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LIBRARY NOTES
BY
A. P. RUSSELL
_NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED_
BOSTON
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1882
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by
ADDISON P. RUSSELL,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
_All rights reserved._
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. INSUFFICIENCY 1
II. EXTREMES 33
III. DISGUISES 63
IV. STANDARDS 90
V. REWARDS 121
VI. LIMITS 157
VII. INCONGRUITY 187
VIII. MUTATIONS 214
IX. PARADOXES 240
X. CONTRASTS 270
XI. TYPES 295
XII. CONDUCT 325
XIII. RELIGION 357
LIBRARY NOTES.
I.
INSUFFICIENCY.
It was well said by some one that "in every object there is an
inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of
seeing." "Each one sees what he carries in his heart," said Goethe. "You
will find poetry nowhere," said Joubert, "unless you bring some with
you." "Those who would see or feel the truth of the anatomy in the
marble must bring their knowledge with them." "Don't you think that
statue indecent?" said Boswell to Johnson. "No, sir," was the reply,
"but your remark is." Once, we are told by Hazlitt, when a pedantic
coxcomb was crying up Raphael to the skies, Northcote could not help
saying, "If there was nothing in Raphael but what you can see in him, we
should not now have been talking of him." Douglas Jerrold, it is said,
disliked the theatre behind the scenes, and seldom went there save to
witness a rehearsal. He would generally attend on the first night of the
performance of his piece, but he seldom saw the same piece twice. His
idea, as realized, generally disgusted him. He saw it with all the
delicate touches rubbed away,--a shadow, or a vulgar caricature. His
quarrels with actors were incessant, because they would take their idea
and not his idea of a part. La Rochefoucauld, in his Maxims, gives us a
picture, not of human nature, but of its selfishness. "He works," said
Sterling, "like a painter who paints the profile, and chooses the side
of the face in which the eye is blind and deformed, instead of the
other, which is unblemished. Yet the picture may be a most accurate
copy." So do we all. Those of us that see at all see but a small part of
anything at a time. Only a line upon the column is distinctly visible;
all the rest is hidden, or obscured in the glaring light or eclipsing
shadow. A man, especially, must be looked at all around, within, by a
fair light, and with a good eye, to be seen truly or judged justly. We
put a narrow and fine sight upon him naturally, and can hardly avoid
estimating him meanly. We have too much the habit of Fuseli, who
preferred beginning his sketch of the human figure at the lowest point,
and working from the foot upward. "The wisest amongst us," said the
artist and critic, Richardson, "is a fool in some things, as the lowest
amongst men has some just notions, and therein is as wise as Socrates;
so that every man resembles a statue made to stand against a wall or in
a niche; on one side it is a Plato, an Apollo, a Demosthenes; on the
other, it is a rough, unformed piece of stone." "Both," said Dr. Johnson
of the remarks of Lord Orrery and Delany on Swift, "were right,--only
Delany had seen most of the good side, Lord Orrery most of the bad."
There is a curious life of Tiberius, with two title-pages, both taken
from historical authorities; two characters--one detestable, the other
admirable--of one and the same person; made up, both, of recorded facts.
"We ought not," said La Bruyere, "to judge of men as of a picture or
statue, at the first sight; there is a mind and heart to be searched;
the veil of modesty covers merit, and the mask of hypocrisy disguises
malignity. There are but few judges that have knowledge to discern
aright to pass sentence; 'tis but by little and little, and perhaps even
by time and occasion, that complete virtue or perfect vice come at last
to show themselves." "A man," said Emerson, "is like a bit of Labrador
spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand, until you come to
a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors." What you
think of him depends so much on how you look at him. As a creature of
small ways and little achievements, he seems fit only for "stopping a
bung-hole;" as an embodiment of every manly trait and of every Christian
virtue, he appears indeed "a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and
pompous in the grave." The petty tyrant of a family, he satirizes Caesar;
the canting bigot of the church, he brings reproach upon religion. Now a
gentleman, he makes you think of Sidney; now a beast, of Swift's
revolting Yahoo. When truly humble and consciously ignorant, he hath the
aspect of a child of God; when conceited, dogmatic, aggressive, all the
forgotten orthodox teachings of the fate of the hopeless come back to
you with the force of apostolic thunder. As the splendid immortal he is
destined to be, you hasten to apotheosize him; as the monster he
sometimes appears, you wonder that he exists. Burns, who was a master in
human nature, characterized woman as "great for good, or great for evil;
when not an angel, she's a devil." "There is something still more to be
dreaded than a Jesuit," said Eugene Sue, "and that is a Jesuitess." It
seems to be nearly impossible to be moderate. If we are calm or
deliberate enough to be just, we are almost sure to be indifferent. Our
ignorance, our education, our interests, our prejudices, blind our eyes,
darken our minds, or drive us to violence. There is nothing half and
half about us. The little that we see, we see so differently and so
partially, and ignorance finds its complement in feeling. Dryden said of
some of the judges of his day, that, right or wrong, they always decided
for the poor against the rich; and he quoted a saying of Charles II.,
that the crown was uniformly worsted in every case which was heard
before Sir Matthew Hale. "The eyes of critics," said Landor, "whether
in commending or carping, are both on one side, like a turbot's."
