Act I. Sc. 2 and Act IV. Sc. 4.

THE

COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT

IN TWELVE VOLUMES

VOLUME TWELVE

_All rights reserved_

[Illustration:

_Grace Hazlitt,

Mother of William Hazlitt

(1747–1837)_

_From an oil painting by John Hazlitt_

]

[Illustration:

_Rev. William Hazlitt.

(1737–1820.)_

_Father of William Hazlitt_

_From a miniature by John Hazlitt._

]

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF

WILLIAM HAZLITT

EDITED BY A. R. WALLER

AND ARNOLD GLOVER

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

W. E. HENLEY

❦

Fugitive Writings

❦

1904

LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO.

McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.: NEW YORK

Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Of the essays in this volume some have already been published in

_Literary Remains_, _Sketches and Essays_, or _Winterslow_ (see

Bibliographical Note to Vol. XI.), and the rest (with one exception) are

now reprinted for the first time. The exception is ‘The Sick Chamber’

which was published by Mr. Ireland in his _William Hazlitt Essayist and

Critic, Selections from his Writings_. Some of the essays now

republished for the first time have been attributed to Hazlitt by Mr. W.

C. Hazlitt (_Memoirs_, 1867, 1. xxii-xxxii—Chronological Catalogue), or

by Mr. Ireland (_List of the Writings of William Hazlitt and Leigh

Hunt_); others have not before been identified. The Editors, however,

have not included any essay as to Hazlitt’s authorship of which any

reasonable doubt can exist.

Reference may here be made to a few essays which, though they may have

been written by Hazlitt, have been excluded from the present volume,

because the evidence of their authorship was not sufficiently strong.

They are arranged in the following list under the heading of the

Magazine in which they first appeared.

I. In _The New Monthly Magazine_.

1. Four papers entitled ‘The Confessional’ (1822, vol. IV. pp. 349,

450; vol. v. pp. 54, 406) which read very much as if they were

written by Hazlitt during the _Liber Amoris_ period.

2. An essay entitled ‘Social Grievances’ (1822, vol. v. p. 412).

3. An essay on ‘The Influence of Books on the Progress of Manners’

(May, 1828, vol. xxii. p. 409).

II. In _The Liberal_.

1. In _The Liberal_ (vol. 11. 1823) appeared an essay entitled ‘A

Sunday’s Fête at St. Cloud’ which was reprinted (without

mention being made of its source) under the title ‘A Fête

at St. Cloud’ and attributed to Hazlitt in a volume of

miscellanies called ‘The Talisman; or Bouquet of Literature and

the Fine Arts’ (1831), edited by Mrs. Alaric A. Watts. The

essay shows no trace of Hazlitt’s handiwork, and seems to have

been written ‘under a foreign sky,’ whereas Hazlitt did not

start for his tour in France and Italy till after the

publication of the essay in _The Liberal_. An editorial

paragraph published in _The London Magazine_ for October 1824,

under the heading of ‘The Lion’s Head,’ would seem to show that

the writer of the sketch had sent it to that magazine for

publication. ‘_The Fête of St. Cloud_’ (the paragraph runs),

‘though not unamusing, would not suit our pages. French

subjects, as all Editors and Kings can testify, are lively and

dangerous. They are very irregular, or very poor.’ The editor

of _The London Magazine_, though he had at the time a grievance

against Hazlitt (see Vol. XI. note to essay on ‘Peveril of the

Peak’), would hardly have spoken so patronisingly of one of his

most distinguished contributors.

III. In _The London Weekly Review_.

1. An essay entitled ‘Brummelliana’ (Feb. 2, 1828).

IV. In _The Atlas_.

1. ‘Manners make the man’ (March 29, 1829).

2. ‘Mr. Jeffrey’s Resignation of the Editorship of the Edinburgh

Review’ (June 21, 1829).

3. ‘Autographs’ (June 28, 1829).

4. ‘A Hint upon Education’ (Aug. 9, 1829).

5. ‘A Newspaper Sketch’ (Oct. 18, 1829).

CONTENTS[1]

_CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE

PAGE

The Fight 1

Merry England 15

Of Persons One would Wish to have Seen 26

On the Conversation of Lords 38

On a Sun-dial 51

Why the Heroes of Romance are insipid 59

The Shyness of Scholars 68

The Main-Chance 78

Self-Love and Benevolence 95

The Same Subject continued 104

*The Free Admission 119

The Sick Chamber 125

Footmen 131

_CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE MONTHLY MAGAZINE

On the Want of Money 136

On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth 150

On Reading New Books 161

On Disagreeable People 173

On Means and Ends 184

On Personal Identity 198

*Aphorisms on Man 209

A Chapter on Editors 230

The Letter-Bell 235

_CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE LIBERAL

On the Spirit of Monarchy 241

*On the Scotch Character 253

My First Acquaintance with Poets 259

*Pulpit Oratory 275

*Arguing in a Circle 285

_CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE LONDON WEEKLY REVIEW_

*Queries and Answers 296

On Knowledge of the World 297

The Same Subject continued 301

The Same Subject continued 306

On Public Opinion 311

On the Causes of Popular Opinion 316

A Farewell to Essay-writing 321

*Byron and Wordsworth 328

On Cant and Hypocrisy 330

The Same Subject continued 336

_CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE ATLAS

*Poetry 339

*English Grammar 342

*Memorabilia of Mr. Coleridge 346

*Peter Pindar 348

*Logic 350

*The Late Mr. Curran 353

*The Court Journal—A Dialogue 354

*The Late Dr. Priestley 357

*Sects and Parties 360

*Conversations as Good as Real (1) 363

*Conversations as Good as Real (2) 369

Trifles Light as Air 370

*Common Sense 377

*The Spirit of Controversy 381

Envy 386

On Prejudice 391

The Same Subject continued 394

The Same Subject continued[2] 396

On Party-Spirit 402

_MISCELLANEOUS_

Project for a New Theory of Civil and Criminal Legislation 405

On the Conduct of Life; or, Advice to a Schoolboy 423

Belief, whether Voluntary 439

Definition of Wit 445

Personal Politics 456

*The Emancipation of the Jews 461

*On the Punishment of Death 466

NOTES 473

Addenda to the Notes in Vols. I.–XI. 504

Index to Titles of Hazlitt’s Writings 508

FUGITIVE WRITINGS

THE FIGHT

_The New Monthly Magazine._] [_February, 1822._

‘——The _fight_, the _fight’s_ the thing,

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.’

_Where there’s a will, there’s a way._—I said so to myself, as I walked

down Chancery-lane, about half-past six o’clock on Monday the 10th of

December, to inquire at Jack Randall’s where the fight the next day was

to be; and I found ‘the proverb’ nothing ‘musty’ in the present

instance. I was determined to see this fight, come what would, and see

it I did, in great style. It was my _first fight_, yet it more than

answered my expectations. Ladies! it is to you I dedicate this

description; nor let it seem out of character for the fair to notice the

exploits of the brave. Courage and modesty are the old English virtues;

and may they never look cold and askance on one another! Think, ye

fairest of the fair, loveliest of the lovely kind, ye practisers of soft

enchantment, how many more ye kill with poisoned baits than ever fell in

the ring; and listen with subdued air and without shuddering, to a tale

tragic only in appearance, and sacred to the FANCY!

I was going down Chancery-lane, thinking to ask at Jack Randall’s where

the fight was to be, when looking through the glass-door of the _Hole in

the Wall_, I heard a gentleman asking the same question _at_ Mrs.

Randall, as the author of Waverley would express it. Now Mrs. Randall

stood answering the gentleman’s question, with the authenticity of the

lady of the Champion of the Light Weights. Thinks I, I’ll wait till this

person comes out, and learn from him how it is. For to say a truth, I

was not fond of going into this house of call for heroes and

philosophers, ever since the owner of it (for Jack is no gentleman)

threatened once upon a time to kick me out of doors for wanting a

mutton-chop at his hospitable board, when the conqueror in thirteen

battles was more full of _blue ruin_ than of good manners. I was the

more mortified at this repulse, inasmuch as I had heard Mr. James

Simpkins, hosier in the Strand, one day when the character of the _Hole

in the Wall_ was brought in question, observe—‘The house is a very good

house, and the company quite genteel: I have been there myself!’

Remembering this unkind treatment of mine host, to which mine hostess

was also a party, and not wishing to put her in unquiet thoughts at a

time jubilant like the present, I waited at the door, when, who should

issue forth but my friend Jo. Toms, and turning suddenly up

Chancery-lane with that quick jerk and impatient stride which

distinguishes a lover of the FANCY, I said, ‘I’ll be hanged if that

fellow is not going to the fight, and is on his way to get me to go with

him.’ So it proved in effect, and we agreed to adjourn to my lodgings to

discuss measures with that cordiality which makes old friends like new,

and new friends like old, on great occasions. We are cold to others only

when we are dull in ourselves, and have neither thoughts nor feelings to

impart to them. Give a man a topic in his head, a throb of pleasure in

his heart, and he will be glad to share it with the first person he

meets. Toms and I, though we seldom meet, were an _alter idem_ on this

memorable occasion, and had not an idea that we did not candidly impart;

and ‘so carelessly did we fleet the time,’ that I wish no better, when

there is another fight, than to have him for a companion on my journey

down, and to return with my friend Jack Pigott, talking of what was to

happen or of what did happen, with a noble subject always at hand, and

liberty to digress to others whenever they offered. Indeed, on my

repeating the lines from Spenser in an involuntary fit of enthusiasm,

‘What more felicity can fall to creature,

Than to enjoy delight with liberty?’

my last-named ingenious friend stopped me by saying that this,

translated into the vulgate, meant ‘_Going to see a fight_.’

Jo. Toms and I could not settle about the method of going down. He said

there was a caravan, he understood, to start from Tom Belcher’s at two,

which would go there _right out_ and back again the next day. Now I

never travel all night, and said I should get a cast to Newbury by one

of the mails. Jo. swore the thing was impossible, and I could only

answer that I had made up my mind to it. In short, he seemed to me to

waver, said he only came to see if I was going, had letters to write, a

cause coming on the day after, and faintly said at parting (for I was

bent on setting out that moment)—‘Well, we meet at Philippi!’ I made the

best of my way to Piccadilly. The mail-coach stand was bare. ‘They are

all gone,’ said I—‘this is always the way with me—in the instant I lose

the future—if I had not stayed to pour out that last cup of tea, I

should have been just in time’—and cursing my folly and ill-luck

together, without inquiring at the coach-office whether the mails were

gone or not, I walked on in despite, and to punish my own dilatoriness

and want of determination. At any rate, I would not turn back: I might

get to Hounslow, or perhaps farther, to be on my road the next morning.

I passed Hyde Park Corner (my Rubicon), and trusted to fortune. Suddenly

I heard the clattering of a Brentford stage, and the fight rushed full

upon my fancy. I argued (not unwisely) that even a Brentford coachman

was better company than my own thoughts (such as they were just then),

and at his invitation mounted the box with him. I immediately stated my

case to him—namely, my quarrel with myself for missing the Bath or

Bristol mail, and my determination to get on in consequence as well as I

could, without any disparagement or insulting comparison between longer

or shorter stages. It is a maxim with me that stage-coaches, and

consequently stage-coachmen, are respectable in proportion to the

distance they have to travel: so I said nothing on that subject to my

Brentford friend. Any incipient tendency to an abstract proposition, or

(as he might have construed it) to a personal reflection of this kind,

was however nipped in the bud; for I had no sooner declared indignantly

that I had missed the mails, than he flatly denied that they were gone

along, and lo! at the instant three of them drove by in rapid,

provoking, orderly succession, as if they would devour the ground before

them. Here again I seemed in the contradictory situation of the man in

Dryden who exclaims,

‘I follow Fate, which does too hard pursue!’

If I had stopped to inquire at the White Horse Cellar, which would not

have taken me a minute, I should now have been driving down the road in

all the dignified unconcern and _ideal_ perfection of mechanical

conveyance. The Bath mail I had set my mind upon, and I had missed it,

as I missed every thing else, by my own absurdity, in putting the will

for the deed, and aiming at ends without employing means. ‘Sir,’ said he

of the Brentford, ‘the Bath mail will be up presently, my brother-in-law

drives it, and I will engage to stop him if there is a place empty.’ I

almost doubted my good genius; but, sure enough, up it drove like

lightning, and stopped directly at the call of the Brentford Jehu. I

would not have believed this possible, but the brother-in-law of a

mail-coach driver is himself no mean man. I was transferred without loss

of time from the top of one coach to that of the other, desired the

guard to pay my fare to the Brentford coachman for me as I had no

change, was accommodated with a great coat, put up my umbrella to keep

off a drizzling mist, and we began to cut through the air like an arrow.

The milestones disappeared one after another, the rain kept off; Tom

Turtle, the trainer, sat before me on the coach-box, with whom I

exchanged civilities as a gentleman going to the fight; the passion that

had transported me an hour before was subdued to pensive regret and

conjectural musing on the next day’s battle; I was promised a place

inside at Reading, and upon the whole, I thought myself a lucky fellow.

Such is the force of imagination! On the outside of any other coach on

the 10th of December, with a Scotch mist drizzling through the cloudy

moonlight air, I should have been cold, comfortless, impatient, and, no

doubt, wet through; but seated on the Royal mail, I felt warm and

comfortable, the air did me good, the ride did me good, I was pleased

with the progress we had made, and confident that all would go well

through the journey. When I got inside at Reading, I found Turtle and a

stout valetudinarian, whose costume bespoke him one of the FANCY, and

who had risen from a three months’ sick bed to get into the mail to see

the fight. They were intimate, and we fell into a lively discourse. My

friend the trainer was confined in his topics to fighting dogs and men,

to bears and badgers; beyond this he was ‘quite chap-fallen,’ had not a

word to throw at a dog, or indeed very wisely fell asleep, when any

other game was started. The whole art of training (I, however, learnt

from him,) consists in two things, exercise and abstinence, abstinence

and exercise, repeated alternately and without end. A yolk of an egg

with a spoonful of rum in it is the first thing in a morning, and then a

walk of six miles till breakfast. This meal consists of a plentiful

supply of tea and toast and beef-steaks. Then another six or seven miles

till dinner-time, and another supply of solid beef or mutton with a pint

of porter, and perhaps, at the utmost, a couple of glasses of sherry.

Martin trains on water, but this increases his infirmity on another very

dangerous side. The Gas-man takes now and then a chirping glass (under

the rose) to console him, during a six weeks’ probation, for the absence

of Mrs. Hickman—an agreeable woman, with (I understand) a pretty fortune

of two hundred pounds. How matter presses on me! What stubborn things

are facts! How inexhaustible is nature and art! ‘It is well,’ as I once

heard Mr. Richmond observe, ‘to see a variety.’ He was speaking of

cock-fighting as an edifying spectacle. I cannot deny but that one

learns more of what _is_ (I do not say of what _ought to be_) in this

desultory mode of practical study, than from reading the same book twice

over, even though it should be a moral treatise. Where was I? I was

sitting at dinner with the candidate for the honours of the ring, ‘where

good digestion waits on appetite, and health on both.’ Then follows an

hour of social chat and native glee; and afterwards, to another

breathing over heathy hill or dale. Back to supper, and then to bed, and

up by six again—Our hero

‘Follows so the ever-running sun

With profitable _ardour_‘—

to the day that brings him victory or defeat in the green fairy circle.

Is not this life more sweet than mine? I was going to say; but I will

not libel any life by comparing it to mine, which is (at the date of

these presents) bitter as coloquintida and the dregs of aconitum!

The invalid in the Bath mail soared a pitch above the trainer, and did

not sleep so sound, because he had ‘more figures and more fantasies.’ We

talked the hours away merrily. He had faith in surgery, for he had had

three ribs set right, that had been broken in a _turn-up_ at Belcher’s,

but thought physicians old women, for they had no antidote in their

catalogue for brandy. An indigestion is an excellent common-place for

two people that never met before. By way of ingratiating myself, I told

him the story of my doctor, who, on my earnestly representing to him

that I thought his regimen had done me harm, assured me that the whole

pharmacopœia contained nothing comparable to the prescription he had

given me; and, as a proof of its undoubted efficacy, said, that, ‘he had

had one gentleman with my complaint under his hands for the last fifteen

years.’ This anecdote made my companion shake the rough sides of his

three great coats with boisterous laughter; and Turtle, starting out of

his sleep, swore he knew how the fight would go, for he had had a dream

about it. Sure enough the rascal told us how the three first rounds went

off, but ‘his dream,’ like others, ‘denoted a foregone conclusion.’ He

knew his men. The moon now rose in silver state, and I ventured, with

some hesitation, to point out this object of placid beauty, with the

blue serene beyond, to the man of science, to which his ear he

‘seriously inclined,’ the more as it gave promise _d’un beau jour_ for

the morrow, and showed the ring undrenched by envious showers, arrayed

in sunny smiles. Just then, all going on well, I thought on my friend

Toms, whom I had left behind, and said innocently, ‘There was a

blockhead of a fellow I left in town, who said there was no possibility

of getting down by the mail, and talked of going by a caravan from

Belcher’s at two in the morning, after he had written some letters.’

‘Why,’ said he of the lapels, ‘I should not wonder if that was the very

person we saw running about like mad from one coach-door to another, and

asking if any one had seen a friend of his, a gentlemen going to the

fight, whom he had missed stupidly enough by staying to write a note.’

‘Pray, Sir,’ said my fellow-traveller, ‘had he a plaid-cloak on?’—‘Why,

no,’ said I, ‘not at the time I left him, but he very well might

afterwards, for he offered to lend me one.’ The plaid-cloak and the

letter decided the thing. Joe, sure enough, was in the Bristol mail,

which preceded us by about fifty yards. This was droll enough. We had

now but a few miles to our place of destination, and the first thing I

did on alighting at Newbury, both coaches stopping at the same time, was

to call out, ‘Pray, is there a gentleman in that mail of the name of

Toms?’ ‘No,’ said Joe, borrowing something of the vein of Gilpin, ‘for I

have just got out.’ ‘Well!’ says he, ‘this is lucky; but you don’t know

how vexed I was to miss you; for,’ added he, lowering his voice, ‘do you

know when I left you I went to Belcher’s to ask about the caravan, and

Mrs. Belcher said very obligingly, she couldn’t tell about that, but

there were two gentlemen who had taken places by the mail and were gone

on in a landau, and she could frank us. It’s a pity I didn’t meet with

you; we could then have got down for nothing. But _mum’s the word_.’

It’s the devil for any one to tell me a secret, for it’s sure to come

out in print. I do not care so much to gratify a friend, but the public

ear is too great a temptation to me.

Our present business was to get beds and a supper at an inn; but this

was no easy task. The public-houses were full, and where you saw a light

at a private house, and people poking their heads out of the casement to

see what was going on, they instantly put them in and shut the window,

the moment you seemed advancing with a suspicious overture for

accommodation. Our guard and coachman thundered away at the outer gate

of the Crown for some time without effect—such was the greater noise

within;—and when the doors were unbarred, and we got admittance, we

found a party assembled in the kitchen round a good hospitable fire,

some sleeping, others drinking, others talking on politics and on the

fight. A tall English yeoman (something like Matthews in the face, and

quite as great a wag)—

‘A lusty man to ben an abbot able,’—

was making such a prodigious noise about rent and taxes, and the price

of corn now and formerly, that he had prevented us from being heard at

the gate. The first thing I heard him say was to a shuffling fellow who

wanted to be off a bet for a shilling glass of brandy and

water—‘Confound it, man, don’t be _insipid_!’ Thinks I, that is a good

phrase. It was a good omen. He kept it up so all night, nor flinched

with the approach of morning. He was a fine fellow, with sense, wit, and

spirit, a hearty body and a joyous mind, free-spoken, frank,

convivial—one of that true English breed that went with Harry the Fifth

to the siege of Harfleur—‘standing like greyhounds in the slips,’ &c. We

ordered tea and eggs (beds were soon found to be out of the question)

and this fellow’s conversation was _sauce piquante_. It did one’s heart

good to see him brandish his oaken towel and to hear him talk. He made

mince-meat of a drunken, stupid, red-faced, quarrelsome, _frowsy_

farmer, whose nose ‘he moralized into a thousand similes,’ making it out

a firebrand like Bardolph’s. ‘I’ll tell you what my friend,’ says he,

‘the landlady has only to keep you here to save fire and candle. If one

was to touch your nose, it would go off like a piece of charcoal.’ At

this the other only grinned like an idiot, the sole variety in his

purple face being his little peering grey eyes and yellow teeth; called

for another glass, swore he would not stand it; and after many attempts

to provoke his humourous antagonist to single combat, which the other

turned off (after working him up to a ludicrous pitch of choler) with

great adroitness, he fell quietly asleep with a glass of liquor in his

hand, which he could not lift to his head. His laughing persecutor made

a speech over him, and turning to the opposite side of the room, where

they were all sleeping in the midst of this ‘loud and furious fun,’

said, ‘There’s a scene, by G—d, for Hogarth to paint. I think he and

Shakspeare were our two best men at copying life.’ This confirmed me in

my good opinion of him. Hogarth, Shakspeare, and Nature, were just

enough for him (indeed for any man) to know. I said, ‘You read Cobbett,

don’t you? At least,’ says I, ‘you talk just as well as he writes.’ He

seemed to doubt this. But I said, ‘We have an hour to spare: if you’ll

get pen, ink, and paper, and keep on talking, I’ll write down what you

say; and if it doesn’t make a capital ‘Political Register,’ I’ll forfeit

my head. You have kept me alive to-night, however. I don’t know what I

should have done without you.’ He did not dislike this view of the

thing, nor my asking if he was not about the size of Jem Belcher; and

told me soon afterwards, in the confidence of friendship, that ‘the

circumstance which had given him nearly the greatest concern in his

life, was Cribb’s beating Jem after he had lost his eye by

racket-playing.’—The morning dawns; that dim but yet clear light

appears, which weighs like solid bars of metal on the sleepless eyelids;

the guests drop down from their chambers one by one—but it was too late

to think of going to bed now (the clock was on the stroke of seven), we

had nothing for it but to find a barber’s (the pole that glittered in

the morning sun lighted us to his shop), and then a nine miles’ march to

Hungerford. The day was fine, the sky was blue, the mists were retiring

from the marshy ground, the path was tolerably dry, the sitting-up all

night had not done us much harm—at least the cause was good; we talked

of this and that with amicable difference, roving and sipping of many

subjects, but still invariably we returned to the fight. At length, a

mile to the left of Hungerford, on a gentle eminence, we saw the ring

surrounded by covered carts, gigs, and carriages, of which hundreds had

passed us on the road; Toms gave a youthful shout, and we hastened down

a narrow lane to the scene of action.

Reader, have you ever seen a fight? If not, you have a pleasure to come,

at least if it is a fight like that between the Gas-man and Bill Neate.

The crowd was very great when we arrived on the spot; open carriages

were coming up, with streamers flying and music playing, and the country

people were pouring in over hedge and ditch in all directions, to see

their hero beat or be beaten. The odds were still on Gas, but only about

five to four. Gully had been down to try Neate, and had backed him

considerably, which was a damper to the sanguine confidence of the

adverse party. About two hundred thousand pounds were pending. The Gas

says, he has lost 3000_l._ which were promised him by different

gentlemen if he had won. He had presumed too much on himself, which had

made others presume on him. This spirited and formidable young fellow

seems to have taken for his motto the old maxim, that ‘there are three

things necessary to success in life—_Impudence! Impudence! Impudence!_’

It is so in matters of opinion, but not in the _Fancy_, which is the

most practical of all things, though even here confidence is half the

battle, but only half. Our friend had vapoured and swaggered too much,

as if he wanted to grin and bully his adversary out of the fight. ‘Alas!

the Bristol man was not so tamed!’—‘This is _the grave-digger_’ (would

Tom Hickman exclaim in the moments of intoxication from gin and success,

shewing his tremendous right hand), ‘this will send many of them to

their long homes; I haven’t done with them yet! ‘Why should he—though he

had licked four of the best men within the hour, yet why should he

threaten to inflict dishonourable chastisement on my old master

Richmond, a veteran going off the stage, and who has borne his sable

honours meekly? Magnanimity, my dear Tom, and bravery, should be

inseparable. Or why should he go up to his antagonist, the first time he

ever saw him at the Fives Court, and measuring him from head to foot

with a glance of contempt, as Achilles surveyed Hector, say to him,

‘What, are you Bill Neate? I’ll knock more blood out of that great

carcase of thine, this day fortnight, than you ever knock’d out of a

bullock’s!’ It was not manly, ’twas not fighter-like. If he was sure of

the victory (as he was not), the less said about it the better. Modesty

should accompany the _Fancy_ as its shadow. The best men were always the

best behaved. Jem Belcher, the Game Chicken (before whom the Gas-man

could not have lived) were civil, silent men. So is Cribb, so is Tom

Belcher, the most elegant of sparrers, and not a man for every one to

take by the nose. I enlarged on this topic in the mail (while Turtle was

asleep), and said very wisely (as I thought) that impertinence was a

part of no profession. A boxer was bound to beat his man, but not to

thrust his fist, either actually or by implication, in every one’s face.

