to their existence: in them
'they live and move and have their being.' The Evening Paper is
impatiently expected and called for at a certain critical minute: the
news of the morning becomes stale and vapid by the dinner-hour. A
fresher interest is required, an appetite for the latest-stirring
information is excited with the return of their meals; and a glass of
old port or humming ale hardly relishes as it ought without the infusion
of some lively topic that had its birth with the day, and perishes
before night. 'Then come in the sweets of the evening':--the Queen, the
coronation, the last new play, the next fight, the insurrection of the
Greeks or Neapolitans, the price of stocks, or death of kings, keep them
on the alert till bedtime. No question comes amiss to them that is
quite new--none is ever heard of that is at all old.
That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker.
The World before the Flood or the Intermediate State of the Soul are
never once thought of--such is the quick succession of subjects, the
suddenness and fugitiveness of the interest taken in them, that the
_Twopenny Post Bag_ would be at present looked upon as an old-fashioned
publication; and the Battle of Waterloo, like the proverb, is somewhat
musty. It is strange that people should take so much interest at one
time in what they so soon forget;--the truth is, they feel no interest
in it at any time, but it does for something to talk about. Their ideas
are served up to them, like their bill of fare, for the day; and the
whole creation, history, war, politics, morals, poetry, metaphysics, is
to them like a file of antedated newspapers, of no use, not even for
reference, except the one which lies on the table! You cannot take any
of these persons at a greater disadvantage than before they are provided
with their cue for the day. They ask with a face of dreary vacuity,
'Have you anything new?'--and on receiving an answer in the negative,
have nothing further to say. [They are like an oyster at the ebb of the
tide, gaping for fresh _tidings._] Talk of the Westminster Election,
the Bridge Street Association, or Mr. Cobbett's Letter to John Cropper
of Liverpool, and they are alive again. Beyond the last twenty-four
hours, or the narrow round in which they move, they are utterly to seek,
without ideas, feelings, interests, apprehensions of any sort; so that
if you betray any knowledge beyond the vulgar routine of SECOND EDITIONS
and first-hand private intelligence, you pass with them for a dull
fellow, not acquainted with what is going forward in the world, or with
the practical value of things. I have known a person of this stamp
censure John Cam Hobhouse for referring so often as he does to the
affairs of the Greeks and Romans, as if the affairs of the nation were
not sufficient for his hands: another asks you if a general in modern
times cannot throw a bridge over a river without having studied Caesar's
_Commentaries;_ and a third cannot see the use of the learned languages,
as he has observed that the greatest proficients in them are rather
taciturn than otherwise, and hesitate in their speech more than other
people. A dearth of general information is almost necessary to the
thorough-paced coffee-house politician; in the absence of thought,
imagination, sentiment, he is attracted immediately to the nearest
commonplace, and floats through the chosen regions of noise and empty
rumours without difficulty and without distraction. Meet 'any six of
these men in buckram,' and they will accost you with the same question
and the same answer: they have seen it somewhere in print, or had it
from some city oracle, that morning; and the sooner they vent their
opinions the better, for they will not keep. Like tickets of admission
to the theatre for a particular evening, they must be used immediately,
or they will be worth nothing: and the object is to find auditors for
the one and customers for the other, neither of which is difficult;
since people who have no ideas of their own are glad to hear what any
one else has to say, as those who have not free admissions to the play
will very obligingly take up with an occasional order. It sometimes
gives one a melancholy but mixed sensation to see one of the better sort
of this class of politicians, not without talents or learning, absorbed
for fifty years together in the all-engrossing topic of the day:
mounting on it for exercise and recreation of his faculties, like the
great horse at a riding-school, and after his short, improgressive,
untired career, dismounting just where he got up; flying abroad in
continual consternation on the wings of all the newspapers; waving his
arm like a pump-handle in sign of constant change, and spouting out
torrents of puddled politics from his mouth; dead to all interests but
those of the state; seemingly neither older nor wiser for age;
unaccountably enthusiastic, stupidly romantic, and actuated by no other
motive than the mechanical operations of the spirit of newsmongering.[1]
'What things,' exclaims Beaumont in his verses to Ben Jonson, 'have we
not seen done at the Mermaid!
'Then when there hath been thrown
Wit able enough to justify the town
For three days past, wit that might warrant be
For the whole city to talk foolishly!'
I cannot say the same of the Southampton, though it stands on classic
ground, and is connected by vocal tradition with the great names of the
Elizabethan age. What a falling off is here I Our ancestors of that
period seem not only to be older by two hundred years, and
proportionably wiser and wittier than we, but hardly a trace of them is
left, not even the memory of what has been. How should I make my friend
Mounsey stare, if I were to mention the name of my still better friend,
old honest Signor Friscobaldo, the father of Bellafront;--yet his name
was perhaps invented, and the scenes in which he figures unrivalled
might for the first time have been read aloud to thrilling ears on this
very spot! Who reads Decker now? Or if by chance any one awakes the
strings of that ancient lyre, and starts with delight as they yield
wild, broken music, is he not accused of envy to the living Muse? What
would a linen-draper from Holborn think, if I were to ask him after the
clerk of St. Andrew's, the immortal, the forgotten Webster? His name
and his works are no more heard of: though _these_ were written with a
pen of adamant, 'within the red-leaved tables of the heart,' his fame
was 'writ in water.' So perishable is genius, so swift is time, so
fluctuating is knowledge, and so far is it from being true that men
perpetually accumulate the means of improvement and refinement. On the
contrary, living knowledge is the tomb of the dead, and while light and
worthless materials float on the surface, the solid and sterling as
often sink to the bottom, and are swallowed up for ever in weeds and
quicksands!--A striking instance of the short-lived nature of popular
reputation occurred one evening at the Southampton, when we got into a
dispute, the most learned and recondite that over took place, on the
comparative merits of Lord Byron and Gray. A country gentleman happened
to drop in, and thinking to show off in London company, launched into a
lofty panegyric on _The Bard_ of Gray as the sublimest composition in
the English language. This assertion presently appeared to be an
anachronism, though it was probably the opinion in vogue thirty years
ago, when the gentleman was last in town. After a little floundering,
one of the party volunteered to express a more contemporary sentiment,
by asking in a tone of mingled confidence and doubt--'But you don't
think, sir, that Gray is to be mentioned as a poet in the same day with
my Lord Byron?' The disputants were now at issue: all that resulted was
that Gray was set aside as a poet who would not go down among readers of
the present day, and his patron treated the works of the Noble Bard as
mere ephemeral effusions, and spoke of poets that would be admired
thirty years hence, which was the farthest stretch of his critical
imagination. His antagonist's did not even reach so far. This was the
most romantic digression we over had; and the subject was not afterwards
resumed.--No one here (generally speaking) has the slightest notion of
anything that has happened, that has been said, thought, or done out of
his own recollection. It would be in vain to hearken after those
'wit-skirmishes,' those 'brave sublunary things' which were the
employment and delight of the Beaumonts and Bens of former times: but we
may happily repose on dulness, drift with the tide of nonsense, and gain
an agreeable vertigo by lending an ear to endless controversies. The
confusion, provided you do not mingle in the fray and try to disentangle
it, is amusing and edifying enough. Every species of false wit and
spurious argument may be learnt here by potent examples. Whatever
observations you hear dropt have been picked up in the same place or in
a kindred atmosphere. There is a kind of conversation made up entirely
of scraps and hearsay, as there are a kind of books made up entirely of
references to other books. This may account for the frequent
contradictions which abound in the discourse of persons educated and
disciplined wholly in coffee-houses. There is nothing stable or
well-grounded in it: it is 'nothing but vanity, chaotic vanity.' They
hear a remark at the Globe which they do not know what to make of;
another at the Rainbow in direct opposition to it; and not having time
to reconcile them, vent both at the Mitre. In the course of half an
hour, if they are not more than ordinarily dull, you are sure to find
them on opposite sides of the question. This is the sickening part of
it. People do not seem to talk for the sake of expressing their
opinions, but to maintain an opinion for the sake of talking. We meet
neither with modest ignorance nor studious acquirement. Their knowledge
has been taken in too much by snatches to digest properly. There is
neither sincerity nor system in what they say. They hazard the first
crude notion that comes to hand, and then defend it how they can; which
is for the most part but ill. 'Don't you think,' says Mounsey, 'that
Mr. ----- is a very sensible, well-informed man?' 'Why, no,' I say, 'he
seems to me to have no ideas of his own, and only to wait to see what
others will say in order to set himself against it. I should not think
that is the way to get at the truth. I do not desire to be driven out
of my conclusions (such as they are) merely to make way for his upstart
pretensions.'--'Then there is -----: what of him?' 'He might very well
express all he has to say in half the time, and with half the trouble.
Why should he beat about the bush as he does? He appears to be getting
up a little speech and practising on a smaller scale for a Debating
Society--the lowest ambition a man can have. Besides, by his manner of
drawling out his words, and interlarding his periods with innuendos and
formal reservations, he is evidently making up his mind all the time
which side he shall take. He puts his sentences together as printers
set up types, letter by letter. There is certainly no principle of
short-hand in his mode of elocution. He goes round for a meaning, and
the sense waits for him. It is not conversation, but rehearsing a part.
Men of education and men of the world order this matter better. They
know what they have to say on a subject, and come to the point at once.
Your coffee-house politician balances between what he heard last and
what he shall say next; and not seeing his way clearly, puts you off
with circumstantial phrases, and tries to gain time for fear of making a
false step. This gentleman has heard some one admired for precision and
copiousness of language; and goes away, congratulating himself that he
has not made a blunder in grammar or in rhetoric the whole evening. He
is a theoretical _Quidnunc_--is tenacious in argument, though wary;
carries his point thus and thus, bandies objections and answers with
uneasy pleasantry, and when he has the worst of the dispute, puns very
emphatically on his adversary's name, if it admits of that kind of
misconstruction.' George Kirkpatrick is admired by the waiter, who is a
sleek hand,[2] for his temper in managing an argument. Any one else
would perceive that the latent cause is not patience with his
antagonist, but satisfaction with himself. I think this unmoved
self-complacency, this cavalier, smooth, simpering indifference is more
annoying than the extremest violence or irritability. The one shows
that your opponent does care something about you, and may be put out of
his way by your remarks; the other seems to announce that nothing you
say can shake his opinion a jot, that he has considered the whole of
what you have to offer beforehand, and that he is in all respects much
wiser and more accomplished than you. Such persons talk to grown people
with the same air of patronage and condescension that they do to
children. 'They will explain'--is a familiar expression with them,
thinking you can only differ from them in consequence of misconceiving
what they say. Or if you detect them in any error in point of fact (as
to acknowledged deficiency in wit or argument, they would smile at the
idea), they add some correction to your correction, and thus have the
whip-hand of you again, being more correct than you who corrected them.
If you hint some obvious oversight, they know what you are going to say.
and were aware of the objection before you uttered it:--'So shall their
anticipation prevent your discovery.' By being in the right you gain no
advantage: by being in the wrong you are entitled to the benefit of
their pity or scorn. It is sometimes curious to see a select group of
our little Gotham getting about a knotty point that will bear a wager,
as whether Dr. Johnson's Dictionary was originally published in quarto
or folio. The confident assertions, the cautious overtures, the length
of time demanded to ascertain the fact, the precise terms of the
forfeit, the provisos for getting out of paying it at last, lead to a
long and inextricable discussion. George Kirkpatrick was, however, so
convinced in his own mind that the _Mourning Bride_ was written by
Shakespear, that he ran headlong into the snare: the bet was decided,
and the punch was drunk. He has skill in numbers, and seldom exceeds
his sevenpence.--He had a brother once, no Michael Cassio, no great
arithmetician. Roger Kirkpatrick was a rare fellow, of the driest
humour, and the nicest tact, of infinite sleights and evasions, of a
picked phraseology, and the very soul of mimicry. I fancy I have some
insight into physiognomy myself, but he could often expound to me at a
single glance the characters of those of my acquaintance that I had been
most at fault about. The account as it was cast up and balanced between
us was not always very favourable. How finely, how truly, how gaily he
took off the company at the Southampton! Poor and faint are my sketches
compared to his! It was like looking into a _camera obscura_--you saw
faces shining and speaking--the smoke curled, the lights dazzled, the
oak wainscotting took a higher polish--there was old Sarratt, tall and
gaunt, with his couplet from Pope and case at Nisi Prius, Mounsey eyeing
the ventilator and lying _perdu_ for a moral, and Hume and Ayrton taking
another friendly finishing glass!--These and many more windfalls of
character he gave us in thought, word, and action. I remember his once
describing three different persons together to myself and Martin Burney,
viz. the manager of a country theatre, a tragic and a comic performer,
till we were ready to tumble on the floor with laughing at the oddity of
their humours, and at Roger's extraordinary powers of ventriloquism,
bodily and mental; and Burney said (such was the vividness of the scene)
that when he awoke the next morning, he wondered what three amusing
characters he had been in company with the evening before. Oh! it was a
rich treat to see him describe Mudford, him of the _Courier,_ the
Contemplative Man, who wrote an answer to Coelebs, coming into a room,
folding up his greatcoat, taking out a little pocket volume, laying it
down to think, rubbing the calf of his leg with grave self-complacency,
and starting out of his reverie when spoken to with an inimitable vapid
exclamation of 'Eh!' Mudford is like a man made of fleecy hosiery:
Roger was lank and lean 'as is the ribbed sea-sand.' Yet he seemed the
very man he represented, as fat, pert, and dull as it was possible to
be. I have not seen him of late:--
For Kais is fled, and our tents are forlorn.
But I thought of him the other day, when the news of the death of
Buonaparte came, whom we both loved for precisely contrary reasons, he
for putting down the rabble of the people, and I because he had put down
the rabble of kings. Perhaps this event may rouse him from his
lurking-place, where he lies like Reynard, 'with head declined, in
feigned slumbers!'[3]
I had almost forgotten the Southampton Tavern. We for some time took
C---- for a lawyer, from a certain arguteness of voice and slenderness
of neck, and from his having a quibble and a laugh at himself always
ready. On inquiry, however, he was found to be a patent-medicine
seller, and having leisure in his apprenticeship, and a forwardness of
parts, he had taken to study Blackstone and the _Statutes at Large._ On
appealing to Mounsey for his opinion on this matter, he observed
pithily, 'I don't like so much law: the gentlemen here seem fond of law,
but I have law enough at chambers.' One sees a great deal of the
humours and tempers of men in a place of this sort, and may almost
gather their opinions from their characters. There is C----, a fellow
that is always in the wrong--who puts might for right on all
occasions--a Tory in grain--who has no one idea but what has been
instilled into him by custom and authority--an everlasting babbler on
the stronger side of the question--querulous and dictatorial, and with a
peevish whine in his voice like a beaten schoolboy. He is a great
advocate for the Bourbons and for the National Debt. The former he
affirms to be the choice of the French people, and the latter he insists
is necessary to the salvation of these kingdoms. This last point a
little inoffensive gentleman among us, of a saturnine aspect but simple
conceptions, cannot comprehend. 'I will tell you, sir--I will make my
propositions so clear that you will be convinced of the truth of my
observation in a moment. Consider, sir, the number of trades that would
be thrown out of employ if it were done away with: what would become of
the porcelain manufacture without it?' Any stranger to overhear one of
these debates would swear that the English as a nation are bad
logicians. Mood and figure are unknown to them. They do not argue by
the book. They arrive at conclusions through the force of prejudice,
and on the principles of contradiction. Mr. C---- having thus triumphed
in argument, offers a flower to the notice of the company as a specimen
of his flower-garden, a curious exotic, nothing like it to be found in
this kingdom; talks of his carnations, of his country-house, and old
English hospitality, but never invites any of his friends to come down
and take their Sunday's dinner with him. He is mean and ostentatious at
the same time, insolent and servile, does not know whether to treat
those he converses with as if they were his porters or his customers:
the prentice-boy is not yet wiped out of him, and his imagination still
hovers between his mansion at ----- and the workhouse. Opposed to him
and to every one else is B., a radical reformer and logician, who makes
clear work of the taxes and National Debt, reconstructs the Government
from the first principles of things, shatters the Holy Alliance at a
blow, grinds out the future prospects of society with a machine, and is
setting out afresh with the commencement of the French Revolution five
and twenty years ago, as if on an untried experiment. He minds nothing
but the formal agreement of his premises and his conclusions, and does
not stick at obstacles in the way, nor consequences in the end. If
there was but one side of a question, he would be always in the right.
He casts up one column of the account to admiration, but totally forgets
and rejects the other. His ideas lie like square pieces of wood in his
brain, and may be said to be piled up on a stiff architectural
principle, perpendicularly, and at right angles. There is no
inflection, no modification, no graceful embellishment, no Corinthian
capitals. I never heard him agree to two propositions together, or to
more than half a one at a time. His rigid love of truth bends to
nothing but his habitual love of disputation. He puts one in mind of
one of those long-headed politicians and frequenters of coffee-houses
mentioned in Berkeley's _Minute Philosopher,_ who would make nothing of
such old-fashioned fellows as Plato and Aristotle. He has the new light
strong upon him, and he knocks other people down with its solid beams.
He denies that he has got certain views out of Cobbett, though he allows
that there are excellent ideas occasionally to be met with in that
writer. It is a pity that this enthusiastic and unqualified regard to
truth should be accompanied with an equal exactness of expenditure and
unrelenting eye to the main chance. He brings a bunch of radishes with
him for cheapness, and gives a band of musicians at the door a penny,
observing that he likes their performance better than all the Opera
squalling. This brings the severity of his political principles into
question, if not into contempt. He would abolish the National Debt from
motives of personal economy, and objects to Mr. Canning's pension
because it perhaps takes a farthing a year out of his own pocket. A
great deal of radical reasoning has its source in this feeling.--He
bestows no small quantity of his tediousness upon Mounsey, on whose mind
all these formulas and diagrams fall like seed on stony ground: 'while
the manna is descending,' he shakes his ears, and, in the intervals of
the debate, insinuates an objection, and calls for another half-pint. I
have sometimes said to him, 'Any one to come in here without knowing
you, would take you for the most disputatious man alive, for you are
always engaged in an argument with somebody or other.' The truth is,
that Mounsey is a good-natured, gentlemanly man, who notwithstanding, if
appealed to, will not let an absurd or unjust proposition pass without
expressing his dissent; and therefore he is a sort of mark for all those
(and we have several of that stamp) who like to tease other people's
understandings as wool-combers tease wool. He is certainly the flower
of the flock. He is the oldest frequenter of the place, the latest
sitter-up, well-informed, inobtrusive, and that sturdy old English
character, a lover of truth and justice. I never knew Mounsey approve
of anything unfair or illiberal. There is a candour and uprightness
about his mind which can neither be wheedled nor browbeat into
unjustifiable complaisance. He looks straight forward as he sits with
his glass in his hand, turning neither to the right nor the left, and I
will venture to say that he has never had a sinister object in view
through life. Mrs. Battle (it is recorded in her Opinions on Whist)
could not make up her mind to use the word _'Go.'_ Mounsey, from long
practice, has got over this difficulty, and uses it incessantly. It is
no matter what adjunct follows in the train of this despised
monosyllable,--whatever liquid comes after this prefix is welcome.
Mounsey, without being the most communicative, is the most conversible
man I know. The social principle is inseparable from his person. If he
has nothing to say, he drinks your health; and when you cannot, from the
rapidity and carelessness of his utterance, catch what he says, you
assent to it with equal confidence: you know his meaning is good. His
favourite phrase is, 'We have all of us something of the coxcomb'; and
yet he has none of it himself. Before I had exchanged half a dozen
sentences with Mounsey, I found that he knew several of my old
acquaintance (an immediate introduction of itself, for the discussing
the characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetener and
cement of friendship)--and had been intimate with most of the wits and
men about town for the last twenty years. He knew Tobin, Wordsworth,
Porson, Wilson, Paley, Erskine, and many others. He speaks of Paley's
pleasantry and unassuming manners, and describes Porson's long potations
and long quotations formerly at the Cider Cellar in a very lively way.
He has doubts, however, as to that sort of learning. On my saying that
I had never seen the Greek Professor but once, at the Library of the
London Institution, when he was dressed in an old rusty black coat with
cobwebs hanging to the skirts of it, and with a large patch of coarse
brown paper covering the whole length of his nose, looking for all the
world like a drunken carpenter, and talking to one of the proprietors
with an air of suavity, approaching to condescension, Mounsey could not
help expressing some little uneasiness for the credit of classical
literature. 'I submit, sir, whether common sense is not the principal
thing? What is the advantage of genius and learning if they are of no
use in the conduct of life?'--Mounsey is one who loves the hours that
usher in the morn, when a select few are left in twos and threes like
stars before the break of day, and when the discourse and the ale are
'aye growing better and better.' Wells, Mounsey, and myself were all
that remained one evening. We had sat together several hours without
being tired of one another's company. The conversation turned on the
Beauties of Charles the Second's Court at Windsor, and from thence to
Count Grammont, their gallant and gay historian. We took our favourite
passages in turn--one preferring that of Killigrew's country cousin,
who, having been resolutely refused by Miss Warminster (one of the Maids
of Honour), when he found she had been unexpectedly brought to bed, fell
on his knees and thanked God that now she might take compassion on
him--another insisting that the Chevalier Hamilton's assignation with
Lady Chesterfield, when she kept him all night shivering in an old
out-house, was better. Jacob Hall's prowess was not forgotten, nor the
story of Miss Stuart's garters. I was getting on in my way with that
delicate _endroit_ in which Miss Churchill is first introduced at court
and is besieged (as a matter of course) by the Duke of York, who was
gallant as well as bigoted on system. His assiduities, however, soon
slackened, owing (it is said) to her having a pale, thin face: till one
day, as they were riding out hunting together, she fell from her horse,
and was taken up almost lifeless. The whole assembled court was thrown
by this event into admiration that such a body should belong to such a
face[4] (so transcendent a pattern was she of the female form), and the
Duke was fixed. This, I contended, was striking, affecting, and grand,
the sublime of amorous biography, and said I could conceive of nothing
finer than the idea of a young person in her situation, who was the
object of indifference or scorn from outward appearance, with the proud
suppressed consciousness of a Goddess-like symmetry, locked up by 'fear
and niceness, the handmaids of ail women,' from the wonder and worship
of mankind. I said so then, and I think so now: my tongue grew wanton
in the praise of this passage, and I believe it bore the bell from its
competitors. Wells then spoke of Lucius Apuleius and his Golden Ass,
which contains the story of Cupid and Psyche, with other matter rich and
rare, and went on to the romance of Heliodorus, Theagenes and Chariclea.
This, as he affirmed, opens with a pastoral landscape equal to Claude,
and in it the presiding deities of Love and Wine appear in all their
pristine strength, youth, and grace, crowned and worshipped as of yore.
The night waned, but our glasses brightened, enriched with the pearls of
Grecian story. Our cup-bearer slept in a corner of the room, like
another Endymion, in the pale ray of a half-extinguished lamp, and
starting up at a fresh summons for a further supply, he swore it was too
late, and was inexorable to entreaty. Mounsey sat with his hat on and
with a hectic flush in his face while any hope remained, but as soon as
we rose to go, he darted out of the room as quick as lightning,
determined not to be the last that went.--I said some time after to the
waiter, that 'Mr. Mounsey was no flincher.' 'Oh! sir,' says he, 'you
should have known him formerly, when Mr. Hume and Mr. Ayrton used to be
here. Now he is quite another man: he seldom stays later than one or
two.'--'Why, did they keep it up much then?' 'Oh! yes; and used to sing
catches and all sorts.'--'What, did Mr. Mounsey sing catches?' 'He
joined chorus, sir, and was as merry as the best of them. He was always
a pleasant gentleman!'--This Hume and Ayrton succumbed in the fight.
Ayrton was a dry Scotchman, Hume a good-natured, hearty Englishman. I
do not mean that the same character applies to all Scotchmen or to all
Englishmen. Hume was of the Pipe-Office (not unfitly appointed), and in
his cheerfuller cups would delight to speak of a widow and a
bowling-green, that ran in his head to the last. 'What is the good of
talking of those things now?' said the man of utility. 'I don't know,'
replied the other, quaffing another glass of sparkling ale, and with a
lambent fire playing in his eye and round his bald forehead--(he had a
head that Sir Joshua would have made something bland and genial of)--'I
don't know, but they were delightful to me at the time, and are still
pleasant to talk and think of.'--_Such a one,_ in Touchstone's phrase,
_is a natural philosopher;_ and in nine cases out of ten that sort of
philosophy is the best! I could enlarge this sketch, such as it is; but
to prose on to the end of the chapter might prove less profitable than
tedious.
I like very well to sit in a room where there are people talking on
subjects I know nothing of, if I am only allowed to sit silent and as a
spectator; but I do not much like to join in the conversation, except
with people and on subjects to my taste. Sympathy is necessary to
society. To look on, a variety of faces, humours, and opinions is
sufficient; to mix with others, agreement as well as variety is
indispensable. What makes good society? I answer, in one word, real
fellowship. Without a similitude of tastes, acquirements, and pursuits
(whatever may be the difference of tempers and characters) there can be
no intimacy or even casual intercourse worth the having. What makes the
most agreeable party? A number of people with a number of ideas in
common, 'yet so as with a difference'; that is, who can put one or more
subjects which they have all studied in the greatest variety of
entertaining or useful lights. Or, in other words, a succession of good
things said with good-humour, and addressed to the understandings of
those who hear them, make the most desirable conversation. Ladies,
lovers, beaux, wits, philosophers, the fashionable or the vulgar, are
the fittest company for one another. The discourse at Randal's is the
best for boxers; that at Long's for lords and loungers. I prefer Hunt's
conversation almost to any other person's, because, with a familiar
range of subjects, he colours with a totally new and sparkling light,
reflected from his own character. Elia, the grave and witty, says
things not to be surpassed in essence; but the manner is more painful
and less a relief to my own thoughts. Some one conceived he could not
be an excellent companion, because he was seen walking down the side of
the Thames, _passibus iniquis,_ after dining at Richmond. The objection
was not valid. I will, however, admit that the said Elia is the worst
company in the world in bad company, if it be granted me that in good
company he is nearly the best that can be. He is one of those of whom
it may be said, Tell me your company, and I'll tell you your manners.
He is the creature of sympathy, and makes good whatever opinion you seem
to entertain of him. He cannot outgo the apprehensions of the circle,
and invariably acts up or down to the point of refinement or vulgarity
at which they pitch him. He appears to take a pleasure in exaggerating
the prejudice of strangers against him; a pride in confirming the
prepossessions of friends. In whatever scale of intellect he is placed,
he is as lively or as stupid as the rest can be for their lives. If you
think him odd and ridiculous, he becomes more and more so every minute,
_a la folie,_ till he is a wonder gazed [at] by all--set him against a
good wit and a ready apprehension, and he brightens more and more--
Or like a gate of steel
Fronting the sun, receives and renders back
Its figure and its heat.
We had a pleasant party one evening at Procter's. A young literary
bookseller who was present went away delighted with the elegance of the
repast, and spoke in raptures of a servant in green livery and a patent
lamp. I thought myself that the charm of the evening consisted in some
talk about Beaumont and Fletcher and the old poets, in which every one
took part or interest, and in a consciousness that we could not pay our
host a better compliment than in thus alluding to studies in which he
excelled, and in praising authors whom he had imitated with feeling and
sweetness!--I should think it may also be laid down as a rule on this
subject, that to constitute good company a certain proportion of hearers
and speakers is requisite. Coleridge makes good company for this
reason. He immediately establishes the principle of the division of
labour in this respect wherever he comes. He takes his cue as speaker,
and the rest of the party theirs as listeners--a 'Circa herd'--without
any previous arrangement having been gone through. I will just add that
there can be no good society without perfect freedom from affectation
and constraint. If the unreserved communication of feeling or opinion
leads to offensive familiarity, it is not well; but it is no better
where the absence of offensive remarks arises only from formality and an
assumed respectfulness of manner.
I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to be
found out of London; and that for the two following reasons. First,
there is _neighbourhood_ elsewhere, accidental or unavoidable
acquaintance: people are thrown together by chance or grow together like
trees; but you can pick your society nowhere but in London. The very
persons that of all others you would wish to associate with in almost
every line of life (or at least of intellectual pursuit) are to be met
with there. It is hard if out of a million of people you cannot find
half a dozen to your liking. Individuals may seem lost and hid in the
size of the place; but in fact, from this very circumstance, you are
within two or three miles' reach of persons that, without it, you would
be some hundreds apart from. Secondly, London is the only place in
which each individual in company is treated according to his value in
company, and to that only. In every other part of the kingdom he
carries another character about with him, which supersedes the
intellectual or social one. It is known in Manchester or Liverpool what
every man in the room is worth in land or money; what are his
connections and prospects in life--and this gives a character of
servility or arrogance, of mercenaries or impertinence to the whole of
provincial intercourse. You laugh not in proportion to a man's wit, but
his wealth; you have to consider not what, but whom you contradict. You
speak by the pound, and are heard by the rood. In the metropolis there
is neither time nor inclination for these remote calculations. Every
man depends on the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings
into society for the reception he meets with in it. A Member of
Parliament soon finds his level as a commoner: the merchant and
manufacturer cannot bring his goods to market here: the great landed
proprietor shrinks from being the lord of acres into a pleasant
companion or a dull fellow. When a visitor enters or leaves a room, it
is not inquired whether he is rich or poor, whether he lives in a garret
or a palace, or comes in his own or a hackney coach, but whether he has
a good expression of countenance, with an unaffected manner, and whether
he is a man of understanding or a blockhead. These are the
circumstances by which you make a favourable impression on the company,
and by which they estimate you in the abstract. In the country, they
consider whether you have a vote at the next election or a place in your
gift, and measure the capacity of others to instruct or entertain them
by the strength of their pockets and their credit with their banker.
Personal merit is at a prodigious discount in the provinces. I like the
country very well if I want to enjoy my own company; but London is the
only place for equal society, or where a man can say a good thing or
express an honest opinion without subjecting himself to being insulted,
unless he first lays his purse on the table to back his pretensions to
talent or independence of spirit. I speak from experience.[5]
NOTES to ESSAY IV.
[1] It is not very long ago that I saw two Dissenting Ministers (the
_Ultima Thud_ of the sanguine, visionary temperament in politics)
stuffing their pipes with dried currant-leaves, calling it Radical
Tobacco, lighting it with a lens in the rays of the sun, and at every
puff fancying that they undermined the Boroughmongers, as Trim blew up
the army opposed to the Allies! They had _deceived the Senate._
Methinks I see them now, smiling as in scorn of Corruption.
Dream on, blest pair:
Yet happier if you knew your happiness,
And knew to know no more!
The world of Reform that you dote on, like Berkeley's material world,
lives only in your own brain, and long may it live there! Those same
Dissenting Ministers throughout the country (I mean the descendants of
the old Puritans) are to this hour a sort of Fifth-monarchy men: very
turbulent fellows, in my opinion altogether incorrigible, and according
to the suggestions of others, should be hanged out of the way without
judge or jury for the safety of church and state. Marry, hang them!
they may be left to die a natural death: the race is nearly extinct of
itself, and can do little more good or harm!
[2] William, our waiter, is dressed neatly in black, takes in the
TICKLER (which many of the gentlemen like to look into), wears, I am
told, a diamond pin in his shirt-collar, has a music-master to teach him
to play on the flageolet two hours before the maids are up, complains of
confinement and a delicate constitution, and is a complete Master
Stephen in his way.
[3] His account of Dr. Whittle was prodigious-of his occult sagacity, of
his eyes prominent and wild like a hare's, fugacious of followers, of
the arts by which he had left the City to lure the patients that he
wanted after him to the West End, of the ounce of tea that he purchased
by stratagem as an unusual treat to his guest, and of the narrow winding
staircase, from the height of which he contemplated in security the
imaginary approach of duns. He was a large, plain, fair-faced Moravian
preacher, turned physician. He was an honest man, but vain of he knew
not what. He was once sitting where Sarratt was playing a game at chess
without seeing the board; and after remaining for some time absorbed in
silent wonder, he turned suddenly to me and said, 'Do you know, Mr.
Hazlitt, that I think there is something I could do?' 'Well, what is
that?' 'Why, perhaps you would not guess, but I think I could dance,
I'm sure I could; ay, I could dance like Vestris!' Sarratt, who was a
man of various accomplishments (among others one of the Fancy),
afterwards bared his arm to convince us of his muscular strength, and
Mrs. Sarratt going out of the room with another lady said, 'Do you know,
Madam, the Doctor is a great jumper!' Moliere could not outdo this.
Never shall I forget his pulling off his coat to eat beef-steaks on
equal terms with Martin Burney. Life is short, but full of mirth and
pastime, did we not so soon forget what we have laughed at, perhaps that
we may not remember what we have cried at! Sarratt, the chess-player,
was an extraordinary man. He had the same tenacious, epileptic faculty
in other things that he had at chess, and could no more get any other
ideas out of his mind than he could those of the figures on the board.
He was a great reader, but had not the least taste. Indeed the violence
of his memory tyrannised over and destroyed all power of selection. He
could repeat [all] Ossian by heart, without knowing the best passage
from the worst; and did not perceive he was tiring you to death by
giving an account of the breed, education, and manners of fighting-dogs
for hours together. The sense of reality quite superseded the
distinction between the pleasurable and the painful. He was altogether
a mechanical philosopher.
[4] Ils ne pouvoient croire qu'un corps de cette beaute fut de quelque
chose au visage de Mademoiselle Churchill.'--_Memoires de Grammont,_
vol. ii. p. 254.
[5] When I was young I spent a good deal of my time at Manchester and
Liverpool; and I confess I give the preference to the former. There you
were oppressed only by the aristocracy of wealth; in the latter by the
aristocracy of wealth and letters by turns. You could not help feeling
that some of their great men were authors among merchants and merchants
among authors. Their bread was buttered on both sides, and they had you
at a disadvantage either way. The Manchester cotton-spinners, on the
contrary, set up no pretensions beyond their looms, were hearty good
fellows, and took any information or display of ingenuity on other
subjects in good part. I remember well being introduced to a
distinguished patron of art and rising merit at a little distance from
Liverpool, and was received with every mark of attention and politeness;
till, the conversation turning on ltalian literature, our host remarked
that there was nothing in the English language corresponding to the
severity of the Italian ode--except perhaps Dryden's _Alexander's Feast_
and Pope's _St. Cecilia!_ I could no longer contain my desire to
display my smattering in criticism, and began to maintain that Pope's
Ode was, as it appeared to me, far from an example of severity in
writing. I soon perceived what I had done, but here am I writing
_Table-talks_ in consequence. Alas! I knew as little of the world then
as I do now. I never could understand anything beyond an abstract
definition.
ESSAY V
ON THE ARISTOCRACY OF LETTERS
Ha! here's three of us are sophisticated:--off, you lendings.
There is such a thing as an aristocracy or privileged order in letters
which has sometimes excited my wonder, and sometimes my spleen. We meet
with authors who have never done anything, but who have a vast
reputation for what they could have done. Their names stand high, and
are in everybody's mouth, but their works are never heard of, or had
better remain undiscovered for the sake of their admirers.--_Stat
nominis umbra_--their pretensions are lofty and unlimited, as they have
nothing to rest upon, or because it is impossible to confront them with
the proofs of their deficiency. If you inquire farther, and insist upon
some act of authorship to establish the claims of these Epicurean
votaries of the Muses, you find that they had a great reputation at
Cambridge, that they were senior wranglers or successful
prize-essayists, that they visit at Holland House, and, to support that
honour, must be supposed, of course, to occupy the first rank in the
world of letters.[1] It is possible, however, that they have some
manuscript work in hand, which is of too much importance (and the writer
has too much at stake in publishing it) hastily to see the light: or
perhaps they once had an article in the Edinburgh Review, which was much
admired at the time, and is kept by them ever since as a kind of diploma
and unquestionable testimonial of merit. They are not like Grub Street
authors, who write for bread, and are paid by the sheet. Like misers
who hoard their wealth, they are supposed to be masters of all the wit
and sense they do not impart to the public. 'Continents have most of
what they contain,' says a considerable philosopher; and these persons,
it must be confessed, have a prodigious command over themselves in the
expenditure of light and learning. The Oriental curse, '0 that mine
enemy had written a book!' hangs suspended over them. By never
committing themselves, they neither give a handle to the malice of the
world, nor excite the jealousy of friends; and keep all the reputation
they have got, not by discreetly blotting, but by never writing a line.
Some one told Sheridan, who was always busy about some new work and
never advancing any farther in it, that he would not write because he
was afraid of the author of the _School for Scandal._ So these idle
pretenders are afraid of undergoing a comparison with themselves in
something they have never done, but have had credit for doing. They do
not acquire celebrity, they assume it; and escape detection by never
venturing out of their imposing and mysterious incognito. They do not
let themselves down by everyday work: for them to appear in print is a
work of supererogation as much as in lords and kings; and like gentlemen
with a large landed estate, they live on their established character,
and do nothing (or as little as possible) to increase or lose it. There
is not a more deliberate piece of grave imposture going. I know a
person of this description who has been employed many years (by
implication) in a translation of Thucydides, of which no one ever saw a
word, but it does not answer the purpose of bolstering up a factitious
reputation the less on that account. The longer it is delayed and kept
sacred from the vulgar gaze, the more it swells into imaginary
consequence; the labour and care required for a work of this kind being
immense;--and then there are no faults in an unexecuted translation.
The only impeccable writers are those that never wrote. Another is an
oracle on subjects of taste and classical erudition, because (he says at
least) he reads Cicero once a year to keep up the purity of his
Latinity. A third makes the indecency pass for the depth of his
researches and for a high gusto in _virtu,_ till, from his seeing
nothing in the finest remains of ancient art, the world by the merest
accident find out that there is nothing in him. There is scarcely
anything that a grave face with an impenetrable manner will not
accomplish, and whoever is weak enough to impose upon himself will have
wit enough to impose upon the public--particularly if he can make it
their interest to be deceived by shallow boasting, and contrives not to
hurt their self-love by sterling acquirements. Do you suppose that the
understood translation of Thucydides costs its supposed author nothing?
A select party of friends and admirers dine with him once a week at a
magnificent town mansion, or a more elegant and picturesque retreat in
the country. They broach their Horace and their old hock, and sometimes
allude with a considerable degree of candour to the defects of works
which are brought out by contemporary writers--the ephemeral offspring
of haste and necessity!
