MY DEAR P——, You have saved my life. If I do not keep friends with her

now, I deserve to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. She is an angel from

Heaven, and you cannot pretend I ever said a word to the contrary! The

little rogue must have liked me from the first, or she never could have

stood all these hurricanes without slipping her cable. What could she

find in me? ‘I have mistook my person all this while,’ &c. Do you know I

saw a picture, the very pattern of her, the other day, at Dalkeith

Palace (Hope finding Fortune in the Sea), just before this blessed news

came, and the resemblance drove me almost out of my senses. Such

delicacy, such fulness, such perfect softness, such buoyancy, such

grace! If it is not the very image of her, I am no judge.—You have the

face to doubt my making the best husband in the world; you might as well

doubt it if I was married to one of the Houris of Paradise. She is a

saint, an angel, a love. If she deceives me again, she kills me. But I

will have such a kiss when I get back, as shall last me twenty years.

May God bless her for not utterly disowning and destroying me! What an

exquisite little creature it is, and how she holds out to the last in

her system of consistent contradictions! Since I wrote to you about

making a formal proposal, I have had her face constantly before me,

looking so like some faultless marble statue, as cold, as fixed and

graceful as ever statue did; the expression (nothing was ever like

_that_!) seemed to say—‘I wish I could love you better than I do, but

still I will be your’s.’ No, I’ll never believe again that she will not

be mine; for I think she was made on purpose for me. If there’s anyone

else that understands that turn of her head as I do, I’ll give her up

without scruple. I have made up my mind to this, never to dream of

another woman, while she even thinks it worth her while to _refuse to

have me_. You see I am not hard to please, after all. Did M—— know of

the intimacy that had subsisted between us? Or did you hint at it? I

think it would be a _clencher_, if he did. How ought I to behave when I

go back? Advise a fool, who had nearly lost a Goddess by his folly. The

thing was, I could not think it possible she would ever like _me_. Her

taste is singular, but not the worse for that. I’d rather have her love,

or liking (call it what you will) than empires. I deserve to call her

mine; for nothing else _can_ atone for what I’ve gone through for her. I

hope your next letter will not reverse all, and then I shall be happy

till I see her,—one of the blest when I do see her, if she looks like my

own beautiful love. I may perhaps write a line when I come to my right

wits.—Farewel at present, and thank you a thousand times for what you

have done for your poor friend.

P.S.—I like what M—— said about her sister, much. There are good people

in the world: I begin to see it, and believe it.

LETTER THE LAST

DEAR P——, To-morrow is the decisive day that makes me or mars me. I will

let you know the result by a line added to this. Yet what signifies it,

since either way I have little hope there, ‘whence alone my hope

cometh!’ You must know I am strangely in the dumps at this present

writing. My reception with her is doubtful, and my fate is then certain.

The hearing of your happiness has, I own, made me thoughtful. It is just

what I proposed to her to do—to have crossed the Alps with me, to sail

on sunny seas, to bask in Italian skies, to have visited Vevai and the

rocks of Meillerie, and to have repeated to her on the spot the story of

Julia and St. Preux, and to have shewn her all that my heart had stored

up for her—but on my forehead alone is written—REJECTED! Yet I too could

have adored as fervently, and loved as tenderly as others, had I been

permitted. You are going abroad, you say, happy in making happy. Where

shall I be? In the grave, I hope, or else in her arms. To me, alas!

there is no sweetness out of her sight, and that sweetness has turned to

bitterness, I fear; that gentleness to sullen scorn! Still I hope for

the best. If she will but _have_ me, I’ll make her _love_ me: and I

think her not giving a positive answer looks like it, and also shews

that there is no one else. Her holding out to the last also, I think,

proves that she was never to have been gained but with honour. She’s a

strange, almost an inscrutable girl: but if I once win her consent, I

shall kill her with kindness.—Will you let me have a sight of _somebody_

before you go? I should be most proud. I was in hopes to have got away

by the Steam-boat to-morrow, but owing to the business not coming on

till then, I cannot; and may not be in town for another week, unless I

come by the Mail, which I am strongly tempted to do. In the latter case

I shall be _there_, and visible on Saturday evening. Will you look in

and see, about eight o’clock? I wish much to see you and her and J. H.

and my little boy once more; and then, if she is not what she once was

to me, I care not if I die that instant. I will conclude here till

to-morrow, as I am getting into my old melancholy.—

It is all over, and I am my own man, and your’s ever—

_PART III_

ADDRESSED TO J. S. K——

My dear K——, It is all over, and I know my fate. I told you I would send

you word, if anything decisive happened; but an impenetrable mystery

hung over the affair till lately. It is at last (by the merest accident

in the world) dissipated; and I keep my promise, both for your

satisfaction, and for the ease of my own mind.

You remember the morning when I said ‘I will go and repose my sorrows at

the foot of Ben Lomond’—and when from Dumbarton Bridge its giant-shadow,

clad in air and sunshine, appeared in view. We had a pleasant day’s

walk. We passed Smollett’s monument on the road (somehow these poets

touch one in reflection more than most military heroes)—talked of old

times; you repeated Logan’s beautiful verses to the cuckoo,[20] which I

wanted to compare with Wordsworth’s, but my courage failed me; you then

told me some passages of an early attachment which was suddenly broken

off; we considered together which was the most to be pitied, a

disappointment in love where the attachment was mutual or one where

there has been no return, and we both agreed, I think, that the former

was best to be endured, and that to have the consciousness of it a

companion for life was the least evil of the two, as there was a secret

sweetness that took off the bitterness and the sting of regret, and ‘the

memory of what once had been’ atoned, in some measure, and at intervals,

for what ‘never more could be.’ In the other case, there was nothing to

look back to with tender satisfaction, no redeeming trait, not even a

possibility of turning it to good. It left behind it not cherished

sighs, but stifled pangs. The galling sense of it did not bring moisture

into the eyes, but dried up the heart ever after. One had been my fate,

the other had been yours!—

You startled me every now and then from my reverie by the robust voice,

in which you asked the country people (by no means prodigal of their

answers)—‘If there was any trout-fishing in those streams?’—and our

dinner at Luss set us up for the rest of our day’s march. The sky now

became overcast; but this, I think, added to the effect of the scene.

The road to Tarbet is superb. It is on the very verge of the lake—hard,

level, rocky, with low stone bridges constantly flung across it, and

fringed with birch trees, just then budding into spring, behind which,

as through a slight veil, you saw the huge shadowy form of Ben Lomond.

It lifts its enormous but graceful bulk direct from the edge of the

water without any projecting lowlands, and has in this respect much the

advantage of Skiddaw. Loch Lomond comes upon you by degrees as you

advance, unfolding and then withdrawing its conscious beauties like an

accomplished coquet. You are struck with the point of a rock, the arch

of a bridge, the Highland huts (like the first rude habitations of men)

dug out of the soil, built of turf, and covered with brown heather, a

sheep-cote, some straggling cattle feeding half-way down a precipice;

but as you advance farther on, the view expands into the perfection of

lake scenery. It is nothing (or your eye is caught by nothing) but

water, earth, and sky. Ben Lomond waves to the right, in its simple

majesty, cloud-capt or bare, and descending to a point at the head of

the lake, shews the Trossacs beyond, tumbling about their blue ridges

like woods waving; to the left is the Cobler, whose top is like a castle

shattered in pieces and nodding to its ruin; and at your side rise the

shapes of round pastoral hills, green, fleeced with herds, and retiring

into mountainous bays and upland valleys, where solitude and peace might

make their lasting home, if peace were to be found in solitude! That it

was not always so, I was a sufficient proof; for there was one image

that alone haunted me in the midst of all this sublimity and beauty, and

turned it to a mockery and a dream!

The snow on the mountain would not let us ascend; and being weary of

waiting and of being visited by the guide every two hours to let us know

that the weather would not do, we returned, you homewards, and I to

London—

‘Italiam, Italiam!’

You know the anxious expectations with which I set out:—now hear the

result.—

As the vessel sailed up the Thames, the air thickened with the

consciousness of being near her, and I ‘heaved her name pantingly

forth.’ As I approached the house, I could not help thinking of the

lines—

‘How near am I to a happiness,

That earth exceeds not! Not another like it.

The treasures of the deep are not so precious

As are the conceal’d comforts of a man

Lock’d up in woman’s love. I scent the air

Of blessings when I come but near the house.

What a delicious breath true love sends forth!

The violet-beds not sweeter. Now for a welcome

Able to draw men’s envies upon man:

A kiss now that will hang upon my lip,

As sweet as morning dew upon a rose,

And full as long!’

I saw her, but I saw at the first glance that there was something amiss.

It was with much difficulty and after several pressing intreaties that

she was prevailed on to come up into the room; and when she did, she

stood at the door, cold, distant, averse; and when at length she was

persuaded by my repeated remonstrances to come and take my hand, and I

offered to touch her lips, she turned her head and shrunk from my

embraces, as if quite alienated or mortally offended. I asked what it

could mean? What had I done in her absence to have incurred her

displeasure? Why had she not written to me? I could get only short,

sullen, disconnected answers, as if there was something labouring in her

mind which she either could not or would not impart. I hardly knew how

to bear this first reception after so long an absence, and so different

from the one my sentiments towards her merited; but I thought it

possible it might be prudery (as I had returned without having actually

accomplished what I went about) or that she had taken offence at

something in my letters. She saw how much I was hurt. I asked her, ‘If

she was altered since I went away?’—‘No.’ ‘If there was any one else who

had been so fortunate as to gain her favourable opinion?’—‘No, there was

no one else.’ ‘What was it then? Was it any thing in my letters? Or had

I displeased her by letting Mr P—— know she wrote to me?’—‘No, not at

all; but she did not apprehend my last letter required any answer, or

she would have replied to it.’ All this appeared to me very

unsatisfactory and evasive; but I could get no more from her, and was

obliged to let her go with a heavy, foreboding heart. I however found

that C—— was gone, and no one else had been there, of whom I had cause

to be jealous.—‘Should I see her on the morrow?’—‘She believed so, but

she could not promise.’ The next morning she did not appear with the

breakfast as usual. At this I grew somewhat uneasy. The little

Buonaparte, however, was placed in its old position on the mantle-piece,

which I considered as a sort of recognition of old times. I saw her once

or twice casually; nothing particular happened till the next day, which

was Sunday. I took occasion to go into the parlour for the newspaper,

which she gave me with a gracious smile, and seemed tolerably frank and

cordial. This of course acted as a spell upon me. I walked out with my

little boy, intending to go and dine out at one or two places, but I

found that I still contrived to bend my steps towards her, and I went

back to take tea at home. While we were out, I talked to William about

Sarah, saying that she too was unhappy, and asking him to make it up

with her. He said, if she was unhappy, he would not bear her malice any

more. When she came up with the tea-things, I said to her, ‘William has

something to say to you—I believe he wants to be friends.’ On which he

said in his abrupt, hearty manner, ‘Sarah, I’m sorry if I’ve ever said

anything to vex you’—so they shook hands, and she said, smiling

affably—‘_Then_ I’ll think no more of it!’ I added—‘I see you’ve brought

me back my little Buonaparte’—She answered with tremulous softness—‘I

told you I’d keep it safe for you!’—as if her pride and pleasure in

doing so had been equal, and she had, as it were, thought of nothing

during my absence but how to greet me with this proof of her fidelity on

my return. I cannot describe her manner. Her words are few and simple;

but you can have no idea of the exquisite, unstudied, irresistible

graces with which she accompanies them, unless you can suppose a Greek

statue to smile, move, and speak. Those lines in Tibullus seem to have

been written on purpose for her—

Quicquid agit quoquo vestigià vertit,

Componit furtim, subsequiturque decor.

Or what do you think of those in a modern play, which might actually

have been composed with an eye to this little trifler—

——‘See with what a waving air she goes

Along the corridor. How like a fawn!

Yet statelier. No sound (however soft)

Nor gentlest echo telleth when she treads,

But every motion of her shape doth seem

Hallowed by silence. So did Hebe grow

Among the gods a paragon! Away, I’m grown

The very fool of Love!’

The truth is, I never saw anything like her, nor I never shall again.

