6. The most common disguise of Envy is in the praise of what is
subordinate.
7. Selfishness in Art, as in other things, is sensibility kept at
home.
8. The Devil's heartiest laugh is at a detracting witticism. Hence the
phrase "devilish good" has sometimes a literal meaning.
9. The most intangible, and therefore the worst, kind of lie is a
half truth. This is the peculiar device of a _conscientious_
detractor.
10. Reverence is an ennobling sentiment; it is felt to be degrading
only by the vulgar mind, which would escape the sense of its own
littleness by elevating itself into an antagonist of what is above it.
He that has no pleasure in looking up is not fit so much as to look
down. Of such minds are mannerists in Art; in the world, tyrants of
all sorts.
11. No right judgment can ever be formed on any subject having a moral
or intellectual bearing without benevolence; for so strong is man's
natural self-bias, that, without this restraining principle, he
insensibly becomes a competitor in all such cases presented to his
mind; and, when the comparison is thus made personal, unless the odds
be immeasurably against him, his decision will rarely be impartial.
In other words, no one can see any thing as it really is through the
misty spectacles of self-love. We must wish well to another in order
to do him justice. Now the virtue in this good-will is not to blind us
to his faults, but to our own rival and interposing merits.
12. In the same degree that we overrate ourselves, we shall underrate
others; for injustice allowed at home is not likely to be corrected
abroad. Never, therefore, expect justice from a vain man; if he has
the negative magnanimity not to disparage you, it is the most you can
expect.
13. The Phrenologists are right in placing the organ of self-love in
the back of the head, it being there where a vain man carries his
intellectual light; the consequence of which is, that every man he
approaches is obscured by his own shadow.
14. Nothing is rarer than a solitary lie; for lies breed like Surinam
toads; you cannot tell one but out it comes with a hundred young ones
on its back.
15. If the whole world should agree to speak nothing but truth, what
an abridgment it would make of speech! And what an unravelling there
would be of the invisible webs which men, like so many spiders, now
weave about each other! But the contest between Truth and Falsehood
is now pretty well balanced. Were it not so, and had the latter the
mastery, even language would soon become extinct, from its very
uselessness. The present superfluity of words is the result of the
warfare.
16. A witch's skiff cannot more easily sail in the teeth of the wind,
than the human _eye_ lie against fact; but the truth will oftener
quiver through lips with a lie upon them.
17. An open brow with a clenched hand shows any thing but an open
purpose.
18. It is a hard matter for a man to lie _all over_. Nature
having provided king's evidence in almost every member. The hand will
sometimes act as a vane to show which way the wind blows, when every
feature is set the other way; the knees smite together, and sound the
alarm of fear, under a fierce countenance; and the legs shake with
anger, when all above is calm.
19. Nature observes a variety even in her correspondences; insomuch
that in parts which seem but repetitions there will be found a
difference. For instance, in the human countenance, the two sides of
which are never identical. Whenever she deviates into monotony,
the deviation is always marked as an exception by some striking
deficiency; as in idiots, who are the only persons that laugh equally
on both sides of the mouth.
The insipidity of many of the antique Statues may be traced to the
false assumption of identity in the corresponding parts. No work
wrought by _feeling_ (which, after all, is the ultimate rule of
Genius) was ever marked by this monotony.
20. He is but half an orator who turns his hearers into spectators.
The best gestures (_quoad_ the speaker) are those which he cannot
help. An unconscious thump of the fist or jerk of the elbow is more
to the purpose, (whatever that may be,) than the most graceful
_cut-and-dried_ action. It matters not whether the orator
personates a trip-hammer or a wind-mill; if his mill but move with the
grist, or his hammer knead the iron beneath it, he will not fail of
his effect. An impertinent gesture is more likely to knock down the
orator than his opponent.
21. The only true independence is in humility; for the humble man
exacts nothing, and cannot be mortified,--expects nothing, and cannot
be disappointed. Humility is also a healing virtue; it will cicatrize
a thousand wounds, which pride would keep for ever open. But humility
is not the virtue of a fool; since it is not consequent upon any
comparison between ourselves and others, but between what we are and
what we ought to be,--which no man ever was.