Among other things, the learned languages are a ready passport to this
sort of unmeaning, unanalysed reputation. They presently lift a man up
among the celestial constellations, the signs of the zodiac (as it were)
and third heaven of inspiration, from whence he looks down on those who
are toiling on in this lower sphere, and earning their bread by the
sweat of their brain, at leisure and in scorn. If the graduates in this
way condescend to express their thoughts in English, it is understood to
be _infra dignitatem_--such light and unaccustomed essays do not fit the
ponderous gravity of their pen--they only draw to advantage and with
full justice to themselves in the bow of the ancients. Their native
tongue is to them strange, inelegant, unapt, and crude. They 'cannot
command it to any utterance of harmony. They have not the skill.' This
is true enough; but you must not say so, under a heavy penalty--the
displeasure of pedants and blockheads. It would be sacrilege against
the privileged classes, the Aristocracy of Letters. What! will you
affirm that a profound Latin scholar, a perfect Grecian, cannot write a
page of common sense or grammar? Is it not to be presumed, by all the
charters of the Universities and the foundations of grammar-schools,
that he who can speak a dead language must be _a fortiori_ conversant
with his own? Surely the greater implies the less. He who knows every
science and every art cannot be ignorant of the most familiar forms of
speech. Or if this plea is found not to hold water, then our scholastic
bungler is said to be above this vulgar trial of skill, 'something must
be excused to want of practice--but did you not observe the elegance of
the Latinity, how well that period would become a classical and studied
dress?' Thus defects are 'monster'd' into excellences, and they screen
their idol, and require you, at your peril, to pay prescriptive homage
to false concords and inconsequential criticisms, because the writer of
them has the character of the first or second Greek or Latin scholar in
the kingdom. If you do not swear to the truth of these spurious
credentials, you are ignorant and malicious, a quack and a
scribbler--_flagranti delicto!_ Thus the man who can merely read and
construe some old author is of a class superior to any living one, and,
by parity of reasoning, to those old authors themselves: the poet or
prose-writer of true and original genius, by the courtesy of custom,
'ducks to the learned fool'; or, as the author of _Hudibras_ has so well
stated the same thing--
He that is but able to express
No sense at all in several languages,
Will pass for learneder than he that's known
To speak the strongest reason in his own.
These preposterous and unfounded claims of mere scholars to precedence
in the commonwealth of letters which they set up so formally themselves
and which others so readily bow to, are partly owing to traditional
prejudice: there was a time when learning was the only distinction from
ignorance, and when there was no such thing as popular English
literature. Again, there is something more palpable and positive in
this kind of acquired knowledge, like acquired wealth, which the vulgar
easily recognise. That others know the meaning of signs which they are
confessedly and altogether ignorant of is to them both a matter of fact
and a subject of endless wonder. The languages are worn like a dress by
a man, and distinguish him sooner than his natural figure; and we are,
from motives of self-love, inclined to give others credit for the ideas
they have borrowed or have come into indirect possession of, rather than
for those that originally belong to them and are exclusively their own.
The merit in them and the implied inferiority in ourselves is less.
Learning is a kind of external appendage or transferable property--
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and may be any man's.
Genius and understanding are a man's self, an integrant part of his
personal identity; and the title to these last, as it is the most
difficult to be ascertained, is also the most grudgingly acknowledged.
Few persons would pretend to deny that Porson had more Greek than they;
it was a question of fact which might be put to the immediate proof, and
could not be gainsaid; but the meanest frequenter of the Cider Cellar or
the Hole in the Wall would be inclined, in his own conceit, to dispute
the palm of wit or sense with him, and indemnify his self-complacency
for the admiration paid to living learning by significant hints to
friends and casual droppers-in, that the greatest men, when you came to
know them, were not without their weak sides as well as others.
Pedants, I will add here, talk to the vulgar as pedagogues talk to
schoolboys, on an understood principle of condescension and superiority,
and therefore make little progress in the knowledge of men or things.
While they fancy they are accommodating themselves to, or else assuming
airs of importance over, inferior capacities, these inferior capacities
are really laughing at them. There can be no true superiority but what
arises out of the presupposed ground of equality: there can be no
improvement but from the free communication and comparing of ideas.
Kings and nobles, for this reason, receive little benefit from
society--where all is submission on one side, and condescension on the
other. The mind strikes out truth by collision, as steel strikes fire
from the flint!
There are whole families who are born classical, and are entered in the
heralds' college of reputation by the right of consanguinity.
Literature, like nobility, runs in the blood. There is the Burney
family. There is no end of it or its pretensions. It produces wits,
scholars, novelists, musicians, artists in 'numbers numberless.' The
name is alone a passport to the Temple of Fame. Those who bear it are
free of Parnassus by birthright. The founder of it was himself an
historian and a musician, but more of a courtier and man of the world
than either. The secret of his success may perhaps be discovered in the
following passage, where, in alluding to three eminent performers on
different instruments, he says: 'These three illustrious personages were
introduced at the Emperor's court,' etc.; speaking of them as if they
were foreign ambassadors or princes of the blood, and thus magnifying
himself and his profession. This overshadowing manner carries nearly
everything before it, and mystifies a great many. There is nothing like
putting the best face upon things, and leaving others to find out the
difference. He who could call three musicians 'personages' would
himself play a personage through life, and succeed in his leading
object. Sir Joshua Reynolds, remarking on this passage, said: 'No one
had a greater respect than he had for his profession, but that he should
never think of applying to it epithets that were appropriated merely to
external rank and distinction.' Madame d'Arblay, it must be owned, had
cleverness enough to stock a whole family, and to set up her
cousin-germans, male and female, for wits and virtuosos to the third and
fourth generation. The rest have done nothing, that I know of, but keep
up the name.
The most celebrated author in modern times has written without a name,
and has been knighted for anonymous productions. Lord Byron complains
that Horace Walpole was not properly appreciated, 'first, because he was
a gentleman; and secondly, because he was a nobleman.' His Lordship
stands in one, at least, of the predicaments here mentioned, and yet he
has had justice, or somewhat more, done him. He towers above his
fellows by all the height of the peerage. If the poet lends a grace to
the nobleman, the nobleman pays it back to the poet with interest. What
a fine addition is ten thousand a year and a title to the flaunting
pretensions of a modern rhapsodist! His name so accompanied becomes the
mouth well: it is repeated thousands of times, instead of hundreds,
because the reader in being familiar with the Poet's works seems to
claim acquaintance with the Lord.
Let but a lord once own the happy lines:
How the wit brightens, and the style refines!
He smiles at the high-flown praise or petty cavils of little men. Does
he make a slip in decorum, which Milton declares to be the principal
thing? His proud crest and armorial bearings support him: no
bend-sinister slurs his poetical escutcheon! Is he dull, or does he put
of some trashy production on the public? It is not charged to his
account, as a deficiency which he must make good at the peril of his
admirers. His Lordship is not answerable for the negligence or
extravagances of his Muse. He 'bears a charmed reputation, which must
not yield' like one of vulgar birth. The Noble Bard is for this reason
scarcely vulnerable to the critics. The double barrier of his
pretensions baffles their puny, timid efforts. Strip off some of his
tarnished laurels, and the coronet appears glittering beneath: restore
them, and it still shines through with keener lustre. In fact, his
Lordship's blaze of reputation culminates from his rank and place in
society. He sustains two lofty and imposing characters; and in order to
simplify the process of our admiration, and 'leave no rubs or botches in
the way,' we equalise his pretensions, and take it for granted that he
must be as superior to other men in genius as he is in birth. Or, to
give a more familiar solution of the enigma, the Poet and the Peer agree
to honour each other's acceptances on the bank of Fame, and sometimes
cozen the town to some tune between them. Really, however, and with all
his privileges, Lord Byron might as well not have written that strange
letter about Pope. I could not afford it, poor as I am. Why does he
pronounce, _ex cathedra_ and robed, that Cowper is no poet? Cowper was
a gentleman and of noble family like his critic. He was a teacher of
morality as well as a describer of nature, which is more than his
Lordship is. His _John Gilpin_ will last as long as _Beppo,_ and his
verses to Mary are not less touching than the _Farewell._ If I had
ventured upon such an assertion as this, it would have been worse for me
than finding out a borrowed line in the _Pleasures of Hope._
There is not a more helpless or more despised animal than a mere author,
without any extrinsic advantages of birth, breeding, or fortune to set
him off. The real ore of talents or learning must be stamped before it
will pass current. To be at all looked upon as an author, a man must be
something more or less than an author--a rich merchant, a banker, a
lord, or a ploughman. He is admired for something foreign to himself,
that acts as a bribe to the servility or a set-off to the envy of the
community. 'What should such fellows as we do, crawling betwixt heaven
and earth';--'coining our hearts for drachmas'; now scorched in the sun,
now shivering in the breeze, now coming out in our newest gloss and best
attire, like swallows in the spring, now 'sent back like hollowmas or
shortest day'? The best wits, like the handsomest faces _upon the
town,_ lead a harassing, precarious life--are taken up for the bud and
promise of talent, which they no sooner fulfil than they are thrown
aside like an old fashion--are caressed without reason, and insulted
with impunity--are subject to all the caprice, the malice, and fulsome
advances of that great keeper, the Public--and in the end come to no
good, like all those who lavish their favours on mankind at large, and
look to the gratitude of the world for their reward. Instead of this
set of Grub Street authors, the mere _canaille_ of letters, this
corporation of Mendicity, this ragged regiment of genius suing at the
corners of streets in _forma pauperis,_ give me the gentleman and
scholar, with a good house over his head and a handsome table 'with wine
of Attic taste' to ask his friends to, and where want and sorrow never
come. Fill up the sparkling bowl; heap high the dessert with roses
crowned; bring out the hot-pressed poem, the vellum manuscripts, the
medals, the portfolios, the intaglios--this is the true model of the
life of a man of taste and _virtu_--the possessors, not the inventors of
these things, are the true benefactors of mankind and ornaments of
letters. Look in, and there, amidst silver services and shining
chandeliers, you will see the man of genius at his proper post, picking
his teeth and mincing an opinion, sheltered by rank, bowing to wealth--a
poet framed, glazed, and hung in a striking light; not a straggling
weed, torn and trampled on; not a poor _Kit-run-the-street,_ but a
powdered beau, a sycophant plant, an exotic reared in a glass case,
hermetically sealed,
Free from the Sirian star and the dread thunder-stroke
whose mealy coat no moth can corrupt nor blight can wither. The poet
Keats had not this sort of protection for his person--he lay bare to
weather--the serpent stung him, and the poison-tree dropped upon this
little western flower: when the mercenary servile crew approached him,
he had no pedigree to show them, no rent-roll to hold out in reversion
for their praise: he was not in any great man's train, nor the butt and
puppet of a lord--he could only offer them 'the fairest flowers of the
season, carnations and streaked gilliflowers,'--'rue for remembrance and
pansies for thoughts,'--they recked not of his gift, but tore him with
hideous shouts and laughter,
Nor could the Muse protect her son!
Unless an author has all establishment of his own, or is entered on that
of some other person, he will hardly be allowed to write English or to
spell his own name. To be well spoken of, he must enlist under some
standard; he must belong to some _coterie._ He must get the _esprit de
corps_ on his side: he must have literary bail in readiness. Thus they
prop up one another's rickety heads at Murray's shop, and a spurious
reputation, like false argument, runs in a circle. Croker affirms that
Gifford is sprightly, and Gifford that Croker is genteel; Disraeli that
Jacob is wise, and Jacob that Disraeli is good-natured. A Member of
Parliament must be answerable that you are not dangerous or dull before
you can be of the _entree._ You must commence toad-eater to have your
observations attended to; if you are independent, unconnected, you will
be regarded as a poor creature. Your opinion is honest, you will say;
then ten to one it is not profitable. It is at any rate your own. So
much the worse; for then it is not the world's. Tom Hill is a very
tolerable barometer in this respect. He knows nothing, hears
everything, and repeats just what he hears; so that you may guess pretty
well from this round-faced echo what is said by others! Almost
everything goes by presumption and appearances. 'Did you not think Mr.
B----'s language very elegant?'--I thought he bowed very low. 'Did you
not think him remarkably well-behaved?'--He was unexceptionably dressed.
'But were not Mr. C----'s manners quite insinuating?'--He said nothing.
'You will at least allow his friend to be a well-informed man."--He
talked upon all subjects alike. Such would be a pretty faithful
interpretation of the tone of what is called _good society._ The
surface is everything; we do not pierce to the core. The setting is
more valuable than the jewel. Is it not so in other things as well as
letters? Is not an R. A. by the supposition a greater man in his
profession than any one who is not so blazoned? Compared with that
unrivalled list, Raphael had been illegitimate, Claude not classical,
and Michael Angelo admitted by special favour. What is a physician
without a diploma? An alderman without being knighted? An actor whose
name does not appear in great letters? All others are counterfeits--men
'of no mark or likelihood.' This was what made the Jackals of the North
so eager to prove that I had been turned out of the _Edinburgh Review._
It was not the merit of the articles which excited their spleen--but
their being there. Of the style they knew nothing; for the thought they
cared nothing: all that they knew was that I wrote in that powerful
journal, and therefore they asserted that I did not!
We find a class of persons who labour under an obvious natural
inaptitude for whatever they aspire to. Their manner of setting about
it is a virtual disqualification. The simple affirmation, 'What this
man has said, I will do,' is not always considered as the proper test of
capacity. On the contrary, there are people whose bare pretensions are
as good or better than the actual performance of others. What I myself
have done, for instance, I never find admitted as proof of what I shall
be able to do: whereas I observe others who bring as proof of their
competence to any task (and are taken at their word) what they have
never done, and who gravely assure those who are inclined to trust them
that their talents are exactly fitted for some post because they are
just the reverse of what they have ever shown them to be. One man has
the air of an Editor as much as another has that of a butler or porter
in a gentleman's family. ----- is the model of this character, with a
prodigious look of business, an air of suspicion which passes for
sagacity, and an air of deliberation which passes for judgment. If his
own talents are no ways prominent, it is inferred he will be more
impartial and in earnest in making use of those of others. There is
Britton, the responsible conductor of several works of taste and
erudition, yet (God knows) without an idea in his head relating to any
one of them. He is learned by proxy, and successful from sheer
imbecility. If he were to get the smallest smattering of the
departments which are under his control, he would betray himself from
his desire to shine; but as it is, he leaves others to do all the
drudgery for him. He signs his name in the title-page or at the bottom
of a vignette, and nobody suspects any mistake. This contractor for
useful and ornamental literature once offered me two guineas for a _Life
and Character of Shakespear,_ with an admission to his _converzationi._
I went once. There was a collection of learned lumber, of antiquaries,
lexicographers, and other 'illustrious obscure,' and I had given up the
day for lost, when in dropped Jack Taylor of the _Sun_--(who would dare
to deny that he was 'the Sun of our table'?)--and I had nothing now to
do but hear and laugh. Mr. Taylor knows most of the good things that
have been said in the metropolis for the last thirty years, and is in
particular an excellent retailer of the humours and extravagances of his
old friend Peter Pindar. He had recounted a series of them, each rising
above the other in a sort of magnificent burlesque and want of literal
preciseness, to a medley of laughing and sour faces, when on his
proceeding to state a joke of a practical nature by the said Peter, a
Mr. ----- (I forget the name) objected to the moral of the story, and to
the whole texture of Mr. Taylor's facetiae--upon which our host, who had
till now supposed that all was going on swimmingly, thought it time to
interfere and give a turn to the conversation by saying, 'Why, yes,
gentlemen, what we have hitherto heard fall from the lips of our friend
has been no doubt entertaining and highly agreeable in its way; but
perhaps we have had enough of what is altogether delightful and pleasant
and light and laughable in conduct. Suppose, therefore, we were to
shift the subject, and talk of what is serious and moral and industrious
and laudable in character--Let us talk of Mr. Tomkins the Penman!'--This
staggered the gravest of us, broke up our dinner-party, and we went
upstairs to tea. So much for the didactic vein of one of our principal
guides in the embellished walks of modern taste, and master
manufacturers of letters. He had found that gravity had been a
never-failing resource when taken at a pinch--for once the joke
miscarried--and Mr. Tomkins the Penman figures to this day nowhere but
in Sir Joshua's picture of him!
To complete the natural Aristocracy of Letters, we only want a Royal
Society of Authors!
NOTES to ESSAY V
[1] Lord Holland had made a diary (in the manner of Boswell) of the
conversation held at his house, and read it at the end of a week _pro
bono publico._ Sir James Mackintosh made a considerable figure in it,
and a celebrated poet none at all, merely answering Yes and No. With
this result he was by no means satisfied, and talked incessantly from
that day forward. At the end of the week he asked, with some anxiety
and triumph, If his Lordship had continued his diary, expecting himself
to shine in 'the first row of the rubric.' To which his Noble Patron
answered in the negative, with an intimation that it had not appeared to
him worth while. Our poet was thus thrown again into the background,
and Sir James remained master of the field!
ESSAY VI
ON CRITICISM
Criticism is an art that undergoes a great variety of changes, and aims
at different objects at different times.
At first, it is generally satisfied to give an opinion whether a work is
good or bad, and to quote a passage or two in support of this opinion:
afterwards, it is bound to assign the reasons of its decision and to
analyse supposed beauties or defects with microscopic minuteness. A
critic does nothing nowadays who does not try to torture the most
obvious expression into a thousand meanings, and enter into a circuitous
explanation of all that can be urged for or against its being in the
best or worst style possible. His object indeed is not to do justice to
his author, whom he treats with very little ceremony, but to do himself
homage, and to show his acquaintance with all the topics and resources
of criticism. If he recurs to the stipulated subject in the end, it is
not till after he has exhausted his budget of general knowledge; and he
establishes his own claims first in an elaborate inaugural dissertation
_de omni scibile et quibusdam aliis,_ before he deigns to bring forward
the pretensions of the original candidate for praise, who is only the
second figure in the piece. We may sometimes see articles of this sort,
in which no allusion whatever is made to the work under sentence of
death, after the first announcement of the title-page; and I apprehend
it would be a clear improvement on this species of nominal criticism to
give stated periodical accounts of works that had never appeared at all,
which would save the hapless author the mortification of writing, and
his reviewer the trouble of reading them. If the real author is made of
so little account by the modern critic, he is scarcely more an object of
regard to the modern reader; and it must be confessed that after a dozen
close-packed pages of subtle metaphysical distinction or solemn didactic
declamation, in which the disembodied principles of all arts and
sciences float before the imagination in undefined profusion, the eye
turns with impatience and indifference to the imperfect embryo specimens
of them, and the hopeless attempts to realise this splendid jargon in
one poor work by one poor author, which is given up to summary execution
with as little justice as pity. 'As when a well-graced actor leaves the
stage, men's eyes are idly bent on him that enters next'--so it is here.
Whether this state of the press is not a serious abuse and a violent
encroachment in the republic of letters, is more than I shall pretend to
determine. The truth is, that in the quantity of works that issue from
the press, it is utterly impossible they should all be read by all sorts
of people. There must be _tasters_ for the public, who must have a
discretionary power vested in them, for which it is difficult to make
them properly accountable. Authors in proportion to their numbers
become not formidable, but despicable. They would not be heard of or
severed from the crowd without the critic's aid, and all complaints of
ill-treatment are vain. He considers them as pensioners on his bounty
for any pittance or praise, and in general sets them up as butts for his
wit and spleen, or uses them as a stalking-horse to convey his own
favourite notions and opinions, which he can do by this means without
the possibility of censure or appeal. He looks upon his literary
_protege_ (much as Peter Pounce looked upon Parson Adams) as a kind of
humble companion or unnecessary interloper in the vehicle of fame, whom
he has taken up purely to oblige him, and whom he may treat with neglect
or insult, or set down in the common footpath, whenever it suits his
humour or convenience. He naturally grows arbitrary with the exercise
of power. He by degrees wants to have a clear stage to himself, and
would be thought to have purchased a monopoly of wit, learning, and
wisdom--
Assumes the rod, affects the God,
And seems to shake the spheres.
Besides, something of this overbearing manner goes a great way with the
public. They cannot exactly tell whether you are right or wrong; and if
you state your difficulties or pay much deference to the sentiments of
others, they will think you a very silly fellow or a mere pretender. A
sweeping, unqualified assertion ends all controversy, and sets opinion
at rest. A sharp, sententious, cavalier, dogmatical tone is therefore
necessary, even in self-defence, to the office of a reviewer. If you do
not deliver your oracles without hesitation, how are the world to
receive them on trust and without inquiry? People read to have
something to talk about, and 'to seem to know that which they do not.'
Consequently, there cannot be too much dialectics and debatable matter,
too much pomp and paradox, in a review. _To elevate and surprise_ is
the great rule for producing a dramatic or critical effect. The more
you startle the reader, the more he will be able to startle others with
a succession of smart intellectual shocks. The most admired of our
Reviews is saturated with this sort of electrical matter, which is
regularly played off so as to produce a good deal of astonishment and a
strong sensation in the public mind. The intrinsic merits of an author
are a question of very subordinate consideration to the keeping up the
character of the work and supplying the town with a sufficient number of
grave or brilliant topics for the consumption of the next three months!
This decided and paramount tone in criticism is the growth of the
present century, and was not at all the fashion in that calm, peaceable
period when the _Monthly Review_ bore 'sole sovereign sway and
masterdom' over all literary productions. Though nothing can be said
against the respectability or usefulness of that publication during its
long and almost exclusive enjoyment of the public favour, yet the style
of criticism adopted in it is such as to appear slight and
unsatisfactory to a modern reader. The writers, instead of 'outdoing
termagant or out-Heroding Herod,' were somewhat precise and prudish,
gentle almost to a fault, full of candour and modesty,
And of their port as meek as is a maid![1]
There was none of that Drawcansir work going on then that there is now;
no scalping of authors, no hacking and hewing of their Lives and
Opinions, except that they used those of Tristram Shandy, gent., rather
scurvily; which was to be expected. All, however, had a show of
courtesy and good manners. The satire was covert and artfully
insinuated; the praise was short and sweet. We meet with no oracular
theories; no profound analysis of principles; no unsparing exposure of
the least discernible deviation from them. It was deemed sufficient to
recommend the work in general terms, 'This is an agreeable volume,' or
'This is a work of great learning and research,' to set forth the title
and table of contents, and proceed without farther preface to some
appropriate extracts, for the most part concurring in opinion with the
author's text, but now and then interposing an objection to maintain
appearances and assert the jurisdiction of the court. This cursory
manner of hinting approbation or dissent would make but a lame figure at
present. We must have not only an announcement that 'This is an
agreeable or able work'; but we must have it explained at full length,
and so as to silence all cavillers, in what the agreeableness or ability
of the work consists: the author must be reduced to a class, all the
living or defunct examples of which must be characteristically and
pointedly _differenced_ from one another; the value of this class of
writing must be developed and ascertained in comparison with others; the
principles of taste, the elements of our sensations, the structure of
the human faculties, all must undergo a strict scrutiny and revision.
The modern or metaphysical system of criticism, in short, supposes the
question, _Why?_ to be repeated at the end of every decision; and the
answer gives birth to interminable arguments and discussion. The former
laconic mode was well adapted to guide those who merely wanted to be
informed of the character and subject of a work in order to read it: the
present is more useful to those whose object is less to read the work
than to dispute upon its merits, and go into company clad in the whole
defensive and offensive armour of criticism.
Neither are we less removed at present from the dry and meagre mode of
dissecting the skeletons of works, instead of transfusing their living
principles, which prevailed in Dryden's Prefaces,[2] and in the
criticisms written on the model of the French school about a century
ago. A genuine criticism should, as I take it, reflect the colours, the
light and shade, the soul and body of a work: here we have nothing but
its superficial plan and elevation, as if a poem were a piece of formal
architecture. We are told something of the plot or fable, of the moral,
and of the observance or violation of the three unities of time, place,
and action; and perhaps a word or two is added on the dignity of the
persons or the baldness of the style; but we no more know, after reading
one of these complacent _tirades,_ what the essence of the work is, what
passion has been touched, or how skilfully, what tone and movement the
author's mind imparts to his subject or receives from it, than if we had
been reading a homily or a gazette. That is, we are left quite in the
dark as to the feelings of pleasure or pain to be derived from the
genius of the performance or the manner in which it appeals to the
imagination: we know to a nicety how it squares with the threadbare
rules of composition, not in the least how it affects the principles of
taste. We know everything about the work, and nothing of it. The
critic takes good care not to baulk the reader's fancy by anticipating
the effect which the author has aimed at producing. To be sure, the
works so handled were often worthy of their commentators; they had the
form of imagination without the life or power; and when any one had gone
regularly through the number of acts into which they were divided, the
measure in which they were written, or the story on which they were
founded, there was little else to be said about them. It is curious to
observe the effect which the _Paradise Lost_ had on this class of
critics, like throwing a tub to a whale: they could make nothing of it.
'It was out of all plumb--not one of the angles at the four corners was
a right angle!' They did not seek for, nor would they much relish, the
marrow of poetry it contained. Like polemics in religion, they had
discarded the essentials of fine writing for the outward form and points
of controversy. They were at issue with Genius and Nature by what route
and in what garb they should enter the Temple of the Muses. Accordingly
we find that Dryden had no other way of satisfying himself of the
pretensions of Milton in the epic style but by translating his anomalous
work into rhyme and dramatic dialogue.[3] So there are connoisseurs who
give you the subject, the grouping, the perspective, and all the
mechanical circumstances of a picture; but they never say a word about
the expression. The reason is, they see the former, but not the latter.
There are persons, however, who cannot employ themselves better than in
taking an inventory of works of art (they want a faculty for higher
studies), as there are works of art, so called, which seemed to have
been composed expressly with an eye to such a class of connoisseurs. In
them are to be found no recondite nameless beauties thrown away upon the
stupid vulgar gaze; no 'graces snatched beyond the reach of art';
nothing but what the merest pretender may note down in good set terms in
his common-place book, just as it is before him. Place one of these
half-informed, imperfectly organised spectators before a tall canvas
with groups on groups of figures, of the size of life, and engaged in a
complicated action, of which they know the name and all the particulars,
and there are no bounds to their burst of involuntary enthusiasm. They
mount on the stilts of the subject and ascend the highest Heaven of
Invention, from whence they see sights and hear revelations which they
communicate with all the fervour of plenary explanation to those who may
be disposed to attend to their raptures. They float with wings expanded
in lofty circles, they stalk over the canvas at large strides, never
condescending to pause at anything of less magnitude than a group or a
colossal figure. The face forms no part of their collective inquiries;
or so that it occupies only a sixth or an eighth proportion to the whole
body, all is according to the received rules of composition. Point to a
divine portrait of Titian, to an angelic head of Guido, close by--they
see and heed it not. What are the 'looks commercing with the skies,'
the soul speaking in the face, to them? It asks another and an inner
sense to comprehend them; but for the trigonometry of painting, nature
has constituted them indifferently well. They take a stand on the
distinction between portrait and history, and there they are
spell-bound. Tell them that there can be no fine history without
portraiture, that the painter must proceed from that ground to the one
above it, and that a hundred bad heads cannot make one good historical
picture, and they will not believe you, though the thing is obvious to
any gross capacity. Their ideas always fly to the circumference, and
never fix at the centre. Art must be on a grand scale; according to
them, the whole is greater than a part, and the greater necessarily
implies the less. The outline is, in this view of the matter, the same
thing as the filling-up, and 'the limbs and flourishes of a discourse'
the substance. Again, the same persons make an absolute distinction,
without knowing why, between high and low subjects. Say that you would
as soon have Murillo's Two Beggar Boys at the Dulwich Gallery as almost
any picture in the world, that is, that it would be one you would choose
out of ten (had you the choice), and they reiterate upon you that surely
a low subject cannot be of equal value with a high one. It is in vain
that you turn to the picture: they keep to the class. They have eyes,
but see not; and, upon their principles of refined taste, would be just
as good judges of the merit of the picture without seeing it as with
that supposed advantage. They know what the subject is _from the
catalogue!_--Yet it is not true, as Lord Byron asserts, that execution
is everything, and the class or subject nothing. The highest subjects,
equally well executed (which, however, rarely happens), are the best.
But the power of execution, the manner of seeing nature, is one thing,
and may be so superlative (if you are only able to judge of it) as to
countervail every disadvantage of subject. Raphael's storks in the
Miraculous Draught of Fishes, exulting in the event, are finer than the
head of Christ would have been in almost any other hands. The cant of
criticism is on the other side of the question; because execution
depends on various degrees of power in the artist, and a knowledge of it
on various degrees of feeling and discrimination in you; but to commence
artist or connoisseur in the grand style at once, without any
distinction of qualifications whatever, it is only necessary for the
first to choose his subject and for the last to pin his faith on the
sublimity of the performance, for both to look down with ineffable
contempt on the painters and admirers of subjects of low life. I
remember a young Scotchman once trying to prove to me that Mrs. Dickons
was a superior singer to Miss Stephens, because the former excelled in
sacred music and the latter did not. At that rate, that is, if it is
the singing sacred music that gives the preference, Miss Stephens would
only have to sing sacred music to surpass herself and vie with her
pretended rival; for this theory implies that all sacred music is
equally good, and, therefore, better than any other. I grant that
Madame Catalani's singing of sacred music is superior to Miss Stephens's
ballad-strains, because her singing is better altogether, and an ocean
of sound more wonderful than a simple stream of dulcet harmonies. In
singing the last verse of 'God Save the King' not long ago her voice
towered above the whole confused noise of the orchestra like an eagle
piercing the clouds, and poured 'such sweet thunder' through the ear as
excited equal astonishment and rapture!
Some kinds of criticism are as much too insipid as others are too
pragmatical. It is not easy to combine point with solidity, spirit with
moderation and candour. Many persons see nothing but beauties in a
work, others nothing but defects. Those cloy you with sweets, and are
'the very milk of human kindness,' flowing on in a stream of luscious
panegyrics; these take delight in poisoning the sources of your
satisfaction, and putting you out of conceit with nearly every author
that comes in their way. The first are frequently actuated by personal
friendship, the last by all the virulence of party spirit. Under the
latter head would fall what may be termed _political criticism._ The
basis of this style of writing is a _caput mortuum_ of impotent spite
and dulness, till it is varnished over with the slime of servility, and
thrown into a state of unnatural activity by the venom of the most
rancorous bigotry. The eminent professors in this grovelling department
are at first merely out of sorts with themselves, and vent their spleen
in little interjections and contortions of phrase--cry _Pish_ at a lucky
hit, and _Hem_ at a fault, are smart on personal defects, and sneer at
'Beauty out of favour and on crutches'--are thrown into an ague-fit by
hearing the name of a rival, start back with horror at any approach to
their morbid pretensions, like Justice Woodcock with his gouty
limbs--rifle the flowers of the Della Cruscan school, and give you in
their stead, as models of a pleasing pastoral style, Verses upon
Anna--which you may see in the notes to the _Baviad_ and _Maeviad._ All
this is like the fable of 'The Kitten and the Leaves.' But when they
get their brass collar on and shake their bells of office, they set up
their backs like the Great Cat Rodilardus, and pounce upon men and
things. Woe to any little heedess reptile of an author that ventures
across their path without a safe-conduct from the Board of Control.
They snap him up at a mouthful, and sit licking their lips, stroking
their whiskers, and rattling their bells over the imaginary fragments of
their devoted prey, to the alarm and astonishment of the whole breed of
literary, philosophical, and revolutionary vermin that were naturalised
in this country by a Prince of Orange and an Elector of Hanover a
hundred years ago.[4] When one of these pampered, sleek,
'demure-looking, spring-nailed, velvet-pawed, green-eyed' critics makes
his King and Country parties to this sort of sport literary, you have
not much chance of escaping out of his clutches in a whole skin.
Treachery becomes a principle with them, and mischief a conscience, that
is, a livelihood. They not only _damn_ the work in the lump, but vilify
and traduce the author, and substitute lying abuse and sheer malignity
for sense and satire. To have written a popular work is as much as a
man's character is worth, and sometimes his life, if he does not happen
to be on the right side of the question. The way in which they set
about _stultifying_ an adversary is not to accuse you of faults, or to
exaggerate those which you may really have, but they deny that you have
any merits at all, least of all those that the world have given you
credit for; bless themselves from understanding a single sentence in a
whole volume; and unless you are ready to subscribe to all their
articles of peace, will not allow you to be qualified to write your own
name. It is not a question of literary discussion, but of political
proscription. It is a mark of loyalty and patriotism to extend no
quarter to those of the opposite party. Instead of replying to your
arguments, they call you names, put words and opinions into your mouth
which you have never uttered, and consider it a species of misprision of
treason to admit that a Whig author knows anything of common sense or
English. The only chance of putting a stop to this unfair mode of
dealing would perhaps be to make a few reprisals by way of example. The
Court party boast some writers who have a reputation to lose, and who
would not like to have their names dragged through the kennel of dirty
abuse and vulgar obloquy. What silenced the masked battery of
_Blackwood's Magazine_ was the implication of the name of Sir Walter
Scott in some remarks upon it--(an honour of which it seems that
extraordinary person was not ambitious)--to be 'pilloried on infamy's
high stage' was a distinction and an amusement to the other gentlemen
concerned in that praiseworthy publication. I was complaining not long
ago of this prostitution of literary criticism as peculiar to our own
times, when I was told that it was just as bad in the time of Pope and
Dryden, and indeed worse, inasmuch as we have no Popes or Drydens now on
the obnoxious side to be nicknamed, metamorphosed into scarecrows, and
impaled alive by bigots and dunces. I shall not pretend to say how far
this remark may be true. The English (it must be owned) are rather a
foul-mouthed nation.
Besides temporary or accidental biases of this kind, there seem to be
sects and parties in taste and criticism (with a set of appropriate
watchwords) coeval with the arts of composition, and that will last as
long as the difference with which men's minds are originally
constituted. There are some who are all for the elegance of an author's
style, and some who are equally delighted with simplicity. The last
refer you to Swift as a model of English prose, thinking all other
writers sophisticated and naught; the former prefer the more ornamented
and sparkling periods of Junius or Gibbon. It is to no purpose to think
of bringing about an understanding between these opposite factions. It
is a natural difference of temperament and constitution of mind. The
one will never relish the antithetical point and perpetual glitter of
the artificial prose style; as the plain, unperverted English idiom will
always appear trite and insipid to the others. A toleration, not an
uniformity of opinion, is as much as can be expected in this case; and
both sides may acknowledge, without imputation on their taste or
consistency, that these different writers excelled each in their way. I
might remark here that the epithet _elegant_ is very sparingly used in
modern criticism. It has probably gone out of fashion with the
appearance of the _Lake School,_ who, I apprehend, have no such phrase
in their vocabulary. Mr. Rogers was, I think, almost the last poet to
whom it was applied as a characteristic compliment. At present it would
be considered as a sort of diminutive of the title of poet, like the
terms _pretty_ or _fanciful_, and is banished from the _haut ton_ of
letters. It may perhaps come into request at some future period.
Again, the dispute between the admirers of Homer and Virgil has never
been settled and never will, for there will always be minds to whom the
excellences of Virgil will be more congenial, and therefore more objects
of admiration and delight than those of Homer, and _vice versa._ Both
are right in preferring what suits them best, the delicacy and
selectness of the one, or the fulness and majestic flow of the other.
There is the same difference in their tastes that there was in the
genius of their two favourites. Neither can the disagreement between
the French and English school of tragedy ever be reconciled till the
French become English or the English French.[5] Both are right in what
they admire, both are wrong in condemning the others for what they
admire. We see the defects of Racine, they see the faults of Shakespear
probably in an exaggerated point of view. But we may be sure of this,
that when we see nothing but grossness and barbarism, or insipidity and
verbiage, in a writer that is the god of a nation's idolatry, it is we
and not they who want true taste and feeling. The controversy about
Pope and the opposite school in our own poetry comes to much the same
thing. Pope's correctness, smoothness, etc., are very good things and
much to be commended in him. But it is not to be expected or even
desired that others should have these qualities in the same paramount
degree, to the exclusion of everything else. If you like correctness
and smoothness of all things in the world, there they are for you in
Pope. If you like other things better, such as strength and sublimity,
you know where to go for them. Why trouble Pope or any other author for
what they have not, and do not profess to give? Those who seem to imply
that Pope possessed, besides his own peculiar, exquisite merits, all
that is to be found in Shakespear or Milton, are, I should hardly think,
in good earnest. But I do not therefore see that, because this was not
the case, Pope was no poet. We cannot by a little verbal sophistry
confound the qualities of different minds, nor force opposite
excellences into a union by all the intolerance in the world. We may
pull Pope in pieces as long as we please for not being Shakespear or
Milton, as we may carp at them for not being Pope, but this will not
make a poet equal to all three. If we have a taste for some one precise
style or manner, we may keep it to ourselves and let others have theirs.
If we are more catholic in our notions, and want variety of excellence
and beauty, it is spread abroad for us to profusion in the variety of
books and in the several growth of men's minds, fettered by no
capricious or arbitrary rules. Those who would proscribe whatever falls
short of a given standard of imaginary perfection do so, not from a
higher capacity of taste or range of intellect than others, but to
destroy, to 'crib and cabin in' all enjoyments and opinions but their
own.
We find people of a decided and original, and others of a more general
and versatile taste. I have sometimes thought that the most acute and
original-minded men made bad critics. They see everything too much
through a particular medium. What does not fall in with their own bias
and mode of composition strikes them as common-place and factitious.
What does not come into the direct line of their vision, they regard
idly, with vacant, 'lack-lustre eye.' The extreme force of their
original impressions, compared with the feebleness of those they receive
at second-hand from others, oversets the balance and just proportion of
their minds. Men who have fewer native resources, and are obliged to
apply oftener to the general stock, acquire by habit a greater aptitude
in appreciating what they owe to others. Their taste is not made a
sacrifice to their egotism and vanity, and they enrich the soil of their
minds with continual accessions of borrowed strength and beauty. I
might take this opportunity of observing, that the person of the most
refined and least contracted taste I ever knew was the late Joseph
Fawcett, the friend of my youth. He was almost the first literary
acquaintance I ever made, and I think the most candid and
unsophisticated. He had a masterly perception of all styles and of
every kind and degree of excellence, sublime or beautiful, from Milton's
_Paradise Lost_ to Shenstone's _Pastoral Ballad,_ from Butler's
_Analogy_ down to _Humphrey Clinker._ If you had a favourite author, he
had read him too, and knew all the best morsels, the subtle traits, the
capital touches. 'Do you like Sterne?' 'Yes, to be sure,' he would
say; 'I should deserve to be hanged if I didn't!' His repeating some
parts of _Comus_ with his fine, deep, mellow-toned voice, particularly
the lines, 'I have heard my mother Circe with the Sirens three,' etc.,
and the enthusiastic comments he made afterwards, were a feast to the
ear and to the soul. He read the poetry of Milton with the same fervour
and spirit of devotion that I have since heard others read their own.
