truism; and yet what is more common than to suppose that we shall find
things done, merely by wishing it? To put the will for the deed is as
usual in practice as it is contrary to common sense. There is, in
fact, no absurdity, no contradiction, of which the will is not
capable. This is, I think, more remarkable in the English than in any
other people, in whom (to judge by what I discover in myself) the will
bears great and disproportioned sway. We will a thing: we contemplate
the end intensely, and think it done, neglecting the necessary means
to accomplish it. The strong tendency of the mind towards it, the
internal effort it makes to give being to the object of its idolatry,
seems an adequate cause to produce the effect, and in a manner
identified with it. This is more particularly the case in what relates
to the _fine arts_, and will account for some phenomena of the
national character. The English school is distinguished by what are
called _ebauches_, rude, violent attempts at effect, and a total
inattention to the details or delicacy of finishing. Now this, I
think, proceeds, not exactly from grossness of perception, but from
the wilfulness of our character; our desire to have things our own
way, without any trouble or distraction of purpose. An object strikes
us: we see and feel the whole effect. We wish to produce a likeness of
it; but we want to transfer this impression to the canvas as it is
conveyed to us, simultaneously and intuitively, that is, to stamp it
there at a blow, or otherwise we turn away with impatience and
disgust, as if the means were an obstacle to the end, and every
attention to the mechanical part of art were a deviation from our
original purpose. We thus degenerate, after repeated failures, into a
slovenly style of art; and that which was at first an undisciplined
and irregular impulse becomes a habit, and then a theory. It seems
strange that the love of the end should produce aversion to the
means--but so it is; neither is it altogether unnatural. That which we
are struck with, which we are enamoured of, is the general appearance
and result; and it would certainly be most desirable to produce the
effect in the same manner by a mere word or wish, if it were possible,
without entering into any mechanical drudgery or minuteness of detail
or dexterity of execution, which though they are essential and
component parts of the work do not enter into our thoughts, and form
no part of our contemplation. We may find it necessary, on a cool
calculation to go through and learn these, but in so doing we only
submit to necessity, and they are still a diversion to and a
suspension of our purpose for the time, at least, unless practice
gives that facility which almost identifies the two together, or makes
the process an unconscious one. The end thus devours up the means, or
our eagerness for the one, where it is strong and unchecked, is in
proportion to our impatience of the other. We view an object at a
distance that excites an inclination to visit it, which we do after
many tedious steps and intricate ways; but if we could fly, we should
never walk. The mind, however, has wings, though the body has not, and
it is this that produces the contradiction in question. The first and
strongest impulse of the mind is to produce any work at once and by
the most energetic means; but as this cannot always be done, we should
not neglect other more mechanical ones, but that delusions of passion
overrule the convictions of the understanding, and what we strongly
wish we fancy to be possible and true. We are full of the effect we
intend to produce, and imagine we have produced it, in spite of the
evidence of our senses, and the suggestions of our friends. In fact,
after a number of fruitless efforts and violent throes to produce an
effect which we passionately long for, it seems all injustice not to
have produced it; if we have not commanded success, we have done more,
we have deserved it; we have copied nature or Titian in the spirit in
which they ought to be copied, and we see them before us in our mind's
eye; there is the look, the expression, the something or other which
we chiefly aim at, and thus we persist and make fifty excuses to
deceive ourselves and confirm our errors; or if the light breaks upon
us through all the disguises of sophistry and self-love, it is so
painful that we shut our eyes to it; the greater the mortification the
more violent the effort to throw it off; and thus we stick to our
determination, and end where we began. What makes me think that this
is the process of our minds, and not merely rusticity or want of
apprehension, is, that you will see an English artist admiring and
thrown into raptures by the tucker of Titian's mistress, made up of an
infinite number of little folds, but if he attempts to copy it, he
proceeds to omit all these details, and dash it off by a single smear
of his brush. This is not ignorance, or even laziness, but what is
called jumping at a conclusion. It is, in a word, all overweening
purpose. He sees the details, the varieties, and their effects, and he
admires them; but he sees them with a glance of his eye, and as a
wilful man must have his way, he would reproduce them by a single dash
