and freethinkers. But even orthodox Frenchmen fare little better. 'The
French Bossuets, Bourdaloues, Fénelons, &c., whatever may be thought of
their meagre and attenuated rhetoric, are one and all the most
commonplace of thinkers.' In fact, the mere mention of France acts upon
him like a red rag on a bull. The French, 'in whom the lower forms of
passion are constantly bubbling up, from the shallow and superficial
character of their feelings,' are incapable of English earnestness.
Their taste is 'anything but good in all that department of wit and
humour'--the department, apparently, of anecdotes--'and the ground lies
in their natural want of veracity;' whereas England bases upon its
truthfulness a well-founded claim to 'a moral pre-eminence among the
nations.' Belgians, French, and Italians attract the inconsiderate by
'facile obsequiousness,' which, however, is a pendent of 'impudence and
insincerity. Want of principle and want of moral sensibility compose the
original _fundus_ of southern manners.' Our faults of style, such as
they are, proceed from our manliness. In France there are no unmarried
women at the age which amongst us gives the insulting name of old maid.
'What striking sacrifices of sexual honour does this one fact argue!'
The French style is remarkable for simplicity--'a strange pretension for
anything French;' but on the whole the intellectual merits of their
style are small, 'chiefly negative,' and 'founded on the accident of
their colloquial necessities.' They are amply compensated, too, by 'the
prodigious defects of the French in all the higher qualities of prose
composition.' Even their handwriting is the 'very vilest form of
scribbling which exists in Europe,' and they and the Germans are 'the
two most gormandising races in Europe.' They display a brutal
selfishness in satisfying their appetites, whereas Englishmen at all
public meals are remarkably conspicuous for 'a spirit of mutual
attention and self-sacrifice.' It is enough to show the real degradation
of their habits, that they use the 'odious gesture' of shrugging their
shoulders, and are fond of the 'vile ejaculation "bah!"' which is as bad
as to puff the smoke of a tobacco-pipe into your companion's face. They
have neither self-respect nor respect for others. French masters are
never dignified, though sometimes tyrannical; French servants are
always, even without meaning it, disrespectfully familiar. Many of their
manners and usages are 'essentially vulgar, and their apparent
affability depends not on kindness of heart, but love of talking.'
The impudence of the assertions is really amusing, though one cannot but
regret that the vulgar prejudice of the old-fashioned John Bull should
have been embodied in the pages of a master of our language. They are
worth notice because they were not special to De Quincey, but
characteristic of one very intelligible tendency of his generation. De
Quincey's prejudices are chiefly the reflection of those of the
Coleridge school in general, though he added to them a few pet aversions
of his own. At times his genuine acuteness of mind raises him above the
teaching of his masters, or at least enables him to detect their
weaknesses. He discovers Coleridge's plagiarisms, though he believes
and, indeed, speaks in the most exaggerated terms of his philosophical
pretensions; whilst, in treating of Wordsworth, he points out with great
skill the fallacy of some of his theories and the inconsistency of his
practice. But whilst keenly observant of some of the failings of his
friends, he reproduces others in even an exaggerated type. He shows to
the full their narrow-minded hatred of the preceding century, of all
forms of excellence which did not correspond to their favourite types,
and of all speculation which did not lead to, or start from their
characteristic doctrines. The error is fully pardonable. We must not
look to men who are leading a revolt against established modes of
thought for a full appreciation of the doctrines of their antagonists;
and if De Quincey could recognise no merit in Voltaire or Rousseau, in
Locke, Paley, or Jeremy Bentham, their followers were quite prepared to
retaliate in kind. One feels, however, that such prejudices are more
respectable when they are the foibles of a strong mind engaged in active
warfare. We can pardon the old campaigner, who has become bitter in an
internecine contest. It is not quite so pleasant to discover the same
bitterness in a gentleman who has looked on from a distance, and never
quite made up his mind to buckle on his armour. De Quincey had not
earned the right of speaking evil of his enemies. If a man chances to be
a Hedonist, he should show the good temper which is the best virtue of
the indolent. To lie on a bed of roses, and snarl at everybody who
contradicts your theories, seems to imply rather testiness of temper
than strength of conviction. De Quincey is a Christian on Epicurean
principles. He dislikes an infidel because his repose is disturbed by
the arguments of freethinkers. He fears that he will be forced to think
conscientiously, and to polish his logical weapons afresh. He mutters
that the man is a fool, and could be easily thrashed if it were worth
while, and then turns back to his opium and his rhetoric and his beloved
Church of England. There is no pleasanter institution for a gentleman
who likes magnificent historical associations, and heartily hates the
rude revolutionists who would turn the world upside down, and thereby
disturb the rest of dreamy metaphysicians.