Even a highwayman, in the way of trade, may blow out your brains, but if

he uses foul language at the same time, I should say he was no

gentleman. A boxer, I would infer, need not be a blackguard or a

coxcomb, more than another. Perhaps I press this point too much on a

fallen man—Mr. Thomas Hickman has by this time learnt that first of all

lessons, ‘That man was made to mourn.’ He has lost nothing by the late

fight but his presumption; and that every man may do as well without! By

an over-display of this quality, however, the public had been prejudiced

against him, and the _knowing-ones_ were taken in. Few but those who had

bet on him wished Gas to win. With my own prepossessions on the subject,

the result of the 11th of December appeared to me as fine a piece of

poetical justice as I had ever witnessed. The difference of weight

between the two combatants (14 stone to 12) was nothing to the sporting

men. Great, heavy, clumsy, long-armed Bill Neate kicked the beam in the

scale of the Gas-man’s vanity. The amateurs were frightened at his big

words, and thought that they would make up for the difference of six

feet and five feet nine. Truly, the FANCY are not men of imagination.

They judge of what has been, and cannot conceive of anything that is to

be. The Gas-man had won hitherto; therefore he must beat a man half as

big again as himself—and that to a certainty. Besides, there are as many

feuds, factions, prejudices, pedantic notions in the FANCY as in the

state or in the schools. Mr. Gully is almost the only cool, sensible man

among them, who exercises an unbiassed discretion, and is not a slave to

his passions in these matters. But enough of reflections, and to our

tale. The day, as I have said, was fine for a December morning. The

grass was wet, and the ground miry, and ploughed up with multitudinous

feet, except that, within the ring itself, there was a spot of

virgin-green closed in and unprofaned by vulgar tread, that shone with

dazzling brightness in the mid-day sun. For it was now noon, and we had

an hour to wait. This is the trying time. It is then the heart sickens,

as you think what the two champions are about, and how short a time will

determine their fate. After the first blow is struck, there is no

opportunity for nervous apprehensions; you are swallowed up in the

immediate interest of the scene—but

‘Between the acting of a dreadful thing

And the first motion, all the interim is

Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream.’

I found it so as I felt the sun’s rays clinging to my back, and saw the

white wintry clouds sink below the verge of the horizon. ‘So, I thought,

my fairest hopes have faded from my sight!—so will the Gas-man’s glory,

or that of his adversary, vanish in an hour.’ The _swells_ were parading

in their white box-coats, the outer ring was cleared with some bruises

on the heads and shins of the rustic assembly (for the _cockneys_ had

been distanced by the sixty-six miles); the time drew near, I had got a

good stand; a bustle, a buzz, ran through the crowd, and from the

opposite side entered Neate, between his second and bottle-holder. He

rolled along, swathed in his loose great coat, his knock-knees bending

under his huge bulk; and, with a modest cheerful air, threw his hat into

the ring. He then just looked round, and began quietly to undress; when

from the other side there was a similar rush and an opening made, and

the Gas-man came forward with a conscious air of anticipated triumph,

too much like the cock-of-the walk. He strutted about more than became a

hero, sucked oranges with a supercilious air, and threw away the skin

with a toss of his head, and went up and looked at Neate, which was an

act of supererogation. The only sensible thing he did was, as he strode

away from the modern Ajax, to fling out his arms, as if he wanted to try

whether they would do their work that day. By this time they had

stripped, and presented a strong contrast in appearance. If Neate was

like Ajax, ‘with Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear’ the pugilistic

reputation of all Bristol, Hickman might be compared to Diomed, light,

vigorous, elastic, and his back glistened in the sun, as he moved about,

like a panther’s hide. There was now a dead pause—attention was

awe-struck. Who at that moment, big with a great event, did not draw his

breath short—did not feel his heart throb? All was ready. They tossed up

for the sun, and the Gas-man won. They were led up to the

_scratch_—shook hands, and went at it.

In the first round every one thought it was all over. After making play

a short time, the Gas-man flew at his adversary like a tiger, struck

five blows in as many seconds, three first, and then following him as he

staggered back, two more, right and left, and down he fell, a mighty

ruin. There was a shout, and I said, ‘There is no standing this.’ Neate

seemed like a lifeless lump of flesh and bone, round which the Gas-man’s

blows played with the rapidity of electricity or lightning, and you

imagined he would only be lifted up to be knocked down again. It was as

if Hickman held a sword or a fire in that right hand of his, and

directed it against an unarmed body. They met again, and Neate seemed,

not cowed, but particularly cautious. I saw his teeth clenched together

and his brows knit close against the sun. He held out both his arms at

full length straight before him, like two sledge-hammers, and raised his

left an inch or two higher. The Gas-man could not get over this

guard—they struck mutually and fell, but without advantage on either

side. It was the same in the next round; but the balance of power was

thus restored—the fate of the battle was suspended. No one could tell

how it would end. This was the only moment in which opinion was divided;

for, in the next, the Gas-man aiming a mortal blow at his adversary’s

neck, with his right hand, and failing from the length he had to reach,

the other returned it with his left at full swing, planted a tremendous

blow on his cheek-bone and eyebrow, and made a red ruin of that side of

his face. The Gas-man went down, and there was another shout—a roar of

triumph as the waves of fortune rolled tumultuously from side to side.

This was a settler. Hickman got up, and ‘grinned horrible a ghastly

smile,’ yet he was evidently dashed in his opinion of himself; it was

the first time he had ever been so punished; all one side of his face

was perfect scarlet, and his right eye was closed in dingy blackness, as

he advanced to the fight, less confident, but still determined. After

one or two rounds, not receiving another such remembrancer, he rallied

and went at it with his former impetuosity. But in vain. His strength

had been weakened,—his blows could not tell at such a distance,—he was

obliged to fling himself at his adversary, and could not strike from his

feet; and almost as regularly as he flew at him with his right hand,

Neate warded the blow, or drew back out of its reach, and felled him

with the return of his left. There was little cautious sparring—no

half-hits—no tapping and trifling, none of the _petit-maitreship_ of the

art—they were almost all knock-down blows:—the fight was a good stand-up

fight. The wonder was the half-minute time. If there had been a minute

or more allowed between each round, it would have been intelligible how

they should by degrees recover strength and resolution; but to see two

men smashed to the ground, smeared with gore, stunned, senseless, the

breath beaten out of their bodies; and then, before you recover from the

shock, to see them rise up with new strength and courage, stand steady

to inflict or receive mortal offence, and rush upon each other ‘like two

clouds over the Caspian’—this is the most astonishing thing of all:—this

is the high and heroic state of man! From this time forward the event

became more certain every round; and about the twelfth it seemed as if

it must have been over. Hickman generally stood with his back to me; but

in the scuffle, he had changed positions, and Neate just then made a

tremendous lunge at him, and hit him full in the face. It was doubtful

whether he would fall backwards or forwards; he hung suspended for a

second or two, and then fell back, throwing his hands in the air, and

with his face lifted up to the sky. I never saw any thing more terrific

than his aspect just before he fell. All traces of life, of natural

expression, were gone from him. His face was like a human skull, a

death’s head, spouting blood. The eyes were filled with blood, the nose

streamed with blood, the mouth gaped blood. He was not like an actual

man, but like a preternatural, spectral appearance, or like one of the

figures in Dante’s _Inferno_. Yet he fought on after this for several

rounds, still striking the first desperate blow, and Neate standing on

the defensive, and using the same cautious guard to the last, as if he

had still all his work to do; and it was not till the Gas-man was so

stunned in the seventeenth or eighteenth round, that his senses forsook

him, and he could not come to time, that the battle was declared

over.[3] Ye who despise the Fancy, do something to shew as much _pluck_,

or as much self-possession as this, before you assume a superiority

which you have never given a single proof of by any one action in the

whole course of your lives!—When the Gas-man came to himself, the first

words he uttered were, ‘Where am I? What is the matter?’ ‘Nothing is the

matter, Tom,—you have lost the battle, but you are the bravest man

alive.’ And Jackson whispered to him, ‘I am collecting a purse for you,

Tom.’—Vain sounds, and unheard at that moment! Neate instantly went up

and shook him cordially by the hand, and seeing some old acquaintance,

began to flourish with his fists, calling out, ‘Ah you always said I

couldn’t fight—What do you think now?’ But all in good humour, and

without any appearance of arrogance; only it was evident Bill Neate was

pleased that he had won the fight. When it was over, I asked Cribb if he

did not think it was a good one? He said, ‘_Pretty well!_’ The

carrier-pigeons now mounted into the air, and one of them flew with the

news of her husband’s victory to the bosom of Mrs. Neate. Alas, for Mrs.

Hickman!

_Mais au revoir_, as Sir Fopling Flutter says. I went down with Toms; I

returned with Jack Pigott, whom I met on the ground. Toms is a rattle

brain; Pigott is a sentimentalist. Now, under favour, I am a

sentimentalist too—therefore I say nothing, but that the interest of the

excursion did not flag as I came back. Pigott and I marched along the

causeway leading from Hungerford to Newbury, now observing the effect of

a brilliant sun on the tawny meads or moss-coloured cottages, now

exulting in the fight, now digressing to some topic of general and

elegant literature. My friend was dressed in character for the occasion,

or like one of the FANCY; that is, with a double portion of great coats,

clogs, and overhauls: and just as we had agreed with a couple of country

lads to carry his superfluous wearing apparel to the next town, we were

overtaken by a return post-chaise, into which I got, Pigott preferring a

seat on the bar. There were two strangers already in the chaise, and on

their observing they supposed I had been to the fight, I said I had, and

concluded they had done the same. They appeared, however, a little shy

and sore on the subject; and it was not till after several hints

dropped, and questions put, that it turned out that they had missed it.

One of these friends had undertaken to drive the other there in his gig:

they had set out, to make sure work, the day before at three in the

afternoon. The owner of the one-horse vehicle scorned to ask his way,

and drove right on to Bagshot, instead of turning off at Hounslow: there

they stopped all night, and set off the next day across the country to

Reading, from whence they took coach, and got down within a mile or two

of Hungerford, just half an hour after the fight was over. This might be

safely set down as one of the miseries of human life. We parted with

these two gentlemen who had been to see the fight, but had returned as

they went, at Wolhampton, where we were promised beds (an irresistible

temptation, for Pigott had passed the preceding night at Hungerford as

we had done at Newbury), and we turned into an old bow-windowed parlour

with a carpet and a snug fire; and after devouring a quantity of tea,

toast, and eggs, sat down to consider, during an hour of philosophic

leisure, what we should have for supper. In the midst of an Epicurean

deliberation between a roasted fowl and mutton chops with mashed

potatoes, we were interrupted by an inroad of Goths and Vandals—_O

procul este profani_—not real flash-men, but interlopers, noisy

pretenders, butchers from Tothill-fields, brokers from Whitechapel, who

called immediately for pipes and tobacco, hoping it would not be

disagreeable to the gentlemen, and began to insist that it was _a

cross_. Pigott withdrew from the smoke and noise into another room, and

left me to dispute the point with them for a couple of hours _sans

intermission_ by the dial. The next morning we rose refreshed; and on

observing that Jack had a pocket volume in his hand, in which he read in

the intervals of our discourse, I inquired what it was, and learned to

my particular satisfaction that it was a volume of the New Eloise.

Ladies, after this, will you contend that a love for the FANCY is

incompatible with the cultivation of sentiment?—We jogged on as before,

my friend setting me up in a genteel drab great coat and green silk

handkerchief (which I must say became me exceedingly), and after

stretching our legs for a few miles, and seeing Jack Randall, Ned

Turner, and Scroggins, pass on the top of one of the Bath coaches, we

engaged with the driver of the second to take us to London for the usual

fee. I got inside, and found three other passengers. One of them was an

old gentleman with an aquiline nose, powdered hair, and a pigtail, and

who looked as if he had played many a rubber at the Bath rooms. I said

to myself, he is very like Mr. Windham; I wish he would enter into

conversation, that I might hear what fine observations would come from

those finely-turned features. However, nothing passed, till, stopping to

dine at Reading, some inquiry was made by the company about the fight,

and I gave (as the reader may believe) an eloquent and animated

description of it. When we got into the coach again, the old gentleman,

after a graceful exordium, said, he had, when a boy, been to a fight

between the famous Broughton and George Stevenson, who was called the

_Fighting Coachman_, in the year 1770, with the late Mr. Windham. This

beginning flattered the spirit of prophecy within me and rivetted my

attention. He went on—‘George Stevenson was coachman to a friend of my

father’s. He was an old man when I saw him some years afterwards. He

took hold of his own arm and said, “there was muscle here once, but now

it is no more than this young gentleman’s.” He added, “well, no matter;

I have been here long, I am willing to go hence, and I hope I have done

no more harm than another man.” Once,’ said my unknown companion, ‘I

asked him if he had ever beat Broughton? He said Yes; that he had fought

with him three times, and the last time he fairly beat him, though the

world did not allow it. “I’ll tell you how it was, master. When the

seconds lifted us up in the last round, we were so exhausted that

neither of us could stand, and we fell upon one another, and as Master

Broughton fell uppermost, the mob gave it in his favour, and he was said

to have won the battle. But,” says he, “the fact was, that as his second

(John Cuthbert) lifted him up, he said to him, ‘I’ll fight no more, I’ve

had enough;’ which,” says Stevenson, “you know gave me the victory. And

to prove to you that this was the case, when John Cuthbert was on his

death-bed, and they asked him if there was any thing on his mind which

he wished to confess, he answered, ‘Yes, that there was one thing he

wished to set right, for that certainly Master Stevenson won that last

fight with Master Broughton; for he whispered him as he lifted him up in

the last round of all, that he had had enough.’”’ ‘This,’ said the Bath

gentleman, ‘was a bit of human nature;’ and I have written this account

of the fight on purpose that it might not be lost to the world. He also

stated as a proof of the candour of mind in this class of men, that

Stevenson acknowledged that Broughton could have beat him in his best

day; but that he (Broughton) was getting old in their last rencounter.

When we stopped in Piccadilly, I wanted to ask the gentleman some

questions about the late Mr. Windham, but had not courage. I got out,

resigned my coat and green silk handkerchief to Pigott (loth to part

with these ornaments of life), and walked home in high spirits.

P.S. Toms called upon me the next day, to ask me if I did not think the

fight was a complete thing? I said I thought it was. I hope he will

relish my account of it.

MERRY ENGLAND

_The New Monthly Magazine._] [_December, 1825._

‘St. George for merry England!’

This old-fashioned epithet might be supposed to have been bestowed

ironically, or on the old principle—_Ut lucus a non lucendo_. Yet there

is something in the sound that hits the fancy, and a sort of truth

beyond appearances. To be sure, it is from a dull, homely ground that

the gleams of mirth and jollity break out; but the streaks of light that

tinge the evening sky are not the less striking on that account. The

beams of the morning sun shining on the lonely glades, or through the

idle branches of the tangled forest, the leisure, the freedom, ‘the

pleasure of going and coming without knowing where,’ the troops of wild

deer, the sports of the chase, and other rustic gambols, were sufficient

to justify the well-known appellation of ‘Merry Sherwood,’ and in like

manner, we may apply the phrase to _Merry England_. The smile is not the

less sincere because it does not always play upon the cheek; and the

jest is not the less welcome, nor the laugh less hearty, because they

happen to be a relief from care or leaden-eyed melancholy. The instances

are the more precious as they are rare; and we look forward to them with

the greater good will, or back upon them with the greater gratitude, as

we drain the last drop in the cup with particular relish. If not always

gay or in good spirits, we are glad when any occasion draws us out of

our natural gloom, and disposed to make the most of it. We may say with

_Silence_ in the play, ‘I have been merry once ere now,’—and this once

was to serve him all his life; for he was a person of wonderful silence

and gravity, though ‘he chirped over his cups,’ and announced with

characteristic glee that ‘there were pippins and cheese to come.’

_Silence_ was in this sense a merry man, that is, he would be merry if

he could, and a very great economy of wit, like very slender fare, was a

banquet to him, from the simplicity of his taste and habits.

‘Continents,’ says Hobbes, ‘have most of what they contain’—and in this

view it may be contended that the English are the merriest people in the

world, since they only show it on high-days and holidays. They are then

like a schoolboy let loose from school, or like a dog that has slipped

his collar. They are not gay like the French, who are one eternal smile

of self-complacency, tortured into affectation, or spun into languid

indifference, nor are they voluptuous and immersed in sensual indolence,

like the Italians; but they have that sort of intermittent, fitful,

irregular gaiety, which is neither worn out by habit, nor deadened by

passion, but is sought with avidity as it takes the mind by surprise, is

startled by a sense of oddity and incongruity, indulges its wayward

humours or lively impulses, with perfect freedom and lightness of heart,

and seizes occasion by the forelock, that it may return to serious

business with more cheerfulness, and have something to beguile the hours

of thought or sadness. I do not see how there can be high spirits

without low ones; and every thing has its price according to

circumstances. Perhaps we have to pay a heavier tax on pleasure, than

some others: what skills it, so long as our good spirits and good hearts

enable us to bear it?

‘They’ (the English), says Froissart, ‘amused themselves sadly after the

fashion of their country’—_ils se réjouissent tristement selon la

coutume de leur pays_. They have indeed a way of their own. Their mirth

is a relaxation from gravity, a challenge to dull care to be gone; and

one is not always clear at first, whether the appeal is successful. The

cloud may still hang on the brow; the ice may not thaw at once. To help

them out in their new character is an act of charity. Any thing short of

hanging or drowning is something to begin with. They do not enter into

their amusements the less doggedly because they may plague others. They

like a thing the better for hitting them a rap on the knuckles, for

making their blood tingle. They do not dance or sing, but they make good

cheer—‘eat, drink, and are merry.’ No people are fonder of field-sports,

Christmas gambols, or practical jests. Blindman’s-buff,

hunt-the-slipper, hot-cockles, and snap-dragon, are all approved English

games, full of laughable surprises and ‘hairbreadth ‘scapes,’ and serve

to amuse the winter fire-side after the roast-beef and plum-pudding, the

spiced ale and roasted crab, thrown (hissing-hot) into the foaming

tankard. Punch (not the liquor, but the puppet) is not, I fear, of

English origin; but there is no place, I take it, where he finds himself

more at home or meets a more joyous welcome, where he collects greater

crowds at the corners of streets, where he opens the eyes or distends

the cheeks wider, or where the bangs and blows, the uncouth gestures,

ridiculous anger and screaming voice of the chief performer excite more

boundless merriment or louder bursts of laughter among all ranks and

sorts of people. An English theatre is the very throne of pantomime; nor

do I believe that the gallery and boxes of Drury Lane or Covent Garden

filled on the proper occasions with holiday folks (big or little) yield

the palm for undisguised, tumultuous, inextinguishable laughter to any

spot in Europe. I do not speak of the refinement of the mirth (this is

no fastidious speculation) but of its cordiality, on the return of these

long looked-for and licensed periods; and I may add here, by way of

illustration, that the English common people are a sort of grown

children, spoiled and sulky perhaps, but full of glee and merriment,

when their attention is drawn off by some sudden and striking object.

The May-pole is almost gone out of fashion among us: but May-day,

besides its flowering hawthorns and its pearly dews, has still its

boasted exhibition of painted chimney-sweepers and their

Jack-o’-the-Green, whose tawdry finery, bedizened faces, unwonted

gestures, and short-lived pleasures call forth good-humoured smiles and

looks of sympathy in the spectators. There is no place where trap-ball,

fives, prison-base, foot-ball, quoits, bowls are better understood or

more successfully practised; and the very names of a cricket bat and

ball make English fingers tingle. What happy days must ‘Long Robinson’

have passed in getting ready his wickets and mending his bats, who when

two of the fingers of his right hand were struck off by the violence of

a ball, had a screw fastened to it to hold the bat, and with the other

hand still sent the ball thundering against the boards that bounded _Old

Lord’s cricket-ground_! What delightful hours must have been his in

looking forward to the matches that were to come, in recounting the

feats he had performed in those that were past! I have myself whiled

away whole mornings in seeing him strike the ball (like a countryman

mowing with a scythe) to the farthest extremity of the smooth, level,

sun-burnt ground, and with long, awkward strides count the notches that

made victory sure! Then again, cudgel-playing, quarter-staff, bull and

badger-baiting, cock-fighting are almost the peculiar diversions of this

island, and often objected to us as barbarous and cruel; horse-racing is

the delight and the ruin of numbers; and the noble science of boxing is

all our own. Foreigners can scarcely understand how we can squeeze

pleasure out of this pastime; the luxury of hard blows given or

received; the joy of the ring; nor the perseverance of the

combatants.[4] The English also excel, or are not excelled in wiring a

hare, in stalking a deer, in shooting, fishing, and hunting. England to

this day boasts her Robin Hood and his merry men, that stout archer and

outlaw, and patron saint of the sporting-calendar. What a cheerful sound

is that of the hunters, issuing from the autumnal wood and sweeping over

hill and dale!

——‘A cry more tuneable

Was never halloo’d to by hound or horn.’

What sparkling richness in the scarlet coats of the riders, what a

glittering confusion in the pack, what spirit in the horses, what

eagerness in the followers on foot, as they disperse over the plain, or

force their way over hedge and ditch! Surely, the coloured prints and

pictures of these, hung up in gentlemen’s halls and village alehouses,

however humble as works of art, have more life and health and spirit in

them, and mark the pith and nerve of the national character more

creditably than the mawkish, sentimental, affected designs of Theseus

and Pirithous, and Æneas and Dido, pasted on foreign _salons à manger_,

and the interior of country-houses. If our tastes are not epic, nor our

pretensions lofty, they are simple and our own; and we may possibly

enjoy our native rural sports, and the rude remembrances of them, with

the truer relish on this account, that they are suited to us and we to

them. The English nation, too, are naturally ‘brothers of the angle.’