of the pencil. The mixing his colours, the putting in and out, the
giving his attention to a minute break, or softening in the particular
lights and shades, is a mechanical and everlasting operation, very
different from the delight he feels in contemplating the effect of all
this when properly and finely done. Such details are foreign to his
refined taste, and some doubts arise in his mind in the midst of his
gratitude and his raptures, as to how Titian could resolve upon the
drudgery of going through them, and whether it was not done by extreme
facility of hand, and a sort of trick, abridging the mechanical
labour. No one wrote or talked more enthusiastically about Titian's
harmony of colouring than the late Mr. Barry, yet his own colouring
was dead and dry; and if he had copied a Titian, he would have made it
a mere splash, leaving out all that caused his wonder or admiration,
after his English, or rather Irish fashion. We not only grudge the
labour of beginning, but we give up, for the same reason, when we are
near touching the goal of success; and to save a few last touches,
leave a work unfinished, and an object unattained. The immediate
process, the daily gradual improvement, the completion of parts giving
us no pleasure, we strain at the whole result; we wish to have it
done, and in our anxiety to have it off our hands, say it will do, and
lose the benefit of all our labour by grudging a little pains, and not
commanding a little patience. In a day or two, suppose a copy of a
fine Titian would be as complete as we could make it: the prospect of
this so enchants us that we skip the intermediate days, see no great
use in going on with it, fancy that we may spoil it, and in order to
have the job done, take it home with us, when we immediately see our
error, and spend the rest of our lives in repenting that we did not
finish it properly at the time. We see the whole nature of a picture
at once; we only do a part: _Hinc illae lachrymae_. A French artist, on
the contrary, has none of this uneasy, anxious feeling; of this desire
to grasp the whole of his subject, and anticipate his good fortune at
a blow; of this massing and concentrating principle. He takes the
thing more easily and rationally. Suppose he undertakes to copy a
picture, he looks at it and copies it bit by bit. He does not set off
headlong without knowing where he is going, or plunge into all sorts
of difficulties and absurdities, from impatience to begin and
thinking that 'no sooner said than done'; but takes time to consider,
lays his plans, gets in his outline and his distances, and lays a
foundation before he attempts a superstructure which he may have to
pull to pieces again. He looks before he leaps, which is contrary to
the true blindfold English principle; and I should think that we had
invented this proverb from seeing so many fatal examples of the
neglect of it. He does not make the picture all black or all white,
because one part of it is so, and because he cannot alter an idea he
has once got into his head, and must always run into extremes, but
varies from green to red, from orange tawney to yellow, from grey to
brown, according as they vary in the original: he sees no
inconsistency or forfeiture of a principle in this, but a great deal
of right reason, and indeed an absolute necessity, if he wishes to
succeed in what he is about. This is the last thing an Englishman
thinks of: he only wants to have his own way, though it ends in defeat
and ruin: he sets about a thing which he had little prospect of
accomplishing, and if he finds he can do it, gives it over and leaves
the matter short of success, which is too agreeable an idea for him to
indulge in. The French artist proceeds bit by bit. He takes one part,
a hand, a piece of drapery, a part of the background, and finishes it
carefully; then another, and so on to the end. He does not, from a
childish impatience, when he is near the conclusion, destroy the
effect of the whole by leaving some one part eminently defective, nor
fly from what he is about to something else that catches his eye,
neglecting the one and spoiling the other. He is constrained by
mastery, by the mastery of common sense and pleasurable feeling. He is
in no hurry to finish, for he has a satisfaction in the work, and
touches and retouches, perhaps a single head, day after day and week
after week, without repining, uneasiness, or apparent progress. The
very lightness and indifference of his feelings renders him patient
and laborious: an Englishman, whatever he is about or undertakes is
as if he was carrying a heavy load that oppresses both his body and
mind, and which he is anxious to throw down. A Frenchman's hopes or
fears are not excited to that pitch of intolerable agony that compels
him, in mere compassion to himself to bring the question to a speedy
issue, even to the loss of his object; he is calm, easy, and
indifferent, and can take his time and make the most of his advantages
with impunity. Pleased with himself, he is pleased with whatever
occupies his attention nearly alike. It is the same to him whether he
paints an angel or a joint-stool; it is the same to him whether it is
landscape or history; it is he who paints it, that is sufficient.