'That is the most delicious feeling of all,' I have heard him explain,
'to like what is excellent, no matter whose it is.' In this respect he
practised what he preached. He was incapable of harbouring a sinister
motive, and judged only from what he felt. There was no flaw or mist in
the clear mirror of his mind. He was as open to impressions as he was
strenuous in maintaining them. He did not care a rush whether a writer
was old or new, in prose or in verse--'What he wanted,' he said, 'was
something to make him think.' Most men's minds are to me like musical
instruments out of tune. Touch a particular key, and it jars and makes
harsh discord with your own. They like _Gil Blas,_ but can see nothing
to laugh at in _Don Quixote:_ they adore Richardson, but are disgusted
with Fielding. Fawcett had a taste accommodated to all these. He was
not exceptious. He gave a cordial welcome to all sort, provided they
were the best in their kind. He was not fond of counterfeits or
duplicates. His own style was laboured and artificial to a fault, while
his character was frank and ingenuous in the extreme. He was not the
only individual whom I have known to counteract their natural
disposition in coming before the public, and by avoiding what they
perhaps thought an inherent infirmity, debar themselves of their real
strength and advantages. A heartier friend or honester critic I never
coped withal. He has made me feel (by contrast) the want of genuine
sincerity and generous sentiment in some that I have listened to since,
and convinced me (if practical proof were wanting) of the truth of that
text of Scripture--'That had I all knowledge and could speak with the
tongues of angels, yet without charity I were nothing!' I would rather
be a man of disinterested taste and liberal feeling, to see and
acknowledge truth and beauty wherever I found it, than a man of greater
and more original genius, to hate, envy, and deny all excellence but my
own--but that poor scanty pittance of it (compared with the whole) which
I had myself produced!
There is another race of critics who might be designated as the _Occult
School_--_vere adepti._ They discern no beauties but what are concealed
from superficial eyes, and overlook all that are obvious to the vulgar
part of mankind. Their art is the transmutation of styles. By happy
alchemy of mind they convert dross into gold--and gold into tinsel.
They see farther into a millstone than most others. If an author is
utterly unreadable, they can read him for ever: his intricacies are
their delight, his mysteries are their study. They prefer Sir Thomas
Browne to the _Rambler_ by Dr. Johnson, and Burton's _Anatomy of
Melancholy_ to all the writers of the Georgian Age. They judge of works
of genius as misers do of hid treasure--it is of no value unless they
have it all to themselves. They will no more share a book than a
mistress with a friend. If they suspected their favourite volumes of
delighting any eyes but their own, they would immediately discard them
from the list. Theirs are superannuated beauties that every one else
has left off intriguing with, bedridden hags, a 'stud of nightmares.'
This is not envy or affectation, but a natural proneness to singularity,
a love of what is odd and out of the way. They must come at their
pleasures with difficulty, and support admiration by an uneasy sense of
ridicule and opposition. They despise those qualities in a work which
are cheap and obvious. They like a monopoly of taste and are shocked at
the prostitution of intellect implied in popular productions. In like
manner, they would choose a friend or recommend a mistress for gross
defects; and tolerate the sweetness of an actress's voice only for the
ugliness of her face. Pure pleasures are in their judgment cloying and
insipid--
An ounce of sour is worth a pound of sweet!
Nothing goes down with them but what is _caviare_ to the multitude.
They are eaters of olives and readers of black-letter. Yet they smack
of genius, and would be worth any money, were it only for the rarity of
the thing!
The last sort I shall mention are _verbal critics_--mere word-catchers,
fellows that pick out a word in a sentence and a sentence in a volume,
and tell you it is wrong.[6] These erudite persons constantly find out
by anticipation that you are deficient in the smallest things--that you
cannot spell certain words or join the nominative case and the verb
together, because to do this is the height of their own ambition, and of
course they must set you down lower than their opinion of themselves.
They degrade by reducing you to their own standard of merit; for the
qualifications they deny you, or the faults they object, are so very
insignificant, that to prove yourself possessed of the one or free from
the other is to make yourself doubly ridiculous. Littleness is their
element, and they give a character of meanness to whatever they touch.
They creep, buzz, and fly-blow. It is much easier to crush than to
catch these troublesome insects; and when they are in your power your
self-respect spares them. The race is almost extinct:--one or two of
them are sometimes seen crawling over the pages of the _Quarterly
Review!_
NOTES to ESSAY VI
[1] A Mr. Rose and the Rev. Dr. Kippis were for many years its principal
support. Mrs. Rose (I have heard my father say) contributed the Monthly
Catalogue. There is sometimes a certain tartness and the woman's tongue
in it. It is said of Gray's _Elegy_, 'This little poem, however humble
its pretensions, is not without elegance or merit.' The characters of
prophet and critic are not always united.
[2] There are some splendid exceptions to this censure. His comparison
between Ovid and Virgil and his character of Shakespear are masterpieces
of their kind.
[3] We have critics In the present day [1821] who cannot tell what to
make of the tragic writers of Queen Elizabeth's age (except Shakespear,
who passes by prescriptive right), and are extremely puzzled to reduce
the efforts of their 'great and irregular' power to the standard of
their own slight and showy common-places. The truth is, they had better
give up the attempt to reconcile such contradictions as an artificial
taste and natural genius; and repose on the admiration of verses which
derive their odour from the scent of rose leaves inserted between the
pages, and their polish from the smoothness of the paper on which they
are printed. They, and such writers as Decker, and Webster, Beaumont
and Fletcher, Ford and Marlowe, move in different orbits of the human
intellect, and need never jostle.
[4] The intelligent reader will be pleased to understand that there is
here a tacit allusion to Squire Western's significant phrase of _Hanover
Rats._
[5] Of the two the latter alternative is more likely to happen. We
abuse and imitate them. They laugh at, but do not imitate us.
[6] The title of _Ultra-Crepidarian critics_ has been given to a variety
of this species.
ESSAY VII
ON GREAT AND LITTLE THINGS
These little things are great to little man. --Goldsmith.
The great and the little have, no doubt, a real existence in the nature
of things; but they both find pretty much the same level in the mind of
man. It is a common measure, which does not always accommodate itself
to the size and importance of the objects it represents. It has a
certain interest to spare for certain things (and no more) according to
its humour and capacity; and neither likes to be stinted in its
allowance, nor to muster up an unusual share of sympathy, just as the
occasion may require. Perhaps, if we could recollect distinctly, we
should discover that the two things that have affected us most in the
course of our lives have been, one of them of the greatest, and the
other of the smallest possible consequence. To let that pass as too
fine a speculation, we know well enough that very trifling circumstances
do give us great and daily annoyance, and as often prove too much for
our philosophy and forbearance, as matters of the highest moment. A
lump of soot spoiling a man's dinner, a plate of toast falling in the
ashes, the being disappointed of a ribbon to a cap or a ticket for a
ball, have led to serious and almost tragical consequences. Friends not
unfrequently fall out and never meet again for some idle
misunderstanding, 'some trick not worth an egg,' who have stood the
shock of serious differences of opinion and clashing interests in life;
and there is an excellent paper in the _Tatler,_ to prove that if a
married couple do not quarrel about some point in the first instance not
worth contesting, they will seldom find an opportunity afterwards to
quarrel about a question of real importance. Grave divines, great
statesmen, and deep philosophers are put out of their way by very little
things: nay, discreet, worthy people, without any pretensions but to
good-nature and common sense, readily surrender the happiness of their
whole lives sooner than give up an opinion to which they have committed
themselves, though in all likelihood it was the mere turn of a feather
which side they should take in the argument. It is the being baulked or
thwarted in anything that constitutes the grievance, the unpardonable
affront, not the value of the thing to which we had made up our minds.
Is it that we despise little things; that we are not prepared for them;
that they take us in our careless, unguarded moments, and tease us out
of our ordinary patience by their petty, incessant, insect warfare,
buzzing about us and stinging us like gnats, so that we can neither get
rid of nor grapple with them; whereas we collect all our fortitude and
resolution to meet evils of greater magnitude? Or is it that there is a
certain stream of irritability that is continually fretting upon the
wheels of life, which finds sufficient food to play with in straws and
feathers, while great objects are too much for it, either choke it up,
or divert its course into serious and thoughtful interest? Some attempt
might be made to explain this in the following manner.
One is always more vexed at losing a game of any sort by a single hole
or ace than if one has never had a chance of winning it. This is no
doubt in part or chiefly because the prospect of success irritates the
subsequent disappointment. But people have been known to pine and fall
sick from holding the next number to the twenty thousand pound prize in
the lottery. Now this could only arise from their being so near winning
in fancy, from there seeming to be so thin a partition between them and
success. When they were within one of the right number, why could they
not have taken the next--it was so easy: this haunts their minds and
will not let them rest, notwithstanding the absurdity of the reasoning.
It is that the will here has a slight imaginary obstacle to surmount to
attain its end; it should appear it had only an exceedingly trifling
effort to make for this purpose, that it was absolutely in its power
(had it known) to seize the envied prize, and it is continually
harassing itself by making the obvious transition from one number to the
other, when it is too late. That is to say, the will acts in proportion
to its fancied power, to its superiority over immediate obstacles. Now
in little or indifferent matters there seems no reason why it should not
have its own way, and therefore a disappointment vexes it the more. It
grows angry according to the insignificance of the occasion, and frets
itself to death about an object, merely because from its very futility
there can be supposed to be no real difficulty in the way of its
attainment, nor anything more required for this purpose than a
determination of the will. The being baulked of this throws the mind
off its balance, or puts it into what is called _a passion;_ and as
nothing but an act of voluntary power still seems necessary to get rid
of every impediment, we indulge our violence more and more, and heighten
our impatience by degrees into a sort of frenzy. The object is the same
as it was, but we are no longer as we were. The blood is heated, the
muscles are strained. The feelings are wound up to a pitch of agony
with the vain strife. The temper is tried to the utmost it will bear.
The more contemptible the object or the obstructions in the way to it,
the more are we provoked at being hindered by them. It looks like
witchcraft. We fancy there is a spell upon us, so that we are hampered
by straws and entangled in cobwebs. We believe that there is a fatality
about our affairs. It is evidently done on purpose to plague us. A
demon is at our elbow to torment and defeat us in everything, even in
the smallest things. We see him sitting and mocking us, and we rave and
gnash our teeth at him in return, It is particularly hard that we cannot
succeed in any one point, however trifling. that we set our hearts on.
We are the sport of imbecility and mischance. We make another desperate
effort, and fly out into all the extravagance of impotent rage once
more. Our anger runs away with our reason, because, as there is little
to give it birth, there is nothing to cheek it or recall us to our
senses in the prospect of consequences. We take up and rend in pieces
the mere toys of humour, as the gusts of wind take up and whirl about
chaff and stubble. Passion plays the tyrant, in a grand tragi-comic
style, over the Lilliputian difficulties and petty disappointments it
has to encounter, gives way to all the fretfulness of grief and all the
turbulence of resentment, makes a fuss about nothing because there is
nothing to make a fuss about--when an impending calamity, an
irretrievable loss, would instantly bring it to its recollection, and
tame it in its preposterous career. A man may be in a great passion and
give himself strange airs at so simple a thing as a game at ball, for
instance; may rage like a wild beast, and be ready to dash his head
against the wall about nothing, or about that which he will laugh at the
next minute, and think no more of ten minutes after, at the same time
that a good smart blow from the ball, the effects of which he might feel
as a serious inconvenience for a month, would calm him directly--
Anon as patient as the female dove,
His silence will sit drooping.
The truth is, we pamper little griefs into great ones, and bear great
ones as well as we can. We can afford to dally and play tricks with the
one, but the others we have enough to do with, without any of the
wantonness and bombast of passion--without the swaggering of Pistol or
the insolence of King Cambyses' vein. To great evils we submit; we
resent little provocations. I have before now been disappointed of a
hundred pound job and lost half a crown at rackets on the same day, and
been more mortified at the latter than the former. That which is
lasting we share with the future, we defer the consideration of till
to-morrow: that which belongs to the moment we drink up in all its
bitterness, before the spirit evaporates. We probe minute mischiefs to
the quick; we lacerate, tear, and mangle our bosoms with misfortune's
finest, brittlest point, and wreak our vengeance on ourselves and it for
good and all. Small pains are more manageable, ore within our reach; we
can fret and worry ourselves about them, can turn them into any shape,
can twist and torture them how we please:--a grain of sand in the eye, a
thorn in the flesh, only irritates the part, and leaves us strength
enough to quarrel and get out of all patience with it: a heavy blow
stuns and takes away all power of sense as well as of resistance. The
great and mighty reverses of fortune, like the revolutions of nature,
may be said to carry their own weight and reason along with them: they
seem unavoidable and remediless, and we submit to them without murmuring
as to a fatal necessity. The magnitude of the events in which we may
happen to be concerned fills the mind, and carries it out of itself, as
it were, into the page of history. Our thoughts are expanded with the
scene on which we have to act, and lend us strength to disregard our own
personal share in it. Some men are indifferent to the stroke of fate,
as before and after earthquakes there is a calm in the air. From the
commanding situation whence they have been accustomed to view things,
they look down at themselves as only a part of the whole, and can
abstract their minds from the pressure of misfortune, by the aid of its
very violence. They are projected, in the explosion of events, into a
different sphere, far from their former thoughts, purposes, and
passions. The greatness of the change anticipates the slow effects of
time and reflection:--they at once contemplate themselves from an
immense distance, and look up with speculative wonder at the height on
which they stood. Had the downfall been less complete, it would have
been more galling and borne with less resignation, because there might
still be a chance of remedying it by farther efforts and farther
endurance--but past cure, past hope. It is chiefly this cause (together
with something of constitutional character) which has enabled the
greatest man in modern history to bear his reverses of fortune with gay
magnanimity, and to submit to the loss of the empire of the world with
as little discomposure as if he had been playing a game at chess.[1]
This does not prove by our theory that he did not use to fly into
violent passions with Talleyrand for plaguing him with bad news when
things went wrong. He was mad at uncertain forebodings of disaster, but
resigned to its consummation. A man may dislike impertinence, yet have
no quarrel with necessity!
There is another consideration that may take off our wonder at the
firmness with which the principals in great vicissitudes of fortune bear
their fate, which is, that they are in the secret of its operations, and
know that what to others appears chance-medley was unavoidable. The
clearness of their perception of all the circumstances converts the
uneasiness of doubt into certainty: they have not the qualms of
conscience which their admirers have, who cannot tell how much of the
event is to be attributed to the leaders, and how much to unforeseen
accidents: they are aware either that the result was not to be helped,
or that they did all they could to prevent it.
Si Pergarna dextra
Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent.
It is the mist and obscurity through which we view objects that makes us
fancy they might have been or might still be otherwise, The precise
knowledge of antecedents and consequents makes men practical as well as
philosophical Necessarians.--It is the want of this knowledge which is
the principle and soul of gambling, and of all games of chance or
partial skill. The supposition is, that the issue is uncertain, and
that there is no positive means of ascertaining it. It is dependent on
the turn of a die, on the tossing up of a halfpenny: to be fair it must
be a lottery; there is no knowing but by the event; and it is this which
keeps the interest alive, and works up the passion little short of
madness. There is all the agitation of suspense, all the alternation of
hope and fear, of good and bad success, all the eagerness of desire,
without the possibility of reducing this to calculation, that is, of
subjecting the increased action of the will to a known rule, or
restraining the excesses of passion within the bounds of reason. We see
no cause beforehand why the run of the cards should not be in our
favour: we will hear of none afterwards why it should not have been so.
As in the absence of all data to judge by, we wantonly fill up the blank
with the most extravagant expectations, so, when all is over, we
obstinately recur to the chance we had previously. There is nothing to
tame us down to the event, nothing to reconcile us to our hard luck, for
so we think it. We see no reason why we failed (and there was none, any
more than why we should succeed)--we think that, reason apart, our will
is the next best thing; we still try to have it our own way, and fret,
torment, and harrow ourselves up with vain imaginations to effect
impossibilities.[2] We play the game over again: we wonder how it was
possible for us to fail. We turn our brain with straining at
contradictions, and striving to make things what they are not, or, in
other words, to subject the course of nature to our fastastical wishes.
_'If it had been so--if we had done such and such a thing'_--we try it
in a thousand different ways, and are just as far off the mark as ever.
We appealed to chance in the first instance, and yet, when it has
decided against us, we will not give in, and sit down contented with our
loss, but refuse to submit to anything but reason, which has nothing to
do with the matter. In drawing two straws, for example, to see which is
the longest, there was no apparent necessity we should fix upon the
wrong one, it was so easy to have fixed upon the other, nay, at one time
we were going to do it--if we had,--the mind thus runs back to what was
so possible and feasible at one time, while the thing was pending, and
would fain give a bias to causes so slender and insignificant, as the
skittle-player bends his body to give a bias to the bowl he has already
delivered from his hand, not considering that what is once determined,
be the causes ever so trivial or evanescent, is in the individual
instance unalterable. Indeed, to be a great philosopher, in the
practical and most important sense of the term, little more seems
necessary than to be convinced of the truth of the maxim which the wise
man repeated to the daughter of King Cophetua, _That if a thing is, it
is,_ and there is an end of it!
We often make life unhappy in wishing things to have turned out
otherwise than they did, merely because that is possible to the
imagination, which is impossible in fact. I remember, when Lamb's farce
was damned (for damned it was, that's certain), I used to dream every
night for a month after (and then I vowed I would plague myself no more
about it) that it was revived at one of the minor or provincial theatres
with great success, that such and such retrenchments and alterations had
been made in it, and that it was thought _it might do at the other
House._ I had heard indeed (this was told in confidence to Lamb) that
_Gentleman_ Lewis was present on the night of its performance, and said
that if he had had it he would have made it, by a few judicious
curtailments, 'the most popular little thing that had been brought out
for some time.' How often did I conjure up in recollection the full
diapason of applause at the end of the _Prologue,_ and hear my ingenious
friend in the first row of the pit roar with laughter at his own wit!
Then I dwelt with forced complacency on some part in which it had been
doing well: then we would consider (in concert) whether the long tedious
opera of the _Travellers,_ which preceded it, had not tired people
beforehand, so that they had not spirits left for the quaint and
sparkling 'wit skirmishes' of the dialogue; and we all agreed it might
have gone down after a tragedy, except Lamb himself, who swore he had no
hopes of it from the beginning, and that he knew the name of the hero
when it came to be discovered could not be got over. Mr. _H----,_ thou
wert damned! Bright shone the morning on the play-bills that announced
thy appearance, and the streets were filled with the buzz of persons
asking one another if they would go to see _Mr. H----,_ and answering
that they would certainly; but before night the gaiety, not of the
author, but of his friends and the town. was eclipsed, for thou were
damned! Hadst thou been anonymous thou haply mightst have lived. But
thou didst come to an untimely end for thy tricks, and for want of a
better name to pass them off!
In this manner we go back to the critical minutes on which the turn of
our fate, or that of any one else in whom we are interested; depended;
try them over again with new knowledge and sharpened sensibility; and
thus think to alter what is irrevocable, and ease for a moment the pang
of lasting regret. So in a game at rackets[3] (to compare small things
with great), I think if at such a point I had followed up my success, if
I had not been too secure or over-anxious in another part, if I had
played for such an opening--in short, if I had done anything but what I
did and what has proved unfortunate in the result, the chances were all
in my favour. But it is merely because I do not know what would have
happened in the other case that I interpret it so readily to my own
advantage. I have sometimes lain awake a whole night, trying to serve
out the last ball of an interesting game in a particular corner of the
court, which I had missed from a nervous feeling. Rackets (I might
observe, for the sake of the uninformed reader) is, like any other
athletic game, very much a thing of skill and practice; but it is also a
thing of opinion, 'subject to all the skyey influences.' If you think
you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory. If you
hesitate in striking at the ball, it is ten to one but you miss it. If
you are apprehensive of committing some particular error (such as
striking the ball _foul_) you will be nearly sure to do it. While
thinking of that which you are so earnestly bent upon avoiding, your
hand mechanically follows the strongest idea, and obeys the imagination
rather than the intention of the striker. A run of luck is a forerunner
of success, and courage is as much wanted as skill. No one is, however,
free from nervous sensations at times. A good player may not be able to
strike a single stroke if another comes into the court that he has a
particular dread of; and it frequently so happens that a player cannot
beat another, even though he can give half the game to an equal player,
because he has some associations of jealousy or personal pique against
the first which he has not towards the last. _Sed haec hactenus._
Chess is a game I do not understand, and have not comprehension enough
to play at. But I believe, though it is so much less a thing of chance
than science or skill, eager players pass whole nights in marching and
countermarching their men and checkmating a successful adversary,
supposing that at a certain point of the game they had determined upon
making a particular move instead of the one which they actually did
make. I have heard a story of two persons playing at backgammon, one of
whom was so enraged at losing his match at a particular point of the
game that he took the board and threw it out of the window. It fell
upon the head of one of the passengers in the street, who came up to
demand instant satisfaction for the affront and injury he had sustained.
The losing gamester only asked him if he understood backgammon, and
finding that he did, said, that if upon seeing the state of the game he
did not excuse the extravagance of his conduct, he would give him any
other satisfaction he wished for. The tables were accordingly brought,
and the situation of the two contending parties being explained, the
gentleman put up his sword and went away perfectly satisfied. To return
from this, which to some will seem a digression, and to others will
serve as a confirmation of the doctrine I am insisting on.
It is not, then, the value of the object, but the time and pains
bestowed upon it, that determines the sense and degree of our loss.
Many men set their minds only on trifles, and have not a compass of soul
to take an interest in anything truly great and important beyond forms
and minutiae. Such persons are really men of little minds, or may be
complimented with the title of great children,
Pleased with a feather, tickled with a straw.
Larger objects elude their grasp, while they fasten eagerly on the light
and insignificant. They fidget themselves and others to death with
incessant anxiety about nothing. A part of their dress that is awry
keeps them in a fever of restlessness and impatience; they sit picking
their teeth, or paring their nails, or stirring the fire, or brushing a
speck of dirt off their coats, while the house or the world tumbling
about their ears would not rouse them from their morbid insensibility.
They cannot sit still on their chairs for their lives, though if there
were anything for them to do they would become immovable. Their nerves
are as irritable as their imaginations are callous and inert. They are
addicted to an inveterate habit of littleness and perversity, which
rejects every other motive to action or object of contemplation but the
daily, teasing, contemptible, familiar, favourite sources of uneasiness
and dissatisfaction. When they are of a sanguine instead of a morbid
temperament, they become _quid-nuncs_ and virtuosos--collectors of
caterpillars and odd volumes, makers of fishing-rods and curious in
watch-chains. Will Wimble dabbled in this way, to his immortal honour.
But many others have been less successful. There are those who build
their fame on epigrams or epitaphs, and others who devote their lives to
writing the Lord's Prayer in little. Some poets compose and sing their
own verses. Which character would they have us think most highly
of--the poet or the musician? The Great is One. Some there are who
feel more pride in sealing a letter with a head of Homer than ever that
old blind bard did in reciting his _Iliad._ These raise a huge opinion
of themselves out of nothing, as there are those who shrink from their
own merits into the shade of unconquerable humility. I know one person
at least, who would rather be the author of an unsuccessful farce than
of a successful tragedy. Repeated mortification has produced an
inverted ambition in his mind, and made failure the bitter test of
desert. He cannot lift his drooping head to gaze on the gaudy crown of
popularity placed within his reach, but casts a pensive, riveted look
downwards to the modest flowers which the multitude trample under their
feet. If he had a piece likely to succeed, coming out under all
advantages, he would damn it by some ill-timed, wilful jest, and lose
the favour of the public, to preserve the sense of his personal
identity. 'Misfortune,' Shakespear says, 'brings a man acquainted with
strange bedfellows'; and it makes our thoughts traitors to
ourselves.--It is a maxim with many--_'Take care of the pence, and the
pounds will take care of themselves.'_ Those only put it in practice
successfully who think more of the pence than of the pounds. To such, a
large sum is less than a small one. Great speculations, great returns
are to them extravagant or imaginary: a few hundreds a year are
something snug and comfortable. Persons who have been used to a petty,
huckstering way of life cannot enlarge their apprehensions to a notion
of anything better. Instead of launching out into greater expense and
liberality with the tide of fortune, they draw back with the fear of
consequences, and think to succeed on a broader scale by dint of
meanness and parsimony. My uncle Toby frequently caught Trim standing
up behind his chair, when he had told him to be seated. What the
corporal did out of respect, others would do out of servility. The
menial character does not wear out in three or four generations. You
cannot keep some people out of the kitchen, merely because their
grandfathers or grandmothers came out of it. A poor man and his wife
walking along in the neighbourhood of Portland Place, he said to her
peevishly, 'What is the use of walking along these fine streets and
squares? Let us turn down some alley!' He felt he should be more at
home there. Lamb said of an old acquaintance of his, that when he was
young he wanted to be a tailor, but had not spirit! This is the misery
of unequal matches. The woman cannot easily forget, or think that
others forget, her origin; and, with perhaps superior sense and beauty,
keeps painfully in the background. It is worse when she braves this
conscious feeling, and displays all the insolence of the upstart and
affected fine lady. But shouldst thou ever, my Infelice, grace my home
with thy loved presence, as thou hast cheered my hopes with thy smile,
thou wilt conquer all hearts with thy prevailing gentleness, and I will
show the world what Shakespear's women were!--Some gallants set their
hearts on princesses; others descend in imagination to women of quality;
others are mad after opera-singers. For my part, I am shy even of
actresses, and should not think of leaving my card with Madame Vestris.
I am for none of these _bonnes fortunes;_ but for a list of humble
beauties, servant-maids and shepherd-girls, with their red elbows, hard
hands, black stockings and mob-caps, I could furnish out a gallery equal
to Cowley's, and paint them half as well. Oh! might I but attempt a
description of some of them in poetic prose, Don Juan would forget his
Julia, and Mr. Davison might both print and publish this volume. I
agree so far with Horace, and differ with Montaigne. I admire the
Clementinas and Clarissas at a distance: the Pamelas and Fannys of
Richardson and Fielding make my blood tingle. I have written
love-letters to such in my time, _d'un pathetique a faire fendre les
rochers,_ and with about as much effect as if they had been addressed to
stone. The simpletons only laughed, and said that 'those were not the
sort of things to gain the affections.' I wish I had kept copies in my
own justification. What is worse, I have an utter aversion to
blue-stockings. I do not care a fig for any woman that knows even what
an author means. If I know that she has read anything I have written, I
cut her acquaintance immediately. This sort of literary intercourse
with me passes for nothing. Her critical and scientific acquirements
are _carrying coals to Newcastle._ I do not want to be told that I have
published such or such a work. I knew all this before. It makes no
addition to my sense of power. I do not wish the affair to be brought
about in that way. I would have her read my soul: she should understand
the language of the heart: she should know what I am, as if she were
another self! She should love me for myself alone. I like myself
without any reason: I would have her do so too. This is not very
reasonable. I abstract from my temptations to admire all the
circumstances of dress, birth, breeding, fortune; and I would not
willingly put forward my own pretensions, whatever they may be. The
image of some fair creature is engraven on my inmost soul; it is on that
I build my claim to her regard, and expect her to see into my heart, as
I see her form always before me. Wherever she treads, pale primroses,
like her face, vernal hyacinths, like her brow, spring up beneath her
feet, and music hangs on every bough; but all is cold, barren, and
desolate without her. Thus I feel, and thus I think. But have I over
told her so? No. Or if I did, would she understand it? No. I 'hunt
the wind, I worship a statue, cry aloud to the desert.' To see beauty
is not to be beautiful, to pine in love is not to be loved again--I
always was inclined to raise and magnify the power of Love. I thought
that his sweet power should only be exerted to join together the
loveliest forms and fondest hearts; that none but those in whom his
godhead shone outwardly, and was inly felt, should ever partake of his
triumphs; and I stood and gazed at a distance, as unworthy to mingle in
so bright a throng, and did not (even for a moment) wish to tarnish the
glory of so fair a vision by being myself admitted into it. I say this
was my notion once, but God knows it was one of the errors of my youth.
For coming nearer to look, I saw the maimed, the blind, and the halt
enter in, the crooked and the dwarf, the ugly, the old and impotent, the
man of pleasure and the man of the world, the dapper and the pert, the
vain and shallow boaster, the fool and the pedant, the ignorant and
brutal, and all that is farthest removed from earth's fairest-born, and
the pride of human life. Seeing all these enter the courts of Love, and
thinking that I also might venture in under favour of the crowd, but
finding myself rejected, I fancied (I might be wrong) that it was not so
much because I was below, as above the common standard. I did feel, but
I was ashamed to feel, mortified at my repulse, when I saw the meanest
of mankind, the very scum and refuse, all creeping things and every
obscene creature, enter in before me. I seemed a species by myself, I
took a pride even in my disgrace; and concluded I had elsewhere my
inheritance! The only thing I ever piqued myself upon was the writing
the _Essay on the Principles of Human Action_--a work that no woman ever
read, or would ever comprehend the meaning of. But if I do not build my
claim to regard on the pretensions I have, how can I build it on those I
am totally without? Or why do I complain and expect to gather grapes of
thorns, or figs of thistles? Thought has in me cancelled pleasure; and
this dark forehead, bent upon truth, is the rock on which all affection
has split. And thus I waste my life in one long sigh; nor ever (till
too late) beheld a gentle face turned gently upon mine! . . . But no!
not too late, if that face, pure, modest, downcast, tender, with angel
sweetness, not only gladdens the prospect of the future, but sheds its
radiance on the past, smiling in tears. A purple light hovers round my
head. The air of love is in the room. As I look at my long-neglected
copy of the Death of Clorinda, golden gleams play upon the canvas, as
they used when I painted it. The flowers of Hope and Joy springing up
in my mind, recall the time when they first bloomed there. The years
that are fled knock at the door and enter. I am in the Louvre once
more. The sun of Austerlitz has not set. It still shines here--in my
heart; and he, the son of glory, is not dead, nor ever shall, to me. I
am as when my life began. The rainbow is in the sky again. I see the
skirts of the departed years. All that I have thought and felt has not
been in vain. I am not utterly worthless, unregarded; nor shall I die
and wither of pure scorn. Now could I sit on the tomb of Liberty, and
write a Hymn to Love. Oh! if I am deceived, let me be deceived still.
Let me live in the Elysium of those soft looks; poison me with kisses,
kill me with smiles; but still mock me with thy love![4]
Poets choose mistresses who have the fewest charms, that they may make
something out of nothing. They succeed best in fiction, and they apply
this rule to love. They make a goddess of any dowdy. As Don Quixote
said, in answer to the matter-of-fact remonstrances of Sancho, that
Dulcinea del Toboso answered the purpose of signalising his valour just
as well as the 'fairest princess under sky,' so any of the fair sex will
serve them to write about just as well as another. They take some
awkward thing and dress her up in fine words, as children dress up a
wooden doll in fine clothes. Perhaps a fine head of hair, a taper
waist, or some other circumstance strikes them, and they make the rest
out according to their fancies. They have a wonderful knack of
supplying deficiencies in the subjects of their idolatry out of the
storehouse of their imaginations. They presently translate their
favourites to the skies, where they figure with Berenice's locks and
Ariadne's crown. This predilection for the unprepossessing and
insignificant, I take to arise not merely from a desire in poets to have
some subject to exercise their inventive talents upon, but from their
jealousy of any pretensions (even those of beauty in the other sex) that
might interfere with the continual incense offered to their personal
vanity.
Cardinal Mazarine never thought anything of Cardinal de Retz after he
told him that he had written for the last thirty years of his life with
the same pen. Some Italian poet going to present a copy of verses to
the Pope, and finding, as he was looking them over in the coach as he
went, a mistake of a single letter in the printing, broke his heart of
vexation and chagrin. A still more remarkable case of literary
disappointment occurs in the history of a countryman of his, which I
cannot refrain from giving here, as I find it related. 'Anthony Codrus
Urceus, a most learned and unfortunate Italian, born near Modena, 1446,
was a striking instance,' says his biographer, 'of the miseries men
bring upon themselves by setting their affections unreasonably on
trifles. This learned man lived at Forli, and had an apartment in the
palace. His room was so very dark that he was forced to use a candle in
the daytime; and one day, going abroad without putting it out, his
library was set on fire, and some papers which he had prepared for the
press were burned. The instant he was informed of this ill news he was
affected even to madness. He ran furiously to the palace, and stopping
at the door of his apartment, he cried aloud, Christ Jesus! what mighty
crime have I committed! whom of your followers have I ever injured, that
you thus rage with inexpiable hatred against me?" Then turning himself
to an image of the Virgin Mary near at hand, "Virgin (says he), hear
what I have to say, for I speak in earnest, and with a composed spirit:
if I shall happen to address you in my dying moments, I humbly entreat
you not to hear me, nor receive me into Heaven, for I am determined to
spend all eternity in Hell!" Those who heard these blasphemous
expressions endeavoured to comfort him; but all to no purpose: for, the
society of mankind being no longer supportable to him, he left the city,
and retired, like savage, to the deep solitude of a wood. Some say that
he was murdered there by ruffians: others, that he died at Bologna in
1500, after much contrition and penitence.'
Perhaps the censure passed at the outset of the anecdote on this
unfortunate person is unfounded and severe, when it is said that he
brought his miseries on himself 'by having set his affections
unreasonably on trifles.' To others it might appear so; but to himself
the labour of a whole life was hardly a trifle. His passion was not a
causeless one, though carried to such frantic excess. The story of Sir
Isaac Newton presents a strong contrast to the last-mentioned one, who,
on going into his study and finding that his dog Tray had thrown down a
candle on the table, and burnt some papers of great value, contented
himself with exclaiming, 'Ah! Tray, you don't know the mischief you have
done!' Many persons would not forgive the overturning a cup of
chocolate so soon.
I remember hearing an instance some years ago of a man of character and
property, who through unexpected losses had been condemned to a long and
heartbreaking imprisonment, which he bore with exemplary fortitude. At
the end of four years, by the interest and exertions of friends, he
obtained his discharge, with every prospect of beginning the world
afresh, and had made his arrangements for leaving his irksome abode, and
meeting his wife and family at a distance of two hundred miles by a
certain day. Owing to the miscarriage of a letter, some signature
necessary to the completion of the business did not arrive in time, and
on account of the informality which had thus arisen, he could not set
out home till the return of the post, which was four days longer. His
spirit could not brook the delay. He had wound himself up to the last
pitch of expectation; he had, as it were, calculated his patience to
hold out to a certain point, and then to throw down his load for ever,
and he could not find resolution to resume it for a few hours beyond
this. He put an end to the intolerable conflict of hope and
disappointment in a fit of excruciating anguish. Woes that we have time
to foresee and leisure to contemplate break their force by being spread
over a larger surface and borne at intervals; but those that come upon
us suddenly, for however short a time, seem to insult us by their
unnecessary and uncalled-for intrusion; and the very prospect of relief,
when held out and then withdrawn from us, to however small a distance,
only frets impatience into agony by tantalising our hopes and wishes;
and to rend asunder the thin partition that separates us from our
favourite object, we are ready to burst even the fetters of life itself!
I am not aware that any one has demonstrated how it is that a stronger
capacity is required for the conduct of great affairs than of small
ones. The organs of the mind, like the pupil of the eye, may be
contracted or dilated to view a broader or a narrower surface, and yet
find sufficient variety to occupy its attention in each. The material
universe is infinitely divisible, and so is the texture of human
affairs. We take things in the gross or in the detail, according to the
occasion. I think I could as soon get up the budget of Ways and Means
for the current year, as be sure of making both ends meet, and paying my
rent at quarter-day in a paltry huckster's shop. Great objects move on
by their own weight and impulse; great power turns aside petty
obstacles; and he who wields it is often but the puppet of
circumstances, like the fly on the wheel that said, 'What a dust we
raise!' It is easier to ruin a kingdom and aggrandise one's own pride
and prejudices than to set up a greengrocer's stall. An idiot or a
madman may do this at any time, whose word is law, and whose nod is
fate. Nay, he whose look is obedience, and who understands the silent
wishes of the great, may easily trample on the necks and tread out the
liberties of a mighty nation, deriding their strength, and hating it the
more from a consciousness of his own meanness. Power is not wisdom, it
is true; but it equally ensures its own objects. It does not exact, but
dispenses with talent. When a man creates this power, or new-moulds the
state by sage counsels and bold enterprises, it is a different thing
from overturning it with the levers that are put into his baby hands.
In general, however, it may be argued that great transactions and
complicated concerns ask more genius to conduct them than smaller ones,
for this reason, viz. that the mind must be able either to embrace a
greater variety of details in a more extensive range of objects, or must
have a greater faculty of generalising, or a greater depth of insight
into ruling principles, and so come at true results in that way.
Buonaparte knew everything, even to the names of our cadets in the East
India service; but he failed in this, that he did not calculate the
resistance which barbarism makes to refinement. He thought that the
Russians could not burn Moscow, because the Parisians could not burn
Paris. The French think everything must be French. The Cossacks, alas!
do not conform to etiquette: the rudeness of the seasons knows no rules
of politeness! Some artists think it a test of genius to paint a large
picture; and I grant the truth of this position, if the large picture
contains more than a small one. It is not the size of the canvas, but
the quantity of truth and nature put into it, that settles the point.
It is a mistake, common enough on this subject, to suppose that a
miniature is more finished than an oil-picture. The miniature is
inferior to the oil-picture only because it is less finished, because it
cannot follow nature into so many individual and exact particulars. The
proof of which is, that the copy of a good portrait will always make a
highly finished miniature (see for example Mr. Bone's enamels), whereas
the copy of a good miniature, if enlarged to the size of life, will make
but a very sorry portrait. Several of our best artists, who are fond of
painting large figures, invert this reasoning. They make the whole
figure gigantic, not that they may have room for nature, but for the
motion of their brush (as if they were painting the side of a house),
regarding the extent of canvas they have to cover as an excuse for their
slovenly and hasty manner of getting over it; and thus, in fact, leave
their pictures nothing at last but overgrown miniatures, but huge
caricatures. It is not necessary in any case (either in a larger or a
smaller compass) to go into the details, so as to lose sight of the
effect, and decompound the face into porous and transparent molecules,
in the manner of Denner, who painted what he saw through a
magnifying-glass. The painter's eye need not be a microscope, but I
contend that it should be a looking-glass, bright, clear, lucid. The
_little_ in art begins with insignificant parts, with what does not tell
in connection with other parts. The true artist will paint not material
points, but _moral qualities._ In a word, wherever there is feeling or
expression in a muscle or a vein, there is grandeur and refinement
too.--I will conclude these remarks with an account of the manner in
which the ancient sculptors combined great and little things in such
matters. 'That the name of Phidias,' says Pliny, 'is illustrious among
all the nations that have heard of the fame of the Olympian Jupiter, no
one doubts; but in order that those may know that he is deservedly
praised who have not even seen his works, we shall offer a few
arguments, and those of his genius only: nor to this purpose shall we
insist on the beauty of the Olympian Jupiter, nor on the magnitude of
the Minerva at Athens, though it is twenty-six cubits in height (about
thirty-five feet), and is made of ivory and gold; but we shall refer to
the shield, on which the battle of the Amazons is carved on the outer
side; on the inside of the same is the fight of the Gods and Giants; and
on the sandals, that between the Centaurs and Lapithae; so well did
every part of that work display the powers of the art. Again, the
sculptures on the pedestal he called the birth of Pandora: there are to
be seen in number thirty gods, the figure of Victory being particularly
admirable: the learned also admire the figures of the serpent and the
brazen sphinx, writhing under the spear. These things are mentioned, in
passing, of an artist never enough to be commended, that it may be seen
that he showed the same magnificence even in small things."[5]
NOTES to ESSAY VII
[1] This Essay was written in January 1821.