"Truth, as Humanity knows it," said Bulwer, "is not what the schoolmen
call it, one and indivisible; it is like light, and splits not only into
elementary colors, but into innumerable tints. Truth with Raphael is not
the same as truth with Titian; truth with Shakespeare is not the same as
truth with Milton; truth with St. Xavier is not the same as truth with
Luther; truth with Pitt is not the same as truth with Fox. Each man
takes from life his favorite truth, as each man takes from light his
favorite color."
Perhaps that which astonishes us most, when we fairly open our eyes upon
the world, is the diversity in everything. Out in the forest, under the
spreading tree, looking up at the luxuriant foliage, you may not think
of the difference between the leaves; but pull down a limb, and spend an
hour comparing them; you find, much as they resemble, that no two are
precisely alike. Examine the plumage of the owl that you cruelly brought
down with your rifle; every feather of his beautiful dress differs from
every other; and, what is more remarkable, every fibre of every feather
is another feather, still more delicate, differing from every other, all
of which together yield to the pressure of your hand like floss silk. No
wonder he fell upon the mischievous mole or mouse as noiselessly as the
shadow of a cloud. Go down to the sea-shore; the tide is out; there is
an apparent waste of white sand, a dull extent of uniformity; but
stretch yourself on the beach, which the innumerable differing waves
have beaten to incomparable smoothness, and examine leisurely, with a
good glass, a few hundred of the infinite grains which you thought to be
the same, and you discover that they differ, that each is differently
shaped, each holds the light differently, and, what is more wonderful
than all, each appears to be a shell, or part of a shell, which was once
the abode of a creature, and a different creature from every other
inhabiting or that ever inhabited any other shell of the ocean. Look
into the crowded street; the men are all men; they all walk upright;
they might wear each other's clothes without serious inconvenience; but
could they exchange souls? "Clothe me as you will," said Sancho, "I
shall still be Sancho Panza." "The soul is not twin-born, but the only
begotten." "And there never was in the world," said Montaigne, "two
opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains. The most universal
quality is diversity."
"The nerve-tissue," said an acute physiologist, "is never precisely the
same in two men; the blood of no two men is precisely alike; the milk of
no two women is identical in composition--they all vary (within certain
limits), and sometimes the variation is considerable. It is in this that
depends what we call the difference of 'temperament,' which makes one
twin so unlike his brother, and makes the great variety of the human
race." "Give Professor Owen part of an old bone or a tooth, and he will
on the instant draw you the whole animal, and tell you its habits and
propensities. What professor has ever yet been able to classify the
wondrous variety of human character? How very limited as yet the
nomenclature! We know there are in our moral dictionary the religious,
the irreligious, the virtuous, the vicious, the prudent, the profligate,
the liberal, the avaricious, and so on to a few names, but the
comprehended varieties under these terms--their mixtures, which, like
colors, have no names--their strange complexities and intertwining of
virtues and vices, graces and deformities, diversified and mingled, and
making individualities--yet of all the myriads of mankind that ever
were, not one the same, and scarcely alike; how little way has science
gone to their discovery, and to mark their delineation! A few sounds,
designated by a few letters, speak all thought, all literature, that
ever was or will be. The variety is infinite, and ever creating a new
infinite; and there is some such mystery in the endless variety of human
character."
Cicero gives an account of a man who could distinguish marks of
difference amongst eggs so well, that he never mistook one for another;
and, having many hens, could tell which laid a particular egg.
Socrates asked Menon what virtue was? "There is," said Menon, "the
virtue of a man and of a woman, of a magistrate and of a private person,
of an old man and of a child." "Very well," said Socrates, "we were in
quest of virtue, and thou hast brought us a whole swarm."
"What," asks the great French essayist, "have our legislators got by
culling out a hundred thousand particular cases, and annexing to these a
hundred thousand laws? The number holds no manner of proportion with the
infinite diversity of human actions; the multiplication of our
inventions will never arrive at the variety of examples; add to them a
hundred times as many more; it will not, nevertheless, ever happen,
that, of events to come, there shall any one fall out that, in this
great number of thousands of events so chosen and recorded, shall find
any one to which it can be so exactly coupled and compared, that there
will not remain some circumstance and diversity which will require a
variety of judgment."
"Some ask," says La Bruyere, "why mankind in general don't compose but
one nation, and are not contented to speak one language, to live under
the same laws, to agree amongst themselves in the same customs and
worship: for my part, seeing the contrariety of their inclinations,
tastes, and sentiments, I wonder to see seven or eight persons live
under the same roof, within the same walls, and make a single family."
Molecular philosophy shows interspaces betwixt atom and atom, differing
atoms, which can hardly be said to touch; so bodies are formed, and so
society and public opinion are compounded. "The single individual is to
collective humanity," says Alger, "as the little column of mercury in
the barometer is to the whole atmosphere. They balance each other,
although infinitely incommensurate. A quicksilver sea, two and a half
feet deep, covering the globe, would weigh five thousand million tons.
