"Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,
Or by the lazy Scheldt or wandering Po."
[Footnote 28: Written at Winterslow Hut, January 18th-19th, 1821.]
I never was in a better place or humour than I am at present for
writing on this subject. I have a partridge getting ready for my
supper, my fire is blazing on the hearth, the air is mild for the
season of the year, I have had but a slight fit of indigestion to-day
(the only thing that makes me abhor myself), I have three hours good
before me, and therefore I will attempt it. It is as well to do it at
once as to have it to do for a week to come.
If the writing on this subject is no easy task, the thing itself is a
harder one. It asks a troublesome effort to ensure the admiration of
others: it is a still greater one to be satisfied with one's own
thoughts. As I look from the window at the wide bare heath before me,
and through the misty moon-light air see the woods that wave over the
top of Winterslow,
"While Heav'n's chancel-vault is blind with sleet,"
my mind takes its flight through too long a series of years, supported
only by the patience of thought and secret yearnings after truth and
good, for me to be at a loss to understand the feeling I intend to
write about; but I do not know that this will enable me to convey it
more agreeably to the reader.
Lady G. in a letter to Miss Harriet Byron, assures her that "her
brother Sir Charles lived to himself:" and Lady L. soon after (for
Richardson was never tired of a good thing) repeats the same
observation; to which Miss Byron frequently returns in her answers to
both sisters--"For you know Sir Charles lives to himself," till at
length it passes into a proverb among the fair correspondents. This is
not, however, an example of what I understand by _living to
one's-self_, for Sir Charles Grandison was indeed always thinking of
himself; but by this phrase I mean never thinking at all about
one's-self, any more than if there was no such person in existence.
The character I speak of is as little of an egotist as possible:
Richardson's great favourite was as much of one as possible. Some
satirical critic has represented him in Elysium "bowing over the
_faded_ hand of Lady Grandison" (Miss Byron that was)--he ought to
have been represented bowing over his own hand, for he never admired
any one but himself, and was the god of his own idolatry. Neither do I
call it living to one's-self to retire into a desert (like the saints
and martyrs of old) to be devoured by wild beasts, nor to descend into
a cave to be considered as a hermit, nor to get to the top of a pillar
or rock to do fanatic penance and be seen of all men. What I mean by
living to one's-self is living in the world, as in it, not of it: it
is as if no one knew there was such a person, and you wished no one to
know it: it is to be a silent spectator of the mighty scene of things,
not an object of attention or curiosity in it; to take a thoughtful,
anxious interest in what is passing in the world, but not to feel the
slightest inclination to make or meddle with it. It is such a life as
a pure spirit might be supposed to lead, and such an interest as it
might take in the affairs of men, calm, contemplative, passive,
distant, touched with pity for their sorrows, smiling at their follies
without bitterness, sharing their affections, but not troubled by
their passions, not seeking their notice, not once dreamt of by them.
He who lives wisely to himself and to his own heart, looks at the busy
world through the loop-holes of retreat, and does not want to mingle
in the fray. "He hears the tumult, and is still." He is not able to
mend it, nor willing to mar it. He sees enough in the universe to
interest him without putting himself forward to try what he can do to
fix the eyes of the universe upon him. Vain the attempt! He reads the
clouds, he looks at the stars, he watches the return of the seasons,
the falling leaves of autumn, the perfumed breath of spring, starts
with delight at the note of a thrush in a copse near him, sits by the
fire, listens to the moaning of the wind, pores upon a book, or
discourses the freezing hours away, or melts down hours to minutes in
pleasing thought. All this while he is taken up with other things,
forgetting himself. He relishes an author's style, without thinking of
turning author. He is fond of looking at a print from an old picture
in the room, without teasing himself to copy it. He does not fret
himself to death with trying to be what he is not, or to do what he
cannot. He hardly knows what he is capable of, and is not in the least
concerned whether he shall ever make a figure in the world. He feels
the truth of the lines--
"The man whose eye is ever on himself,
Doth look on one, the least of nature's works;
One who might move the wise man to that scorn
Which wisdom holds unlawful ever"--
he looks out of himself at the wide extended prospect of nature, and
takes an interest beyond his narrow pretensions in general humanity.
