La vie eat un sommeil. Les vieillards sont ceux donc le
sommeil a ete plus long: ils ne commencent a se reveiller
que quand il faut mourir. --LA BRUYERE.
[“Life is a sleep. The aged are those whose sleep has been
the longest they begin to awaken themselves just as they are
obliged to die.”]
“You wonder why I have never turned author, with my constant love
of literature and my former desire of fame,” said Talbot, as he and
Clarence sat alone after dinner, discussing many things: “the fact is,
that I have often intended it, and as often been frightened from
my design. Those terrible feuds; those vehement disputes; those
recriminations of abuse, so inseparable from literary life,--appear to
me too dreadful for a man not utterly hardened or malevolent voluntarily
to encounter. Good Heavens! what acerbity sours the blood of an author!
The manifestoes of opposing generals, advancing to pillage, to burn, to
destroy, contain not a tithe of the ferocity which animates the pages
of literary controversialists! No term of reproach is too severe, no
vituperation too excessive! the blackest passions, the bitterest, the
meanest malice, pour caustic and poison upon every page! It seems as if
the greatest talents, the most elaborate knowledge, only sprang from
the weakest and worst-regulated mind, as exotics from dung. The private
records, the public works of men of letters, teem with an immitigable
fury! Their histories might all be reduced into these sentences: they
were born; they quarrelled; they died!”
“But,” said Clarence, “it would matter little to the world if
these quarrels were confined merely to poets and men of imaginative
literature, in whom irritability is perhaps almost necessarily allied to
the keen and quick susceptibilities which constitute their genius. These
are more to be lamented and wondered at among philosophers, theologians,
and men of science; the coolness, the patience, the benevolence, which
ought to characterize their works, should at least moderate their
jealousy and soften their disputes.”
“Ah!” said Talbot, “but the vanity of discovery is no less acute than
that of creation: the self-love of a philosopher is no less self-love
than that of a poet. Besides, those sects the most sure of their
opinions, whether in religion or science, are always the most bigoted
and persecuting. Moreover, nearly all men deceive themselves in
disputes, and imagine that they are intolerant, not through private
jealousy, but public benevolence: they never declaim against the
injustice done to themselves; no, it is the terrible injury done
to society which grieves and inflames them. It is not the bitter
expressions against their dogmas which give them pain; by no means:
it is the atrocious doctrines (so prejudicial to the country, if in
polities; so pernicious to the world, if in philosophy), which their
duty, not their vanity, induces them to denounce and anathematize.”
“There seems,” said Clarence, “to be a sort of reaction in sophistry and
hypocrisy: there has, perhaps, never been a deceiver who was not, by his
own passions, himself the deceived.”
“Very true,” said Talbot; “and it is a pity that historians have not
kept that fact in view: we should then have had a better notion of the
Cromwells and Mohammeds of the past than we have now, nor judged those
as utter impostors who were probably half dupes. But to return to
myself. I think you will already be able to answer your own question,
why I did not turn author, now that we have given a momentary
consideration to the penalties consequent on such a profession. But in
truth, as I near the close of my life, I often regret that I had not
more courage, for there is in us all a certain restlessness in the
persuasion, whether true or false, of superior knowledge or intellect,
and this urges us on to the proof; or, if we resist its impulse; renders
us discontented with our idleness and disappointed with the past. I have
everything now in my possession which it has been the desire of my later
years to enjoy: health, retirement, successful study, and the affection
of one in whose breast, when I am gone, my memory will not utterly
pass away. With these advantages, added to the gifts of fortune, and an
habitual elasticity of spirit, I confess that my happiness is not free
from a biting and frequent regret: I would fain have been a better
citizen; I would fain have died in the consciousness not only that I had
improved my mind to the utmost, but that I had turned that improvement
to the benefit of my fellow-creatures. As it is, in living wholly
for myself, I feel that my philosophy has wanted generosity; and my
indifference to glory has proceeded from a weakness, not, as I once
persuaded myself, from a virtue but the fruitlessness of my existence
has been the consequence of the arduous frivolities and the petty
objects in which my early years were consumed; and my mind, in losing
the enjoyments which it formerly possessed, had no longer the vigour to
create for itself a new soil, from which labour it could only hope
for more valuable fruits. It is no contradiction to see those who
most eagerly courted society in their youth shrink from it the most
sensitively in their age; for they who possess certain advantages,
and are morbidly vain of them, will naturally be disposed to seek that
sphere for which those advantages are best calculated: and when youth
and its concomitants depart, the vanity so long fed still remains, and
perpetually mortifies them by recalling not so much the qualities
they have lost, as the esteem which those qualities conferred; and by
contrasting not so much their own present alteration, as the change
they experience in the respect and consideration of others. What wonder,
then, that they eagerly fly from the world, which has only mortification
for their self-love, or that we find, in biography, how often the most
assiduous votaries of pleasure have become the most rigid of recluses?