How then do I console myself for the loss of her? Shall I tell you, but

you will not mention it again? I am foolish enough to believe that she

and I, in spite of every thing, shall be sitting together over a

sea-coal fire, a comfortable good old couple, twenty years hence! But to

my narrative.—

I was delighted with the alteration in her manner, and said, referring

to the bust—‘You know it is not mine, but your’s; I gave it you; nay, I

have given you all—my heart, and whatever I possess, is your’s!’ She

seemed good-humouredly to decline this _carte blanche_ offer, and waved,

like a thing of enchantment, out of the room. False calm!—Deceitful

smiles!—Short interval of peace, followed by lasting woe! I sought an

interview with her that same evening. I could not get her to come any

farther than the door. ‘She was busy—she could hear what I had to say

there.’ ‘Why do you seem to avoid me as you do? Not one five minutes’

conversation, for the sake of old acquaintance? Well, then, for the sake

of _the little image_!’ The appeal seemed to have lost its efficacy; the

charm was broken; she remained immoveable. ‘Well, then I must come to

you, if you will not run away.’ I went and sat down in a chair near the

door, and took her hand, and talked to her for three quarters of an

hour; and she listened patiently, thoughtfully, and seemed a good deal

affected by what I said. I told her how much I had felt, how much I had

suffered for her in my absence, and how much I had been hurt by her

sudden silence, for which I knew not how to account. I could have done

nothing to offend her while I was away; and my letters were, I hoped,

tender and respectful. I had had but one thought ever present with me;

her image never quitted my side, alone or in company, to delight or

distract me. Without her I could have no peace, nor ever should again,

unless she would behave to me as she had done formerly. There was no

abatement of my regard to her; why was she so changed? I said to her,

‘Ah! Sarah, when I think that it is only a year ago that you were

everything to me I could wish, and that now you seem lost to me for

ever, the month of May (the name of which ought to be a signal for joy

and hope) strikes chill to my heart.—How different is this meeting from

that delicious parting, when you seemed never weary of repeating the

proofs of your regard and tenderness, and it was with difficulty we tore

ourselves asunder at last! I am ten thousand times fonder of you than I

was then, and ten thousand times more unhappy.’ ‘You have no reason to

be so; my feelings towards you are the same as they ever were.’ I told

her ‘She was my all of hope or comfort: my passion for her grew stronger

every time I saw her.’ She answered, ‘She was sorry for it; for _that_

she never could return.’ I said something about looking ill: she said in

her pretty, mincing, emphatic way, ‘I despise looks!’ So, thought I, it

is not that; and she says there’s no one else: it must be some strange

air she gives herself, in consequence of the approaching change in my

circumstances. She has been probably advised not to give up till all is

fairly over, and then she will be my own sweet girl again. All this time

she was standing just outside the door, my hand in hers (would that they

could have grown together!) she was dressed in a loose morning-gown, her

hair curled beautifully; she stood with her profile to me, and looked

down the whole time. No expression was ever more soft or perfect. Her

whole attitude, her whole form, was dignity and bewitching grace. I said

to her, ‘You look like a queen, my love, adorned with your own graces!’

I grew idolatrous, and would have kneeled to her. She made a movement,

as if she was displeased. I tried to draw her towards me. She wouldn’t.

I then got up, and offered to kiss her at parting. I found she

obstinately refused. This stung me to the quick. It was the first time

in her life she had ever done so. There must be some new bar between us

to produce these continued denials; and she had not even esteem enough

left to tell me so. I followed her half-way down-stairs, but to no

purpose, and returned into my room, confirmed in my most dreadful

surmises. I could bear it no longer. I gave way to all the fury of

disappointed hope and jealous passion. I was made the dupe of trick and

cunning, killed with cold, sullen scorn; and, after all the agony I had

suffered, could obtain no explanation why I was subjected to it. I was

still to be tantalized, tortured, made the cruel sport of one, for whom

I would have sacrificed all. I tore the locket which contained her hair

(and which I used to wear continually in my bosom, as the precious token

of her dear regard) from my neck, and trampled it in pieces. I then

dashed the little Buonaparte on the ground, and stamped upon it, as one

of her instruments of mockery. I could not stay in the room; I could not

leave it; my rage, my despair were uncontroulable. I shrieked curses on

her name, and on her false love; and the scream I uttered (so pitiful

and so piercing was it, that the sound of it terrified me) instantly

brought the whole house, father, mother, lodgers and all, into the room.

They thought I was destroying her and myself. I had gone into the

bedroom, merely to hide away from myself, and as I came out of it,

raging-mad with the new sense of present shame and lasting misery, Mrs.

F—— said, ‘She’s in there! He has got her in there!’ thinking the cries

had proceeded from her, and that I had been offering her violence. ‘Oh!

no,’ I said, ‘She’s in no danger from me; I am not the person;’ and

tried to burst from this scene of degradation. The mother endeavoured to

stop me, and said, ‘For God’s sake, don’t go out, Mr ——! for God’s sake,

don’t!’ Her father, who was not, I believe, in the secret, and was

therefore justly scandalised at such outrageous conduct, said angrily,

‘Let him go! Why should he stay?’ I however sprang down stairs, and as

they called out to me, ‘What is it?—What has she done to you?’ I

answered, ‘She has murdered me!—She has destroyed me for ever!—She has

doomed my soul to perdition!’ I rushed out of the house, thinking to

quit it forever; but I was no sooner in the street, than the desolation

and the darkness became greater, more intolerable; and the eddying

violence of my passion drove me back to the source, from whence it

sprung. This unexpected explosion, with the conjectures to which it

would give rise, could not be very agreeable to the _precieuse_ or her

family; and when I went back, the father was waiting at the door, as if

anticipating this sudden turn of my feelings, with no friendly aspect. I

said, ‘I have to beg pardon, Sir; but my mad fit is over, and I wish to

say a few words to you in private.’ He seemed to hesitate, but some

uneasy forebodings on his own account, probably, prevailed over his

resentment; or, perhaps (as philosophers have a desire to know the cause

of thunder) it was a natural curiosity to know what circumstances of

provocation had given rise to such an extraordinary scene of confusion.

When we reached my room, I requested him to be seated. I said, ‘It is

true, Sir, I have lost my peace of mind for ever, but at present I am

quite calm and collected, and I wish to explain to you why I have

behaved in so extravagant a way, and to ask for your advice and

intercession.’ He appeared satisfied, and I went on. I had no chance

either of exculpating myself, or of probing the question to the bottom,

but by stating the naked truth, and therefore I said at once, ‘Sarah

told me, Sir (and I never shall forget the way in which she told me,

fixing her dove’s eyes upon me, and looking a thousand tender reproaches

for the loss of that good opinion, which she held dearer than all the

world) she told me, Sir, that as you one day passed the door, which

stood a-jar, you saw her in an attitude which a good deal startled you;

I mean sitting in my lap, with her arms round my neck, and mine twined

round her in the fondest manner. What I wished to ask was, whether this

was actually the case, or whether it was a mere invention of her own, to

enhance the sense of my obligations to her; for I begin to doubt

everything?’—‘Indeed, it was so; and very much surprised and hurt I was

to see it.’ ‘Well then, Sir, I can only say, that as you saw her sitting

then, so she had been sitting for the last year and a half, almost every

day of her life, by the hour together; and you may judge yourself,

knowing what a nice modest-looking girl she is, whether, after having

been admitted to such intimacy with so sweet a creature, and for so long

a time, it is not enough to make any one frantic to be received by her

as I have been since my return, without any provocation given or cause

assigned for it.’ The old man answered very seriously, and, as I think,

sincerely, ‘What you now tell me, Sir, mortifies and shocks me as much

as it can do yourself. I had no idea such a thing was possible. I was

much pained at what I saw; but I thought it an accident, and that it

would never happen again.’—‘It was a constant habit; it has happened a

hundred times since, and a thousand before. I lived on her caresses as

my daily food, nor can I live without them.’ So I told him the whole

story, ‘what conjurations, and what mighty magic I won his daughter

with,’ to be anything but _mine for life_. Nothing could well exceed his

astonishment and apparent mortification. ‘What I had said,’ he owned,

‘had left a weight upon his mind that he should not easily get rid of.’

I told him, ‘For myself, I never could recover the blow I had received.

I thought, however, for her own sake, she ought to alter her present

behaviour. Her marked neglect and dislike, so far from justifying, left

her former intimacies without excuse; for nothing could reconcile them

to propriety, or even a pretence to common decency, but either love, or

friendship so strong and pure that it could put on the guise of love.

She was certainly a singular girl. Did she think it right and becoming

to be free with strangers, and strange to old friends?’ I frankly

declared, ‘I did not see how it was in human nature for any one who was

not rendered callous to such familiarities by bestowing them

indiscriminately on every one, to grant the extreme and continued

indulgences she had done to me, without either liking the man at first,

or coming to like him in the end, in spite of herself. When my addresses

had nothing, and could have nothing honourable in them, she gave them

every encouragement; when I wished to make them honourable, she treated

them with the utmost contempt. The terms we had been all along on were

such as if she had been to be my bride next day. It was only when I

wished her actually to become so, to ensure her own character and my

happiness, that she shrunk back with precipitation and panic-fear. There

seemed to me something wrong in all this; a want both of common

propriety, and I might say, of natural feeling; yet, with all her

faults, I loved her, and ever should, beyond any other human being. I

had drank in the poison of her sweetness too long ever to be cured of

it; and though I might find it to be poison in the end, it was still in

my veins. My only ambition was to be permitted to live with her, and to

die in her arms. Be she what she would, treat me how she would, I felt

that my soul was wedded to hers; and were she a mere lost creature, I

would try to snatch her from perdition, and marry her to-morrow if she

would have me. That was the question—‘Would she have me, or would she

not?’ He said he could not tell; but should not attempt to put any

constraint upon her inclinations, one way or other. I acquiesced, and

added, that ‘I had brought all this upon myself, by acting contrary to

the suggestions of my friend, Mr ——, who had desired me to take no

notice whether she came near me or kept away, whether she smiled or

frowned, was kind or contemptuous—all you have to do, is to wait

patiently for a month till you are your own man, as you will be in all

probability; then make her an offer of your hand, and if she refuses,

there’s an end of the matter.’ Mr L. said, ‘Well, Sir, and I don’t think

you can follow a better advice!’ I took this as at least a sort of

negative encouragement, and so we parted.

TO THE SAME

(_in continuation_).

My Dear Friend, The next day I felt almost as sailors must do after a

violent storm over-night, that has subsided towards day-break. The

morning was a dull and stupid calm, and I found she was unwell, in

consequence of what had happened. In the evening I grew more uneasy, and

determined on going into the country for a week or two. I gathered up

the fragments of the locket of her hair, and the little bronze statue,

which were strewed about the floor, kissed them, folded them up in a

sheet of paper, and sent them to her, with these lines written in pencil

on the outside—‘_Pieces of a broken heart, to be kept in remembrance of

the unhappy. Farewell._’ No notice was taken; nor did I expect any. The

following morning I requested Betsey to pack up my box for me, as I

should go out of town the next day, and at the same time wrote a note to

her sister to say, I should take it as a favour if she would please to

accept of the enclosed copies of the _Vicar of Wakefield_, _The Man of

Feeling_, and _Nature and Art_, in lieu of three volumes of my own

writings, which I had given her on different occasions, in the course of

our acquaintance. I was piqued, in fact, that she should have these to

shew as proofs of my weakness, and as if I thought the way to win her

was by plaguing her with my own performances. She sent me word back that

the books I had sent were of no use to her, and that I should have those

I wished for in the afternoon; but that she could not before, as she had

lent them to her sister, Mrs. M ——. I said, ‘very well;’ but observed

(laughing) to Betsey, ‘It’s a bad rule to give and take; so, if Sarah

won’t have these books, you must; they are very pretty ones, I assure

you.’ She curtsied and took them, according to the family custom. In the

afternoon, when I came back to tea, I found the little girl on her

knees, busy in packing up my things, and a large paper parcel on the

table, which I could not at first tell what to make of. On opening it,

however, I soon found what it was. It contained a number of volumes

which I had given her at different times (among others, a little

Prayer-Book, bound in crimson velvet, with green silk linings; she

kissed it twenty times when she received it, and said it was the

prettiest present in the world, and that she would shew it to her aunt,

who would be proud of it)—and all these she had returned together. Her

name in the title-page was cut out of them all. I doubted at the instant

whether she had done this before or after I had sent for them back, and

I have doubted of it since; but there is no occasion to suppose her

_ugly all over with hypocrisy_. Poor little thing! She has enough to

answer for, as it is. I asked Betsey if she could carry a message for

me, and she said ‘_Yes_.’ ‘Will you tell your sister, then, that I did

not want all these books; and give my love to her, and say that I shall

be obliged if she will still keep these that I have sent back, and tell

her that it is only those of my own writing that I think unworthy of

her.’ What do you think the little imp made answer? She raised herself

on the other side of the table where she stood, as if inspired by the

genius of the place, and said—‘AND THOSE ARE THE ONES THAT SHE PRIZES

THE MOST!’ If there were ever words spoken that could revive the dead,

those were the words. Let me kiss them, and forget that my ears have

heard aught else! I said, ‘Are you sure of that?’ and she said, ‘Yes,

quite sure.’ I told her, ‘If I could be, I should be very different from

what I was.’ And I became so that instant, for these casual words

carried assurance to my heart of her esteem—that once implied, I had

proofs enough of her fondness. Oh! how I felt at that moment! Restored

to love, hope, and joy, by a breath which I had caught by the merest

accident, and which I might have pined in absence and mute despair for

want of hearing! I did not know how to contain myself; I was childish,

wanton, drunk with pleasure. I gave Betsey a twenty-shilling note which

I happened to have in my hand, and on her asking ‘What’s this for, Sir?’