He is free as air, and independent as the wind. Woe be to him when he
first begins to think what others say of him. While a man is contented
with himself and his own resources, all is well. When he undertakes to
play a part on the stage, and to persuade the world to think more
about him than they do about themselves, he is got into a track where
he will find nothing but briars and thorns, vexation and
disappointment. I can speak a little to this point. For many years of
my life I did nothing but think. I had nothing else to do but solve
some knotty point, or dip in some abstruse author, or look at the sky,
or wander by the pebbled sea-side--
"To see the children sporting on the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."
I cared for nothing, I wanted nothing. I took my time to consider
whatever occurred to me, and was in no hurry to give a sophistical
answer to a question--there was no printer's devil waiting for me. I
used to write a page or two perhaps in half a year; and remember
laughing heartily at the celebrated experimentalist Nicholson, who
told me that in twenty years he had written as much as would make
three hundred octavo volumes. If I was not a great author, I could
read with ever fresh delight, "never ending, still beginning," and had
no occasion to write a criticism when I had done. If I could not paint
like Claude, I could admire "the witchery of the soft blue sky" as I
walked out, and was satisfied with the pleasure it gave me. If I was
dull, it gave me little concern: if I was lively, I indulged my
spirits. I wished well to the world, and believed as favourably of it
as I could. I was like a stranger in a foreign land, at which I looked
with wonder, curiosity, and delight, without expecting to be an object
of attention in return. I had no relations to the state, no duty to
perform, no ties to bind me to others: I had neither friend nor
mistress, wife or child. I lived in a world of contemplation, and not
of action.
This sort of dreaming existence is the best. He who quits it to go in
search of realities, generally barters repose for repeated
disappointments and vain regrets. His time, thoughts, and feelings are
no longer at his own disposal. From that instant he does not survey
the objects of nature as they are in themselves, but looks asquint at
them to see whether he cannot make them the instruments of his
ambition, interest, or pleasure; for a candid, undesigning,
undisguised simplicity of character, his views become jaundiced,
sinister, and double: he takes no farther interest in the great
changes of the world but as he has a paltry share in producing them:
instead of opening his senses, his understanding, and his heart to the
resplendent fabric of the universe, he holds a crooked mirror before
his face, in which he may admire his own person and pretensions, and
just glance his eye aside to see whether others are not admiring him
too. He no more exists in the impression which "the fair variety of
things" makes upon him, softened and subdued by habitual
contemplation, but in the feverish sense of his own upstart
self-importance. By aiming to fix, he is become the slave of opinion.
He is a tool, a part of a machine that never stands still, and is sick
and giddy with the ceaseless motion. He has no satisfaction but in the
reflection of his own image in the public gaze, but in the repetition
of his own name in the public ear. He himself is mixed up with, and
spoils every thing. I wonder Buonaparte was not tired of the N.N.'s
stuck all over the Louvre and throughout France. Goldsmith (as we all
know), when in Holland, went out into a balcony with some handsome
Englishwomen, and on their being applauded by the spectators, turned
round, and said peevishly--"There are places where I also am admired."
He could not give the craving appetite of an author's vanity one day's
respite. I have seen a celebrated talker of our own time turn pale and
go out of the room when a showy-looking girl has come into it, who for
a moment divided the attention of his hearers. Infinite are the
mortifications of the bare attempt to emerge from obscurity;
numberless the failures; and greater and more galling still the
vicissitudes and tormenting accompaniments of success--
"Whose top to climb
Is certain falling, or so slippery, that
The fear's as bad as falling."