Nothing puts him out of conceit with his work, for nothing puts him
out of conceit with himself. This self-complacency produces admirable
patience and docility in certain particulars, besides charity and
toleration towards others. I remember a ludicrous instance of this
deliberate process, in a young French artist who was copying the
_Titian's Mistress_, in the Louvre, some twenty years ago. After
getting it in chalk-lines, one would think he would have been
attracted to the face, that heaven of beauty which makes a sunshine in
the shady place, or to some part of the poetry of the picture; instead
of which he began to finish a square he had marked out in the
right-hand corner of the picture. He set to work like a cabinetmaker
or an engraver, and seemed to have no sympathy with the soul of the
picture. Indeed, to a Frenchman there is no distinction between the
great and little, the pleasurable and the painful; the utmost he
arrives at a conception of is the indifferent and the light. Another
young man, at the time I speak of, was for eleven weeks (I think it
was) daily employed in making a blacklead pencil drawing of a small
Leonardo; he sat cross-legged on a rail to do it, kept his hat on,
rose up, went to the fire to warm himself, talked constantly of the
excellence of the different masters--Titian for colour, Raphael for
expression, Poussin for composition--all being alike to him, provided
there was a word to express it, for all he thought about was his own
harangue; and, having consulted some friend on his progress, he
returned to 'perfectionate,' as he called it, his copy. This would
drive an Englishman mad or stupid. The perseverance and the
indifference, the labour without impulse, the attention to the parts
in succession, and disregard of the whole together, are to him
absolutely inconceivable. A Frenchman only exists in his present
sensations, and provided he is left free to these as they arise, he
cares about nothing farther, looking neither backward nor forward.
With all this affectation and artifice, there is on this account a
kind of simplicity and nature about them, after all. They lend
themselves to the impression before them with good humour and good
will, making it neither better nor worse than it is. The English
overdo or underdo everything, and are either drunk or in despair. I do
not speak of all Frenchmen or of all Englishmen, but of the most
characteristic specimens of each class. The extreme slowness and
methodical regularity of the French has arisen out of this
indifference, and even frivolity (their usually-supposed natural
character), for owing to it their laborious minuteness costs them
nothing; they have no strong impulses or ardent longings that urge
them to the violation of rules, or hurry them away with a subject and
with the interest belonging to it. Everything is matter of
calculation, and measured beforehand, in order to assist their
fluttering and their feebleness. When they get beyond the literal and
the formal, and attempt the impressive and the grand, as in David's
and Girardot's pictures, defend us from sublimity heaped on insipidity
and petit-maitreism. You see a Frenchman in the Louvre copying the
finest pictures, standing on one leg, with his hat on; or after
copying a Raphael, thinking David much finer, more truly one of
themselves, more a combination of the Greek sculptor and the French
posture-master. Even if a French artist fails, he is not
disconcerted; there is something else he excels in: if he cannot
paint, he can dance! If an Englishman, save the mark! fails in
anything, he thinks he can do nothing; enraged at the mention of his
ability to do anything else, and at any consolation offered to him, he
banishes all other thought but of his disappointment, and discarding
hope from his breast, neither eats nor sleeps (it is well if he does
not cut his throat), will not attend to any other thing in which he
before took an interest and pride, and is in despair till he recovers
his good opinion of himself in the point in which he has been
disgraced, though, from his very anxiety and disorder of mind, he is
incapacitated from applying to the only means of doing so, as much as
if he were drunk with liquor, instead of with pride and passion. The
character I have here drawn of an Englishman I am clear about, for it
is the character of myself, and, I am sorry to add, no exaggerated
one. As my object is to paint the varieties of human nature, and as I
can have it best from myself, I will confess a weakness. I lately
tried to copy a Titian (after many years' want of practice), in order
to give a friend in England some idea of the picture. I floundered on
for several days, but failed, as might be expected. My sky became
overcast. Everything seemed of the colour of the paint I used. Nature
was one great daub. I had no feeling left but a sense of want of
power, and of an abortive struggle to do what I could not do. I was
ashamed of being seen to look at the picture with admiration, as if I
had no right to do so. I was ashamed even to have written or spoken
about the picture or about art at all: it seemed a piece of
presumption or affectation in me, whose whole notions and refinements
on the subject ended in an inexcusable daub. Why did I think of
attempting such a thing heedlessly, of exposing my presumption and
incapacity? It was blotting from my memory, covering with a dark veil,
all that I remembered of those pictures formerly, my hopes when young,
my regrets since; it was wresting from me one of the consolations of
my life and of my declining years. I was even afraid to walk out by
the barrier of Neuilly, or to recall to memory that I had ever seen
the picture; all was turned to bitterness and gall: to feel anything
but a sense of my own helplessness and absurdity seemed a want of
sincerity, a mockery and a piece of injustice. The only comfort I had
was in the excess of pain I felt; this was at least some distinction:
I was not insensible on that side. No Frenchman, I thought, would
regret the not copying a Titian so much as I did, or so far show the
same value for it. Besides, I had copied this identical picture very
well formerly. If ever I got out of this scrape, I had received a
lesson, at least, not to run the same risk of gratuitous vexation
again, or even to attempt what was uncertain and unnecessary.