This pursuit implies just that mixture of patience and pastime, of

vacancy and thoughtfulness, of idleness and business, of pleasure and of

pain, which is suited to the genius of an Englishman, and as I suspect,

of no one else in the same degree. He is eminently gifted to stand in

the situation assigned by Dr. Johnson to the angler, ‘at one end of a

rod with a worm at the other.’ I should suppose no language can show

such a book as an often-mentioned one, ‘Walton’s Complete Angler,’—so

full of _naïveté_, of unaffected sprightliness, of busy trifling, of

dainty songs, of refreshing brooks, of shady arbours, of happy thoughts

and of the herb called _Heart’s Ease_! Some persons can see neither the

wit nor wisdom of this genuine volume, as if a book as well as a man

might not have a personal character belonging to it, amiable, venerable

from the spirit of joy and thorough goodness it manifests, independently

of acute remarks or scientific discoveries: others object to the cruelty

of Walton’s theory and practice of trout-fishing—for my part, I should

as soon charge an infant with cruelty for killing a fly, and I feel the

same sort of pleasure in reading his book as I should have done in the

company of this happy, child-like old man, watching his ruddy cheek, his

laughing eye, the kindness of his heart, and the dexterity of his hand

in seizing his finny prey! It must be confessed, there is often an odd

sort of _materiality_ in English sports and recreations. I have known

several persons, whose existence consisted wholly in manual exercises,

and all whose enjoyments lay at their finger-ends. Their greatest

happiness was in cutting a stick, in mending a cabbage-net, in digging a

hole in the ground, in hitting a mark, turning a lathe, or in something

else of the same kind, at which they had a certain _knack_. Well is it

when we can amuse ourselves with such trifles and without injury to

others! This class of character, which the Spectator has immortalised in

the person of Will Wimble, is still common among younger brothers and

gentlemen of retired incomes in town or country. The _Cockney_ character

is of our English growth, as this intimates a feverish fidgety delight

in rural sights and sounds, and a longing wish, after the turmoil and

confinement of a city-life, to transport one’s-self to the freedom and

breathing sweetness of a country retreat. London is half suburbs. The

suburbs of Paris are a desert; and you see nothing but crazy wind-mills,

stone-walls, and a few straggling visitants in spots where in England

you would find a thousand villas, a thousand terraces crowned with their

own delights, or be stunned with the noise of bowling-greens and

tea-gardens, or stifled with the fumes of tobacco mingling with fragrant

shrubs, or the clouds of dust raised by half the population of the

metropolis panting and toiling in search of a mouthful of fresh air. The

Parisian is, perhaps, as well (or better) contented with himself

wherever he is, stewed in his shop or his garret; the Londoner is

miserable in these circumstances, and glad to escape from them.[5] Let

no one object to the gloomy appearance of a London Sunday, compared with

a Parisian one. It is a part of our politics and our religion: we would

not have James the First’s ‘Book of Sports’ thrust down our throats: and

besides, it is a part of our character to do one thing at a time, and

not to be dancing a jig and on our knees in the same breath. It is true

the Englishman spends his Sunday evening at the alehouse—

——‘And e`en on Sunday

Drank with Kirton Jean till Monday’—

but he only unbends and waxes mellow by degrees, and sits soaking till

he can neither sit, stand, nor go: it is his vice, and a beastly one it

is, but not a proof of any inherent distaste to mirth or

good-fellowship. Neither can foreigners throw the carnival in our teeth

with any effect: those who have seen it (at Florence, for example), will

say that it is duller than any thing in England. Our Bartholomew-Fair is

Queen Mab herself to it! What can be duller than a parcel of masks

moving about the streets and looking as grave and monotonous as possible

from day to day, and with the same lifeless formality in their limbs and

gestures as in their features? One might as well expect variety and

spirit in a procession of wax-work. We must be hard run indeed, when we

have recourse to a pasteboard proxy to set off our mirth: a mask may be

a very good cover for licentiousness (though of that I saw no signs),

but it is a very bad exponent of wit and humour. I should suppose there

is more drollery and unction in the caricatures in Gilray’s shop-window,

than in all the masks in Italy, without exception.[6]

The humour of English writing and description has often been wondered

at; and it flows from the same source as the merry _traits_ of our

character. A degree of barbarism and rusticity seems necessary to the

perfection of humour. The droll and laughable depend on peculiarity and

incongruity of character. But with the progress of refinement, the

peculiarities of individuals and of classes wear out or lose their

sharp, abrupt edges; nay, a certain slowness and dulness of

understanding is required to be struck with odd and unaccountable

appearances, for which a greater facility of apprehension can sooner

assign an explanation that breaks the force of the seeming absurdity,

and to which a wider scope of imagination is more easily reconciled.

Clowns and country people are more amused, are more disposed to laugh

and make sport of the dress of strangers, because from their ignorance

the surprise is greater, and they cannot conceive any thing to be

natural or proper to which they are unused. Without a given portion of

hardness and repulsiveness of feeling the ludicrous cannot well exist.

Wonder, and curiosity, the attributes of inexperience, enter greatly

into its composition. Now it appears to me that the English are (or

were) just at that mean point between intelligence and obtuseness, which

must produce the most abundant and happiest crop of humour. Absurdity

and singularity glide over the French mind without jarring or jostling

with it; or they evaporate in levity:—with the Italians they are lost in

indolence or pleasure. The ludicrous takes hold of the English

imagination, and clings to it with all its ramifications. We resent any

difference or peculiarity of appearance at first, and yet, having not

much malice at our hearts, we are glad to turn it into a jest—we are

liable to be offended, and as willing to be pleased—struck with oddity

from not knowing what to make of it, we wonder and burst out a laughing

at the eccentricity of others, while we follow our own bent from

wilfulness or simplicity, and thus afford them, in our turn, matter for

the indulgence of the comic vein. It is possible that a greater

refinement of manners may give birth to finer distinctions of satire and

a nicer tact for the ridiculous: but our insular situation and character

are, I should say, most likely to foster, as they have in fact fostered,

the greatest quantity of natural and striking humour, in spite of our

plodding tenaciousness, and want both of gaiety and quickness of

perception. A set of raw recruits with their awkward movements and

unbending joints are laughable enough: but they cease to be so, when

they have once been drilled into discipline and uniformity. So it is

with nations that lose their angular points and grotesque qualities with

education and intercourse: but it is in a mixed state of manners that

comic humour chiefly flourishes, for, in order that the drollery may not

be lost, we must have spectators of the passing scene who are able to

appreciate and embody its most remarkable features,—wits as well as

_butts_ for ridicule. I shall mention two names in this department,

which may serve to redeem the national character from absolute dulness

and solemn pretence,—Fielding and Hogarth. These were thorough specimens

of true English humour; yet both were grave men. In reality, too high a

pitch of animal spirits runs away with the imagination, instead of

helping it to reach the goal; is inclined to take the jest for granted

when it ought to work it out with patient and marked touches, and it

ends in vapid flippancy and impertinence. Among our neighbours on the

Continent, Moliere and Rabelais carried the freedom of wit and humour to

an almost incredible height; but they rather belonged to the old French

school, and even approach and exceed the English licence and

extravagance of conception. I do not consider Congreve’s wit (though it

belongs to us) as coming under the article here spoken of; for his

genius is any thing but _merry_. Lord Byron was in the habit of railing

at the spirit of our good old comedy, and of abusing Shakspeare’s Clowns

and Fools, which he said the refinement of the French and Italian stage

would not endure, and which only our grossness and puerile taste could

tolerate. In this I agree with him; and it is _pat_ to my purpose. I

flatter myself that we are almost the only people left who understand

and relish _nonsense_. We are not ‘merry and wise,’ but indulge our

mirth to excess and folly. When we trifle, we trifle in good earnest;

and having once relaxed our hold of the helm, drift idly down the

stream, and delighted with the change are tossed about ‘by every little

breath’ of whim or caprice,

‘That under Heaven is blown.’

All we then want is to proclaim a truce with reason, and to be pleased

with as little expense of thought or pretension to wisdom as possible.

This licensed fooling is carried to its very utmost length in

Shakspeare, and in some other of our elder dramatists, without, perhaps,

sufficient warrant or the same excuse. Nothing can justify this extreme

relaxation but extreme tension. Shakspeare’s trifling does indeed tread

upon the very borders of vacancy: his meaning often hangs by the very

slenderest threads. For this he might be blamed if it did not take away

our breath to follow his eagle flights, or if he did not at other times

make the cordage of our hearts crack. After our heads ache with

thinking, it is fair to play the fool. The clowns were as proper an

appendage to the gravity of our antique literature, as fools and dwarfs

were to the stately dignity of courts and noble houses in former days.

Of all people, they have the best right to claim a total exemption from

rules and rigid formality, who, when they have any thing of importance

to do, set about it with the greatest earnestness and perseverance, and

are generally grave and sober to a proverb.[7] Poor Swift, who wrote

more idle or _nonsense_ verses than any man, was the severest of

moralists; and his feelings and observations morbidly acute. Did not

Lord Byron himself follow up his Childe Harold with his Don Juan?—not

that I insist on what he did as an illustration of the English

character. He was one of the English Nobility, not one of the English

People; and his occasional ease and familiarity were in my mind equally

constrained and affected, whether in relation to the pretensions of his

rank or the efforts of his genius.

They ask you in France, how you pass your time in England without

amusements; and can with difficulty believe that there are theatres in

London, still less that they are larger and handsomer than those in

Paris. That we should have comic actors, ‘they own, surprises them.’

They judge of the English character in the lump as one great

jolter-head, containing all the stupidity of the country, as the large

ball at the top of the Dispensary in Warwick-lane, from its resemblance

to a gilded pill, has been made to represent the whole pharmacopœia and

professional quackery of the kingdom. They have no more notion, for

instance, how we should have such an actor as Liston on our stage, than

if we were to tell them we have parts performed by a sea-otter; nor if

they were to see him, would they be much the wiser, or know what to

think of his unaccountable twitches of countenance or nondescript

gestures, of his teeth chattering in his head, his eyes that seem

dropping from their sockets, his nose that is tickled by a jest as by a

feather and shining with self-complacency as if oiled, his ignorant

conceit, his gaping stupor, his lumpish vivacity in Lubin Log or Tony

Lumpkin; for as our rivals do not wind up the machine to such a

determined intensity of purpose, neither have they any idea of its

running down to such degrees of imbecility and folly, or coming to an

absolute _stand still_ and lack of meaning, nor can they enter into or

be amused with the contrast. No people ever laugh heartily who can give

a reason for their doing so: and I believe the English in general are

not yet in this predicament. They are not metaphysical, but very much in

a state of nature; and this is one main ground why I give them credit

for being merry, notwithstanding appearances. Their mirth is not the

mirth of vice or desperation, but of innocence and a native wildness.

They do not cavil or boggle at niceties, and not merely come to the edge

of a joke, but break their necks over it with a wanton ‘Here goes,’

where others make a _pirouette_ and stand upon decorum. The French

cannot, however, be persuaded of the excellence of our comic stage, nor

of the store we set by it. When they ask what amusements we have, it is

plain they can never have heard of Mrs. Jordan, nor King, nor Bannister,

nor Suett, nor Munden, nor Lewis, nor little Simmons, nor Dodd, and

Parsons, and Emery, and Miss Pope, and Miss Farren, and all those who

even in my time have gladdened a nation and ‘made life’s business like a

summer’s dream.’ Can I think of them, and of their names that glittered

in the playbills when I was young, exciting all the flutter of hope and

expectation of seeing them in their favourite parts of Nell, or Little

Pickle, or Touchstone, or Sir Peter Teazle, or Lenitive in the Prize, or

Lingo, or Crabtree, or Nipperkin, or old Dornton, or Ranger, or the

Copper Captain, or Lord Sands, or Filch, or Moses, or Sir Andrew

Aguecheek, or Acres, or Elbow, or Hodge, or Flora, or the Duenna, or

Lady Teazle, or Lady Grace, or of the gaiety that sparkled in all eyes,

and the delight that overflowed all hearts, as they glanced before us in

these parts,

‘Throwing a gaudy shadow upon life,’—

and not feel my heart yearn within me, or couple the thoughts of England

and the spleen together? Our cloud has at least its rainbow tints; ours

is not one long polar night of cold and dulness, but we have the

gleaming lights of fancy to amuse us, the household fires of truth and

genius to warm us. We can go to a play and see Liston; or stay at home

and read Roderick Random; or have Hogarth’s prints of _Marriage à la

Mode_ hanging round our room. ‘Tut! there’s livers even in England,’ as

well as ‘out of it.’ We are not quite the _forlorn hope_ of humanity,

the last of nations. The French look at us across the Channel, and

seeing nothing but water and a cloudy mist, think that this is England.

——‘What’s our Britain

In the world’s volume? In a great pool a swan’s nest.’

If they have any farther idea of us, it is of George III. and our Jack

tars, the House of Lords and House of Commons, and this is no great

addition to us. To go beyond this, to talk of arts and elegances as

having taken up their abode here, or to say that Mrs. Abington was equal

to Mademoiselle Mars, and that we at one time got up the ‘School for

Scandal,’ as they do the ‘Misanthrope,’ is to persuade them that Iceland

is a pleasant summer-retreat, or to recommend the whale-fishery as a

classical amusement. The French are the _cockneys_ of Europe, and have

no idea how any one can exist out of Paris, or be alive without

incessant grimace and _jabber_. Yet what imports it? What! though the

joyous train I have just enumerated were, perhaps, never heard of in the

precincts of the Palais-Royal, is it not enough that they gave pleasure

where they were, to those who saw and heard them? Must our laugh, to be

sincere, have its echo on the other side of the water? Had not the

French their favourites and their enjoyments at the time, that we knew

nothing of? Why then should we not have ours (and boast of them too)

without their leave? A monopoly of self-conceit is not a monopoly of all

other advantages. The English, when they go abroad, do not take away the

prejudice against them by their looks. We seem duller and sadder than we

are. As I write this, I am sitting in the open air in a beautiful

valley, near Vevey: Clarens is on my left, the Dent de Jamant is behind

me, the rocks of Meillerie opposite: under my feet is a green bank,

enamelled with white and purple flowers, in which a dew-drop here and

there still glitters with pearly light—

‘And gaudy butterflies flutter around.’

Intent upon the scene and upon the thoughts that stir within me, I

conjure up the cheerful passages of my life, and a crowd of happy images

appear before me. No one would see it in my looks—my eyes grow dull and

fixed, and I seem rooted to the spot, as all this phantasmagoria passes

in review before me, glancing a reflex lustre on the face of the world

and nature. But the traces of pleasure, in my case, sink into an

absorbent ground of thoughtful melancholy, and require to be brought out

by time and circumstances, or (as the critics tell you) by the _varnish_

of style!

The _comfort_, on which the English lay so much stress, is of the same

character, and arises from the same source as their mirth. Both exist by

contrast and a sort of contradiction. The English are certainly the most

uncomfortable of all people in themselves, and therefore it is that they

stand in need of every kind of comfort and accommodation. The least

thing puts them out of their way, and therefore every thing must be in

its place. They are mightily offended at disagreeable tastes and smells,

and therefore they exact the utmost neatness and nicety. They are

sensible of heat and cold, and therefore they cannot exist, unless every

thing is snug and warm, or else open and airy, where they are. They must

have ‘all appliances and means to boot.’ They are afraid of interruption

and intrusion, and therefore they shut themselves up in in-door

enjoyments and by their own firesides. It is not that they require

luxuries (for that implies a high degree of epicurean indulgence and

gratification), but they cannot do without _their comforts_; that is,

whatever tends to supply their physical wants, and ward off physical

pain and annoyance. As they have not a fund of animal spirits and

enjoyments in themselves, they cling to external objects for support,

and derive solid satisfaction from the ideas of order, cleanliness,

plenty, property, and domestic quiet, as they seek for diversion from

odd accidents and grotesque surprises, and have the highest possible

relish not of voluptuous softness, but of hard knocks and dry blows, as

one means of ascertaining their personal identity.

OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN

_The New Monthly Magazine._] [_January, 1826._

‘Come like shadows—so depart.’

B—— it was, I think, who suggested this subject, as well as the defence

of Guy Faux, which I urged him to execute. As, however, he would

undertake neither, I suppose I must do both—a task for which he would

have been much fitter, no less from the temerity than the felicity of

his pen—

‘Never so sure our rapture to create

As when it touch’d the brink of all we hate.’

Compared with him I shall, I fear, make but a common-place piece of

business of it; but I should be loth the idea was entirely lost, and

besides I may avail myself of some hints of his in the progress of it. I

am sometimes, I suspect, a better reporter of the ideas of other people

than expounder of my own. I pursue the one too far into paradox or

mysticism; the others I am not bound to follow farther than I like, or

than seems fair and reasonable.

On the question being started, A—— said, ‘I suppose the two first

persons you would choose to see would be the two greatest names in

English literature, Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. Locke?’ In this A——, as

usual, reckoned without his host. Every one burst out a laughing at the

expression of B——’s face, in which impatience was restrained by

courtesy. ‘Yes, the greatest names,’ he stammered out hastily, ‘but they

were not persons—not persons.’—‘Not persons?’ said A——, looking wise and

foolish at the same time, afraid his triumph might be premature. ‘That

is,’ rejoined B——, ‘not characters, you know. By Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac

Newton, you mean the Essay on the Human Understanding, and the

_Principia_, which we have to this day. Beyond their contents there is

nothing personally interesting in the men. But what we want to see any

one _bodily_ for, is when there is something peculiar, striking in the

individuals, more than we can learn from their writings, and yet are

curious to know. I dare say Locke and Newton were very like Kneller’s

portraits of them. But who could paint Shakspeare?’—‘Ay,’ retorted A——,

‘there it is; then I suppose you would prefer seeing him and Milton

instead?’—‘No,’ said B——, ‘neither. I have seen so much of Shakspeare on

the stage and on book-stalls, in frontispieces and on mantle-pieces,

that I am quite tired of the everlasting repetition: and as to Milton’s

face, the impressions that have come down to us of it I do not like; it

is too starched and puritanical; and I should be afraid of losing some

of the manna of his poetry in the leaven of his countenance and the

precisian’s band and gown.’—‘I shall guess no more,’ said A——. ‘Who is

it, then, you would like to see “in his habit as he lived,” if you had

your choice of the whole range of English literature?’ B—— then named

Sir Thomas Brown and Fulke Greville, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, as

the two worthies whom he should feel the greatest pleasure to encounter

on the floor of his apartment in their nightgown and slippers, and to

exchange friendly greeting with them. At this A—— laughed outright, and

conceived B—— was jesting with him; but as no one followed his example,

he thought there might be something in it, and waited for an explanation

in a state of whimsical suspense. B—— then (as well as I can remember a

conversation that passed twenty years ago—how time slips!) went on as

follows. ‘The reason why I pitch upon these two authors is, that their

writings are riddles, and they themselves the most mysterious of

personages. They resemble the soothsayers of old, who dealt in dark

hints and doubtful oracles; and I should like to ask them the meaning of

what no mortal but themselves, I should suppose, can fathom. There is

Dr. Johnson, I have no curiosity, no strange uncertainty about him: he

and Boswell together have pretty well let me into the secret of what

passed through his mind. He and other writers like him are sufficiently

explicit: my friends, whose repose I should be tempted to disturb, (were

it in my power) are implicit, inextricable, inscrutable.

“And call up him who left half-told

The story of Cambuscan bold.”

‘When I look at that obscure but gorgeous prose-composition (the

_Urn-burial_) I seem to myself to look into a deep abyss, at the bottom

of which are hid pearls and rich treasure; or it is like a stately

labyrinth of doubt and withering speculation, and I would invoke the

spirit of the author to lead me through it. Besides, who would not be

curious to see the lineaments of a man who, having himself been twice

married, wished that mankind were propagated like trees! As to Fulke

Greville, he is like nothing but one of his own “Prologues spoken by the

ghost of an old king of Ormus,” a truly formidable and inviting

personage: his style is apocalyptical, cabalistical, a knot worthy of

such an apparition to untie; and for the unravelling a passage or two, I

would stand the brunt of an encounter with so portentous a

commentator!’—‘I am afraid in that case,’ said A——, ‘that if the mystery

were once cleared up, the merit might be lost;‘—and turning to me,

whispered a friendly apprehension, that while B—— continued to admire

these old crabbed authors, he would never become a popular writer. Dr.

Donne was mentioned as a writer of the same period, with a very

interesting countenance, whose history was singular, and whose meaning

was often quite as _uncomeatable_, without a personal citation from the

dead, as that of any of his contemporaries. The volume was produced; and

while some one was expatiating on the exquisite simplicity and beauty of

the portrait prefixed to the old edition, A—— got hold of the poetry,

and exclaiming ‘What have we here?’ read the following:—

‘Here lies a She-Sun and a He-Moon there,

She gives the best light to his sphere,

Or each is both and all, and so

They unto one another nothing owe.’

There was no resisting this, till B——, seizing the volume, turned to the

beautiful ‘Lines to his Mistress,’ dissuading her from accompanying him

abroad, and read them with suffused features and a faltering tongue.

‘By our first strange and fatal interview,

By all desires which thereof did ensue,

By our long starving hopes, by that remorse

Which my words’ masculine persuasive force

Begot in thee, and by the memory

Of hurts, which spies and rivals threaten’d me,

I calmly beg. But by thy father’s wrath,

By all pains which want and divorcement hath,

I conjure thee; and all the oaths which I

And thou have sworn to seal joint constancy

Here I unswear, and overswear them thus,

Thou shalt not love by ways so dangerous.

Temper, oh fair Love! love’s impetuous rage,

Be my true mistress still, not my feign’d Page;

I’ll go, and, by thy kind leave, leave behind

Thee, only worthy to nurse in my mind.

Thirst to come back; oh, if thou die before,

My soul from other lands to thee shall soar.

Thy (else Almighty) beauty cannot move

Rage from the seas, nor thy love teach them love,

Nor tame wild Boreas’ harshness; thou hast read

How roughly he in pieces shiver’d

Fair Orithea, whom he swore he lov’d.

Fall ill or good, ’tis madness to have prov’d

Dangers unurg’d: Feed on this flattery,

That absent lovers one with th’ other be.

Dissemble nothing, not a boy; nor change

Thy body’s habit, nor mind; be not strange

To thyself only. All will spy in thy face

A blushing, womanly, discovering grace.

Richly cloth’d apes are called apes, and as soon

Eclips’d as bright we call the moon the moon.

Men of France, changeable cameleons,

Spittles of diseases, shops of fashions,

Love’s fuellers, and the rightest company

Of players, which upon the world’s stage be,

Will quickly know thee.... O stay here! for thee

England is only a worthy gallery,

To walk in expectation; till from thence

Our greatest King call thee to his presence.

When I am gone, dream me some happiness,

Nor let thy looks our long hid love confess,

Nor praise, nor dispraise me; nor bless, nor curse

Openly love’s force, nor in bed fright thy nurse

With midnight startings, crying out, Oh, oh,

Nurse, oh, my love is slain, I saw him go

O’er the white Alps alone; I saw him, I,

Assail’d, fight, taken, stabb’d, bleed, fall, and die.

Augur me better chance, except dread Jove

Think it enough for me to have had thy love.’

Some one then inquired of B—— if we could not see from the window the

Temple-walk in which Chaucer used to take his exercise; and on his name

being put to the vote, I was pleased to find that there was a general

sensation in his favour in all but A——, who said something about the

ruggedness of the metre, and even objected to the quaintness of the

orthography. I was vexed at this superficial gloss, pertinaciously

reducing every thing to its own trite level, and asked ‘if he did not

think it would be worth while to scan the eye that had first greeted the

Muse in that dim twilight and early dawn of English literature; to see

the head, round which the visions of fancy must have played like gleams

of inspiration or a sudden glory; to watch those lips that “lisped in

numbers, for the numbers came”—as by a miracle, or as if the dumb should

speak? Nor was it alone that he had been the first to tune his native

tongue (however imperfectly to modern ears); but he was himself a noble,

manly character, standing before his age and striving to advance it; a

pleasant humourist withal, who has not only handed down to us the living

manners of his time, but had, no doubt, store of curious and quaint

devices, and would make as hearty a companion as Mine Host of Tabard.

His interview with Petrarch is fraught with interest. Yet I would rather

have seen Chaucer in company with the author of the Decameron, and have

heard them exchange their best stories together, the Squire’s Tale

against the Story of the Falcon, the Wife of Bath’s Prologue against the

Adventures of Friar Albert. How fine to see the high mysterious brow

which learning then wore, relieved by the gay, familiar tone of men of

the world, and by the courtesies of genius. Surely, the thoughts and

feelings which passed through the minds of these great revivers of

learning, these Cadmuses who sowed the teeth of letters, must have

stamped an expression on their features, as different from the moderns

as their books, and well worth the perusal. Dante,’ I continued, ‘is as

interesting a person as his own Ugolino, one whose lineaments curiosity

would as eagerly devour in order to penetrate his spirit, and the only

one of the Italian poets I should care much to see. There is a fine

portrait of Ariosto by no less a hand than Titian’s; light, Moorish,

spirited, but not answering our idea. The same artist’s large colossal

profile of Peter Aretine is the only likeness of the kind that has the

effect of conversing with “the mighty dead,” and this is truly spectral,

ghastly, necromantic.’ B—— put it to me if I should like to see Spenser

as well as Chaucer; and I answered without hesitation, ‘No; for that his

beauties were ideal, visionary, not palpable or personal, and therefore

connected with less curiosity about the man. His poetry was the essence

of romance, a very halo round the bright orb of fancy; and the bringing

in the individual might dissolve the charm. No tones of voice could come

up to the mellifluous cadence of his verse; no form but of a winged

angel could vie with the airy shapes he has described. He was (to our

apprehensions) rather “a creature of the element, that lived in the

rainbow and played in the plighted clouds,” than an ordinary mortal. Or

if he did appear, I should wish it to be as a mere vision, like one of

his own pageants, and that he should pass by unquestioned like a dream

or sound—

——“_That_ was Arion crown’d:

So went he playing on the wat’ry plain!”’

