"Still follow SENSE, of every art the Soul."
POPE: /Moral Essays/--Essay iv.
ERNEST MALTRAVERS spent much of his time with the family of De
Montaigne. There is no period of life in which we are more accessible
to the sentiment of friendship than in the intervals of moral exhaustion
which succeed to the disappointments of the passions. There is, then,
something inviting in those gentler feelings which keep alive, but do
not fever, the circulation of the affections. Maltravers looked with
the benevolence of a brother upon the brilliant, versatile, and restless
Teresa. She was the last person in the world he could have been in love
with--for his nature, ardent, excitable, yet fastidious, required
something of repose in the manners and temperament of the woman whom he
could love, and Teresa scarcely knew what repose was. Whether playing
with her children (and she had two lovely ones--the eldest six years
old), or teasing her calm and meditative husband, or pouring out
extempore verses, or rattling over airs which she never finished, on the
guitar or piano--or making excursions on the lake--or, in short, in
whatever occupation she appeared as the Cynthia of the minute, she was
always gay and mobile--never out of humour, never acknowledging a single
care or cross in life--never susceptible of grief, save when her
brother's delicate health or morbid temper saddened her atmosphere of
sunshine. Even then, the sanguine elasticity of her mind and
constitution quickly recovered from the depression; and she persuaded
herself that Castruccio would grow stronger every year, and ripen into a
celebrated and happy man. Castruccio himself lived what romantic
poetasters call the "life of a poet." He loved to see the sun rise over
the distant Alps--or the midnight moon sleeping on the lake. He spent
half the day, and often half the night, in solitary rambles, weaving his
airy rhymes, or indulging his gloomy reveries, and he thought loneliness
made the element of a poet. Alas! Dante, Alfieri, even Petrarch might
have taught him, that a poet must have intimate knowledge of men as well
as mountains, if he desire to become the CREATOR. When Shelley, in one
of his prefaces, boasts of being familiar with Alps and glaciers, and
Heaven knows what, the critical artist cannot help wishing that he had
been rather familiar with Fleet Street or the Strand. Perhaps, then,
that remarkable genius might have been more capable of realizing
characters of flesh and blood, and have composed corporeal and
consummate wholes, not confused and glittering fragments.
Though Ernest was attached to Teresa and deeply interested in
Castruccio, it was De Montaigne for whom he experienced the higher and
graver sentiment of esteem. This Frenchman was one acquainted with a
much larger world than that of the Coteries. He had served in the army,
had been employed with distinction in civil affairs, and was of that
robust and healthful moral constitution which can bear with every
variety of social life, and estimate calmly the balance of our moral
fortunes. Trial and experience had left him that true philosopher who
is too wise to be an optimist, too just to be a misanthrope. He enjoyed
life with sober judgment, and pursued the path most suited to himself,
without declaring it to be the best for others. He was a little hard,
perhaps, upon the errors that belong to weakness and conceit--not to
those that have their source in great natures or generous thoughts.
Among his characteristics was a profound admiration for England. His
own country he half loved, yet half disdained. The impetuosity and
levity of his compatriots displeased his sober and dignified notions.
He could not forgive them (he was wont to say) for having made the two
grand experiments of popular revolution and military despotism in vain.
He sympathised neither with the young enthusiasts who desired a
republic, without well knowing the numerous strata of habits and customs
upon which that fabric, if designed for permanence, should be built--nor
with the uneducated and fierce chivalry that longed for a restoration of
the warrior empire--nor with the dull and arrogant bigots who connected
all ideas of order and government with the ill-starred and worn-out
dynasty of the Bourbons. In fact, GOOD SENSE was with him the
/principium et fons/ of all theories and all practice. And it was this
quality that attached him to the English. His philosophy on this head
was rather curious.