22. The greatest of all fools is the proud fool,--who is at the mercy
of every fool he meets.
23. There is an essential meanness in the wish to _get the
better_ of any one. The only competition worthy, of a wise man is
with himself.
24. He that argues for victory is but a gambler in words, seeking to
enrich himself by another's loss.
25. Some men make their ignorance the measure of excellence; these
are, of course, very fastidious critics; for, knowing little, they can
find but little to like.
26. The Painter who seeks popularity in Art closes the door upon his
own genius.
27. Popular excellence in one age is but the _mechanism_ of what
was good in the preceding; in Art, the _technic_.
28. Make no man your idol, for the best man must have faults; and his
faults will insensibly become yours, in addition to your own. This is
as true in Art as in morals.
29. A man of genius should not aim at praise, except in the form of
_sympathy_; this assures him of his success, since it meets the
feeling which possessed himself.
30. Originality in Art is the individualizing the Universal; in other
words, the impregnating some general truth with the individual mind.
31. The painter who is content with the praise of the world in respect
to what does not satisfy himself, is not an artist, but an artisan;
for though his reward be only praise, his pay is that of a
mechanic,--for his time, and not for his art.
32. _Reputation_ is but a synonyme of _popularity_;
dependent on suffrage, to be increased or diminished at the will of
the voters. It is the creature, so to speak, of its particular age, or
rather of a particular state of society; consequently, dying with that
which sustained it. Hence we can scarcely go over a page of history,
that we do not, as in a church-yard, tread upon some buried
reputation. But fame cannot be voted down, having its immediate
foundation in the essential. It is the eternal shadow of excellence,
from which it can never be separated; nor is it ever made visible but
in the light of an intellect kindred with that of its author. It is
that light which projects the shadow which is seen of the multitude,
to be wondered at and reverenced, even while so little comprehended
as to be often confounded with the substance,--the substance being
admitted from the shadow, as a matter of faith. It is the economy of
Providence to provide such lights: like rising and setting stars, they
follow each other through successive ages: and thus the monumental
form of Genius stands for ever relieved against its own imperishable
shadow.
33. All excellence of every kind is but variety of truth. If we wish,
then, for something beyond the true, we wish for that which is false.
According to this test, how little truth is there in Art! Little
indeed! but how much is that little to him who feels it!
34. Fame does not depend on the _will_ of any man, but Reputation
may be given or taken away. Fame is the sympathy of kindred
intellects, and sympathy is not a subject of _willing_; while
Reputation, having its source in the popular voice, is a sentence
which may either be uttered or suppressed at pleasure. Reputation,
being essentially contemporaneous, is always at the mercy of
the envious and the ignorant; but Fame, whose very birth is
_posthumous_, and which is only known _to exist by the echo of
its footsteps through congenial minds_, can neither be increased
nor diminished by any degree of will.
35. What _light_ is in the natural world, such is _fame_
in the intellectual; both requiring an _atmosphere_ in order
to become perceptible. Hence the fame of Michael Angelo is, to some
minds, a nonentity; even as the sun itself would be invisible _in
vacuo_.
36. Fame has no necessary conjunction with Praise: it may exist without
the breath of a word; it is a _recognition of excellence_, which _must
be felt_, but need not be _spoken_. Even the envious must feel it,--feel
it, and hate it, in silence.
37. I cannot believe that any man who deserved fame ever labored for
it; that is, _directly_. For, as fame is but the contingent of
excellence, it would be like an attempt to project a shadow, before
its substance was obtained. Many, however, have so fancied. "I write,
I paint, for fame," has often been repeated: it should have been, "I
write, I paint, for reputation." All anxiety, therefore, about Fame
should be placed to the account of Reputation.
38. A man may be pretty sure that he has not attained
_excellence_, when it is not all in all to him. Nay, I may add,
that, if he looks beyond it, he has not reached it. This is not the
less true for being good _Irish_.