He is quite pathetic, too, about the British Constitution. 'Destroy the
House of Lords,' he exclaims, 'and henceforward, for people like you and
me, England will be no habitable land.' Here, he seems to say, is one
charming elysium, where no rude hand has swept away the cobwebs or
replaced the good old-fashioned machinery; here we may find rest in the
'pure, holy, and magnificent Church,' whose Articles, interpreted by
Coleridge, may guide us through the most wondrous of metaphysical
labyrinths, and dwell in a grand constitutional edifice, rich in
picturesque memories, and blending into one complex harmony elements
contributed by a long series of centuries. And you, wretched French
revolutionists, with your love of petty precision, and irreverent
radicals and utilitarians, with your grovelling material notions,
propose to level, and destroy, and break in upon my delicious reveries.
No old Hebrew prophet could be more indignant with the enemy who
threatened to break down the carved work of his temples with axes and
hammers. But his complaint is, after all, the voice of the sluggard. Let
me dream a little longer; for much as I love my country and its
institutions, I cannot rouse myself to fight for them. It is enough if I
call their assailants an ugly name or so, and at times begin to write
what might be the opening pages of the preface to some very great work
of the future. Alas! the first digression diverts the thread of the
discourse; the task becomes troublesome, and the labour is abruptly
broken off. And so in a life of seventy-three years De Quincey read
extensively and thought acutely by fits, ate an enormous quantity of
opium, wrote a few pages which revealed new capacities in the language,
and provided a good deal of respectable padding for magazines. It
sounds, and many people will say that it is, a harsh and, perhaps they
will add, a stupid judgment. If so, they may find plenty of admirers who
will supply the eulogistic side here too briefly indicated. I will only
say two things: first, that there are very few writers who have revealed
new capacities in the language, and in English literature they might
almost be counted on the fingers. Secondly, I must confess that I have
often consulted De Quincey in regard to biographic and critical
questions, and that though I have generally found something to admire, I
have always found gross inaccuracies and almost always effeminate
prejudices and mere flippancies draped in elaborate rhetoric. I take
leave, therefore, to insist upon faults which are passed over too easily
by writers of more geniality than I claim to possess.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] It is curious that De Quincey, in his Essay on Style, explains that
political economy, and especially the doctrine of value, is one of those
subjects which cannot be satisfactorily treated in dialogue--the very
form which he chose to adopt for that particular purpose.
_SIR THOMAS BROWNE_
'Let me not injure the felicity of others,' says Sir Thomas Browne in a
suppressed passage of the 'Religio Medici,' 'if I say that I am the
happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty into
riches, adversity into prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than
Achilles; fortune hath not one place to hit me.' Perhaps on second
thoughts, Sir Thomas felt that the phrase savoured of that presumption
which is supposed to provoke the wrath of Nemesis; and at any rate, he,
of all men, is the last to be taken too literally at his word. He is a
humorist to the core, and is here writing dramatically. There are many
things in this book, so he tells us, 'delivered rhetorically, many
expressions therein merely tropical,... and therefore also many things
to be taken in a soft and flexible sense, and not to be called unto the
rigid test of reason.' We shall hardly do wrong in reckoning amongst
them this audacious claim to surpassing felicity, as we may certainly
include his boast that he 'could lose an arm without a tear, and with
few groans be quartered into pieces.' And yet, if Sir Thomas were to be
understood in the most downright literal earnest, perhaps he could have
made out as good a case for his assertion as almost any of the troubled
race of mankind. For, if we set aside external circumstances of life,
what qualities offer a more certain guarantee of happiness than those
of which he is an almost typical example? A mind endowed with an
insatiable curiosity as to all things knowable and unknowable; an
imagination which tinges with poetical hues the vast accumulation of
incoherent facts thus stored in a capacious memory; and a strangely
vivid humour that is always detecting the quaintest analogies, and, as
it were, striking light from the most unexpected collocations of
uncompromising materials: such talents are by themselves enough to
provide a man with work for life, and to make all his work delightful.
