Quis sapiens bono Confidat fragili.--Seneca.
Grammatici certant et adhuc sub judice lis est.--Horace.
When I first went to Paris, I took a French master, to perfect me in the
Parisian pronunciation. This “Haberdasher of Pronouns” was a person of
the name of Margot. He was a tall, solemn man, with a face of the most
imperturbable gravity. He would have been inestimable as an undertaker.
His hair was of a pale yellow; you would have thought it had caught a
bilious complaint from his complexion; the latter was, indeed, of so
sombre a saffron, that it looked as if ten livers had been forced into
a jaundice, in order to supply its colour. His forehead was high, bald,
and very narrow. His cheekbones were extremely prominent, and his cheeks
so thin, that they seemed happier than Pyramus and Thisbe, and kissed
each other inside without any separation or division. His face was as
sharp and almost as long as an inverted pyramid, and was garnished on
either side by a miserable half starved whisker, which seemed scarcely
able to maintain itself, amid the general symptoms of atrophy and
decay. This charming countenance was supported by a figure so long, so
straight, so shadowy, that you might have taken it for the monument in a
consumption.
But the chief characteristic of the man was the utter and wonderful
gravity I have before spoken of. You could no more have coaxed a
smile out of his countenance, than you could out of the poker, and yet
Monsieur Margot was by no means a melancholy man. He loved his joke,
and his wine, and his dinner, just as much as if he had been of a fatter
frame; and it was a fine specimen of the practical antithesis, to hear
a good story, or a jovial expression, leap friskily out of that long,
curved mouth; it was at once a paradox and a bathos--it was the mouse
coming out of its hole in Ely Cathedral.
I said that this gravity was M. Margot’s most especial characteristic.
I forgot:--he had two others equally remarkable; the one was an ardent
admiration for the chivalrous, the other an ardent admiration for
himself. Both of these are traits common enough in a Frenchman, but in
Mons. Margot their excesses rendered them uncommon. He was a most ultra
specimen of le chevalier amoureux--a mixture of Don Quixote and the Duc
de Lauzun. Whenever he spoke of the present tense, even en professeur,
he always gave a sigh to the preterite, and an anecdote of Bayard;
whenever he conjugated a verb, he paused to tell me that the favourite
one of his female pupils was je t’aime.
In short, he had tales of his own good fortune, and of other people’s
brave exploits, which, without much exaggeration, were almost as long,
and had perhaps as little substance as himself; but the former was his
favourite topic: to hear him, one would have imagined that his face,
in borrowing the sharpness of the needle, had borrowed also its
attraction;--and then the prettiness of Mons. Margot’s modesty!
“It is very extraordinary,” said he, “very extraordinary, for I have no
time to give myself up to those affairs; it is not, Monsieur, as if I
had your leisure to employ all the little preliminary arts of creating
la belle passion. Non, Monsieur, I go to church, to the play, to the
Tuilleries, for a brief relaxation--and me voila partout accable with
my good fortune. I am not handsome, Monsieur, at least, not very; it
is true, that I have expression, a certain air noble, (my first cousin,
Monsieur, is the Chevalier de Margot) and above all, de l’a me in my
physiognomy; the women love soul, Monsieur--something intellectual and
spiritual always attracts them; yet my success certainly is singular.”
“Bah! Monsieur,” replied I: “with dignity, expression, and soul! how
could the heart of any French woman resist you? No, you do yourself
injustice. It was said of Caesar, that he was great without an effort;
much more, then, may Monsieur Margot be happy without an exertion.”
“Ah, Monsieur!” rejoined the Frenchman, still looking
“As weak, as earnest, and as gravely out As sober Lanesbro’ dancing with
the gout.”
“Ah, Monsieur, there is a depth and truth in your remarks, worthy of
Montaigne. As it is impossible to account for the caprices of women, so
it is impossible for ourselves to analyze the merit they discover in us;
but, Monsieur, hear me--at the house where I lodge, there is an English
lady en pension. Eh bien, Monsieur, you guess the rest: she has taken a
caprice for me, and this very night she will admit me to her apartment.
She is very handsome,--Ah qu’elle est belle, une jolie petite bouche,
une denture eblouissante, un nez tout afait grec, in fine, quite a
bouton de rose.”
I expressed my envy at Monsieur Margot’s good fortune, and when he had
sufficiently dilated upon it, he withdrew. Shortly afterwards Vincent
entered--“I have a dinner invitation for both of us to-day,” said he;
“you will come?”
“Most certainly,” replied I; “but who is the person we are to honour?”
“A Madame Laurent,” replied Vincent; “one of those ladies only found
at Paris, who live upon anything rather than their income. She keeps
a tolerable table, haunted with Poles, Russians, Austrians, and idle
Frenchmen, peregrinae gentis amaenum hospitium. As yet, she has not the
happiness to be acquainted with any Englishmen, (though she boards one
of our countrywomen) and (as she is desirous of making her fortune as
soon as possible) she is very anxious of having that honour. She has
heard vast reports of our wealth and wisdom, and flatters herself that
we are so many ambulatory Indies: in good truth, a Frenchwoman thinks
she is never in want of a fortune as long as there is a rich fool in the
world.