That is the heft of the air,--that transparent robe of blue gauze which
outsags the Andes and the Alps. Its pressure is unfelt, yet if that
pressure were annulled all the water on the earth would immediately fly
into vapor. Public opinion is the atmosphere of society, without which
the forces of the individual would collapse and all the institutions of
society fly into atoms." Common sense has been defined to be the
"average intellect and conscience of the civilized world,--that portion
of intelligence, morality, and Christianity, which has been practically
embodied in life and active power. It destroys pretense and quackery,
and tests genius and heroism. It changes with the progress of society;
persecutes in one age what it adopts in the next; its martyrs of the
sixteenth century are its precedents and exponents of the nineteenth;
and a good part of the common sense of an elder day is the common
nonsense of our own."
"The history of human opinions," said Voltaire, "is scarcely anything
more than the history of human errors."
John Foster, in one of his thoughtful essays, has this suggestive
passage: "If a reflective, aged man were to find at the bottom of an old
chest--where it had lain forgotten fifty years--a record which he had
written of himself when he was young, simply and vividly describing his
whole heart and pursuits, and reciting verbatim many passages of the
language which he sincerely uttered, would he not read it with more
wonder than almost every other writing could at his age inspire? He
would half lose the assurance of his identity, under the impression of
this immense dissimilarity. It would seem as if it must be the tale of
the juvenile days of some ancestor, with whom he had no connection but
that of name." Said Swift, "If a man would register all his opinions
upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth,
and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and
contradictions would appear at last." Says Montaigne, "Never did two men
make the same judgment of the same thing; and 'tis impossible to find
two opinions exactly alike, not only in several men, but in the same
men, at different times." Says Pope, "What is every year of a wise man's
life but a censure or critique on the past? Those whose date is the
shortest live long enough to laugh at one half of it; the boy despises
the infant; the man, the boy; the philosopher, both; and the Christian,
all." Diet, health, the weather, affairs,--a thousand things,--determine
our views. "I knew a witty physician," says Emerson, "who found the
creed in the biliary duct, and used to affirm that if there was disease
in the liver, the man became a Calvinist, and if that organ was sound,
he became a Unitarian." Voltaire declared that the fate of a nation had
often depended on the good or bad digestion of a prime minister; and
Motley holds that the gout of Charles V. changed the destinies of the
world. Our views change so often that the writer who would be consistent
would never write at all. The sentence that would express his thought at
one time would fail at another. Alteration would only confuse. An
attempt to find words to express his thoughts upon any one thing at all
times would be given up in despair. Voltaire once praised another writer
very heartily to a third person. "It is very strange," was the reply,
"that you speak so well of him, for he says you are a charlatan." "Oh,"
replied Voltaire, "I think it very likely that both of us are mistaken."
A day or two after the production of one of Sheridan's comedies, a
friend met the author, and told him he had seen Cumberland at the
theatre on its representation. "Ah, well," replied Sheridan, "What did
he say to it?" "He wasn't seen to smile from the beginning to the end of
the comedy," said the friend. "Come, now, that's very ungrateful of
him," retorted Sheridan, "for I went to see his tragedy the other
evening, and laughed through the whole of it." Smith gives an account of
a lady in weeds for her husband who came drooping like a willow to
Nollekens, the sculptor, desiring a monument, and declaring that she did
not care what money was expended on the memory of one she loved so. "Do
what you please, but, oh, do it quickly!" were her parting orders.
Nollekens went to work, made the design, finished the model, and began
to look for a block of marble to carve it from, when in dropped the
lady; she had been absent some three months. "Poor soul," said the
sculptor, when she was announced, "I thought she would come soon, but I
am ready." The lady came light of foot, and lighter of look. "Ah, how do
you do, Mr. Nollekens? Well, you have not commenced the model?" "Ay, but
I have, though," returned the sculptor, "and there it stands, finished!"