To them, moreover, we must add a disposition absolutely incapable of
controversial bitterness; 'a constitution,' as he says of himself, 'so
general that it consorts and sympathises with all things;' an absence of
all antipathies to loathsome objects in nature--to French 'dishes of
snails, frogs, and toadstools,' or to Jewish repasts on 'locusts or
grasshoppers;' an equal toleration--which in the first half of the
seventeenth century is something astonishing--for all theological
systems; an admiration even of our natural enemies, the French, the
Spaniards, the Italians, and the Dutch; a love of all climates, of all
countries; and, in short, an utter incapacity to 'absolutely detest or
hate any essence except the devil.' Indeed, his hatred even for that
personage has in it so little of bitterness, that no man, we may be
sure, would have joined more heartily in the Scotch minister's petition
for 'the puir de'il'--a prayer conceived in the very spirit of his
writings. A man so endowed--and it is not only from his explicit
assertions, but from his unconscious self-revelation, that we may credit
him with closely approaching his own ideal--is admirably qualified to
discover one great secret of human happiness. No man was ever better
prepared to keep not only one, but a whole stableful of hobbies, nor
more certain to ride them so as to amuse himself, without loss of temper
or dignity, and without rude collisions against his neighbours. That
happy art is given to few, and thanks to his skill in it, Sir Thomas
reminds us strongly of the two illustrious brothers Shandy combined in
one person. To the exquisite kindliness and simplicity of Uncle Toby he
unites the omnivorous intellectual appetite and the humorous pedantry of
the head of the family. The resemblance, indeed, may not be quite
fortuitous. Though it does not appear that Sterne, amidst his
multifarious pilferings, laid hands upon Sir Thomas Browne, one may
fancy that he took a general hint or two from so congenial an author.
The best mode of approaching so original a writer is to examine the
intellectual food on which his mind was nourished. He dwelt by
preference in strange literary pastures; and their nature will let us
into some secrets as to his taste and character. We will begin,
therefore, by examining the strange furniture of his mind, as described
in his longest, though not his most characteristic book--the 'Inquiry
into Vulgar Errors.' When we turn over its quaint pages, we feel as
though we were entering one of those singular museums of curiosities
which existed in the pre-scientific ages. Every corner is filled with a
strange, incoherent medley, in which really valuable objects are placed
side by side with what is simply grotesque and ludicrous. The modern man
of science may find some objects of interest; but they are mixed
inextricably with strange rubbish that once delighted the astrologer,
the alchemist, or the dealer in apocryphal relics. And the possessor of
this miscellaneous collection accompanies us with an unfailing flow of
amusing gossip: at one moment pouring forth a torrent of out-of-the-way
learning; at another, making a really passable scientific remark; and
then lapsing into an elaborate discussion of some inconceivable
absurdity; affecting the air of a grave inquirer, and to all appearance
fully believing in his own pretensions, and yet somehow indulging
himself in a half-suppressed smile, which indicates that the humorous
aspect of a question can never be far removed from his mind. Mere
curiosity is not yet differentiated from scientific thirst for
knowledge; and a quaint apologue is as good a reward for the inquirer as
the discovery of a law of nature. The numerous class which insists upon
a joke being as unequivocal as a pistol-shot, and a serious statement as
grave as a Blue-book, should therefore keep clear of Sir Thomas Browne.