“‘Stultitiam patiuntur, opes,’
is her hope; and
“‘Ut tu fortunam, sic nos te, Celse, feremus,’
is her motto.”
“Madame Laurent!” repeated I, “why, surely that is the name of Mons.
Margot’s landlady.”
“I hope not,” cried Vincent, “for the sake of our dinner; he reflects no
credit on her good cheer--
“‘Who eats fat dinners, should himself be fat.’”
“At all events,” said I, “we can try the good lady for once. I am very
anxious to see a countrywoman of ours, probably the very one you
speak of, whom Mons. Margot eulogizes in glowing colours, and who has,
moreover, taken a violent fancy for my solemn preceptor. What think you
of that, Vincent?”
“Nothing extraordinary,” replied Vincent; “the lady only exclaims with
the moralist--
“‘Love, virtue, valour, yea, all human charms, Are shrunk and centred in
that heap of bones. Oh! there are wondrous beauties in the grave!’”
I made some punning rejoinder, and we sallied out to earn an appetite in
the Tuilleries for Madame Laurent’s dinner.
At the hour of half-past five we repaired to our engagement. Madame
Laurent received us with the most evident satisfaction, and introduced
us forthwith to our countrywoman. She was a pretty, fair, shrewd looking
person, with an eye and lip which, unless it greatly belied her, showed
her much more inclined, as an amante, to be merry and wise, than honest
and true.
Presently Monsieur Margot made his appearance. Though very much
surprised at seeing me, he did not appear the least jealous of my
attentions to his inamorata. Indeed, the good gentleman was far too much
pleased with himself to be susceptible of the suspicions common to less
fortunate lovers. At dinner I sat next to the pretty Englishwoman, whose
name was Green.
“Monsieur Margot,” said I, “has often spoken to me of you before I had
the happiness of being personally convinced how true and unexaggerated
were his sentiments.”
“Oh!” cried Mrs. Green, with an arch laugh, “you are acquainted with
Monsieur Margot, then?”
“I have that honour,” said I. “I receive from him every morning lessons
both in love and languages. He is perfect master of both.”
Mrs. Green burst out into one of those peals so peculiarly British.
“Ah, le pauvre Professeur!” cried she. “He is too absurd!”
“He tells me,” said I, gravely, “that he is quite accable with his
bonnes fortunes--possibly he flatters himself that even you are not
perfectly inaccessible to his addresses.”
“Tell me, Mr. Pelham,” said the fair Mrs. Green, “can you pass by this
street about half past twelve to-night?”
“I will make a point of doing so,” replied I, not a little surprised by
the remark.
“Do,” said she, “and now let us talk of old England.”
When we went away I told Vincent of my appointment. “What!” said he,
“eclipse Monsieur Margot! Impossible!”
“You are right,” replied I, “nor is it my hope; there is some trick
afloat of which we may as well be spectators.”
“De tout mon coeur!” answered Vincent; “let us go till then to the
Duchesse de G----.”
I assented, and we drove to the Rue de--.
The Duchesse de G--was a fine relict of the ancien regime--tall and
stately, with her own grey hair crepe, and surmounted by a high cap of
the most dazzling blonde. She had been one of the earliest emigrants,
and had stayed for many months with my mother, whom she professed to
rank amongst her dearest friends. The duchesse possessed to perfection
that singular melange of ostentation and ignorance which was so peculiar
to the ante-revolutionists. She would talk of the last tragedy with the
emphatic tone of a connoisseur, in the same breath that she would ask,
with Marie Antoinette, why the poor people were so clamorous for bread
when they might buy such nice cakes for two-pence a-piece? “To give
you an idea of the Irish,” said she one day to an inquisitive marquess,
“know that they prefer potatoes to mutton!”
Her soirees were among the most agreeable at Paris--she united all the
rank and talent to be found in the ultra party, for she professed to
be quite a female Maecenas; and whether it was a mathematician or a
romance-writer, a naturalist or a poet, she held open house for all, and
conversed with each with equal fluency and self-satisfaction.
A new play had just been acted, and the conversation, after a few
preliminary hoverings, settled upon it.
“You see,” said the duchesse, “that we have actors, you authors; of what
avail is it that you boast of a Shakspeare, since your Liseton, great as
he is, cannot be compared with our Talma?”
“And yet,” said I, preserving my gravity with a pertinacity, which
nearly made Vincent and the rest of our compatriots assembled lose
their’s “Madame must allow, that there is a striking resemblance in
their persons, and the sublimity of their acting?”
“Pour ca, j’en conviens,” replied this ‘critique de l’Ecole des Femmes.’
“Mais cependant Liseton n’a pas la Nature! l’ame! la grandeur de Talma!”
“And will you then allow us no actors of merit?” asked Vincent.
“Mais oui!--dans le genre comique, par exemple, votre buffo Kean met dix
fois plus d’esprit et de drollerie dans ses roles que La Porte.”
“The impartial and profound judgment of Madame admits of no further
discussion on this point,” said I. “What does she think of the present
state of our dramatic literature?”