Captain C. muttered something about Columbus, and M. C. hinted at the

Wandering Jew; but the last was set aside as spurious, and the first

made over to the New World.

‘I should like,’ said Miss D——, ‘to have seen Pope talking with Patty

Blount; and I _have_ seen Goldsmith.’ Every one turned round to look at

Miss D——, as if by so doing they too could get a sight of Goldsmith.

‘Where,’ asked a harsh croaking voice, ‘was Dr. Johnson in the years

1745–6? He did not write any thing that we know of, nor is there any

account of him in Boswell during those two years. Was he in Scotland

with the Pretender? He seems to have passed through the scenes in the

Highlands in company with Boswell many years after “with lack-lustre

eye,” yet as if they were familiar to him, or associated in his mind

with interests that he durst not explain. If so, it would be an

additional reason for my liking him; and I would give something to have

seen him seated in the tent with the youthful Majesty of Britain, and

penning the Proclamation to all true subjects and adherents of the

legitimate Government.’

‘I thought,’ said A——, turning short round upon B——, ‘that you of the

Lake School did not like Pope?’—‘Not like Pope! My dear sir, you must be

under a mistake—I can read him over and over for ever!’—‘Why certainly,

the “Essay on Man” must be masterpiece.’—‘It may be so, but I seldom

look into it.’—‘Oh! then it’s his Satires you admire?’—‘No, not his

Satires, but his friendly Epistles and his compliments.’—‘Compliments! I

did not know he ever made any.’—‘The finest,’ said B——, ‘that were ever

paid by the wit of man. Each of them is worth an estate for life—nay, is

an immortality. There is that superb one to Lord Cornbury:

“Despise low joys, low gains;

Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains;

Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains.”

‘Was there ever more artful insinuation of idolatrous praise? And then

that noble apotheosis of his friend Lord Mansfield (however little

deserved), when, speaking of the House of Lords, he adds—

“Conspicuous scene! another yet is nigh,

(More silent far) where kings and poets lie;

Where Murray (long enough his country’s pride)

Shall be no more than Tully or than Hyde!”

‘And with what a fine turn of indignant flattery he addresses Lord

Bolingbroke—

“Why rail they then, if but one wreath of mine,

Oh! all accomplish’d St. John, deck thy shrine?”

‘Or turn,’ continued B——, with a slight hectic on his cheek and his eye

glistening, ‘to his list of early friends:

“But why then publish? Granville the polite,

And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write;

Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise,

And Congreve loved and Swift endured my lays:

The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read,

Ev’n mitred Rochester would nod the head;

And St. John’s self (great Dryden’s friend before)

Received with open arms one poet more.

Happy my studies, if by these approved!

Happier their author, if by these beloved!

From these the world will judge of men and books,

Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks.”’

Here his voice totally failed him, and throwing down the book, he said,

‘Do you think I would not wish to have been friends with such a man as

this?’

‘What say you to Dryden?’—‘He rather made a show of himself, and

courted popularity in that lowest temple of Fame, a coffee-house, so

as in some measure to vulgarize one’s idea of him. Pope, on the

contrary, reached the very _beau-ideal_ of what a poet’s life should

be; and his fame while living seemed to be an emanation from that

which was to circle his name after death. He was so far enviable (and

one would feel proud to have witnessed the rare spectacle in him) that

he was almost the only poet and man of genius who met with his reward

on this side of the tomb, who realized in friends, fortune, the esteem

of the world, the most sanguine hopes of a youthful ambition, and who

found that sort of patronage from the great during his lifetime which

they would be thought anxious to bestow upon him after his death. Read

Gay’s verses to him on his supposed return from Greece, after his

translation of Homer was finished, and say if you would not gladly

join the bright procession that welcomed him home, or see it once more

land at Whitehall-stairs.’—‘Still,’ said Miss D——, ‘I would rather

have seen him talking with Patty Blount, or riding by in a

coronet-coach with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu!’

E——, who was deep in a game of piquet at the other end of the room,

whispered to M. C. to ask if Junius would not be a fit person to invoke

from the dead. ‘Yes,’ said B——, ‘provided he would agree to lay aside

his mask.’

We were now at a stand for a short time, when Fielding was mentioned as

a candidate: only one, however, seconded the proposition.

‘Richardson?’—‘By all means, but only to look at him through the

glass-door of his back-shop, hard at work upon one of his novels (the

most extraordinary contrast that ever was presented between an author

and his works), but not to let him come behind his counter lest he

should want you to turn customer, nor to go upstairs with him, lest he

should offer to read the first manuscript of Sir Charles Grandison,

which was originally written in eight and twenty volumes octavo, or get

out the letters of his female correspondents, to prove that Joseph

Andrews was low.’

There was but one statesman in the whole of English history that any one

expressed the least desire to see—Oliver Cromwell, with his fine, frank,

rough, pimply face, and wily policy;—and one enthusiast, John Bunyan,

the immortal author of the Pilgrim’s Progress. It seemed that if he came

into the room, dreams would follow him, and that each person would nod

under his golden cloud, ‘nigh-sphered in Heaven,’ a canopy as strange

and stately as any in Homer.

Of all persons near our own time, Garrick’s name was received with the

greatest enthusiasm, who was proposed by J. F——. He presently superseded

both Hogarth and Handel, who had been talked of, but then it was on

condition that he should act in tragedy and comedy, in the play and the

farce, Lear and Wildair and Abel Drugger. What a _sight for sore eyes_

that would be! Who would not part with a year’s income at least, almost

with a year of his natural life, to be present at it? Besides, as he

could not act alone, and recitations are unsatisfactory things, what a

troop he must bring with him—the silver-tongued Barry, and Quin, and

Shuter and Weston, and Mrs. Clive and Mrs. Pritchard, of whom I have

heard my father speak as so great a favourite when he was young! This

would indeed be a revival of the dead, the restoring of art; and so much

the more desirable, as such is the lurking scepticism mingled with our

overstrained admiration of past excellence, that though we have the

speeches of Burke, the portraits of Reynolds, the writings of Goldsmith,

and the conversation of Johnson, to show what people could do at that

period, and to confirm the universal testimony to the merits of Garrick;

yet, as it was before our time, we have our misgivings, as if he was

probably after all little better than a Bartlemy-fair actor, dressed out

to play Macbeth in a scarlet coat and laced cocked-hat. For one, I

should like to have seen and heard with my own eyes and ears. Certainly,

by all accounts, if any one was ever moved by the true histrionic

_æstus_, it was Garrick. When he followed the Ghost in Hamlet, he did

not drop the sword, as most actors do behind the scenes, but kept the

point raised the whole way round, so fully was he possessed with the

idea, or so anxious not to lose sight of his part for a moment. Once at

a splendid dinner-party at Lord ——’s, they suddenly missed Garrick, and

could not imagine what was become of him, till they were drawn to the

window by the convulsive screams and peals of laughter of a young negro

boy, who was rolling on the ground in an ecstasy of delight to see

Garrick mimicking a turkey-cock in the court-yard, with his coat-tail

stuck out behind, and in a seeming flutter of feathered rage and pride.

Of our party only two persons present had seen the British Roscius; and

they seemed as willing as the rest to renew their acquaintance with

their old favourite.

We were interrupted in the hey-day and mid-career of this fanciful

speculation, by a grumbler in a corner, who declared it was a shame to

make all this rout about a mere player and farce-writer, to the neglect

and exclusion of the fine old dramatists, the contemporaries and rivals

of Shakspeare. B—— said he had anticipated this objection when he had

named the author of Mustapha and Alaham; and out of caprice insisted

upon keeping him to represent the set, in preference to the wild

hair-brained enthusiast Kit Marlowe; to the sexton of St. Ann’s,

Webster, with his melancholy yew-trees and death’s-heads; to Deckar, who

was but a garrulous proser; to the voluminous Heywood; and even to

Beaumont and Fletcher, whom we might offend by complimenting the wrong

author on their joint productions. Lord Brook, on the contrary, stood

quite by himself, or in Cowley’s words, was ‘a vast species alone.’ Some

one hinted at the circumstance of his being a lord, which rather

startled B——, but he said a _ghost_ would perhaps dispense with strict

etiquette, on being regularly addressed by his title. Ben Jonson divided

our suffrages pretty equally. Some were afraid he would begin to traduce

Shakspeare, who was not present to defend himself. ‘If he grows

disagreeable,’ it was whispered aloud, ‘there is G—— can match him.’ At

length, his romantic visit to Drummond of Hawthornden was mentioned, and

turned the scale in his favour.

B—— inquired if there was any one that was hanged that I would choose to

mention? And I answered, Eugene Aram.[8] The name of the ‘Admirable

Crichton’ was suddenly started as a splendid example of _waste_ talents,

so different from the generality of his countrymen. This choice was

mightily approved by a North-Briton present, who declared himself

descended from that prodigy of learning and accomplishment, and said he

had family-plate in his possession as vouchers for the fact, with the

initials A. C.—_Admirable Crichton_! H—— laughed or rather roared as

heartily at this as I should think he has done for many years.

The last-named Mitre-courtier[9] then wished to know whether there were

any metaphysicians to whom one might be tempted to apply the wizard

spell? I replied, there were only six in modern times deserving the

name—Hobbes, Berkeley, Butler, Hartley, Hume, Leibnitz; and perhaps

Jonathan Edwards, a Massachusets man.[10] As to the French, who talked

fluently of having _created_ this science, there was not a title in any

of their writings, that was not to be found literally in the authors I

had mentioned. [Horne Tooke, who might have a claim to come in under the

head of Grammar, was still living.] None of these names seemed to excite

much interest, and I did not plead for the re-appearance of those who

might be thought best fitted by the abstracted nature of their studies

for their present spiritual and disembodied state, and who, even while

on this living stage, were nearly divested of common flesh and blood. As

A—— with an uneasy fidgetty face was about to put some question about

Mr. Locke and Dugald Stewart, he was prevented by M. C. who observed,

‘If J—— was here, he would undoubtedly be for having up those profound

and redoubted scholiasts, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.’ I said this

might be fair enough in him who had read or fancied he had read the

original works, but I did not see how we could have any right to call up

these authors to give an account of themselves in person, till we had

looked into their writings.

By this time it should seem that some rumour of our whimsical

deliberation had got wind, and had disturbed the _irritabile genus_ in

their shadowy abodes, for we received messages from several candidates

that we had just been thinking of. Gray declined our invitation, though

he had not yet been asked: Gay offered to come and bring in his hand the

Duchess of Bolton, the original Polly: Steele and Addison left their

cards as Captain Sentry and Sir Roger de Coverley: Swift came in and sat

down without speaking a word, and quitted the room as abruptly: Otway

and Chatterton were seen lingering on the opposite side of the Styx, but

could not muster enough between them to pay Charon his fare: Thomson

fell asleep in the boat, and was rowed back again—and Burns sent a low

fellow, one John Barleycorn, an old companion of his who had conducted

him to the other world, to say that he had during his lifetime been

drawn out of his retirement as a show, only to be made an exciseman of,

and that he would rather remain where he was. He desired, however, to

shake hands by his representative—the hand, thus held out, was in a

burning fever, and shook prodigiously.

The room was hung round with several portraits of eminent painters.

While we were debating whether we should demand speech with these

masters of mute eloquence, whose features were so familiar to us, it

seemed that all at once they glided from their frames, and seated

themselves at some little distance from us. There was Leonardo with his

majestic beard and watchful eye, having a bust of Archimedes before him;

next him was Raphael’s graceful head turned round to the Fornarina; and

on his other side was Lucretia Borgia, with calm, golden locks; Michael

Angelo had placed the model of St. Peter’s on the table before him;

Corregio had an angel at his side; Titian was seated with his Mistress

between himself and Giorgioni; Guido was accompanied by his own Aurora,

who took a dice-box from him; Claude held a mirror in his hand; Rubens

patted a beautiful panther (led in by a satyr) on the head; Vandyke

appeared as his own Paris, and Rembrandt was hid under furs, gold chains

and jewels, which Sir Joshua eyed closely, holding his hand so as to

shade his forehead. Not a word was spoken; and as we rose to do them

homage, they still presented the same surface to the view. Not being

_bonâ-fide_ representations of living people, we got rid of the splendid

apparitions by signs and dumb show. As soon as they had melted into thin

air, there was a loud noise at the outer door, and we found it was

Giotto, Cimabue, and Ghirlandaio, who had been raised from the dead by

their earnest desire to see their illustrious successors—

‘Whose names on earth

In Fame’s eternal records live for aye!’

Finding them gone, they had no ambition to be seen after them, and

mournfully withdrew. ‘Egad!’ said B——, ‘those are the very fellows I

should like to have had some talk with, to know how they could see to

paint when all was dark around them?’

‘But shall we have nothing to say,’ interrogated G. J——, ‘to the Legend

of Good Women?’—‘Name, name, Mr. J——,’ cried H—— in a boisterous tone of

friendly exultation, ‘name as many as you please, without reserve or

fear of molestation!’ J—— was perplexed between so many amiable

recollections, that the name of the lady of his choice expired in a

pensive whiff of his pipe; and B—— impatiently declared for the Duchess

of Newcastle. Mrs. Hutchinson was no sooner mentioned, than she carried

the day from the Duchess. We were the less solicitous on this subject of

filling up the posthumous lists of Good Women, as there was already one

in the room as good, as sensible, and in all respects as exemplary, as

the best of them could be for their lives! ‘I should like vastly to have

seen Ninon de l’Enclos,’ said that incomparable person; and this

immediately put us in mind that we had neglected to pay honour due to

our friends on the other side of the Channel: Voltaire, the patriarch of

levity, and Rousseau, the father of sentiment, Montaigne and Rabelais

(great in wisdom and in wit), Moliere and that illustrious group that

are collected round him (in the print of that subject) to hear him read

his comedy of the Tartuffe at the house of Ninon; Racine, La Fontaine,

Rochefoucault, St. Evremont, &c.

‘There is one person,’ said a shrill, querulous voice, ‘I would rather

see than all these—Don Quixote!’

‘Come, come!’ said H——; ‘I thought we should have no heroes, real or

fabulous. What say you, Mr. B——? Are you for eking out your shadowy list

with such names as Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Tamerlane, or Ghengis

Khan?’—‘Excuse me,’ said B——, ‘on the subject of characters in active

life, plotters and disturbers of the world, I have a crotchet of my own,

which I beg leave to reserve.’—‘No, no! come, out with your

worthies!’—‘What do you think of Guy Faux and Judas Iscariot?’ H——

turned an eye upon him like a wild Indian, but cordial and full of

smothered glee. ‘Your most exquisite reason!’ was echoed on all sides;

and A—— thought that B—— had now fairly entangled himself. ‘Why, I

cannot but think,’ retorted he of the wistful countenance, ‘that Guy

Faux, that poor fluttering annual scare-crow of straw and rags, is an

ill-used gentleman. I would give something to see him sitting pale and

emaciated, surrounded by his matches and his barrels of gunpowder, and

expecting the moment that was to transport him to Paradise for his

heroic self-devotion; but if I say any more, there is that fellow G——

will make something of it. And as to Judas Iscariot, my reason is

different. I would fain see the face of him, who, having dipped his hand

in the same dish with the Son of Man, could afterwards betray him. I

have no conception of such a thing; nor have I ever seen any picture

(not even Leonardo’s very fine one) that gave me the least idea of

it.’—‘You have said enough, Mr. B——, to justify your choice.’

‘Oh! ever right, Menenius,—ever right!’

‘There is only one other person I can ever think of after this,’

continued H——; but without mentioning a name that once put on a

semblance of mortality. ‘If Shakspeare was to come into the room, we

should all rise up to meet him; but if that person was to come into it,

we should all fall down and try to kiss the hem of his garment!’

As a lady present seemed now to get uneasy at the turn the conversation

had taken, we rose up to go. The morning broke with that dim, dubious

light by which Giotto, Cimabue, and Ghirlandaio must have seen to paint

their earliest works; and we parted to meet again and renew similar

topics at night, the next night, and the night after that, till that

night overspread Europe which saw no dawn. The same event, in truth,

broke up our little Congress that broke up the great one. But that was

to meet again: our deliberations have never been resumed.

ON THE CONVERSATION OF LORDS

_The New Monthly Magazine._] [_April, 1826._

‘An infinite deal of nothing,’—SHAKSPEARE.

The conversation of Lords is very different from that of authors.

Mounted on horseback, they stick at nothing in the chace, and clear

every obstacle with flying leaps, while we poor devils have no chance of

keeping up with them with our clouten shoes and long hunting-poles. They

have all the benefit of education, society, confidence, they read books,

purchase pictures, breed horses, learn to ride, dance, and fence, look

after their estates, travel abroad:—authors have none of these

advantages, or inlets of knowledge, to assist them, except one, reading;

and this is still more impoverished and clouded by the painful exercise

of their own thoughts. The knowledge of the Great has a character of

wealth and property in it, like the stores of the rich merchant or

manufacturer, who lays his hands on all within his reach: the

understanding of the student is like the workshop of the mechanic, who

has nothing but what he himself creates. How difficult is the

production, how small the display in the one case compared to the other!

Most of Correggio’s designs are contained in one small room at Parma:

how different from the extent and variety of some hereditary and

princely collections!

The human mind has a trick (probably a very natural and consoling one)

of striking a balance between the favours of wisdom and of fortune, and

of making one thing a gratuitous and convenient foil to another. Whether

this is owing to envy or to a love of justice, I will not say: but

whichever it is owing to, I must own I do not think it well founded. A

scholar is without money: therefore (to make the odds even) we argue

(not very wisely) that a rich man must be without ideas. This does not

follow. ‘The wish is father to that thought;’ and the thought is a

spurious one. We might as well pretend, that because a man has the

advantage of us in height, he is not strong or in good health; or

because a woman is handsome, she is not at the same time young,

accomplished and well-bred. Our fastidious self-love or our rustic

prejudices may revolt at the accumulation of advantages in others; but

we must learn to submit to the mortifying truth, which every day’s

experience points out, with what grace we may. There were those who

grudged to Lord Byron the name of a poet because he was of noble birth;

as he himself could not endure the praises bestowed upon Wordsworth,

whom he considered as a clown. He carried this weakness so far, that he

even seemed to regard it as a piece of presumption in Shakspeare _to be

preferred before him_ as a dramatic author, and contended that Milton’s

writing an epic poem and the ‘Answer to Salmasius’ was entirely owing to

vanity—so little did he relish the superiority of the old blind

schoolmaster. So it is that one party would arrogate every advantage to

themselves, while those on the other side would detract from all in

their rivals that they do not themselves possess. Some will not have the

statue painted: others can see no beauty in the clay-model!

The man of rank and fortune, besides his chance for the common or (now

and then) an uncommon share of wit and understanding, has it in his

power to avail himself of every thing that is to be taught of art and

science; he has tutors and valets at his beck; he may master the dead

languages, he _must_ acquire the modern ones; he moves in the highest

circles, and may descend to the lowest; the paths of pleasure, of

ambition, of knowledge, are open to him; he may devote himself to a

particular study, or skim the cream of all; he may read books or men or

things, as he finds most convenient or agreeable; he is not forced to

confine his attention to some one dry uninteresting pursuit; he has a

single _hobby_, or half a dozen; he is not distracted by care, by

poverty and want of leisure; he has every opportunity and facility

afforded him for acquiring various accomplishments of body or mind, and

every encouragement, from confidence and success, for making an imposing

display of them; he may laugh with the gay, jest with the witty, argue

with the wise; he has been in courts, in colleges, and camps, is

familiar with playhouses and taverns, with the riding-house and the

dissecting-room, has been present at or taken part in the debates of

both Houses of Parliament, was in the O. P. row, and is deep in the

Fancy, understands the broadsword exercise, is a connoisseur in

regimentals, plays the whole game at whist, is a tolerable proficient at

backgammon, drives four in hand, skates, rows, swims, shoots; knows the

different sorts of game and modes of agriculture in the different

counties of England, the manufactures and commerce of the different

towns, the politics of Europe, the campaigns in Spain, has the Gazette,

the newspapers, and reviews at his fingers’ ends, has visited the finest

scenes of Nature and beheld the choicest works of Art, and is in society

where he is continually hearing or talking of all these things; and yet

we are surprised to find that a person so circumstanced and qualified

has any ideas to communicate or words to express himself, and is not, as

by patent and prescription he was bound to be, a mere well-dressed fop

of fashion or a booby lord! It would be less remarkable if a poor

author, who has none of this giddy range and scope of information, who

pores over the page till it fades from his sight, and refines upon his

style till the words stick in his throat, should be dull as a beetle and

mute as a fish, instead of spontaneously pouring out a volume of wit and

wisdom on every subject that can be started.

An author lives out of the world, or mixes chiefly with those of his own

class; which renders him pedantic and pragmatical, or gives him a

reserved, hesitating, and _interdicted_ manner. A lord or

gentleman-commoner goes into the world, and this imparts that fluency,

spirit, and freshness to his conversation, which arises from the

circulation of ideas and from the greater animation and excitement of

unrestrained intercourse. An author’s tongue is tied for want of

somebody to speak to: his ideas rust and become obscured, from not being

brought out in company and exposed to the gaze of instant admiration. A

lord has always some one at hand on whom he can ‘bestow his

tediousness,’ and grows voluble, copious, inexhaustible in consequence:

his wit is polished, and the flowers of his oratory expanded by his

smiling commerce with the world, like the figures in tapestry, that

after being thrust into a corner and folded up in closets, are displayed

on festival and gala-days. Again, the man of fashion and fortune reduces

many of those arts and mysteries to practice, of which the scholar gains

all his knowledge from books and vague description. Will not the rules

of architecture find a readier reception and sink deeper into the mind

of the proprietor of a noble mansion, or of him who means to build one,

than of the half-starved occupier of a garret? Will not the political

economist’s insight into Mr. Ricardo’s doctrine of Rent, or Mr.

Malthus’s theory of Population, be vastly quickened by the circumstance

of his possessing a large landed estate and having to pay enormous

poor-rates? And in general is it not self-evident that a man’s knowledge

of the true interests of the country will be enlarged just in proportion

to the _stake_ he has in it? A person may have read accounts of

different cities and the customs of different nations: but will this

give him the same accurate idea of the situation of celebrated places,

of the aspect and manners of the inhabitants, or the same lively impulse

and ardour and fund of striking particulars in expatiating upon them, as

if he had run over half the countries of Europe, for no other purpose

than to satisfy his own curiosity, and excite that of others on his

return? I many years ago looked into the Duke of Newcastle’s ‘Treatise

on Horsemanship’; all I remember of it is some quaint cuts of the Duke

and his riding-master introduced to illustrate the lessons. Had I myself

possessed a stud of Arabian coursers, with grooms and a master of the

horse to assist me in reducing these precepts to practice, they would

have made a stronger impression on my mind; and what interested myself

from vanity or habit, I could have made interesting to others. I am sure

I could have learnt to _ride the Great Horse_, and do twenty other

things, in the time I have employed in endeavouring to make something

out of nothing, or in conning the same problem fifty times over, as

monks count over their beads! I have occasionally in my life bought a

few prints, and hung them up in my room with great satisfaction; but is

it to be supposed possible, from this casual circumstance, that I should

compete in taste or in the knowledge of _virtù_ with a peer of the

realm, who has in his possession the costly designs, or a wealthy

commoner, who has spent half his fortune in learning to distinguish

copies from originals? ‘A question not to be asked!’ Nor is it likely

that the having dipped into the Memoirs of Count Grammont, or of Lady

Vane in Peregrine Pickle, should enable any one to sustain a

conversation on subjects of love and gallantry with the same ease,

grace, brilliancy, and spirit as the having been engaged in a hundred

adventures of one’s own, or heard the scandal and tittle-tattle of

fashionable life for the last thirty years canvassed a hundred times.