"There it is, indeed," sighed the lady, throwing herself into a chair;
they looked at each other for a minute's space or so--she spoke first;
"These, my good friend, are, I know, early days for this little
change,"--she looked at her dress, from which the early profusion of
crape had disappeared,--"but since I saw you, I have met with an old
Roman acquaintance of yours who has made me an offer, and I don't know
how he would like to see in our church a monument of such expense to my
late husband. Indeed, on second thought, it would be considered quite
enough if I got our mason to put up a mural tablet, and that, you know,
he can cut very prettily." "My charge, madam, for the model," said the
sculptor, "is one hundred guineas." "Enormous! enormous!" said the
lady, but drew out her purse, and paid it. The mutability of human
nature! Change, change is the rule. Flaxman, when he was in Rome, lived
at a sort of chocolate house kept by three girls who were so elegant as
to be called "the Graces." They lived to be so old that they were called
"the Furies." A distinguished painter has said, that often while you are
looking at a face, and though you perceive no difference in the
features, yet you find they have undergone a total alteration of
expression. "I have seen several pictures of Garrick," said Macaulay,
"none resembling another, and I have heard Hannah More speak of the
extraordinary variety of countenance by which he was distinguished." "I
wish the world, James," said Christopher North to the Ettrick Shepherd,
"would stand still for some dozen years--till I am at rest. It seems as
if the very earth itself were undergoing a vital change. Nothing is
unalterable, except the heaven above my head, and even it, James, is
hardly, methinks, at times, the same as in former days or nights. There
is not much difference in the clouds, James, but the blue sky, I must
confess, is not quite so very blue as it was sixty years since; and the
sun, although still a glorious luminary, has lost a leetle--of his
lustre." Gilbert White, in his Natural History of Selborne, says he saw
a cock-bullfinch in a cage, which had been caught in the fields after it
was come to its full colors. In about a year it began to look dingy; and
blackening each succeeding year, it became coal-black at the end of
four. Its chief food was hemp seed. Such influence has food on the color
of animals! Darwin, in his Voyage, says that the wild cattle in East
Falkland Island, originally the same stock, differ much in color; and
that in different parts of that one small island, different colors
predominate. He remarked that the difference in the prevailing colors
was so obvious, that in looking at the herds from a point near Point
Pleasant, they appeared from a long distance like black spots, whilst
south of Choiseul Sound they appeared like white spots on the
hill-sides. Round Mount Usborne, at a height of one thousand to fifteen
hundred feet above the sea, about half of some of the herds are mouse or
lead colored. "From the westward till you get to the river Adur,"
observed White, "all the flocks have horns and smooth white faces, and
white legs, and a hornless sheep is rarely to be seen; but as soon as
you pass that river eastward, and mount Beeding Hill, all the flocks at
once become hornless, or, as they call them, poll-sheep; and have,
moreover, black faces, with a white tuft of wool on their foreheads, and
speckled and spotted legs, so that you would think that the flocks of
Laban were pasturing on one side of the stream, and the variegated breed
of his son-in-law, Jacob, were cantoned along on the other." Youatt
speaks of two flocks of Leicester sheep which have been purely bred from
the original stock of Mr. Bakewell for more than fifty years. There is
not a suspicion existing in the mind of any one at all acquainted with
the subject, that the owner of either of them has deviated in any one
instance from the pure blood of Mr. Bakewell's flock, and yet the
difference between the sheep possessed by these two gentlemen is so
great that they have the appearance of being quite different varieties.
"We may, in truth," said Voltaire, "be naturally and aptly resembled to
a river, all whose waters pass away in perpetual change and flow. It is
the same river as to its bed, its banks, its source, its mouth,
everything, in short, that is not itself; but changing every moment its
water, which constitutes its very being, it has no identity; there is no
sameness belonging to the river." Said Sir Kenelm Digby, long before
Voltaire, "There is not one drop of the same water in the Thames that
ran down by Whitehall yesternight; yet no man will deny but that it is
the same river that was in Queen Elizabeth's time, as long as it is
supplied from the same common stock, the sea."
Lowell, in one of his critical essays, says that "all men are interested
in Montaigne in proportion as all men find more of themselves in him;
and all men see but one image in the glass which the greatest of poets
holds up to nature,--an image which at once startles and charms with its
familiarity." Montaigne himself says, "Nature, that we may not be
dejected with the sight of our deformities, has wisely thrust the action
of seeing outward." "Know thyself," that Apollo caused to be written on
the front of his temple at Delphi, appeared to him contradictory. We are
vain of our knowledge, vain of our virtue, vain of everything that
pertains to us. Reading La Rochefoucauld's Maxims at twenty, one is a
little surprised that the first and longest should be upon self-love; at
forty, one is not astonished at the rank and importance it has in the
philosopher's system. "In vain," says Xavier de Maistre, "are
looking-glasses multiplied around us which reflect light and truth with
geometrical exactness. As soon as the rays reach our vision and paint us
as we are, self-love slips its deceitful prism between us and our image,
and presents a divinity to us. And of all the prisms that have existed
since the first that came from the hands of the immortal Newton, none
has possessed so powerful a refractive force, or produced such pleasing
and lively colors, as the prism of self-love. Now, seeing that ordinary
looking-glasses record the truth in vain, and that they cannot make men
see their own imperfections, every one being satisfied with his face,
what would a moral mirror avail? Few people would look at it, and no one
would recognize himself." "Oh, the incomparable contrivance of Nature,"
exclaims Erasmus, "who has ordered all things in so even a method that
wherever she has been less bountiful in her gifts, there she makes it up
with a larger dose of self-love, which supplies the former defects, and
makes all even." "Could all mankind," says John Norris, "lay claim to
that estimate which they pass upon themselves, there would be little or
no difference betwixt laps'd and perfect humanity, and God might again
review his image with paternal complacency, and still pronounce it
good." "Blinded as they are as to their true character by self-love,
every man," says Plutarch, "is his own first and chiefest flatterer,
prepared therefore to welcome the flatterer from the outside, who only
comes confirming the verdict of the flatterer within." It was the habit
of Sir Godfrey Kneller to say to his sitter, "Praise me, sir, praise me:
how can I throw any animation into your face if you don't choose to
animate me?" "I have heard," says Bulwer, in one of his essays, "that
when the late Mr. Kean was performing in some city of the United States,
he came to the manager at the end of the third act and said, 'I can't go
on the stage again, sir, if the pit keeps its hands in its pockets. Such
an audience would extinguish AEtna.' The audience being notified by the
manager of the determination of the actor, proved hearty enough in its
applause. As the favor of the audience rose, so rose the genius of the
actor, and the contagion of their own applause redoubled their enjoyment
of the excellence it contributed to create." "Vanity," says Pascal, "has
taken so firm a hold on the heart of man, that a porter, a hodman, a
turnspit, can talk greatly of himself, and is for having his admirers.