I said, ‘It’s for you. Don’t you think it worth that to be made happy?

You once made me very wretched by some words I heard you drop, and now

you have made me as happy; and all I wish you is, when you grow up, that

you may find some one to love you as well as I do your sister, and that

you may love better than she does me!’ I continued in this state of

delirium or dotage all that day and the next, talked incessantly,

laughed at every thing, and was so extravagant, nobody could tell what

was the matter with me. I murmured her name; I blest her; I folded her

to my heart in delicious fondness; I called her by my own name; I

worshipped her: I was mad for her. I told P—— I should laugh in her

face, if ever she pretended not to like me again. Her mother came in and

said, she hoped I should excuse Sarah’s coming up. ‘Oh, Ma’am,’ I said,

‘I have no wish to see her; I feel her at my heart; she does not hate me

after all, and I wish for nothing. Let her come when she will, she is to

me welcomer than light, than life; but let it be in her own sweet time,

and at her own dear pleasure.’ Betsey also told me she was ‘so glad to

get the books back.’ I, however, sobered and wavered (by degrees) from

seeing nothing of her, day after day; and in less than a week I was

devoted to the Infernal Gods. I could hold out no longer than the Monday

evening following. I sent a message to her; she returned an ambiguous

answer; but she came up. Pity me, my friend, for the shame of this

recital. Pity me for the pain of having ever had to make it! If the

spirits of mortal creatures, purified by faith and hope, can (according

to the highest assurances) ever, during thousands of years of

smooth-rolling eternity and balmy, sainted repose, forget the pain, the

toil, the anguish, the helplessness, and the despair they have suffered

here, in this frail being, then may I forget that withering hour, and

her, that fair, pale form that entered, my inhuman betrayer, and my only

earthly love! She said, ‘Did you wish to speak to me, Sir?’ I said,

‘Yes, may I not speak to you? I wanted to see you and be friends.’ I

rose up, offered her an arm-chair which stood facing, bowed on it, and

knelt to her adoring. She said (going) ‘If that’s all, I have nothing to

say.’ I replied, ‘Why do you treat me thus? What have I done to become

thus hateful to you?’ _Answer_, ‘I always told you I had no affection

for you.’ You may suppose this was a blow, after the imaginary

honey-moon in which I had passed the preceding week. I was stunned by

it; my heart sunk within me. I contrived to say, ‘Nay, my dear girl, not

always neither; for did you not once (if I might presume to look back to

those happy, happy times), when you were sitting on my knee as usual,

embracing and embraced, and I asked if you could not love me at last,

did you not make answer, in the softest tones that ever man heard, ‘_I

could easily say so, whether I did or not; you should judge by my

actions!_’ Was I to blame in taking you at your word, when every hope I

had depended on your sincerity? And did you not say since I came back,

‘_Your feelings to me were the same as ever?_ Why then is your behaviour

so different?’ S. ‘Is it nothing, your exposing me to the whole house in

the way you did the other evening?’ H. ‘Nay, that was the consequence of

your cruel reception of me, not the cause of it. I had better have gone

away last year, as I proposed to do, unless you would give some pledge

of your fidelity; but it was your own offer that I should remain. “Why

should I go?” you said, “Why could we not go on the same as we had done,

and say nothing about the word _forever_?”’ S. ‘And how did you behave

when you returned?’ H. ‘That was all forgiven when we last parted, and

your last words were, “I should find you the same as ever” when I came

home? Did you not that very day enchant and madden me over again by the

purest kisses and embraces, and did I not go from you (as I said)

adoring, confiding, with every assurance of mutual esteem and

friendship?’ S. ‘Yes, and in your absence I found that you had told my

aunt what had passed between us.’ H. ‘It was to induce her to extort

your real sentiments from you, that you might no longer make a secret of

your true regard for me, which your actions (but not your words)

confessed.’ S. ‘I own I have been guilty of improprieties, which you

have gone and repeated, not only in the house, but out of it; so that it

has come to my ears from various quarters, as if I was a light

character. And I am determined in future to be guided by the advice of

my relations, and particularly of my aunt, whom I consider as my best

friend, and keep every lodger at a proper distance.’ You will find

hereafter that her favourite lodger, whom she visits daily, had left the

house; so that she might easily make and keep this vow of extraordinary

self-denial. Precious little dissembler! Yet her aunt, her best friend,

says, ‘No, Sir, no; Sarah’s no hypocrite!’ which I was fool enough to

believe; and yet my great and unpardonable offence is to have

entertained passing doubts on this delicate point. I said, Whatever

errors I had committed, arose from my anxiety to have everything

explained to her honour: my conduct shewed that I had that at heart, and

that I built on the purity of her character as on a rock. My esteem for

her amounted to adoration. ‘She did not want adoration.’ It was only

when any thing happened to imply that I had been mistaken, that I

committed any extravagance, because I could not bear to think her short

of perfection. ‘She was far from perfection,’ she replied, with an air

and manner (oh, my God!) as near it as possible. ‘How could she accuse

me of a want of regard to her? It was but the other day, Sarah,’ I said

to her, ‘when that little circumstance of the books happened, and I

fancied the expressions your sister dropped proved the sincerity of all

your kindness to me—you don’t know how my heart melted within me at the

thought, that after all, I might be dear to you. New hopes sprung up in

my heart, and I felt as Adam must have done when his Eve was created for

him!’ ‘She had heard enough of that sort of conversation,’ (moving

towards the door). This, I own, was the unkindest cut of all. I had, in

that case, no hopes whatever. I felt that I had expended words in vain,

and that the conversation below stairs (which I told you of when I saw

you) had spoiled her taste for mine. If the allusion had been classical

I should have been to blame; but it was scriptural, it was a sort of

religious courtship, and Miss L. is religious!

At once he took his Muse and dipt her

Right in the middle of the Scripture.

It would not do—the lady could make neither head nor tail of it. This is

a poor attempt at levity. Alas! I am sad enough. ‘Would she go and leave

me so? If it was only my own behaviour, I still did not doubt of

success. I knew the sincerity of my love, and she would be convinced of

it in time. If that was all, I did not care: but tell me true, is there

not a new attachment that is the real cause of your estrangement? Tell

me, my sweet friend, and before you tell me, give me your hand (nay,

both hands) that I may have something to support me under the dreadful

conviction.’ She let me take her hands in mine, saying, ‘She supposed

there could be no objection to that,’—as if she acted on the suggestions

of others, instead of following her own will—but still avoided giving me

any answer. I conjured her to tell me the worst, and kill me on the

spot. Any thing was better than my present state. I said, ‘Is it Mr

C——?’ She smiled, and said with gay indifference, ‘Mr C—— was here a

very short time.’ ‘Well, then, was it Mr ——?’ She hesitated, and then

replied faintly, ‘No.’ This was a mere trick to mislead; one of the

profoundnesses of Satan, in which she is an adept. ‘But,’ she added

hastily, ‘she could make no more confidences.’ ‘Then,’ said I, ‘you have

something to communicate.’ ‘No; but she had once mentioned a thing of

the sort, which I had hinted to her mother, though it signified little.’

All this while I was in tortures. Every word, every half-denial, stabbed

me. ‘Had she any tie?’ ‘No, I have no tie?’ ‘You are not going to be

married soon?’ ‘I don’t intend ever to marry at all!’ ‘Can’t you be

friends with me as of old?’ ‘She could give no promises.’ ‘Would she

make her own terms?’ ‘She would make none.’—‘I was sadly afraid the

_little image_ was dethroned from her heart, as I had dashed it to the

ground the other night.’—‘She was neither desperate nor violent.’ I did

not answer—‘But deliberate and deadly,’—though I might; and so she

vanished in this running fight of question and answer, in spite of my

vain efforts to detain her. The cockatrice, I said, mocks me: so she has

always done. The thought was a dagger to me. My head reeled, my heart

recoiled within me. I was stung with scorpions; my flesh crawled; I was

choked with rage; her scorn scorched me like flames; her air (her

heavenly air) withdrawn from me, stifled me, and left me gasping for

breath and being. It was a fable. She started up in her own likeness, a

serpent in place of a woman. She had fascinated, she had stung me, and

had returned to her proper shape, gliding from me after inflicting the

mortal wound, and instilling deadly poison into every pore; but her form

lost none of its original brightness by the change of character, but was

all glittering, beauteous, voluptuous grace. Seed of the serpent or of

the woman, she was divine! I felt that she was a witch, and had

bewitched me. Fate had enclosed me round about. _I_ was transformed too,

no longer human (any more than she, to whom I had knit myself) my

feelings were marble; my blood was of molten lead; my thoughts on fire.

I was taken out of myself, wrapt into another sphere, far from the light

of day, of hope, of love. I had no natural affection left; she had slain

me, but no other thing had power over me. Her arms embraced another; but

her mock-embrace, the phantom of her love, still bound me, and I had not

a wish to escape. So I felt then, and so perhaps shall feel till I grow

old and die, nor have any desire that my years should last longer than

they are linked in the chain of those amorous folds, or than her

enchantments steep my soul in oblivion of all other things! I started to

find myself alone—for ever alone, without a creature to love me. I

looked round the room for help; I saw the tables, the chairs, the places

where she stood or sat, empty, deserted, dead. I could not stay where I

was; I had no one to go to but to the parent-mischief, the preternatural

hag, that had ‘drugged this posset’ of her daughter’s charms and

falsehood for me, and I went down and (such was my weakness and

helplessness) sat with her for an hour, and talked with her of her

daughter, and the sweet days we had passed together, and said I thought

her a good girl, and believed that if there was no rival, she still had

a regard for me at the bottom of her heart; and how I liked her all the

better for her coy, maiden airs: and I received the assurance over and

over that there was no one else; and that Sarah (they all knew) never

staid five minutes with any other lodger, while with me she would stay

by the hour together, in spite of all her father could say to her (what

were her motives, was best known to herself!) and while we were talking

of her, she came bounding into the room, smiling with smothered delight

at the consummation of my folly and her own art; and I asked her mother

whether she thought she looked as if she hated me, and I took her

wrinkled, withered, cadaverous, clammy hand at parting, and kissed it.

Faugh!—

I will make an end of this story; there is something in it discordant to

honest ears. I left the house the next day, and returned to Scotland in

a state so near to phrenzy, that I take it the shades sometimes ran into

one another. R—— met me the day after I arrived, and will tell you the

way I was in. I was like a person in a high fever; only mine was in the

mind instead of the body. It had the same irritating, uncomfortable

effect on the bye-standers. I was incapable of any application, and

don’t know what I should have done, had it not been for the kindness of

——. I came to see you, to ‘bestow some of my tediousness upon you,’ but

you were gone from home. Everything went on well as to the law business;

and as it approached to a conclusion, I wrote to my good friend P—— to

go to M——, who had married her sister, and ask him if it would be worth

my while to make her a formal offer, as soon as I was free, as, with the

least encouragement, I was ready to throw myself at her feet; and to

know, in case of refusal, whether I might go back there and be treated

as an old friend. Not a word of answer could be got from her on either

point, notwithstanding every importunity and intreaty; but it was the

opinion of M—— that I might go and try my fortune. I did so with joy,

with something like confidence. I thought her giving no positive answer

implied a chance, at least, of the reversion of her favour, in case I

behaved well. All was false, hollow, insidious. The first night after I

got home, I slept on down. In Scotland, the flint had been my pillow.