His most congenial readers are those who take a simple delight in
following out any quaint train of reflections, careless whether it may
culminate in a smile or a sigh, or in some thought in which the two
elements of the sad and the ludicrous are inextricably blended. Sir
Thomas, however, is in the 'Inquiry' content generally with bringing out
the strange curiosities of his museum, and does not care to draw any
explicit moral. The quaintness of the objects unearthed seems to be a
sufficient recompense for the labour of the search. Fortunately for his
design, he lived in the time when a poet might have spoken without
hyperbole of the 'fairy tales of science.' To us, who have to plod
through an arid waste of painful observation, and slow piecing together
of cautious inferences before reaching the promised land of wondrous
discoveries, the expression sometimes appears to be ironical. Does not
science, we may ask with a _primâ facie_ resemblance of right, destroy
as much poetry as it generates? To him no such doubts could present
themselves, for fairyland was still a province of the empire of science.
Strange beings moved through the pages of natural history, which were
equally at home in the 'Arabian Nights' or in poetical apologues. The
griffin, the phoenix, and the dragon were not yet extinct; the
salamander still sported in flames; and the basilisk slew men at a
distance with his deadly glance. More commonplace animals indulged in
the habits which they had learnt in fables, and of which only some
feeble vestiges now remain in the eloquence of strolling showmen. The
elephant had no joints, and was caught by felling the tree against which
he rested his stiff limbs in sleep; the pelican pierced its breast for
the good of its young; ostriches were regularly painted with a horseshoe
in their bills, to indicate their ordinary diet; storks refused to live
except in republics and free states; the crowing of a cock put lions to
flight, and men were struck dumb in good sober earnest by the sight of a
wolf. The curiosity-hunter, in short, found his game still plentiful,
and, by a few excursions into Aristotle, Pliny, and other more recondite
authors, was able still to display a rich bag for the edification of his
readers. Sir Thomas Browne sets out on that quest with all imaginable
seriousness. He persuaded himself, and he has persuaded some of his
editors, that he was a genuine disciple of Bacon, by one of whose
suggestions the 'Inquiry' is supposed to have been prompted.
Accordingly, as Bacon describes the idols by which the human mind is
misled, Sir Thomas sets out with investigating the causes of error; but
his introductory remarks immediately diverge into strange paths, from
which it is obvious that the discovery of true scientific method was a
very subordinate object in his mind. Instead of telling us by what means
truth is to be attained, his few perfunctory remarks on logic are lost
in an historical narrative given with infinite zest, of the earliest
recorded blunders. The period of history in which he most delighted was
the antediluvian--probably because it afforded the widest field for
speculation. His books are full of references to the early days of the
world. He takes a keen personal interest in our first parents. He
discusses the unfortunate lapse of Adam and Eve from every possible
point of view. It is not without a visible effort that he declines to
settle which of the two was the more guilty, and what would have been
the result if they had tasted the fruit of the Tree of Life before
applying to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Then he passes
in review every recorded speech before the Flood, shows that in each of
them, with one exception, there is a mixture of falsehood and error, and
settles to his own satisfaction that Cain showed less 'truth, wisdom,
and reverence' than Satan under similar circumstances. Granting all
which to be true, it is impossible to see how we are advanced in
settling, for example, whether the Ptolemaic or the Copernican system of
astronomy is to be adopted, or in extracting the grains of truth that
may be overlaid by masses of error in the writings of alchemists. Nor do
we really learn much by being told that ancient authorities sometimes
lie, for he evidently enjoys accumulating the fables, and cares little
for showing how to discriminate their degree of veracity. He tells us,
indeed, that Medea was simply a predecessor of certain modern artists,
with an excellent 'recipe to make white hair black;' and that Actæon was
a spirited master of hounds, who, like too many of his ancestors, went
metaphorically, instead of literally, to the dogs. He points out,
moreover, that we must not believe on authority that the sea is the
sweat of the earth, that the serpent, before the Fall, went erect like
man, or that the right eye of a hedgehog, boiled in oil, and preserved
in a brazen vessel, will enable us to see in the dark. Such stories, he
moderately remarks, being 'neither consonant unto reason nor
correspondent unto experiment,' are unto us 'no axioms.' But we may
judge of his scepticism by his remarks on 'Oppianus, that famous
Cilician poet.' Of this writer he says that 'abating the annual mutation
of sexes in the hyæna, the single sex of the rhinoceros, the antipathy
between two drums of a lamb's and a wolf's skin, the informity of cubs,
the venation of centaurs, and some few others, he may be read with
delight and profit.' Obviously we shall find in Sir Thomas Browne no
inexorably severe guide to truth! he will not too sternly reject the
amusing because it happens to be slightly improbable, or doubt an
authority because he sometimes sanctions a mass of absurd fables. Satan,
as he argues at great length, is at the bottom of most errors, from
false religions down to a belief that there is another world in the
moon; but Sir Thomas takes little trouble to provide us with an
Ithuriel's spear, and, indeed, we have a faint suspicion that he will
overlook at times the diabolic agency in sheer enthusiasm at the
marvellous results. The logical design is little more than ostensible;
and Sir Thomas, though he knew it not himself, is really satisfied with
any line of inquiry that will bring him in sight of some freak of nature
or of opinion suitable to his museum of curiosities.