Philosophers who write of the contempt of glory do yet desire the glory
of writing well; and those who read their compositions would not lose
the glory of having read them. We are so presumptuous as that we desire
to be known to all the world; and even to those who are not to come into
the world till we have left it. And, at the same time, we are so little
and vain as that the esteem of five or six persons about us is enough to
content and amuse us." "We censure others," says Sir Thomas Browne,
"but as they disagree from that humor which we fancy laudable in
ourselves, and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate
and consent with us. So that in conclusion, all is but that we all
condemn, self-love." We think ourselves of great importance in the eyes
of others, when we are only so in our own. Calmly considering it, what
can be more astonishing than vanity in a middle-aged person? Know as
much as it is possible for a human being to know in this world, he
cannot know enough to justify him in being vain of his knowledge. Good
as it is possible for a human being to be, he cannot be good enough to
excuse a conceit of his goodness. Yet how common it is for full-grown
ignorance to have conceit of wisdom, and for ordinary virtue to assume
the airs of saintship. How we shall one day wonder, looking back at the
world we have left, at the nearly invisible mites, like ourselves,
tossing their heads in pride, and gathering their skirts in
self-righteousness, that we were ever as vain and shameless as they, and
that the little things of life ever so engrossed us. Alas, to learn and
unlearn is our fate; to gather as we climb the hill of life, to scatter
as we descend it: empty-handed alike at the end and at the beginning.
"Youth's heritage is hope, but man's
Is retrospect of shattered plans,
And doubtful glances cast before."
"All the world, all that we are, and all that we have, our bodies and
our souls, our actions and our sufferings, our conditions at home, our
accidents abroad, our many sins, and our seldom virtues," says Jeremy
Taylor, "are as so many arguments to make our souls dwell low in the
valleys of humility." We are not what we think ourselves, nor are other
people what we think them, else this were a different world. We know not
ourselves, nor others, nor anything, so well as to avoid
misapprehending everything. Our condition is ignorance and humility,
and better it were if we kept modestly in our paths. Whatever we do or
are, we are of chief importance to ourselves. Northcote said that he
often blamed himself for uttering what might be thought harsh things;
and that on mentioning this once to Kemble, and saying it sometimes kept
him from sleep, after he had been out in company, Kemble replied, "Oh,
you need not trouble yourself so much about them; others never think of
them afterward." "I see you will not believe it," said Sydney Smith,
"but I was once very shy." "Were you, indeed, Mr. Smith? how did you
cure yourself?" "Why, it was not very long before I made two very useful
discoveries: First, that all mankind were not solely employed in
observing me (a belief that all young people have); and next, that
shamming was of no use; that the world was very clear-sighted, and soon
estimated a man at his just value. This cured me, and I determined to be
natural, and let the world find me out." "The world," says Thackeray,
"can pry out everything about us which it has a mind to know. But there
is this consolation, which men will never accept in their own cases,
that the world doesn't care. Consider the amount of scandal it has been
forced to hear in its time, and how weary it must be of that kind of
intelligence. You are taken to prison and fancy yourself indelibly
disgraced? You are bankrupt under odd circumstances? You drive a queer
bargain with your friend and are found out, and imagine the world will
punish you? Pshaw! Your shame is only vanity. Go and talk to the world
as if nothing had happened, and nothing has happened. Tumble down; brush
the mud off your clothes; appear with a smiling countenance, and
nobody cares. Do you suppose society is going to take out its
pocket-handkerchief and be inconsolable when you die? Why should it
care, very much, then, whether your worship graces yourself or disgraces
yourself? Whatever happens, it talks, meets, jokes, yawns, has its
dinner, pretty much as before." Depend upon it, the world will not hunt
you, nor concern itself much about you. If you want its favors you must
keep yourself in its eye. Cicero left Sicily extremely pleased with the
success of his administration, and flattered himself that all Rome was
celebrating his praises, and that the people would readily grant him
everything that he desired; in which imagination he landed at Puteoli, a
considerable port adjoining to Baiae, the chief seat of pleasure in
Italy, where there was a perpetual resort of all the rich and the great,
as well for the delights of its situation as for the use of its baths
and hot waters. But here, as he himself pleasantly tells the story, he
was not a little mortified by the first friend whom he met, who asked
him how long he had left Rome, and what news there, when he answered
that he came from the provinces. "From Africk, I suppose," says another;
and upon his replying, with some indignation, "No; I come from Sicily,"
a third, who stood by, and had a mind to be thought wiser, said
presently, "How? did you not know that Cicero was quaestor of Syracuse?"
