_THE CENSORIOUS._
"Judging with rigour every small offence."--HAYWARD.
He is a judge passing sentence upon persons and things without justice
or charity. Benevolent works in Church or State are failures unless he
has been a prominent party in their execution. Personal motives are
weighed in the balance and found wanting. Thoughts, ere they are
expressed, are even seen and censured. Actions are pronounced false and
defective. Appearances are judged as realities, and realities as
nonentities. Things straight are seen as crooked, and things beautiful
as deformed. Where wiser men perceive order, strength, utility, he
perceives confusion, weakness, and uselessness. An enterprise of which
the community approve and co-operate in he stands aloof from, and
satisfies his unhappy disposition with carping criticisms and ungenerous
censures. A neighbour who does not reach his standard of moral
excellence in character and action he pronounces lax in principles and
delinquent in life. One who does not agree with him in his peculiar
views of some disputed doctrine of Christian faith or principle of
Church discipline he judges to be little better than a heretic or a
heathen.
It seems the instinct of his nature to find fault. He hears no preacher,
reads no book, looks upon no work of art, without some expression of
disapproval. God, Providence, the Bible, Religion, do not escape his
sharp and keen criticisms. His perception is so fine and his taste so
exquisite that points of failure which a generous mind would overlook he
discerns and speaks of with unfailing fidelity. He would at any time
rather rub his nose against a thistle than smell at a flower.
"Mr. Smith is a very excellent man," said a friend of mine one day in
conversation to Mr. Pepper.
"Yes, he may be," said Pepper in an indifferent way; "but perhaps you
don't know him as well as I do."
"What a noble gift of Lord Hill to the town of Shenton, that park of one
thousand acres!"
"True, it was; but what were his motives in its bestowment? Did he not
expect to gain more than its value in certain ways that I need not
mention?"
"How sad that the family of Hobson have come into such circumstances."
"It is only a judgment upon them for the old man's sins."
"Have you heard that young Dumas has entered the ministry?"
"Yes, and what for? Only for the loaves and fishes."
"What a kind Providence it was that provided so suitably for widow
Bonsor and her family."
"Providence, indeed! Was it not rather the benevolence of Mr. Lord and
his friend Squance?"
"What an admirable picture that is in Mr. Robinson's window in Bond
Street. It is a splendid piece of workmanship. Don't you think so?"
"A bad sky--very bad! Cold as winter. That trunk of a tree on the right
is as stiff and formal as a sign-post. It spoils the whole picture."
"Then you don't like it?"
"There are a few good points in it; but it is full of faults."
"The Rev. Mr. Benson, of Queen's-road Church, is, in my judgment, an
eloquent and powerful preacher. Don't you think so, Mr. Pepper?"
"Well, as you ask me so pointedly, I am free to say that I think him a
very good preacher _on the whole_. But, you know, he is far from
perfect. I have again and again perceived his false logic, his weak
metaphors, and his unsound expositions. Still, he is passable, and you
may go a long way before you hear a better."
Thus the censor meets you in every topic which you introduce in
conversation.
"All seems infected that the infected spy,
And all seems yellow to the jaundiced eye."
If you ask reasons for his censures, he cannot give you any, excepting
one similar in kind to the following:--
"I do not like you, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But I do not like you, Doctor Fell."
"Canting bigotry and carping criticism," says Magoon, "are usually the
product of obtuse sensibilities and a pusillanimous will. Plutarch tells
us of an idle and effeminate Etrurian, who found fault with the manner
in which Themistocles had conducted a recent campaign. 'What,' said the
hero, in reply, 'have you, too, something to say about war, who are like
the fish that has a sword, but no heart?' He is always the severest
censor on the merits of others who has the least worth of his own."
Again he says, "The Sandwich Islanders murdered Captain Cook, but adored
his bones. It is after the same manner that the censorious treat
deserving men. They first immolate them in the most savage mode of
sacrifice, and then declare the relics of their victims to be sacred.
Crabbed members of churches and other societies will quarrel a pastor or
leading member away, and with snappish tone will complain of his
absence, invidiously comparing him with his successor, and making the
change they have caused the occasion of a still keener fight, simply to
indulge the unslumbering malice of their unfeeling heart. The rancour
with which they would silence one, the envy with which they hurry
another into seclusion, and the inexorable bitterness under the
corrosion of which a third is brought prematurely to the grave, proves
how indiscriminate are their carping comments, and how identical
towards all degrees of merit is their infernal hate."