But now I slept under the same roof with her. What softness, what balmy

repose in the very thought! I saw her that same day and shook hands with

her, and told her how glad I was to see her; and she was kind and

comfortable, though still cold and distant. Her manner was altered from

what it was the last time. She still absented herself from the room, but

was mild and affable when she did come. She was pale, dejected,

evidently uneasy about something, and had been ill. I thought it was

perhaps her reluctance to yield to my wishes, her pity for what I

suffered; and that in the struggle between both, she did not know what

to do. How I worshipped her at these moments! We had a long interview

the third day, and I thought all was doing well. I found her sitting at

work in the window-seat of the front parlour; and on my asking if I

might come in, she made no objection. I sat down by her; she let me take

her hand; I talked to her of indifferent things, and of old times. I

asked her if she would put some new frills on my shirts?—‘With the

greatest pleasure.’ If she could get _the little image_ mended? ‘It was

broken in three pieces, and the sword was gone, but she would try.’ I

then asked her to make up a plaid silk which I had given her in the

winter, and which she said would make a pretty summer gown. I so longed

to see her in it!—‘She had little time to spare, but perhaps might!’

Think what I felt, talking peaceably, kindly, tenderly with my love,—not

passionately, not violently. I tried to take pattern by her patient

meekness, as I thought it, and to subdue my desires to her will. I then

sued to her, but respectfully, to be admitted to her friendship—she must

know I was as true a friend as ever woman had—or if there was a bar to

our intimacy from a dearer attachment, to let me know it frankly, as I

shewed her all my heart. She drew out her handkerchief and wiped her

eyes ‘of tears which sacred pity had engendered there.’ Was it so or

not? I cannot tell. But so she stood (while I pleaded my cause to her

with all the earnestness, and fondness in the world) with the tears

trickling from her eye-lashes, her head stooping, her attitude fixed,

with the finest expression that ever was seen of mixed regret, pity, and

stubborn resolution; but without speaking a word, without altering a

feature. It was like a petrifaction of a human face in the softest

moment of passion. ‘Ah!’ I said, ‘how you look! I have prayed again and

again while I was away from you, in the agony of my spirit, that I might

but live to see you look so again, and then breathe my last!’ I

intreated her to give me some explanation. In vain! At length she said

she must go, and disappeared like a spirit. That week she did all the

little trifling favours I had asked of her. The frills were put on, and

she sent up to know if I wanted any more done. She got the Buonaparte

mended. This was like healing old wounds indeed! How? As follows, for

thereby hangs the conclusion of my tale. Listen.

I had sent a message one evening to speak to her about some special

affairs of the house, and received no answer. I waited an hour expecting

her, and then went out in great vexation at my disappointment. I

complained to her mother a day or two after, saying I thought it so

unlike Sarah’s usual propriety of behaviour, that she must mean it as a

mark of disrespect. Mrs. L—— said, ‘La! Sir, you’re always fancying

things. Why, she was dressing to go out, and she was only going to get

the little image you’re both so fond of mended; and it’s to be done this

evening. She has been to two or three places to see about it, before she

could get anyone to undertake it.’ My heart, my poor fond heart, almost

melted within me at this news. I answered, ‘Ah! Madam, that’s always the

way with the dear creature. I am finding fault with her and thinking the

hardest things of her; and at that very time she’s doing something to

shew the most delicate attention, and that she has no greater

satisfaction than in gratifying my wishes!’ On this we had some farther

talk, and I took nearly the whole of the lodgings at a hundred guineas a

year, that (as I said) she might have a little leisure to sit at her

needle of an evening, or to read if she chose, or to walk out when it

was fine. She was not in good health, and it would do her good to be

less confined. I would be the drudge and she should no longer be the

slave. I asked nothing in return. To see her happy, to make her so, was

to be so myself.—This was agreed to. I went over to Blackheath that

evening, delighted as I could be after all I had suffered, and lay the

whole of the next morning on the heath under the open sky, dreaming of

my earthly Goddess. This was Sunday. That evening I returned, for I

could hardly bear to be for a moment out of the house where she was, and

the next morning she tapped at the door—it was opened—it was she—she

hesitated and then came forward: she had got the little image in her

hand, I took it, and blest her from my heart. She said ‘They had been

obliged to put some new pieces to it.’ I said ‘I didn’t care how it was

done, so that I had it restored to me safe, and by her.’ I thanked her

and begged to shake hands with her. She did so, and as I held the only

hand in the world that I never wished to let go, I looked up in her

face, and said ‘Have pity on me, have pity on me, and save me if you

can!’ Not a word of answer, but she looked full in my eyes, as much as

to say, ‘Well, I’ll think of it; and if I can, I will save you!’ We

talked about the expense of repairing the figure. ‘Was the man

waiting?’—‘No, she had fetched it on Saturday evening.’ I said I’d give

her the money in the course of the day, and then shook hands with her

again in token of reconciliation; and she went waving out of the room,

but at the door turned round and looked full at me, as she did the first

time she beguiled me of my heart. This was the last.—

All that day I longed to go down stairs to ask her and her mother to set

out with me for Scotland on Wednesday, and on Saturday I would make her

my wife. Something withheld me. In the evening, however, I could not

rest without seeing her, and I said to her younger sister, ‘Betsey, if

Sarah will come up now, I’ll pay her what she laid out for me the other

day.’—‘My sister’s gone out, Sir,’ was the answer. What again! thought

I, That’s somewhat sudden. I told P—— her sitting in the window-seat of

the front parlour boded me no good. It was not in her old character. She

did not use to know there were doors or windows in the house—and now she

goes out three times in a week. It is to meet some one, I’ll lay my life

on’t. ‘Where is she gone?’—‘To my grandmother’s, Sir.’ ‘Where does your

grandmother live now?’—‘At Somers’ Town.’ I immediately set out to

Somers’ Town. I passed one or two streets, and at last turned up King

Street, thinking it most likely she would return that way home. I passed

a house in King Street where I had once lived, and had not proceeded

many paces, ruminating on chance and change and old times, when I saw

her coming towards me. I felt a strange pang at the sight, but I thought

her alone. Some people before me moved on, and I saw another person with

her. _The murder was out._ It was a tall, rather well-looking young man,

but I did not at first recollect him. We passed at the crossing of the

street without speaking. Will you believe it, after all that had past

between us for two years, after what had passed in the last half-year,

after what had passed that very morning, she went by me without even

changing countenance, without expressing the slightest emotion, without

betraying either shame or pity or remorse or any other feeling that any

other human being but herself must have shewn in the same situation. She

had no time to prepare for acting a part, to suppress her feelings—the

truth is, she has not one natural feeling in her bosom to suppress. I

turned and looked—they also turned and looked—and as if by mutual

consent, we both retrod our steps and passed again, in the same way. I

went home. I was stifled. I could not stay in the house, walked into the

street and met them coming towards home. As soon as he had left her at

the door (I fancy she had prevailed with him to accompany her, dreading

some violence) I returned, went up stairs, and requested an interview.

Tell her, I said, I’m in excellent temper and good spirits, but I must

see her! She came smiling, and I said ‘Come in, my dear girl, and sit

down, and tell me all about it, how it is and who it is.’—‘What,’ she

said, ‘do you mean Mr C——?’ ‘Oh,’ said I, ‘Then it is he! Ah! you rogue,

I always suspected there was something between you, but you know you

denied it lustily: why did you not tell me all about it at the time,

instead of letting me suffer as I have done? But, however, no

reproaches. I only wish it may all end happily and honourably for you,

and I am satisfied. But,’ I said, ‘you know you used to tell me, you

despised looks.’—‘She didn’t think Mr C—— was so particularly handsome.’

‘No, but he’s very well to pass, and a well-grown youth into the

bargain.’ Pshaw! let me put an end to the fulsome detail. I found he had

lived over the way, that he had been lured thence, no doubt, almost a

year before, that they had first spoken in the street, and that he had

never once hinted at marriage, and had gone away, because (as he said)

they were too much together, and that it was better for her to meet him

occasionally out of doors. ‘There could be no harm in them walking

together.’ ‘No, but you may go some where afterwards.’—‘One must trust

to one’s principle for that.’ Consummate hypocrite! * * * * * * I told

her Mr M——, who had married her sister, did not wish to leave the house.

I, who would have married her, did not wish to leave it. I told her I

hoped I should not live to see her come to shame, after all my love of

her; but put her on her guard as well as I could, and said, after the

lengths she had permitted herself with me, I could not help being

alarmed at the influence of one over her, whom she could hardly herself

suppose to have a tenth part of my esteem for her!! She made no answer

to this, but thanked me coldly for my good advice, and rose to go. I

begged her to sit a few minutes, that I might try to recollect if there

was anything else I wished to say to her, perhaps for the last time; and

then, not finding anything, I bade her good night, and asked for a

farewell kiss. Do you know she refused; so little does she understand

what is due to friendship, or love, or honour! We parted friends,

however, and I felt deep grief, but no enmity against her. I thought C——

had pressed his suit after I went, and had prevailed. There was no harm

in that—a little fickleness or so, a little over-pretension to

unalterable attachment—but that was all. She liked him better than me—it

was my hard hap, but I must bear it. I went out to roam the desert

streets, when, turning a corner, whom should I meet but her very lover?

I went up to him and asked for a few minutes’ conversation on a subject

that was highly interesting to me and I believed not indifferent to him:

and in the course of four hours’ talk, it came out that for three months

previous to my quitting London for Scotland, she had been playing the

same game with him as with me—that he breakfasted first, and enjoyed an

hour of her society, and then I took my turn, so that we never jostled;

and this explained why, when he came back sometimes and passed my door,

as she was sitting in my lap, she coloured violently, thinking if her

lover looked in, what a _denouement_ there would be. He could not help

again and again expressing his astonishment at finding that our intimacy

had continued unimpaired up to so late a period after he came, and when

they were on the most intimate footing. She used to deny positively to

him that there was anything between us, just as she used to assure me

with impenetrable effrontery that ‘Mr C—— was nothing to her, but merely

a lodger.’ All this while she kept up the farce of her romantic

attachment to her old lover, vowed that she never could alter in that

respect, let me go to Scotland on the solemn and repeated assurance that

there was no new flame, that there was no bar between us but this

shadowy love—I leave her on this understanding, she becomes more fond or

more intimate with her new lover; he quitting the house (whether tired

out or not, I can’t say)—in revenge she ceases to write to me, keeps me

in wretched suspense, treats me like something loathsome to her when I

return to enquire the cause, denies it with scorn and impudence,

destroys me and shews no pity, no desire to soothe or shorten the pangs

she has occasioned by her wantonness and hypocrisy, and wishes to linger

the affair on to the last moment, going out to keep an appointment with

another while she pretends to be obliging me in the tenderest point

(which C—— himself said was too much).... What do you think of all this?

Shall I tell you my opinion? But I must try to do it in another letter.

TO THE SAME

(_in conclusion_).

I did not sleep a wink all that night; nor did I know till the next day

the full meaning of what had happened to me. With the morning’s light,

conviction glared in upon me that I had not only lost her for ever—but

every feeling I had ever had towards her—respect, tenderness, pity—all

but my fatal passion, was gone. The whole was a mockery, a frightful

illusion. I had embraced the false Florimel instead of the true; or was

like the man in the Arabian Nights who had married a _goul_. How

different was the idea I once had of her? Was this she,

—‘Who had been beguiled—she who was made

Within a gentle bosom to be laid—

To bless and to be blessed—to be heart-bare

To one who found his bettered likeness there—

To think for ever with him, like a bride—

To haunt his eye, like taste personified—

To double his delight, to share his sorrow,

And like a morning beam, wake to him every morrow?’

I saw her pale, cold form glide silent by me, dead to shame as to pity.