Upon which, perceiving it in vain to be angry, he fell into the humor of
the place, and made himself one of the company who came to the waters.
This mortification gave some little check to his ambition, or taught him
rather how to apply it more successfully; and did him more good, he
says, than if he had received all the compliments that he expected; for
it made him reflect that the people of Rome had dull ears, but quick
eyes; and that it was his business to keep himself always in their
sight; nor to be so solicitous how to make them hear of him, as to make
them see him: so that, from this moment, he resolved to stick close to
the forum, and to live perpetually in the view of the city; nor to
suffer either his porter or his sleep to hinder any man's access to
him.
As capital in trade must be constantly turning to accumulate, so
intelligence must be constantly in use to be useful. Its value and
utility and accuracy can only be known by constantly testing it. A false
light leads straight into the bog, and misinformation is worse than no
information at all. Curiosity has need to be on tip-toe,--but cautious,
nevertheless. Southey tells a story in his Doctor which the Jesuit
Manuel de Vergara used to tell of himself. When he was a little boy he
asked a Dominican friar what was the meaning of the seventh commandment,
for he said he could not tell what committing adultery was. The friar,
not knowing how to answer, cast a perplexed look around the room, and
thinking he had found a safe reply, pointed to a kettle on the fire, and
said the commandment meant that he must never put his hand in the pot
while it was boiling. The very next day, a loud scream alarmed the
family, and behold there was little Manuel running about the room,
holding up his scalded finger, and exclaiming, "Oh dear! oh dear! I've
committed adultery! I've committed adultery! I've committed adultery!"
Men are most apt to believe what they least understand. What they are
most ready to talk upon, if they knew just a little more about, they
would be dumb; or would at least betray in some degree what John Buncle
calls "the decencies of ignorance." We are told that shortly after the
shock of the famous earthquake at Talcahuano, a great wave was seen from
the distance of three or four miles, approaching in the middle of the
bay with a smooth outline; but along the shore it tore up cottages and
trees, as it swept onward with irresistible force. At the head of the
bay it broke in a fearful line of white breakers, which rushed up to a
height of twenty-three vertical feet above the highest spring-tides. The
lower orders in Talcahuano thought that the earthquake was caused by
some old Indian women, witches, who, two years before, being offended,
stopped the volcano of Antuco!
Bishop Latimer says that "Master More was once sent in commission into
Kent, to help to try out, if it might be, what was the cause of Goodwin
Sands, and the shelf that stopped up Sandwich Haven. Among others, came
in before him an old man with a white head, and one that was thought to
be little less than one hundred years old. Quoth Master More, How say
you in this matter? What think you to be the cause of these shelves and
flats that stop up Sandwich Haven? Forsooth, quoth he, I am an old man.
I think that Tenterden-steeple is the cause of Goodwin Sands; for I am
an old man, sir, quoth he, and I may remember the building of
Tenterden-steeple, and I may remember when there was no steeple at all
there. And before that Tenterden-steeple was in building, there was no
manner of speaking of any flats or sands that stopped the haven, and
therefore I think that Tenterden-steeple is the cause of the destroying
and decay of Sandwich Haven!" (The centenarian's reply crystallized at
once into a proverb and synonym for popular ignorance; but what if the
old man had in his mind the half of the story omitted by Latimer--that
the obnoxious steeple had been built by a bishop with fifty thousand
pounds appropriated to build a breakwater!)
The fox that Darwin tells us about in his Voyage was literally lost in
the presence of wonders. "In the evening," says the naturalist, "we
reached the island of San Pedro. In doubling the point, two of the
officers landed, to take a round of angles with the theodolite. A fox of
a kind said to be peculiar on the island, and very rare in it, was
sitting on the rocks. He was so intently absorbed in watching the work
of the officers, that I was able, by quietly walking up behind, to knock
him on the head with my geological hammer!"
"We on this globe," said Voltaire, speaking of the slender acquaintance
of Europe with the Chinese Empire, "we on this globe are like insects in
a garden--those who live on an oak seldom meet those who pass their
short lives on an ash." "We are poor, silly animals," says Horace
Walpole; "we live for an instant upon a particle of a boundless
universe, and are much like a butterfly that should argue about the
nature of the seasons, and what creates their vicissitudes, and does not
exist itself to see an annual revolution of them." When Dr. Livingstone
returned from Africa, after a stay of sixteen years as a missionary, he
was induced to bring with him an intelligent and affectionate native,
Sekwebu, who had been of great service to him. When they parted from
their friends at Kilemane, the sea on the bar was frightful, even to the
seamen. This was the first time Sekwebu had seen the sea. As the
terrible breakers broke over them, he asked, wonderingly, "Is this the
way you go? Is this the way you go?" exclaiming, "What a strange country
is this--all water together!"