Let us, however, pass from the anteroom, and enter this queer museum. We
pause in sheer bewilderment on the threshold, and despair of classifying
its contents intelligibly within any moderate space. This much, indeed,
is obvious at first sight--that the title 'vulgar errors' is to some
extent a misnomer. It is not given to vulgar brains to go wrong by such
complex methods. There are errors which require more learning and
ingenuity than are necessary for discovering truths; and it is in those
queer freaks of philosophical minds that Sir Thomas specially delights.
Though far, indeed, from objecting to any absurdity which lies on the
common highroad, he rejoices in the true spirit of a collector when he
can discover some grotesque fancy by rambling into less frequented paths
of inquiry. Perhaps it will be best to take down one or two specimens,
pretty much at random, and mark their nature and mode of treatment.
Here, for example, is that quaint old wonder, the phoenix, 'which, after
many hundred years, burneth itself, and from the ashes thereof ariseth
up another.' Sir Thomas carefully discusses the pros and cons of this
remarkable legend. In favour of the phoenix, it may be alleged that he
is mentioned 'not only by human authors,' but also by such 'holy
writers' as Cyril, Epiphanius, and Ambrose. Moreover, allusions are made
to him in Job and the Psalms. 'All which notwithstanding,' the following
grave reasons may be alleged against his existence: First, nobody has
ever seen a phoenix. Secondly, those who mention him speak doubtfully,
and even Pliny, after telling a story about a particular phoenix which
came to Rome in the censorship of Claudius, unkindly turns round and
declares the whole story to be a palpable lie. Thirdly, the name phoenix
has been applied to many other birds, and those who speak unequivocally
of the genuine phoenix contradict each other in the most flagrant way as
to his age and habitat. Fourthly, many writers, such as Ovid, only speak
poetically, and others, as Paracelsus, only mystically, whilst the
remainder speak rhetorically, emblematically, or hieroglyphically.
Fifthly, in the Scriptures, the word translated phoenix means a palm
tree. Sixthly, his existence, if we look closely, is implicitly denied
in the Scriptures, because all fowls entered the ark in pairs, and
animals were commanded to increase and multiply, neither of which
statements is compatible with the solitary nature of the phoenix.
Seventhly, nobody could have known by experience whether the phoenix
actually lived for a thousand years, and, therefore, 'there may be a
mistake in the compute.' Eighthly, and finally, no animals really
spring, or could spring, from the ashes of their predecessors and it is
impossible to believe that they could enter the world in such a fashion.
Having carefully summed up this negative evidence--enough, one would
have fancied, to blow the poor phoenix into summary annihilation--Sir
Thomas finally announces his grave conclusion in these words--'How far
to rely on this tradition we refer unto consideration.' And yet he feels
impelled to add a quaint reflection on the improbability of a statement
made by Plutarch, that 'the brain of a phoenix is a pleasant bit, but
that it causeth the headache.' Heliogabalus, he observes, could not have
slain the phoenix, for it must of necessity be 'a vain design to destroy
any species, or mutilate the great accomplishment of six days.' To which
it is added, by way of final corollary, that after Cain had killed Abel,
he could not have destroyed Eve, supposing her to have been the only
woman in existence; for then there must have been another creation, and
a second rib of Adam must have been animated.