Books may be manufactured from other books by some dull, mechanical

process: it is conversation and the access to the best society that

alone fit us for society; or ‘the act and practic part of life must be

the mistress to our theorique,’ before we can hope to shine in mixed

company, or bend our previous knowledge to ordinary and familiar uses

out of that plaster-cast mould which is as brittle as it is formal!

There is another thing which tends to produce the same effect, viz. that

lords and gentlemen seldom trouble themselves about the knotty and

uninviting parts of a subject: they leave it to ‘the dregs of earth’ to

drain the cup or find the bottom. They are attracted by the frothy and

sparkling. If a question puzzles them, or is not likely to amuse others,

they leave it to its fate, or to those whose business it is to contend

with difficulty, and to pursue truth for its own sake. They string

together as many available, _off-hand_ topics as they can procure for

love or money; and aided by a good person or address, sport them with

very considerable effect at the next rout or party they go to. They do

not _bore_ you with pedantry, or tease you with sophistry. Their

conversation is not made up of _moot-points_ or _choke-pears_. They do

not willingly forego ‘the feast of reason or the flow of soul’ to grub

up some solitary truth or dig for hid treasure. They are amateurs, not

professors; the patrons, not the drudges of knowledge. An author loses

half his life, and _stultifies_ his faculties, in hopes to find out

something which perhaps neither he nor any one else can ever find out.

For this he neglects half a hundred acquirements, half a hundred

accomplishments. _Aut Cæsar aut nihil._ He is proud of the discovery or

of the fond pursuit of one truth—a lord is vain of a thousand

ostentatious common-places. If the latter ever devotes himself to some

crabbed study, or sets about finding out the longitude, he is then to be

looked upon as a humorist if he fails—a genius if he succeeds—and no

longer belongs to the class I have been speaking of.

Perhaps a multiplicity of attainments and pursuits is not very

favourable to their selectness; as a local and personal acquaintance

with objects of imagination takes away from, instead of adding to, their

romantic interest. Familiarity is said to breed contempt; or at any

rate, the being brought into contact with places, persons, or things

that we have hitherto only heard or read of, removes a certain aerial

delicious veil of refinement from them, and strikes at that _ideal_

abstraction, which is the charm and boast of a life conversant chiefly

among books. The huddling a number of tastes and studies together tends

to degrade and vulgarise each, and to give a crude, unconcocted,

dissipated turn to the mind. Instead of stuffing it full of gross,

palpable, immediate objects of excitement, a wiser plan would be to

leave something in reserve, something hovering in airy space to draw our

attention out of ourselves, to excite hope, curiosity, wonder, and never

to satisfy it. The great art is not to throw a glare of light upon all

objects, or to lay the whole extended landscape bare at one view; but so

to manage as to see the more amiable side of things, and through the

narrow vistas and loop-holes of retreat,

‘Catch glimpses that may make us less forlorn.’

I hate to annihilate air and distance by the perpetual use of an

opera-glass, to run every thing into foreground, and to interpose no

medium between the thought and the object. The breath of words stirs and

plays idly with the gossamer web of fancy: the touch of things destroys

it. I have seen a good deal of authors: and I believe that they (as well

as I) would quite as lieve that I had not. Places I have seen too, that

did not answer my expectation. Pictures (that is, some few of them) are

the only things that are the better for our having studied them ‘face to

face, not in a glass darkly,’ and that in themselves surpass any

description we can give, or any notion we can form of them. But I do not

think seriously, after all, that those who possess are the best judges

of them. They become furniture, property in their hands. The purchasers

look to the price they will fetch, or turn to that which they have cost.

They consider not beauty or expression, but the workmanship, the date,

the pedigree, the school—something that will figure in the description

in a catalogue or in a puff in a newspaper. They are blinded by silly

admiration of whatever belongs to themselves, and warped so as to eye

‘with jealous leer malign’ all that is not theirs. Taste is melted down

in the crucible of avarice and vanity, and leaves a wretched _caput

mortuum_ of pedantry and conceit. As to books, they ‘best can feel them

who have read them most,’ and who rely on them for their only support

and their only chance of distinction. They most keenly relish the graces

of style who have in vain tried to make them their own: they alone

understand the value of a thought who have gone through the trouble of

thinking. The privation of other advantages is not a clear loss, if it

is counterbalanced by a proportionable concentration and unity of

interest in what is left. The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the

man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame. A member of the

Roxburgh Club has a certain work (let it be the Decameron of Boccaccio)

splendidly bound, and in the old quarto edition, we will say. In this

not only his literary taste is gratified, but the pride of property, the

love of external elegance and decoration. The poor student has only a

paltry and somewhat worn copy of the same work (or perhaps only a

translation) which he picked up at a stall, standing out of a shower of

rain. What then! has not the Noble Virtuoso doubly the advantage, and a

much higher pleasure in the perusal of the work? No; for these are

vulgar and mechanical helps to the true enjoyment of letters. From all

this mock-display and idle parade of binding and arms and dates, his

unthought-of rival is precluded, and sees only the talismanic words,

feels only the spirit of the author, and in that author reads ‘with

sparkling eyes’

‘His title to a mansion in the skies.’

Oh! divine air of learning, fanned by the undying breath of genius,

still let me taste thee, free from all adventitious admixtures,

‘Pure in the last recesses of the soul!’

We are far at present from the style of Swift’s ‘Polite Conversation.’

The fashionable tone has quite changed in this respect, and almost gone

into the opposite extreme. At that period, the polite world seems to

have been nearly at a stand, in a state of intellectual _abeyance_; or

in the interval between the disuse of chivalrous exercises and the

introduction of modern philosophy, not to have known how to pass its

time and to have sunk into the most common-place formality and unmeaning

apathy. But lo! at a signal given, or rather prompted by that most

powerful of all calls, the want of something to do, all rush into the

lists, having armed themselves anew with the shining panoply of science

and of letters, with an eagerness, a perseverance, a dexterity, and a

success that are truly astonishing. The higher classes have of late

taken the lead almost as much in arts as they formerly did in arms, when

the last was the only prescribed mode of distinguishing themselves from

the rabble whom they treated as serfs and churls. The prevailing cue at

present is to regard mere authors (who are not also of gentle blood) as

dull, illiterate, poor creatures, a sort of pretenders to taste and

elegance, and adventurers in intellect. The true adepts in black-letter

are knights of the shire: the sworn patentees of Parnassus are Peers of

the Realm. Not to pass for a literary quack, you must procure a diploma

from the College of Heralds. A dandy conceals a bibliomanist: our belles

are _bluestockings_. The Press is so entirely monopolised by beauty,

birth, or importance in the State, that an author by profession resigns

the field to the crowd of well-dressed competitors, out of modesty or

pride, is fain to keep out of sight—

‘Or write by stealth and blush to find it fame!’

Lord Byron used to boast that he could bring forward a dozen young men

of fashion who could beat all the regular authors at their several

weapons of wit or argument; and though I demur to the truth of the

assertion, yet there is no saying till the thing is tried. Young

gentlemen make _very pretty sparrers_, but are not the ‘ugliest

customers’ when they take off the gloves. Lord Byron himself was in his

capacity of author an _out-and-outer_; but then it was at the expense of

other things, for he could not talk except in short sentences and

sarcastic allusions, he had no ready resources; all his ideas moulded

themselves into stanzas, and all his ardour was carried off in rhyme.

The channel of his pen was worn deep by habit and power; the current of

his thoughts flowed strong in it, and nothing remained to supply the

neighbouring flats and shallows of miscellaneous conversation, but a few

sprinklings of wit or gushes of spleen. An intense purpose concentrated

and gave a determined direction to his energies, that ‘held on their

way, unslacked of motion.’ The track of his genius was like a volcanic

eruption, a torrent of burning lava, full of heat and splendour and

headlong fury, that left all dry, cold, hard, and barren behind it! To

say nothing of a host of female authors, a bright galaxy above our

heads, there is no young lady of fashion in the present day, scarce a

boarding-school girl, that is not mistress of as many branches of

knowledge as would set up half-a-dozen literary hacks. In lieu of the

sampler and the plain-stitch of our grandmothers, they have so many

hours for French, so many for Italian, so many for English grammar and

composition, so many for geography and the use of the globes, so many

for history, so many for botany, so many for painting, music, dancing,

riding, &c. One almost wonders how so many studies are crammed into the

twenty-four hours; or how such fair and delicate creatures can master

them without spoiling the smoothness of their brows, the sweetness of

their tempers, or the graceful simplicity of their manners. A girl

learns French (not only to read, but to speak it) in a few months, while

a boy is as many years in learning to construe Latin. Why so? Chiefly

because the one is treated as a _bagatelle_ or agreeable relaxation; the

other as a serious task or necessary evil. Education, a very few years

back, was looked upon as a hardship, and enforced by menaces and blows,

instead of being carried on (as now) as an amusement and under the garb

of pleasure, and with the allurements of self-love. It is found that the

products of the mind flourish better and shoot up more quickly in the

sunshine of good-humour and in the air of freedom, than under the frowns

of sullenness, or the shackles of authority. ‘The labour we delight in

physics pain.’ The idlest people are not those who have most

leisure-time to dispose of as they choose: take away the feeling of

compulsion, and you supply a motive for application, by converting a

toil into a pleasure. This makes nearly all the difference between the

hardest drudgery and the most delightful exercise—not the degree of

exertion, but the motive and the accompanying sensation. Learning does

not gain proselytes by the austerity or awfulness of its looks. By

representing things as so difficult, and as exacting such dreadful

sacrifices, and to be acquired under such severe penalties, we not only

deter the student from the attempt, but lay a dead-weight upon the

imagination, and destroy that cheerfulness and alacrity of spirit which

is the spring of thought and action. But to return.—An author by

profession reads a few works that he intends to criticise and cut up

‘for a consideration,’—a _bluestocking_ by profession reads all that

comes out to pass the time or satisfy her curiosity. The author has

something to say about Fielding, Richardson, or even the Scotch novels:

but he is soon distanced by the fair critic or overwhelmed with the

contents of whole Circulating Libraries poured out upon his head without

stint or intermission. He reads for an object and to live; she for the

sake of reading or to talk. Be this as it may, the idle reader at

present reads twenty times as many books as the learned one. The former

skims the surface of knowledge, and carries away the striking points and

a variety of amusing details, while the latter reserves himself for

great occasions, or perhaps does nothing under the pretence of having so

much to do.

‘From every work he challenges _essoine_,

For contemplation’s sake.’

The _literati_ of Europe threaten at present to become the Monks of

letters, and from having taken up learning as a profession, to live on

the reputation of it. As gentlemen have turned authors, authors seem

inclined to turn gentlemen; and enjoying the _otium cum dignitate_, to

be much too refined and abstracted to condescend to the subordinate or

mechanical parts of knowledge. They are too wise in general to be

acquainted with anything in particular; and remain in a proud and

listless ignorance of all that is within the reach of the vulgar. They

are not, as of old, walking libraries or Encyclopædias, but rather

certain faculties of the mind personified. They scorn the material and

instrumental branches of inquiry, the husk and bran, and affect only the

fine flour of literature—they are only to be called in to give the last

polish to style, the last refinement to thought. They leave it to their

drudges, the Reading Public, to accumulate the facts, to arrange the

evidence, to make out the _data_, and like great painters whose pupils

have got in the ground-work and the established proportions of a

picture, come forward to go over the last thin glazing of the colours,

or throw in the finer touches of expression. On my excusing myself to

N—— for some blunder in history, by saying, ‘I really had not time to

read,’—he said, ‘No, but you have time to write!’ And once a celebrated

critic taking me to task as to the subject of my pursuits, and receiving

regularly the same answer to his queries, that I knew nothing of

chemistry, nothing of astronomy, of botany, of law, of politics, &c. at

last exclaimed somewhat impatiently—‘What the devil is it, then, you

_do_ know?’ I laughed, and was not very much disconcerted at the

reproof, as it was just.

Modern men of letters may be divided into three classes; the mere

scholar or _book-worm_, all whose knowledge is taken from books, and who

may be passed by as an obsolete character, little inquired after—the

literary _hack_ or coffee-house politician, who gets his information

mostly from hearsay, and who makes some noise indeed, but the echo of it

does not reach beyond his own club or circle—and the man of real or of

pretended genius, who aims to draw upon his own resources of thought or

feeling, and to throw a new light upon nature and books. This last

personage (if he acts up to his supposed character) has too much to do

to lend himself to a variety of pursuits, or to lay himself out to

please in all companies. He has a task in hand, a vow to perform; and he

cannot be diverted from it by incidental or collateral objects. All the

time that he does not devote to this paramount duty, he should have to

himself, to repose, to lie fallow, to gather strength and recruit

himself. A boxer is led into the lists that he may not waste a particle

of vigour needlessly; and a leader in Parliament, on the day that he is

expected to get up a grand attack or defence, is not to be pestered with

the ordinary news of the day. So an author (who is, or would be thought

original) has no time for _spare_ accomplishments or ornamental studies.

All that he intermeddles with must be marshalled to bear upon his

purpose. He must be acquainted with books and the thoughts of others,

but only so far as to assist him on his way, and ‘to take progression

from them.’ He starts from the point where _they_ left off. All that

does not aid him in his new career goes for nothing, is thrown out of

the account; or is a useless and splendid incumbrance. Most of his time

he passes in brooding over some wayward hint or suggestion of a thought,

nor is he bound to give any explanation of what he does with the rest.

He tries to melt down truth into essences—to express some fine train of

feeling, to solve some difficult problem, to start what is new, or to

perfect what is old; in a word, not to do what others can do (which in

the division of mental labour he holds to be unnecessary), but to do

what they all with their joint efforts cannot do. For this he is in no

hurry, and must have the disposal of his leisure and the choice of his

subject. The public can wait. He deems with a living poet, who is an

example of his own doctrine—

——‘That there are powers

Which of themselves our minds impress;

That we can feed this mind of ours

In a wise passiveness.’

Or I have sometimes thought that the dalliance of the mind with Fancy or

with Truth might be described almost in the words of Andrew Marvell’s

address ‘To his Coy Mistress:‘—

‘Had we but world enough and time,

This toying, Lady, were no crime;

We would sit down, and think which way

To walk and pass our love’s long day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side

Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the flood;

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

My contemplative love should grow

Vaster than empires, and more slow.

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast,

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart:

For, lady, you deserve this state;

Nor would I love at lower rate!’

The aspiring poet or prose-writer undertakes to do a certain thing; and

if he succeeds, it is enough. While he is intent upon that or asleep,

others may amuse themselves how they can with any topic that happens to

be afloat and all the eloquence they are masters of, so that they do not

disturb the champion of truth, or the proclaimer of beauty to the world.

The Conversation of Lords, on the contrary, is to this like a newspaper

to a book—the latter treats well or ill of one subject, and leads to a

conclusion on one point; the other is made up of all sorts of things

jumbled together, debates in parliament, law-reports, plays, operas,

concerts, routs, levees, fashions, auctions, the last fight, foreign

news, deaths, marriages, and _crim-cons_, bankruptcies, and quack

medicines; and a large allowance is frequently to be made, besides the

natural confusion of the subjects, for _cross-readings_ in the speaker’s

mind![11] Or, to take another illustration, fashionable conversation has

something theatrical or _melo-dramatic_ in it; it is got up for

immediate effect, it is calculated to make a great display, there is a

profusion of paint, scenery, and dresses, the music is loud, there are

banquets and processions, you have the dancers from the Opera, the

horses from Astley’s, and the elephant from Exeter ‘Change, the stage is

all life, bustle, noise and glare, the audience brilliant and delighted,

and the whole goes off in a blaze of phosphorus; but the dialogue is

poor, the story improbable, the critics shake their heads in the pit,

and the next day the piece is _damned_!

In short, a man of rank and fortune takes the adventitious and

ornamental part of letters, the obvious, popular, fashionable, that

serves to amuse at the time, or minister to the cravings of vanity,

without laying a very heavy tax on his own understanding, or the

patience of his hearers. He furnishes his mind as he does his house,

with what is showy, striking, and of the newest pattern: he mounts his

_hobby_ as he does his horse, which is brought to his door for an

airing, and which (should it prove restive or sluggish) he turns away

for another; or like a child at a fair, gets into a round-about of

knowledge, till his head becomes giddy, runs from sight to sight, from

booth to booth, and like the child, goes home loaded with trinkets,

gewgaws, and rattles. He does not pore and pine over an idea (like some

poor hypochondriac) till it becomes impracticable, unsociable,

incommunicable, absorbed in mysticism, and lost in minuteness: he is not

upon oath never to utter anything but oracles, but rattles away in a

fine careless hair-brained dashing manner, hit or miss, and succeeds the

better for it. Nor does he prose over the same stale round of politics

and the state of the nation (with the coffee-house politician), but

launches out with freedom and gaiety into whatever has attraction and

interest in it, ‘runs the great circle, and is still at home.’ He is

inquisitive, garrulous, credulous, sanguine, florid,—neither pedantic

nor vulgar. Neither is he intolerant, exclusive, bigoted to one set of

opinions or one class of individuals. He clothes an abstract theory with

illustrations from his own experience and observation, hates what is dry

and dull, and throws in an air of high health, buoyant spirits, fortune

and splendid connections to give animation and vividness to what perhaps

might otherwise want it. He selects what is palpable without being gross

or trivial, lends it colour from the flush of success, and elevation

from the distinctions of rank. He runs on and never stops for an answer,

rather dictating to others than endeavouring to ascertain their

opinions, solving his own questions, improving upon their hints, and

bearing down or precluding opposition by a good-natured loquacity or

stately dogmatism. All this is perhaps more edifying as a subject of

speculation than delightful in itself. Shakspeare somewhere says—‘A

man’s mind is parcel of his fortunes,’—and I think the inference will be

borne out in the present case. I should guess that in the prevailing

tone of fashionable society or aristocratic literature would be found

all that variety, splendour, facility, and startling effect which

corresponds with external wealth, magnificence of appearance, and a

command of opportunity; while there would be wanting whatever depends

chiefly on intensity of pursuit, on depth of feeling, and on simplicity

and independence of mind joined with straitened fortune. Prosperity is a

great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind;

privation trains and strengthens it. Accordingly, we find but one really

great name (Lord Bacon) in this rank of English society, where

superiority is taken for granted, and reflected from outward

circumstances. The rest are in the second class. Lord Bolingbroke, whom

Pope idolized (and it pains me that all his idols are not mine) was a

boastful empty mouther! I never knew till the other day, that Lord

Bolingbroke was the model on which Mr. Pitt formed himself. He was his

_Magnus Apollo_; and no wonder. The late Minister used to lament it as

the great desideratum of English literature, that there was no record

anywhere existing of his speeches as they were spoken, and declared that

he would give any price for one of them reported as speeches were

reported in the newspapers in our time. Being asked which he thought the

best of his written productions, he would answer, raising his eyebrows

and deepening the tones of his voice to a sonorous bass—‘Why,

undoubtedly, Sir, the Letter to Sir William Wyndham is the most masterly

of all his writings, and the first composition for wit and eloquence in

the English language;‘—and then he would give his reasons at great

length and _con amore_, and say that Junius had formed himself entirely

upon it. Lord Bolingbroke had, it seems, a house next-door to one

belonging to Lord Chatham at Walham-Green; and as the gardens joined,

they could hear Lord Bolingbroke walking out with the company that came

to see him in his retirement, and elaborately declaiming politics to the

old lords and statesmen that were with him, and philosophy to the

younger ones. Pitt learned this story from his father when a boy. This

account, interesting in itself, was to me the more interesting and

extraordinary, as it had always appeared to me that Mr. Pitt was quite

an original, _sui generis_,

‘As if a man were author of himself,

And own’d no other kin’—

that so far from having a model or idol that he looked up to and

grounded himself upon, he had neither admiration nor consciousness of

any thing existing out of himself, and that he lived solely in the sound

of his own voice and revolved in the circle of his own hollow and

artificial periods. I have it from the same authority that he thought

Cobbett the best writer and Horne Tooke the cleverest man of the day.

His hatred of Wyndham was excessive and mutual.—Perhaps it may be said

that Lord Chatham was a first-rate man in his way, and I incline to

think it; but he was a self-made man, bred in a camp, not in a court,

and his rank was owing to his talents.[12]

ON A SUN-DIAL

_The New Monthly Magazine._] [_October, 1827._

‘To carve out dials quaintly, point by point.’

SHAKESPEARE.

_Horas non numero nisi serenas_—is the motto of a sun-dial near Venice.

There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought

unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most classical. ‘I count

only the hours that are serene.’ What a bland and care-dispelling

feeling! How the shadows seem to fade on the dial-plate as the sky

lours, and time presents only a blank unless as its progress is marked

by what is joyous, and all that is not happy sinks into oblivion! What a

fine lesson is conveyed to the mind—to take no note of time but by its

benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate,

to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always to the

sunny side of things, and letting the rest slip from our imaginations,

unheeded or forgotten! How different from the common art of

self-tormenting! For myself, as I rode along the Brenta, while the sun

shone hot upon its sluggish, slimy waves, my sensations were far from

comfortable; but the reading this inscription on the side of a glaring

wall in an instant restored me to myself; and still, whenever I think of

or repeat it, it has the power of wafting me into the region of pure and

blissful abstraction. I cannot help fancying it to be a legend of Popish

superstition. Some monk of the dark ages must have invented and

bequeathed it to us, who, loitering in trim gardens and watching the

silent march of time, as his fruits ripened in the sun or his flowers

scented the balmy air, felt a mild languor pervade his senses, and

having little to do or to care for, determined (in imitation of his

sun-dial) to efface that little from his thoughts or draw a veil over

it, making of his life one long dream of quiet! _Horas non numero nisi

serenas_—he might repeat, when the heavens were overcast and the

gathering storm scattered the falling leaves, and turn to his books and

wrap himself in his golden studies! Out of some such mood of mind,

indolent, elegant, thoughtful, this exquisite device (speaking volumes)

must have originated.

Of the several modes of counting time, that by the sun-dial is perhaps

the most apposite and striking, if not the most convenient or

comprehensive. It does not obtrude its observations, though it ‘morals

on the time,’ and, by its stationary character, forms a contrast to the

most fleeting of all essences. It stands _sub dio_—under the marble air,

and there is some connexion between the image of infinity and eternity.

I should also like to have a sunflower growing near it with bees

fluttering round.[13] It should be of iron to denote duration, and have

a dull, leaden look. I hate a sun-dial made of wood, which is rather

calculated to show the variations of the seasons, than the progress of

time, slow, silent, imperceptible, chequered with light and shade. If

our hours were all serene, we might probably take almost as little note

of them, as the dial does of those that are clouded. It is the shadow

thrown across, that gives us warning of their flight. Otherwise, our

impressions would take the same undistinguishable hue; we should scarce

be conscious of our existence. Those who have had none of the cares of

this life to harass and disturb them, have been obliged to have recourse

to the hopes and fears of the next to enliven the prospect before them.

Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe,

been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, finding time

hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of

it. The hour-glass is, I suspect, an older invention; and it is

certainly the most defective of all. Its creeping sands are not indeed

an unapt emblem of the minute, countless portions of our existence; and

the manner in which they gradually slide through the hollow glass and

diminish in number till not a single one is left, also illustrates the

way in which our years slip from us by stealth: but as a mechanical

invention, it is rather a hindrance than a help, for it requires to have

the time, of which it pretends to count the precious moments, taken up

in attention to itself, and in seeing that when one end of the glass is

empty, we turn it round, in order that it may go on again, or else all

our labour is lost, and we must wait for some other mode of ascertaining

the time before we can recover our reckoning and proceed as before. The

philosopher in his cell, the cottager at her spinning-wheel must,

however, find an invaluable acquisition in this ‘companion of the lonely

hour,’ as it has been called,[14] which not only serves to tell how the

time goes, but to fill up its vacancies. What a treasure must not the

little box seem to hold, as if it were a sacred deposit of the very

grains and fleeting sands of life! What a business, in lieu of other

more important avocations, to see it out to the last sand, and then to

renew the process again on the instant, that there may not be the least

flaw or error in the account! What a strong sense must be brought home

to the mind of the value and irrecoverable nature of the time that is

fled; what a thrilling, incessant consciousness of the slippery tenure

by which we hold what remains of it! Our very existence must seem

crumbling to atoms, and running down (without a miraculous reprieve) to

the last fragment. ‘Dust to dust and ashes to ashes’ is a text that

might be fairly inscribed on an hour-glass: it is ordinarily associated

with the scythe of Time and a Death’s head, as a _Memento mori_; and

has, no doubt, furnished many a tacit hint to the apprehensive and

visionary enthusiast in favour of a resurrection to another life!

The French give a different turn to things, less _sombre_ and less

edifying. A common and also a very pleasing ornament to a clock, in

Paris, is a figure of Time seated in a boat which Cupid is rowing along,

with the motto, _L’Amour fait passer le Tems_—which the wits again have

travestied into _Le Tems fait passer L’Amour_. All this is ingenious and

well; but it wants sentiment. I like a people who have something that

they love and something that they hate, and with whom every thing is not

alike a matter of indifference or _pour passer le tems_. The French

attach no importance to any thing, except for the moment; they are only

thinking how they shall get rid of one sensation for another; all their

ideas are _in transitu_. Every thing is detached, nothing is

accumulated. It would be a million of years before a Frenchman would

think of the _Horas non numero nisi serenas_. Its impassioned repose and

_ideal_ voluptuousness are as far from their breasts as the poetry of

that line in Shakspeare—‘How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon that bank!’

They never arrive at the classical—or the romantic. They blow the

bubbles of vanity, fashion, and pleasure; but they do not expand their

perceptions into refinement, or strengthen them into solidity. Where

there is nothing fine in the ground-work of the imagination, nothing

fine in the superstructure can be produced. They are light, airy,

fanciful (to give them their due)—but when they attempt to be serious

(beyond mere good sense) they are either dull or extravagant. When the

volatile salt has flown off, nothing but a _caput mortuum_ remains. They

have infinite crotchets and caprices with their clocks and watches,

which seem made for any thing but to tell the hour—gold-repeaters,

watches with metal covers, clocks with hands to count the seconds. There

is no escaping from quackery and impertinence, even in our attempts to

calculate the waste of time. The years gallop fast enough for me,

without remarking every moment as it flies; and farther, I must say I

dislike a watch (whether of French or English manufacture) that comes to

me like a footpad with its face muffled, and does not present its clear,

open aspect like a friend, and point with its finger to the time of day.

All this opening and shutting of dull, heavy cases (under pretence that

the glass-lid is liable to be broken, or lets in the dust or air and

obstructs the movement of the watch), is not to husband time, but to

give trouble. It is mere pomposity and self-importance, like consulting

a mysterious oracle that one carries about with one in one’s pocket,

instead of asking a common question of an acquaintance or companion.

There are two clocks which strike the hour in the room where I am. This

I do not like. In the first place, I do not want to be reminded twice

how the time goes (it is like the second tap of a saucy servant at your

door when perhaps you have no wish to get up): in the next place, it is

starting a difference of opinion on the subject, and I am averse to

every appearance of wrangling and disputation. Time moves on the same,

whatever disparity there may be in our mode of keeping count of it, like

true fame in spite of the cavils and contradictions of the critics. I am

no friend to repeating watches. The only pleasant association I have

with them is the account given by Rousseau of some French lady, who sat

up reading the _New Heloise_ when it first came out, and ordering her

maid to sound the repeater, found it was too late to go to bed, and

continued reading on till morning. Yet how different is the interest

excited by this story from the account which Rousseau somewhere else

gives of his sitting up with his father reading romances, when a boy,

till they were startled by the swallows twittering in their nests at

day-break, and the father cried out, half angry and ashamed—‘_Allons,

mon fils; je suis plus enfant que toi!_’ In general, I have heard

repeating watches sounded in stage-coaches at night, when some

fellow-traveller suddenly awaking and wondering what was the hour,

another has very deliberately taken out his watch, and pressing the

spring, it has counted out the time; each petty stroke acting like a

sharp puncture on the ear, and informing me of the dreary hours I had

already passed, and of the more dreary ones I had to wait till morning.

The great advantage, it is true, which clocks have over watches and

other dumb reckoners of time is, that for the most part they strike the

hour—that they are as it were the mouth-pieces of time; that they not

only point it to the eye, but impress it on the ear; that they ‘lend it

both an understanding and a tongue.’ Time thus speaks to us in an

audible and warning voice. Objects of sight are easily distinguished by

the sense, and suggest useful reflections to the mind; sounds, from

their intermittent nature, and perhaps other causes, appeal more to the

imagination, and strike upon the heart. But to do this, they must be

unexpected and involuntary—there must be no trick in the case—they

should not be squeezed out with a finger and a thumb; there should be

nothing optional, personal in their occurrence; they should be like

stern, inflexible monitors, that nothing can prevent from discharging

their duty. Surely, if there is any thing with which we should not mix

up our vanity and self-consequence, it is with Time, the most

independent of all things. All the sublimity, all the superstition that

hang upon this palpable mode of announcing its flight, are chiefly

attached to this circumstance. Time would lose its abstracted character,

if we kept it like a curiosity or a jack-in-a-box: its prophetic

warnings would have no effect, if it obviously spoke only at our

prompting, like a paltry ventriloquism. The clock that tells the coming,

dreaded hour—the castle bell, that ‘with its brazen throat and iron

tongue, sounds one unto the drowsy ear of night’—the curfew, ‘swinging

slow with sullen roar’ o’er wizard stream or fountain, are like a voice

from other worlds, big with unknown events. The last sound, which is

still kept up as an old custom in many parts of England, is a great

favourite with me. I used to hear it when a boy. It tells a tale of

other times. The days that are past, the generations that are gone, the

tangled forest glades and hamlets brown of my native country, the

woodsman’s art, the Norman warrior armed for the battle or in his

festive hall, the conqueror’s iron rule and peasant’s lamp extinguished,

all start up at the clamorous peal, and fill my mind with fear and

wonder. I confess, nothing at present interests me but what has been—the

recollection of the impressions of my early life, or events long past,

of which only the dim traces remain in a smouldering ruin or

half-obsolete custom. That _things should be that are now no more_,

creates in my mind the most unfeigned astonishment. I cannot solve the

mystery of the past, nor exhaust my pleasure in it. The years, the

generations to come, are nothing to me. We care no more about the world

in the year 2300 than we do about one of the planets. Even George IV. is

better than the Earl of Windsor. We might as well make a voyage to the

moon as think of stealing a march upon Time with impunity. _De non

apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio._ Those who are to come

after us and push us from the stage seem like upstarts and pretenders,

that may be said to exist _in vacuo_, we know not upon what, except as

they are blown up with vain and self-conceit by their patrons among the

moderns. But the ancients are true and _bonâ-fide_ people, to whom we

are bound by aggregate knowledge and filial ties, and in whom seen by

the mellow light of history we feel our own existence doubled and our

pride consoled, as we ruminate on the vestiges of the past. The public

in general, however, do not carry this speculative indifference about

the future to what is to happen to themselves, or to the part they are

to act in the busy scene. For my own part, I do; and the only wish I can

form, or that ever prompts the passing sigh, would be to live some of my

years over again—they would be those in which I enjoyed and suffered

most!

The ticking of a clock in the night has nothing very interesting nor

very alarming in it, though superstition has magnified it into an omen.

In a state of vigilance or debility, it preys upon the spirits like the

persecution of a teazing pertinacious insect; and haunting the

imagination after it has ceased in reality, is converted into the

death-watch. Time is rendered vast by contemplating its minute portions

thus repeatedly and painfully urged upon its attention, as the ocean in

its immensity is composed of water-drops. A clock striking with a clear

and silver sound is a great relief in such circumstances, breaks the

spell, and resembles a sylph-like and friendly spirit in the room.

Foreigners, with all their tricks and contrivances upon clocks and

time-pieces, are strangers to the sound of village bells, though perhaps

a people that can dance may dispense with them. They impart a pensive,

wayward pleasure to the mind, and are a kind of chronology of happy

events, often serious in the retrospect—births, marriages, and so forth.

Coleridge calls them ‘the poor man’s only music.’ A village-spire in

England peeping from its cluster of trees is always associated in

imagination with this cheerful accompaniment, and may be expected to

pour its joyous tidings on the gale. In Catholic countries, you are

stunned with the everlasting tolling of bells to prayers or for the

dead. In the Apennines, and other wild and mountainous districts of

Italy, the little chapel-bell with its simple tinkling sound has a

romantic and charming effect. The Monks in former times appear to have

taken a pride in the construction of bells as well as churches; and some

of those of the great cathedrals abroad (as at Cologne and Rouen) may be

fairly said to be hoarse with counting the flight of ages. The chimes in

Holland are a nuisance. They dance in the hours and the quarters. They

leave no respite to the imagination. Before one set has done ringing in

your ears, another begins. You do not know whether the hours move or

stand still, go backwards or forwards, so fantastical and perplexing are

their accompaniments. Time is a more staid personage, and not so full of

gambols. It puts you in mind of a tune with variations, or of an

embroidered dress. Surely, nothing is more simple than time. His march

is straightforward; but we should have leisure allowed us to look back

upon the distance we have come, and not be counting his steps every

moment. Time in Holland is a foolish old fellow with all the antics of a

youth, who ‘goes to church in a coranto, and lights his pipe in a

cinque-pace.’ The chimes with us, on the contrary, as they come in every

three or four hours, are like stages in the journey of the day. They

give a fillip to the lazy, creeping hours, and relieve the lassitude of

country places. At noon, their desultory, trivial song is diffused

through the hamlet with the odour of rashers of bacon; at the close of

day they send the toil-worn sleepers to their beds. Their discontinuance

would be a great loss to the thinking or unthinking public. Mr.

Wordsworth has painted their effect on the mind when he makes his friend

Matthew, in a fit of inspired dotage,

‘Sing those witty rhymes

About the crazy old church-clock

And the bewilder’d chimes.’

The tolling of the bell for deaths and executions is a fearful summons,

though, as it announces, not the advance of time but the approach of

fate, it happily makes no part of our subject. Otherwise, the ‘sound of

the bell’ for Macheath’s execution in the ‘Beggar’s Opera,’ or for that

of the Conspirators in ‘Venice Preserved,’ with the roll of the drum at

a soldier’s funeral, and a digression to that of my Uncle Toby, as it is

so finely described by Sterne, would furnish ample topics to descant

upon. If I were a moralist, I might disapprove the ringing in the new

and ringing out the old year.

‘Why dance ye, mortals, o’er the grave of Time?’

St Paul’s bell tolls only for the death of our English kings, or a

distinguished personage or two, with long intervals between.[15]

Those who have no artificial means of ascertaining the progress of time,

are in general the most acute in discerning its immediate signs, and are

most retentive of individual dates. The mechanical aids to knowledge are

not sharpeners of the wits. The understanding of a savage is a kind of

natural almanac, and more true in its prognostication of the future. In

his mind’s eye he sees what has happened or what is likely to happen to

him, ‘as in a map the voyager his course.’ Those who read the times and

seasons in the aspect of the heavens and the configurations of the

stars, who count by moons and know when the sun rises and sets, are by

no means ignorant of their own affairs or of the common concatenation of

events. People in such situations have not their faculties distracted by

any multiplicity of inquiries beyond what befalls themselves, and the

outward appearances that mark the change. There is, therefore, a

simplicity and clearness in the knowledge they possess, which often

puzzles the more learned. I am sometimes surprised at a shepherd-boy by

the road-side, who sees nothing but the earth and sky, asking me the

time of day—he ought to know so much better than any one how far the sun

is above the horizon. I suppose he wants to ask a question of a

passenger, or to see if he has a watch. Robinson Crusoe lost his

reckoning in the monotony of his life and that bewildering dream of

solitude, and was fain to have recourse to the notches in a piece of

wood. What a diary was his! And how time must have spread its circuit

round him, vast and pathless as the ocean!

For myself, I have never had a watch nor any other mode of keeping time

in my possession, nor ever wish to learn how time goes. It is a sign I

have had little to do, few avocations, few engagements. When I am in a

town, I can hear the clock; and when I am in the country, I can listen

to the silence. What I like best is to lie whole mornings on a sunny

bank on Salisbury Plain, without any object before me, neither knowing

nor caring how time passes, and thus ‘with light-winged toys of

feathered Idleness’ to melt down hours to moments. Perhaps some such

thoughts as I have here set down float before me like motes before my

half-shut eyes, or some vivid image of the past by forcible contrast

rushes by me—‘Diana and her fawn, and all the glories of the antique

world;’ then I start away to prevent the iron from entering my soul, and

let fall some tears into that stream of time which separates me farther

and farther from all I once loved! At length I rouse myself from my

reverie, and home to dinner, proud of killing time with thought, nay

even without thinking. Somewhat of this idle humour I inherit from my

father, though he had not the same freedom from _ennui_, for he was not

a metaphysician; and there were stops and vacant intervals in his being

which he did not know how to fill up. He used in these cases, and as an

obvious resource, carefully to wind up his watch at night, and ‘with

lack-lustre eye’ more than once in the course of the day look to see

what o’clock it was. Yet he had nothing else in his character in common

with the elder Mr. Shandy. Were I to attempt a sketch of him, for my own

or the reader’s satisfaction, it would be after the following

manner:——but now I recollect, I have done something of the kind once

before, and were I to resume the subject here, some bat or owl of a

critic, with spectacled gravity, might swear I had stolen the whole of

this Essay from myself—or (what is worse) from him! So I had better let

it go as it is.

WHY THE HEROES OF ROMANCE ARE INSIPID

_The New Monthly Magazine._] [_November, 1827._

Because it is taken for granted that they must be amiable and

interesting, in the first instance, and like other things that are taken

for granted, is but indifferently, or indeed cannot be made out at all

in the sequel. To put it to the proof, to give illustrations of it,

would be to throw a doubt upon the question. They have only to show

themselves to ensure conquest. Indeed, the reputation of their victories

goes before them, and is a pledge of their success before they even

appear. They are, or are supposed to be, so amiable, so handsome, so

accomplished, so captivating, that all hearts bow before them, and all

the women are in love with them without knowing why or wherefore, except

that it is understood that they are to be so. All obstacles vanish

without a finger lifted or a word spoken, and the effect is produced

without a blow being struck. When there is this imaginary charm at work,

every thing they could do or say must weaken the impression, like

arguments brought in favour of a self-evident truth: they very wisely

say or do little or nothing, rely on their names and the author’s good

word, look, smile, and are adored; but to all but the heroines of

romance and their confidantes, are exceedingly uninteresting and

_common-place_ personages, either great coxcombs or wonderfully insipid.

When a lover is able to look unutterable things which produce the

desired effect, what occasion for him to exert his eloquence or make an

impassioned speech in order to bring about a revolution in his favour,

which is already accomplished by other less doubtful means? When the

impression at first sight is complete and irresistible, why throw away

any farther thoughts or words to make it more so? This were ‘to gild

refined gold, to paint the lily, to smooth the ice, to throw a perfume

on the violet, or add another hue unto the rainbow, or seek with

taper-light the beauteous eye of Heaven to garnish,’ which has been

pronounced to be ‘wasteful and superfluous excess.’ Authors and

novel-writers therefore reserve for their second-rate and less prominent

characters, the artillery of words, the arts of persuasion, and all the

unavailing battery of hopeless attentions and fine sentiment, which are

of no use to the more accomplished gallant, who makes his triumphant

approaches by stolen glances and breathing sighs, and whose appearance

alone supersedes the disclosure of all his other implied perfections and

an importunate display of a long list of titles to the favour of the

fair, which, as they are not insisted on, it would be vain and

unbecoming to produce to the gaze of the world, or for the edification

of the curious reader. It is quite enough if the lady is satisfied with

her choice, and if (as generally happens both as a cause and consequence

in such cases) the gentleman is satisfied with himself. If he indeed

seemed to entertain a doubt upon the subject, the spell of his

fascination would be broken, and the author would be obliged to derogate

from the _beau-ideal_ of his character, and make him do something to

deserve the good opinion that might be entertained of him, and to which

he himself had not led the way by boundless self-complacency and the

conscious assurance of infallible success.

Another circumstance that keeps our novel-heroes in the back-ground is,

that if there was any doubt of their success, or they were obliged to

employ the ordinary and vulgar means to establish their superiority over

every one else, they would be no longer those ‘faultless monsters’ which

it is understood that they must be to fill their part in the drama. The

discarded or despairing, not the favoured lovers, are unavoidably the

most interesting persons in the story. In fact, the principals are

already disposed of in the first page; they are destined for each other

by an unaccountable and uncontrollable sympathy: the ceremony is in a

manner over, and they are already married people, with all the lawful

attributes and indifference belonging to the character. To produce an

interest, there must be mixed motives, alternate hope and fear,

difficulties to struggle with, sacrifices to make; but the true hero of

romance is too fine a gentleman to be subjected to this rude ordeal, or

mortifying exposure, which devolves upon some much more unworthy and

unpretending personage. The beauty of the outline must not be disturbed

by the painful conflicts of passion or the strong contrast of light and

shade. The taste of the heroic cannot swerve for a moment from the

object of its previous choice, who must never be placed in

disadvantageous circumstances. The top characters occupy a certain

prescriptive rank in the world of romance, by the rules of etiquette and

laws of this sort of fictitious composition, reign like princes, and

have only to do nothing to forfeit their privileges or compromise their

supposed dignity.

The heroes of the old romances, the Grand Cyruses, the Artamenes, and

Oroondates, are in this respect better than the moderns. They had their

steel helmet and plume of feathers, the glittering spear and shield, the

barbed steed, and the spread banner, and had knightly service to perform

in joust and tournament, in the field of battle or the deep forest,

besides the duty which they owed to their ‘mistress’ eyebrow,’ and the

favours they received at her hands. They were comparatively picturesque

and adventurous personages, and men of action in the tented field, and

lost all title to the smile of beauty if they did not deserve it by

feats of prowess, and by the valour of their arms. However insipid they

might be as accepted lovers, in their set speeches and improgressive

languishments by which they paid their court to their hearts’ idols, the

‘fairest of the fair,’ yet in their character of warriors and heroes,

they were men of mettle, and had something in them. They did not merely

sigh and smile and kneel in the presence of their mistresses—they had to

unhorse their adversaries in combat, to storm castles, to vanquish

giants, and lead armies. So far, so well. In the good old times of

chivalry and romance, favour was won and maintained by the bold

achievements and fair fame of the chosen knight, which keeps up a show

of suspense and dramatic interest, instead of depending, as in more

effeminate times, on taste, sympathy, and a refinement of sentiment and

manners, of the delicacy of which it is impossible to convey any idea by

words or actions. Even in the pompous and affected courtship of the

romances of the seventeenth century (now, alas! exploded) the interviews

between the lovers are so rare and guarded, their union, though agreed

upon and inevitable, is so remote, the smile with which the lady regards

her sworn champion, though as steady as that of one of the fixed stars,

is like them so cold, as to give a tone of passion and interest to their

enamoured flights, as though they were affected by the chances and

changes of sublunary affairs. I confess I have read some of these

fabulous folios formerly with no small degree of delight and breathless

anxiety, particularly that of ‘Cassandra’; and would willingly indeed go

over it again to catch even a faint, a momentary glimpse of the pleasure

with which I used at one period to peruse its prolix descriptions and

high-flown sentiments. Not only the Palmerins of England and Amadises of

Gaul, who made their way to their mistresses’ hearts by slaying giants

and taming dragons, but the heroes of the French romances of intrigue

and gallantry which succeeded those of necromancy and chivalry, and

where the adventurers for the prize have to break through the fences of

morality and scruples of conscience instead of stone-walls and

enchantments dire, are to be excepted from the censure of downright

insipidity which attaches to those ordinary drawing-room heroes, who are

installed in the good graces of their Divinities by a look, and keep

their places there by the force of _still-life_! It is Gray who cries

out, ‘Be mine to read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon!’ I

could say the same of those of Madame La Fayette and the Duke de la

Rochefoucault. ‘The Princess of Cleves’ is a most charming work of this

kind; and the Duke de Nemours is a great favourite with me. He is

perhaps the most brilliant personage that ever entered upon the _tapis_

of a drawing-room, or trifled at a lady’s toilette.

I prefer him, I own, vastly to Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison, whom

I look upon as the prince of coxcombs; and so much the more impertinent

as he is a moral one. His character appears to me ‘ugly all over with

affectation.’ There is not a single thing that Sir Charles Grandison

does or says all through the book from liking to any person or object

but himself, and with a view to answer to a certain standard of

perfection for which he pragmatically sets up. He is always thinking of

himself, and trying to show that he is the wisest, happiest, and most

virtuous person in the whole world. He is (or would be thought) a code

of Christian ethics; a compilation and abstract of all gentlemanly

accomplishments. There is nothing, I conceive, that excites so little

sympathy as this inordinate egotism; or so much disgust as this

everlasting self-complacency. Yet this self-admiration, brought forward

on every occasion as the incentive to every action and reflected from

all around him, is the burden and pivot of the story. ‘Is not the man

Sir Charles Grandison?’—is what he and all the other persons concerned

are continually repeating to themselves. His preference of the little,

insignificant, selfish, affected, puritanical Miss Byron, who is

remarkable for nothing but her conceit of herself and her lover, to the

noble Clementina, must for ever stamp him for the poltroon and blockhead

that he was. What a contrast between these two females—the one, the

favourite heroine, settling her idle punctilios and the choice of her

ribbons for the wedding-day with equal interest, the other,

self-devoted, broken-hearted, generous, disinterested, pouring out her

whole soul in the fervent expressions and dying struggles of an

unfortunate and hopeless affection! It was impossible indeed for the

genius of the author (strive all he could) to put the prettinesses and

coquettish scruples of the bride-elect upon a par with the eloquent

despair and impassioned sentiments of her majestic but unsuccessful

rival. Nothing can show more clearly that the height of good fortune and

of that conventional faultlessness which is supposed to secure it, is

incompatible with any great degree of interest. Lady Clementina should

have been married to Sir Charles to surfeit her of a coxcomb—Miss Byron

to Lovelace to plague her with a rake! Have we not sometimes seen such

matches? A slashing critic of my acquaintance once observed, that

‘Richardson would be surprised in the next world to find Lovelace in

Heaven and Grandison in Hell!’ Without going this orthodox length, I

must say there is something in Lovelace’s vices more attractive than in

the other’s best virtues. Clarissa’s attachment seems as natural as

Clementina’s is romantic. There is a _regality_ about Lovelace’s manner,

and he appears clothed in a panoply of wit, gaiety, spirit, and

enterprise, that is criticism-proof. If he had not possessed these

dazzling qualities, nothing could have made us forgive for an instant

his treatment of the spotless Clarissa; but indeed they might be said to

be mutually attracted to and extinguished in each other’s dazzling

lustre! When we think of Lovelace and his luckless exploits, we can

hardly be persuaded at this time of day that he wore a wig. Yet that he

did so is evident; for Miss Howe when she gave him that spirited box on

the ear, struck the powder out of it! Mr. B. in ‘Pamela’ has all the

insipidity, that arises from patronising beauty and condescending to

virtue. Pamela herself is delightfully made out; but she labours under

considerable disadvantages, and is far from a _regular_ heroine.

Sterne (thank God!) has neither hero nor heroine, and he does very well

without them.

Many people find fault with Fielding’s Tom Jones as gross and immoral.