At sea, a person's eye being six feet above the surface of the water,
his horizon is only two miles and four fifths distant; yet his tongue
will as freely wag of the world as if it were all spinning under his
eye. We freely discuss the ignorance of those we believe to be less
intelligent than ourselves, never thinking that we are the cause of like
amusement to those who are more intelligent than we are. Fewer laugh
with us than at us. The grades are so many that contrast is more natural
than comparison. Unfortunately, too, it is only in the descent that we
can see, and that but a little way. We know it is up, up, that we would
go, but the rounds of the ladder are but vaguely visible. But a small
part, indeed, we perceive of the prodigious sweep from the lowest
ignorance to possible intelligence. Happily, credulity fills the empty
spaces, and, setting itself up for original wisdom, satisfies us with
ourselves and ours. Thackeray, in one of his best novels, thus
satirically screams out one of its uses: "Oh, Mr. Pendennis! if Nature
had not made that provision for each sex in the credulity of the other,
which sees good qualities where none exist, good looks in donkeys' ears,
wit in their numskulls, and music in their bray, there would not have
been near so much marrying and giving in marriage as now obtains, and as
is necessary for the due propagation and continuance of the noble race
to which we belong!" "I desire to die," said Horace Walpole, "when I
have nobody left to laugh with me. I have never yet seen, or heard,
anything serious that was not ridiculous.... Oh! we are ridiculous
animals; and if angels have any fun in them, how we must divert them."
"I had taken, when a child," says Crabb Robinson, "a great fancy to the
Book of Revelation; and I have heard that I asked our minister to preach
from that book, because it was my favorite. 'And why is it your
favorite, Henry?' 'Because it is so pretty and easy to understand!'"
Robert Robinson, a witty and distinguished clergyman in the last
century, was addressed by a grave brother, "Friend, I never heard you
preach on the Trinity." "Oh, I intend to do so," was the reply, "as soon
as ever I understand it!"
This recalls the rebuke of a clergyman to a young man, who said he would
believe nothing which he could not understand. "Then, young man, your
creed will be the shortest of any man's I know."
John Foster's observations upon an atheist you remember,--"one of the
most daring beings in the creation, a contemner of God, who explodes his
laws by denying his existence. If you were so unacquainted with mankind
that this character might be announced to you as a rare or singular
phenomenon, your conjectures, till you saw and heard the man, at the
nature and the extent of the discipline through which he must have
advanced, would be led toward something extraordinary. And you might
think that the term of that discipline must have been very long; since a
quick train of impressions, a short series of mental gradations, within
the little space of a few months and years, would not seem enough to
have matured such an awful heroism. Surely the creature that thus lifts
his voice, and defies all invisible power within the possibilities of
infinity, challenging whatever unknown being may hear him, was not as
yesterday a little child, that would tremble and cry at the approach of
a diminutive reptile. But indeed it is heroism no longer, if he knows
there is no God. The wonder then turns on the great process by which a
man could grow to the immense intelligence that can know that there is
no God. What ages and what lights are requisite for this attainment!
This intelligence involves the very attributes of the Divinity, while a
God is denied. For unless this man is omnipresent, unless he is at this
moment in every place in the universe, he cannot know but there may be
in some place manifestations of a Deity by which even he would be
overpowered. If he does not know absolutely every agent in the universe,
the one that he does not know may be God. If he is not in absolute
possession of all the propositions that constitute universal truth, the
one which he wants may be, that there is a God. If he does not know
everything that has been done in the immeasurable ages that are past,
some things may have been done by a God. Thus, unless he knows all
things, that is, precludes another Deity by being one himself, he cannot
know that the Being whose existence he rejects does not exist. And yet a
man of ordinary age and intelligence may present himself to you with the
avowal of being thus distinguished from the crowd!"
"I had one just flogging," says Coleridge. "When I was about thirteen I
went to a shoemaker and begged him to take me as his apprentice. He,
being an honest man, immediately brought me to Bowyer, [the head-master
at the charity-school] who got into a great rage, knocked me down, and
even pushed Crispin rudely out of the room. Bowyer asked me why I had
made myself such a fool? to which I answered that I had a great desire
to be a shoemaker, and that I hated the thought of being a clergyman.
'Why so?' said he. 'Because, to tell you the truth, sir,' said I, 'I am
an infidel!' For this, without more ado, Bowyer flogged me,--wisely, as
I think,--soundly, as I know. Any whining or sermonizing would have
gratified my vanity, and confirmed me in my absurdity; as it was, I was
laughed at and got heartily ashamed of my folly." At a supper-table,
when Cottle was present, Coleridge spoke of the unutterable horror he
felt, when a son of Holcroft, (the atheist,) a boy eight years of age,
came up to him and said, "There is no God."