"Good sense," said he one day to Maltravers, as they were walking to and
fro at De Montaigne's villa, by the margin of the lake, "is not a merely
intellectual attribute. It is rather the result of a just equilibrium
of all our faculties, spiritual and moral. The dishonest, or the toys
of their own passions, may have genius; but they rarely, if ever, have
good sense in the conduct of life. They may often win large prizes, but
it is by a game of chance, not skill. But the man whom I perceive
walking an honourable and upright career--just to others, and also to
himself (for we owe justice to ourselves--to the care of our fortunes,
our character--to the management of our passions)--is a more dignified
representative of his Maker than the mere child of genius. Of such a
man we say he has GOOD SENSE; yes, but he has also integrity,
self-respect, and self-denial. A thousand trials which his sense raves
and conquers, are temptations also to his probity--his temper--in a
word, to all the many sides of his complicated nature. Now, I do not
think he will have this /good sense/ any more than a drunkard will have
strong nerves, unless he be in the constant habit of keeping his mind
clear from the intoxication of envy, vanity, and the various emotions
that dupe and mislead us. Good sense is not, therefore, an abstract
quality or a solitary talent; but it is the natural result of the habit
of thinking justly, and therefore seeing clearly, and is as different
from the sagacity that belongs to a diplomatist or attorney, as the
philosophy of Socrates differed from the rhetoric of Gorgias. As a mass
of individual excellences make up this attribute in a man, so a mass of
such men thus characterised give a character to a nation. Your England
is, therefore, renowned for its good sense, but it is renowned also for
the excellences which accompany strong sense in an individual--high
honesty and faith in its dealings, a warm love of justice and fair play,
a general freedom from the violent crimes common on the Continent, and
the energetic perseverance in enterprise once commenced, which results
from a bold and healthful disposition."
"Our wars, our debt--" began Maltravers.
"Pardon me," interrupted De Montaigne, "I am speaking of your people,
not of your government. A government is often a very unfair
representative of a nation. But even in the wars you allude to, if you
examine, you will generally find them originate in the love of justice,
which is the basis of good sense, not from any insane desire of conquest
or glory. A man, however sensible, must have a heart in his bosom, and
a great nation cannot be a piece of selfish clockwork. Suppose you and
I are sensible, prudent men, and we see in a crowd one violent fellow
unjustly knocking another on the head, we should be brutes, not men, if
we did not interfere with the savage; but if we thrust ourselves into a
crowd with a large bludgeon, and belabour our neighbours, with the hope
that the spectators would cry, 'See what a bold, strong fellow that
is!'--then we should be only playing the madman from the motive of the
coxcomb. I fear you will find in the military history of the French and
English the application of my parable."
"Yet still, I confess, there is a gallantry, and a noblemanlike and
Norman spirit in the whole French nation, which make me forgive many of
their excesses, and think they are destined for great purposes, when
experience shall have sobered their hot blood. Some nations, as some
men, are slow in arriving at maturity; others seem men in their cradle.
The English, thanks to their sturdy Saxon origin, elevated, not
depressed, by the Norman infusion, never were children. The difference
is striking, when you regard the representatives of both in their great
men--whether writers or active citizens."
"Yes," said De Montaigne, "in Milton and Cromwell there is nothing of
the brilliant child. I cannot say as much for Voltaire or Napoleon.
Even Richelieu, the manliest of our statesmen, had so much of the French
infant in him as to fancy himself a /beau garcon/, a gallant, a wit, and
a poet. As for the Racine school of writers, they were not out of the
leading-strings of imitation--cold copyists of a pseudo-classic, in
which they saw the form, and never caught the spirit. What so little
Roman, Greek, Hebrew, as their Roman, Greek, and Hebrew dramas? Your
rude Shakespeare's /Julius Caesar/--even his /Troilus and
Cressida/--have the ancient spirit, precisely as they are imitations of
nothing ancient. But our Frenchmen copied the giant images of old just
as the school-girl copies a drawing, by holding it up to the window, and
tracing the lines on silver paper."
"But your new writers--De Stael--Chateaubriand?"*
* At the time of this conversation the later school, adorned by Victor
Hugo, who, with notions of art elaborately wrong, is still a man of
extraordinary genius, had not risen into its present equivocal
reputation.