For my part, I have doubts of his being so very handsome from the

author’s always talking about his beauty, and I suspect he was a clown,

from being constantly assured he was so very genteel. Otherwise, I think

Jones acquits himself very well both in his actions and speeches, as a

lover and as a _trencher-man_ whenever he is called upon. Some persons,

from their antipathy to that headlong impulse, of which Jones was the

slave, and to that morality of good-nature which in him is made a foil

to principle, have gone so far as to prefer Blifil as the _prettier

fellow_ of the two. I certainly cannot subscribe to this opinion, which

perhaps was never meant to have followers, and has nothing but its

singularity to recommend it. Joseph Andrews is a hero of the

shoulder-knot: it would be hard to canvass his pretensions too severely,

especially considering what a patron he has in Parson Adams. That one

character would cut up into a hundred fine gentlemen and novel-heroes!

Booth is another of the good-natured tribe, a fine man, a very fine man!

But there is a want of spirit to animate the well-meaning mass. He

hardly deserved to have the hashed mutton kept waiting for him. The

author has redeemed himself in Amelia; but a heroine with a _broken

nose_ and who was a married woman besides, must be rendered truly

interesting and amiable to make up for superficial objections. The

character of the Noble Peer in this novel is _not_ insipid. If Fielding

could have made virtue as admirable as he could make vice detestable, he

would have been a greater master even than he was. I do not understand

what those critics mean who say he got all his characters out of

alehouses. It is true he did some of them.

Smollett’s heroes are neither one thing nor the other: neither very

refined nor very insipid. Wilson in Humphrey Clinker comes the nearest

to the _beau-ideal_ of this character, the favourite of the

novel-reading and boarding-school girl. Narcissa and Emilia Gauntlet are

very charming girls; and Monimia in Count Fathom is a fine monumental

beauty. But perhaps he must be allowed to be most _at home_ in Winifred

Jenkins!

The women have taken this matter up in our own time: let us see what

they have made of it. Mrs. Radcliffe’s heroes and lovers are perfect in

their kind; nobody can find any fault with them, for nobody knows any

thing about them. They are described as very handsome, and quite

unmeaning and inoffensive.

‘Her heroes have no character at all.’

Theodore, Valancourt,—what delightful names! and there is nothing else

to distinguish them by. Perhaps, however, this indefiniteness is an

advantage. We add expression to the inanimate outline, and fill up the

blank with all that is amiable, interesting, and romantic. A long ride

without a word spoken, a meeting that comes to nothing, a parting look,

a moonlight scene, or evening skies that paint their sentiments for them

better than the lovers can do for themselves, farewells too full of

anguish, deliverances too big with joy to admit of words, suppressed

sighs, faint smiles, the freshness of the morning, pale melancholy, the

clash of swords, the clank of chains that make the fair one’s heart sink

within her, these are the chief means by which the admired authoress of

‘The Romance of the Forest’ and ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’ keeps alive

an ambiguous interest in the bosom of her fastidious readers, and

elevates the lover into the hero of the fable. Unintelligible

distinctions, impossible attempts, a delicacy that shrinks from the most

trifling objection, and an enthusiasm that rushes on its fate, such are

the charming and teazing contradictions that form the flimsy texture of

a modern romance! If the lover in such critical cases was any thing but

a lover, he would cease to be the most amiable of all characters in the

abstract and by way of excellence, and would be a traitor to the cause;

to give reasons or to descend to particulars, is to doubt the

omnipotence of love and shake the empire of credulous fancy; a sounding

name, a graceful form, are all that is necessary to suspend the whole

train of tears, sighs, and the softest emotions upon; the ethereal

nature of the passion requires ethereal food to sustain it; and our

youthful hero, in order to be perfectly interesting, must be drawn as

perfectly insipid!

I cannot, however, apply this charge to Mrs. Inchbald’s heroes or

heroines. However finely drawn, they are an essence of sentiment. Their

words are composed of the warmest breath, their tears scald, their sighs

stifle. Her characters seem moulded of a softer clay, the work of

fairest hands. Miss Milner is enchanting. Doriforth indeed is severe,

and has a very stately opinion of himself, but he has spirit and

passion. Lord Norwynne is the most unpleasant and obdurate. He seduces

by his situation and kills by indifference, as is natural in such cases.

But still through all these the fascination of the writer’s personal

feelings never quits you. On the other hand, Miss Burney’s (Madame

D’Arblay’s) _forte_ is ridicule, or an exquisite tact for minute

absurdities, and when she aims at being fine she only becomes affected.

No one had ever much less of the romantic. Lord Orville is a

condescending suit of clothes; yet certainly the sense which Evelina has

of the honour done her is very prettily managed. Sir Clement Willoughby

is a much gayer and more animated person, though his wit outruns his

discretion. Young Delville is the hero of punctilio—a perfect

diplomatist in the art of love-making—and draws his parallels and sits

down as deliberately before the citadel of his mistress’s heart, as a

cautious general lays siege to an impregnable fortress. Cecilia is not

behind-hand with him in the game of studied cross-purposes and affected

delays, and is almost the veriest and most provoking trifler on record.

Miss Edgeworth, I believe, has no heroes. Her _trenchant_ pen cuts away

all extravagance and idle pretence, and leaves nothing but common sense,

prudence, and propriety behind it, wherever it comes.

I do not apprehend that the heroes of the Author of Waverley form any

very striking exception to the common rule. They conform to their

designation and follow the general law of their being. They are for the

most part very equivocal and undecided personages, who receive their

governing impulse from accident, or are puppets in the hands of their

mistresses, such as Waverley, Ivanhoe, Frank Osbaldistone, Henry Morton,

&c. I do not say that any of these are absolutely insipid, but they have

in themselves no leading or master-traits, and they are worked out of

very listless and inert materials into a degree of force and prominence

solely by the genius of the author. Instead of acting, they are acted

upon, and keep in the back-ground and in a neutral posture, till they

are absolutely forced to come forward, and it is then with a very

amiable reservation of modest scruples. Does it not seem almost, or

generally speaking, as if a character to be put in this responsible

situation of candidate for the highest favour of the public at large, or

of the fair in particular, who is to conciliate all suffrages and

concentrate all interests, must really have nothing in him to please or

give offence, that he must be left a negative, feeble character without

untractable or uncompromising points, and with a few slight

recommendations and obvious good qualities which every one may be

supposed to improve upon and fill up according to his or her inclination

or fancy and the model of perfection previously existing in the mind? It

is a privilege claimed, no doubt, by the fair reader to make out the

object of her admiration and interest according to her own choice; and

the same privilege, if not openly claimed, may be covertly exercised by

others. We are all fond of our own creations, and if the author does

little to his chief character and allows us to have a considerable hand

in it, it may not suffer in our opinion from this circumstance. In fact,

the hero of the work is not so properly the chief object in it, as a

sort of blank left open to the imagination, or a lay-figure on which the

reader disposes whatever drapery he pleases! Of all Sir Walter’s

characters the most dashing and spirited is the Sultan Saladin. But he

is not meant for a hero, nor fated to be a lover. He is a collateral and

incidental performer in the scene. His movements therefore remain free,

and he is master of his own resplendent energies, which produce so much

the more daring and felicitous an effect. So far from being intended to

please all tastes or the most squeamish, he is not meant for any taste.

He has no pretensions, and stands upon the sole ground of his own heroic

acts and sayings. The author has none of the timidity or mawkishness

arising from a fear of not coming up to his own professions, or to the

expectations excited in the reader’s mind. Any striking trait, any

interesting exploit is more than was bargained for—is heaped measure,

running over. There is no idle, nervous apprehension of falling short of

perfection, arresting the hand or diverting the mind from truth and

nature. If the Pagan is not represented as a monster and barbarian, all

the rest is a god-send. Accordingly all is spontaneous, bold, and

original in this beautiful and glowing design, which is as magnificent

as it is magnanimous.—Lest I should forget it, I will mention while I am

on the subject of Scotch novels, that Mackenzie’s ‘Man of Feeling’ is

not without interest, but it is an interest brought out in a very

singular and unprecedented way. He not merely says or does nothing to

deserve the approbation of the goddess of his idolatry, but from extreme

shyness and sensitiveness, instead of presuming on his merits, gets out

of her way, and only declares his passion on his death-bed. Poor

Harley!—Mr. Godwin’s Falkland is a very high and heroic character: he,

however, is not a love-hero; and the only part in which an episode of

this kind is introduced, is of the most trite and mawkish description.

The case is different in St. Leon. The author’s resuscitated hero there

quaffs joy, love, and immortality with a considerable _gusto_, and with

appropriate manifestations of triumph.

As to the heroes of the philosophical school of romance, such as

Goethe’s Werther, &c., they are evidently out of the pale of this

reasoning. Instead of being common-place and insipid, they are one

violent and startling paradox from beginning to end. Instead of being

cast in stiff unmeaning mould, they ‘all germins spill at once’ that

make mere mortal men. They run a-tilt at all established usages and

prejudices, and overset all the existing order of society. There is

plenty of interest here; and instead of complaining of a calm, we are

borne along by a hurricane of passion and eloquence, certainly without

any thing of ‘temperance that may give it smoothness.’ Schiller’s Moor,

Kotzebue’s heroes, and all the other German prodigies are of this stamp.

Shakspeare’s lovers and Boccaccio’s I like much: they seem to me full of

tenderness and manly spirit, and free from insipidity and cant. Otway’s

Jaffier is, however, the true woman’s man—full of passion and

effeminacy, a mixture of strength and weakness. Perhaps what I have said

above may suggest the true reason and apology for Milton’s having

unwittingly made Satan the hero of ‘Paradise Lost.’ He suffers infinite

losses, and makes the most desperate efforts to recover or avenge them;

and it is the struggle with fate and the privation of happiness that

sharpens our desires, or enhances our sympathy with good or evil. We

have little interest in unalterable felicity, nor can we join with heart

and soul in the endless symphonies and exulting hallelujahs of the

spirits of the blest. The remorse of a fallen spirit or ‘tears such as

angels shed’ touch us more nearly.

THE SHYNESS OF SCHOLARS

_The New Monthly Magazine._] [_December, 1827._

‘_And of his port as meek as is a maid._’

Scholars lead a contemplative and retired life, both which circumstances

must be supposed to contribute to the effect in question. A life of

study is also conversant with high and _ideal_ models, which gives an

ambitious turn to the mind; and pride is nearly akin to delicacy of

feeling.

That a life of privacy and obscurity should render its votaries bashful

and awkward, or unfit them for the routine of society, from the want

both of a habit of going into company and from ignorance of its usages,

is obvious to remark. No one can be expected to do that well or without

a certain degree of hesitation and restraint, which he is not accustomed

to do except on particular occasions, and at rare intervals. You might

as rationally set a scholar or a clown on a tight-rope and expect them

to dance gracefully and with every appearance of ease, as introduce

either into the gay, laughing circle, and suppose that he will acquit

himself handsomely and come off with applause in the retailing of

anecdote or the interchange of repartee. ‘If you have not seen the

Court, your manners must be naught; and if your manners are naught, you

must be damned,’ according to Touchstone’s reasoning. The other cause

lies rather deeper, and is so far better worth considering, perhaps. A

student, then, that is, a man who condemns himself to toil for a length

of time and through a number of volumes in order to arrive at a

conclusion, naturally loses that smartness and ease which distinguish

the gay and thoughtless rattler. There is a certain elasticity of

movement and hey-day of the animal spirits seldom to be met with but in

those who have never cared for any thing beyond the moment, or looked

lower than the surface. The scholar having to encounter doubts and

difficulties on all hands, and indeed to apply by way of preference to

those subjects which are most beset with mystery, becomes hesitating,

sceptical, irresolute, absent, dull. All the processes of his mind are

slow, cautious, circuitous, instead of being prompt, heedless,

straightforward. Finding the intricacies of the path increase upon him

in every direction, this can hardly be supposed to add to the lightness

of his step, the confidence of his brow as he advances. He does not skim

the surface, but dives under it like the mole to make his way darkling,

by imperceptible degrees, and throwing up heaps of dirt and rubbish over

his head to track his progress. He is therefore startled at any sudden

light, puzzled by any casual question, taken unawares and at a

disadvantage in every critical emergency. He must have time given him to

collect his thoughts, to consider objections, to make farther inquiries,

and come to no conclusion at last. This is very different from the

dashing, _off-hand_ manner of the mere man of business or fashion; and

he who is repeatedly found in situations to which he is unequal

(particularly if he is of a reflecting and candid temper) will be apt to

look foolish, and to lose both his countenance and his confidence in

himself—at least as to the opinion others entertain of him, and the

figure he is likely on any occasion to make in the eyes of the world.

The course of his studies has not made him wise, but has taught him the

uncertainty of wisdom; and has supplied him with excellent reasons for

suspending his judgment, when another would throw the casting-weight of

his own presumption or interest into the scale.

The inquirer after truth learns to take nothing for granted; least of

all, to make an assumption of his own superior merits. He would have

nothing proceed without proper proofs and an exact scrutiny; and would

neither be imposed upon himself, nor impose upon others by shallow and

hasty appearances. It takes years of patient toil and devoted enthusiasm

to master any art or science; and after all, the success is doubtful. He

infers that other triumphs must be prepared in like manner at an humble

distance: he cannot bring himself to imagine that any object worth

seizing on or deserving of regard, can be carried by a _coup de main_.

So far from being proud or puffed up by them, he would be ashamed and

degraded in his own opinion by any advantages that were to be obtained

by such cheap and vulgar means as putting a good face on the matter, as

strutting and vapouring about his own pretensions. He would not place

himself on a level with bullies or coxcombs; nor believe that those

whose favour he covets, can be the dupes of either. Whatever is

excellent in his fanciful creed is hard of attainment; and he would

(perhaps absurdly enough) have the means in all cases answerable to the

end. He knows that there are difficulties in his favourite pursuits to

puzzle the will, to tire the patience, to unbrace the strongest nerves,

and make the stoutest courage quail; and he would fain think that if

there is any object more worthy than another to call forth the earnest

solicitude, the hopes and fears of a wise man, and to make his heart

yearn within him at the most distant prospect of success, this precious

prize in the grand lottery of life is not to be had for the asking for,

or from the mere easy indifference or overbearing effrontery with which

you put in your claim. He is aware that it will be long enough before

any one paints a fine picture by walking up and down and admiring

himself in the glass; or writes a fine poem by being delighted with the

sound of his own voice; or solves a single problem in philosophy by

swaggering and haughty airs. He conceives that it is the same with the

way of the world—woos the fair as he woos the Muse; in conversation

never puts in a word till he has something better to say than any one

else in the room; in business never strikes while the iron is hot, and

flings away all his advantages by endeavouring to prove to his own and

the satisfaction of others, that he is clearly entitled to them. It

never once enters into his head (till it is too late) that impudence is

the current coin in the affairs of life; that he who doubts his own

merit, never has credit given him by others; that Fortune does not stay

to have her overtures canvassed; that he who neglects opportunity, can

seldom command it a second time; that the world judge by appearances,

not by realities; and that they sympathise more readily with those who

are prompt to do themselves justice, and to show off their various

qualifications or enforce their pretensions to the utmost, than with

those who wait for others to award their claims, and carry their

fastidious refinement into helplessness and imbecility. Thus ‘fools rush

in where angels fear to tread;’ and modest merit finds to its cost, that

the bold hand and dauntless brow succeed where timidity and bashfulness

are pushed aside; that the gay, laughing eye is preferred to dejection

and gloom, health and animal spirits to the shattered, sickly frame and

trembling nerves; and that to succeed in life, a man should carry about

with him the outward and incontrovertible signs of success, and of his

satisfaction with himself and his prospects, instead of plaguing every

body near him with fantastical scruples and his ridiculous anxiety to

realise an unattainable standard of perfection. From holding back

himself, the speculative enthusiast is thrust back by others: his

pretensions are insulted and trampled on; and the repeated and pointed

repulses he meets with, make him still more unwilling to encounter, and

more unable to contend with those that await him in the prosecution of

his career. He therefore retires from the contest altogether, or remains

in the back-ground, a passive but uneasy spectator of a scene, in which

he finds from experience, that confidence, alertness, and superficial

acquirements are of more avail than all the refinement and delicacy in

the world. Action, in truth, is referable chiefly to quickness and

strength of resolution, rather than to depth of reasoning or scrupulous

nicety: again, it is to be presumed that those who show a proper

reliance on themselves, will not betray the trust we place in them

through pusillanimity or want of spirit: in what relates to the opinion

of others, which is often formed hastily and on slight acquaintance,

much must be allowed to what strikes the senses, to what excites the

imagination; and in all popular worldly schemes, popular and worldly

means must be resorted to, instead of depending wholly on the hidden and

intrinsic merits of the case.

‘In peace, there’s nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness, and humility:

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

Then imitate the action of the tyger;

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,

Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage:

Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;

Let it pry through the portage of the head,

Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it,

As fearfully, as doth a galled rock

O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,

Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.’

This advice (sensible as it is) is abhorrent to the nature of a man who

is accustomed to place all his hopes of victory in reasoning and

reflection only. The noisy, rude, gratuitous success of those who have

taken so much less pains to deserve it, disgusts and disheartens him—he

loses his self-possession and self-esteem, has no standard left by which

to measure himself or others, and as he cannot be brought to admire

them, persuades himself at last that the blame rests with himself; and

instead of bespeaking a fashionable dress, learning to bow, or taking a

few lessons in boxing or fencing to brace his nerves and raise his

spirits, aggravates all his former faults by way of repairing them,

grows more jealous of the propriety of every word and look, lowers his

voice into a whisper, gives his style the last polish, reconsiders his

arguments, refines his sentiments till they evaporate in a sigh, and

thus satisfies himself that he can hardly fail, that men judge

impartially in the end, that the public will sooner or later do him

justice, Fortune smile, and the Fair no longer be averse! _Oh malore!_

He is just where he was, or ten times worse off than ever.

There is another circumstance that tends not a little to perplex the

judgment, and add to the difficulties of the retired student, when he

comes out into the world. He is like one dropped from the clouds. He has

hitherto conversed chiefly with historic personages and abstract

propositions, and has no just notion of actual men and things. He does

not well know how to reconcile the sweeping conclusions he has been

taught to indulge in to the cautious and pliant maxims of the world, nor

how to compare himself, an inhabitant of Utopia, with sublunary mortals.

He has been habituated all his life to look up to a few great names

handed down by virtue or science as the ‘Gods of his idolatry,’ as the

fixed stars in the firmament of reputation, and to have some respect for

himself and other learned men as votaries at the shrine and as

appreciating the merits of their idol; but all the rest of the world,

who are neither the objects of this sort of homage, nor concerned as a

sort of priesthood in collecting and paying it, he looks upon as

actually nobody, or as worms crawling upon the face of the earth without

intellectual value or pretensions. He is, therefore, a little surprised

and shocked to find, when he deigns to mingle with his fellows, those

every-day mortals, on ordinary terms, that they are of a height nearly

equal to himself, that they have words, ideas, feelings in common with

the best, and are not the mere cyphers he had been led to consider them.

From having under-rated, he comes to over-rate them. Having dreamt of no

such thing, he is more struck with what he finds than perhaps it

deserves; magnifies the least glimpse of sense or humour into sterling

wit or wisdom; is startled by any objection from so unexpected a

quarter; thinks his own advantages of no avail, because they are not the

only ones, and shrinks from an encounter with weapons he has not been

used to, and from a struggle by which he feels himself degraded. The

Knight of La Mancha when soundly beaten by the packstaves of the

Yanguesian carriers, laid all the blame on his having condescended to

fight with plebeians. The pride of learning comes in to aid the

awkwardness and bashfulness of the inexperienced novice, converting his

want of success into the shame and mortification of defeat in what he

habitually considers as a contest with inferiors. Indeed, those will

always be found to submit with the worst grace to any check or reverse

of this kind in common conversation or reasoning, who have been taught

to set the most exclusive and disproportioned value on letters: and the

most enlightened and accomplished scholars will be less likely to be

humbled or put to the blush by the display of common sense or native

talent, than the more ignorant, self-sufficient, and pedantic among the

learned; for that ignorance, self-sufficiency, and pedantry, are

sometimes to be reckoned among the attributes of learning, cannot be

disputed. These qualities are not very reconcilable with modest merit;

but they are quite consistent with a great deal of blundering,

confusion, and want of _tact_ in the commerce of the world. The genuine

scholar retires from an unequal conflict into silence and obscurity: the

pedant swells into self-importance, and renders himself conspicuous by

pompous arrogance and absurdity!

It is hard upon those who have ever taken pains or done any thing to

distinguish themselves, that they are seldom the trumpeters of their own

achievements; and I believe it may be laid down as a rule, that we

receive just as much homage from others as we exact from them by our own

declarations, looks, and manner. But no one who has performed any thing

great looks big upon it: those who have any thing to boast of are

generally silent on that head, and altogether shy of the subject. With

Coriolanus, they ‘will not have their nothings monster’d.’ From

familiarity, his own acquirements do not appear so extraordinary to the

individual as to others; and there is a natural want of sympathy in this

respect. No one who is really capable of great things is proud or vain

of his success; for he thinks more of what he had hoped or has failed to

do, than of what he has done. A habit of extreme exertion, or of anxious

suspense, is not one of buoyant, overweening self-complacency: those who

have all their lives tasked their faculties to the utmost, may be

supposed to have quite enough to do without having much disposition left

to anticipate their success with confidence, or to glory in it

afterwards. The labours of the mind, like the drudgery of the body,

depress and take away the usual alacrity of the spirits. Nor can such

persons be lifted up with the event; for the impression of the

consequences to result from any arduous undertaking must be light and

vain, compared with the toil and anxiety accompanying it. It is only

those who have done nothing, who fancy they can do every thing; or who

have leisure and inclination to admire themselves. To sit before a glass

and smile delighted at our own image, is merely a tax on our egotism and

self-conceit; and these are resources not easily exhausted in some

persons; or if they are, the deficiency is supplied by flatterers who

surround the vain, like a natural atmosphere. Fools who take all their

opinions at second-hand cannot resist the coxcomb’s delight in himself;

or it might be said that folly is the natural mirror of vanity. The

greatest heroes, it has often been observed, do not show it in their

faces; nor do philosophers affect to be thought wise. Little minds

triumph on small occasions, or over puny competitors: the loftiest wish

for higher opportunities of signalising themselves, or compare

themselves with those models that leave them no room for flippant

exultation. Either great things are accomplished with labour and pains,

which stamp their impression on the general character and tone of

feeling; or if this should not be the case (as sometimes happens), and

they are the effect of genius and a happiness of nature, then they cost

too little to be much thought of, and we rather wonder at others for

admiring them, than at ourselves for having performed them. ‘Vix ea

nostra voco’—is the motto of spontaneous talent; and in neither case is

conceit the exuberant growth of great original power or of great

attainments.

In one particular, the uneducated man carries it hollow against the man

of thought and refinement: the first can shoot in the _long bow_, which

the last cannot for the life of him. He who has spent the best part of

his time and wasted his best powers in endeavouring to answer the

question—‘What is truth?’—scorns a lie, and every thing making the

smallest approach to one. His mind by habit has become tenacious of,

devoted to the truth. The grossness and vulgarity of falsehood shock the

delicacy of his perceptions, as much as it would shock the finest artist

to be obliged to daub in a signpost, or scrawl a caricature. He cannot

make up his mind to derive any benefit from so pitiful and disgusting a

source. Tell me that a man is a metaphysician, and at the same time that

he is given to shallow and sordid boasting, and I will not believe you.

After striving to raise himself to an equality with truth and nature by

patient investigation and refined distinctions (which few can

make)—whether he succeed or fail, he cannot stoop to acquire a spurious

reputation, or to advance himself or lessen others by paltry artifice

and idle rhodomontade, which are in every one’s power who has never

known the value or undergone the labour of discovering a single truth.