Still I seemed to clasp this piece of witchcraft to my bosom; this

lifeless image, which was all that was left of my love, was the only

thing to which my sad heart clung. Were she dead, should I not wish to

gaze once more upon her pallid features? She is dead to me; but what she

once was to me, can never die! The agony, the conflict of hope and fear,

of adoration and jealousy is over; or it would, ere long, have ended

with my life. I am no more lifted now to Heaven, and then plunged in the

abyss; but I seem to have been thrown from the top of a precipice, and

to lie groveling, stunned, and stupefied. I am melancholy, lonesome, and

weaker than a child. The worst is, I have no prospect of any alteration

for the better: she has cut off all possibility of a reconcilement at

any future period. Were she even to return to her former pretended

fondness and endearments, I could have no pleasure, no confidence in

them. I can scarce make out the contradiction to myself. I strive to

think she always was what I now know she is; but I have great difficulty

in it, and can hardly believe but she still _is_ what she so long

_seemed_. Poor thing! I am afraid she is little better off herself; nor

do I see what is to become of her, unless she throws off the mask at

once, and _runs a-muck_ at infamy. She is exposed and laid bare to all

those whose opinion she set a value upon. Yet she held her head very

high, and must feel (if she feels any thing) proportionably mortified.—A

more complete experiment on character was never made. If I had not met

her lover immediately after I parted with her, it would have been

nothing. I might have supposed she had changed her mind in my absence,

and had given him the preference as soon as she felt it, and even shewn

her delicacy in declining any farther intimacy with me. But it comes out

that she had gone on in the most forward and familiar way with both at

once—(she could not change her mind in passing from one room to

another)—told both the same barefaced and unblushing falsehoods, like

the commonest creature; received presents from me to the very last, and

wished to keep up the game still longer, either to gratify her humour,

her avarice, or her vanity in playing with my passion, or to have me as

a _dernier resort_, in case of accidents. Again, it would have been

nothing, if she had not come up with her demure, well-composed,

wheedling looks that morning, and then met me in the evening in a

situation, which (she believed) might kill me on the spot, with no more

feeling than a common courtesan shews, who _bilks_ a customer, and

passes him, leering up at her bully, the moment after. If there had been

the frailty of passion, it would have been excusable; but it is evident

she is a practised, callous jilt, a regular lodging-house decoy, played

off by her mother upon the lodgers, one after another, applying them to

her different purposes, laughing at them in turns, and herself the

probable dupe and victim of some favourite gallant in the end. I know

all this; but what do I gain by it, unless I could find some one with

her shape and air, to supply the place of the lovely apparition? That a

professed wanton should come and sit on a man’s knee, and put her arms

round his neck, and caress him, and seem fond of him, means nothing,

proves nothing, no one concludes anything from it; but that a pretty,

reserved, modest, delicate-looking girl should do this, from the first

hour to the last of your being in the house, without intending anything

by it, is new, and, I think, worth explaining. It was, I confess, out of

my calculation, and may be out of that of others. Her unmoved

indifference and self-possession all the while, shew that it is her

constant practice. Her look even, if closely examined, bears this

interpretation. It is that of studied hypocrisy or startled guilt,

rather than of refined sensibility or conscious innocence. ‘She defied

anyone to read her thoughts?’ she once told me. ‘Do they then require

concealing?’ I imprudently asked her. The command over herself is

surprising. She never once betrays herself by any momentary

forgetfulness, by any appearance of triumph or superiority to the person

who is her dupe, by any levity of manner in the plenitude of her

success; it is one faultless, undeviating, consistent, consummate piece

of acting. Were she a saint on earth, she could not seem more like one.

Her hypocritical high-flown pretensions, indeed, make her the worse: but

still the ascendancy of her will, her determined perseverance in what

she undertakes to do, has something admirable in it, approaching to the

heroic. She is certainly an extraordinary girl! Her retired manner, and

invariable propriety of behaviour made me think it next to impossible

she could grant the same favours indiscriminately to every one that she

did to me. Yet this now appears to be the fact. She must have done the

very same with C——, invited him into the house to carry on a closer

intrigue with her, and then commenced the double game with both

together. She always ‘despised looks.’ This was a favourite phrase with

her, and one of the hooks which she baited for me. Nothing could win her

but a man’s behaviour and sentiments. Besides, she could never like

another—she was a martyr to disappointed affection—and friendship was

all she could even extend to any other man. All the time, she was making

signals, playing off her pretty person, and having occasional interviews

in the street with this very man, whom she could only have taken so

sudden and violent a liking to from his looks, his personal appearance,

and what she probably conjectured of his circumstances. Her sister had

married a counsellor—the Miss F——’s, who kept the house before, had done

so too—and so would she. ‘There was a precedent for it.’ Yet if she was

so desperately enamoured of this new acquaintance, if he had displaced

_the little image_ from her breast, if he was become her _second_

‘unalterable attachment’ (which I would have given my life to have been)

why continue the same unwarrantable familiarities with me to the last,

and promise that they should be renewed on my return (if I had not

unfortunately stumbled upon the truth to her aunt) and yet keep up the

same refined cant about her old attachment all the time, as if it was

that which stood in the way of my pretensions, and not her faithlessness

to it? ‘If one swerves from one, one shall swerve from another’—was her

excuse for not returning my regard. Yet that which I thought a prophecy,

was I suspect a history. She had swerved twice from her vowed

engagements, first to me, and then from me to another. If she made a

fool of me, what did she make of her lover? I fancy he has put that

question to himself. I said nothing to him about the amount of the

presents; which is another damning circumstance, that might have opened

my eyes long before; but they were shut by my fond affection, which

‘turned all to favour and to prettiness.’ She cannot be supposed to have

kept up an appearance of old regard to me, from a fear of hurting my

feelings by her desertion; for she not only shewed herself indifferent

to, but evidently triumphed in my sufferings, and heaped every kind of

insult and indignity upon them. I must have incurred her contempt and

resentment by my mistaken delicacy at different times; and her manner,

when I have hinted at becoming a reformed man in this respect, convinces

me of it. ‘She hated it!’ She always hated whatever she liked most. She

‘hated Mr C——’s red slippers,’ when he first came! One more count

finishes the indictment. She not only discovered the most hardened

indifference to the feelings of others; she has not shewn the least

regard to her own character, or shame when she was detected. When found

out, she seemed to say, ‘Well, what if I am? I have played the game as

long as I could; and if I could keep it up no longer, it was not for

want of good will!’ Her colouring once or twice is the only sign of

grace she has exhibited. Such is the creature on whom I had thrown away

my heart and soul—one who was incapable of feeling the commonest

emotions of human nature, as they regarded herself or any one else. ‘She

had no feelings with respect to herself,’ she often said. She in fact

knows what she is, and recoils from the good opinion or sympathy of

others, which she feels to be founded on a deception; so that my

overweening opinion of her must have appeared like irony, or direct

insult. My seeing her in the street has gone a good way to satisfy me.

Her manner there explains her manner in-doors to be conscious and

overdone; and besides, she looks but indifferently. She is diminutive in

stature, and her measured step and timid air do not suit these public

airings. I am afraid she will soon grow common to my imagination, as

well as worthless in herself. Her image seems fast ‘going into the

wastes of time,’ like a weed that the wave bears farther and farther

from me. Alas! thou poor hapless weed, when I entirely lose sight of

thee, and for ever, no flower will ever bloom on earth to glad my heart

again!

THE END

CHARACTERISTICS

IN THE MANNER OF ROCHEFOUCAULD’S MAXIMS

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

This book was published anonymously in a 12mo vol. of 152 pages in 1823,

the title-page being as follows: ‘Characteristics: In the Manner of

Rochefoucault’s Maxims. London: Printed for W. Simpkin and R. Marshall,

Stationers’-Hall Court, Ludgate Street, 1823.’ Some of the unsold copies

were afterwards issued with a fresh undated title-page, and again in a

so-called second edition in 1837, with an introduction by R. H. Horne.

The title-page of this edition is as follows: ‘Characteristics: In the

Manner of Rochefoucault’s Maxims. By William Hazlitt. Second Edition.

With Introductory Remarks by the Editor of the “Monthly Repository.”

London: J. Templeman, 248 Regent Street and sold also by J. Miller, 404

Oxford Street, 1837.’ A later edition (1871), edited by Mr W. C.

Hazlitt, was published in Bohn’s Library in the volume containing _The

Round Table_ and _Characters of Shakespear’s Plays_. The first edition

is here reprinted.

PREFACE

The following work was suggested by a perusal of Rochefoucault’s Maxims

and Moral Reflections. I was so struck with the force and beauty of the

style and matter, that I felt an earnest ambition to embody some

occasional thoughts of my own in the same form. This was much easier

than to retain an equal degree of spirit. Having, however, succeeded

indifferently in a few, the work grew under my hands; and both the

novelty and agreeableness of the task impelled me forward. There is a

peculiar _stimulus_, and at the same time a freedom from all anxiety, in

this mode of writing. A thought must tell at once, or not at all. There

is no opportunity for considering how we shall make out an opinion by

labour and prolixity. An observation must be self-evident; or a reason

or illustration (if we give one) must be pithy and concise. Each Maxim

should contain the essence or ground-work of a separate Essay, but so

developed as of itself to suggest a whole train of reflections to the

reader; and it is equally necessary to avoid paradox or common-place.

The style also must be sententious and epigrammatic, with a certain

pointedness and involution of expression, so as to keep the thoughts

distinct, and to prevent them from running endlessly into one another.

Such are the conditions to which it seemed to me necessary to conform,

in order to insure anything like success to a work of this kind, or to

render the pleasure of the perusal equal to the difficulty of the

execution. There is only one point in which I dare even allude to a

comparison with Rochefoucault—_I have had no theory to maintain_; and

have endeavoured to set down each thought as it occurred to me, without

bias or prejudice of any sort.

CHARACTERISTICS

I. Of all virtues, magnanimity is the rarest. There are a hundred

persons of merit for one who willingly acknowledges it in another.

II. It is often harder to praise a friend than an enemy. By the last we

may acquire a reputation for candour; by the first we only seem to

discharge a debt, and are liable to a suspicion of partiality. Besides,

though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of

admiration; and the shining points of character are not those we chiefly

wish to dwell upon. Our habitual impression of any one is very different

from the light in which he would choose to appear before the public. We

think of him _as a friend_: we must forget that he is one, before we can

extol him to others.

III. To speak highly of one with whom we are intimate, is a species of

egotism. Our modesty as well as our jealousy teaches us caution on this

subject.

IV. What makes it so difficult to do justice to others is, that we are

hardly sensible of merit, unless it falls in with our own views and line

of pursuit; and where this is the case, it interferes with our own

pretensions. To be forward to praise others, implies either great

eminence, that can afford to part with applause; or great quickness of

discernment, with confidence in our own judgments; or great sincerity

and love of truth, getting the better of our self-love.

V. Many persons are so narrow in this respect, that they cannot bring

themselves to allow the most trifling merit in any one else. This is not

altogether ill-nature, but a meanness of spirit or want of confidence in

themselves, which is upset and kicks the beam, if the smallest particle

of praise is thrown into another’s scale. They are poor feeble insects

tottering along the road to fame, that are crushed by the shadow of

opposition, or stopped by a whisper of rivalship.

VI. There are persons, not only whose praise, but whose very names we

cannot bear to hear.

VII. There are people who cannot praise a friend for the life of them.

With every effort and all the good-will in the world, they shrink from

the task through a want of mental courage; as some people shudder at

plunging into a cold-bath from weak nerves.

VIII. Others praise you behind your back, who will not, on any account,

do so to your face. Is it that they are afraid of being taken for

flatterers?—Or that they had rather any one else should know they think

well of you than yourself;—as a rival is the last person we should wish

to hear the favourable opinion of a mistress, because it gives him most

pleasure?

IX. To deny undoubted merit in others, is to deny its existence

altogether, and consequently our own. The example of illiberality we set

is easily turned against ourselves.

X. Magnanimity is often concealed under an appearance of shyness, and

even poverty of spirit. Heroes, according to Rousseau, are not known by

the loftiness of their carriage; as the greatest braggarts are generally

the merest cowards.

XI. Men of the greatest genius are not always the most prodigal of their

encomiums. But then it is when their range of power is confined, and

they have in fact little perception, except of their own particular kind

of excellence.

XII. Popularity disarms envy in well-disposed minds. Those are ever the

most ready to do justice to others, who feel that the world has done

them justice. When success has not this effect in opening the mind, it

is a sign that it has been ill-deserved.

XIII. Some people tell us all the harm—others as carefully conceal all

the good they hear of us.

XIV. It signifies little what we say of our acquaintance, so that we do

not tell them what others say against them. Tale-bearers make all the

real mischief.

XV. The silence of a friend commonly amounts to treachery. His not

daring to say anything in our behalf implies a tacit censure.

XVI. It is hard to praise those who are dispraised by others. He is

little short of a hero, who perseveres in thinking well of a friend who

has become a butt for slander, and a bye-word.