"I find no fault with the sentimentalists," answered the severe critic,
"but that of exceeding feebleness. They have no bone and muscle in
their genius--all is flaccid and rotund in its feminine symmetry. They
seem to think that vigour consists in florid phrases and little
aphorisms, and delineate all the mighty tempests of the human heart with
the polished prettiness of a miniature-painter on ivory. No!--these two
are children of another kind--affected, tricked-out, well-dressed
children--very clever, very precocious--but children still. Their
whinings, and their sentimentalities, and their egotism, and their
vanity, cannot interest masculine beings who know what life and its
stern objects are."
"Your brother-in-law," said Maltravers with a slight smile, "must find
in you a discouraging censor."
"My poor Castruccio," replied De Montaigne, with a half-sigh; "he is one
of those victims whom I believe to be more common than we dream of--men
whose aspirations are above their powers. I agree with a great German
writer, that in the first walks of Art no man has a right to enter,
unless he is convinced that he has strength and speed for the goal.
Castruccio might be an amiable member of society, nay, an able and
useful man, if he would apply the powers he possesses to the rewards
they may obtain. He has talent enough to win him reputation in any
profession but that of a poet."
"But authors who obtain immortality are not always first-rate."
"First-rate in their way, I suspect; even if that way be false or
trivial. They must be connected with the /history/ of their literature;
you must be able to say of them, 'In this school, be it bad or good,
they exerted such and such an influence;' in a word, they must form a
link in the great chain of a nation's authors, which may be afterwards
forgotten by the superficial, but without which the chain would be
incomplete. And thus, if not first-rate for all time, they have been
first-rate in their own day. But Castruccio is only the echo of
others--he can neither found a school nor ruin one. Yet this" (again
added De Montaigne after a pause)--"this melancholy malady in my
brother-in-law would cure itself, perhaps, if he were not Italian. In
your animated and bustling country, after sufficient disappointment as a
poet, he would glide into some other calling, and his vanity and craving
for effect would find a rational and manly outlet. But in Italy, what
can a clever man do, if he is not a poet or a robber? If he love his
country, that crime is enough to unfit him for civil employment, and his
mind cannot stir a step in the bold channels of speculation without
falling foul of the Austrian or the Pope. No; the best I can hope for
Castruccio is, that he will end in an antiquary, and dispute about ruins
with the Romans. Better that than mediocre poetry."
Maltravers was silent and thoughtful. Strange to say, De Montaigne's
views did not discourage his own new and secret ardour for intellectual
triumphs; not because he felt that he was now able to achieve them, but
because he felt the iron of his own nature, and knew that a man who has
iron in his nature must ultimately hit upon some way of shaping the
metal into use.
The host and guest were now joined by Castruccio himself--silent and
gloomy as indeed he usually was, especially in the presence of De
Montaigne, with whom he felt his "self-love" wounded; for though he
longed to despise his hard brother-in-law, the young poet was compelled
to acknowledge that De Montaigne was not a man to be despised.
Maltravers dined with the De Montaignes, and spent the evening with
them. He could not but observe that Castruccio, who affected in his
verses the softest sentiments--who was, indeed, by original nature,
tender and gentle--had become so completely warped by that worst of all
mental vices--the eternally pondering on his own excellences, talents,
mortifications, and ill-usage, that he never contributed to the
gratification of those around him; he had none of the little arts of
social benevolence, none of the playful youth of disposition which
usually belongs to the good-hearted, and for which men of a
master-genius, however elevated their studies, however stern or reserved
to the vulgar world, are commonly noticeable amidst the friends they
love or in the home they adorn. Occupied with one dream, centred in
self, the young Italian was sullen and morose to all who did not
sympathise with his own morbid fancies. From the children--the
sister--the friend--the whole living earth, he fled to a poem on
Solitude, or stanzas upon Fame. Maltravers said to himself, "I will
never be an author--I will never sigh for renown--if I am to purchase
shadows at such a price!"