“Why,” replied Madame, “you have many great poets, but when they write
for the stage they lose themselves entirely; your Valter Scote’s play of
Robe Roi is very inferior to his novel of the same name.”
“It is a great pity,” said I, “that Byron did not turn his Childe Harold
into a tragedy--it has so much energy--action--variety!”
“Very true,” said Madame, with a sigh; “but the tragedy is, after all,
only suited to our nation--we alone carry it to perfection.”
“Yet,” said I, “Goldoni wrote a few fine tragedies.”
“Eh bien!” said Madame, “one rose does not constitute a garden!”
And satisfied with this remark, la femme savante turned to a celebrated
traveller to discuss with him the chance of discovering the North Pole.
There were one or two clever Englishmen present; Vincent and I joined
them.
“Have you met the Persian prince yet?” said Sir George Lynton to me; “he
is a man of much talent, and great desire of knowledge. He intends
to publish his observations on Paris, and I suppose we shall have an
admirable supplement to Montesquieu’s Lettres Persannes!”
“I wish we had,” said Vincent: “there are few better satires on a
civilized country than the observations of visitors less polished; while
on the contrary the civilized traveller, in describing the manners of
the American barbarian, instead of conveying ridicule upon the visited,
points the sarcasm on the visitor; and Tacitus could not have thought of
a finer or nobler satire on the Roman luxuries than that insinuated by
his treatise on the German simplicity.”
“What,” said Monsieur D’E--(an intelligent ci-devant emigre), “what
political writer is generally esteemed as your best?”
“It is difficult to say,” replied Vincent, “since with so many parties
we have many idols; but I think I might venture to name Bolingbroke as
among the most popular. Perhaps, indeed, it would be difficult to
select a name more frequently quoted and discussed than his; and yet his
political works are the least valuable part of his remains; and though
they contain many lofty sentiments, and many beautiful yet scattered
truths, they were written when legislation, most debated, was least
understood, and ought to be admired rather as excellent for the day than
estimable in themselves. The life of Bolingbroke would convey a juster
moral than all his writings: and the author who gives us a full and
impartial memoir of that extraordinary man, will have afforded both
to the philosophical and political literature of England one of its
greatest desideratums.”
“It seems to me,” said Monsieur D’E--, “that your national literature is
peculiarly deficient in biography--am I right in my opinion?”
“Indubitably!” said Vincent; “we have not a single work that can be
considered a model in biography, (excepting, perhaps, Middleton’s Life
of Cicero.) This brings on a remark I have often made in distinguishing
your philosophy from ours. It seems to me that you who excel so
admirably in biography, memoirs, comedy, satirical observation on
peculiar classes, and pointed aphorisms, are fonder of considering man
in his relation to society and the active commerce of the world, than
in the more abstracted and metaphysical operations of the mind.
Our writers, on the contrary, love to indulge rather in abstruse
speculations on their species--to regard man in an abstract and isolated
point of view, and to see him think alone in his chamber, while you
prefer beholding him act with the multitude in the world.”
“It must be allowed,” said Monsieur D’E----t, “that if this be true, our
philosophy is the most useful, though yours may be the most profound.”
Vincent did not reply.
“Yet,” said Sir George Lynton, “there will be a disadvantage attending
your writings of this description, which, by diminishing their general
applicability, diminish their general utility. Works which treat upon
man in his relation to society, can only be strictly applicable so long
as that relation to society treated upon continues. For instance, the
play which satirizes a particular class, however deep its reflections
and accurate its knowledge upon the subject satirized, must necessarily
be obsolete when the class itself has become so. The political pamphlet,
admirable for one state, may be absurd in another; the novel which
exactly delineates the present age may seem strange and unfamiliar to
the next; and thus works which treat of men relatively, and not man in
se, must often confine their popularity to the age and even the country
in which they were written. While on the other hand, the work which
treats of man himself, which seizes, discovers, analyzes the human
mind, as it is, whether in the ancient or the modern, the savage or the
European, must evidently be applicable, and consequently useful, to all
times and all nations. He who discovers the circulation of the blood,
or the origin of ideas, must be a philosopher to every people who have
veins or ideas; but he who even most successfully delineates the
manners of one country, or the actions of one individual, is only the
philosopher of a single country, or a single age. If, Monsieur D’E--t,
you will condescend to consider this, you will see perhaps that the
philosophy which treats of man in his relations is not so useful,
because neither so permanent nor so invariable, as that which treats of
man in himself.” [Note: Yet Hume holds the contrary opinion to this, and
considers a good comedy more durable than a system of philosophy. Hume
is right, if by a system of philosophy is understood--a pile of guesses,
false but plausible, set up by one age to be destroyed by the next.
Ingenuity cannot rescue error from oblivion; but the moment Wisdom has
discovered Truth, she has obtained immortality.]
I was now somewhat weary of this conversation, and though it was not yet
twelve, I seized upon my appointment as an excuse to depart--accordingly
I rose for that purpose. “I suppose,” said I to Vincent, “that you will
not leave your discussion.”
“Pardon me,” said he, “amusement is quite as profitable to a man of
sense as metaphysics. Allons.”