For my part, I think that that love of solitude which the ancients so
eminently possessed, and which, to this day, is considered by some as
the sign of a great mind, nearly always arises from a tenderness of
vanity, easily wounded in the commerce of the rough world; and that
it is under the shadow of Disappointment that we must look for the
hermitage. Diderot did well, even at the risk of offending Rousseau,
to write against solitude. The more a moralist binds man to man, and
forbids us to divorce our interests from our kind, the more effectually
is the end of morality obtained. They only are justifiable in seclusion
who, like the Greek philosophers, make that very seclusion the means of
serving and enlightening their race; who from their retreats send forth
their oracles of wisdom, and render the desert which surrounds them
eloquent with the voice of truth. But remember, Clarence (and let my
life, useless in itself, have at least this moral), that for him who
in no wise cultivates his talent for the benefit of others; who is
contented with being a good hermit at the expense of being a bad
citizen; who looks from his retreat upon a life wasted in the difficiles
nugae of the most frivolous part of the world, nor redeems in the closet
the time he has misspent in the saloon,--remember that for him seclusion
loses its dignity, philosophy its comfort, benevolence its hope, and
even religion its balm. Knowledge unemployed may preserve us from vice;
but knowledge beneficently employed is virtue. Perfect happiness, in our
present state, is impossible; for Hobbes says justly that our nature is
inseparable from desires, and that the very word desire (the craving
for something not possessed) implies that our present felicity is not
complete. But there is one way of attaining what we may term, if not
utter, at least mortal, happiness; it is this,--a sincere and unrelaxing
activity for the happiness of others. In that one maxim is concentrated
whatever is noble in morality, sublime in religion, or unanswerable in
truth. In that pursuit we have all scope for whatever is excellent in
our hearts, and none for the petty passions which our nature is heir
to. Thus engaged, whatever be our errors, there will be nobility, not
weakness, in our remorse; whatever our failure, virtue, not selfishness,
in our regret; and, in success, vanity itself will become holy and
triumph eternal. As astrologers were wont to receive upon metals ‘the
benign aspect of the stars, so as to detain and fix, as it were, the
felicity of that hour which would otherwise be volatile and fugitive,’
[Bacon] even so will that success leave imprinted upon our memory a
blessing which cannot pass away; preserve forever upon our names, as on
a signet, the hallowed influence of the hour in which our great end was
effected, and treasure up ‘the relics of heaven’ in the sanctuary of a
human fane.”
As the old man ceased, there was a faint and hectic flush over his face,
an enthusiasm on his features, which age made almost holy, and which
Clarence had never observed there before. In truth, his young listener
was deeply affected, and the advice of his adopted parent was afterwards
impressed with a more awful solemnity upon his remembrance. Already he
had acquired much worldly lore from Talbot’s precepts and conversation.
He had obtained even something better than worldly lore,--a kindly and
indulgent disposition to his fellow-creatures; for he had seen that
foibles were not inconsistent with generous and great qualities, and
that we judge wrongly of human nature when we ridicule its littleness.
The very circumstances which make the shallow misanthropical incline the
wise to be benevolent. Fools discover that frailty is not incompatible
with great men; they wonder and despise: but the discerning find that
greatness is not incompatible with frailty; and they admire and indulge.
But a still greater benefit than this of toleration did Clarence derive
from the commune of that night. He became strengthened in his honourable
ambition and nerved to unrelaxing exertion. The recollection of Talbot’s
last words, on that night, occurred to him often and often, when sick at
heart and languid with baffled hope, it roused him from that gloom and
despondency which are always unfavourable to virtue, and incited him
once more to that labour in the vineyard which, whether our hour be late
or early, will if earnest obtain a blessing and reward.
The hour was now waxing late; and Talbot, mindful of his companion’s
health, rose to retire. As he pressed Clarence’s hand and bade him
farewell for the night, Linden thought there was something more than
usually impressive in his manner and affectionate in his words. Perhaps
this was the natural result of their conversation.
The next morning, Clarence was awakened by a noise. He listened, and
heard distinctly an alarmed cry proceeding from the room in which Talbot
slept, and which was opposite to his own. He rose hastily and hurried
to the chamber. The door was open; the old servant was bending over the
bed: Clarence approached, and saw that he supported his master in his
arms.
“Good God!” he cried, “what is the matter?” The faithful old man lifted
up his face to Clarence, and the big tears rolled fast from eyes in
which the sources of such emotion were well-nigh dried up.
“He loved you well, sir!” he said, and could say no more. He dropped
the body gently, and throwing himself on the floor sobbed aloud. With
a foreboding and chilled heart, Clarence bent forward; the face of his
benefactor lay directly before him, and the hand of death was upon
it. The soul had passed to its account hours since, in the hush of
night,--passed, apparently, without a struggle or a pang, like the wind,
which animates the harp one moment, and the next is gone.
Linden seized his hand; it was heavy and cold: his eye rested upon the
miniature of the unfortunate Lady Merton, which, since the night of the
attempted robbery, Talbot had worn constantly round his neck. Strange
and powerful was the contrast of the pictured face--in which not a
colour had yet faded, and where the hues and fulness and prime of youth
dwelt, unconscious of the lapse of years--with the aged and shrunken
countenance of the deceased.
In that contrast was a sad and mighty moral: it wrought, as it were, a
contract between youth and age, and conveyed a rapid but full history of
our passions and our life.
The servant looked up once more on the countenance; he pointed towards
it, and muttered, “See, see how awfully it is changed!”
“But there is a smile upon it!” said Clarence, as he flung himself
beside the body and burst into tears.