XVII. However we may flatter ourselves to the contrary, our friends

think no higher of us than the world do. They see us with the jaundiced

or distrustful eyes of others. They may know better, but their feelings

are governed by popular prejudice. Nay, they are more shy of us (when

under a cloud) than even strangers; for we involve them in a common

disgrace, or compel them to embroil themselves in continual quarrels and

disputes in our defence.

XVIII. We find those who are officious and troublesome through sheer

imbecility of character. They can neither resolve to do a thing, nor to

let it alone; and, by getting in the way, hinder where perhaps they

meant to help. To _volunteer_ a service and shrink from the performance,

is to prevent others from undertaking it.

XIX. Envy, among other ingredients, has a mixture of the love of justice

in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.

XX. We admit the merit of some, much less willingly than that of others.

This is because there is something about them, that is at variance with

their boasted pretensions, either a heaviness importing stupidity, or a

levity inferring folly, &c.

XXI. The assumption of merit is easier, less embarrassing, and more

effectual than the positive attainment of it.

XXII. Envy is the most universal passion. We only pride ourselves on the

qualities we possess or think we possess; but we envy the pretensions we

have, and those which we have not, and do not even wish for. We envy the

greatest qualities and every trifling advantage. We envy the most

ridiculous appearance or affectation of superiority. We envy folly and

conceit: nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction or

notoriety, even vice and infamy.

XXIII. Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain

point, and if it does not occupy the whole space, feels itself excluded.

XXIV. Or, it often arises from weakness of judgment. We cannot make up

our minds to admit the soundness of certain pretensions; and therefore

hate the appearance, where we are doubtful about the reality. We

consider every such tax on our applause as a kind of imposition or

injustice; so that the withholding our assent is from a fear of being

tricked out of our good opinion under false pretences. This is the

reason why sudden or upstart advantages are always an object of such

extreme jealousy, and even of contempt; and why we so readily bow to the

claims of posthumous and long-established reputation. The last is the

sterling coin of merit, which we no longer question or cavil at. The

other, we think, may be tinsel; and we are unwilling to give our

admiration in exchange for a bauble. It is not that the candidates for

it in the one case are removed out of our way, and make a diversion to

the more immediate claims of our contemporaries; but that their own are

so clear and universally acknowledged, that they come home to our

feelings and bosoms with their full weight, without any drawbacks of

doubt in our own minds, or objection on the part of others. If our envy

were intrinsically and merely a hatred of excellence and of the

approbation due to it, we should hate it the more, the more

distinguished and unequivocal it was. On the other hand, our faith in

standard reputation is a kind of religion; and our admiration of it,

instead of a cold servile offering, an enthusiastic homage. There are

people who would attempt to persuade us that we read Homer or Milton

with pleasure, only to _spite_ some living poet. With them, all our best

actions are hypocrisy; and our best feelings, affectation.

XXV. The secret of our self-love is just the same as that of our

liberality and candour. We prefer ourselves to others, only because we

have a more intimate consciousness and confirmed opinion of our own

claims and merits than of any other person’s.

XXVI. It argues a poor opinion of ourselves, when we cannot admit any

other class of merit besides our own, or any rival in that class.

XXVII. Those who are the most distrustful of themselves, are the most

envious of others; as the most weak and cowardly are the most

revengeful.

XXVIII. Some persons of great talents and celebrity have been remarkable

for narrowness of mind and an impatience of everything like competition.

Garrick and other public favourites might be mentioned as instances.

This may perhaps be accounted for, either from an undue and intoxicating

share of applause, so that they became jealous of popularity, as of a

mistress; or from a want of other resources, so as to be unable to

repose on themselves without the constant stimulus of incense offered to

their vanity.

XXIX. We are more jealous of frivolous accomplishments with brilliant

success, than of the most estimable qualities without it. Dr. Johnson

envied Garrick whom he despised, and ridiculed Goldsmith whom he loved.

XXX. Persons of slender intellectual _stamina_ dread competition, as

dwarfs are afraid of being run over in the street. Yet vanity often

prompts them to hazard the experiment, as women through foolhardiness

rush into a crowd.

XXXI. We envy others for any trifling addition to their acknowledged

merit, more than for the sum-total, much as we object to pay an addition

to a bill, or grudge an acquaintance an unexpected piece of good

fortune. This happens, either because such an accession of

accomplishment is like stealing a march upon us, and implies a

versatility of talent we had not reckoned upon; or it seems an

impertinence and affectation for a man to go out of his way to

distinguish himself; or it is because we cannot account for his

proficiency mechanically and as a thing of course, by saying _It is his

trade!_ In like manner, we plume ourselves most on excelling in what we

are not bound to do, and are most flattered by the admission of our most

questionable pretensions. We nurse the ricketty child, and want to have

our faults and weak sides pampered into virtues. We feel little obliged

to any one for owning the merit we are known to have—it is an old

story—but we are mightily pleased to be complimented on some fancy we

set up for—it is _a feather in our cap_, a new conquest, an extension of

our sense of power. A man of talent aspires to a reputation for personal

address or advantages. Sir Robert Walpole wished to pass for a man of

gallantry, for which he was totally unfit. A woman of sense would be

thought a beauty, a beauty a great wit, and so on.

XXXII. Some there are who can only find out in us those good qualities

which nobody else has discovered: as there are others who make a point

of crying up our deserts, after all the rest of the world have agreed to

do so. The first are patrons, not friends: the last are not friends, but

sycophants.

XXXIII. A distinction has been made between acuteness and subtlety of

understanding. This might be illustrated by saying, that acuteness

consists in taking up the points or solid atoms, subtlety in feeling the

_air_ of truth.

XXXIV. Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but

those who are without hope; and few are reduced so low as that.

XXXV. Death is the greatest evil; because it cuts off hope.

XXXVI. While we desire, we do not enjoy; and with enjoyment desire

ceases, which should lend its strongest zest to it. This, however, does

not apply to the gratification of sense, but to the passions, in which

distance and difficulty have a principal share.

XXXVII. To deserve any blessing is to set a just value on it. The pains

we take in its pursuit are only a consequence of this.

XXXVIII. The wish is often ‘father to the thought’: but we are quite as

apt to believe what we dread as what we hope.

XXXIX. The amiable is the voluptuous in expression or manner. The sense

of pleasure in ourselves is that which excites it in others; or, the art

of pleasing is to seem pleased.

XL. Let a man’s talents or virtues be what they may, we only feel

satisfaction in his society, as he is satisfied in himself. We cannot

enjoy the good qualities of a friend, if he seems to be none the better

for them.

XLI. We judge of others for the most part by their good opinion of

themselves: yet nothing gives such offence or creates so many enemies as

that extreme self-complacency or superciliousness of manner, which

appears to set the opinion of every one else at defiance.

XLII. Self-sufficiency is more provoking than rudeness or the most

unqualified or violent opposition, inasmuch as the latter may be

retorted, and implies that we are worth notice; whereas the former

strikes at the root of our self-importance, and reminds us that even our

good opinion is not worth having. Nothing precludes sympathy so much as

a perfect indifference to it.

XLIII. The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savours

less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we

thought our weaknesses as good as other people’s virtues.

XLIV. A coxcomb is generally a favorite with women. To a certain point

_his_ self-complacency is agreeable in itself; and beyond that, even if

it grows fulsome, it only piques their vanity the more to make a

conquest of _his_. He becomes a sort of rival to them in his own good

opinion, so that his conceit has all the effect of jealousy in

irritating their desire to withdraw his admiration from himself.

XLV. Nothing is more successful with women than that sort of

condescending patronage of the sex, which goes by the general name of

gallantry. It has the double advantage of imposing on their weakness and

flattering their pride. By being indiscriminate, it tantalizes and keeps

them in suspense; and by making a profession of an extreme deference for

the sex in general, naturally suggests the reflection, what a delightful

thing must be to gain the exclusive regard of a man who has so high an

opinion of what is due to the female character. It is possible for a

man, by talking of what is _feminine_ or _unfeminine_, _vulgar_ or

_genteel_, by saying _how shocking such an article of dress is_, or that

_no lady ought to touch a particular kind of food_, fairly to starve or

strip a whole circle of simpletons half-naked, by mere dint of

impertinence, and an air of common-place assurance. How interesting to

be acquainted with a man whose every thought turns upon the sex! How

charming to make a conquest of one who sets up for a consummate judge of

female perfections!

XLVI. We like characters and actions which we do not approve. There are

amiable vices and obnoxious virtues, on the mere principle that our

sympathy with a person who yields to obvious temptations and agreeable

impulses (however prejudicial) is itself agreeable, while to sympathise

with exercises of self-denial or fortitude, is a painful effort. Virtue

costs the spectator, as well as the performer, something. We are touched

by the immediate motives of actions, we judge of them by the

consequences. We like a convivial character better than an abstemious

one, because the idea of conviviality in the first instance is

pleasanter than that of sobriety. For the same reason, we prefer

generosity to justice, because the imagination lends itself more easily

to an ebullition of feeling, than to the suppression of it on remote and

abstract principles; and we like a good-natured fool, or even knave

better than the severe professors of wisdom and morality. Cato, Brutus,

&c. are characters to admire and applaud, rather than to love or

imitate.

XLVII. Personal pretensions alone ensure female regard. It is not the

eye that sees whatever is sublime or beautiful in nature that the fair

delight to see gazing in silent rapture on themselves, but that which is

itself a pleasing object to the sense. I may look at a Claude or a

Raphael by turns, but this does not alter my own appearance; and it is

that which women attend to.

XLVIII. There are persons that we like, though they do not like us. This

happens very rarely; and, indeed it argues a strong presumption of merit

both in them and in ourselves. We fancy they only want to know us

better, to be convinced of the prize they would obtain in our

friendship. There are others, to whom no civilities or good offices on

their parts can reconcile us, from an original distaste: yet even this

repugnance would not, perhaps, be proof against time and custom.

XLIX. We may observe persons who seem to have a peculiar delight in the

_disagreeable_. They catch all sorts of uncouth tones and gestures, the

manners and dialect of clowns and hoydens, and aim at vulgarity as

others ape gentility. (This is what is often understood by a love of low

life.) They say all sorts of disagreeable things without meaning or

feeling what they say. What startles or shocks other people is to them

an amusing excitement, a fillip to their constitutions; and from the

bluntness of their perceptions and a certain wilfulness of spirit, not

being able to enter into the refined and pleasurable, they make a merit

of being insensible to everything of the kind. Masculine women, for

instance, are those who, not being possessed of the charms and delicacy

of the sex, affect a superiority over it by throwing aside all decorum.

L. We find another class who continually do and say what they ought not,

and what they do not intend; and who are governed almost entirely by an

instinct of absurdity. Owing to a perversity of imagination or

irritability of nerve, the idea that a thing is improper acts as a

mechanical inducement to do it; the fear of committing a blunder is so

strong, that they _bolt_ out whatever is uppermost in their minds,

before they are aware of it. The dread of some object haunts and rivets

attention to it; and a continual, uneasy, morbid apprehensiveness of

temper takes away their self-possession, and hurries them into the very

mistakes they wish to avoid.

LI. There are few people quite above, or completely below _par_.

LII. Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or

absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or

dwarfs. The heaviest charge we can bring against the general texture of

society is, that it is commonplace; and many of those who are singular,

had better be commonplace. Our fancied superiority to others is in some

one thing, which we think most of, because we excel in it, or have paid

most attention to it; whilst we overlook their superiority to us in

something else, which they set equal and exclusive store by. This is

fortunate for all parties. I never felt myself superior to any one, who

did not go out of his way to affect qualities which he had not. In his

own individual character and line of pursuit, every one has knowledge,

experience, and skill:—and who shall say which pursuit requires most,

thereby proving his own narrowness and incompetence to decide?

Particular talent or genius does not imply general capacity. Those who

are most versatile are seldom great in any one department: and the

stupidest people can generally do something. The highest pre-eminence in

any one study commonly arises from the concentration of the attention

and faculties on that one study. He who expects from a great name in

politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is

little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The

learned in books is ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books

is often well acquainted with other things: for life is of the same

length in the learned and the unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it

is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or

necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another

is a mere lottery.