It is the same in love and in literature. A man makes love without
thinking of the chances of success, his own disabilities, or the
character of his mistress; that is, without connecting means with
ends, and consulting only his own will and passion. The author sets
about writing history, with the full intention of rendering all
documents, dates, and facts secondary to his own opinion and will. In
business it is not altogether the same; for interest acts obviously as
a counterpoise to caprice and will, and is the moving principle; nor
is it so in war, for then the spirit of contradiction does everything,
and an Englishman will go to the devil rather than give up to any
odds. Courage is pure will without regard to consequences, and this
the English have in perfection. Again, poetry is our element, for the
essence of poetry is will and passion. The French poetry is detail and
verbiage. I have thus shown why the English fail, as a people, in the
Fine Arts, namely, because with them the end absorbs the means. I have
mentioned Barry as an individual instance. No man spoke or wrote with
more _gusto_ about painting, and yet no one painted with less. His
pictures were dry and coarse, and wanted all that his description of
those of others contained. For instance, he speaks of the dull, dead,
watery look in the Medusa's head of Leonardo, which conveys a perfect
idea of it: if he had copied it, you would never have suspected
anything of the kind. Again, he has, I believe, somewhere spoken of
the uneasy effect of the tucker of the _Titian's Mistress_, bursting
with the full treasures it contains. What a daub he would have made of
it! He is like a person admiring the grace of a fine rope-dancer;
placed on the rope himself his head turns, and he falls: or like a man
admiring fine horsemanship; set him upon a horse, and he tumbles over
on the other side. Why was this? His mind was essentially ardent and
discursive, not sensitive or observing; and though the immediate
object acted as a stimulus to his imagination, it was only as it does
to a poet's, that is, as a link in the chain of association, as
suggesting other strong feelings and ideas, and not for its intrinsic
beauty or hidden details. He had not the painter's eye though he had
the painter's knowledge. There is as great a difference in this
respect as between the telescope and microscope. People in general see
objects only to distinguish them in practice and by name; to know that
a hat is a hat, that a chair is not a table, that John is not William;
and there are painters (particularly of history) in England who look
no farther. They cannot finish anything, or go over a head twice; the
first view is all they would arrive at; nor can they reduce their
impressions to their component parts without losing the spirit. The
effect of this is grossness and want of force; for in reality the
component parts cannot be separated from the whole. Such people have
no pleasure in the exercise of their art as such: it is all to
astonish or to get money that they follow it; or if they are thrown
out of it, they regret it only as a bankrupt does a business which was
a livelihood to him. Barry did not live, like Titian, in the taste of
colours; they were not a _pabulum_ to his sense; he did not hold
green, blue, red, and yellow as the precious darlings of his eye.
They did not therefore sink into his mind, or nourish and enrich it
with the sense of beauty, though he knew enough of them to furnish
hints and topics of discourse. If he had had the most beautiful object
in nature before him in his painting-room in the Adelphi, he would
have neglected it, after a moment's burst of admiration, to talk of
his last composition, or to scrawl some new and vast design. Art was
nothing to him, or if anything, merely a stalking-horse to his
ambition and display of intellectual power in general; and therefore
he neglected it to daub huge allegories, or cabal with the Academy,
where the violence of his will or the extent of his views found ample
scope. As a painter he was valuable merely as a draughtsman, in that
part of the art which may be reduced to lines and precepts, or
positive measurement. There is neither colour, nor expression, nor
delicacy, nor beauty, in his works.
1827.
