“In her utmost lightness there is truth—and often she speaks lightly—
Has a grace in being gay, which even mournful souls approve,
For the root of some grave earnest thought is understruck so rightly
As to justify the foliage and the waving flowers above.”
So with Lord Lytton’s Helen Mainwaring, the sunny gladness of whose
nature must have vent like a bird’s, though he forbids us to fancy
that that gladness speaks the levity which comes from the absence of
thought: “it is rather from the depth of thought that it springs, as
from the depth of a sea comes its music.” Well and wisely Molière’s
Cléonte exclaims, “Veux-tu de ces enjouements épanouis, de ces joies
toujours ouvertes? et vois tu rien de plus impertinent que des femmes qui
rient à tout propos?” Such a _femme_ as the same author’s Zerbinette, a
self-convicted giggler in and out of season, yet whose confession may be
twisted into an example the other way, when she says, “J’ai l’humeur
enjouée, et sans cesse je ris: mais, tout en riant, je suis sérieuse sur
de certains chapitres.”
Among the writings of M. de St. Evremond there is an essay on the Idea
of a Woman that never was, nor ever will be found. Emilia he calls this
all too perfect, impossible she. And amongst the foremost of Emilia’s
fine qualities he reckons the co-existence of seriousness _au fond_ with
vivacity of mien. “For we find that the gayest humour doth, at length,
become tiresome; ... the most effervescent liveliness either disgusts or
wearies you.” In the case of the celebrated Duchesse de Longueville, De
Retz notices the exquisite effect of the sudden bursts of gaiety which
would at times dispel her habitual but not inexpressive languor. Mdlle.
de Scudéry, in her “Clélie,” was painting a well-known, perhaps too
well-known, contemporary in the person of Clarice, when, “parmi toute
cette disposition qu’elle a pour la joie,” she ascribes to this charmer,
_qui rit si aisément_, a facile faculty of tear-shedding: _elle sait
pleurer_, whenever occasion justifies weeping. As Lady Eastlake says, in
her little treatise on Music, a change of key is the most powerful engine
in the hands of a musician: we cannot bear the monotony of one key long,
even the most joyful: “Gaiety without eclipse wearieth me, May Lilian.”
We long for “a mournful muse, soft pity to infuse.” The Hon. Miss
Byron takes the liberty of telling the sister of Sir Charles Grandison
that “Your brother has hinted, Charlotte, that he loves you for your
vivacity, and should still more, if you consulted time and occasion.”
The affections are justly said to be more readily called into play by a
mixture of mirth and melancholy; ours being a twofold life, the union of
mortal with immortal, we covet happiness, yet turn back anon to the more
majestic form of sorrow. There is a form of cheerfulness which, we are
assured, nobody can stand:—
“Send me hence a thousand miles
From a face that always smiles;”
people ostentatiously and pretentiously cheerful being not unfrequently
foolish people: their spirits of a brisk but thin quality—nothing about
them in good working order. “For, in truth, the most fortunate existence
has cares enough to make gravity our normal condition.” Roland Graeme, in
the “Abbot,” earnestly assures his vivacious companion, “Ay, but, fair
Catherine, there are moments of deep and true feeling, which are worth
ten thousand years of liveliest mirth.” Melancholy Minna is a fine relief
by contrast to laughter-loving Brenda; and it is suggestively told us of
the old Udaller, their sire, that he liked his graver damsel better in
the walk without doors, and his merry maiden better by the fireside; and
that if he preferred Brenda after the glass circulated in the evening, he
gave the preference to Minna before noon. So with Molly and Cynthia in
“Wives and Daughters:” Molly always gentle, but very grave and silent;
Cynthia merry, full of pretty mockeries, and hardly ever silent—only this
constant brilliancy became a little tiresome in everyday life, being not
the sunshiny rest of a placid lake, so much as the “glitter of the pieces
of a broken mirror, which confuses and bewilders.” The union of what can
be harmonized of the two distinctive characters, is sure to be engaging
in no ordinary degree. As in the Beryl of “George Geith.” “You imagine,”
says Beryl, on one occasion, “because it is necessary to my existence to
laugh at people’s oddities, that I never feel for their woes. You think,
because I have a quick sense of the ludicrous, that I have no eyes for
grief. And there you do me an injustice.” Such as Beryl will be found
to take exception to predominant levity in the masculine gender, after
the manner of the fair tenant of Wildfell Hall: “I do wish he would be
sometimes serious,” she writes of her endeared Arthur: “I cannot get him
to write or speak in real, solid earnest. I don’t mind it now, but if it
be always so, what shall I do with the serious part of myself?” Tired
out with such companionship, a complainant in one of Lovell Beddoes’
tragedies exclaims,—
“I’m weary of their laughter’s empty din.
Methinks, these fellows, with their ready jests,
Are like to tedious bells, that ring alike
Marriage or death.”
Rather than have her uniformly saccharine and smiling, Ben Jonson’s
Curius avowedly would have his mistress “angry sometimes, to sweeten off
the rest of her behaviour.”
* * * * *
Sir Walter Scott, in one page of his Diary, noting the break-up of
a hilarious group of guests at Abbotsford, adds the avowal, “I am
not sorry, being one of those whom too much mirth always inclines to
sadness.” Even the bright extremes of joy, as Thomas Hood the elder words
it, bring on conclusions of disgust:—
“There is no music in the life
That sounds with idiot laughter solely;
There’s not a string attuned to mirth
But has its chord in melancholy.”