"Would to God," exclaimed Oliver Cromwell, when he was at any time
thwarted by the Parliament, "that I had remained by my wood-side to
tend a flock of sheep, rather than have been thrust on such a
government as this!" When Buonaparte got into his carriage to proceed
on his Russian expedition, carelessly twirling his glove, and singing
the air--"Malbrook to the wars is going"--he did not think of the
tumble he has got since, the shock of which no one could have stood
but himself. We see and hear chiefly of the favourites of Fortune and
the Muse, of great generals, of first-rate actors, of celebrated
poets. These are at the head; we are struck with the glittering
eminence on which they stand, and long to set out on the same tempting
career:--not thinking how many discontented half-pay lieutenants are
in vain seeking promotion all their lives, and obliged to put up with
"the insolence of office, and the spurns which patient merit of the
unworthy takes;" how many half-starved strolling-players are doomed to
penury and tattered robes in country-places, dreaming to the last of a
London engagement; how many wretched daubers shiver and shake in the
ague-fit of alternate hopes and fears, waste and pine away in the
atrophy of genius, or else turn drawing-masters, picture-cleaners, or
newspaper critics; how many hapless poets have sighed out their souls
to the Muse in vain, without ever getting their effusions farther
known than the Poets' Corner of a country newspaper, and looked and
looked with grudging, wistful eyes at the envious horizon that bounded
their provincial fame! Suppose an actor, for instance, "after the
heart-aches and the thousand natural pangs that flesh is heir to,"
_does_ get at the top of his profession, he can no longer bear a rival
near the throne; to be second or only equal to another, is to be
nothing: he starts at the prospect of a successor, and retains the
mimic sceptre with a convulsive grasp: perhaps as he is about to seize
the first place which he has long had in his eye, an unsuspected
competitor steps in before him, and carries off the prize, leaving him
to commence his irksome toil again: he is in a state of alarm at every
appearance or rumour of the appearance of a new actor: "a mouse that
takes up its lodging in a cat's ear"[29] has a mansion of peace to
him: he dreads every hint of an objection, and least of all can
forgive praise mingled with censure: to doubt is to insult, to
discriminate is to degrade: he dare hardly look into a criticism
unless some one has _tasted_ it for him, to see that there is no
offence in it: if he does not draw crowded houses every night, he can
neither eat nor sleep; or if all these terrible inflictions are
removed, and he can "eat his meal in peace," he then becomes surfeited
with applause and dissatisfied with his profession: he wants to be
something else, to be distinguished as an author, a collector, a
classical scholar, a man of sense and information, and weighs every
word he utters, and half retracts it before he utters it, lest if he
were to make the smallest slip of the tongue, it should get buzzed
abroad that _Mr. ---- was only clever as an actor_! If ever there was
a man who did not derive more pain than pleasure from his vanity, that
man, says Rousseau, was no other than a fool. A country gentleman near
Taunton spent his whole life in making some hundreds of wretched
copies of second-rate pictures, which were bought up at his death by a
neighbouring Baronet, to whom
"Some demon whisper'd, L----, have a taste!"
[Footnote 29: Webster's _Duchess of Malfy_.]
A little Wilson in an obscure corner escaped the man of _virtu_, and
was carried off by a Bristol picture-dealer for three guineas, while
the muddled copies of the owner of the mansion (with the frames)
fetched thirty, forty, sixty, a hundred ducats a piece. A friend of
mine found a very fine Canaletti in a state of strange disfigurement,
with the upper part of the sky smeared over and fantastically
variegated with English clouds; and on enquiring of the person to whom
it belonged whether something had not been done to it, received for
answer "that a gentleman, a great artist in the neighbourhood, had
retouched some parts of it." What infatuation! Yet this candidate for
the honours of the pencil might probably have made a jovial fox-hunter
or respectable justice of the peace, if he could only have stuck to
what nature and fortune intended him for. Miss ---- can by no means be
persuaded to quit the boards of the theatre at ----, a little country
town in the West of England. Her salary has been abridged, her person
ridiculed, her acting laughed at; nothing will serve--she is
determined to be an actress, and scorns to return to her former
business as a milliner. Shall I go on? An actor in the same company
was visited by the apothecary of the place in an ague-fit, who, on
asking his landlady as to his way of life, was told that the poor
gentleman was very quiet and gave little trouble, that he generally
had a plate of mashed potatoes for his dinner, and lay in bed most of
his time, repeating his part. A young couple, every way amiable and
deserving, were to have been married, and a benefit-play was bespoke
by the officers of the regiment quartered there, to defray the expense
of a licence and of the wedding-ring, but the profits of the night did
not amount to the necessary sum, and they have, I fear, "virgined it
e'er since!" Oh for the pencil of Hogarth or Wilkie to give a view of
the comic strength of the company at ----, drawn up in battle-array in
the Clandestine Marriage, with a _coup d'oeil_ of the pit, boxes, and
gallery, to cure for ever the love of the _ideal_, and the desire to
shine and make holiday in the eyes of others, instead of retiring
within ourselves and keeping our wishes and our thoughts at home!
Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage,
how little security have we when we trust our happiness in the hands
of others! Most of the friends I have seen have turned out the
bitterest enemies, or cold, uncomfortable acquaintance. Old companions
are like meats served up too often that lose their relish and their
wholesomeness. He who looks at beauty to admire, to adore it, who
reads of its wondrous power in novels, in poems, or in plays, is not
unwise: but let no man fall in love, for from that moment he is "the
baby of a girl." I like very well to repeat such lines as these in the
play of Mirandola--
--"With what a waving air she goes
Along the corridor. How like a fawn!
Yet statelier. Hark! No sound, however soft,
Nor gentlest echo telleth when she treads,
But every motion of her shape doth seem
Hallowed by silence"--
but however beautiful the description, defend me from meeting with the
original!
"The fly that sips treacle
Is lost in the sweets;
So he that tastes woman
Ruin meets."
The song is Gay's, not mine, and a bitter-sweet it is.--How few out of
the infinite number of those that marry and are given in marriage, wed
with those they would prefer to all the world; nay, how far the
greater proportion are joined together by mere motives of convenience,
accident, recommendation of friends, or indeed not unfrequently by the
very fear of the event, by repugnance and a sort of fatal fascination:
yet the tie is for life, not to be shaken off but with disgrace or
death: a man no longer lives to himself, but is a body (as well as
mind) chained to another, in spite of himself--
"Like life and death in disproportion met."
So Milton (perhaps from his own experience) makes Adam exclaim, in the
vehemence of his despair,
"For either
He never shall find out fit mate, but such
As some misfortune brings him or mistake;
Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain
Through her perverseness, but shall see her gain'd
By a far worse; or if she love, withheld
By parents; or his happiest choice too late
Shall meet, already link'd and wedlock-bound
To a fell adversary, his hate and shame;
Which infinite calamity shall cause
To human life, and household peace confound."
If love at first sight were mutual, or to be conciliated by kind
offices; if the fondest affection were not so often repaid and chilled
by indifference and scorn; if so many lovers both before and since the
madman in Don Quixote had not "worshipped a statue, hunted the wind,
cried aloud to the desert;" if friendship were lasting; if merit were
renown, and renown were health, riches, and long life; or if the
homage of the world were paid to conscious worth and the true
aspirations after excellence, instead of its gaudy signs and outward
trappings:--then indeed I might be of opinion that it is better to
live to others than one's-self: but as the case stands, I incline to
the negative side of the question.[30]
[Footnote 30: Shenstone and Gray were two men, one of whom pretended
to live to himself, and the other really did so. Gray shrunk from the
public gaze (he did not even like his portrait to be prefixed to his
works) into his own thoughts and indolent musings; Shenstone affected
privacy, that he might be sought out by the world; the one courted
retirement in order to enjoy leisure and repose, as the other
coquetted with it, merely to be interrupted with the importunity of
visitors and the flatteries of absent friends.]
"I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bow'd
To its idolatries a patient knee--
Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles--nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo; in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such; I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filed my mind which thus itself subdued.
"I have not loved the world, nor the world me--
But let us part fair foes; I do believe,
Though I have found them not, that there may be
Words which are things--hopes which will not deceive,
And virtues which are merciful nor weave
Snares for the failing: I would also deem
O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve;
That two, or one, are almost what they seem--
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream."