39. An original mind is rarely understood, until it has been
_reflected_ from some half-dozen congenial with it, so averse
are men to admitting the _true_ in an unusual form; whilst any
novelty, however fantastic, however false, is greedily swallowed. Nor
is this to be wondered at; for all truth demands a response, and few
people care to _think_, yet they must have something to supply
the place of thought. Every mind would appear original, if every man
had the power of _projecting_ his own into the mind of others.
40. All effort at originality must end either in the quaint or the
monstrous. For no man knows himself as an original; he can only
believe it on the report of others to whom _he is made known_, as
he is by the projecting power before spoken of.
41. There is one thing which no man, however generously disposed, can
_give_, but which every one, however poor, is bound to _pay_. This is
Praise. He cannot give it, because it is not his own,--since what is
dependent for its very existence on something in another can never
become to him a _possession_; nor can he justly withhold it, when the
presence of merit claims it as a _consequence_. As praise, then, cannot
be made a _gift_, so, neither, when not his due, can any man receive it:
he may think he does, but he receives only _words_; for _desert_ being
the essential condition of praise, there can be no reality in the one
without the other. This is no fanciful statement; for, though praise may
be withheld by the ignorant or envious, it cannot be but that, in the
course of time, an existing merit will, on _some one_, produce its
effects; inasmuch as the existence of any cause without its effect is an
impossibility. A fearful truth lies at the bottom of this, an
_irreversible justice_ for the weal or woe of him who confirms or
violates it.
* * * * *
[From the back of a pencil sketch.]
Let no man trust to the gentleness, the generosity, or seeming
goodness of his heart, in the hope that they alone can safely bear him
through the temptations of this world. This is a state of probation,
and a perilous passage to the true beginning of life, where even the
best natures need continually to be reminded of their weakness, and
to find their only security in steadily referring all their thoughts,
acts, affections, to the ultimate end of their being: yet where,
imperfect as we are, there is no obstacle too mighty, no temptation
too strong, to the truly humble in heart, who, distrusting themselves,
seek to be sustained only by that holy Being who is life and power,
and who, in his love and mercy, has promised to give to those that
ask.--Such were my reflections, to which I was giving way on reading
this melancholy story.
If he is satisfied with them, he may rest assured that he is neither
fitted for this world nor the next. Even in this, there are wrongs and
sorrows which no human remedy can reach;--no, tears cannot restore
what is lost.
* * * * *
[Written in a book of sketches, with a pencil.]
A real debt of gratitude--that is, founded on a disinterested act of
kindness--cannot be cancelled by any subsequent unkindness on the part
of our benefactor. If the favor be of a pecuniary nature, we may,
indeed, by returning an equal or greater sum, balance the moneyed part;
but we cannot _liquidate_ the _kind motive_ by the setting off against
it any number of unkind ones. For an after injury can no more _undo_ a
previous kindness, than we can _prevent_ in the future what has happened
in the past. So neither can a good act undo an ill one: a fearful truth!
For good and evil have a moral _life_, which nothing in time can
extinguish; the instant they _exist_, they start for Eternity. How,
then, can a man who has _once_ sinned, and who has not of _himself_
cleansed his soul, be fit for heaven where no sin can enter? I seek not
to enter into the mystery of the _atonement_, "which even the angels
sought to comprehend and could not"; but I feel its truth in an
unutterable conviction, and that, without it, all flesh must perish.
Equally deep, too, and unalienable, is my conviction that "the fruit of
sin is misery." A second birth to the soul is therefore a necessity
which sin _forces_ upon us. Ay,--but not against the desperate _will_
that rejects it.
This conclusion was not anticipated when I wrote the first sentence of
the preceding paragraph. But it does not surprise me. For it is but a
recurrence of what I have repeatedly experienced; namely, that I never
lighted on _any truth_ which I _inwardly felt_ as such, however
apparently remote from our religious being, (as, for instance, in the
philosophy of my art,) that, by following it out, did not find its
illustration and confirmation in some great doctrine of the Bible,--the
only true philosophy, the sole fountain of light, where the dark
questions of the understanding which have so long stood, like chaotic
spectres, between the fallen soul and its reason, at once lose their
darkness and their terror.