[2] Losing gamesters thus become desperate, because the continued and
violent irritation of the will against a run of ill luck drives it to
extremity, and makes it bid defiance to common sense and every
consideration of prudence or self-interest.
[3] Some of the poets in the beginning of the last century would often
set out on a simile by observing, 'So in Arabia have I seen a Phoenix!'
I confess my illustrations are of a more homely and humble nature.
[4] I beg the reader to consider this passage merely as a specimen of
the mock-heroic style, and as having nothing to do with any real facts
or feelings.
[5] Pliny's _Natural History,_ Book 36.
ESSAY VIII
ON FAMILIAR STYLE
It is not easy to write a familiar style. Many people mistake a
familiar for a vulgar style, and suppose that to write without
affectation is to write at random. On the contrary, there is nothing
that requires more precision, and, if I may so say, purity of
expression, than the style I am speaking of. It utterly rejects not
only all unmeaning pomp, but all low, cant phrases, and loose,
unconnected, _slipshod_ allusions. It is not to take the first word
that offers, but the best word in common use; it is not to throw words
together in any combinations we please, but to follow and avail
ourselves of the true idiom of the language. To write a genuine
familiar or truly English style is to write as any one would speak in
common conversation who had a thorough command and choice of words, or
who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all
pedantic and oratorical flourishes. Or, to give another illustration,
to write naturally is the same thing in regard to common conversation as
to read naturally is in regard to common speech. It does not follow
that it is an easy thing to give the true accent and inflection to the
words you utter, because you do not attempt to rise above the level of
ordinary life and colloquial speaking. You do not assume, indeed, the
solemnity of the pulpit, or the tone of stage-declamation; neither are
you at liberty to gabble on at a venture, without emphasis or
discretion, or to resort to vulgar dialect or clownish pronunciation.
You must steer a middle course. You are tied down to a given and
appropriate articulation, which is determined by the habitual
associations between sense and sound, and which you can only hit by
entering into the author's meaning, as you must find the proper words
and style to express yourself by fixing your thoughts on the subject you
have to write about. Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical
cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak
with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy
to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you
want to express: it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that
exactly fits it. Out of eight or ten words equally common, equally
intelligible, with nearly equal pretensions, it is a matter of some
nicety and discrimination to pick out the very one the preferableness of
which is scarcely perceptible, but decisive. The reason why I object to
Dr. Johnson's style is that there is no discrimination, no selection, no
variety in it. He uses none but 'tall, opaque words,' taken from the
'first row of the rubric'--words with the greatest number of syllables,
or Latin phrases with merely English terminations. If a fine style
depended on this sort of arbitrary pretension, it would be fair to judge
of an author's elegance by the measurement of his words and the
substitution of foreign circumlocutions (with no precise associations)
for the mother-tongue.[1] How simple is it to be dignified without
case, to be pompous without meaning! Surely it is but a mechanical rule
for avoiding what is low, to be always pedantic and affected. It is
clear you cannot use a vulgar English word if you never use a common
English word at all. A fine tact is shown in adhering to those which
are perfectly common, and yet never falling into any expressions which
are debased by disgusting circumstances, or which owe their
signification and point to technical or professional allusions. A truly
natural or familiar style can never be quaint or vulgar, for this
reason, that it is of universal force and applicability, and that
quaintness and vulgarity arise out of the immediate connection of
certain words with coarse and disagreeable or with confined ideas. The
last form what we understand by _cant_ or _slang_ phrases.--To give an
example of what is not very clear in the general statement, I should say
that the phrase _To cut with a knife,_ or _To cut a piece of wood,_ is
perfectly free from vulgarity, because it is perfectly common; but _to
cut an acquaintance_ is not quite unexceptionable, because it is not
perfectly common or intelligible, and has hardly yet escaped out of the
limits of slang phraseology. I should hardly, therefore, use the word
in this sense without putting it in italics as a license of expression,
to be received _cum grano salis._ All provincial or bye-phrases come
under the same mark of reprobation--all such as the writer transfers to
the page from his fireside or a particular _coterie,_ or that he invents
for his own sole use and convenience. I conceive that words are like
money, not the worse for being common, but that it is the stamp of
custom alone that gives them circulation or value. I am fastidious in
this respect, and would almost as soon coin the currency of the realm as
counterfeit the King's English. I never invented or gave a new and
unauthorised meaning to any word but one single one (the term
_impersonal_ applied to feelings), and that was in an abstruse
metaphysical discussion to express a very difficult distinction. I have
been (I know) loudly accused of revelling in vulgarisms and broken
English. I cannot speak to that point; but so far I plead guilty to the
determined use of acknowledged idioms and common elliptical expressions.
I am not sure that the critics in question know the one from the other,
that is, can distinguish any medium between formal pedantry and the most
barbarous solecism. As an author I endeavour to employ plain words and
popular modes of construction, as, were I a chapman and dealer, I should
common weights and measures.
The proper force of words lies not in the words themselves, but in their
application. A word may be a fine-sounding word, of an unusual length,
and very imposing from its learning and novelty, and yet in the
connection in which it is introduced may be quite pointless and
irrelevant. It is not pomp or pretension, but the adaptation of the
expression to the idea, that clenches a writer's meaning:--as it is not
the size or glossiness of the materials, but their being fitted each to
its place, that gives strength to the arch; or as the pegs and nails are
as necessary to the support of the building as the larger timbers, and
more so than the mere showy, unsubstantial ornaments. I hate anything
that occupies more space than it is worth. I hate to see a load of
bandboxes go along the street, and I hate to see a parcel of big words
without anything in them. A person who does not deliberately dispose of
all his thoughts alike in cumbrous draperies and flimsy disguises may
strike out twenty varieties of familiar everyday language, each coming
somewhat nearer to the feeling he wants to convey, and at last not hit
upon that particular and only one which may be said to be identical with
the exact impression in his mind. This would seem to show that Mr.
Cobbett is hardly right in saying that the first word that occurs is
always the best. It may be a very good one; and yet a better may
present itself on reflection or from time to time. It should be
suggested naturally, however, and spontaneously, from a fresh and lively
conception of the subject. We seldom succeed by trying at improvement,
or by merely substituting one word for another that we are not satisfied
with, as we cannot recollect the name of a place or person by merely
plaguing ourselves about it. We wander farther from the point by
persisting in a wrong scent; but it starts up accidentally in the memory
when we least expected it, by touching some link in the chain of
previous association.
There are those who hoard up and make a cautious display of nothing but
rich and rare phraseology--ancient medals, obscure coins, and Spanish
pieces of eight. They are very curious to inspect, but I myself would
neither offer nor take them in the course of exchange. A sprinkling of
archaisms is not amiss, but a tissue of obsolete expressions is more fit
_for keep than wear._ I do not say I would not use any phrase that had
been brought into fashion before the middle or the end of the last
century, but I should be shy of using any that had not been employed by
any approved author during the whole of that time. Words, like clothes,
get old-fashioned, or mean and ridiculous, when they have been for some
time laid aside. Mr. Lamb is the only imitator of old English style I
can read with pleasure; and he is so thoroughly imbued with the spirit
of his authors that the idea of imitation is almost done away. There is
an inward unction, a marrowy vein, both in the thought and feeling, an
intuition, deep and lively, of his subject, that carries off any
quaintness or awkwardness arising from an antiquated style and dress.
The matter is completely his own, though the manner is assumed. Perhaps
his ideas are altogether so marked and individual as to require their
point and pungency to be neutralised by the affectation of a singular
but traditional form of conveyance. Tricked out in the prevailing
costume, they would probably seem more startling and out of the way.
The old English authors, Burton, Fuller, Coryate, Sir Thomas Browne, are
a kind of mediators between us and the more eccentric and whimsical
modern, reconciling us to his peculiarities. I do not, however, know
how far this is the case or not, till he condescends to write like one
of us. I must confess that what I like best of his papers under the
signature of Elia (still I do not presume, amidst such excellence, to
decide what is most excellent) is the account of 'Mrs. Battle's Opinions
on Whist,' which is also the most free from obsolete allusions and turns
of expression--
A well of native English undefiled.
To those acquainted with his admired prototypes, these _Essays_ of the
ingenious and highly gifted author have the same sort of charm and
relish that Erasmus's _Colloquies_ or a fine piece of modern Latin have
to the classical scholar. Certainly, I do not know any borrowed pencil
that has more power or felicity of execution than the one of which I
have here been speaking.
It is as easy to write a gaudy style without ideas as it is to spread a
pallet of showy colours or to smear in a flaunting transparency. 'What
do you read?' 'Words, words, words.'--'What is the matter?' '
_Nothing_,' it might be answered. The florid style is the reverse of
the familiar. The last is employed as an unvarnished medium to convey
ideas; the first is resorted to as a spangled veil to conceal the want
of them. When there is nothing to be set down but words, it costs
little to have them fine. Look through the dictionary, and cull out a
_florilegium_, rival the _tulippomania_. _Rouge_ high enough, and never
mind the natural complexion. The vulgar, who are not in the secret,
will admire the look of preternatural health and vigour; and the
fashionable, who regard only appearances, will be delighted with the
imposition. Keep to your sounding generalities, your tinkling phrases,
and all will be well. Swell out an unmeaning truism to a perfect
tympany of style. A thought, a distinction is the rock on which all
this brittle cargo of verbiage splits at once. Such writers have merely
_verbal_ imaginations, that retain nothing but words. Or their puny
thoughts have dragon-wings, all green and gold. They soar far above the
vulgar failing of the _Sermo humi obrepens_--their most ordinary speech
is never short of an hyperbole, splendid, imposing, vague,
incomprehensible, magniloquent, a cento of sounding common-places. If
some of us, whose 'ambition is more lowly,' pry a little too narrowly
into nooks and corners to pick up a number of 'unconsidered trifles,'
they never once direct their eyes or lift their hands to seize on any
but the most gorgeous, tarnished, threadbare, patchwork set of phrases,
the left-off finery of poetic extravagance, transmitted down through
successive generations of barren pretenders. If they criticise actors
and actresses, a huddled phantasmagoria of feathers, spangles, floods of
light, and oceans of sound float before their morbid sense, which they
paint in the style of Ancient Pistol. Not a glimpse can you get of the
merits or defects of the performers: they are hidden in a profusion of
barbarous epithets and wilful rhodomontade. Our hypercritics are not
thinking of these little fantoccini beings--
That strut and fret their hour upon the stage--
but of tall phantoms of words, abstractions, _genera_ and _species_,
sweeping clauses, periods that unite the Poles, forced alliterations,
astounding antitheses--
And on their pens _Fustian_ sits plumed.
If they describe kings and queens, it is an Eastern pageant. The
Coronation at either House is nothing to it. We get at four repeated
images--a curtain, a throne, a sceptre, and a footstool. These are with
them the wardrobe of a lofty imagination; and they turn their servile
strains to servile uses. Do we read a description of pictures? It is
not a reflection of tones and hues which 'nature's own sweet and cunning
hand laid on,' but piles of precious stones, rubies, pearls, emeralds,
Golconda's mines, and all the blazonry of art. Such persons are in fact
besotted with words, and their brains are turned with the glittering but
empty and sterile phantoms of things. Personifications, capital
letters, seas of sunbeams, visions of glory, shining inscriptions, the
figures of a transparency, Britannia with her shield, or Hope leaning on
an anchor, make up their stock-in-trade. They may be considered as
_hieroglyphical_ writers. Images stand out in their minds isolated and
important merely in themselves, without any groundwork of feeling--there
is no context in their imaginations. Words affect them in the same way,
by the mere sound, that is, by their possible, not by their actual
application to the subject in hand. They are fascinated by first
appearances, and have no sense of consequences. Nothing more is meant
by them than meets the ear: they understand or feel nothing more than
meets their eye. The web and texture of the universe, and of the heart
of man, is a mystery to them: they have no faculty that strikes a chord
in unison with it. They cannot get beyond the daubings of fancy, the
varnish of sentiment. Objects are not linked to feelings, words to
things, but images revolve in splendid mockery, words represent
themselves in their strange rhapsodies. The categories of such a mind
are pride and ignorance--pride in outside show, to which they sacrifice
everything, and ignorance of the true worth and hidden structure both of
words and things. With a sovereign contempt for what is familiar and
natural, they are the slaves of vulgar affectation--of a routine of
high-flown phrases. Scorning to imitate realities, they are unable to
invent anything, to strike out one original idea. They are not copyists
of nature, it is true; but they are the poorest of all plagiarists, the
plagiarists of words. All is far-fetched, dear bought, artificial,
oriental in subject and allusion; all is mechanical, conventional,
vapid, formal, pedantic in style and execution. They startle and
confound the understanding of the reader by the remoteness and obscurity
of their illustrations; they soothe the ear by the monotony of the same
everlasting round of circuitous metaphors. They are the mock-school in
poetry and prose. They flounder about between fustian in expression and
bathos in sentiment. They tantalise the fancy, but never reach the head
nor touch the heart. Their Temple of Fame is like a shadowy structure
raised by Dulness to Vanity, or like Cowper's description of the Empress
of Russia's palace of ice, 'as worthless as in show 'twas glittering'--
It smiled, and it was cold!
NOTES to ESSAY VIII
[1] I have heard of such a thing as an author who makes it a rule never
to admit a monosyllable into his vapid verse. Yet the charm and
sweetness of Marlowe's lines depended often on their being made up
almost entirely of monosyllables.
ESSAY IX
ON EFFEMINACY OF CHARACTER
Effeminacy of character arises from a prevalence of the sensibility over
the will; or it consists in a want of fortitude to bear pain or to
undergo fatigue, however urgent the occasion. We meet with instances of
people who cannot lift up a little finger to save themselves from ruin,
nor give up the smallest indulgence for the sake of any other person.
They cannot put themselves out of their way on any account. No one
makes a greater outcry when the day of reckoning comes, or affects
greater compassion for the mischiefs they have occasioned; but till the
time comes, they feel nothing, they care for nothing. They live in the
present moment, are the creatures of the present impulse (whatever it
may be)--and beyond that, the universe is nothing to them. The
slightest toy countervails the empire of the world; they will not forego
the smallest inclination they feel, for any object that can be proposed
to them, or any reasons that can be urged for it. You might as well ask
of the gossamer not to wanton in the idle summer air, or of the moth not
to play with the flame that scorches it, as ask of these persons to put
off any enjoyment for a single instant, or to gird themselves up to any
enterprise of pith or moment. They have been so used to a studied
succession of agreeable sensations that the shortest pause is a
privation which they can by no means endure--it is like tearing them
from their very existence--they have been so inured to ease and
indolence, that the most trifling effort is like one of the tasks of
Hercules, a thing of impossibility, at which they shudder. They lie on
beds of roses, and spread their gauze wings to the sun and summer gale,
and cannot bear to put their tender feet to the ground, much less to
encounter the thorns and briars of the world. Life for them
Rolls o'er Elysian flowers its amber stream,
and they have no fancy for fishing in troubled waters. The ordinary
state of existence they regard as something importunate and vain, and
out of nature. What must they think of its trials and sharp
vicissitudes? Instead of voluntarily embracing pain, or labour, or
danger, or death, every sensation must be wound up to the highest pitch
of voluptuous refinement, every motion must be grace and elegance; they
live in a luxurious, endless dream, or
Die of a rose in aromatic pain!
Siren sounds must float around them; smiling forms must everywhere meet
their sight; they must tread a soft measure on painted carpets or
smooth-shaven lawns; books, arts, jests, laughter occupy every thought
and hour--what have they to do with the drudgery, the struggles, the
poverty, the disease or anguish which are the common lot of humanity?
These things are intolerable to them, even in imagination. They disturb
the enchantment in which they are lapt. They cause a wrinkle in the
clear and polished surface of their existence. They exclaim with
impatience and in agony, 'Oh, leave me to my repose!' How 'they shall
discourse the freezing hours away, when wind and rain beat dark December
down,' or 'bide the pelting of the pitiless storm,' gives them no
concern, it never once enters their heads. They close the shutters,
draw the curtains, and enjoy or shut out the whistling of the
approaching tempest 'They take no thought for the morrow,' not they.
They do not anticipate evils. Let them come when they will come, they
will not run to meet them. Nay more, they will not move one step to
prevent them, nor let any one else. The mention of such things is
shocking; the very supposition is a nuisance that must not be tolerated.
The idea of the trouble, the precautions, the negotiations necessary to
obviate disagreeable consequences oppresses them to death, is an
exertion too great for their enervated imaginations. They are not like
Master Barnardine in _Measure for Measure_, who would not 'get up to be
hanged'--they would not get up to avoid being hanged. They are
completely wrapped up in themselves; but then all their self-love is
concentrated in the present minute. They have worked up their
effeminate and fastidious appetite of enjoyment to such a pitch that the
whole of their existence, every moment of it, must be made up of these
exquisite indulgences; or they will fling it all away, with indifference
and scorn. They stake their entire welfare on the gratification of the
passing instant. Their senses, their vanity, their thoughtless gaiety
have been pampered till they ache at the smallest suspension of their
perpetual dose of excitement, and they will purchase the hollow
happiness of the next five minutes by a mortgage on the independence and
comfort of years. They must have their will in everything, or they grow
sullen and peevish like spoiled children. Whatever they set their eyes
on, or make up their minds to, they must have that instant. They may
pay for it hereafter. But that is no matter. They snatch a joy beyond
the reach of fate, and consider the present time sacred, inviolable,
unaccountable to that hard, churlish, niggard, inexorable taskmaster,
the future. _Now or never_ is their motto. They are madly devoted to
the plaything, the ruling passion of the moment. What is to happen to
them a week hence is as if it were to happen to them a thousand years
hence. They put off the consideration for another day, and their
heedless unconcern laughs at it as a fable. Their life is 'a cell of
ignorance, travelling a-bed'; their existence is ephemeral; their
thoughts are insect-winged; their identity expires with the whim, the
folly, the passion of the hour.
Nothing but a miracle can rouse such people from their lethargy. It is
not to be expected, nor is it even possible in the natural course of
things. Pope's striking exclamation,
Oh! blindness to the future kindly given,
That each may fill the circuit mark'd by Heaven!
hardly applies here; namely, to evils that stare us in the face, and
that might be averted with the least prudence or resolution. But
nothing can be done. How should it? A slight evil, a distant danger,
will not move them; and a more imminent one only makes them turn away
from it in greater precipitation and alarm. The more desperate their
affairs grow, the more averse they are to look into them; and the
greater the effort required to retrieve them, the more incapable they
are of it. At first, they will not do anything; and afterwards, it is
too late. The very motives that imperiously urge them to
self-reflection and amendment, combine with their natural disposition to
prevent it. This amounts pretty nearly to a mathematical demonstration.
Ease, vanity, pleasure are the ruling passions in such cases. How will
you conquer these, or wean their infatuated votaries from them? By the
dread of hardship, disgrace, pain? They turn from them, and you who
point them out as the alternative, with sickly disgust; and instead of a
stronger effort of courage or self-denial to avert the crisis, hasten it
by a wilful determination to pamper the disease in every way, and arm
themselves, not with fortitude to bear or to repel the consequences, but
with judicial blindness to their approach. Will you rouse the indolent
procrastinator to an irksome but necessary effort, by showing him how
much he has to do? He will only draw back the more for all your
entreaties and representations. If of a sanguine turn, he will make a
slight attempt at a new plan of life. be satisfied with the first
appearance of reform, and relapse into indolence again. If timid and
undecided, the hopelessness of the undertaking will put him out of heart
with it, and he will stand still in despair. Will you save a vain man
from ruin, by pointing out the obloquy and ridicule that await him in
his present career? He smiles at your forebodings as fantastical; or
the more they are realised around him, the more he is impelled to keep
out the galling conviction, and the more fondly he clings to flattery
and death. He will not make a bold and resolute attempt to recover his
reputation, because that would imply that it was capable of being soiled
or injured; or he no sooner meditates some desultory project, than he
takes credit to himself for the execution, and is delighted to wear his
unearned laurels while the thing is barely talked of. The chance of
success relieves the uneasiness of his apprehensions; so that he makes
use of the interval only to flatter his favourite infirmity again.
Would you wean a man from sensual excesses by the inevitable
consequences to which they lead?--What holds more antipathy to pleasure
than pain? The mind given up to self-indulgence revolts at suffering,
and throws it from it as an unaccountable anomaly, as a piece of
injustice when it comes. Much less will it acknowledge any affinity
with or subjection to it as a mere threat. If the prediction does not
immediately come true, we laugh at the prophet of ill: if it is
verified, we hate our adviser proportionably, hug our vices the closer,
and hold them dearer and more precious the more they cost us. We resent
wholesome counsel as an impertinence, and consider those who warn us of
impending mischief as if they had brought it on our heads. We cry out
with the poetical enthusiast--
And let us nurse the fond deceit;
And what if we must die in sorrow?
Who would not cherish dreams so sweet,
Though grief and pain should come to-morrow?
But oh thou! who didst lend me speech when I was dumb, to whom I owe it
that I have not crept on my belly all the days of my life like the
serpent, but sometimes lift my forked crest or tread the empyrean, wake
thou out of thy mid-day slumbers! Shake off the heavy honeydew of thy
soul, no longer lulled with that Circean cup, drinking thy own thoughts
with thy own ears, but start up in thy promised likeness, and shake the
pillared rottenness of the world! Leave not thy sounding words in air,
write them in marble, and teach the coming age heroic truths! Up, and
wake the echoes of Time! Rich in deepest lore, die not the bed-rid
churl of knowledge, leaving the survivors unblest! Set, set as thou
didst rise in pomp and gladness! Dart like the sunflower one broad,
golden flash of light; and ere thou ascendest thy native sky, show us
the steps by which thou didst scale the Heaven of philosophy, with Truth
and Fancy for thy equal guides, that we may catch thy mantle,
rainbow-dipped, and still read thy words dear to Memory, dearer to Fame!
There is another branch of this character, which is the trifling or
dilatory character. Such persons are always creating difficulties, and
unable or unwilling to remove them. They cannot brush aside a cobweb,
and are stopped by an insect's wing. Their character is imbecility,
rather than effeminacy. The want of energy and resolution in the
persons last described arises from the habitual and inveterate
predominance of other feelings and motives; in these it is a mere want
of energy and resolution, that is, an inherent natural defect of vigour
of nerve and voluntary power. There is a specific levity about such
persons, so that you cannot propel them to any object, or give them a
decided _momentum_ in any direction or pursuit. They turn back, as it
were, on the occasion that should project them forward with manly force
and vehemence. They shrink from intrepidity of purpose, and are alarmed
at the idea of attaining their end too soon. They will not act with
steadiness or spirit, either for themselves or you. If you chalk out a
line of conduct for them, or commission them to execute a certain task,
they are sure to conjure up some insignificant objection or fanciful
impediment in the way, and are withheld from striking an effectual blow
by mere feebleness of character. They may be officious, good-natured,
friendly, generous in disposition, but they are of no use to any one.
They will put themselves to twice the trouble you desire, not to carry
your point, but to defeat it; and in obviating needless objections,
neglect the main business. If they do what you want, it is neither at
the time nor in the manner that you wish. This timidity amounts to
treachery; for by always anticipating some misfortune or disgrace, they
realise their unmeaning apprehensions. The little bears sway in their
minds over the great: a small inconvenience outweighs a solid and
indispensable advantage; and their strongest bias is uniformly derived
from the weakest motive. They hesitate about the best way of beginning
a thing till the opportunity for action is lost, and are less anxious
about its being done than the precise manner of doing it. They will
destroy a passage sooner than let an objectionable word pass; and are
much less concerned about the truth or the beauty of an image than about
the reception it will meet with from the critics. They alter what they
write, not because it is, but because it may possibly be wrong; and in
their tremulous solicitude to avoid imaginary blunders, run into real
ones. What is curious enough is, that with all this caution and
delicacy, they are continually liable to extraordinary oversights. They
are, in fact, so full of all sorts of idle apprehensions, that they do
not know how to distinguish real from imaginary grounds of apprehension;
and they often give some unaccountable offence, either from assuming a
sudden boldness half in sport, or while they are secretly pluming
themselves on their dexterity in avoiding everything exceptionable; and
the same distraction of motive and shortsightedness which gets them into
scrapes hinders them from seeing their way out of them. Such persons
(often of ingenious and susceptible minds) are constantly at
cross-purposes with themselves and others; will neither do things nor
let others do them; and whether they succeed or fail, never feel
confident or at their case. They spoil the freshness and originality of
their own thoughts by asking contradictory advice; and in befriending
others, while they are _about it and about it,_ you might have done the
thing yourself a dozen times over.
There is nothing more to be esteemed than a manly firmness and decision
of character. I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it;
who sees at once what is to be done in given circumstances and does it.
He does not beat about the bush for difficulties or excuses, but goes
the shortest and most effectual way to work to attain his own ends or to
accomplish a useful object. If he can serve you, he will do so; if he
cannot, he will say so without keeping you in needless suspense, or
laying you under pretended obligations. The applying to him in any
laudable undertaking is not like stirring 'a dish of skimmed milk.'
There is stuff in him, and it is of the right practicable sort. He is
not all his life at hawk-and-buzzard whether he shall be a Whig or a
Tory, a friend or a foe, a knave or a fool; but thinks that life is
short, and that there is no time to play fantastic tricks in it, to
tamper with principles, or trifle with individual feelings. If he gives
you a character, he does not add a damning clause to it: he does not
pick holes in you lest others should, or anticipate objections lest he
should be thought to be blinded by a childish partiality. His object is
to serve you; and not to play the game into your enemies' hands.
A generous friendship no cold medium knows,
Burns with one love, with one resentment glows.
I should be sorry for any one to say what he did not think of me; but I
should not be pleased to see him slink out of his acknowledged opinion,
lest it should not be confirmed by malice or stupidity. He who is well
acquainted and well inclined to you ought to give the tone, not to
receive it from others, and may set it to what key he pleases in certain
cases.
There are those of whom it has been said, that to them an obligation is
a reason for not doing anything, and there are others who are invariably
led to do the reverse of what they should. The last are perverse, the
first impracticable people. Opposed to the effeminate in disposition
and manners are the coarse and brutal. As those were all softness and
smoothness, these affect or are naturally attracted to whatever is
vulgar and violent, harsh and repulsive in tone, in modes of speech, in
forms of address, in gesture and behaviour. Thus there are some who ape
the lisping of the fine lady, the drawling of the fine gentleman, and
others who all their life delight in and catch the uncouth dialect, the
manners and expressions of clowns and hoydens. The last are governed by
an instinct of the disagreeable, by an appetite and headlong rage for
violating decorum and hurting other people's feelings, their own being
excited and enlivened by the shock. They deal in home truths,
unpleasant reflections, and unwelcome matters of fact; as the others are
all compliment and complaisance, insincerity and insipidity.
We may observe an effeminacy of style, in some degree corresponding to
effeminacy of character. Writers of this stamp are great interliners of
what they indite, alterers of indifferent phrases, and the plague of
printers' devils. By an effeminate style I would be understood to mean
one that is all florid, all fine; that cloys by its sweetness, and tires
by its sameness. Such are what Dryden calls 'calm, peaceable writers.'
They only aim to please, and never offend by truth or disturb by
singularity. Every thought must be beautiful _per se_, every expression
equally fine. They do not delight in vulgarisms, but in common-places,
and dress out unmeaning forms in all the colours of the rainbow. They
do not go out of their way to think--that would startle the indolence of
the reader: they cannot express a trite thought in common words--that
would be a sacrifice of their own vanity. They are not sparing of
tinsel, for it costs nothing. Their works should be printed, as they
generally are, on hot-pressed paper, with vignette margins. The Della
Cruscan school comes under this description, which is now nearly
exploded. Lord Byron is a pampered and aristocratic writer, but he is
not effeminate, or we should not have his works with only the printer's
name to them! I cannot help thinking that the fault of Mr. Keats's
poems was a deficiency in masculine energy of style. He had beauty,
tenderness, delicacy, in an uncommon degree, but there was a want of
strength and substance. His _Endymion_ is a very delightful description
of the illusions of a youthful imagination given up to airy dreams--we
have flowers, clouds, rainbows, moonlight, all sweet sounds and smells,
and Oreads and Dryads flitting by--but there is nothing tangible in it,
nothing marked or palpable--we have none of the hardy spirit or rigid
forms of antiquity. He painted his own thoughts and character, and did
not transport himself into the fabulous and heroic ages. There is a
want of action, of character, and so far of imagination, but there is
exquisite fancy. All is soft and fleshy, without bone or muscle. We
see in him the youth without the manhood of poetry. His genius breathed
'vernal delight and joy.' 'Like Maia's son he stood and shook his
plumes,' with fragrance filled. His mind was redolent of spring. He
had not the fierceness of summer, nor the richness of autumn, and winter
he seemed not to have known till he felt the icy hand of death!
NOTES to ESSAY IX
No notes for this essay.
ESSAY X
WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE
Distant objects please, because, in the first place, they imply an idea
of space and magnitude, and because, not being obtruded too close upon
the eye, we clothe them with the indistinct and airy colours of fancy.
In looking at the misty mountain-tops that bound the horizon, the mind
is as it were conscious of all the conceivable objects and interests
that lie between; we imagine all sorts of adventures in the interim;
strain our hopes and wishes to reach the air-drawn circle, or to 'descry
new lands, rivers, and mountains,' stretching far beyond it: our
feelings, carried out of themselves, lose their grossness and their
husk, are rarefied, expanded, melt into softness and brighten into
beauty, turning to ethereal mould, sky-tinctured. We drink the air
before us, and borrow a more refined existence from objects that hover
on the brink of nothing. Where the landscape fades from the dull sight,
we fill the thin, viewless space with shapes of unknown good, and tinge
the hazy prospect with hopes and wishes and more charming fears.
But thou, oh Hope! with eyes so fair,
What was thy delighted measure?
Still it whisper'd promised pleasure,
And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail!
Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and knowledge, whatever is
imperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its leisure; and all but
the present moment, but the present spot, passion claims for its own,
and brooding over it with wings outspread, stamps it with an image of
itself. Passion is lord of infinite space, and distant objects please
because they border on its confines and are moulded by its touch. When
I was a boy, I lived within sight of a range of lofty hills, whose blue
tops blending with the setting sun had often tempted my longing eyes and
wandering feet. At last I put my project in execution, and on a nearer
approach, instead of glimmering air woven into fantastic shapes, found
them huge lumpish heaps of discoloured earth. I learnt from this (in
part) to leave 'Yarrow unvisited,' and not idly to disturb a dream of
good!
Distance of time has much the same effect as distance of place. It is
not surprising that fancy colours the prospect of the future as it
thinks good, when it even effaces the forms of memory. Time takes out
the sting of pain; our sorrows after a certain period have been so often
steeped in a medium of thought and passion that they 'unmould their
essence'; and all that remains of our original impressions is what we
would wish them to have been. Not only the untried steep ascent before
us, but the rude, unsightly masses of our past experience presently
resume their power of deception over the eye: the golden cloud soon
rests upon their heads, and the purple light of fancy clothes their
barren sides! Thus we pass on, while both ends of our existence touch
upon Heaven! There is (so to speak) 'a mighty stream of tendency' to
good in the human mind, upon which all objects float and are
imperceptibly borne along; and though in the voyage of life we meet with
strong rebuffs, with rocks and quicksands, yet there is 'a tide in the
affairs of men,' a heaving and a restless aspiration of the soul, by
means of which, 'with sails and tackle torn,' the wreck and scattered
fragments of our entire being drift into the port and haven of our
desires! In all that relates to the affections, we put the will for the
deed; so that the instant the pressure of unwelcome circumstances is
removed, the mind recoils from their hold, recovers its elasticity, and
reunites itself to that image of good which is but a reflection and
configuration of its own nature. Seen in the distance, in the long
perspective of waning years, the meanest incidents, enlarged and
enriched by countless recollections, become interesting; the most
painful, broken and softened by time, soothe. How any object that
unexpectedly brings back to us old scenes and associations startles the
mind! What a yearning it creates within us; what a longing to leap the
intermediate space! How fondly we cling to, and try to revive the
impression of all that we then were!
Such tricks hath strong imagination!
In truth we impose upon ourselves, and know not what we wish. It is a
cunning artifice, a quaint delusion, by which, in pretending to be what
we were at a particular moment of time, we would fain be all that we
have since been, and have our lives to come over again. It is not the
little, glimmering, almost annihilated speck in the distance that rivets
our attention and 'hangs upon the beatings of our hearts': it is the
interval that separates us from it, and of which it is the trembling
boundary, that excites all this coil and mighty pudder in the breast.
Into that great gap in our being 'come thronging soft desires' and
infinite regrets. It is the contrast, the change from what we then
were, that arms the half-extinguished recollection with its giant
strength, and lifts the fabric of the affections from its shadowy base.
In contemplating its utmost verge, we overlook the map of our existence,
and re-tread, in apprehension, the journey of life. So it is that in
early youth we strain our eager sight after the pursuits of manhood;
and, as we are sliding off the stage, strive to gather up the toys and
flowers that pleased our thoughtless childhood.
When I was quite a boy my father used to take me to the Montpelier Tea
Gardens at Walworth. Do I go there now? No; the place is deserted, and
its borders and its beds o'erturned. Is there, then, nothing that can
Bring back the hour
Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower?
Oh! yes. I unlock the casket of memory, and draw back the warders of
the brain; and there this scene of my infant wanderings still lives
unfaded, or with fresher dyes. A new sense comes upon me, as in a
dream; a richer perfume, brighter colours start out; my eyes dazzle; my
heart heaves with its new load of bliss, and I am a child again. My
sensations are all glossy, spruce, voluptuous, and fine: they wear a
candied coat, and are in holiday trim. I see the beds of larkspur with
purple eyes; tall hollyhocks, red or yellow; the broad sunflowers, caked
in gold, with bees buzzing round them; wildernesses of pinks, and hot
glowing peonies; poppies run to seed; the sugared lily, and faint
mignonette, all ranged in order, and as thick as they can grow; the
box-tree borders, the gravel-walks, the painted alcove, the
confectionery, the clotted cream:--I think I see them now with sparkling
looks; or have they vanished while I have been writing this description
of them? No matter; they will return again when I least think of them.
All that I have observed since, of flowers and plants, and grass-plots,
and of suburb delights, seems to me borrowed from 'that first garden of
my innocence'--to be slips and scions stolen from that bed of memory.
In this manner the darlings of our childhood burnish out in the eye of
after years, and derive their sweetest perfume from the first heartfelt
sigh of pleasure breathed upon them,
Like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour!
If I have pleasure in a flower-garden, I have in a kitchen-garden too,
and for the same reason. If I see a row of cabbage-plants, or of peas
or beans coming up, I immediately think of those which I used so
carefully to water of an evening at Wem, when my day's tasks were done,
and of the pain with which I saw them droop and hang down their leaves
in the morning's sun. Again, I never see a child's kite in the air but
it seems to pull at my heart. It is to me 'a thing of life.' I feel
the twinge at my elbow, the flutter and palpitation, with which I used
to let go the string of my own, as it rose in the air, and towered among
the clouds. My little cargo of hopes and fears ascended with it; and as
it made a part of my own consciousness then, it does so still, and
appears 'like some gay creature of the element,' my playmate when life
was young, and twin-born with my earliest recollections. I could
enlarge on this subject of childish amusements, but Mr. Leigh Hunt has
treated it so well, in a paper in the _Indicator,_ on the productions of
the toy-shops of the metropolis, that if I were to insist more on it I
should only pass for an imitator of that ingenious and agreeable writer,
_and for an indifferent one into the bargain._
Sounds, smells, and sometimes tastes, are remembered longer than visible
objects, and serve, perhaps, better for links in the chain of
association. The reason seems to be this: they are in their nature
intermittent, and comparatively rare; whereas objects of sight are
always before us, and, by their continuous succession, drive one another
out. The eye is always open; and between any given impression and its
recurrence a second time, fifty thousand other impressions have, in all
likelihood, been stamped upon the sense and on the brain. The other
senses are not so active or vigilant. They are but seldom called into
play. The ear, for example, is oftener courted by silence than noise;
and the sounds that break that silence sink deeper and more durably into
the mind. I have a more present and lively recollection of certain
scents, tastes, and sounds, for this reason, than I have of mere visible
images, because they are more original, and less worn by frequent
repetition. Where there is nothing interposed between any two
impressions, whatever the distance of time that parts them, they
naturally seem to touch; and the renewed impression recalls the former
one in full force, without distraction or competitor. The taste of
barberries, which have hung out in the snow during the severity of a
North American winter, I have in my mouth still, after an interval of
thirty years; for I have met with no other taste in all that time at all
like it. It remains by itself, almost like the impression of a sixth
sense. But the colour is mixed up indiscriminately with the colours of
many other berries, nor should I be able to distinguish it among them.
The smell of a brick-kiln carries the evidence of its own identity with
it: neither is it to me (from peculiar associations) unpleasant. The
colour of brickdust, on the contrary, is more common, and easily
confounded with other colours. Raphael did not keep it quite distinct
from his flesh colour. I will not say that we have a more perfect
recollection of the human voice than of that complex picture the human
face, but I think the sudden hearing of a well-known voice has something
in it more affecting and striking than the sudden meeting with the face:
perhaps, indeed, this may be because we have a more familiar remembrance
of the one than the other, and the voice takes us more by surprise on
that account. I am by no means certain (generally speaking) that we
have the ideas of the other senses so accurate and well made out as
those of visible form: what I chiefly mean is, that the feelings
belonging to the sensations of our other organs, when accidentally
recalled, are kept more separate and pure. Musical sounds, probably,
owe a good deal of their interest and romantic effect to the principle
here spoken of. Were they constant, they would become indifferent, as
we may find with respect to disagreeable noises, which we do not hear
after a time. I know no situation more pitiable than that of a blind
fiddler who has but one sense left (if we except the sense of
snuff-taking[1]) and who has that stunned or deafened by his own
villainous noises. Shakespear says.
