I HAVE a strong propensity in me to begin this chapter very
nonsensically, and I will not balk my fancy.—Accordingly I set off
thus:
If the fixture of _Momus_’s glass in the human breast, according to the
proposed emendation of that arch-critick, had taken place,——first, This
foolish consequence would certainly have followed,—That the very wisest
and very gravest of us all, in one coin or other, must have paid
window-money every day of our lives.
And, secondly, that had the said glass been there set up, nothing more
would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man’s character, but
to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical
bee-hive, and look’d in,—view’d the soul stark naked;—observed all her
motions,—her machinations;—traced all her maggots from their first
engendering to their crawling forth;—watched her loose in her frisks,
her gambols, her capricios; and after some notice of her more solemn
deportment, consequent upon such frisks, &c.——then taken your pen and
ink and set down nothing but what you had seen, and could have sworn
to:—But this is an advantage not to be had by the biographer in this
planet;—in the planet _Mercury_ (belike) it may be so, if not better
still for him;——for there the intense heat of the country, which is
proved by computators, from its vicinity to the sun, to be more than
equal to that of red-hot iron,—must, I think, long ago have vitrified
the bodies of the inhabitants, (as the efficient cause) to suit them
for the climate (which is the final cause;) so that betwixt them both,
all the tenements of their souls, from top to bottom, may be nothing
else, for aught the soundest philosophy can shew to the contrary, but
one fine transparent body of clear glass (bating the umbilical knot)—so
that, till the inhabitants grow old and tolerably wrinkled, whereby the
rays of light, in passing through them, become so monstrously
refracted,——or return reflected from their surfaces in such transverse
lines to the eye, that a man cannot be seen through;—his soul might as
well, unless for mere ceremony, or the trifling advantage which the
umbilical point gave her,—might, upon all other accounts, I say, as
well play the fool out o’doors as in her own house.
But this, as I said above, is not the case of the inhabitants of this
earth;—our minds shine not through the body, but are wrapt up here in a
dark covering of uncrystalized flesh and blood; so that, if we would
come to the specific characters of them, we must go some other way to
work.
Many, in good truth, are the ways, which human wit has been forced to
take, to do this thing with exactness.
Some, for instance, draw all their characters with
wind-instruments.—_Virgil_ takes notice of that way in the affair of
_Dido_ and _Æneas_;—but it is as fallacious as the breath of fame;—and,
moreover, bespeaks a narrow genius. I am not ignorant that the
_Italians_ pretend to a mathematical exactness in their designations of
one particular sort of character among them, from the _forte_ or
_piano_ of a certain wind-instrument they use,—which they say is
infallible.—I dare not mention the name of the instrument in this
place;—’tis sufficient we have it amongst us,—but never think of making
a drawing by it;—this is ænigmatical, and intended to be so, at least
_ad populum_:—And therefore, I beg, Madam, when you come here, that you
read on as fast as you can, and never stop to make any inquiry about
it.
There are others again, who will draw a man’s character from no other
helps in the world, but merely from his evacuations;—but this often
gives a very incorrect outline,—unless, indeed, you take a sketch of
his repletions too; and by correcting one drawing from the other,
compound one good figure out of them both.
I should have no objection to this method, but that I think it must
smell too strong of the lamp,—and be render’d still more operose, by
forcing you to have an eye to the rest of his _Non-naturals._—Why the
most natural actions of a man’s life should be called his
Non-naturals,—is another question.
There are others, fourthly, who disdain every one of these
expedients;—not from any fertility of their own, but from the various
ways of doing it, which they have borrowed from the honourable devices
which the Pentagraphic Brethren[3] of the brush have shewn in taking
copies.—These, you must know, are your great historians.
One of these you will see drawing a full length character _against the
light_;—that’s illiberal,—dishonest,—and hard upon the character of the
man who sits.
Others, to mend the matter, will make a drawing of you in the
_Camera_;—that is most unfair of all, because, _there_ you are sure to
be represented in some of your most ridiculous attitudes.
To avoid all and every one of these errors in giving you my uncle
_Toby_’s character, I am determined to draw it by no mechanical help
whatever;—nor shall my pencil be guided by any one wind-instrument
which ever was blown upon, either on this, or on the other side of the
_Alps_;—nor will I consider either his repletions or his discharges,—or
touch upon his Non-naturals; but, in a word, I will draw my uncle
_Toby_’s character from his HOBBY-HORSE.
[3] Pentagraph, an instrument to copy Prints and Pictures
mechanically, and in any proportion.