LIII. Some things, it is true, are more prominent, and lead to more

serious consequences than others, so as to excite a greater share of

attention and applause. Public characters, authors, warriors, statesmen,

&c. nearly monopolise public consideration in this way, and are apt to

judge of their merit by the noise they make in the world. Yet none of

these classes would be willing to make the rule absolute; for a

favourite player gains as much applause as any of them. A poet stands a

poor chance either of popularity with the vulgar, or influence with the

great, against a fashionable opera-dancer or singer. Reputation or

notoriety is not the stamp of merit. Certain professions, like certain

situations, bring it into greater notice, but have, perhaps, no more to

do with it than birth or fortune. Opportunity sometimes indeed ‘throws a

cruel sunshine on a fool.’ I have known several celebrated men, and some

of them have been persons of the weakest capacity; yet accident had

lifted them into general notice, and probably will hand their memories

down to posterity. There are names written in her immortal scroll at

which FAME blushes!

LIV. The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we

judge of ourselves by the same test; for it is that on which our success

in life depends. Yet how often do our talents and pursuits lie in

different directions! The best painters are not always the cleverest

men; and an author who makes an unfavourable or doubtful impression on

the public, may in himself be a person of rare and agreeable

qualifications. One cause of this is affectation. We constantly aim at

what we are least fit for, thwarting or despising our natural bent; so

that our performances and our characters are unaccountably at variance.

LV. If a man is disliked by one woman, he will succeed with none. The

sex (one and all) have the same secret, or _freemasonry_, in judging of

men.

LVI. Any woman may act the part of a coquet successfully, who has the

reputation without the scruples of modesty. If a woman passes the bounds

of propriety for our sakes, and throws herself unblushingly at our

heads, we conclude it is either from a sudden and violent liking, or

from extraordinary merit on our parts, either of which is enough to turn

any man’s head, who has a single spark of gallantry or vanity in his

composition.

LVII. The surest way to make ourselves agreeable to others is by seeming

to think them so. If we appear fully sensible of their good qualities,

they will not complain of the want of them in us.

LVIII. We often choose a friend as we do a mistress, for no particular

excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that

flatters our self-love.

LIX. Silence is one great art of conversation. He is not a fool who

knows when to hold his tongue; and a person may gain credit for sense,

eloquence, wit, who merely says nothing to lessen the opinion which

others have of these qualities in themselves.

LX. There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the

esteem we profess to entertain for our friends. It is little better than

a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please—that

is, as _they_ please or displease us. As long as we are in good humour

with them, we see nothing but their good qualities; but no sooner do

they offend us than we rip up all their bad ones (which we before made a

secret of, even to ourselves) with double malice. He who but now was

little less than an angel of light shall be painted in the blackest

colours for a slip of the tongue, ‘some trick not worth an egg,’ for the

slightest suspicion of offence given or received. We often bestow the

most opprobrious epithets on our best friends, and retract them twenty

times in the course of a day, while the man himself remains the same. In

love, which is all rhapsody and passion, this is excusable; but in the

ordinary intercourse of life, it is preposterous.

LXI. A man who is always defending his friends from the most trifling

charges, will be apt to make other people their enemies.

LXII. There are those who see everything through a medium of enthusiasm

or prejudice; and who therefore think, that to admit any blemish in a

friend, is to compromise his character altogether. The instant you

destroy their heated exaggerations, they feel that they have no other

ground to stand upon.

LXIII. We are ridiculous enough in setting up for patterns of perfection

ourselves, without becoming answerable for that of others. It is best to

confine our absurdities at home.

LXIV. We do not like our friends the worse because they sometimes give

us an opportunity to rail at them heartily. Their faults reconcile us to

their virtues. Indeed, we never have much esteem or regard, except for

those that we can afford to speak our minds of freely; whose follies vex

us in proportion to our anxiety for their welfare, and who have plenty

of redeeming points about them to balance their defects. When we ‘spy

abuses’ of this kind, it is a wiser and more generous proceeding to give

vent to our impatience and ill-humour, than to brood over it, and let

it, by sinking into our minds, poison the very sources of our goodwill.

LXV. To come to an explanation with a friend is to do away half the

cause of offence; as to declare the grounds of our complaints and

chagrin to a third party, is tacitly to pass them over. Our not daring

to hint at the infirmities of a friend implies that we are ashamed to

own them, and that we can only hope to keep on good terms with him by

being blind to his real character.

LXVI. It is well that there is no one without a fault; for he would not

have a friend in the world. He would seem to belong to a different

species.

LXVII. Even among actors, painters, &c. those who are the most perfect,

are not always the most admired. It is those who strike by their

inequalities, and whose faults and excellences keep up a perpetual

warfare between the partizans on both sides, that are the most talked of

and produce the greatest effect. Nothing is prominent that does not act

as a foil to itself. Emery’s acting was without a fault. This was all

that was ever said about it. His merit was one of those things that

nobody insisted on, because it was taken for granted. Mr Kean agitates

and almost convulses the public mind by contrary extremes. It is a

question whether Raphael would have acquired so great a name, if his

colouring had been equal to his drawing or expression. As it is, his

figures stand out like a rock, severed from its base: while Correggio’s

are lost in their own beauty and sweetness. Whatever has not a mixture

of imperfection in it, soon grows insipid, or seems ‘stupidly good.’

LXVIII. I have known persons without a friend—never any one without some

virtue. The virtues of the former conspired with their vices to make the

whole world their enemies.

LXIX. The study of metaphysics has this advantage, at least—it promotes

a certain integrity and uprightness of understanding, which is a cure

for the spirit of lying. He who has devoted himself to the discovery of

truth feels neither pride nor pleasure in the invention of falsehood,

and cannot condescend to any such paltry expedient. If you find a person

given to vulgar shifts and rhodomontade, and who at the same time tells

you he is a metaphysician, do not believe him.

LXX. It is the mischief of the regular study of all art and science,

that it proportionably unfits a man for those pursuits or emergencies in

life, which require mere courage and promptitude. To any one who has

found how difficult it is to arrive at truth or beauty, with all the

pains and time he can bestow upon them, everything seems worthless that

can be obtained by a mere assumption of the question, or putting a good

face upon the matter. Let a man try to produce a fine picture, or to

solve an abstruse problem by giving himself airs of self-importance, and

see what he will make of it. But in the common intercourse of life, too

much depends on this sort of assurance and quackery. This is the reason

why scholars and other eminent men so often fail in what personally

concerns themselves. They cannot take advantage of the follies of

mankind; nor submit to arrive at the end they have in view by unworthy

means. Those who cannot make the progress of a single step in a

favourite study without infinite pains and preparation, scorn to carry

the world before them, or to win the good opinion of any individual in

it, by vapouring and impudence. Yet these last qualities often succeed

without an atom of true desert; and ‘fools rush in where angels fear to

tread.’ In nine cases out of ten, the mere sanguineness of our pursuit

ensures success; but the having tasked our faculties as much as they

will bear, does not tend to enhance our overweening opinion of

ourselves. The labours of the mind, like the drudgery of the body,

impair our animal spirits and alacrity. Those who have done nothing,

fancy themselves capable of everything: while those who have exerted

themselves to the utmost, only feel the limitation of their powers, and

evince neither admiration of themselves nor triumph over others. Their

work is still to do, and they have no time or disposition for _fooling_.

This is the reason why the greatest men have the least appearance of it.

LXXI. Persons who pique themselves on their understanding are frequently

reserved and haughty: persons who aim at wit are generally courteous and

sociable. Those who depend at every turn on the applause of the company,

must endeavour to conciliate the good opinion of others by every means

in their power.

‘A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear

Of him who hears it.’

If a habit of jesting lowers a man, it is to the level of humanity. Wit

nourishes vanity; reason has a much stronger tincture of pride in it.

LXXII. Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through

love.

LXXIII. Some persons can do nothing but ridicule others.

LXXIV. Parodists, like mimics, seize only on defects, or turn beauties

into blemishes. They make bad writers and indifferent actors.

LXXV. People of the greatest gaiety of manners are often the dullest

company imaginable. Nothing is so dreary as the serious conversation or

writing of a professed wag. So the gravest persons, divines,

mathematicians, and so on, make the worst and poorest jokes, puns, &c.

LXXVI. The expression of a Frenchman’s face is often as melancholy when

he is by himself, as it is lively in conversation. The instant he ceases

to talk, he becomes ‘quite chop-fallen.’

LXXVII. To point out defects, one would think it necessary to be equally

conversant with beauties. But this is not the case. The best

caricaturists cannot draw a common outline; nor the best comic actors

speak a line of serious poetry without being laughed at. This may be

perhaps accounted for in some degree by saying, that the perfection of

the ludicrous implies that looseness or disjointedness of mind, which

receives most delight and surprise from oddity and contrast, and which

is naturally opposed to the steadiness and unity of feeling required for

the serious, or the sublime and beautiful.

LXXVIII. Different persons have different limits to their capacity.

Thus, some excel in one profession generally, such as acting; others in

one department of it, as tragedy; others in one character only. Garrick

was equally great in tragedy and comedy; Mrs. Siddons only shone in

tragedy; Russell could play nothing but Jerry Sneak.[21]

LXXIX. Comic actors have generally attempted tragedy first, and have a

hankering after it to the last. It was the case with Weston, Shuter,

Munden, Bannister, and even Liston. _Prodigious!_ The mistake may

perhaps be traced to the imposing _eclat_ of tragedy, and the awe

produced by the utter incapacity of such persons to know what to make of

it.

LXXX. If we are not first, we may as well be last in any pursuit. To be

_worst_ is some kind of distinction, and implies, by the rule of

contrary, that we ought to excel in some opposite quality. Thus, if any

one has scarcely the use of his limbs, we may conceive it is from his

having exercised his mind too much. We suppose that an awkward boy at

school is a good scholar. So, if a man has a strong body, we compliment

him with a weak mind, and _vice versâ_.

LXXXI. There is a natural principle of _antithesis_ in the human mind.

We seldom grant one excellence but we hasten to make up for it by a

contrary defect, to keep the balance of criticism even. Thus we say,

_Titian was a great colourist, but did not know how to draw_. The first

is true: the last is a mere presumption from the first, like alternate

rhyme and reason; or a compromise with the weakness of human nature,

which soon tires of praise.

LXXXII. There is some reason for this cautious distribution of merit;

for it is not necessary for one man to possess more than one quality in

the highest perfection, since no one possesses all, and we are in the

end forced to collect the idea of perfection in art from a number of

different specimens. It is quite sufficient for any one person to do any

one thing better than everybody else. Anything beyond this is like an

impertinence. It was not necessary for Hogarth to paint his Sigismunda;

nor for Mrs. Siddons to abridge Paradise Lost.

LXXXIII. On the stage none but originals can be counted as anything. The

rest are ‘men of no mark or likelihood.’ They give us back the same

impression we had before, and make it worse instead of better.

LXXXIV. It was ridiculous to set up Mr Kean as a rival to Mr Kemble.

Whatever merits the first might have, they were of a totally different

class, and could not possibly interfere with, much less injure those of

his great predecessor. Mr Kemble stood on his own ground, and he stood

high on it. Yet there certainly was a _reaction_ in this case. Many

persons saw no defect in Mr Kemble till Mr Kean came, and then finding

themselves mistaken in the abstract idea of perfection they had indulged

in, were ready to give up their opinion altogether. When a man is a

great favourite with the public, they incline by a natural spirit of

exaggeration and love of the marvellous, to heap all sorts of

perfections upon him, and when they find by another’s excelling him in

some one thing that this is not the case, they are disposed to strip

their former idol, and leave him ‘bare to weather.’ Nothing is more

unjust or capricious than public opinion.

LXXXV. The public have neither shame nor gratitude.

LXXXVI. Public opinion is the mixed result of the intellect of the

community acting upon general feeling.

LXXXVII. Our friends are generally ready to do everything for us, except

the very thing we wish them to do. There is one thing in particular they

are always disposed to give us, and which we are as unwilling to take,

namely, _advice_.

LXXXVIII. Good-nature is often combined with ill temper. Our own

uncomfortable feelings teach us to sympathise with others, and to seek

relief from our own uneasiness in the satisfactions we can afford them.

Ill-nature combined with good temper is an unnatural and odious

character. Our delight in mischief and suffering, when we have no

provocation to it from being ill at ease ourselves, is wholly

unpardonable. Yet I have known one or two instances of this sort of

callous levity, and gay, laughing malignity. Such people ‘poison in

jest.’

LXXXIX. It is wonderful how soon men acquire talents for offices of

trust and importance. The higher the situation, the higher the opinion

it gives us of ourselves; and as is our confidence, so is our capacity.