How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night!
It has been observed in explanation of this passage, that it is because
in the day-time lovers are occupied with one another's faces, but that
at night they can only distinguish the sound of each other's voices. I
know not how this may be; but I have, ere now, heard a voice break so
upon the silence,
To angels' 'twas most like,
and charm the moonlight air with its balmy essence, that the budding
leaves trembled to its accents. Would I might have heard it once more
whisper peace and hope (as erst when it was mingled with the breath of
spring), and with its soft pulsations lift winged fancy to heaven. But
it has ceased, or turned where I no more shall hear it!--Hence, also, we
see what is the charm of the shepherd's pastoral reed; and why we hear
him, as it were, piping to his flock, even in a picture. Our ears are
fancy stung! I remember once strolling along the margin of a stream,
skirted with willows and plashy sedges, in one of those low sheltered
valleys on Salisbury Plain, where the monks of former ages had planted
chapels and built hermits' cells. There was a little parish church
near, but tall elms and quivering alders hid it from my sight, when, all
of a sudden, I was startled by the sound of the full organ pealing on
the ear, accompanied by rustic voices and the willing choir of village
maids and children. It rose, indeed, 'like an exhalation of rich
distilled perfumes.' The dew from a thousand pastures was gathered in
its softness; the silence of a thousand years spoke in it. It came upon
the heart like the calm beauty of death; fancy caught the sound, and
faith mounted on it to the skies. It filled the valley like a mist, and
still poured out its endless chant, and still it swells upon the ear,
and wraps me in a golden trance, drowning the noisy tumult of the world!
There is a curious and interesting discussion on the comparative
distinctness of our visual and other external impressions, in Mr.
Fearn's _Essay on Consciousness_, with which I shall try to descend from
this rhapsody to the ground of common sense and plain reasoning again.
After observing, a little before, that 'nothing is more untrue than that
sensations of vision do necessarily leave more vivid and durable ideas
than those of grosser senses,' he proceeds to give a number of
illustrations in support of this position. 'Notwithstanding,' he says,
'the advantages here enumerated in favour of sight, I think there is no
doubt that a man will come to forget acquaintance, and many other
visible objects, noticed in mature age, before he will in the least
forget taste and smells, of only moderate interest, encountered either
in his childhood or at any time since.
'In the course of voyaging to various distant regions, it has several
times happened that I have eaten once or twice of different things that
never came in my way before nor since. Some of these have been
pleasant, and some scarce better than insipid; but I have no reason to
think I have forgot, or much altered the ideas left by those single
impulses of taste; though here the memory of them certainly has not been
preserved by repetition. It is clear I must have seen as well as tasted
those things; and I am decided that I remember the tastes with more
precision than I do the visual sensations.
'I remember having once, and only once, eat Kangaroo in New Holland; and
having once smelled a baker's shop having a peculiar odour in the city
of Bassorah. Now both these gross ideas remain with me quite as vivid
as any visual ideas of those places; and this could not be from
repetition, but really from interest in the sensation.
'Twenty-eight years ago, in the island of Jamaica, I partook (perhaps
twice) of a certain fruit, of the taste of which I have now a very fresh
idea; and I could add other instances of that period.
'I have had repeated proofs of having lost retention of visual objects,
at various distances of time, though they had once been familiar. I
have not, during thirty years, forgot the delicate, and in itself most
trifling sensation that the palm of my hand used to convey, when I was a
boy, trying the different effects of what boys call _light_ and _heavy_
tops; but I cannot remember within several shades of the brown coat
which I left off a week ago. If any man thinks he can do better, let
him take an ideal survey of his wardrobe, and then actually refer to it
for proof.
'After retention of such ideas, it certainly would be very difficult to
persuade me that feeling, taste, and smell can scarce be said to leave
ideas, unless indistinct and obscure ones. . . .
'Show a Londoner correct models of twenty London churches, and, at the
same time, a model of each, which differs, in several considerable
features, from the truth, and I venture to say he shall not tell you, in
any instance, which is the correct one, except by mere chance.
'If he is an architect he may be much more correct than any ordinary
person: and this obviously is because he has felt an interest in viewing
these structures, which an ordinary person does not feel: and here
interest is the sole reason of his remembering more correctly than his
neighbour.
'I once heard a person quaintly ask another, How many trees there are in
St. Paul's churchyard? The question itself indicates that many cannot
answer it; and this is found to be the case with those who have passed
the church a hundred times: whilst the cause is, that every individual
in the busy stream which glides past St. Paul's is engrossed in various
other interests.
'How often does it happen that we enter a well-known apartment, or meet
a well-known friend, and receive some vague idea of visible difference,
but cannot possibly find out _what_ it is; until at length we come to
perceive (or perhaps must be told) that some ornament or furniture is
removed, altered, or added in the apartment; or that our friend has cut
his hair, taken a wig, or has made any of twenty considerable
alterations in his appearance. At other times we have no perception of
alteration whatever, though the like has taken place.
'It is, however, certain that sight, apposited with interest, can retain
tolerably exact copies of sensations, especially if not too complex,
such as of the human countenance and figure: yet the voice will convince
us when the countenance will not; and he is reckoned an excellent
painter, and no ordinary genius, who can make a tolerable likeness from
memory. Nay, more, it is a conspicuous proof of the inaccuracy of
visual ideas, that it is an effort of consummate art, attained by many
years' practice, to take a strict likeness of the human countenance,
even when the object is present; and among those cases where the wilful
cheat of flattery has been avoided, we still find in how very few
instances the best painters produce a likeness up to the life, though
practice and interest join in the attempt.
'I imagine an ordinary person would find it very difficult, supposing he
had some knowledge of drawing, to afford from memory a tolerable sketch
of such a familiar object as his curtain, his carpet, or his
dressing-gown, if the pattern of either be at all various or irregular;
yet he will instantly tell, with precision, either if his snuff or his
wine has not the same character it had yesterday, though both these are
compounds.
'Beyond all this I may observe, that a draper who is in the daily habit
of such comparisons cannot carry in his mind the particular shade of a
colour during a second of time; and has no certainty of tolerably
matching two simple colours, except by placing the patterns in
contact.'[2]
I will conclude the subject of this Essay with observing that (as it
appears to me) a nearer and more familiar acquaintance with persons has
a different and more favourable effect than that with places or things.
The latter improve (as an almost universal rule) by being removed to a
distance: the former, generally at least, gain by being brought nearer
and more home to us. Report or imagination seldom raises any individual
so high in our estimation as to disappoint us greatly when we are
introduced to him: prejudice and malice constantly exaggerate defects
beyond the reality. Ignorance alone makes monsters or bugbears: our
actual acquaintances are all very commonplace people. The thing is,
that as a matter of hearsay or conjecture, we make abstractions of
particular vices, and irritate ourselves against some particular quality
or action of the person we dislike: whereas individuals are concrete
existences, not arbitrary denominations or nicknames; and have
innumerable other qualities, good, bad, and indifferent, besides the
damning feature with which we fill up the portrait or caricature in our
previous fancies. We can scarcely hate any one that we know. An acute
observer complained, that if there was any one to whom he had a
particular spite, and a wish to let him see it, the moment he came to
sit down with him his enmity was disarmed by some unforeseen
circumstance. If it was a Quarterly Reviewer, he was in other respects
like any other man. Suppose, again, your adversary turns out a very
ugly man, or wants an eye, you are baulked in that way: he is not what
you expected, the object of your abstract hatred and implacable disgust.
He may be a very disagreeable person, but he is no longer the same. If
you come into a room where a man is, you find, in general, that he has a
nose upon his face. 'There's sympathy!' This alone is a diversion to
your unqualified contempt. He is stupid, and says nothing, but he seems
to have something in him when he laughs. You had conceived of him as a
rank Whig or Tory--yet he talks upon other subjects. You knew that he
was a virulent party-writer; but you find that the man himself is a tame
sort of animal enough. He does not bite. That's something. In short,
you can make nothing of it. Even opposite vices balance one another. A
man may be pert in company, but he is also dull; so that you cannot,
though you try, hate him cordially, merely for the wish to be offensive.
He is a knave. Granted. You learn, on a nearer acquaintance, what you
did not know before--that he is a fool as well; so you forgive him. On
the other hand, he may be a profligate public character, and may make no
secret of it; but he gives you a hearty shake by the hand, speaks kindly
to servants, and supports an aged father and mother. Politics apart, he
is a very honest fellow. You are told that a person has carbuncles on
his face; but you have ocular proofs that he is sallow, and pale as a
ghost. This does not much mend the matter; but it blunts the edge of
the ridicule, and turns your indignation against the inventor of the
lie; but he is -----, the editor of a Scotch magazine; so you are just
where you were. I am not very fond of anonymous criticism; I want to
know who the author can be: but the moment I learn this, I am satisfied.
Even ----- would do well to come out of his disguise. It is the mask
only that we dread and hate: the man may have something human about him!
The notions, in short, which we entertain of people at a distance, or
from partial representations, or from guess-work, are simple
uncompounded ideas, which answer to nothing in reality: those which we
derive from experience are mixed modes, the only true, and, in general,
the most favourable ones. Instead of naked deformity, or abstract
perfection--
Those faultless monsters which the world ne'er saw--
'the web of our lives is of mingled yarn, good and ill together: our
virtues would be proud, if our faults whipt them not; and our vices
would despair, if they were not encouraged by our virtues.' This was
truly and finely said long ago, by one who knew the strong and weak
points of human nature; but it is what sects, and parties, and those
philosophers whose pride and boast it is to classify by nicknames, have
yet to know the meaning of!
NOTES to ESSAY X
[1] See Wilkie's Blind Fiddler.
[2] _Essay on Consciousness, p. 303.
ESSAY XI
ON CORPORATE BODIES
Corporate bodies have no soul.
Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals,
because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to
disgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude,
nor goodwill. The principle of private or natural conscience is
extinguished in each individual (we have no moral sense in the breasts
of others), and nothing is considered but how the united efforts of the
whole (released from idle scruples) may be best directed to the
obtaining of political advantages and privileges to be shared as common
spoil. Each member reaps the benefit, and lays the blame, if there is
any, upon the rest. The _esprit de corps_ becomes the ruling passion of
every corporate body, compared with which the motives of delicacy or
decorum towards others are looked upon as being both impertinent and
improper. If any person sets up a plea of this sort in opposition to
the rest, he is overruled, he gets ill-blood, and does no good: he is
regarded as an interloper, a _black sheep_ in the flock, and is either
_sent to Coventry_ or obliged to acquiesce in the notions and wishes of
those he associates and is expected to co-operate with. The refinements
of private judgment are referred to and negatived in a committee of the
whole body, while the projects and interests of the Corporation meet
with a secret but powerful support in the self-love of the different
members. Remonstrance, opposition, is fruitless, troublesome,
invidious; it answers no one end; and a conformity to the sense of the
company is found to be no less necessary to a reputation for
good-fellowship than to a quiet life. Self-love and social here look
like the same; and in consulting the interests of a particular class,
which are also your own, there is even a show of public virtue. He who
is a captious, impracticable, dissatisfied member of his little club or
_coterie_ is immediately set down as a bad member of the community in
general, as no friend to regularity and order, as 'a pestilent fellow,'
and one who is incapable of sympathy, attachment, or cordial
co-operation in any department or undertaking. Thus the most refractory
novice in such matters becomes weaned from his obligations to the larger
society, which only breed him inconvenience without any adequate
recompense, and wedded to a nearer and dearer one, where he finds every
kind of comfort and consolation. He contracts the vague and unmeaning
character of Man into the more emphatic title of Freeman and Alderman.
The claims of an undefined humanity sit looser and looser upon him, at
the same time that he draws the bands of his new engagements closer and
tighter about him. He loses sight, by degrees, of all common sense and
feeling in the petty squabbles, intrigues, feuds, and airs of affected
importance to which he has made himself an accessory. He is quite an
altered man. 'Really the society were under considerable obligations to
him in that last business'; that is to say, in some paltry job or
underhand attempt to encroach upon the rights or dictate to the
understandings of the neighbourhood. In the meantime they eat, drink,
and carouse together. They wash down all minor animosities and
unavoidable differences of opinion in pint bumpers; and the complaints
of the multitude are lost in the clatter of plates and the roaring of
loyal catches at every quarter's meeting or mayor's feast. The
town-hall reels with an unwieldy sense of self-importance; 'the very
stones prate' of processions; the common pump creaks in concert with the
uncorking of bottles and tapping of beer-barrels: the market-cross looks
big with authority. Everything has an ambiguous, upstart, repulsive
air. Circle within circle is formed, an _imperium in imperio_: and the
business is to exclude from the first circle all the notions, opinions,
ideas, interests, and pretensions of the second. Hence there arises not
only an antipathy to common sense and decency in those things where
there is a real opposition of interest or clashing of prejudice, but it
becomes a habit and a favourite amusement in those who are 'dressed in a
little brief authority,' to thwart, annoy, insult, and harass others on
all occasions where the least opportunity or pretext for it occurs.
Spite, bickerings, back-biting, insinuations, lies, jealousies,
nicknames are the order of the day, and nobody knows what it's all
about. One would think that the mayor, aldermen, and liverymen were a
higher and more select species of animals than their townsmen; though
there is no difference whatever but in their gowns and staff of office!
This is the essence of the _esprit de corps_. It is certainly not a
very delectable source of contemplation or subject to treat of.
Public bodies are so far worse than the individuals composing them,
because the _official_ takes place of the _moral sense._ The nerves
that in themselves were soft and pliable enough, and responded naturally
to the touch of pity, when fastened into a machine of that sort become
callous and rigid, and throw off every extraneous application that can
be made to them with perfect apathy. An appeal is made to the ties of
individual friendship: the body in general know nothing of them. A case
has occurred which strongly called forth the compassion of the person
who was witness of it; but the body (or any special deputation of them)
were not present when it happened. These little weaknesses and
'compunctious visitings of nature' are effectually guarded against,
indeed, by the very rules and regulations of the society, as well as by
its spirit. The individual is the creature of his feelings of all
sorts, the sport of his vices and his virtues--like the fool in
Shakespear, 'motley's his proper wear':--corporate bodies are dressed in
a moral uniform; mixed motives do not operate there, frailty is made
into a system, 'diseases are turned into commodities.' Only so much of
any one's natural or genuine impulses can influence him in his
artificial capacity as formally comes home to the aggregate conscience
of those with whom he acts, or bears upon the interests (real or
pretended), the importance, respectability, and professed objects of the
society. Beyond that point the nerve is bound up, the conscience is
seared, and the torpedo-touch of so much inert matter operates to deaden
the best feelings and harden the heart. Laughter and tears are said to
be the characteristic signs of humanity. Laughter is common enough in
such places as a set-off to the mock-gravity; but who ever saw a public
body in tears? Nothing but a job or some knavery can keep them serious
for ten minutes together.[1]
Such are the qualifications and the apprenticeship necessary to make a
man tolerated, to enable him to pass as a cypher, or be admitted as a
mere numerical unit, in any corporate body: to be a leader and dictator
he must be diplomatic in impertinence, and officious in every dirty
work. He must not merely conform to established prejudices; he must
flatter them. He must not merely be insensible to the demands of
moderation and equity; he must be loud against them. He must not simply
fall in with all sorts of contemptible cabals and intrigues; he must be
indefatigable in fomenting them, and setting everybody together by the
ears. He must not only repeat, but invent lies. He must make speeches
and write handbills; he must be devoted to the wishes and objects of the
society, its creature, its jackal, its busybody, its mouthpiece, its
prompter; he must deal in law cases, in demurrers, in charters, in
traditions, in common-places, in logic and rhetoric--in everything but
common sense and honesty. He must (in Mr. Burke's phrase) 'disembowel
himself of his natural entrails, and be stuffed with paltry, blurred
sheets of parchment about the rights' of the privileged few. He must be
a concentrated essence, a varnished, powdered representative of the
vices, absurdities, hypocrisy, jealousy, pride, and pragmaticalness of
his party. Such a one, by bustle and self-importance and puffing, by
flattering one to his face and abusing another behind his back, by
lending himself to the weaknesses of some, and pampering the mischievous
propensities of others, will pass for a great man in a little society.
Age does not improve the morality of public bodies. They grow more and
more tenacious of their idle privileges and senseless self-consequence.
They get weak and obstinate at the same time. Those who belong to them
have all the upstart pride and pettifogging spirit of their present
character ingrafted on the venerableness and superstitious sanctity of
ancient institutions. They are naturally at issue, first with their
neighbours, and next with their contemporaries, on all matters of common
propriety and judgment. They become more attached to forms, the more
obsolete they are; and the defence of every absurd and invidious
distinction is a debt which (by implication) they owe to the dead as
well as the living. What might once have been of serious practical
utility they turn to farce, by retaining the letter when the spirit is
gone: and they do this the more, the more glaring the inconsistency and
want of sound reasoning; for they think they thus give proof of their
zeal and attachment to the abstract principle on which old
establishments exist, the ground of prescription and authority. _The
greater the wrong, the greater the right,_ in all such cases. The
_esprit de corps_ does not take much merit to itself for upholding what
is justifiable in any system, or the proceedings of any party, but for
adhering to what is palpably injurious. You may exact the first from an
enemy: the last is the province of a friend. It has been made a subject
of complaint, that the champions of the Church, for example, who are
advanced to dignities and honours, are hardly ever those who defend the
common principles of Christianity, but those who volunteer to man the
out-works, and set up ingenious excuses for the questionable points, the
ticklish places in the established form of worship, that is, for those
which are attacked from without, and are supposed in danger of being
undermined by stratagem, or carried by assault!
The great resorts and seats of learning often outlive in this way the
intention of the founders as the world outgrows them. They may be said
to resemble antiquated coquettes of the last age, who think everything
ridiculous and intolerable but what was in fashion when they were young,
and yet are standing proofs of the progress of taste and the vanity of
human pretensions. Our universities are, in a great measure, become
cisterns to hold, not conduits to disperse knowledge. The age has the
start of them; that is, other sources of knowledge have been opened
since their formation, to which the world have had access, and have
drunk plentifully at those living fountains, but from which they are
debarred by the tenor of their charter, and as a matter of dignity and
privilege. They have grown poor, like the old grandees in some
countries, by subsisting on the inheritance of learning, while the
people have grown rich by trade. They are too much in the nature of
_fixtures_ in intellect: they stop the way in the road to truth; or at
any rate (for they do not themselves advance) they can only be of
service as a check-weight on the too hasty and rapid career of
innovation. All that has been invented or thought in the last two
hundred years they take no cognizance of, or as little as possible; they
are above it; they stand upon the ancient landmarks, and will not budge;
whatever was not known when they were first endowed, they are still in
profound and lofty ignorance of. Yet in that period how much has been
done in literature, arts, and science, of which (with the exception of
mathematical knowledge, the hardest to gainsay or subject to the
trammels of prejudice and barbarous _ipse dixits_) scarce any trace is
to be found in the authentic modes of study and legitimate inquiry which
prevail at either of our Universities! The unavoidable aim of all
corporate bodies of learning is not to grow wise, or teach others
wisdom, but to prevent any one else from being or seeming wiser than
themselves; in other words, their infallible tendency is in the end to
suppress inquiry and darken knowledge, by setting limits to the mind of
man, and saying to his proud spirit, _Hitherto shalt thou come, and no
farther!_ It would not be an unedifying experiment to make a collection
of the titles of works published in the course of the year by Members of
the Universities. If any attempt is to be made to patch up an idle
system in policy or legislation, or church government, it is by a member
of the University: if any hashed-up speculation on an old exploded
argument is to be brought forward 'in spite of _shame,_ in erring
reason's spite,' it is by a Member of the University: if a paltry
project is ushered into the world for combining ancient prejudices with
modern time-serving, it is by a Member of the University. Thus we get
at a stated supply of the annual Defences of the Sinking Fund, Thoughts
on the Evils of Education, Treatises on Predestination, and Eulogies on
Mr. Malthus, all from the same source, and through the same vent. If
they came from any other quarter nobody would look at them; but they
have an _Imprimatur_ from dulness and authority: we know that there is
no offence in them; and they are stuck in the shop windows, and read (in
the intervals of Lord Byron's works, or the Scotch novels) in cathedral
towns and close boroughs!
It is, I understand and believe, pretty much the same in more modern
institutions for the encouragement of the Fine Arts. The end is lost in
the means: rules take place of nature and genius; cabal and bustle, and
struggle for rank and precedence, supersede the study and the love of
art. A Royal Academy is a kind of hospital and infirmary for the
obliquities of taste and ingenuity--a receptacle where enthusiasm and
originality stop and stagnate, and spread their influence no farther,
instead of being a school founded for genius, or a temple built to fame.
The generality of those who wriggle, or fawn, or beg their way to a
seat there, live on their certificate of merit to a good old age, and
are seldom heard of afterwards. If a man of sterling capacity gets
among them, and minds his own business he is nobody; he makes no figure
in council, in voting, in resolutions or speeches. If he comes forward
with plans and views for the good of the Academy and the advancement of
art, he is immediately set upon as a visionary, a fanatic, with notions
hostile to the interest and credit of the existing members of the
society. If he directs the ambition of the scholars to the study of
History, this strikes at once at the emoluments of the profession, who
are most of them (by God's will) portrait painters. If he eulogises the
Antique, and speaks highly of the Old Masters, he is supposed to be
actuated by envy to living painters and native talent. If, again, he
insists on a knowledge of anatomy as essential to correct drawing, this
would seem to imply a want of it in our most eminent designers. Every
plan, suggestion, argument, that has the general purposes and principles
of art for its object, is thwarted, scouted, ridiculed, slandered, as
having a malignant aspect towards the profits and pretensions of the
great mass of flourishing and respectable artists in the country. This
leads to irritation and ill-will on all sides. The obstinacy of the
constituted authorities keeps pace with the violence and extravagance
opposed to it; and they lay all the blame on the folly and mistakes they
have themselves occasioned or increased. It is considered as a personal
quarrel, not a public question; by which means the dignity of the body
is implicated in resenting the slips and inadvertencies of its members,
not in promoting their common and declared objects. In this sort of
wretched _tracasserie_ the Barrys and H----s stand no chance with the
Catons, the Tubbs, and F----s. Sir Joshua even was obliged to hold
himself aloof from them, and Fuseli passes as a kind of nondescript, or
one of his own grotesques. The air of an academy, in short, is not the
air of genius and immortality; it is too close and heated, and
impregnated with the notions of the common sort. A man steeped in a
corrupt atmosphere of this description is no longer open to the genial
impulses of nature and truth, nor sees visions of ideal beauty, nor
dreams of antique grace and grandeur, nor has the finest works of art
continually hovering and floating through his uplifted fancy; but the
images that haunt it are rules of the academy, charters, inaugural
speeches, resolutions passed or rescinded, cards of invitation to a
council-meeting, or the annual dinner, prize medals, and the king's
diploma, constituting him a gentleman and esquire. He 'wipes out all
trivial, fond records'; all romantic aspirations; 'the Raphael grace,
the Guido air'; and the commands of the academy alone 'must live within
the book and volume of his brain, unmixed with baser matter.' It may be
doubted whether any work of lasting reputation and universal interest
can spring up in this soil, or ever has done in that of any academy.
The last question is a matter of fact and history, not of mere opinion
or prejudice; and may be ascertained as such accordingly. The mighty
names of former times rose before the existence of academies; and the
three greatest painters, undoubtedly, that this country has produced,
Reynolds, Wilson, and Hogarth, were not 'dandled and swaddled' into
artists in any institution for the fine arts. I do not apprehend that
the names of Chantrey or Wilkie (great as one, and considerable as the
other of them is) can be made use of in any way to impugn the jet of
this argument. We may find a considerable improvement in some of our
artists, when they get out of the vortex for a time. Sir Thomas
Lawrence is all the better for having been abstracted for a year or two
from Somerset House; and Mr. Dawe, they say, has been doing wonders in
the North. When will he return, and once more 'bid Britannia rival
Greece'?
Mr. Canning somewhere lays it down as a rule, that corporate bodies are
necessarily correct and pure in their conduct, from the knowledge which
the individuals composing them have of one another, and the jealous
vigilance they exercise over each other's motives and characters;
whereas people collected into mobs are disorderly and unprincipled from
being utterly unknown and unaccountable to each other. This is a
curious _pass_ of wit. I differ with him in both parts of the dilemma.
To begin with the first, and to handle it somewhat cavalierly, according
to the model before us; we know, for instance, there is said to be
honour among thieves, but very little honesty towards others. Their
honour consists in the division of the booty, not in the mode of
acquiring it: they do not (often) betray one another, but they will
waylay a stranger, or knock out a traveller's brains: they may be
depended on in giving the alarm when any of their posts are in danger of
being surprised; and they will stand together for their ill-gotten gains
to the last drop of their blood. Yet they form a distinct society, and
are strictly responsible for their behaviour to one another and to their
leader. They are not a mob, but a _gang,_ completely in one another's
power and secrets. Their familiarity, however, with the proceedings of
the _corps_ does not lead them to expect or to exact from it a very high
standard of moral honesty; that is out of the question; but they are
sure to gain the good opinion of their fellows by committing all sorts
of depredations, fraud, and violence against the community at large. So
(not to speak it profanely) some of Mr. Croker's friends may be very
respectable people in their way--'all honourable men'--but their
respectability is confined within party limits; every one does not
sympathise in the integrity of their views; the understanding between
them and the public is not well defined or reciprocal. Or, suppose a
gang of pickpockets hustle a passenger in the street, and the mob set
upon them, and proceed to execute summary justice upon such as they can
lay hands on, am I to conclude that the rogues are in the right, because
theirs is a system of well-organised knavery, which they settled in the
morning, with their eyes one upon the other, and which they regularly
review at night, with a due estimate of each other's motives, character,
and conduct in the business; and that the honest men are in the wrong,
because they are a casual collection of unprejudiced, disinterested
individuals, taken at a venture from the mass of the people, acting
without concert or responsibility, on the spur of the occasion, and
giving way to their instantaneous impulses and honest anger? Mobs, in
fact, then, are almost always right in their feelings, and often in
their judgments, on this very account--that being utterly unknown to and
disconnected with each other, they have no point of union or principle
of co-operation between them, but the natural sense of justice
recognised by all persons in common. They appeal, at the first meeting,
not to certain symbols and watchwords privately agreed upon, like
Freemasons, but to the maxims and instincts proper to all the world.
They have no other clue to guide them to their object but either the
dictates of the heart or the universally understood sentiments of
society, neither of which are likely to be in the wrong. The flame
which bursts out and blazes from popular sympathy is made of honest but
homely materials. It is not kindled by sparks of wit or sophistry, nor
damped by the cold calculations of self-interest. The multitude may be
wantonly set on by others, as is too often the case, or be carried too
far in the impulse of rage and disappointment; but their resentment,
when they are left to themselves, is almost uniformly, in the first
instance, excited by some evident abuse and wrong; and the excesses into
which they run arise from that very want of foresight and regular system
which is a pledge of the uprightness and heartiness of their intentions.
In short, the only class of persons to whom the above courtly charge of
sinister and corrupt motives is not applicable is that body of
individuals which usually goes by the name of the _People!_
NOTES to ESSAY XI
[1] We sometimes see a whole playhouse in tears. But the audience at a
theatre, though a public assembly, are not a public body. They are not
Incorporated into a framework of exclusive, narrow-minded interests of
their own. Each individual looks out of his own insignificance at a
scene, _ideal_ perhaps, and foreign to himself, but true to nature;
friends, strangers, meet on the common ground of humanity, and the tears
that spring from their breasts are those which 'sacred pity has
engendered.' They are a mixed multitude melted Into sympathy by remote,
imaginary events, not a combination cemented by petty views, and sordid,
selfish prejudices.
ESSAY XII
WHETHER ACTORS OUGHT TO SIT IN THE BOXES?
I think not; and that for the following reasons, as well as I can give
them:--
Actors belong to the public: their persons are not their own property.
They exhibit themselves on the stage: that is enough, without displaying
themselves in the boxes of the theatre. I conceive that an actor, on
account of the very circumstances of his profession, ought to keep
himself as much incognito as possible. He plays a number of parts
disguised, transformed into them as much as he can 'by his so potent
art,' and he should not disturb this borrowed impression by unmasking
before company more than he can help. Let him go into the pit, if he
pleases, to see--not into the first circle, to be seen. He is seen
enough without that: he is the centre of an illusion that he is bound to
support, both, as it appears to me, by a certain self-respect which
should repel idle curiosity, and by a certain deference to the public,
in whom he has inspired certain prejudices which he is covenanted not to
break. He represents the majesty of successive kings; he takes the
responsibility of heroes and lovers on himself; the mantle of genius and
nature falls on his shoulders; we 'pile millions' of associations on
him, under which he should be 'buried quick,' and not perk out an
inauspicious face upon us, with a plain-cut coat, to say, 'What fools
you all were!--I am not Hamlet the Dane!'
It is very well and in strict propriety for Mr. Mathews, in his AT HOME,
after he has been imitating his inimitable Scotchwoman, to slip out as
quick as lightning, and appear in the side-box shaking hands with our
old friend Jack Bannister. It adds to our surprise at the versatility
of his changes of place and appearance, and he had been before us in his
own person during a great part of the evening. There was no harm
done--no imaginary spell broken--no discontinuity of thought or
sentiment. Mr. Mathews is himself (without offence be it spoken) both a
cleverer and more respectable man than many of the characters he
represents. Not so when
O'er the stage the Ghost of Hamlet stalks,
Othello rages, Desdemona mourns,
And poor Monimia pours her soul in love.
A different feeling then prevails:--close, close the scene upon them,
and never break that fine phantasmagoria of the brain. Or if it must be
done at all, let us choose some other time and place for it: let no one
wantonly dash the Cirecan cup from our lips, or dissolve the spirit of
enchantment in the very palace of enchantment. Go, Mr. -----, and sit
somewhere else! What a thing it is, for instance, for any part of an
actor's dress to come off unexpectedly while he is playing! What a
_cut_ it is upon himself and the audience! What an effort he has to
recover himself, and struggle through this exposure of the naked truth!
It has been considered as one of the triumphs of Garrick's tragic power,
that once, when he was playing Lear, his crown of straw came off, and
nobody laughed or took the least notice, so much had he identified
himself with the character. Was he, after this, to pay so little
respect to the feelings he had inspired, as to tear off his tattered
robes, and take the old crazed king with him to play the fool in the
boxes?
No; let him pass. Vex not his parting spirit,
Nor on the rack of this rough world
Stretch him out farther!
Some lady is said to have fallen in love with Garrick from being present
when he played the part of Romeo, on which he observed, that he would
undertake to cure her of her folly if she would only come and see him in
Abel Drugger. So the modern tragedian and fine gentleman, by appearing
to advantage, and conspicuously, _in propria persona,_ may easily cure
us of our predilection for all the principal characters he shines in.
'Sir! do you think Alexander looked o' this fashion in his lifetime, or
was perfumed so? Had Julius Caesar such a nose? or wore his frill as
you do? You have slain I don't know how many heroes "with a bare
bodkin," the gold pin in your shirt, and spoiled all the fine love
speeches you will ever make by picking your teeth with that inimitable
air!'
An actor, after having performed his part well, instead of courting
farther distinction, should affect obscurity, and 'steal most
guilty-like away,' conscious of admiration that he can support nowhere
but in his proper sphere, and jealous of his own and others' good
opinion of him, in proportion as he is a darling in the public eye. He
cannot avoid attracting disproportionate attention: why should he wish
to fix it on himself in a perfectly flat and insignificant part, viz.
his own character? It was a bad custom to bring authors on the stage to
crown them. _Omne Ignotum pro magnifico est._ Even professed critics,
I think, should be shy of putting themselves forward to applaud loudly:
any one in a crowd has 'a voice potential' as the press: it is either
committing their pretensions a little indiscreetly, or confirming their
own judgment by a clapping of hands. If you only go and give the cue
lustily, the house seems in wonderful accord with your opinions. An
actor, like a king, should only appear on state occasions. He loses
popularity by too much publicity; or, according to the proverb,
_familiarity breeds contempt._ Both characters personate a certain
abstract idea, are seen in a fictitious costume, and when they have
'shuffled off this more than mortal coil,' they had better keep out of
the way--the acts and sentiments emanating from themselves will not
carry on the illusion of our prepossessions. Ordinary transactions do
not give scope to grace and dignity like romantic situations or prepared
pageants, and the _little_ is apt to prevail over the _great,_ if we
come to count the instances.
The motto of a great actor should be _aut Caesar aut nihil._ I do not
see how with his crown, or plume of feathers, he can get through those
little box-doors without stooping and squeezing his artificial
importance to tatters. The entrance of the stage is arched so high
'that _players_ may get through, and keep their gorgeous turbans on,
without good-morrow to the gods!'
The top-tragedian of the day has too large and splendid a train
following him to have room for them in one of the dress-boxes. When he
appears there, it should be enlarged expressly for the occasion; for at
his heels march the figures, in full costume, of Cato, and Brutus, and
Cassius, and of him with the falcon eye, and Othello, and Lear, and
crook-backed Richard, and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, and numbers more,
and demand entrance along with him, shadows to which he alone lends
bodily substance! 'The graves yawn and render up their dead to push us
from our stools.' There is a mighty bustle at the door, a gibbering and
squeaking in the lobbies. An actor's retinue is imperial, it presses
upon the imagination too much, and he should therefore slide unnoticed
into the pit. Authors, who are in a manner his makers and masters, sit
there contented--why should not he? 'He is used to show himself.'
That, then, is the very reason he should conceal his person at other
times. A habit of ostentation should not be reduced to a principle. If
I had seen the late Gentleman Lewis fluttering in a prominent situation
in the boxes, I should have been puzzled whether to think of him as the
Copper Captain, or as Bobadil, or Ranger, or Young Rapid, or Lord
Foppington, or fifty other whimsical characters; then I should have got
Munden and Quick and a parcel more of them in my head, till 'my brain
would have been like a smoke-jack': I should not have known what to make
of it; but if I had seen him in the pit, I should merely have eyed him
with respectful curiosity, and have told every one that that was
Gentleman Lewis. We should have concluded from the circumstance that he
was a modest, sensible man: we all knew beforehand that he could show
off whenever he pleased!
There is one class of performers that I think is quite exempt from the
foregoing reasoning, I mean _retired actors._ Come when they will and
where they will, they are welcome to their old friends. They have as
good a right to sit in the boxes as children at the holidays. But they
do not, somehow, come often. It is but a melancholy recollection with
them:--
Then sweet,
Now sad to think on!
Mrs. Garrick still goes often, and hears the applause of her husband
over again in the shouts of the pit. Had Mrs. Pritchard or Mrs. Clive
been living, I am afraid we should have seen little of them-it would
have been too _home_ a feeling with them. Mrs. Siddons seldom if ever
goes, and yet she is almost the only thing left worth seeing there. She
need not stay away on account of any theory that I can form. She is out
of the pale of all theories, and annihilates all rules. Wherever she
sits there is grace and grandeur, there is tragedy personified. Her
seat is the undivided throne of the Tragic Muse. She had no need of the
robes, the sweeping train, the ornaments of the stage; in herself she is
as great as any being she ever represented in the ripeness and plenitude
of her power! I should not, I confess, have had the same paramount
abstracted feeling at seeing John Kemble there, whom I venerate at a
distance, and should not have known whether he was playing off the great
man or the great actor:--
A little more than kin, and less than kind.
I know it may be said in answer to all this pretext of keeping the
character of the player inviolate, 'What is there more common, in fact,
than for the hero of a tragedy to speak the prologue, or than for the
heroine, who has been stabbed or poisoned, to revive, and come forward
laughing in the epilogue?' As to the epilogue, it is spoken to get rid
of the idea of the tragedy altogether, and to ward off the fury of the
pit, who may be bent on its damnation. The greatest incongruity you can
hit upon is, therefore, the most proper for this purpose. But I deny
that the hero of a tragedy, or the principal character in it, is ever
pitched upon to deliver the prologue. It is always, by prescription,
some walking shadow, some poor player, who cannot even spoil a part of
any consequence. Is there not Mr. Claremont always at hand for this
purpose, whom the late king pronounced three times to be 'a bad
actor'?[1] What is there in common between that accustomed wave of the
hand and the cocked hat under the arm, and any passion or person that
can be brought forward on the stage? It is not that we can be said to
acquire a prejudice against so harmless an actor as Mr. Claremont: we
are born with a prejudice against a speaker of prologues. It is an
innate idea: a natural instinct: there is a particular organ in the
brain provided for it. Do we not all hate a manager? It is not because
he is insolent or impertinent, or fond of making ridiculous speeches, or
a notorious puffer, or ignorant, or mean, or vain, but it is because we
see him in a coat, waistcoat, and breeches. The stage is the world of
fantasy: it is Queen Mab that has invited us to her revels there, and
all that have to do with it should wear motley!
Lastly, there are some actors by profession whose faces we like to see
in the boxes or anywhere else; but it is because they are no actors, but
rather gentlemen and scholars, and in their proper places in the boxes,
or wherever they are. Does not an actor himself, I would ask, feel
conscious and awkward in the boxes if he thinks that he is known? And
does he not sit there in spite of this uneasy feeling, and run the
gauntlet of impertinent looks and whispers, only to get a little
by-admiration, as he thinks? It is hardly to be supposed that he comes
to see the play--the show. He must have enough of plays and finery.
But he wants to see a favourite (perhaps a rival) actor in a striking
part. Then the place for him to do this is the pit. Painters, I know,
always get as close up to a picture they want to copy as they can; and I
should imagine actors would want to do the same, in order to look into
the texture and mechanism of their art. Even theatrical critics can
make nothing of a part that they see from the boxes. If you sit in the
stage-box, your attention is drawn off by the company and other
circumstances. If you get to a distance (so as to be out of the reach
of notice) you can neither hear nor see well. For myself, I would as
soon take a seat on the top of the Monument to give an account of a
first appearance, as go into the second or third tier of boxes to do it.
I went, but the other day, with a box-ticket to see Miss Fanny Brunton
come out in Juliet, and Mr. Macready make a first appearance in Romeo;
and though I was told (by a tolerable judge) that the new Juliet was the
most elegant figure on the stage, and that Mr. Macready's Romeo was
quite beautiful, I vow to God I knew nothing of it. So little could I
tell of the matter that at one time I mistook Mr. Horrebow for Mr.