Sweet verse embalms the spirit of sour misanthropy: but woe betide the
ignoble prose-writer who should thus dare to compare notes with the
world, or tax it roundly with imposture.
If I had sufficient provocation to rail at the public, as Ben Jonson
did at the audience in the Prologues to his plays, I think I should do
it in good set terms, nearly as follows. There is not a more mean,
stupid, dastardly, pitiful, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful
animal than the Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is
afraid of itself. From its unwieldy, overgrown dimensions, it dreads
the least opposition to it, and shakes like isinglass at the touch of
a finger. It starts at its own shadow, like the man in the Hartz
mountains, and trembles at the mention of its own name. It has a
lion's mouth, the heart of a hare, with ears erect and sleepless eyes.
It stands "listening its fears." It is so in awe of its own opinion,
that it never dares to form any, but catches up the first idle rumour,
lest it should be behind-hand in its judgment, and echoes it till it
is deafened with the sound of its own voice. The idea of what the
public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and
acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment, so that in short
the public ear is at the mercy of the first impudent pretender who
chooses to fill it with noisy assertions, or false surmises, or secret
whispers. What is said by one is heard by all; the supposition that a
thing is known to all the world makes all the world believe it, and
the hollow repetition of a vague report drowns the "still, small
voice" of reason. We may believe or know that what is said is not
true: but we know or fancy that others believe it--we dare not
contradict or are too indolent to dispute with them, and therefore
give up our internal, and, as we think, our solitary conviction to a
sound without substance, without proof, and often without meaning. Nay
more, we may believe and know not only that a thing is false, but that
others believe and know it to be so, that they are quite as much in
the secret of the imposture as we are, that they see the puppets at
work, the nature of the machinery, and yet if any one has the art or
power to get the management of it, he shall keep possession of the
public ear by virtue of a cant-phrase or nickname; and, by dint of
effrontery and perseverance, make all the world believe and repeat
what all the world know to be false. The ear is quicker than the
judgment. We know that certain things are said; by that circumstance
alone we know that they produce a certain effect on the imagination of
others, and we conform to their prejudices by mechanical sympathy, and
for want of sufficient spirit to differ with them. So far then is
public opinion from resting on a broad and solid basis, as the
aggregate of thought and feeling in a community, that it is slight and
shallow and variable to the last degree--the bubble of the moment--so
that we may safely say the public is the dupe of public opinion, not
its parent. The public is pusillanimous and cowardly, because it is
weak. It knows itself to be a great dunce, and that it has no opinions
but upon suggestion. Yet it is unwilling to appear in leading-strings,
and would have it thought that its decisions are as wise as they are
weighty. It is hasty in taking up its favourites, more hasty in laying
them aside, lest it should be supposed deficient in sagacity in either
case. It is generally divided into two strong parties, each of which
will allow neither common sense nor common honesty to the other side.
It reads the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, and believes them
both--or if there is a doubt, malice turns the scale. Taylor and
Hessey told me that they had sold nearly two editions of the
Characters of Shakespeare's Plays in about three months, but that
after the Quarterly Review of them came out, they never sold another
copy. The public, enlightened as they are, must have known the meaning
of that attack as well as those who made it. It was not ignorance then
but cowardice that led them to give up their own opinion. A crew of
mischievous critics at Edinburgh having fixed the epithet of the
_Cockney School_ to one or two writers born in the metropolis, all the
people in London became afraid of looking into their works, lest they
too should be convicted of cockneyism. Oh brave public! This epithet
proved too much for one of the writers in question, and stuck like a
barbed arrow in his heart. Poor Keats! What was sport to the town was
death to him. Young, sensitive, delicate, he was like
"A bud bit by an envious worm,
Ere he could spread his sweet leaves to the air,
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun"--
and unable to endure the miscreant cry and idiot laugh, withdrew to
sigh his last breath in foreign climes.--The public is as envious and
ungrateful as it is ignorant, stupid, and pigeon-livered--
"A huge-sized monster of ingratitudes."