"It is one thing to see that a line is crooked, and another thing to be
able to draw a straight one," said Conversation Sharp. "It is not quite
so easy to do good as those may imagine who never try." Says Montaigne,
"Could my soul once take footing, I would not essay, but resolve; but it
is always leaving and making trial." "'Tis an exact and exquisite life
that contains itself in due order in private. Every one may take a part
in the farce, and assume the part of an honest man upon the stage; but
within, and in his own bosom, where all things are lawful to us, all
things concealed,--to be regular, that is the point. The next degree is
to be so in one's house, in one's ordinary actions, for which one is
accountable to none, and where there is no study or artifice." "We
chiefly, who live private lives, not exposed to any other view than our
own, ought to have settled a pattern within ourselves, by which to try
our actions." "Conscience," cries Sterne, "is not a law; no, God and
reason made the law, and have placed conscience within you to
determine."
How often our virtues and benefactions are but the effects of our vices
and our crimes; and as often do our vices disguise themselves under the
name of virtues. "We ought not," says Montaigne, "to honor with the name
of duty that peevishness and inward discontent which spring from private
interest and passion; nor call treacherous and malicious conduct
courage. People give the name of zeal to their propensity to mischief
and violence, though it is not the cause, but their interest, that
inflames them. Miserable kind of remedy, to owe a man's health to his
disease. The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but
walking orderly; its grandeur does not exercise itself in grandeur, but
in mediocrity." The greatest man is great in matters of self-conduct;
the wisest is wise in little matters of life; the one is never little,
the other never foolish.
"The superior man," says Confucius, "does not wait till he sees things,
to be cautious, nor till he hears things, to be apprehensive. There is
nothing more visible than what is secret, and nothing more manifest than
what is minute. Therefore, the superior man will watch over himself when
he is alone. He examines his heart that there may be nothing wrong
there, and that he may have no cause for dissatisfaction with himself.
That wherein he excels is simply his work which other men cannot see.
Are you free from shame in your apartment, when you are exposed only to
the light of heaven?"
"Most men," says Alger, "live blindly to repeat a routine of drudgery
and indulgence, without any deliberately chosen and maintained aims.
Many live to outstrip their rivals, pursue their enemies, gratify their
lusts, and make a display. Few live distinctly to develop the value of
their being, know the truth, love their fellows, enjoy the beauty of the
world, and aspire to God."
"Life is a series of surprises," says Emerson, "and would not be worth
taking or keeping if it were not. God delights to isolate us every day,
and hide from us the past and the future. We would look about us, but
with grand politeness He draws down before us an impenetrable screen of
purest sky. 'You will not remember,' He seems to say, 'and you will not
expect.'"
Goldsmith, in one of his delightful Chinese Letters, gives this
illustration of the vanity and uncertainty of human judgment: "A painter
of eminence was once resolved to finish a piece which should please the
whole world. When, therefore, he had drawn a picture, in which his
utmost skill was exhausted, it was exposed in the public market-place,
with directions at the bottom for every spectator to mark with a brush,
which lay by, every limb and feature which seemed erroneous. The
spectators came, and in general applauded; but each, willing to show his
talent at criticism, marked whatever he thought proper. At evening, when
the painter came, he was mortified to find the whole picture one
universal blot; not a single stroke that was not stigmatized with marks
of disapprobation. Not satisfied with this trial, the next day he was
resolved to try them in a different manner, and, exposing his picture as
before, desired that every spectator would mark those beauties he
approved or admired. The people complied; and the artist, returning,
found his picture replete with the marks of beauty; every stroke that
had been yesterday condemned now received the character of approbation."
"Experience tells us," says La Bruyere, "if there are ten persons who
would blot a thought or an expression out of a book, there are a like
number who would oppose it." "The most accomplished piece," he thought,
"which the age has produced would fail under the hands of the critics
and censurers, if the author would hearken to all their objections, and
allow every one to throw out the passage that pleased him the least."
"To hear praise and dispraise on a sermon, a piece of music, or a
picture, and upon the very same subject to be entertained with quite
opposite sentiments, is what makes one freely conclude we may safely
publish anything, good or bad; for the good pleases some, the bad
others, and the worst has its admirers."
At a club meeting in London, a nephew of Macaulay refused to rise when
the national anthem was sung; but when he said that he did so from
principle, he was respected in it. Others when questioned as to why they
rose said, one because it was a hymn; another because of loyalty to
England; another because he loved the queen; another because it was the
custom; and they finally justified the refusal to rise because no two of
them could agree as to why they rose.
Irving, in his Knickerbocker's New York, thus refers to the habit of
criticising and complaining in the time of William the Testy: "Cobblers
abandoned their stalls to give lessons on political economy; blacksmiths
suffered their fires to go out while they stirred up the fires of
faction; and even tailors, though said to be the ninth parts of
humanity, neglected their own measures to criticise the measures of
government. Strange! that the science of government, which seems to be
so generally understood, should invariably be denied to the only ones
called upon to exercise it. Not one of the politicians in question but,
take his word for it, could have administered affairs ten times better
than William the Testy."