Abbott. I have seen Mr. Kean play Sir Giles Overreach one night from
the front of the pit, and a few nights after from the front boxes facing
the stage. It was another thing altogether. That which had been so
lately nothing but flesh and blood, a living fibre, 'instinct with fire'
and spirit, was no better than a little fantoccini figure, darting
backwards and forwards on the stage, starting, screaming, and playing a
number of fantastic tricks before the audience. I could account, in the
latter instance, for the little approbation of the performance
manifested around me, and also for the general scepticism with respect
to Mr. Kean's acting, which has been said to prevail among those who
cannot condescend to go into the pit, and have not interest in the
orchestra--to see him act. They may, then, stay away altogether. His
face is the running comment on his acting, which reconciles the audience
to it. Without that index to his mind, you are not prepared for the
vehemence and suddenness of his gestures; his pauses are long, abrupt,
and unaccountable, if not filled up by the expression; it is in the
working of his face that you see the writhing and coiling up of the
passions before they make their serpent-spring; the lightning of his eye
precedes the hoarse burst of thunder from his voice.
One may go into the boxes, indeed, and criticise acting and actors with
Sterne's stop-watch, but not otherwise--'"And between the nominative
case and the verb (which, as your lordship knows, should agree together
in number, person, etc.) there was a full pause of a second and
two-thirds."--"But was the eye silent--did the look say nothing?" "I
looked only at the stop-watch, my lord."--"Excellent critic!"'--If any
other actor, indeed, goes to see Mr. Kean act, with a view _to avoid
imitation,_ this may be the place, or rather it is the way to run into
it, for you see only his extravagances and defects, which are the most
easily carried away. Mr. Mathews may translate him into an AT HOME even
from the _slips!_--Distinguished actors, then, ought, I conceive, to set
the example of going into the pit, were it only for their own sakes. I
remember a trifling circumstance, which I worked up at the time into a
confirmation of this theory of mine, engrafted on old prejudice and
tradition.[2] I had got into the middle of the pit, at considerable
risk of broken bones, to see Mr. Kean in one of his early parts, when I
perceived two young men seated a little behind me, with a certain space
left round them. They were dressed in the height of the fashion, in
light drab-coloured greatcoats, and with their shirt-sleeves drawn down
over their hands, at a time when this was not so common as it has since
become. I took them for younger sons of some old family at least. One
of them, that was very good-looking, I thought might be Lord Byron, and
his companion might be Mr. Hobhouse. They seemed to have wandered from
another sphere of this our planet to witness a masterly performance to
the utmost advantage. This stamped the thing. They were, undoubtedly,
young men of rank and fashion; but their taste was greater than their
regard for appearances. The pit was, after all, the true resort of
thoroughbred critics and amateurs. When there was anything worth
seeing, this was the place; and I began to feel a sort of reflected
importance in the consciousness that I also was a critic. Nobody sat
near them--it would have seemed like an intrusion. Not a syllable was
uttered.--They were two clerks in the Victualling Office!
What I would insist on, then, is this--that for Mr. Kean, or Mr. Young,
or Mr. Macready, or any of those that are 'cried out upon in the top of
the compass' to obtrude themselves voluntarily or ostentatiously upon
our notice, when they are out of character, is a solecism in
theatricals. For them to thrust themselves forward before the scenes,
is to drag us behind them against our will, than which nothing can be
more fatal to a true passion for the stage, and which is a privilege
that should be kept sacred for impertinent curiosity. Oh! while I live,
let me not be admitted (under special favour) to an actor's
dressing-room. Let me not see how Cato painted, or how Caesar combed!
Let me not meet the prompt-boys in the passage, nor see the half-lighted
candles stuck against the bare walls, nor hear the creaking of machines,
or the fiddlers laughing; nor see a Columbine practising a pirouette in
sober sadness, nor Mr. Grimaldi's face drop from mirth to sudden
melancholy as he passes the side-scene, as if a shadow crossed it, nor
witness the long-chinned generation of the pantomime sit twirling their
thumbs, nor overlook the fellow who holds the candle for the moon in the
scene between Lorenzo and Jessica! Spare me this insight into secrets I
am not bound to know. The stage is not a mistress that we are sworn to
undress. Why should we look behind the glass of fashion? Why should we
prick the bubble that reflects the world, and turn it to a little soap
and water? Trust a little to first appearances--leave something to
fancy. I observe that the great puppets of the real stage, who
themselves play a grand part, like to get into the boxes over the stage;
where they see nothing from the proper point of view, but peep and pry
into what is going on like a magpie looking into a marrow-bone. This is
just like them. So they look down upon human life, of which they are
ignorant. They see the exits and entrances of the players, something
that they suspect is meant to be kept from them (for they think they are
always liable to be imposed upon): the petty pageant of an hour ends
with each scene long before the catastrophe, and the tragedy of life is
turned to farce under their eyes. These people laugh loud at a
pantomime, and are delighted with clowns and pantaloons. They pay no
attention to anything else. The stage-boxes exist in contempt of the
stage and common sense. The private boxes, on the contrary, should be
reserved as the receptacle for the officers of state and great
diplomatic characters, who wish to avoid, rather than court popular
notice!
NOTES to ESSAY XII
[1] Mr. Munden and Mr. Claremont went one Sunday to Windsor to see the
king. They passed with other spectators once or twice: at last, his
late majesty distinguished Munden in the crowd and called him to him.
After treating him with much cordial familiarity, the king said, 'And,
pray, who is that with you?' Munden, with many congees, and contortions
of face, replied, 'An please your majesty, it's Mr. Claremont of the
Theatre Royal Drury Lane.' 'Oh! yes,' said the king, 'I know him
well--a bad actor, a bad actor, a bad actor!' Why kings should repeat
what they say three times is odd: their saying it once is quite enough.
I have always liked Mr. Claremont's face since I heard this anecdote,
and perhaps the telling it may have the same effect on other people.
[2] The trunk-maker, I grant, in the _Spectator's_ time, sat in the
two-shilling gallery. But that was in the _Spectator's_ time, and not
in the days of Mr. Smirke and Mr. Wyatt.
ESSAY XIII
ON THE DISADVANTAGES OF INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY
The chief disadvantage of knowing more and seeing farther than others,
is not to be generally understood. A man is, in consequence of this,
liable to start paradoxes, which immediately transport him beyond the
reach of the common-place reader. A person speaking once in a slighting
manner of a very original-minded man, received for answer, 'He strides
on so far before you that he dwindles in the distance!"
Petrarch complains that 'Nature had made him different from other
people'--_singular' d' altri genti._ The great happiness of life is, to
be neither better nor worse than the general run of those you meet with.
If you are beneath them, you are trampled upon; if you are above them,
you soon find a mortifying level in their difference to what you
particularly pique yourself upon. What is the use of being moral in a
night-cellar, or wise in Bedlam? 'To be honest, as this world goes, is
to be one man picked out of ten thousand.' So says Shakespear; and the
commentators have not added that, under these circumstances, a man is
more likely to become the butt of slander than the mark of admiration
for being so. 'How now, thou particular fellow?'[1] is the common
answer to all such out-of-the-way pretensions. By not doing as those at
Rome do, we cut ourselves off from good-fellowship and society. We
speak another language, have notions of our own, and are treated as of a
different species. Nothing can be more awkward than to intrude with any
such far-fetched ideas among the common herd, who will be sure to
Stand all astonished, like a sort of steers,
'Mongst whom some beast of strange and foreign race
Unwares is chanced, far straying from his peers:
So will their ghastly gaze betray their hidden fears.
Ignorance of another's meaning is a sufficient cause of fear, and fear
produces hatred: hence the suspicion and rancour entertained against all
those who set up for greater refinement and wisdom than their
neighbours. It is in vain to think of softening down this spirit of
hostility by simplicity of manners, or by condescending to persons of
low estate. The more you condescend, the more they will presume upon
it; they will fear you less, but hate you more; and will be the more
determined to take their revenge on you for a superiority as to which
they are entirely in the dark, and of which you yourself seem to
entertain considerable doubt. All the humility in the world will only
pass for weakness and folly. They have no notion of such a thing. They
always put their best foot forward; and argue that you would do the same
if you had any such wonderful talents as people say. You had better,
therefore, play off the great man at once--hector, swagger, talk big,
and ride the high horse over them: you may by this means extort outward
respect or common civility; but you will get nothing (with low people)
by forbearance and good-nature but open insult or silent contempt.
Coleridge always talks to people about what they don't understand: I,
for one, endeavour to talk to them about what they do understand, and
find I only get the more ill-will by it. They conceive I do not think
them capable of anything better; that I do not think it worth while, as
the vulgar saying is, to _throw a word to a dog._ I once complained of
this to Coleridge, thinking it hard I should be sent to Coventry for not
making a prodigious display. He said: 'As you assume a certain
character, you ought to produce your credentials. It is a tax upon
people's good-nature to admit superiority of any kind, even where there
is the most evident proof of it; but it is too hard a task for the
imagination to admit it without any apparent ground at all.'
There is not a greater error than to suppose that you avoid the envy,
malice, and uncharitableness, so common in the world, by going among
people without pretensions. There are no people who have no
pretensions; or the fewer their pretensions, the less they can afford to
acknowledge yours without some sort of value received. The more
information individuals possess, or the more they have refined upon any
subject, the more readily can they conceive and admit the same kind of
superiority to themselves that they feel over others. But from the low,
dull, level sink of ignorance and vulgarity, no idea or love of
excellence can arise. You think you are doing mighty well with them;
that you are laying aside the buckram of pedantry and pretence, and
getting the character of a plain, unassuming, good sort of fellow. It
will not do. All the while that you are making these familiar advances,
and wanting to be at your ease, they are trying to recover the wind of
you. You may forget that you are an author, an artist, or what
not--they do not forget that they are nothing, nor bate one jot of their
desire to prove you in the same predicament. They take hold of some
circumstance in your dress; your manner of entering a room is different
from that of other people; you do not eat vegetables--that's odd; you
have a particular phrase, which they repeat, and this becomes a sort of
standing joke; you look grave, or ill; you talk, or are more silent than
usual; you are in or out of pocket: all these petty, inconsiderable
circumstances, in which you resemble, or are unlike other people, form
so many counts in the indictment which is going on in their imaginations
against you, and are so many contradictions in your character. In any
one else they would pass unnoticed, but in a person of whom they had
heard so much they cannot make them out at all. Meanwhile, those things
in which you may really excel go for nothing, because they cannot judge
of them. They speak highly of some book which you do not like, and
therefore you make no answer. You recommend them to go and see some
Picture in which they do not find much to admire. How are you to
convince them that you are right? Can you make them perceive that the
fault is in them, and not in the picture, unless you could give them
your knowledge? They hardly distinguish the difference between a
Correggio and a common daub. Does this bring you any nearer to an
understanding? The more you know of the difference, the more deeply you
feel it, or the more earnestly you wish to convey it, the farther do you
find yourself removed to an immeasurable distance from the possibility
of making them enter into views and feelings of which they have not even
the first rudiments. You cannot make them see with your eyes, and they
must judge for themselves.
Intellectual is not like bodily strength. You have no hold of the
understanding of others but by their sympathy. Your knowing, in fact,
so much more about a subject does not give you a superiority, that is, a
power over them, but only renders it the more impossible for you to make
the least impression on them. Is it, then, an advantage to you? It may
be, as it relates to your own private satisfaction, but it places a
greater gulf between you and society. It throws stumbling-blocks in
your way at every turn. All that you take most pride and pleasure in is
lost upon the vulgar eye. What they are pleased with is a matter of
indifference or of distaste to you. In seeing a number of persons turn
over a portfolio of prints from different masters, what a trial it is to
the patience, how it jars the nerves to hear them fall into raptures at
some common-place flimsy thing, and pass over some divine expression of
countenance without notice, or with a remark that it is very
singular-looking? How useless it is in such cases to fret or argue, or
remonstrate? Is it not quite as well to be without all this
hypercritical, fastidious knowledge, and to be pleased or displeased as
it happens, or struck with the first fault or beauty that is pointed out
by others? I would be glad almost to change my acquaintance with
pictures, with books, and, certainly, what I know of mankind, for
anybody's ignorance of them!
It is recorded in the life of some worthy (whose name I forget) that he
was one of those 'who loved hospitality and respect': and I profess to
belong to the same classification of mankind. Civility is with me a
jewel. I like a little comfortable cheer, and careless, indolent chat,
I hate to be always wise, or aiming at wisdom. I have enough to do with
literary cabals, questions, critics, actors, essay-writing, without
taking them out with me for recreation, and into all companies. I wish
at these times to pass for a good-humoured fellow; and good-will is all
I ask in return to make good company. I do not desire to be always
posing myself or others with the questions of fate, free-will,
foreknowledge absolute, etc. I must unbend sometimes. I must
occasionally lie fallow. The kind of conversation that I affect most is
what sort of a day it is, and whether it is likely to rain or hold up
fine for to-morrow. This I consider as enjoying the _otium cum
dignitate,_ as the end and privilege of a life of study. I would resign
myself to this state of easy indifference, but I find I cannot. I must
maintain a certain pretension, which is far enough from my wish. I must
he put on my defence, I must take up the gauntlet continually, or I find
I lose ground. 'I am nothing, if not critical.' While I am thinking
what o'clock it is, or how I came to blunder in quoting a well-known
passage, as if I had done it on purpose, others are thinking whether I
am not really as dull a fellow as I am sometimes said to be. If a
drizzling shower patters against the windows, it puts me in mind of a
mild spring rain, from which I retired twenty years ago, into a little
public-house near Wem in Shropshire, and while I saw the plants and
shrubs before the door imbibe the dewy moisture, quaffed a glass of
sparkling ale, and walked home in the dusk of evening, brighter to me
than noonday suns at present are! Would I indulge this feeling? In
vain. They ask me what news there is, and stare if I say I don't know.
If a new actress has come out, why must I have seen her? If a new novel
has appeared, why must I have read it? I, at one time, used to go and
take a hand at cribbage with a friend, and afterwards discuss a cold
sirloin of beef, and throw out a few lackadaisical remarks, in a way to
please myself, but it would not do long. I set up little pretension,
and therefore the little that I did set up was taken from me. As I said
nothing on that subject myself, it was continually thrown in my teeth
that I was an author. From having me at this disadvantage, my friend
wanted to peg on a hole or two in the game, and was displeased if I
would not let him. If I won off him, it was hard he should be beat by
an author. If he won, it would be strange if he did not understand the
game better than I did. If I mentioned my favourite game of rackets,
there was a general silence, as if this was my weak point. If I
complained of being ill, it was asked why I made myself so. If I said
such an actor had played a part well, the answer was, there was a
different account in one of the newspapers. If any allusion was made to
men of letters, there was a suppressed smile. If I told a humorous
story, it was difficult to say whether the laugh was at me or at the
narrative. The wife hated me for my ugly face; the servants, because I
could not always get them tickets for the play, and because they could
not tell exactly what an author meant. If a paragraph appeared against
anything I had written, I found it was ready there before me, and I was
to undergo a regular _roasting._ I submitted to all this till I was
tired, and then I gave it up.
One of the miseries of intellectual pretensions is, that nine-tenths of
those you come in contact with do not know whether you are an impostor
or not. I dread that certain anonymous criticisms should get into the
hands of servants where I go, or that my hatter or shoemaker should
happen to read them, who cannot possibly tell whether they are well or
ill founded. The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of its
malice. There are people whose good opinion or good-will you want,
setting aside all literary pretensions; and it is hard to lose by an ill
report (which you have no means of rectifying) what you cannot gain by a
good one. After a _diatribe_ in the _Quarterly_ (which is taken in by a
gentleman who occupies my old apartments on the first floor), my
landlord brings me up his bill (of some standing), and on my offering to
give him so much in money and a note of hand for the rest, shakes his
head, and says he is afraid he could make no use of it. Soon after, the
daughter comes in, and, on my mentioning the circumstance carelessly to
her, replies gravely, 'that indeed her father has been almost ruined by
bills.' _This is the unkindest cut of all._ It is in vain for me to
endeavour to explain that the publication in which I am abused is a mere
government engine--an organ of a political faction. They know nothing
about that. They only know such and such imputations are thrown out;
and the more I try to remove them, the more they think there is some
truth in them. Perhaps the people of the house are strong
Tories--government agents of some sort. Is it for me to enlighten their
ignorance? If I say, I once wrote a thing called _Prince Maurice's
Parrot_, and an _Essay on the Regal Character_, in the former of which
allusion is made to a noble marquis, and in the latter to a great
personage (so at least, I am told, it has been construed), and that Mr.
Croker has peremptory instructions to retaliate, they cannot conceive
what connection there can be between me and such distinguished
characters. I can get no farther. Such is the misery of pretensions
beyond your situation, and which are not backed by any external symbols
of wealth or rank, intelligible to all mankind!
The impertinence of admiration is scarcely more tolerable than the
demonstrations of contempt. I have known a person whom I had never seen
before besiege me all dinner-time with asking what articles I had
written in the _Edinburgh Review?_ I was at last ashamed to answer to
my splendid sins in that way. Others will pick out something not yours,
and say they are sure no one else could write it. By the first sentence
they can always tell your style. Now I hate my style to be known, as I
hate all _idiosyncrasy._ These obsequious flatterers could not pay me a
worse compliment. Then there are those who make a point of reading
everything you write (which is fulsome); while others, more provoking,
regularly lend your works to a friend as soon as they receive them.
They pretty well know your notions on the different subjects, from
having heard you talk about them. Besides, they have a greater value
for your personal character than they have for your writings. You
explain things better in a common way, when you are not aiming at
effect. Others tell you of the faults they have heard found with your
last book, and that they defend your style in general from a charge of
obscurity. A friend once told me of a quarrel he had had with a near
relation, who denied that I knew how to spell the commonest words.
These are comfortable confidential communications to which authors who
have their friends and excusers are subject. A gentleman told me that a
lady had objected to my use of the word _learneder_ as bad grammar. He
said he thought it a pity that I did not take more care, but that the
lady was perhaps prejudiced, as her husband held a government office. I
looked for the word, and found it in a motto from Butler. I was piqued,
and desired him to tell the fair critic that the fault was not in me,
but in one who had far more wit, more learning, and loyalty than I could
pretend to. Then, again, some will pick out the flattest thing of yours
they can find to load it with panegyrics; and others tell you (by way of
letting you see how high they rank your capacity) that your best
passages are failures. Lamb has a knack of tasting (or as he would say,
_palating_) the insipid. Leigh Hunt has a trick of turning away from
the relishing morsels you put on his plate. There is no getting the
start of some people. Do what you will, they can do it better; meet
with what success you may, their own good opinion stands them in better
stead, and runs before the applause of the world. I once showed a
person of this overweening turn (with no small triumph, I confess) a
letter of a very flattering description I had received from the
celebrated Count Stendhal, dated Rome. He returned it with a smile of
indifference, and said, he had had a letter from Rome himself the day
before, from his friend S----! I did not think this 'germane to the
matter.' Godwin pretends I never wrote anything worth a farthing but my
'Answers to Vetus,' and that I fail altogether when I attempt to write
an essay, or anything in a short compass.
What can one do in such cases? Shall I confess a weakness? The only
set-off I know to these rebuffs and mortifications is sometimes in an
accidental notice or involuntary mark of distinction from a stranger. I
feel the force of Horace's _digito monstrari_--I like to be pointed out
in the street, or to hear people ask in Mr. Powell's court, _Which is
Mr. Hazlitt?_ This is to me a pleasing extension of one's personal
identity. Your name so repeated leaves an echo like music on the ear:
it stirs the blood like the sound of a trumpet. It shows that other
people are curious to see you; that they think of you, and feel an
interest in you without your knowing it. This is a bolster to lean
upon; a lining to your poor, shivering, threadbare opinion of yourself.
You want some such cordial to exhausted spirits, and relief to the
dreariness of abstract speculation. You are something; and, from
occupying a place in the thoughts of others, think less contemptuously
of yourself. You are the better able to run the gauntlet of prejudice
and vulgar abuse. It is pleasant in this way to have your opinion
quoted against yourself, and your own sayings repeated to you as good
things. I was once talking to an intelligent man in the pit, and
criticising Mr. Knight's performance of Filch. 'Ah!' he said, 'little
Simmons was the fellow to play that character.' He added, 'There was a
most excellent remark made upon his acting it in the _Examiner_ (I think
it was)--_That he looked as if he had the gallows in one eye and a
pretty girl in the other._' I said nothing, but was in remarkably good
humour the rest of the evening. I have seldom been in a company where
fives-playing has been talked of but some one has asked in the course of
it, 'Pray, did any one ever see an account of one Cavanagh that appeared
some time back in most of the papers? Is it known who wrote it?' These
are trying moments. I had a triumph over a person, whose name I will
not mention, on the following occasion. I happened to be saying
something about Burke, and was expressing my opinion of his talents in
no measured terms, when this gentleman interrupted me by saying he
thought, for his part, that Burke had been greatly overrated, and then
added, in a careless way, 'Pray, did you read a character of him in the
last number of the -----?' 'I wrote it!'--I could not resist the
antithesis, but was afterwards ashamed of my momentary petulance. Yet
no one that I find ever spares me.
Some persons seek out and obtrude themselves on public characters in
order, as it might seem, to pick out their failings, and afterwards
betray them. Appearances are for it, but truth and a better knowledge
of nature are against this interpretation of the matter. Sycophants and
flatterers are undesignedly treacherous and fickle. They are prone to
admire inordinately at first, and not finding a constant supply of food
for this kind of sickly appetite, take a distaste to the object of their
idolatry. To be even with themselves for their credulity, they sharpen
their wits to spy out faults, and are delighted to find that this
answers better than their first employment. It is a course of study,
'lively, audible, and full of vent.' They have the organ of wonder and
the organ of fear in a prominent degree. The first requires new objects
of admiration to satisfy its uneasy cravings: the second makes them
crouch to power wherever its shifting standard appears, and willing to
curry favour with all parties, and ready to betray any out of sheer
weakness and servility. I do not think they mean any harm: at least, I
can look at this obliquity with indifference in my own particular case.
I have been more disposed to resent it as I have seen it practised upon
others, where I have been better able to judge of the extent of the
mischief, and the heartlessness and idiot folly it discovered.
I do not think great intellectual attainments are any recommendation to
the women. They puzzle them, and are a diversion to the main question.
If scholars talk to ladies of what they understand, their hearers are
none the wiser: if they talk of other things, they prove themselves
fools. The conversation between Angelica and Foresight in _Love for
Love_ is a receipt in full for all such overstrained nonsense: while he
is wandering among the signs of the zodiac, she is standing a-tiptoe on
the earth. It has been remarked that poets do not choose mistresses
very wisely. I believe it is not choice, but necessity. If they could
throw the handkerchief like the Grand Turk, I imagine we should see
scarce mortals, but rather goddesses, surrounding their steps, and each
exclaiming, with Lord Byron's own Ionian maid--
So shalt thou find me ever at thy side,
Here and hereafter, if the last may be!
Ah! no, these are bespoke, carried of by men of mortal, not of ethereal
mould, and thenceforth the poet from whose mind the ideas of love and
beauty are inseparable as dreams from sleep, goes on the forlorn hope of
the passion, and dresses up the first Dulcinea that will take compassion
on him in all the colours of fancy. What boots it to complain if the
delusion lasts for life, and the rainbow still paints its form in the
cloud?
There is one mistake I would wish, if possible, to correct. Men of
letters, artists, and others not succeeding with women in a certain rank
of life, think the objection is to their want of fortune, and that they
shall stand a better chance by descending lower, where only their good
qualities or talents will be thought of. Oh! worse and worse. The
objection is to themselves, not to their fortune--to their abstraction,
to their absence of mind, to their unintelligible and romantic notions.
Women of education may have a glimpse of their meaning, may get a clue
to their character, but to all others they are thick darkness. If the
mistress smiles at their ideal advances, the maid will laugh outright;
she will throw water over you, get her sister to listen, send her
sweetheart to ask you what you mean, will set the village or the house
upon your back; it will be a farce, a comedy, a standing jest for a
year, and then the murder will out. Scholars should be sworn at
Highgate. They are no match for chambermaids, or wenches at
lodging-houses. They had better try their hands on heiresses or ladies
of quality. These last have high notions of themselves that may fit
some of your epithets! They are above mortality; so are your thoughts!
But with low life, trick, ignorance, and cunning, you have nothing in
common. Whoever you are, that think you can make a compromise or a
conquest there by good nature or good sense, be warned b a friendly
voice, and retreat in time from the unequal contest.
If, as I have said above, scholars are no match for chambermaids, on the
other hand gentlemen are no match for blackguards. The former are on
their honour, act on the square; the latter take all advantages, and
have no idea of any other principle. It is astonishing how soon a
fellow without education will learn to cheat. He is impervious to any
ray of liberal knowledge; his understanding is
Not pierceable by power of any star--
but it is porous to all sorts of tricks, chicanery, stratagems, and
knavery, by which anything is to be got. Mrs. Peachum, indeed, says,
that to succeed at the gaming-table, the candidate should have the
education of a nobleman. I do not know how far this example contradicts
my theory. I think it is a rule that men in business should not be
taught other things. Any one will be almost sure to make money who has
no other idea in his head. A college education, or intense study of
abstract truth, will not enable a man to drive a bargain, to overreach
another, or even to guard himself from being overreached. As Shakespear
says, that 'to have a good face is the effect of study, but reading and
writing come by nature'; so it might be argued, that to be a knave is
the gift of fortune, but to play the fool to advantage it is necessary
to be a learned man. The best politicians are not those who are deeply
grounded in mathematical or in ethical science. Rules stand in the way
of expediency. Many a man has been hindered from pushing his fortune in
the world by an early cultivation of his moral sense, and has repented
of it at leisure during the rest of his life. A shrewd man said of my
father, that he would not send a son of his to school to him on any
account, for that by teaching him to speak the truth he would disqualify
him from getting his living in the world!
It is hardly necessary to add any illustration to prove that the most
original and profound thinkers are not always the most successful or
popular writers. This is not merely a temporary disadvantage; but many
great philosophers have not only been scouted while they were living,
but forgotten as soon as they were dead. The name of Hobbes is perhaps
sufficient to explain this assertion. But I do not wish to go farther
into this part of the subject, which is obvious in itself. I have said,
I believe, enough to take off the air of paradox which hangs over the
title of this Essay.
NOTES to ESSAY XIII
[1] Jack Cade's salutation to one who tries to recommend himself by
saying he can write and read--see _Henry VI._ Part Second.
ESSAY XIV
ON PATRONAGE AND PUFFING
A gentle usher, Vanity by name. --Spenser.
A lady was complaining to a friend of mine of the credulity of people in
attending to quack advertisements, and wondering who could be taken in
by them--"for that she had never bought but one half-guinea bottle of
Dr. -----'s Elixir of Life, and it had done her no sort of good!' This
anecdote seemed to explain pretty well what made it worth the doctor's
while to advertise his wares in every newspaper in the kingdom. He
would no doubt be satisfied if every delicate, sceptical invalid in his
majesty's dominions gave his Elixir one trial, merely to show the
absurdity of the thing. We affect to laugh at the folly of those who
put faith in nostrums, but are willing to see ourselves whether there is
any truth in them.
There is a strong tendency in the human mind to flatter itself with
secret hopes, with some lucky reservation in our own favour, though
reason may point out the grossness of the trick in general; and,
besides, there is a wonderful power in words, formed into regular
propositions, and printed in capital letters, to draw the assent after
them, till we have proof of their fallacy. The ignorant and idle
believe what they read, as Scotch philosophers demonstrate the existence
of a material world, and other learned propositions, from the evidence
of their senses. The ocular proof is all that is wanting in either
case. As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the
art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth. We
can hardly _believe_ a thing to be a lie, though we _know_ it to be so.
The 'puff direct,' even as it stands in the columns of the _Times_
newspaper, branded with the title of Advertisement before it, claims
some sort of attention and respect for the merits that it discloses,
though we think the candidate for public favour and support has hit upon
(perhaps) an injudicious way of laying them before the world. Still
there may be something in them; and even the outrageous improbability
and extravagance of the statement on the very face of it stagger us, and
leave a hankering to inquire farther into it, because we think the
advertiser would hardly have the impudence to hazard such barefaced
absurdities without some foundation. Such is the strength of the
association between words and things in the mind--so much oftener must
our credulity have been justified by the event than imposed upon. If
every second story we heard was an invention, we should lose our
mechanical disposition to trust to the meaning of sounds, just as when
we have met with a number of counterfeit pieces of coin, we suspect good
ones; but our implicit assent to what we hear is a proof how much more
sincerity and good faith there is in the sum total of our dealings with
one another than artifice and imposture.
'To elevate and surprise' is the great art of quackery and puffing; to
raise a lively and exaggerated image in the mind, and take it by
surprise before it can recover breath, as it were; so that by having
been caught in the trap, it is unwilling to retract entirely--has a
secret desire to find itself in the right, and a determination to see
whether it is or not. Describe a picture as _lofty,_ _imposing,_ and
_grand,_ these words excite certain ideas in the mind like the sound of
a trumpet, which are not to be quelled, except by seeing the picture
itself, nor even then, if it is viewed by the help of a catalogue,
written expressly for the occasion by the artist himself. It is not to
be supposed that _he_ would say such things of his picture unless they
were allowed by all the world; and he repeats them, on this gentle
understanding, till all the world allows them.[1] So Reputation runs in
a vicious circle, and Merit limps behind it, mortified and abashed at
its own insignificance. It has been said that the test of fame or
popularity is to consider the number of times your name is repeated by
others, or is brought to their recollection in the course of a year. At
this rate, a man has his reputation in his own hands, and, by the help
of puffing and the press, may forestall the voice of posterity, and stun
the 'groundling' ear of his contemporaries. A name let off in your
hearing continually, with some bouncing epithet affixed to it, startles
you like the report of a pistol close at your car: you cannot help the
effect upon the imagination, though you know it is perfectly
harmless--_vox et praeterea nihil._ So, if you see the same name
staring you in the face in great letters at the corner of every street,
you involuntarily think the owner of it must be a great man to occupy so
large a space in the eye of the town. The appeal is made, in the first
instance, to the senses, but it sinks below the surface into the mind.
There are some, indeed, who publish their own disgrace, and make their
names a common by-word and nuisance, notoriety being all that they want.
A quack gets himself surreptitiously dubbed Doctor or Knight; and
though you may laugh in his face, it pays expenses. Parolles and his
drum typify many a modern adventurer and court-candidate for unearned
laurels and unblushing honours. Of all puffs, lottery puffs are the
most ingenious and most innocent. A collection of them would make an
amusing _Vade mecum._ They are still various and the same, with that
infinite ruse with which they lull the reader at the outset out of all
suspicion. the insinuating turn in the middle, the home-thrust at the
ruling passion at last, by which your spare cash is conjured clean out
of the pocket in spite of resolution, by the same stale, well-known,
thousandth-time repeated artifice of _All prizes_ and _No blanks_--a
self-evident imposition! Nothing, however, can be a stronger proof of
the power of fascinating the public judgment through the eye alone. I
know a gentleman who amassed a considerable fortune (so as to be able to
keep his carriage) by printing nothing but lottery placards and
handbills of a colossal size. Another friend of mine (of no mean
talents) was applied to (as a snug thing in the way of business) to
write regular lottery puffs for a large house in the city, and on having
a parcel of samples returned on his hands as done in too severe and
terse a style, complained quaintly enough, _'That modest merit never
could succeed!'_ Even Lord Byron, as he tells us, has been accused of
writing lottery-puffs. There are various ways of playing one's-self off
before the public, and keeping one's name alive. The newspapers, the
lamp-posts, the walls of empty houses, the shutters of windows, the
blank covers of magazines and reviews, are open to every one. I have
heard of a man of literary celebrity sitting in his study writing
letters of remonstrance to himself, on the gross defects of a plan of
education he had just published, and which remained unsold on the
bookseller's counter. Another feigned himself dead in order to see what
would be said of him in the newspapers, and to excite a sensation in
this way. A flashy pamphlet has been run to a five-and-thirtieth
edition, and thus ensured the writer a 'deathless date' among political
charlatans, by regularly striking off a new title-page to every fifty or
a hundred copies that were sold. This is a vile practice. It is an
erroneous idea got abroad (and which I will contradict here) that
paragraphs are paid for in the leading journals. It is quite out of the
question. A favourable notice of an author, an actress, etc., may be
inserted through interest, or to oblige a friend, but it must invariably
be done for _love,_ not _money!_
When I formerly had to do with these sort of critical verdicts, I was
generally sent out of the way when any _debutant_ had a friend at court,
and was to be tenderly handled. For the rest, or those of robust
constitutions, I had _carte blanche_ given me. Sometimes I ran out of
the course, to be sure. Poor Perry! what bitter complaints he used to
make, that by _running-a-muck_ at lords and Scotchmen I should not leave
him a place to dine out at! The expression of his face at these
moments, as if he should shortly be without a friend in the world, was
truly pitiable. What squabbles we used to have about Kean and Miss
Stephens, the only theatrical favourites I ever had! Mrs. Billington
had got some notion that Miss Stephens would never make a singer, and it
was the torment of Perry's life (as he told me in confidence) that he
could not get any two people to be of the same opinion on any one point.
I shall not easily forget bringing him my account of her first
appearance in the _Beggar's Opera._ I have reason to remember that
article: it was almost the last I ever wrote with any pleasure to
myself. I had been down on a visit to my friends near Chertsey, and on
my return had stopped at an inn near Kingston-upon-Thames, where I had
got the _Beggar's Opera_, and had read it over-night. The next day I
walked cheerfully to town. It was a fine sunny morning, in the end of
autumn, and as I repeated the beautiful song, 'Life knows no return of
Spring,' I meditated my next day's criticism, trying to do all the
justice I could to so inviting a subject. I was not a little proud of
it by anticipation. I had just then begun to stammer out my sentiments
on paper, and was in a kind of honeymoon of authorship. But soon after,
my final hopes of happiness and of human liberty were blighted nearly at
the same time; and since then I have had no pleasure in anything--
And Love himself can flatter me no more.
It was not so ten years since (ten short years since.--Ah! how fast
those years run that hurry us away from our last fond dream of bliss!)
when I loitered along thy green retreats, O Twickenham! and conned over
(with enthusiastic delight) the chequered view which one of thy
favourites drew of human life! I deposited my account of the play at
the Morning Chronicle office in the afternoon, and went to see Miss
Stephens as Polly. Those were happy times, in which she first came out
in this character, in Mandane, where she sang the delicious air, 'If
o'er the cruel tyrant, Love' (so as it can never be sung again), in
_Love in a Village_, where the scene opened with her and Miss Matthews
in a painted garden of roses and honeysuckles, and 'Hope, thou nurse of
young Desire' thrilled from two sweet voices in turn. Oh! may my ears
sometimes still drink the same sweet sounds, embalmed with the spirit of
youth, of health, and joy, but in the thoughts of an instant, but in a
dream of fancy, and I shall hardly need to complain! When I got back,
after the play, Perry called out, with his cordial, grating voice,
'Well, how did she do?' and on my speaking in high terms, answered, that
'he had been to dine with his friend the Duke, that some conversation
had passed on the subject, he was afraid it was not the thing, it was
not the true _sostenuto_ style; but as I had written the article'
(holding my peroration on the _Beggar's Opera_ carelessly in his hand),
'it might pass!' I could perceive that the rogue licked his lips at it,
and had already in imagination 'bought golden opinions of all sorts of
people' by this very criticism, and I had the satisfaction the next day
to meet Miss Stephens coming out of the editor's room, who had been to
thank him for his very flattering account of her.
I was sent to see Kean the first night of his performance in Shylock,
when there were about a hundred people in the pit; but from his masterly
and spirited delivery of the first striking speech, 'On such a day you
called me a dog,' etc., I perceived it was a hollow thing. So it was
given out in the _Chronicle_; but Perry was continually at me as other
people were at him, and was afraid it would not last. It was to no
purpose I said _it would last:_ yet I am in the right hitherto. It has
been said, ridiculously, that Mr. Kean was written up in the
_Chronicle._ I beg leave to state my opinion that no actor can be
written up or down by a paper. An author may be puffed into notice, or
damned by criticism, because his book may not have been read. An artist
may be overrated, or undeservedly decried, because the public is not
much accustomed to see or judge of pictures. But an actor is judged by
his peers, the play-going public, and must stand or fall by his own
merits or defects. The critic may give the tone or have a casting voice
where popular opinion is divided; but he can no more _force_ that
opinion either way, or wrest it from its base in common sense and
feeling, than he can move Stonehenge. Mr. Kean had, however, physical
disadvantages and strong prejudices to encounter, and so far the
_liberal_ and _independent_ part of the press might have been of service
in helping him to his seat in the public favour. May he long keep it
with dignity and firmness![2]
It was pretended by the Covent Garden people, and some others at the
time, that Mr. Kean's popularity was a mere effect of love of novelty, a
nine days' wonder, like the rage after Master Betty's acting, and would
be as soon over. The comparison did not hold. Master Betty's acting
was so far wonderful, and drew crowds to see it as a mere singularity,
because he was a boy. Mr. Kean was a grown man, and there was no rule
or precedent established in the ordinary course of nature why some other
man should not appear in tragedy as great as John Kemble. Farther,
Master Betty's acting was a singular phenomenon, but it was also as
beautiful as it was singular. I saw him in the part of Douglas, and he
seemed almost like 'some gay creature of the element,' moving about
gracefully, with all the flexibility of youth, and murmuring AEolian
sounds with plaintive tenderness. I shall never forget the way in which
he repeated the line in which young Norval says, speaking of the fate of
two brothers:
And in my mind happy was he that died!
The tones fell and seemed to linger prophetic on my ear. Perhaps the
wonder was made greater than it was. Boys at that age can often read
remarkably well, and certainly are not without natural grace and
sweetness of voice. The Westminster schoolboys are a better company of
comedians than we find at most of our theatres. As to the understanding
a part like Douglas, at least, I see no difficulty on that score. I
myself used to recite the speech in Enfield's _Speaker_ with good
emphasis and discretion when at school, and entered, about the same age,
into the wild sweetness of the sentiments in Mrs. Radcliffe's _Romance
of the Forest_, I am sure, quite as much as I should do now; yet the
same experiment has been often tried since and has uniformly failed.[3]
It was soon after this that Coleridge returned from Italy, and he got
one day into a long tirade to explain what a ridiculous farce the whole
was, and how all the people abroad wore shocked at the _gullibility_ of
the English nation, who on this and every other occasion were open to
the artifices of all sorts of quacks, wondering how any persons with the
smallest pretensions to common sense could for a moment suppose that a
boy could act the characters of men without any of their knowledge,
their experience, or their passions. We made some faint resistance, but
in vain. The discourse then took a turn, and Coleridge began a laboured
eulogy on some promising youth, the son of an English artist, whom he
had met in Italy, and who had wandered all over the Campagna with him,
whose talents, he assured us, were the admiration of all Rome, and whose
early designs had almost all the grace and purity of Raphael's. At
last, some one interrupted the endless theme by saying a little
impatiently, 'Why just now you would not let us believe our own eyes and
ears about young Betty, because you have a theory against premature
talents, and now you start a boy phenomenon that nobody knows anything
about but yourself--a young artist that, you tell us, is to rival
Raphael!' The truth is, we like to have something to admire ourselves,
as well as to make other people gape and stare at; but then it must be a
discovery of our own, an idol of our own making and setting up:--if
others stumble on the discovery before us, or join in crying it up to
the skies, we then set to work to prove that this is a vulgar delusion,
and show our sagacity and freedom from prejudice by pulling it in pieces
with all the coolness imaginable. Whether we blow the bubble or crush
it in our hands, vanity and the desire of empty distinction are equally
at the bottom of our sanguine credulity or fastidious scepticism. There
are some who always fall in with the fashionable prejudice as others
affect singularity of opinion on all such points, according as they
think they have more or less wit to judge for themselves.