ESSAY IX
MATTER AND MANNER
Nothing can frequently be more striking than the difference of style
or manner, where the _matter_ remains the same, as in paraphrases and
translations. The most remarkable example which occurs to us is in the
beginning of the _Flower and Leaf_, by Chaucer, and in the
modernisation of the same passage by Dryden. We shall give an extract
from both, that the reader may judge for himself. The original runs
thus:
'And I that all this pleasaunt sight _ay_ sie,
Thought sodainly I felt_e_ so sweet an aire
_Con_ of the eglentere, that certainely
There is no heart, I deme, in such dispaire,
Ne with _no_ thought_e_s froward and contraire
So overlaid, but it should_e_ soone have bote,
If it had ones felt this savour sote.
And as I stood and cast aside mine eie,
I was of ware the fairest medler tree,
That ever yet in all my life I sie,
As full of blossomes as it might_e_ be;
Therein a goldfinch leaping pretil_e_
Fro bough to bough; and, as him list, _gan_ eete
Of bud_de_s here and there and floures sweet_e_.
And to the herber side _ther_ was joyning_e_
This faire tree, of which I have you told;
And at the last the brid began to sing_e_,
When he had eaten what he eat_e_ wold_e_,
So passing sweetly, that by manifold_e_,
It was more pleasaunt than I coud_e_ devise.
And when his song was ended in this wise,
The nightingale with so mery a note
Answered him, that all the wood_e_ rong
So sodainly, that, as it were a sote,
I stood astonied; so was I with the song
Thorow ravished, that till late and longe,
Ne wist I in what place I was, ne where;
And ay, me thought_e_, she song even by mine ere.
Wherefore about I waited busily,
On every side, if _that_ I her might_e_ see;
And, at the last, I gan full well aspie
Where she sat in a fresh grene laurer tree,
On the further side, even right by me,
That gave so passing a delicious smell,
According to the eglentere full well.
Whereof I had_de_ so inly great pleasure,
That, as me thought, I surely ravished was
Into Paradice, where _as_ my desire
Was for to be, and no ferther to passe
As for that day; and on the sote grasse
I sat me downe; for, as for mine entent,
The bird_de_s song was more convenient,
And more pleasaunt to me by many fold,
Than meat or drinke, or any other thing.
Thereto the herber was so fresh and cold,
The wholesome savours eke so comforting
That, as I demed_e_, sith the beginning
Of th_ilke_ world was never seene or than
So pleasaunt a ground of none earthly man.
And as I sat, the bird_de_s harkening thus,
Me thought_e_ that I heard_e_ voices sodainly,
The most sweetest and most delicious
That ever any wight, I trow truly,
Heard in _here_ life; for _sothe_ the armony
And sweet accord was in so good musike,
That the voices to angels most was like.'
In this passage the poet has let loose the very soul of pleasure.
There is a spirit of enjoyment in it, of which there seems no end. It
is the intense delight which accompanies the description of every
object, the fund of natural sensibility which it displays, which
constitutes its whole essence and beauty. Now this is shown chiefly in
the manner in which the different objects are anticipated, and the
eager welcome which is given to them; in his repeating and varying the
circumstances with a restless delight; in his quitting the subject for
a moment, and then returning to it again, as if he could never have
his fill of enjoyment. There is little of this in Dryden's paraphrase.
The same ideas are introduced, but not in the same manner, nor with
the same spirit. The imagination of the poet is not borne along with
the tide of pleasure--the verse is not poured out, like the natural
strains it describes, from pure delight, but according to rule and
measure. Instead of being absorbed in his subject, he is dissatisfied
with it, tries to give an air of dignity to it by factitious
ornaments, to amuse the reader by ingenious allusions, and divert his
attention from the progress of the story by the artifices of the
style:
'The painted birds, companions of the spring,
Hopping from spray to spray, were heard to sing.
Both eyes and ears receiv'd a like delight,
Enchanting music, and a charming sight.
On Philomel I fix'd my whole desire;
And listen'd for the queen of all the quire;
Fain would I hear her heavenly voice to sing;
And wanted yet an omen to the spring.
Thus as I mus'd I cast aside my eye,
And saw a medlar-tree was planted nigh.
The spreading branches made a goodly show,
And full of opening blooms was every bough:
A goldfinch there I saw with gawdy pride
Of painted plumes, that hopp'd from side to side,
Still pecking as she pass'd; and still she drew
The sweets from every flower and suck'd the dew:
Suffic'd at length, she warbled in her throat,
And tun'd her voice to many a merry note,
But indistinct, and neither sweet nor clear,
Yet such as sooth'd my soul, and pleas'd my ear.