Leigh Hunt tenderly tells one of his grandchildren how, when _he_ was
a child, and in excessive spirits, his dear mother would sometimes say
to him, “Leigh, come and sit down here by me, and let us try to think a
little.” Better that than _riant sans cesse_, even for a child. When I
was a child, says the apostle, I thought as a child. Thinking was not
out of the question even then, though it might, and by comparison with
the man’s it must, be childish thinking. For children as for men, a time
to laugh and a time to weep. True, there are differences of gifts and
temperaments:—
“To some men God hath given laughter; but tears to some men He hath
given:
He bade us sow in tears, hereafter to harvest holier smiles in Heaven;
And tears and smiles, they are His gift: both good, to smite or to
uplift.
He knows His sheep: the wind and showers beat not too sharply the
shorn lamb:
His wisdom is more wise than ours: He knew my nature—what I am:
He tempers smiles with tears: both good, to bear in time the
Christian mood.”
_DISALLOWED DESIGNS._
PROVERBS xix. 21.
“There are many devices in a man’s heart; nevertheless, the counsel of
the Lord, that shall stand.” Even the counsels of the prudent He bringeth
to nought. “There is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel, against
the Lord,” nor any that prospers without Him. Without Him, where is the
wise? where is the scribe? What, after all, is the wisdom of the children
of this world, wiser in their generation than the children of light? Hath
not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For it is written, “I will
destroy the wisdom of the wise.” Nay; unworldly wisdom, in its forming
of plans, and elaboration of schemes, and devising of devices, enjoys no
privileged immunity from failure, at the veto of Him who chargeth His
angels with folly. “L’homme propose, Dieu dispose.” The Divine disposal
of human proposals is ofttimes very summary and entire.
The proverb, “Man proposes, God disposes,” is believed by one learned in
such lore to be naturalised in every nation of Europe:—thus the Spanish,
“La gente pone, y Dios dispone;” the German, with its corresponding
jingle, “Der Mensch denkt’s, Gott lenkt’s,” etc., so deeply upon all men
is impressed the sense of Hamlet’s assertion of a Divinity that shapes
our ends, rough-hew them how we will. Molière’s shrewd-spoken Dorine
enounces a truism when reminding Damis that,—
“On n’exécute pas tout ce qui se propose;
Et le chemin est long du projet à la chose.”
A wise man endeavours, it has been said, by considering all
circumstances, to make conjectures and form conclusions: but the smallest
accident intervening (and in the course of affairs it is impossible to
foresee all) often produces such turns and changes, that at last he is
just as much in doubt of events as the most ignorant and inexperienced
person. What Shakspeare in his sonnets calls “millioned accidents” creep
in between design and result, between plan and performance, between
scheme and issue, and “blunt the sharpest intents.” As the old moralising
poet, modernised by Dryden, puts it—
“But see how Fortune can confound the wise,
And when they least expect it, turn the dice.”
Fortune, or fate, is the popularly recognised agent in these reversals
and collapses; and subtile philosophers speculate curiously on the
plenipotent character of this agency. One such, for example, predisposed
to paradox may-be, yet no heedless or hasty penman, affirms, that if you
look closely into the matter, it will be seen that whatever appears most
vagrant, and utterly purposeless, turns out, in the end, to have been
impelled the most surely on a preordained and unswerving track. Chance
and change, he goes on to remark, love to deal with men’s unsettled
plans, not with their idle vagaries. So that, as he argues the matter, if
we desire unexpected and unimaginable events, we should contrive an iron
framework, such as we fancy may compel the future to take one inevitable
shape; for then comes in the unexpected, and shatters our design in
fragments.
The biographer of Columbus, narrating the story of his shipwreck in 1492,
describes him as passing, with his usual excitability, from a state of
doubt and anxiety to one of sanguine anticipation, and thus coming to
consider his present misfortune as a providential event mysteriously
ordained by Heaven to work out the success of his enterprise. At once,
therefore, he began to look forward to glorious fruits to be reaped
from this seeming evil, and laid his plans accordingly. “Such was the
visionary yet generous enthusiasm of Columbus, the moment that prospects
of vast wealth broke upon his mind. What in some spirits would have
awakened a grasping and sordid avidity to accumulate, immediately filled
his imagination with plans of magnificent expenditure. But how vain
are our attempts to interpret the inscrutable decrees of Providence!
The shipwreck, which Columbus considered the act of Divine favour, to
reveal to him the secrets of the land, shackled and limited all his
after-discoveries.” For it is shown to have linked his fortunes, for the
remainder of his life, to this island, which was doomed to be to him a
source of cares and troubles, to involve him in a thousand perplexities,
and to becloud his declining years with humiliation and disappointment.
“Le ciel agit sans nous en ces événements,
Et ne les régle point dessus nos sentiments.”
It is instructive to note in the memoirs of Gabriel Naudé, that great
scholar’s exultant anticipation of the public opening of the library he
had mainly helped to form. He must have reckoned on that day as a _beau
jour_ for him, the happiest day of his life; and he arranged a fête
accordingly, to be celebrated with his most intimate friends. But that
very day broke out the public troubles of the Fronde; and barricades in
the streets of Paris ill accorded with Gabriel Naudé’s cherished hopes.
“Ainsi vont les projets humains sous l’œil d’en haut qui les déjoue.” The
Scotch ploughman-poet, eyeing the mouse and its “wee bit housie, too, in
ruin,” as turned up by his plough, gave racy utterance to but a trite
reflection, when, apostrophising the “wee sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous
beastie,” he thus moralised his song:—
“But, mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft a-gley,
And leave us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promised joy.”