If a little varnishing and daubing, a little puffing and quacking, and
giving yourself a good name, and getting a friend to speak a word for
you, is excusable in any profession, it is, I think, in that of
painting. Painting is an occult science, and requires a little
ostentation and mock-gravity in the professor. A man may here rival
Katterfelto, 'with his hair on end at his own wonders, wondering for his
bread'; for, if he does not, he may in the end go without it. He may
ride on a high-trotting horse, in green spectacles, and attract notice
to his person anyhow he can, if he only works hard at his profession.
If 'it only is when he is _out_ he is acting,' let him make the fools
stare, but give others something worth looking at. Good Mr. Carver and
Gilder, good Mr. Printer's Devil, good Mr. Billsticker, 'do me your
offices' unmolested! Painting is a plain ground, and requires a great
many heraldic quarterings and facings to set it off. Lay on, and do not
spare. No man's merit can be fairly judged of if he is not known; and
how can he be known if he keeps entirely in the background?[4] A great
name in art goes but a little way, is chilled as it creeps along the
surface of the world without something to revive and make it blaze up
with fresh splendour. Fame is here almost obscurity. It is long before
your name affixed to a sterling design will be spelt out by an
undiscerning regardless public. Have it proclaimed, therefore, as a
necessary precaution, by sound of trumpet at the corners of the street,
let it be stuck as a label in your mouth, carry it on a placard at your
back. Otherwise, the world will never trouble themselves about you, or
will very soon forget you. A celebrated artist of the present day,
whose name is engraved at the bottom of some of the most touching
specimens of English art, once had a frame-maker call on him, who, on
entering his room, exclaimed with some surprise, 'What, are you a
painter, sir?' The other made answer, a little startled in his turn,
'Why, didn't you know that? Did you never see my name at the bottom of
prints?' He could not recollect that he had. 'And yet you sell
picture-frames and prints?'--'Yes.'--'What painter's names, then, did he
recollect: did he know West's?' 'Oh! yes.'--'And Opie's?' 'Yes.'--'And
Fuseli's?' 'Oh! yes.'--'But you never heard of me?' 'I cannot say that
I ever did!' It was plain from this conversation that Mr. Northcote had
not kept company enough with picture-dealers and newspaper critics. On
another occasion, a country gentleman, who was sitting to him for his
portrait, asked him if he had any pictures in the Exhibition at Somerset
House, and on his replying in the affirmative, desired to know what they
were. He mentioned, among others, The Marriage of Two Children; on
which the gentleman expressed great surprise, and said that was the very
picture his wife was always teasing him to go and have another look at,
though he had never noticed the painter's name. When the public are so
eager to be amused, and care so little who it is that amuses them, it is
not amiss to remind them of it now and then; or even to have a starling
taught to repeat the name, to which they owe such misprised obligations,
in their drowsy ears. On any other principle I cannot conceive how
painters (not without genius or industry) can fling themselves at the
head of the public in the manner they do, having lives written of
themselves, busts made of themselves, prints stuck in the shop-windows
of themselves, and their names placed in 'the first row of the rubric,'
with those of Rubens, Raphael, and Michael Angelo, swearing by
themselves or their proxies that these glorified spirits would do well
to leave the abodes of the blest in order to stand in mute wonder and
with uplifted hands before some production of theirs which is yet hardly
dry! Oh! whatever you do, leave that string untouched. It will jar the
rash and unhallowed hand that meddles with it. Profane not the mighty
dead by mixing them up with the uncanonised living. Leave yourself a
reversion in immortality, beyond the noisy clamour of the day. Do not
quite lose your respect for public opinion by making it in all cases a
palpable cheat, the echo of your own lungs that are hoarse with calling
on the world to admire. Do not think to bully posterity, or to cozen
your contemporaries. Be not always anticipating the effect of your
picture on the town--think more about deserving success than commanding
it. In issuing so many promissory notes upon the bank of fame, do not
forget you have to pay in sterling gold. Believe that there is
something in the pursuit of high art, beyond the manufacture of a
paragraph or the collection of receipts at the door of an exhibition.
Venerate art as art. Study the works of others, and inquire into those
of nature. Gaze at beauty. Become great by great efforts, and not by
pompous pretensions. Do not think the world was blind to merit before
your time, nor make the reputation of great geniuses the stalking-horse
to your vanity. You have done enough to insure yourself attention: you
have now only to do something to deserve it, and to make good all that
you have aspired to do.
There is a silent and systematic assumption of superiority which is as
barefaced and unprincipled an imposture as the most impudent puffing.
You may, by a tacit or avowed censure on all other arts, on all works of
art, on all other pretensions, tastes, talents, but your own, produce a
complete ostracism in the world of intellect, and leave yourself and
your own performances alone standing, a mighty monument in an universal
waste and wreck of genius. By cutting away the rude block and removing
the rubbish from around it, the idol may be effectually exposed to view,
placed on its pedestal of pride, without any other assistance. This
method is more inexcusable than the other. For there is no egotism or
vanity so hateful as that which strikes at our satisfaction in
everything else, and derives its nourishment from preying, like the
vampire, on the carcase of others' reputation. I would rather, in a
word, that a man should talk for ever of himself with vapid, senseless
assurance, than preserve a malignant, heartless silence when the merit
of a rival is mentioned. I have seen instances of both, and can judge
pretty well between them.
There is no great harm in putting forward one's own pretensions (of
whatever kind) if this does not bear a sour, malignant aspect towards
others. Every one sets himself off to the best advantage he can, and
tries to steal a march upon public opinion. In this sense, too, 'all
the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.' Life
itself is a piece of harmless quackery. A great house over your head is
of no use but to announce the great man within. Dress, equipage, title,
livery-servants are only so many quack advertisements and assumptions of
the question of merit. The star that glitters at the breast would be
worth nothing but as a badge of personal distinction; and the crown
itself is but a symbol of the virtues which the possessor inherits from
a long line of illustrious ancestors! How much honour and honesty have
been forfeited to be graced with a title or a ribbon; how much genius
and worth have sunk to the grave without an escutcheon and without an
epitaph!
As men of rank and fortune keep lackeys to reinforce their claims to
self-respect, so men of genius sometimes surround themselves with a
coterie of admirers to increase their reputation with the public. These
_proneurs,_ or satellites, repeat all their good things, laugh loud at
all their jokes, and remember all their oracular decrees. They are
their shadows and echoes. They talk of them in all companies, and bring
back word of all that has been said about them. They hawk the good
qualities of their patrons as shopmen and _barkers_ tease you to buy
goods. I have no notion of this vanity at second-hand; nor can I see
how this servile testimony from inferiors ('some followers of mine own')
can be a proof of merit. It may soothe the ear, but that it should
impose on the understanding, I own, surprises me; yet there are persons
who cannot exist without a _cortege_ of this kind about them, in which
they smiling read the opinion of the world, in the midst of all sorts of
rancorous abuse and hostility, as Otho called for his mirror in the
Illyrian field. One good thing is, that this evil, in some degree,
cures itself; and when a man has been nearly ruined by a herd of these
sycophants, he finds them leaving him, like thriftless dependants, for
some more eligible situation, carrying away with them all the tattle
they can pick up, and some left-off suit of finery. The same proneness
to adulation which made them lick the dust before one idol makes them
bow as low to the rising Sun; they are as lavish of detraction as they
were prurient with praise; and the _protege_ and admirer of the editor
of the ----- figures in Blackwood's train. The man is a lackey, and it
is of little consequence whose livery he wears!
I would advise those who volunteer the office of puffing to go the whole
length of it. No half-measures will do. Lay it on thick and threefold,
or not at all. If you are once harnessed into that vehicle, it will be
in vain for you to think of stopping. You must drive to the devil at
once. The mighty Tamburlane, to whose car you are yoked, cries out:
Holloa, you pamper'd jades of Asia,
Can you not drive but twenty miles a day?
He has you on the hip, for you have pledged your taste and judgment to
his genius. Never fear but he will drive this wedge. If you are once
screwed into such a machine, you must extricate yourself by main force.
No hyperboles are too much: any drawback, any admiration on this side
idolatry, is high treason. It is an unpardonable offence to say that
the last production of your patron is not so good as the one before it,
or that a performer shines more in one character than another. I
remember once hearing a player declare that he never looked into any
newspapers or magazines on account of the abuse that was always levelled
at himself in them, though there were not less than three persons in
company who made it their business through these conduit pipes of fame
to 'cry him up to the top of the compass.' This sort of expectation is
a little _exigeante!_
One fashionable mode of acquiring reputation is by patronising it. This
may be from various motives--real good nature, good taste, vanity, or
pride. I shall only speak of the spurious ones in this place. The
quack and the _would-be_ patron are well met. The house of the latter
is a sort of curiosity shop or _menagerie,_ where all sorts of
intellectual pretenders and grotesques, musical children, arithmetical
prodigies, occult philosophers, lecturers, _accoucheurs,_ apes,
chemists, fiddlers, and buffoons are to be seen for the asking, and are
shown to the company for nothing. The folding doors are thrown open,
and display a collection that the world cannot parallel again. There
may be a few persons of common sense and established reputation, _rari
nantes in gurgite vasto,_ otherwise it is a mere scramble or lottery.
The professed encourager of _virtu_ and letters, being disappointed of
the great names, sends out into the highways for the halt, the lame, and
the blind, for all who pretend to distinction, defects, and obliquities,
for all the disposable vanity or affectation floating on the town, in
hopes that, among so many oddities, chance may bring some jewel or
treasure to his door, which he may have the good fortune to appropriate
in some way to his own use, or the credit of displaying to others. The
art is to encourage rising genius--to bring forward doubtful and
unnoticed merit. You thus get a set of novices and raw pretenders about
you, whose actual productions do not interfere with your self-love, and
whose future efforts may reflect credit on your singular sagacity and
faculty for finding out talent in the germ; and in the next place, by
having them completely in your power, you are at liberty to dismiss them
whenever you will, and to supply the deficiency by a new set of
wondering, unwashed faces in a rapid succession; an 'aiery of children,'
embryo actors, artists, poets, or philosophers. Like unfledged birds,
they are hatched, nursed, and fed by hand: this gives room for a vast
deal of management, meddling, care, and condescending solicitude; but
the instant the callow brood are fledged, they are driven from the nest,
and forced to shift for themselves in the wide world. One sterling
production decides the question between them and their patrons, and from
that time they become the property of the public. Thus a succession of
importunate, hungry, idle, overweening candidates for fame are
encouraged by these fickle keepers, only to be betrayed, and left to
starve or beg, or pine in obscurity, while the man of merit and
respectability is neglected, discountenanced, and stigmatised, because
he will not lend himself as a tool to this system of splendid
imposition, or pamper the luxury and weaknesses of the Vulgar Great.
When a young artist is too independent to subscribe to the dogmas of his
superiors, or fulfils their predictions and prognostics of wonderful
contingent talent too soon, so as to get out of leading-strings, and
lean on public opinion for partial support, exceptions are taken to his
dress, dialect, or manners, and he is expelled the circle with a
character for ingratitude and treachery. None can procure toleration
long but those who do not contradict the opinions or excite the jealousy
of their betters. One independent step is an appeal from them to the
public, their natural and hated rivals, and annuls the contract between
them, which implies ostentatious countenance on the one part and servile
submission on the other. But enough of this.
The patronage of men of talent, even when it proceeds from vanity, is
often carried on with a spirit of generosity and magnificence, as long
as these are in difficulties and a state of dependence; but as the
principle of action in this case is a love of power, the complacency in
the object of friendly regard ceases with the opportunity or necessity
for the same manifest display of power; and when the unfortunate
_protege_ is just coming to land, and expects a last helping hand, he
is, to his surprise, pushed back, in order that he may be saved from
drowning once more. You are not hailed ashore, as you had supposed, by
these kind friends, as a mutual triumph after all your struggles and
their exertions in your behalf. It is a piece of presumption in you to
be seen walking on _terra firma_: you are required, at the risk of their
friendship, to be always swimming in troubled waters, that they may have
the credit of throwing out ropes, and sending out lifeboats to you,
without ever bringing you ashore. Your successes, your reputation,
which you think would please them, as justifying their good opinion, are
coldly received, and looked at askance, because they remove your
dependence on them: if you are under a cloud, they do all they can to
keep you there by their goodwill: they are so sensible of your gratitude
that they wish your obligations never to cease, and take care you shall
owe no one else a good turn; and provided you are compelled or contented
to remain always in poverty, obscurity, and disgrace, they will continue
your very good friends and humble servants to command, to the end of the
chapter. The tenure of these indentures is hard. Such persons will
wilfully forfeit the gratitude created by years of friendship, by
refusing to perform the last act of kindness that is likely ever to be
demanded of them: will lend you money, if you have no chance of repaying
them: will give you their good word, if nobody will believe it; and the
only thing they do not forgive is an attempt or probability on your part
of being able to repay your obligations. There is something
disinterested in all this: at least, it does not show a cowardly or
mercenary disposition, but it savours too much of arrogance and
arbitrary pretension. It throws a damning light on this question, to
consider who are mostly the subjects of the patronage of the great, and
in the habit of receiving cards of invitation to splendid dinners. I
confess, for one, I am not on the list; at which I do not grieve much,
nor wonder at all. Authors, in general, are not in much request. Dr.
Johnson was asked why he was not more frequently invited out; and he
said, 'Because great lords and ladies do not like to have their mouths
stopped.' Garrick was not in this predicament: he could amuse the
company in the drawing-room by imitating the great moralist and
lexicographer, and make the negro-boy in the courtyard die with laughing
to see him take off the swelling airs and strut of the turkey-cock.
This was clever and amusing, but it did not involve an opinion, it did
not lead to a difference of sentiment, in which the owner of the house
might be found in the wrong. Players, singers, dancers, are hand and
glove with the great. They embellish, and have an _eclat_ in their
names, but do not come into collision. Eminent portrait-painters,
again, are tolerated, because they come into personal contact with the
great; and sculptors hold equality with lords when they have a certain
quantity of solid marble in their workshops to answer for the solidity
of their pretensions. People of fashion and property must have
something to show for their patronage, something visible or tangible. A
sentiment is a visionary thing; an argument may lead to dangerous
consequences, and those who are likely to broach either one or the other
ate not, therefore, fit for good company in general. Poets and men of
genius who find their way there, soon find their way out. They are not
of that ilk, with some exceptions. Painters who come in contact with
majesty get on by servility or buffoonery, by letting themselves down in
some way. Sir Joshua was never a favourite at court. He kept too much
at a distance. Beechey gained a vast deal of favour by familiarity, and
lost it by taking too great freedoms.[5] West ingratiated himself in
the same quarter by means of practices as little creditable to himself
as his august employer, namely, by playing the hypocrite, and professing
sentiments the reverse of those he naturally felt. Kings (I know not
how justly) have been said to be lovers of low company and low
conversation. They are also said to be fond of dirty practical jokes.
If the fact is so, the reason is as follows. From the elevation of
their rank, aided by pride and flattery, they look down on the rest of
mankind, and would not be thought to have all their advantages for
nothing. They wish to maintain the same precedence in private life that
belongs to them as a matter of outward ceremony. This pretension they
cannot keep up by fair means; for in wit or argument they are not
superior to the common run of men. They therefore answer a repartee by
a practical joke, which turns the laugh against others, and cannot be
retaliated with safety. That is, they avail themselves of the privilege
of their situation to take liberties, and degrade those about them, as
they can only keep up the idea of their own dignity by proportionably
lowering their company.
NOTES to ESSAY XIV
[1] It is calculated that West cleared some hundred pounds by the
catalogues that were sold of his great picture of Death riding on the
Pale Horse.
[2] I cannot say how in this respect it might have fared if a Mr.
Mudford, a fat gentleman, who might not have 'liked yon lean and hungry
Roscius,' had continued in the theatrical department of Mr. Perry's
paper at the time of this actor's first appearance; but I had been put
upon this duty just before, and afterwards Mr. Mudford's _spare_ talents
were not in much request. This, I believe, is the reason why he takes
pains every now and then to inform the readers of the _Courier_ that it
is impossible for any one to understand a word that I write.
[3] I (not very long ago) had the pleasure of spending an evening with
Mr. Betty, when we had some 'good talk' about the good old times of
acting. I wanted to insinuate that I had been a sneaking admirer, but
could not bring it in. As, however, we were putting on our greatcoats
downstairs I ventured to break the ice by saying, 'There is one actor of
that period of whom we have not made honourable mention, I mean Master
Betty.' 'Oh!' he said, 'I have forgot all that.' I replied, that he
might, but that I could not forget the pleasure I had had in seeing him.
On which he turned off, and, shaking his sides heartily, and with no
measured demand upon his lungs, called out, 'Oh, memory! memory!' in a
way that showed he felt the full force of the allusion. I found
afterwards that the subject did not offend, and we were to have drunk
some Burton ale together the following evening, but were prevented. I
hope he will consider that the engagement still stands good.
[4] Sir Joshua, who was not a vain man, purchased a tawdry sheriff's
carriage, soon after he took his house in Leicester Fields, and desired
his sister to ride about in it, in order that people might ask, 'Whose
it was?' and the answer would be, 'It belongs to the great painter!'
[5] Sharp became a great favourite of the king on the following
occasion. It was the custom, when the king went through the lobbies of
the palace, for those who preceded him to cry out, 'Sharp, sharp, look
sharp!' in order to clear the way. Mr. Sharp, who was waiting in a room
just by (preparing some colours), hearing his name repeated so urgently,
ran out in great haste, and came up with all his force against the king,
who was passing the door at the time. The young artist was knocked down
in the encounter, and the attendants were in the greatest consternation;
but the king laughed heartily at the adventure, and took great notice of
the unfortunate subject of it from that time forward.]
ESSAY XV
ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER
It is astonishing, with all our opportunities and practice, how little
we know of this subject. For myself, I feel that the more I learn, the
less I understand it.
I remember, several years ago, a conversation in the diligence coming
from Paris, in which, on its being mentioned that a man had married his
wife after thirteen years' courtship, a fellow-countryman of mine
observed, that 'then, at least, he would be acquainted with her
character'; when a Monsieur P----, inventor and proprietor of the
_Invisible Girl,_ made answer, 'No, not at all; for that the very next
day she might turn out the very reverse of the character that she had
appeared in during all the preceding time.'[1] I could not help
admiring the superior sagacity of the French juggler, and it struck me
then that we could never be sure when we had got at the bottom of this
riddle.
There are various ways of getting at a knowledge of character--by looks,
words, actions. The first of these, which seems the most superficial,
is perhaps the safest, and least liable to deceive: nay, it is that
which mankind, in spite of their pretending to the contrary, most
generally go by. Professions pass for nothing, and actions may be
counterfeited; but a man cannot help his looks. 'Speech,' said a
celebrated wit, 'was given to man to conceal his thoughts.' Yet I do not
know that the greatest hypocrites are the least silent. The mouth of
Cromwell is pursed up in the portraits of him, as if he was afraid to
trust himself with words. Lord Chesterfield advises us, if we wish to
know the real sentiments of the person we are conversing with, to look
in his face, for he can more easily command his words than his features.
A man's whole life may be a lie to himself and others; and yet a
picture painted of him by a great artist would probably stamp his true
character on the canvas, and betray the secret to posterity. Men's
opinions were divided, in their lifetimes, about such prominent
personages as Charles V. and Ignatius Loyola, partly, no doubt, from
passion and interest, but partly from contradictory evidence in their
ostensible conduct: the spectator, who has ever seen their pictures by
Titian, judges of them at once, and truly. I had rather leave a good
portrait of myself behind me than have a fine epitaph. The face, for
the most part, tells what we have thought and felt--the rest is nothing.
I have a higher idea of Donne from a rude, half-effaced outline of him
prefixed to his poems than from anything he ever wrote. Caesar's
_Commentaries_ would not have redeemed him in my opinion, if the bust of
him had resembled the Duke of Wellington. My old friend Fawcett used to
say, that if Sir Isaac Newton himself had lisped, he could not have
thought anything of him. So I cannot persuade myself that any one is a
great man who looks like a fool. In this I may be wrong.
First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not unfrequently) to
our cost when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions
or actions. A man's look is the work of years, it is stamped on his
countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of
nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily. There is, as it has been
remarked repeatedly, something in a person's appearance at first sight
which we do not like, and that gives us an odd twinge, but which is
overlooked in a multiplicity of other circumstances, till the mask is
taken off, and we see this lurking character verified in the plainest
manner in the sequel. We are struck at first, and by chance, with what
is peculiar and characteristic; also with permanent _traits_ and general
effect: this afterwards goes off in a set of unmeaning, common-place
details. This sort of _prima facie_ evidence, then, shows what a man is
better than what he says or does; for it shows us the habit of his mind,
which is the same under all circumstances and disguises. You will say,
on the other hand, that there is no judging by appearances, as a general
rule. No one, for instance, would take such a person for a very clever
man without knowing who he was. Then, ten to one, he is not: he may
have got the reputation, but it is a mistake. You say, there is Mr.
-----, undoubtedly a person of great genius; yet, except when excited by
something extraordinary, he seems half dead. He has wit at will, yet
wants life and spirit. He is capable of the most generous acts, yet
meanness seems to cling to every motion. He looks like a poor
creature--and in truth he is one! The first impression he gives you of
him answers nearly to the feeling he has of his personal identity; and
this image of himself, rising from his thoughts, and shrouding his
faculties, is that which sits with him in the house, walks out with him
into the street, and haunts his bedside. The best part of his existence
is dull, cloudy, leaden: the flashes of light that proceed from it, or
streak it here and there, may dazzle others, but do not deceive himself.
Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a real confession of the
deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly
undervalued by others. Whatever good properties he may possess are, in
fact, neutralised by a 'cold rheum' running through his veins, and
taking away the zest of his pretensions, the pith and marrow of his
performances. What is it to me that I can write these TABLE-TALKS? It
is true I can, by a reluctant effort, rake up a parcel of half-forgotten
observations, but they do not float on the surface of my mind, nor stir
it with any sense of pleasure, nor even of pride. Others have more
property in them than I have: they may reap the benefit, I have only had
the pain. Otherwise, they are to me as if they bad never existed; nor
should I know that I had ever thought at all, but that I am reminded of
it by the strangeness of my appearance, and my unfitness for everything
else. Look in Coleridge's face while he is talking. His words are such
as might 'create a soul under the ribs of death.' His face is a blank.
Which are we to consider as the true index of his mind? Pain, languor,
shadowy remembrances, are the uneasy inmates there: his lips move
mechanically!
There are people that we do not like, though we may have known them
long, and have no fault to find with them, 'their appearance, as we say,
is so much against them.' That is not all, if we could find it out.
There is, generally, a reason for this prejudice; for nature is true to
itself. They may be very good sort of people too, in their way, but
still something is the matter. There is a coldness, a selfishness, a
levity, an insincerity, which we cannot fix upon any particular phrase
or action, but we see it in their whole persons and deportment. One
reason that we do not see it in any other way may be, that they are all
the time trying to conceal this defect by every means in their power.
There is, luckily, a sort of _second sight_ in morals: we discern the
lurking indications of temper and habit a long while before their
palpable effects appear. I once used to meet with a person at an
ordinary, a very civil, good-looking man in other respects, but with an
odd look about his eyes, which I could not explain, as if he saw you
under their fringed lids, and you could not see him again: this man was
a common sharper. The greatest hypocrite I ever knew was a little,
demure, pretty, modest-looking girl, with eyes timidly cast upon the
ground, and an air soft as enchantment; the only circumstance that could
lead to a suspicion of her true character was a cold, sullen, watery,
glazed look about the eyes, which she bent on vacancy, as if determined
to avoid all explanation with yours. I might have spied in their
glittering, motionless surface the rocks and quicksands that awaited me
below! We do not feel quite at ease in the company or friendship of
those who have any natural obliquity or imperfection of person. The
reason is, they are not on the best terms with themselves, and are
sometimes apt to play off on others the tricks that nature has played
them. This, however, is a remark that, perhaps, ought not to have been
made. I know a person to whom it has been objected as a
disqualification for friendship, that he never shakes you cordially by
the hand. I own this is a damper to sanguine and florid temperaments,
who abound in these practical demonstrations and 'compliments extern.'
The same person who testifies the least pleasure at meeting you, is the
last to quit his seat in your company, grapples with a subject in
conversation right earnestly, and is, I take it, backward to give up a
cause or a friend. Cold and distant in appearance, he piques himself on
being the king of _good haters,_ and a no less zealous partisan. The
most phlegmatic constitutions often contain the most inflammable
spirits--a fire is struck from the hardest flints.
And this is another reason that makes it difficult to judge of
character. Extremes meet; and qualities display themselves by the most
contradictory appearances. Any inclination, in consequence of being
generally suppressed, vents itself the more violently when an
opportunity presents itself: the greatest grossness sometimes
accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief, one to the
other; and we find the most reserved and indifferent tempers at the
beginning of an entertainment, or an acquaintance, turn out the most
communicative and cordial at the end of it. Some spirits exhaust
themselves at first: others gain strength by progression. Some minds
have a greater facility of throwing off impressions--are, as it were,
more transparent or porous than others. Thus the French present a
marked contrast to the English in this respect. A Frenchman addresses
you at once with a sort of lively indifference: an Englishman is more on
his guard, feels his way, and is either exceedingly reserved, or lets
you into his whole confidence, which he cannot so well impart to an
entire stranger. Again, a Frenchman is naturally humane: an Englishman
is, I should say, only friendly by habit. His virtues and his vices
cost him more than they do his more gay and volatile neighbours. An
Englishman is said to speak his mind more plainly than others,--yes, if
it will give you pain to hear it. He does not care whom he offends by
his discourse: a foreigner generally strives to oblige in what he says.
The French are accused of promising more than they perform. That may
be, and yet they may perform as many good-natured acts as the English,
if the latter are as averse to perform as they are to promise. Even the
professions of the French may be sincere at the time, or arise out of
the impulse of the moment; though their desire to serve you may be
neither very violent nor very lasting. I cannot think, notwithstanding,
that the French are not a serious people; nay, that they are not a more
reflecting people than the common run of the English. Let those who
think them merely light and mercurial explain that enigma, their
everlasting prosing tragedy. The English are considered as
comparatively a slow, plodding people. If the French are quicker, they
are also more plodding. See, for example, how highly finished and
elaborate their works of art are! How systematic and correct they aim
at being in all their productions of a graver cast! 'If the French have
a fault,' as Yorick said, 'it is that they are too grave.' With wit,
sense, cheerfulness, patience, good-nature, and refinement of manners,
all they want is imagination and sturdiness of moral principle! Such
are some of the contradictions in the character of the two nations, and
so little does the character of either appear to have been understood!
Nothing can be more ridiculous indeed than the way in which we
exaggerate each other's vices and extenuate our own. The whole is an
affair of prejudice on one side of the question, and of partiality on
the other. Travellers who set out to carry back a true report of the
case appear to lose not only the use of their understandings, but of
their senses, the instant they set foot in a foreign land. The
commonest facts and appearances are distorted and discoloured. They go
abroad with certain preconceived notions on the subject, and they make
everything answer, in reason's spite, to their favourite theory. In
addition to the difficulty of explaining customs and manners foreign to
our own, there are all the obstacles of wilful prepossession thrown in
the way. It is not, therefore, much to be wondered at that nations have
arrived at so little knowledge of one another's characters; and that,
where the object has been to widen the breach between them, any slight
differences that occur are easily blown into a blaze of fury by repeated
misrepresentations, and all the exaggerations that malice or folly can
invent!
This ignorance of character is not confined to foreign nations: we are
ignorant of that of our own countrymen in a class a little below or
above ourselves. We shall hardly pretend to pronounce magisterially on
the good or bad qualities of strangers; and, at the same time, we are
ignorant of those of our friends, of our kindred, and of our own. We
are in all these cases either too near or too far off the object to
judge of it properly.
Persons, for instance, in a higher or middle rank of life know little or
nothing of the characters of those below them, as servants, country
people, etc. I would lay it down in the first place as a general rule
on this subject, that all uneducated people are hypocrites. Their sole
business is to deceive. They conceive themselves in a state of
hostility with others, and stratagems are fair in war. The inmates of
the kitchen and the parlour are always (as far as respects their
feelings and intentions towards each other) in Hobbes's; 'state of
nature.' Servants and others in that line of life have nothing to
exercise their spare talents for invention upon but those about them.
Their superfluous electrical particles of wit and fancy are not carried
off by those established and fashionable conductors, novels and
romances. Their faculties are not buried in books, but all alive and
stirring, erect and bristling like a cat's back. Their coarse
conversation sparkles with 'wild wit, invention ever new.' Their
betters try all they can to set themselves up above them, and they try
all they can to pull them down to their own level. They do this by
getting up a little comic interlude, a daily, domestic, homely drama out
of the odds and ends of the family failings, of which there is in
general a pretty plentiful supply, or make up the deficiency of
materials out of their own heads. They turn the qualities of their
masters and mistresses inside out, and any real kindness or
condescension only sets them the more against you. They are not to be
taken in that way--they will not be baulked in the spite they have to
you. They only set to work with redoubled alacrity, to lessen the
favour or to blacken your character. They feel themselves like a
degraded _caste,_ and cannot understand how the obligations can be all
on one side, and the advantages all on the other. You cannot come to
equal terms with them--they reject all such overtures as insidious and
hollow--nor can you ever calculate upon their gratitude or goodwill, any
more than if they were so many strolling Gipsies or wild Indians. They
have no fellow-feeling, they keep no faith with the more privileged
classes. They are in your power, and they endeavour to be even with you
by trick and cunning, by lying and chicanery. In this they have nothing
to restrain them. Their whole life is a succession of shifts, excuses,
and expedients. The love of truth is a principle with those only who
have made it their study, who have applied themselves to the pursuit of
some art or science, where the intellect is severely tasked, and learns
by habit to take a pride in, and to set a just value on, the correctness
of its conclusions. To have a disinterested regard to truth, the mind
must have contemplated it in abstract and remote questions; whereas the
ignorant and vulgar are only conversant with those things in which their
own interest is concerned. All their notions are local, personal, and
consequently gross and selfish. They say whatever comes uppermost--turn
whatever happens to their own account--and invent any story, or give any
answer that suits their purposes. Instead of being bigoted to general
principles, they trump up any lie for the occasion, and the more of a
_thumper_ it is, the better they like it; the more unlooked-for it is,
why, so much the more of a _God-send!_ They have no conscience about
the matter; and if you find them out in any of their manoeuvres, are not
ashamed of themselves, but angry with you. If you remonstrate with
them, they laugh in your face. The only hold you have of them is their
interest--you can but dismiss them from your employment; and _service is
no inheritance._ If they effect anything like decent remorse, and hope
you will pass it over, all the while they are probably trying to recover
the wind of you. Persons of liberal knowledge or sentiments have no
kind of chance in this sort of mixed intercourse with these barbarians
in civilised life. You cannot tell, by any signs or principles, what is
passing in their minds. There is no common point of view between you.
You have not the same topics to refer to, the same language to express
yourself. Your interests, your feelings are quite distinct. You take
certain things for granted as rules of action: they take nothing for
granted but their own ends, pick up all their knowledge out of their own
occasions, are on the watch only for what they can catch--are
Subtle as the fox for prey:
Like warlike as the wolf, for what they eat.
They have indeed a regard to their character, as this last may affect
their livelihood or advancement, none as it is connected with a sense of
propriety; and this sets their mother-wit and native talents at work
upon a double file of expedients, to bilk their consciences, and salve
their reputation. In short, you never know where to have them, any more
than if they were of a different species of animals; and in trusting to
them, you are sure to be betrayed and overreached. You have other
things to mind; they are thinking only of you, and how to turn you to
advantage. _Give and take_ is no maxim here. You can build nothing on
your own moderation or on their false delicacy. After a familiar
conversation with a waiter at a tavern, you overhear him calling you by
some provoking nickname. If you make a present to the daughter of the
house where you lodge, the mother is sure to recollect some addition to
her bill. It is a running fight. In fact, there is a principle in
human nature not willingly to endure the idea of a superior, a sour,
jacobinical disposition to wipe out the score of obligation, or efface
the tinsel of external advantages--and where others have the opportunity
of coming in contact with us, they generally find the means to establish
a sufficiently marked degree of degrading equality. No man is a hero to
his valet-de-chambre, is an old maxim. A new illustration of this
principle occurred the other day. While Mrs. Siddons was giving her
readings of Shakespear to a brilliant and admiring drawing-room, one of
the servants in the hall below was saying, 'What, I find the old lady is
making as much noise as ever!' So little is there in common between the
different classes of society, and so impossible is it ever to unite the
diversities of custom and knowledge which separate them.
Women, according to Mrs. Peachum, are 'bitter bad judges' of the
characters of men; and men are not much better of theirs, if we can form
any guess from their choice in marriage. Love is proverbially blind.
The whole is an affair of whim and fancy. Certain it is that the
greatest favourites with the other sex are not those who are most liked
or respected among their own. I never knew but one clever man who was
what is called a _lady's man;_ and he (unfortunately for the argument)
happened to be a considerable coxcomb. It was by this irresistible
quality, and not by the force of his genius, that he vanquished. Women
seem to doubt their own judgments in love, and to take the opinion which
a man entertains of his own prowess and accomplishments for granted.
The wives of poets are (for the most part) mere pieces of furniture in
the room. If you speak to them of their husbands' talents or reputation
in the world, it is as if you made mention of some office that they
held. It can hardly be otherwise, when the instant any subject is
started or conversation arises, in which men are interested, or try one
another's strength, the women leave the room, or attend to something
else. The qualities, then, in which men are ambitious to excel, and
which ensure the applause of the world,--eloquence, genius, learning,
integrity,--are not those which gain the favour of the fair. I must not
deny, however, that wit and courage have this effect. Neither is youth
or beauty the sole passport to their affections.
The way of woman's will is hard to find,
Harder to hit.
Yet there is some clue to this mystery, some determining cause; for we
find that the same men are universal favourites with women, as others
are uniformly disliked by them. Is not the loadstone that attracts so
powerfully, and in all circumstances, a strong and undisguised bias
towards them, a marked attention, a conscious preference of them to
every other passing object or topic? I am not sure, but I incline to
think so. The successful lover is the _cavalier servente_ of all
nations. The man of gallantry behaves as if he had made an assignation
with every woman he addresses. An argument immediately draws off my
attention from the prettiest woman in the room. I accordingly succeed
better in argument--than in love!--I do not think that what is called
_Love at first sight_ is so great an absurdity as it is sometimes
imagined to be. We generally make up our minds beforehand to the sort
of person we should like,--grave or gay, black, brown, or fair; with
golden tresses or with raven locks;--and when we meet with a complete
example of the qualities we admire, the bargain is soon struck. We have
never seen anything to come up to our newly-discovered goddess before,
but she is what we have been all our lives looking for. The idol we
fall down and worship is an image familiar to our minds. It has been
present to our waking thoughts, it has haunted us in our dreams, like
some fairy vision. Oh! thou who, the first time I over beheld thee,
didst draw my soul into the circle of thy heavenly looks, and wave
enchantment round me, do not think thy conquest less complete because it
was instantaneous; for in that gentle form (as if another Imogen had
entered) I saw all that I had ever loved of female grace, modesty, and
sweetness!
I shall not say much of friendship as giving an insight into character,
because it is often founded on mutual infirmities and prejudices.
Friendships are frequently taken up on some sudden sympathy, and we see
only as much as we please of one another's characters afterwards.
Intimate friends are not fair witnesses to character, any more than
professed enemies. They cool, indeed, in time, part, and retain only a
rankling grudge of past errors and oversights. Their testimony in the
latter case is not quite free from suspicion.
One would think that near relations, who live constantly together, and
always have done so, must be pretty well acquainted with one another's
characters. They are nearly in the dark about it. Familiarity
confounds all traits of distinction: interest and prejudice take away
the power of judging. We have no opinion on the subject, any more than
of one another's faces. The Penates, the household gods, are veiled.
We do not see the features of those we love, nor do we clearly
distinguish their virtues or their vices. We take them as they are
found in the lump,--by weight, and not by measure. We know all about
the individuals, their sentiments, history, manners, words, actions,
everything; but we know all these too much as facts, as inveterate,
habitual impressions, as clothed with too many associations, as
sanctified with too many affections, as woven too much into the web of
our hearts, to be able to pick out the different threads, to cast up the
items of the debtor and creditor account, or to refer them to any
general standard of right and wrong. Our impressions with respect to
them are too strong, too real, too much _sui generis,_ to be capable of
a comparison with anything but themselves. We hardly inquire whether
those for whom we are thus interested, and to whom we are thus knit, are
_better_ or _worse_ than others--the question is a kind of
profanation--all we know is, they are _more_ to us than any one else can
be. Our sentiments of this kind are rooted and grow in us, and we
cannot eradicate them by voluntary means. Besides, our judgments are
bespoke, our interests take part with our blood. If any doubt arises,
if the veil of our implicit confidence is drawn aside by any accident
for a moment, the shock is too great, like that of a dislocated limb,
and we recoil on our habitual impressions again. Let not that veil ever
be rent entirely asunder, so that those images may be left bare of
reverential awe, and lose their religion; for nothing can ever support
the desolation of the heart afterwards.
The greatest misfortune that can happen among relations is a different
way of bringing up, so as to set one another's opinions and characters
in an entirely new point of view. This often lets in an unwelcome
daylight on the subject, and breeds schisms, coldness, and incurable
heart-burnings in families. I have sometimes thought whether the
progress of society and march of knowledge does not do more harm in this
respect, by loosening the ties of domestic attachment, and preventing
those who are most interested in and anxious to think well of one
another from feeling a cordial sympathy and approbation of each other's
sentiments, manners, views, etc., than it does good by any real
advantage to the community at large. The son, for instance, is brought
up to the Church, and nothing can exceed the pride and pleasure the
father takes in him while all goes on well in this favourite direction.