It reads, it admires, it extols only because it is the fashion, not
from any love of the subject or the man. It cries you up or runs you
down out of mere caprice and levity. If you have pleased it, it is
jealous of its own involuntary acknowledgment of merit, and seizes the
first opportunity, the first shabby pretext, to pick a quarrel with
you, and be quits once more. Every petty caviller is erected into a
judge, every tale-bearer is implicitly believed. Every little low
paltry creature that gaped and wondered only because others did so, is
glad to find you (as he thinks) on a level with himself. An author is
not then, after all, a being of another order. Public admiration is
forced, and goes against the grain. Public obloquy is cordial and
sincere: every individual feels his own importance in it. They give
you up bound hand and foot into the power of your accusers. To attempt
to defend yourself is a high crime and misdemeanour, a contempt of
court, an extreme piece of impertinence. Or, if you prove every charge
unfounded, they never think of retracting their error, or making you
amends. It would be a compromise of their dignity; they consider
themselves as the party injured, and resent your innocence as an
imputation on their judgment. The celebrated Bub Doddington, when out
of favour at court, said "he would not _justify_ before his sovereign:
it was for Majesty to be displeased, and for him to believe himself in
the wrong!" The public are not quite so modest. People already begin
to talk of the Scotch Novels as overrated. How then can common authors
be supposed to keep their heads long above water? As a general rule,
all those who live by the public starve, and are made a bye-word and a
standing jest into the bargain. Posterity is no better (not a bit more
enlightened or more liberal), except that you are no longer in their
power, and that the voice of common fame saves them the trouble of
deciding on your claims. The public now are the posterity of Milton
and Shakespeare. Our posterity will be the living public of a future
generation. When a man is dead, they put money in his coffin, erect
monuments to his memory, and celebrate the anniversary of his birthday
in set speeches. Would they take any notice of him if he were living?
No!--I was complaining of this to a Scotchman who had been attending a
dinner and a subscription to raise a monument to Burns. He replied, he
would sooner subscribe twenty pounds to his monument than have given
it him while living; so that if the poet were to come to life again,
he would treat him just as he was treated in fact. This was an honest
Scotchman. What _he_ said, the rest would do.
Enough: my soul, turn from them, and let me try to regain the
obscurity and quiet that I love, "far from the madding strife," in
some sequestered corner of my own, or in some far-distant land! In the
latter case, I might carry with me as a consolation the passage in
Bolingbroke's Reflections on Exile, in which he describes in glowing
colours the resources which a man may always find within himself, and
of which the world cannot deprive him.
"Believe me, the providence of God has established such an order in
the world, that of all which belongs to us, the least valuable parts
can alone fall under the will of others. Whatever is best is safest;
lies out of the reach of human power; can neither be given nor taken
away. Such is this great and beautiful work of nature, the world. Such
is the mind of man, which contemplates and admires the world whereof
it makes the noblest part. These are inseparably ours, and as long as
we remain in one we shall enjoy the other. Let us march therefore
intrepidly wherever we are led by the course of human accidents.
Wherever they lead us, on what coast soever we are thrown by them, we
shall not find ourselves absolutely strangers. We shall feel the same
revolution of seasons, and the same sun and moon[31] will guide the
course of our year. The same azure vault, bespangled with stars, will
be every where spread over our heads. There is no part of the world
from whence we may not admire those planets which roll, like ours, in
different orbits round the same central sun; from whence we may not
discover an object still more stupendous, that army of fixed stars
hung up in the immense space of the universe, innumerable suns whose
beams enlighten and cherish the unknown worlds which roll around them;
and whilst I am ravished by such contemplations as these, whilst my
soul is thus raised up to heaven, imports me little what ground I
tread upon."
[Footnote 31: Plut. of Banishment. He compares those who cannot live
out of their own country, to the simple people who fancied the moon of
Athens was a finer moon than that of Corinth,
----_Labentem coelo quae ducitis annum._
VIRG., _Georg._]
_Hazlitt._