We _assume_ an equality with circumstances.

XC. The difficulty is for a man to rise to high station, not to fill it;

as it is easier to stand on an eminence than to climb up to it. Yet he

alone is truly great who is so without the aid of circumstances and in

spite of fortune, who is as little lifted up by the tide of opinion, as

he is depressed by neglect or obscurity, and who borrows dignity only

from himself. It is a fine compliment which Pope has paid to Lord

Oxford—

‘A soul supreme, in each hard instance tried,

Above all pain, all passion, and all pride;

The rage of power, the blast of public breath,

The lust of lucre, and the dread of death!’

XCI. The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of

themselves. They fancy themselves superior to every one else; and not

being sure of making good their secret pretensions, decline entering the

lists altogether. They thus ‘lay the flattering unction to their souls,’

that they could have said better things than others, or that the

conversation was beneath them.

XCII. There are writers who never do their best; lest if they should

fail, they should be left without excuse in their own opinion. While

they trifle with a subject, they feel superior to it. They will not take

pains, for this would be a test of what they are actually able to do,

and set a limit to their pretensions, while their vanity is unbounded.

The more you find fault with them, the more careless they grow, their

affected indifference keeping pace with and acting as a shield against

the disapprobation or contempt of others. They fancy whatever they

condescend to write must be good enough for the public.

XCIII. Authors who acquire a high celebrity and conceal themselves, seem

superior to fame. Producing great works _incognito_ is like doing good

by stealth. There is an air of magnanimity in it, which people wonder

at. Junius, and the author of Waverley are striking examples. Junius,

however, is really unknown; while the author of Waverley enjoys all the

credit of his writings without acknowledging them. Let any one else come

forward and claim them; and we should then see whether Sir Walter Scott

would stand idle by. It is a curious argument that he cannot be the

author, because the real author could not help making himself known;

when, if he is not so, the real author has never even been hinted at,

and lets another run away with all the praise.

XCIV. Some books have a _personal_ character. We are attached to the

work for the sake of the author. Thus we read WALTON’S ANGLER as we

should converse with an agreeable old man, not for what he says, so much

as for his manner of saying it, and the pleasure he takes in the

subject.

XCV. Some persons are exceedingly shocked at the cruelty of WALTON’S

ANGLER—as if the most humane could be expected to trouble themselves

about fixing a worm on a hook, at a time when they burnt men at a stake

‘in conscience and tender heart.’ We are not to measure the feelings of

one age by those of another. Had Walton lived in our day, he would have

been the first to cry out against the cruelty of angling. As it was, his

flies and baits were only a part of his tackle. _They_ had not, at this

period, the most distant idea of setting up as candidates for our

sympathy! Man is naturally a savage, and emerges from barbarism by slow

degrees. Let us take the streaks of light, and be thankful for them, as

they arise and tinge the horizon one by one, and not complain because

the noon is long after the dawn of refinement.

XCVI. Livery-servants (I confess it) are the only people I do not like

to sit in company with. They offend not only by their own meanness, but

by the ostentatious display of the pride of their masters.

XCVII. It has been observed, that the proudest people are not nice in

love. In fact, they think they raise the object of their choice above

every one else.

XCVIII. A proud man is satisfied with his own good opinion, and does not

seek to make converts to it. Pride erects a little kingdom of its own,

and acts as sovereign in it. Hence we see why some men are so proud they

cannot be affronted, like kings who have no peer or equal.

XCIX. The proudest people are as soon repulsed as the most humble. The

last are discouraged by the slightest objection or hint of their

conscious incapacity, while the first disdain to enter into any

competition, and resent whatever implies a doubt of their self-evident

superiority to others.

C. What passes in the world for talent or dexterity or enterprise, is

often only a want of moral principle. We may succeed where others fail,

not from a greater share of invention, but from not being nice in the

choice of expedients.

CI. Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering

other people’s weaknesses. Or it is taking advantages of others which

they do not suspect, because they are contrary to propriety and the

settled practice. We feel no inferiority to a fellow who picks our

pockets; though we feel mortified at being over-reached by trick and

cunning. Yet there is no more reason for it in the one case than in the

other. Any one may win at cards by cheating—_till he is found out_. We

have been playing against odds. So any one may deceive us by lying, or

take an unfair advantage of us, who is not withheld by a sense of shame

or honesty from doing so.

CII. The completest hypocrites are so by nature. That is, they are

without sympathy with others to distract their attention—or any of that

nervous weakness, which might revolt or hesitate at the baseness of the

means necessary to carry on their system of deception. You can no more

tell what is passing in the minds of such people than if they were of a

different species. They, in fact, are so as to all moral intents and

purposes; and this is the advantage they have over you. You fancy there

is a common link between you, while in reality there is none.

CIII. The greatest hypocrites are the greatest dupes. This is either

because they think only of deceiving others and are off their guard, or

because they really know little about the feelings or characters of

others from their want of sympathy, and of consequent sagacity. Perhaps

the resorting to trick and artifice in the first instance implies not

only a callousness of feeling, but an obtuseness of intellect, which

cannot get on by fair means. Thus a girl who is ignorant and stupid may

yet have cunning enough to resort to silence as the only chance of

conveying an opinion of her capacity.

CIV. The greatest talents do not generally attain to the highest

stations. For though high, the ascent to them is narrow, beaten, and

crooked. The path of genius is free, and its own. Whatever requires the

concurrence and co-operation of others, must depend chiefly on routine

and an attention to rules and _minutiæ_. Success in business is

therefore seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power, which is

untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of common-place

capacity.

CV. The error in the reasonings of Mandeville, Rochefoucault, and

others, is this: they first find out that there is something mixed in

the motives of all our actions, and they then proceed to argue, that

they must all arise from one motive, _viz._ self-love. They make the

exception the rule. It would be easy to reverse the argument, and prove

that our most selfish actions are disinterested. There is honour among

thieves. Robbers, murderers, &c. do not commit those actions, from a

pleasure in pure villainy, or for their own benefit only, but from a

mistaken regard to the welfare or good opinion of those with whom they

are immediately connected.

CVI. It is ridiculous to say, that compassion, friendship, &c. are at

bottom only selfishness in disguise, because it is _we_ who feel

pleasure or pain in the good or evil of others; for the meaning of

self-love is not that it is I who love, but that I love myself. The

motive is no more selfish because it is I who feel it, than the action

is selfish because it is I who perform it. To prove a man selfish, it is

not surely enough to say, that it is _he who feels_ (this is a mere

quibble) but to shew that he does not feel _for another_; that is, that

the idea of the suffering or welfare of others does not excite any

feeling whatever of pleasure or pain in his mind, except from some

reference to or reflection on himself. Self-love or the love of self

means, that I have an immediate interest in the contemplation of my own

good, and that this is a motive to action; and benevolence or the love

of others means in like manner, that I have an immediate interest in the

idea of the good or evil that may befall them, and a disposition to

assist them, in consequence. Self-love, in a word, is sympathy with

myself, that is, it is I who feel it, and I who am the object of it: in

benevolence or compassion, it is I who still feel sympathy, but another

(not myself) is the object of it. If I feel sympathy with others at all,

it must be disinterested. The pleasure it may give me is the

consequence, not the cause, of my feeling it. To insist that sympathy is

self-love because we cannot feel for others, without being ourselves

affected pleasurably or painfully, is to make nonsense of the question;

for it is to insist that in order to feel for others properly and truly,

we must in the first place feel nothing. _C’est une mauvaise

plaisanterie._ That the feeling exists in the individual must be

granted, and never admitted of a question: the only question is, how

that feeling is caused, and what is its object—and it is to express the

two opinions that may be entertained on this subject, that the terms

_self-love_ and _benevolence_ have been appropriated. Any other

interpretation of them is an evident abuse of language, and a subterfuge

in argument, which, driven from the fair field of fact and observation,

takes shelter in verbal sophistry.

CVII. Humility and pride are not easily distinguished from each other. A

proud man, who fortifies himself in his own good opinion, may be

supposed not to put forward his pretensions through shyness or deference

to others: a modest man, who is really reserved and afraid of committing

himself, is thought distant and haughty: and the vainest coxcomb, who

makes a display of himself and his most plausible qualifications, often

does so to hide his deficiencies and to prop up his tottering opinion of

himself by the applause of others. Vanity does not refer to the opinion

a man entertains of himself, but to that which he wishes others to

entertain of him. Pride is indifferent to the approbation of others; as

modesty shrinks from it, either through bashfulness, or from an

unwillingness to take any undue advantage of it. I have known several

very forward, loquacious, and even overbearing persons, whose

confidential communications were oppressive from the sense they

entertained of their own demerits. In company they talked on in mere

_bravado_, and for fear of betraying their weak side, as children make a

noise in the dark.

CVIII. True modesty and true pride are much the same thing. Both consist

in setting a just value on ourselves—neither more nor less. It is a want

of proper spirit to fancy ourselves inferior to others in those things

in which we really excel them. It is conceit and want of common-sense to

arrogate a superiority over others, without the most well-founded

pretensions.

CIX. A man may be justly accused of vanity and presumption, who either

thinks he possesses qualifications which he has not, or greatly

overrates those which he has. An egotist does not think well of himself

because he possesses certain qualities, but fancies he possesses a

number of excellences, because he thinks well of himself through mere

idle self-complacency. True moderation is the bounding of our

self-esteem within the extent of our acquirements.

CX. Conceit is the most contemptible and one of the most odious

qualities in the world. It is vanity driven from all other shifts, and

forced to appeal to itself for admiration. An author, whose play has

been _damned_ overnight, feels a paroxysm of conceit the next morning.

Conceit may be defined as a restless, overweening, petty, obtrusive,

mechanical delight in our own qualifications, without any reference to

their real value, or to the approbation of others, merely because they

are ours, and for no other reason whatever. It is the extreme of

selfishness and folly.

CXI. Confidence or courage is conscious ability—the sense of power. No

man is ever afraid of attempting what he knows he can do better than any

one else. Charles Fox felt no diffidence in addressing the House of

Commons: he was reserved and silent in company, and had no opinion of

his talent for writing; that is, he knew his powers and their limits.

The torrent of his eloquence rushed upon him from his knowledge of the

subject and his interest in it, unchecked and unbidden, without his once

thinking of himself or his hearers. As a man is strong, so is he bold.

The thing is, that wherever we feel at home, there we are at our ease.

The late Sir John Moore once had to review the troops at Plymouth before

the King; and while he was on the ground and had to converse with the

different persons of the court, with the ladies, and with Mr Pitt whom

he thought a great man, he found himself a good deal embarrassed; but

the instant he mounted his horse and the troops were put in motion, he

felt quite relieved, and had leisure to observe what an awkward figure

Mr Pitt made on horseback.

CXII. The truly proud man knows neither superiors nor inferiors. The

first he does not admit of: the last he does not concern himself about.

People who are insolent to those beneath them crouch to those above

them. Both shew equal meanness of spirit and want of conscious dignity.

CXIII. No elevation or success raises the humble man in his own opinion.

To the proud the slightest repulse or disappointment is the last

indignity. The vain man makes a merit of misfortune, and triumphs in his

disgrace.

CXIV. We reserve our gratitude for the manner of conferring benefits;

and we revolt against this, except when it seems to say we owe no

obligation at all, and thus cancels the debt of gratitude as soon as it

is incurred.

CXV. We do not hate those who injure us, if they do not at the same time

wound our self-love. We can forgive any one sooner than those who lower

us in our own opinion. It is no wonder, therefore, that we as often

dislike others for their virtues as for their vices. We naturally hate

whatever makes us despise ourselves.

CXVI. When you find out a man’s ruling passion, beware of crossing him

in it.

CXVII. We sometimes hate those who differ from us in opinion worse than

we should for an attempt to injure us in the most serious point. A

favourite theory is a possession for life; and we resent any attack upon

it proportionably.

CXVIII. Men will die for an opinion as soon as for anything else.

Whatever excites the spirit of contradiction, is capable of producing

the last effects of heroism, which is only the highest pitch of

obstinacy in a good or a bad cause, in wisdom or in folly.

CXIX. We are ready to sacrifice life, not only for our own opinion, but

in deference to that of others. Conscience, or its shadow, honour,

prevails over the fear of death. The man of fortune and fashion will

throw away his life, like a bauble, to prevent the slightest breath of

dishonour. So little are we governed by self-interest, and so much by

imagination and sympathy.