Her short performance was no sooner tried,
When she I sought, the nightingale, replied:
So sweet, so shrill, so variously she sung,
That the grove echoed, and the valleys rung:
And I so ravish'd with her heavenly note,
I stood entranced, and had no room for thought.
But all o'erpower'd with ecstasy of bliss,
Was in a pleasing dream of paradise;
At length I wak'd, and looking round the bower,
Search'd every tree, and pry'd on every flower,
If any where by chance I might espy
The rural poet of the melody:
For still methought she sung not far away:
At last I found her on a laurel spray.
Close by my side she sat, and fair in sight,
Full in a line, against her opposite;
Where stood with eglantine the laurel twin'd;
And both their native sweets were well conjoin'd.
On the green bank I sat, and listen'd long
(Sitting was more convenient for the song);
Nor till her lay was ended could I move,
But wish'd to dwell for ever in the grove.
Only methought the time too swiftly pass'd,
And every note I fear'd would be the last.
My sight, and smell and hearing were employ'd,
And all three senses in full gust enjoy'd.
And what alone did all the rest surpass
The sweet possession of the fairy place;
Single, and conscious to myself alone
Of pleasures to the excluded world unknown:
Pleasures which no where else were to be found,
And all Elysium in a spot of ground.
Thus while I sat intent to see and hear,
And drew perfumes of more than vital air,
All suddenly I heard the approaching sound
Of vocal music on the enchanted ground:
A host of saints it seem'd, so full the quire;
As if the bless'd above did all conspire
To join their voices, and neglect the lyre.'
Compared with Chaucer, Dryden and the rest of that school were merely
_verbal poets_. They had a great deal of wit, sense, and fancy; they
only wanted truth and depth of feeling. But I shall have to say more
on this subject, when I come to consider the old question which I have
got marked down in my list, whether Pope was a poet.
Lord Chesterfield's character of the Duke of Marlborough is a good
illustration of his general theory. He says, 'Of all the men I ever
knew in my life (and I knew him extremely well) the late Duke of
Marlborough possessed the graces in the highest degree, not to say
engrossed them; for I will venture (contrary to the custom of profound
historians, who always assign deep causes for great events) to ascribe
the better half of the Duke of Marlborough's greatness and riches to
those graces. He was eminently illiterate: wrote bad English, and
spelt it worse. He had no share of what is commonly called parts; that
is, no brightness, nothing shining in his genius. He had, most
undoubtedly, an excellent good plain understanding, with sound
judgment. But these alone would probably have raised him but something
higher than they found him, which was page to King James II.'s Queen.
There the graces protected and promoted him; for while he was Ensign
of the Guards, the Duchess of Cleveland, then favourite mistress of
Charles II., struck by these very graces, gave him five thousand
pounds; with which he immediately bought an annuity of five hundred
pounds a year, which was the foundation of his subsequent fortune. His
figure was beautiful, but his manner was irresistible by either man or
woman. It was by this engaging, graceful manner, that he was enabled
during all his wars to connect the various and jarring powers of the
grand alliance, and to carry them on to the main object of the war,
notwithstanding their private and separate views, jealousies, and
wrongheadedness. Whatever court he went to (and he was often obliged
to go himself to some resty and refractory ones) he as constantly
prevailed, and brought them into his measures.'
Grace in women has often more effect than beauty. We sometimes see a
certain fine self-possession, an habitual voluptuousness of character,
which reposes on its own sensations, and derives pleasure from all
around it, that is more irresistible than any other attraction. There
is an air of languid enjoyment in such persons, 'in their eyes, in
their arms, and their hands, and their face,' which robs us of
ourselves, and draws us by a secret sympathy towards them. Their
minds are a shrine where pleasure reposes. Their smile diffuses a
sensation like the breath of spring. Petrarch's description of Laura
answers exactly to this character, which is indeed the Italian
character. Titian's pictures are full of it; they seem sustained by
sentiment, or as if the persons whom he painted sat to music. There is
one in the Louvre (or there was) which had the most of this expression
I ever remember. It did not look downward; 'it looked forward beyond
this world.' It was a look that never passed away, but remained
unalterable as the deep sentiment which gave birth to it. It is the
same constitutional character (together with infinite activity of
mind) 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.