His notions change, and he imbibes a taste for the Fine Arts. From this
moment there is an end of anything like the same unreserved
communication between them. The young man may talk with enthusiasm of
his 'Rembrandts, Correggios, and stuff': it is all _Hebrew_ to the
elder; and whatever satisfaction he may feel in the hearing of his son's
progress, or good wishes for his success, he is never reconciled to the
new pursuit, he still hankers after the first object that he had set his
mind upon. Again, the grandfather is a Calvinist, who never gets the
better of his disappointment at his son's going over to the Unitarian
side of the question. The matter rests here till the grandson, some
years after, in the fashion of the day and 'infinite agitation of men's
wit,' comes to doubt certain points in the creed in which he has been
brought up, and the affair is all abroad again. Here are three
generations made uncomfortable and in a manner set at variance by a
veering point of theology, and the officious, meddling biblical critics!
Nothing, on the other hand, can be more wretched or common than that
upstart pride and insolent good fortune which is ashamed of its origin;
nor are there many things more awkward than the situation of rich and
poor relations. Happy, much happier, are those tribes and people who
are confined to the same _caste_ and way of life from sire to son, where
prejudices are transmitted like instincts, and where the same unvarying
standard of opinion and refinement blends countless generations in its
improgressive, everlasting mould!
Not only is there a wilful and habitual blindness in near kindred to
each other's defects, but an incapacity to judge from the quantity of
materials, from the contradictoriness of the evidence. The chain of
particulars is too long and massy for us to lift it or put it into the
most approved ethical scales. The concrete result does not answer to
any abstract theory, to any logical definition. There is black, and
white, and grey, square and round--there are too many anomalies, too
many redeeming points, in poor human nature, such as it actually is, for
us to arrive at a smart, summary decision on it. We know too much to
come to any hasty or partial conclusion. We do not pronounce upon the
present act, because a hundred others rise up to contradict it. We
suspend our judgments altogether, because in effect one thing
unconsciously balances another; and perhaps this obstinate, pertinacious
indecision would be the truest philosophy in other cases, where we
dispose of the question of character easily, because we have only the
smallest part of the evidence to decide upon. Real character is not one
thing, but a thousand things; actual qualities do not conform to any
factitious standard in the mind, but rest upon their own truth and
nature. The dull stupor under which we labour in respect of those whom
we have the greatest opportunities of inspecting nearly, we should do
well to imitate before we give extreme and uncharitable verdicts against
those whom we only see in passing or at a distance. If we knew them
better, we should be disposed to say less about them.
In the truth of things, there are none utterly worthless, none without
some drawback on their pretensions or some alloy of imperfection. It
has been observed that a familiarity with the worst characters lessens
our abhorrence of them; and a wonder is often expressed that the
greatest criminals look like other men. The reason is that _they are
like other men in many respects._ If a particular individual was merely
the wretch we read of, or conceive in the abstract, that is, if he was
the mere personified idea of the criminal brought to the bar, he would
not disappoint the spectator, but would look like what he would be--a
monster! But he has other qualities, ideas, feelings, nay, probably
virtues, mixed up with the most profligate habits or desperate acts.
This need not lessen our abhorrence of the crime, though it does of the
criminal; for it has the latter effect only by showing him to us in
different points of view, in which he appears a common mortal, and not
the caricature of vice we took him for, or spotted all over with infamy.
I do not, at the same time, think this is a lax or dangerous, though it
is a charitable view of the subject. In my opinion, no man ever
answered in his own mind (except in the agonies of conscience or of
repentance, in which latter case he throws the imputation from himself
in another way) to the abstract idea of a _murderer._ He may have
killed a man in self-defence, or 'in the trade of war,' or to save
himself from starving, or in revenge for an injury, but always 'so as
with a difference,' or from mixed and questionable motives. The
individual, in reckoning with himself, always takes into the account the
considerations of time, place, and circumstance, and never makes out a
case of unmitigated, unprovoked villainy, of 'pure defecated evil'
against himself. There are degrees in real crimes: we reason and
moralise only by names and in classes. I should be loth, indeed, to say
that 'whatever is, is right'; but almost every actual choice inclines to
it, with some sort of imperfect, unconscious bias. This is the reason,
besides the ends of secrecy, of the invention of _slang_ terms for
different acts of profligacy committed by thieves, pickpockets, etc.
The common names suggest associations of disgust in the minds of others,
which those who live by them do not willingly recognise, and which they
wish to sink in a technical phraseology. So there is a story of a
fellow who, as he was writing down his confession of a murder, stopped
to ask how the word _murder_ was spelt; this, if true, was partly
because his imagination was staggered by the recollection of the thing,
and partly because he shrunk from the verbal admission of it. '_Amen_
stuck in his throat'! The defence made by Eugene Aram of himself
against a charge of murder, some years before, shows that he in
imagination completely flung from himself the _nominal_ crime imputed to
him: he might, indeed, have staggered an old man with a blow, and buried
his body in a cave, and lived ever since upon the money he found upon
him, but there was 'no malice in the case, none at all,' as Peachum
says. The very coolness, subtlety, and circumspection of his defence
(as masterly a legal document as there is upon record) prove that he was
guilty of the act, as much as they prove that he was unconscious of the
_crime_.[2] In the same spirit, and I conceive with great metaphysical
truth, Mr. Coleridge, in his tragedy of _Remorse,_ makes Ordonio (his
chief character) wave the acknowledgment of his meditated guilt to his
own mind, by putting into his mouth that striking soliloquy:
Say, I had lay'd a body in the sun!
Well! in a month there swarm forth from the corse
A thousand, nay, ten thousand sentient beings
In place of that one man. Say I had _kill'd_ him!
Yet who shall tell me, that each one and all
Of these ten thousand lives Is not as happy
As that one life, which being push'd aside,
Made room for these unnumber'd.--Act ii. Sc. 2.
I am not sure, indeed, that I have not got this whole train of
speculation from him; but I should not think the worse of it on that
account. That gentleman, I recollect, once asked me whether I thought
that the different members of a family really liked one another so well,
or had so much attachment, as was generally supposed; and I said that I
conceived the regard they had towards each other was expressed by the
word _interest_ rather than by any other, which he said was the true
answer. I do not know that I could mend it now. Natural affection is
not pleasure in one another's company, nor admiration of one another's
qualities; but it is an intimate and deep knowledge of the things that
affect those to whom we are bound by the nearest ties, with pleasure or
pain; it is an anxious, uneasy fellow-feeling with them, a jealous
watchfulness over their good name, a tender and unconquerable yearning
for their good. The love, in short, we bear them is the nearest to that
we bear ourselves. _Home,_ according to the old saying, _is home, be it
never so homely._ We love ourselves, not according to our deserts, but
our cravings after good: so we love our immediate relations in the next
degree (if not, even sometimes a higher one), because we know best what
they have suffered and what sits nearest to their hearts. We are
implicated, in fact, in their welfare by habit and sympathy, as we are
in our own.
If our devotion to our own interests is much the same as to theirs, we
are ignorant of our own characters for the same reason. We are parties
too much concerned to return a fair verdict, and are too much in the
secret of our own motives or situation not to be able to give a
favourable turn to our actions. We exercise a liberal criticism upon
ourselves, and put off the final decision to a late day. The field is
large and open. Hamlet exclaims, with a noble magnanimity, ' I count
myself indifferent honest, and yet I could accuse me of such things!'
If you could prove to a man that he is a knave, it would not make much
difference in his opinion, his self-love is stronger than his love of
virtue. Hypocrisy is generally used as a mask to deceive the world, not
to impose on ourselves: for once detect the delinquent in his knavery,
and he laughs in your face or glories in his iniquity. This at least
happens except where there is a contradiction in the character, and our
vices are involuntary and at variance with our convictions. One great
difficulty is to distinguish ostensible motives, or such as we
acknowledge to ourselves, from tacit or secret springs of action. A man
changes his opinion readily, he thinks it candour: it is levity of mind.
For the most part, we are stunned and stupid in judging of ourselves.
We are callous by custom to our defects or excellences, unless where
vanity steps in to exaggerate or extenuate them. I cannot conceive how
it is that people are in love with their own persons, or astonished at
their own performances, which are but a nine days' wonder to every one
else. In general it may be laid down that we are liable to this twofold
mistake in judging of our own talents: we, in the first place, nurse the
rickety bantling, we think much of that which has cost us much pains and
labour, and comes against the grain; and we also set little store by
what we do with most ease to ourselves, and therefore best. The works
of the greatest genius are produced almost unconsciously, with an
ignorance on the part of the persons themselves that they have done
anything extraordinary. Nature has done it for them. How little
Shakespear seems to have thought of himself or of his fame! Yet, if 'to
know another well were to know one's self,' he must have been acquainted
with his own pretensions and character, 'who knew all qualities with a
learned spirit.' His eye seems never to have been bent upon himself,
but outwards upon nature. A man who thinks highly of himself may almost
set it down that it is without reason. Milton, notwithstanding, appears
to have had a high opinion of himself, and to have made it good. He was
conscious of his powers, and great by design. Perhaps his
tenaciousness, on the score of his own merit, might arise from an early
habit of polemical writing, in which his pretensions were continually
called to the bar of prejudice and party-spirit, and he had to plead not
guilty to the indictment. Some men have died unconscious of
immortality, as others have almost exhausted the sense of it in their
lifetimes. Correggio might be mentioned as an instance of the one,
Voltaire of the other.
There is nothing that helps a man in his conduct through life more than
a knowledge of his own characteristic weaknesses (which, guarded
against, become his strength), as there is nothing that tends more to
the success of a man's talents than his knowing the limits of his
faculties, which are thus concentrated on some practicable object. One
man can do but one thing. Universal pretensions end in nothing. Or, as
Butler has it, too much wit requires
As much again to govern it.
There are those who have gone, for want of this self-knowledge,
strangely out of their way, and others who have never found it. We find
many who succeed in certain departments, and are yet melancholy and
dissatisfied, because they failed in the one to which they first devoted
themselves, like discarded lovers who pine after their scornful
mistress. I will conclude with observing that authors in general
overrate the extent and value of posthumous fame: for what (as it has
been asked) is the amount even of Shakespear's fame? That in that very
country which boasts his genius and his birth, perhaps, scarce one
person in ten has ever heard of his name or read a syllable of his
writings!
NOTES to ESSAY XV
[1] 'It is not a year or two shows us a man.'--AEmilia, in _Othello._
[2] The bones of the murdered man were dug up in an old hermitage. On
this, as one instance of the acuteness which he displayed all through
the occasion, Aram remarks, 'Where would you expect to find the bones of
a man sooner than in a hermit's cell, except you were to look for them
in a cemetery?'--See _Newgate Calendar_ for the year 1758 or 1759.
ESSAY XVI
ON THE PICTURESQUE AND IDEAL
(A Fragment)
The natural in visible objects is whatever is ordinarily presented to
the senses: the picturesque is that which stands out and catches the
attention by some striking peculiarity: the _ideal_ is that which
answers to the preconceived imagination and appetite in the mind for
love and beauty. The picturesque depends chiefly on the principle of
discrimination or contrast; the _ideal_ on harmony and continuity of
effect: the one surprises, the other satisfies the mind; the one starts
off from a given point, the other reposes on itself; the one is
determined by an excess of form, the other by a concentration of
feeling.
The picturesque may be considered as something like an excrescence on
the face of nature. It runs imperceptibly into the fantastical and
grotesque. Fairies and satyrs are picturesque; but they are scarcely
_ideal._ They are an extreme and unique conception of a certain thing,
but not of what the mind delights in or broods fondly over. The image
created by the artist's hand is not moulded and fashioned by the love of
good and yearning after grace and beauty, but rather the contrary: that
is they are ideal deformity, not ideal beauty. Rubens was perhaps the
most picturesque of painters; but he was almost the least _ideal._ So
Rembrandt was (out of sight) the most picturesque of colourists; as
Correggio was the most _ideal._ In other words, his composition of
light and shade is more a whole, more in unison, more blended into the
same harmonious feeling than Rembrandt's, who staggers by contrast, but
does not soothe by gradation. Correggio's forms, indeed, had a
picturesque air; for they often incline (even when most beautiful) to
the quaintness of caricature. Vandyke, I think, was at once the least
picturesque and least _ideal_ of all the great painters. He was purely
natural, and neither selected from outward forms nor added anything from
his own mind. He owes everything to perfect truth, clearness, and
transparency; and though his productions certainly arrest the eye, and
strike in a room full of pictures, it is from the contrast they present
to other pictures, and from being stripped quite naked of all artificial
advantages. They strike almost as a piece of white paper would, hung up
in the same situation--I began with saying that whatever stands out from
a given line, and as it were projects upon the eye, is picturesque; and
this holds true (comparatively) in form and colour. A rough terrier
dog, with the hair bristled and matted together, is picturesque. As we
say, there is a decided character in it, a marked determination to an
extreme point. A shock-dog is odd and disagreeable, but there is
nothing picturesque in its appearance; it is a mere mass of flimsy
confusion. A goat with projecting horns and pendent beard is a
picturesque animal; a sheep is not. A horse is only picturesque from
opposition of colour; as in Mr. Northcote's study of Gadshill, where the
white horse's head coming against the dark, scowling face of the man
makes as fine a contrast as can be imagined. An old stump of a tree
with rugged bark, and one or two straggling branches, a little stunted
hedge-row line, marking the boundary of the horizon, a stubble-field, a
winding path, a rock seen against the sky, are picturesque, because they
have all of them prominence and a distinctive character of their own.
They are not objects (to borrow Shakespear's phrase) 'of no mark or
likelihood.' A country may be beautiful, romantic, or sublime, without
being picturesque. The Lakes in the North of England are not
picturesque, though certainly the most interesting sight in this
country. To be a subject for painting, a prospect must present sharp,
striking points of view or singular forms, or one object must relieve
and set off another. There must be distinct stages and salient points
for the eye to rest upon or start from in its progress over the expanse
before it. The distance of a landscape will oftentimes look flat or
heavy, that the trunk of a tree or a ruin in the foreground would
immediately throw into perspective and turn to air. Rembrandt's
landscapes are the least picturesque in the world, except from the
straight lines and sharp angles, the deep incision and dragging of his
pencil, like a harrow over the ground, and the broad contrast of earth
and sky. Earth, in his copies, is rough and hairy; and Pan has struck
his hoof against it!--A camel is a picturesque ornament in a landscape
or history-piece. This is not merely from its romantic and oriental
character; for an elephant has not the same effect, and if introduced as
a necessary appendage, is also an unwieldy incumbrance. A negro's head
in a group is picturesque from contrast; so are the spots on a panther's
hide. This was the principle that Paul Veronese went upon, who said the
rule for composition was _black upon white, and while upon black._ He
was a pretty good judge. His celebrated picture of the Marriage of Cana
is in all likelihood the completest piece of workmanship extant in the
art. When I saw it, it nearly covered one side of a large room in the
Louvre (being itself forty feet by twenty)--and it seemed as if that
side of the apartment was thrown open, and you looked out at the open
sky, at buildings, marble pillars, galleries with people in them,
emperors, female slaves, Turks, negroes, musicians, all the famous
painters of the time, the tables loaded with viands, goblets, and dogs
under them--a sparkling, overwhelming confusion, a bright, unexpected
reality--the only fault you could find was that no miracle was going on
in the faces of the spectators: the only miracle there was the picture
itself! A French gentleman, who showed me this 'triumph of painting'
(as it has been called), perceiving I was struck with it, observed, 'My
wife admires it exceedingly for the facility of the execution.' I took
this proof of sympathy for a compliment. It is said that when Humboldt,
the celebrated traveller and naturalist, was introduced to Buonaparte,
the Emperor addressed him in these words--_'Vous aimez la botanique,
Monsieur'_; and on the other's replying in the affirmative, added, _'Et
ma femme aussi!'_ This has been found fault with as a piece of
brutality and insolence in the great man by bigoted critics, who do not
know what a thing it is to get a Frenchwoman to agree with them in any
point. For my part, I took the observation as it was meant, and it did
not put me out of conceit with myself or the picture that Madame M----
liked it as well as _Monsieur l'Anglois._ Certainly, there could be no
harm in that. By the side of it happened to be hung two allegorical
pictures of Rubens (and in such matters he too was 'no baby'[1])--I
don't remember what the figures were, but the texture seemed of wool or
cotton. The texture of the Paul Veronese was not wool or cotton, but
stuff, jewels, flesh, marble, air, whatever composed the essence of the
varied subjects, in endless relief and truth of handling. If the
Fleming had seen his two allegories hanging where they did, he would,
without a question, have wished them far enough.
I imagine that Rubens's landscapes are picturesque: Claude's are
_ideal._ Rubens is always in extremes; Claude in the middle. Rubens
carries some one peculiar quality or feature of nature to the utmost
verge of probability: Claude balances and harmonises different forms and
masses with laboured delicacy, so that nothing falls short, no one thing
overpowers another. Rainbows, showers, partial gleams of sunshine,
moonlight, are the means with which Rubens produces his most gorgeous
and enchanting effects: there are neither rainbows, nor showers, nor
sudden bursts of sunshine, nor glittering moonbeams in Claude. He is
all softness and proportion: the other is all spirit and brilliant
excess. The two sides (for example) of one of Claude's landscapes
balance one another, as in a scale of beauty: in Rubens the several
objects are grouped and thrown together with capricious wantonness.
Claude has more repose: Rubens more gaiety and extravagance. And here
it might be asked, Is a rainbow a picturesque or an _ideal_ object? It
seems to me to be both. It is an accident in nature; but it is an
inmate of the fancy. It startles and surprises the sense, but it
soothes and tranquillises the spirit. It makes the eye glisten to
behold it, but the mind turns to it long after it has faded from its
place in the sky. It has both properties, then, of giving an
extraordinary impulse to the mind by the singularity of its appearance,
and of riveting the imagination by its intense beauty. I may just
notice here in passing, that I think the effect of moonlight is treated
in an _ideal_ manner in the well-known line in Shakespear--
See how the moonlight _sleeps_ upon yon bank.
The image is heightened by the exquisiteness of the expression beyond
its natural beauty, and it seems as if there could be no end to the
delight taken in it.--A number of sheep coming to a pool of water to
drink, with shady trees in the background, the rest of the flock
following them, and the shepherd and his dog left carelessly behind, is
surely the _ideal_ in landscape-composition, if the _ideal_ has its
source in the interest excited by a subject, in its power of drawing the
affections after it linked in a golden chain, and in the desire of the
mind to dwell on it for ever. The _ideal_, in a word, is the height of
the pleasing, that which satisfies and accords with the inmost longing
of the soul: the picturesque is merely a sharper and bolder impression
of reality. A morning mist drawing a slender veil over all objects is
at once picturesque and _ideal_; for it in the first place excites
immediate surprise and admiration, and in the next a wish for it to
continue, and a fear lest it should be too soon dissipated. Is the
Cupid riding on a lion in the ceiling at Whitehall, and urging him with
a spear over a precipice, with only clouds and sky beyond, most
picturesque or _ideal?_ It has every effect of startling contrast and
situation, and yet inspires breathless expectation and wonder for the
event. Rembrandt's Jacob's Dream, again, is both fearful to the eye,
but realising that loftiest vision of the soul. Take two faces in
Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, the Judas and the St John: the one is
all strength, repulsive character; the other is all divine grace and
mild sensibility. The individual, the characteristic in painting, is
that _which is_ in a marked manner--the _ideal_ is that which we wish
anything to be, and to contemplate without measure and without end. The
first is truth, the last is good. The one appeals to the sense and
understanding, the other to the will and the affections. The truly
beautiful and grand attracts the mind to it by instinctive harmony, is
absorbed in it, and nothing can ever part them afterwards. Look at a
Madonna of Raphael's: what gives the _ideal_ character to the
expression,--the insatiable purpose of the soul, or its measureless
content in the object of its contemplation? A portrait of Vandyke's is
mere indifference and still-life in the comparison: it has not in it the
principle of growing and still unsatisfied desire. In the _ideal_ there
is no fixed stint or limit but the limit of possibility: it is the
infinite with respect to human capacities and wishes. Love is for this
reason an _ideal_ passion. We give to it our all of hope, of fear, of
present enjoyment, and stake our last chance of happiness wilfully and
desperately upon it. A good authority puts into the mouth of one of his
heroines--
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep!
How many fair catechumens will there be found in all ages to repeat as
much after Shakespear's Juliet!
NOTES to ESSAY XVI
[1] And surely Mandricardo was no baby. --HARRINGTON's _Ariosto._
ESSAY XVII
ON THE FEAR OF DEATH
And our little life is rounded with a sleep.
Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has
a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this
gives us no concern--why, then, should it trouble us that a time will
come when we shall cease to be? I have no wish to have been alive a
hundred years ago, or in the reign of Queen Anne: why should I regret
and lay it so much to heart that I shall not be alive a hundred years
hence, in the reign of I cannot tell whom?
When Bickerstaff wrote his Essays I knew nothing of the subjects of
them; nay, much later, and but the other day, as it were, in the
beginning of the reign of George III., when Goldsmith, Johnson, Burke,
used to meet at the Globe, when Garrick was in his glory, and Reynolds
was over head and ears with his portraits, and Sterne brought out the
volumes of _Tristram Shandy_ year by year, it was without consulting me:
I had not the slightest intimation of what was going on: the debates in
the House of Commons on the American War, or the firing at Bunker's
Hill, disturbed not me: yet I thought this no evil--I neither ate,
drank, nor was merry, yet I did not complain: I had not then looked out
into this breathing world, yet I was well; and the world did quite as
well without me as I did without it! Why, then, should I make all this
outcry about parting with it, and being no worse off than I was before?
There is nothing in the recollection that at a certain time we were not
come into the world that 'the gorge rises at'--why should we revolt at
the idea that we must one day go out of it? To die is only to be as we
were before we were born; yet no one feels any remorse, or regret, or
repugnance, in contemplating this last idea. It is rather a relief and
disburthening of the mind: it seems to have been holiday-time with us
then: we were not called to appear upon the stage of life, to wear robes
or tatters, to laugh or cry, be hooted or applauded; we had lain
_perdus_ all this while, snug, out of harm's way; and had slept out our
thousands of centuries without wanting to be waked up; at peace and free
from care, in a long nonage, in a sleep deeper and calmer than that of
infancy, wrapped in the softest and finest dust. And the worst that we
dread is, after a short, fretful, feverish being, after vain hopes and
idle fears, to sink to final repose again, and forget the troubled dream
of life! . . . Ye armed men, knights templars, that sleep in the stone
aisles of that old Temple church, where all is silent above, and where a
deeper silence reigns below (not broken by the pealing organ), are ye
not contented where ye lie? Or would you come out of your long homes to
go to the Holy War? Or do ye complain that pain no longer visits you,
that sickness has done its worst, that you have paid the last debt to
nature, that you hear no more of the thickening phalanx of the foe, or
your lady's waning love; and that while this ball of earth rolls its
eternal round, no sound shall ever pierce through to disturb your
lasting repose, fixed as the marble over your tombs, breathless as the
grave that holds you! And thou, oh! thou, to whom my heart turns, and
will turn while it has feeling left, who didst love in vain, and whose
first was thy last sigh, wilt not thou too rest in peace (or wilt thou
cry to me complaining from thy clay-cold bed) when that sad heart is no
longer sad, and that sorrow is dead which thou wert only called into the
world to feel!
It is certain that there is nothing in the idea of a pre-existent state
that excites our longing like the prospect of a posthumous existence.
We are satisfied to have begun life when we did; we have no ambition to
have set out on our journey sooner; and feel that we have had quite
enough to do to battle our way through since. We cannot say,
The wars we well remember of King Nine,
Of old Assaracus and Inachus divine.
Neither have we any wish: we are contented to read of them in story, and
to stand and gaze at the vast sea of time that separates us from them.
It was early days then: the world was not _well-aired_ enough for us: we
have no inclination to have been up and stirring. We do not consider
the six thousand years of the world before we were born as so much time
lost to us: we are perfectly indifferent about the matter. We do not
grieve and lament that we did not happen to be in time to see the grand
mask and pageant of human life going on in all that period; though we
are mortified at being obliged to quit our stand before the rest of the
procession passes.
It may be suggested in explanation of this difference, that we know from
various records and traditions what happened in the time of Queen Anne,
or even in the reigns of the Assyrian monarchs, but that we have no
means of ascertaining what is to happen hereafter but by awaiting the
event, and that our eagerness and curiosity are sharpened in proportion
as we are in the dark about it. This is not at all the case; for at
that rate we should be constantly wishing to make a voyage of discovery
to Greenland or to the Moon, neither of which we have, in general, the
least desire to do. Neither, in truth, have we any particular
solicitude to pry into the secrets of futurity, but as a pretext for
prolonging our own existence. It is not so much that we care to be
alive a hundred or a thousand years hence, any more than to have been
alive a hundred or a thousand years ago: but the thing lies here, that
we would all of us wish the present moment to last for ever. We would
be as we are, and would have the world remain just as it is, to please
us.
The present eye catches the present object--
to have and to hold while it may; and abhors, on any terms, to have it
torn from us, and nothing left in its room. It is the pang of parting,
the unloosing our grasp, the breaking asunder some strong tie, the
leaving some cherished purpose unfulfilled, that creates the repugnance
to go, and 'makes calamity of so long life,' as it often is.
O! thou strong heart!
There's such a covenant 'twixt the world and thee
They're loth to break!
The love of life, then, is an habitual attachment, not an abstract
principle. Simply _to be_ does not 'content man's natural desire': we
long to be in a certain time, place, and circumstance. We would much
rather be now, 'on this bank and shoal of time,' than have our choice of
any future period, than take a slice of fifty or sixty years out of the
Millennium, for instance. This shows that our attachment is not
confined either to _being_ or to _well-being_; but that we have an
inveterate prejudice in favour of our immediate existence, such as it
is. The mountaineer will not leave his rock, nor the savage his hut;
neither are we willing to give up our present mode of life, with all its
advantages and disadvantages, for any other that could be substituted
for it. No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other
man, however fortunate. We had as lief _not be_, as _not be ourselves_.
There are some persons of that reach of soul that they would like to
live two hundred and fifty years hence, to see to what height of empire
America will have grown up in that period, or whether the English
constitution will last so long. These are points beyond me. But I
confess I should like to live to see the downfall of the Bourbons. That
is a vital question with me; and I shall like it the better, the sooner
it happens!
No young man ever thinks he shall die. He may believe that others will,
or assent to the doctrine that 'all men are mortal' as an abstract
proposition, but he is far enough from bringing it home to himself
individually.[1] Youth, buoyant activity, and animal spirits, hold
absolute antipathy with old age as well as with death; nor have we, in
the hey-day of life, any more than in the thoughtlessness of childhood,
the remotest conception how
This sensible warm motion can become
A kneaded clod--
nor how sanguine, florid health and vigour, shall 'turn to withered,
weak, and grey.' Or if in a moment of idle speculation we indulge in
this notion of the close of life as a theory, it is amazing at what a
distance it seems; what a long, leisurely interval there is between;
what a contrast its slow and solemn approach affords to our present gay
dreams of existence! We eye the farthest verge of the horizon, and
think what a way we shall have to look back upon, ere we arrive at our
journey's end; and without our in the least suspecting it, the mists are
at our feet, and the shadows of age encompass us. The two divisions of
our lives have melted into each other: the extreme points close and meet
with none of that romantic interval stretching out between them that we
had reckoned upon; and for the rich, melancholy, solemn hues of age,
'the sear, the yellow leaf,' the deepening shadows of an autumnal
evening, we only feel a dank, cold mist, encircling all objects, after
the spirit of youth is fled. There is no inducement to look forward;
and what is worse, little interest in looking back to what has become so
trite and common. The pleasures of our existence have worn themselves
out, are 'gone into the wastes of time,' or have turned their
indifferent side to us: the pains by their repeated blows have worn us
out, and have left us neither spirit nor inclination to encounter them
again in retrospect. We do not want to rip up old grievances, nor to
renew our youth like the phoenix, nor to live our lives twice over.
Once is enough. As the tree falls, so let it lie. Shut up the book and
close the account once for all!
It has been thought by some that life is like the exploring of a passage
that grows narrower and darker the farther we advance, without a
possibility of ever turning back, and where we are stifled for want of
breath at last. For myself, I do not complain of the greater thickness
of the atmosphere as I approach the narrow house. I felt it more
formerly,[2] when the idea alone seemed to suppress a thousand rising
hopes, and weighed upon the pulses of the blood. At present I rather
feel a thinness and want of support, I stretch out my hand to some
object and find none, I am too much in a world of abstraction; the naked
map of life is spread out before me, and in the emptiness and desolation
I see Death coming to meet me. In my youth I could not behold him for
the crowd of objects and feelings, and Hope stood always between us,
saying, 'Never mind that old fellow!' If I had lived indeed, I should
not care to die. But I do not like a contract of pleasure broken off
unfulfilled, a marriage with joy unconsummated, a promise of happiness
rescinded. My public and private hopes have been left a ruin, or remain
only to mock me. I would wish them to be re-edified. I should like to
see some prospect of good to mankind, such as my life began with. I
should like to leave some sterling work behind me. I should like to
have some friendly hand to consign me to the grave. On these conditions
I am ready, if not willing, to depart. I shall then write on my
tomb--GRATEFUL AND CONTENTED! But I have thought and suffered too much
to be willing to have thought and suffered in vain.--In looking back, it
sometimes appears to me as if I had in a manner slept out my life in a
dream or shadow on the side of the hill of knowledge, where I have fed
on books, on thoughts, on pictures, and only heard in half-murmurs the
trampling of busy feet, or the noises of the throng below. Waked out of
this dim, twilight existence. and startled with the passing scene, I
have felt a wish to descend to the world of realities, and join in the
chase. But I fear too late, and that I had better return to my bookish
chimeras and indolence once more! _Zanetto, lascia le donne, et studia
la matematica._ I will think of it.
It is not wonderful that the contemplation and fear of death become more
familiar to us as we approach nearer to it: that life seems to ebb with
the decay of blood and youthful spirits; and that as we find everything
about us subject to chance and change, as our strength and beauty die,
as our hopes and passions, our friends and our affections leave us, we
begin by degrees to feel ourselves mortal!
I have never seen death but once, and that was in an infant. It is
years ago. The look was calm and placid, and the face was fair and
firm. It was as if a waxen image had been laid out in the coffin, and
strewed with innocent flowers. It was not like death, but more like an
image of life! No breath moved the lips, no pulse stirred, no sight or
sound would enter those eyes or ears more. While I looked at it, I saw
no pain was there; it seemed to smile at the short pang of life which
was over: but I could not bear the coffin-lid to be closed--it seemed to
stifle me; and still as the nettles wave in a corner of the churchyard
over his little grave, the welcome breeze helps to refresh me, and ease
the tightness at my breast!
An ivory or marble image, like Chantry's monument of the two children,
is contemplated with pure delight. Why do we not grieve and fret that
the marble is not alive, or fancy that it has a shortness of breath? It
never was alive; and it is the difficulty of making the transition from
life to death, the struggle between the two in our imagination, that
confounds their properties painfully together, and makes us conceive
that the infant that is but just dead, still wants to breathe, to enjoy,
and look about it, and is prevented by the icy hand of death, locking up
its faculties and benumbing its senses; so that, if it could, it would
complain of its own hard state. Perhaps religious considerations
reconcile the mind to this change sooner than any others, by
representing the spirit as fled to another sphere, and leaving the body
behind it. So in reflecting on death generally, we mix up the idea of
life with it, and thus make it the ghastly monster it is. We think, how
we should feel, not how the dead feel.
Still from the tomb the voice of nature cries;
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires!
There is an admirable passage on this subject in Tucker's _Light of
Nature Pursued_, which I shall transcribe, as by much the best
illustration I can offer of it.
'The melancholy appearance of a lifeless body, the mansion provided for
it to inhabit, dark, cold, close and solitary, are shocking to the
imagination; but it is to the imagination only, not the understanding;
for whoever consults this faculty will see at first glance, that there
is nothing dismal in all these circumstances: if the corpse were kept
wrapped up in a warm bed, with a roasting fire in the chamber, it would
feel no comfortable warmth therefrom; were store of tapers lighted up as
soon as day shuts in, it would see no objects to divert it; were it left
at large it would have no liberty, nor if surrounded with company would
be cheered thereby; neither are the distorted features expressions of
pain, uneasiness, or distress. This every one knows, and will readily
allow upon being suggested, yet still cannot behold, nor even cast a
thought upon those objects without shuddering; for knowing that a living
person must suffer grievously under such appearances, they become
habitually formidable to the mind, and strike a mechanical horror, which
is increased by the customs of the world around us.'
There is usually one pang added voluntarily and unnecessarily to the
fear of death, by our affecting to compassionate the loss which others
will have in us. If that were all, we might reasonably set our minds at
rest. The pathetic exhortation on country tombstones, 'Grieve not for
me, my wife and children dear,' etc., is for the most part speedily
followed to the letter. We do not leave so great a void in society as
we are inclined to imagine, partly to magnify our own importance. and
partly to console ourselves by sympathy. Even in the same family the
gap is not so great; the wound closes up sooner than we should expect.
Nay, _our room_ is not unfrequently thought better than _our company._
People walk along the streets the day after our deaths just as they did
before, and the crowd is not diminished. While we were living, the
world seemed in a manner to exist only for us, for our delight and
amusement, because it contributed to them. But our hearts cease to
beat, and it goes on as usual, and thinks no more about us than it did
in our lifetime. The million are devoid of sentiment, and care as
little for you or me as if we belonged to the moon. We live the week
over in the Sunday's paper, or are decently interred in some obituary at
the month's end! It is not surprising that we are forgotten so soon
after we quit this mortal stage; we are scarcely noticed while we are on
it. It is not merely that our names are not known in China--they have
hardly been heard of in the next street. We are hand and glove with the
universe, and think the obligation is mutual. This is an evident
fallacy. If this, however, does not trouble us now, it will not
hereafter. A handful of dust can have no quarrel to pick with its
neighbours, or complaint to make against Providence, and might well
exclaim, if it had but an understanding and a tongue, 'Go thy ways, old
world, swing round in blue ether, voluble to every age, you and I shall
no more jostle!'
It is amazing how soon the rich and titled, and even some of those who
have wielded great political power, are forgotten.
A little rule, a little sway,
Is all the great and mighty have
Betwixt the cradle and the grave--
and, after its short date, they hardly leave a name behind them. 'A
great man's memory may, at the common rate, survive him half a year.'
His heirs and successors take his titles, his power, and his wealth--all
that made him considerable or courted by others; and he has left nothing
else behind him either to delight or benefit the world. Posterity are
not by any means so disinterested as they are supposed to be. They give
their gratitude and admiration only in return for benefits conferred.
They cherish the memory of those to whom they are indebted for
instruction and delight; and they cherish it just in proportion to the
instruction and delight they are conscious they receive. The sentiment
of admiration springs immediately from this ground, and cannot be
otherwise than well founded.[3]
The effeminate clinging to life as such, as a general or abstract idea,
is the effect of a highly civilised and artificial state of society.
Men formerly plunged into all the vicissitudes and dangers of war, or
staked their all upon a single die, or some one passion, which if they
could not have gratified, life became a burden to them--now our
strongest passion is to think, our chief amusement is to read new plays,
new poems, new novels, and this we may do at our leisure, in perfect
security, _ad infinitum_. If we look into the old histories and
romances, before the _belles-lettres_ neutralised human affairs and
reduced passion to a state of mental equivocation, we find the heroes
and heroines not setting their lives 'at a pin's fee,' but rather
courting opportunities of throwing them away in very wantonness of
spirit. They raise their fondness for some favourite pursuit to its
height, to a pitch of madness, and think no price too dear to pay for
its full gratification. Everything else is dross. They go to death as
to a bridal bed, and sacrifice themselves or others without remorse at
the shrine of love, of honour, of religion, or any other prevailing
feeling. Romeo runs his 'sea-sick, weary bark upon the rocks' of death
the instant he finds himself deprived of his Juliet; and she clasps his
neck in their last agonies, and follows him to the same fatal shore.
One strong idea takes possession of the mind and overrules every other;
and even life itself, joyless without that, becomes an object of
indifference or loathing. There is at least more of imagination in such
a state of things, more vigour of feeling and promptitude to act, than
in our lingering, languid, protracted attachment to life for its own
poor sake. It is, perhaps, also better, as well as more heroical, to
strike at some daring or darling object, and if we fail in that, to take
the consequences manfully, than to renew the lease of a tedious,
spiritless, charmless existence, merely (as Pierre says) 'to lose it
afterwards in some vile brawl' for some worthless object. Was there not
a spirit of martyrdom as well as a spice of the reckless energy of
barbarism in this bold defiance of death? Had not religion something to
do with it: the implicit belief in a future life, which rendered this of
less value, and embodied something beyond it to the imagination; so that
the rough soldier, the infatuated lover, the valorous knight, etc.,
could afford to throw away the present venture, and take a leap into the
arms of futurity, which the modern sceptic shrinks back from, with all
his boasted reason and vain philosophy, weaker than a woman! I cannot
help thinking so myself; but I have endeavoured to explain this point
before, and will not enlarge farther on it here.
A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only
gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every step the
precarious tenure on which we hold our present being. Sedentary and
studious men are the most apprehensive on this score. Dr. Johnson was
an instance in point. A few years seemed to him soon over, compared
with those sweeping contemplations on time and infinity with which he
had been used to pose himself. In the _still-life_ of a man of letters
there was no obvious reason for a change. He might sit in an arm-chair
and pour out cups of tea to all eternity. Would it had been possible
for him to do so! The most rational cure after all for the inordinate
fear of death is to set a just value on life. If we merely wish to
continue on the scene to indulge our headstrong humours and tormenting
passions, we had better begone at once; and if we only cherish a
fondness for existence according to the good we derive from it, the pang
we feel at parting with it will not be very severe!
NOTES to ESSAY XVII
[1] All men think all men mortal but themselves. --YOUNG.
[2] I remember once, In particular, having this feeling in reading
Schiller's _Don Carlos_, where there is a description of death, in a
degree that almost stifled me.
[3] It has been usual to raise a very unjust clamour against the
enormous salaries of public singers, actors, and so on. This matter
seems reducible to a moral equation. They are paid out of money raised
by voluntary contributions in the strictest sense; and if they did not
bring certain sums into the treasury, the managers would not engage
them. These sums are exactly in proportion to the number of Individuals
to whom their performance gives an extraordinary degree of pleasure.
The talents of a singer, actor, etc., are therefore worth just as much
as they will fetch.
End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Table-Talk