Gross personal and local interests bear the principal sway with the

ignorant or mere man of the world, who considers not what things are in

themselves, but what they are to him: the man of science attaches a

higher importance to, because he finds a more constant pleasure in the

contemplation and pursuit of general and abstracted truths. Philosophy

also teaches self-knowledge; and self-knowledge strikes equally at the

root of any inordinate opinion of ourselves, or wish to impress others

with idle admiration. Mathematicians have been remarked for persons of

strict probity and a conscientious and somewhat literal turn of

mind.[16] But are poets and romance-writers equally scrupulous and

severe judges of themselves, and martyrs to right principle? I cannot

acquit them of the charge of vanity, and a wish to aggrandise themselves

in the eyes of the world, at the expense of a little false complaisance

(what wonder when the world are so prone to admire, and they are so

spoiled by indulgence in self-pleasing fancies?)—but in general they are

too much taken up with their _ideal_ creations, which have also a truth

and keeping of their own, to misrepresent or exaggerate matters of fact,

or to trouble their heads about them. The poet’s waking thoughts are

dreams: the liar has all his wits and senses about him, and thinks only

of astonishing his hearers by some worthless assertion, a mixture of

impudence and cunning. But what shall we say of the clergy and the

priests of all countries? Are they not men of learning? And are they

not, with few exceptions, noted for imposture and time-serving, much

more than for a love of truth and candour? They are good subjects, it is

true; bound to keep the peace, and hired to maintain certain opinions,

not to inquire into them. So this is an exception to the rule, such as

might be expected. I speak of the natural tendencies of things, and not

of the false bias that may be given to them by their forced combination

with other principles.

The worst effect of this depression of spirits, or of the ‘scholar’s

melancholy,’ here spoken of, is when it leads a man, from a distrust of

himself, to seek for low company, or to forget it by matching below

himself. Gray is to be pitied, whose extreme diffidence or

fastidiousness was such as to prevent his associating with his fellow

collegians, or mingling with the herd, till at length, like the owl,

shutting himself up from society and daylight, he was hunted and hooted

at like the owl whenever he chanced to appear, and was even assailed and

disturbed in the haunts in which ‘he held his solitary reign.’ He was

driven from college to college, and subjected to a persecution the more

harassing to a person of his indolent and retired habits. But he only

shrunk the more within himself in consequence—read over his favourite

authors—corresponded with his distant friends—was terrified out of his

wits at the bare idea of having his portrait prefixed to his works; and

probably died from nervous agitation at the publicity into which his

name had been forced by his learning, taste, and genius. This monastic

seclusion and reserve is, however, better than a career such as

Porson’s; who from not liking the restraints, or not possessing the

exterior recommendations of good society, addicted himself to the lowest

indulgences, spent his days and nights in cider-cellars and pot-houses,

cared not with whom or where he was, so that he had somebody to talk to

and something to drink, ‘from humble porter to imperial tokay’ (_a

liquid_, according to his own pun), and fell a martyr, in all

likelihood, to what in the first instance was pure _mauvaise honte_.

Nothing could overcome this propensity to low society and sotting, but

the having something to do, which required his whole attention and

faculties; and then he shut himself up for weeks together in his

chambers, or at the University, to collate old manuscripts, or edite a

Greek tragedy, or expose a grave pedant, without seeing a single

boon-companion, or touching a glass of wine. I saw him once at the

London Institution with a large patch of coarse brown paper on his nose,

the skirts of his rusty black coat hung with cobwebs, and talking in a

tone of suavity approaching to condescension to one of the Managers. It

is a pity that men should so lose themselves from a certain awkwardness

and rusticity at the outset. But did not Sheridan make the same

melancholy ending, and run the same fatal career, though in a higher and

more brilliant circle? He did; and though not from exactly the same

cause (for no one could accuse Sheridan’s purple nose and flashing eye

of a bashfulness—‘modest as morning when she coldly eyes the youthful

Phœbus!’)—yet it was perhaps from one nearly allied to it, namely, the

want of that noble independence and confidence in its own resources

which should distinguish genius, and the dangerous ambition to get

sponsors and vouchers for it in persons of rank and fashion. The

affectation of the society of lords is as mean and low-minded as the

love of that of coblers and tapsters. It is that coblers and tapsters

may admire, that we wish to be seen in the company of _their_ betters.

The tone of literary patronage is better than it was a hundred or a

hundred and fifty years ago. What dramatic author would think now of

getting a lady of quality to take a box at the first night of a play to

prevent its being damned by the pit? Do we not read the account of

Parson Adams taking his ale in Squire Booby’s kitchen with mingled

incredulity and shame? At present literature has, to a considerable

degree, found its level, and is hardly in danger, ‘deprived of its

natural patrons and protectors, the great and noble, of being trodden in

the mire, and trampled under the hoofs of a swinish multitude’—though it

can never again hope, to be what learning once was in the persons of the

priesthood, the lord and sovereign of principalities and powers. Fool

that it was ever to forego its privileges, and loosen the strong hold it

had on opinion in bigotry and superstition!

I remember hearing a lady of great sense and acuteness speak of it as a

painful consequence of the natural shyness of scholars, that from the

want of a certain address, or an acquaintance with the common forms of

society, they despair of making themselves agreeable to women of

education and a certain rank in life, and throw away their fine

sentiments and romantic tenderness on chambermaids and mantua-makers.

Not daring to hope for success where it would be most desirable, yet

anxious to realise in some way the dream of books and of their youth,

they are willing to accept a return of affection which they count upon

as a tribute of gratitude in those of lower circumstances, (as if

gratitude were ever bought by interest), and take up with the first

Dulcinea del Toboso that they meet with, when, would they only try the

experiment, they might do much better. Perhaps so: but there is here

also a mixture of pride as well as modesty. The scholar is not only

apprehensive of not meeting with a return of fondness where it might be

most advantageous to him; but he is afraid of subjecting his self-love

to the mortification of a repulse, and to the reproach of aiming at a

prize far beyond his deserts. Besides, living (as he does) in an _ideal_

world, he has it in his option to clothe his Goddess (be she who or what

she may) with all the perfections his heart doats on; and he works up a

dowdy of this ambiguous description _à son gré_, as an artist does a

piece of dull clay, or the poet the sketch of some unrivalled heroine.

The contrast is also the greater (and not the less gratifying as being

his own discovery,) between his favourite figure and the back-ground of

her original circumstances; and he likes her the better, inasmuch as,

like himself, she owes all to her own merit—and _his_ notice!

Possibly, the best cure for this false modesty, and for the uneasiness

and extravagances it occasions, would be, for the retired and abstracted

student to consider that he properly belongs to another sphere of

action, remote from the scenes of ordinary life, and may plead the

excuse of ignorance, and the privilege granted to strangers and to those

who do not speak the same language. If any one is travelling in a

foreign Diligence, he is not expected to shine nor to put himself

forward, nor need he be out of countenance because he cannot: he has

only to conform as well as he can to his new and temporary situation,

and to study common propriety and simplicity of manners. Every thing has

its own limits, a little centre of its own, round which it moves; so

that our true wisdom lies in keeping to our own walk in life, however

humble or obscure, and being satisfied if we can succeed in it. The best

of us can do no more, and we shall only become ridiculous or unhappy by

attempting it. We are ashamed, because we are at a loss in things to

which we have no pretensions, and try to remedy our mistakes by

committing greater. An overweening vanity or self-opinion is, in truth,

often at the bottom of this weakness; and we shall be most likely to

conquer the one by eradicating the other, or restricting it within due

and moderate bounds.

THE MAIN-CHANCE

_The New Monthly Magazine._] [_February, 1828._

‘Search then the ruling passion: there alone,

The wild are constant, and the cunning known;

The fool consistent, and the false sincere;

Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.

This clue once found unravels all the rest,

The prospect clears, and Wharton stands confest.’

POPE.

I am one of those who do not think that mankind are exactly governed by

reason or a cool calculation of consequences. I rather believe that

habit, imagination, sense, passion, prejudice, words make a strong and

frequent diversion from the right line of prudence and wisdom. I have

been told, however, that these are merely the irregularities and

exceptions, and that reason forms the rule or basis; that the

understanding, instead of being the sport of the capricious and

arbitrary decisions of the will, generally dictates the line of conduct

it is to pursue, and that self-interest, or the _main-chance_, is the

unvarying load-star of our affections, or the chief ingredient in all

our motives, that, thrown in as ballast, gives steadiness and direction

to our voyage through life. I will not take upon me to give a verdict in

this cause as judge; but I will try to plead one side of it as an

advocate, perhaps a biassed and feeble one.

As the passions are said to be subject to the control of reason, and as

reason is resolved (in the present case) into an attention to our own

interest, or a practical sense of the value of money, it will not be

amiss to inquire how much of this principle itself is founded in a

rational estimate of things, or is calculated for the end it proposes,

or how much of it will turn out (when analysed) to be mere madness and

folly or a mixture, like all the rest, of obstinacy, whim, fancy,

vanity, ill-nature, and so forth, or a nominal pursuit of good. This

passion, or an inordinate love of wealth, shows itself, when it is

strong, equally in two opposite ways, in saving or in spending—in

avarice (or stinginess) and in extravagance. To examine each of their

order. That lowest and most familiar form of covetousness, commonly

called _stinginess_, is at present (it must be owned) greatly on the

wane in civilised society; it has been driven out of fashion either by

ridicule and good sense, or by the spread of luxury, or by supplying the

mind with other sources of interest, besides those which related to the

bare means of subsistence, so that it may almost be considered as a

vice, or absurdity, struck off the list, as a set-off to some that, in

the change of manners and the progress of dissipation have been brought

upon the stage. It is not, however, so entirely banished from the world,

but that examples of it may be found to our purpose. It seems to have

taken refuge in the petty provincial towns, or in old baronial castles

in the North of Scotland, where it is still triumphant. To go into this

subject somewhat in detail, as a study of the surviving manners of the

last age.—Nothing is more common in these half-starved, barren regions,

than to stint the servants in their wages, to allowance them in the

merest necessaries, never to indulge them with a morsel of savoury food,

and to lock up every thing from them as if they were thieves, or common

vagabonds, broke into the house. The natural consequence is, that the

mistresses live in continual _hot water_ with their servants, keep watch

and ward over them—the pantry is in a state of siege—grudge them every

mouthful, every appearance of comfort, or moment of leisure, and torment

their own souls every minute of their lives about what, if left wholly

to itself, would not make a difference of five shillings at the year’s

end. There are families so notorious for this kind of _surveillance_ and

meanness, that no servant will go to live with them; for, to clench the

matter, they are obliged to stay if they do; as, under these amiable

establishments, and to provide against an evasion of their signal

advantages, domestics are never hired but by the half-year. Instances

have been known where servants have taken a pleasant revenge on their

masters and mistresses without intending it; but where the example of

sordid saving and meanness set to them, having taken possession of those

even who were victims to it, they have conscientiously applied it to the

benefit of all parties, and scarcely suffered a thing to enter the house

for the whole six months they stayed in it. To pass over, however, those

cases which may plead poverty as their excuse, what shall we say to a

lady of fortune (the sister of one of their old-fashioned lairds)

allowing the fruit to rot in the gardens and hot-houses of a fine old

mansion in large quantities, sooner than let any of it be given away in

presents to the neighbours; and, when peremptorily ordered by the master

of the house to send a basket-full every morning to a sick friend,

purchasing a small pottle for the purpose, and satisfying her mind (an

intelligent and well-informed one) with this miserable subterfuge? Nay,

farther, the same person, whenever they had green-peas, or other

rarities, served up at table, could hardly be prevailed on to help the

guests to them, but, if possible, sent them away, though no other use

could now be made of them, and she would never see them again! Is there

common sense in this; or is it not more like madness? But is it not, at

the same time, human nature? Let us stop to explain a little. In my

view, the real motive of action in this and other similar cases of

grasping penuriousness has no more reference to self-love (properly so

called) than artificial fruit and flowers have to natural ones. A

certain form or outside appearance of utility may deceive the mind, but

the natural, pulpy, wholesome, nutritious substance, the principle of

vitality is gone. To this callous, frigid habit of mind, the real uses

of things harden and crystallise; the pith and marrow are extracted out

of them, and leave nothing but the husk or shell. By a regular process,

the idea of property is gradually abstracted from the advantage it may

be of even to ourselves; and to a well-drilled, thorough-bred, Northern

housekeeper (such as I have supposed), the fruits, or other produce of

her garden, would come at last to be things no more to be eaten or

enjoyed, than her jewels or trinkets of any description, which are,

professedly, of no use but to be _kept_ as symbols of wealth, to be

occasionally looked at, and carefully guarded from the approach of any

unhallowed touch. The calculation of consequences, or of benefit to

accrue to any living person, is so far from being the mainspring in this

mechanical operation that it is never once thought of, or regarded with

peevishness and impatience as an unwelcome intruder, because it must

naturally divert the mind from the warped and false bias it has taken.

The feeling of property is here, then, removed from the sphere of

practice to a chimerical and fictitious one. In the case of not sending

the fruit out of the house, there might be some lurking idea of its

being possibly wanted at home, that it might be sent to some one else,

or made up into conserves: but when different articles of food are

actually placed on the table, to hang back from using or offering them

to others, is a deliberate infatuation. They _must be_ destroyed, they

_could not_ appear again; and yet this person’s heart failed her, and

shrank back from the only opportunity of making the proper use of them

with a petty, sensitive apprehension, as if it were a kind of sacrilege

done to a cherished and favourite object. The impulse to save was

become, by indulgence, a sort of desperate propensity and forlorn hope,

no longer the understood means, but the mistaken end: habit had

completely superseded the exercise and control of reason, and the rage

of making the most of every thing _by making no use of it at all_,

resisted to the last moment the shocking project of feasting on a

helpless dish of green-peas (that _would_ fetch so much in the market)

as an outrage against the Goddess of stinginess, and torture to the soul

of thrift! The principle of economy is inverted; and in order to avoid

the possibility of wasting any thing, the way with such philosophers and

housewives is to abstain from touching it altogether. Is not this a

common error? Or are we conscious of our motives in such cases? [Or do

we not flatter ourselves by imputing every such act of idle folly to the

necessity of adopting some sure and judicious plan to shun ruin,

beggary, and the most profligate abuse of wealth? An old maid in the

same northern school of humanity calling upon some young ladies, her

neighbours, was so alarmed and scandalized at finding the _safe_ open in

their absence, that she engaged herself to drink tea the same afternoon,

for the express purpose of reading them a lecture on the unheard-of

imprudence and impropriety of such an example, and was mobbed on her way

home by the poor servant-girl (who had been made the subject of her

declamation) in return for her uncalled-for interference. _She_ had

nothing to fear, nothing to lose: _her_ safe was carefully locked up.

Why then all this flutter, fidgetty anxiety, and itch of meddling? Out

of pure romantic generosity—because the idea of any thing like comfort

or liberality to a servant shocked her economical and screwed-up

prejudices as much as the impugning any article of her religious or

moral creed could have done. The very truisms and literal refinements of

this passion are then sheer impertinence. The housekeeper came into the

parlour of a ‘_big ha’ house_,’ in the same land of cakes and

hospitality, to say that the workmen had refused to eat their

dinner.—‘Why so?’—Because there was nothing but sowins and sour

milk.—‘Then they must go without a dinner,’ said the young mistress

delighted; ‘there is nothing else in the house for them.’ Yet the larder

at that time groaned with cold rounds of beef, hams, pasties, and the

other plentiful remains of a huge entertainment the day before. This was

flippancy and ill-nature, as well as a wrong notion of self-interest. Is

it at all wonderful that a decent servant-girl, when applied to to go to

this place, laughed at the idea of a service where there was nothing to

eat? Yet this attention to the _main-chance_ on her part, had it come to

the lady’s knowledge, would have been treated as a great piece of

insolence. So little conception have such people of their own

obligations on the claims of others! The clergyman of the parish

(prolific in this sort of anecdote), a hearty, good sort of man enough,

but irritable withal, took it into his head to fly into a violent

passion if ever he found the glasses or spoons left out in the kitchen,

and he always went into the kitchen to look after this sort of

excitement. He pretended to be mightily afraid that the one would be

broken (to his irreparable loss) and the other stolen, though there was

no danger of either: he wanted an excuse to fret and fume about

something. On the death of his wife he sent for her most intimate friend

to condole and consult with, and having made some necessary

arrangements, begged as a peculiar favour that she would look into the

kitchen to see if the glasses and silver spoons were in their places.

She repressed a smile at such a moment out of regard to his feelings,

which were serious and acute; but burst into a fit of unrestrained

laughter as soon as she got home. So ridiculous a thing is human nature,

even to ourselves! Either our actions are absurd, or we are absurd in

our constant censure and exposure of others. I would not from choice go

into these details, but I might be required to fill up a vague outline;

and the examples of folly, spite, and meanness are unfortunately ‘sown

like a thick scurf o’er life!’]

Let us turn the tables and look at the other side of this sober, solid,

ingrossing passion for property and its appendages. A man lays out a

thousand, nay, sometimes many thousand pounds in purchasing a fine

picture. This is thought, by the vulgar, a very fantastical folly, and

unaccountable waste of money. Why so? No one would give such a sum for a

picture, unless there were others ready to offer nearly the same sum,

and who are likely to appreciate its value, and envy him the

distinction. It is then a sign of taste, a proof of wealth to possess

it, it is an ornament and a luxury. If the same person lays out the same

sum of money in building or purchasing a fine house, or enriching it

with costly furniture, no notice is taken—this is supposed to be

perfectly natural and in order. Yet both are equally gratuitous pieces

of extravagance, and the value of the objects is, in either case,

equally _ideal_. It will be asked, ‘But what is the use of the picture?’

And what, pray, is the use of the fine house or costly furniture, unless

to be looked at, to be admired, and to display the taste and

magnificence of the owner? Are not pictures and statues as much

furniture as gold plate or jasper tables; or does the circumstance of

the former having a meaning in them, and appealing to the imagination as

well as to the senses, neutralize their virtue, and render it entirely

chimerical and visionary? It is true, every one must have a house of

some kind, furnished somehow, and the superfluity so far grows

imperceptibly out of the necessary. But a fine house, fine furniture, is

necessary to no man, nor of more value than the plainest, except as a

matter of taste, of fancy, of luxury and ostentation. Again, no doubt,

if a person is in the habit of keeping a number of servants, and

entertaining a succession of fashionable guests, he must have more room

than he wants for himself, apartments suitably decorated to receive

them, and offices and stables for their horses and retinue. But is all

this unavoidably dictated as a consequence of his attention to the

_main-chance_, or is it not sacrificing the latter, and making it a

stalking-horse to his vanity, dissipation, or love of society and

hospitality? We are at least as fond of spending money as of making it.

If a man runs through a fortune in the way here spoken of, is it out of

love to himself? Yet who scruples to run through a fortune in this way,

or accuses himself of any extraordinary disinterestedness or love of

others? One bed is as much as any one can sleep in, one room is as much

as he can dine in, and he may have another for study or to retire to

after dinner—but he can only want more than this for the accommodation

of his friends, or the admiration of strangers. At Fonthill Abbey (to

take an extreme illustration), there was not a single room fit to sit,

lie, or stand in: the whole was cut up into pigeon holes, or spread out

into long endless galleries. The building this huge, ill-assorted pile

cost, I believe, nearly a million of money; and if the circumstance was

mentioned, it occasioned an expression of surprise at the amount of the

wealth that had been thus squandered—but if it was said that a hundred

pounds had been laid out on a highly-finished picture, there was the

same astonishment expressed at its misdirection. The sympathetic auditor

makes up his mind to the first and greatest loss, by reflecting that in

case of the worst the building materials alone will fetch something

considerable; or, in the very idea of stone-walls and mortar there is

something solid and tangible, that repels the charge of frivolous levity

or fine sentiment. This quaint excrescence in architecture, preposterous

and ill-contrived as it was, occasioned, I suspect, many a heart-ache

and bitter comparison to the throng of fashionable visitants; and I

conceive it was the very want of comfort and convenience that enhanced

this feeling, by magnifying, as it were from contrast, the expense that

had been incurred in realising an idle whim. When we judge thus

perversely and invidiously of the employment of wealth by others, I

cannot think that we are guided in our own choice of means to ends by a

simple calculation of downright use and personal accommodation. The

gentleman who purchased Fonthill, and was supposed to be possessed of

wealth enough to purchase half a dozen more Fonthills, lived there

himself for some time in a state of the greatest retirement, rose at six

and read till four, rode out for an hour for the benefit of the air, and

dined abstemiously for the sake of his health. I could do all this

myself. What then became of the rest of his fortune? It was lying in the

funds, or embarked in business to make it yet greater, that he might

still rise at six and read till four, &c.—it was of no other earthly use

to him; for he did not wish to make a figure in the world, or to throw

it away on studs of horses, on equipages, entertainments, gaming,

electioneering, subscriptions to charitable institutions, [mistresses,]

or any of the usual fashionable modes of squandering wealth for the

amusement and wonder of others and our own fancied enjoyment. Mr. F. did

not probably lay out five hundred a-year on himself: it cost Mr.

Beckford, who led a life of perfect seclusion, twenty thousand a-year to

defray the expenses of his table and of his household establishment.

When I find that such and so various are the tastes of men, I am a

little puzzled to know what is meant by self-interest, of which some

persons talk so fluently, as if it was a _Jack-in-a-Box_ which they

could take out and show you, and which they tell you is the object that

all men equally aim at. If money, is it for its own sake or the sake of

other things? Is it to hoard it or to spend it, on ourselves or others?

In all these points, we find the utmost diversity and contradiction both

of feeling and practice. Certainly, he who puts his money into a

strong-box, and he who puts it into a dice-box must be allowed to have a

very different idea of the _main-chance_. If by this phrase be

understood a principle of self-preservation, I grant that while we live,

we must not starve, and that _necessity has no law_. Beyond this point,

all seems nearly left to chance or whim; and so far are all the world

from being agreed in their definition of this redoubtable term, that one

half of them may be said to think and act in diametrical opposition to

the other.

Avarice is the miser’s dream, as fame is the poet’s. A calculation of

physical profit or loss is almost as much out of the question in the one

case as in the other. The one has set his mind on gold, the other on

praise, as the _summum bonum_ or object of his bigoted idolatry and

darling contemplation, not for any private and sinister ends. It is the

immediate pursuit, not the remote or reflex consequence that gives wings

to the passion. There is, indeed, a reference to self in either case

that fixes and concentrates it, but not a gross or sordid one. Is not

the desire to accumulate and leave a vast estate behind us equally

romantic with the desire to leave a posthumous name behind us? Is not

the desire of distinction, of something to be known and remembered by,

the paramount consideration? And are not the privations we undergo, the

sacrifices and exertions we make for either object, nearly akin? A child

makes a huge snow-ball to show his skill and perseverance and as

something to wonder at, not that he can swallow it as an ice, or warm

his hands at it, and though the next day’s sun will dissolve it; and the

man accumulates a pile of wealth for the same reason principally, or to

find employment for his time, his imagination, and his will. I deny that

it can be of any other use to him to watch and superintend the returns

of millions, than to watch the returns of the heavenly bodies, or to

calculate their distances, or to contemplate eternity, or infinity, or

the sea, or the dome of St. Peter’s, or any other object that excites

curiosity and interest from its magnitude and importance. Do we not look

at the most barren mountain with thrilling awe and wonder? And is it

strange that we should gaze at a mountain of gold with satisfaction,

when we can besides say, ‘This is ours, with all the power that belongs

to it?’ Every passion, however plodding and prosaic, has its poetical

side to it. A miser is the true alchemist, or, like the magician in his

cell, who overlooks a mighty experiment, who sees dazzling visions, and

who wields the will of others at his nod; but to whom all other hopes

and pleasures are dead, and who is cut off from all connexion with his

kind. He lives in a splendid hallucination, a waking trance, and so far

it is well: but if he thinks he has any other need or use for all this

endless store (any more than to swill the ocean) he deceives himself,

and is no conjuror after all. He goes on, however, mechanically adding

to his stock, and fancying that great riches is great gain, that every

particle that swells the heap is something in reserve against the evil

day, and a defence against that poverty which he dreads more, the

farther he is removed from it; as the more giddy the height to which we

have attained, the more frightful does the gulph yawn below—so easily

does habit get the mastery of reason, and so nearly is passion allied to

madness! ‘But he is laying up for his heirs and successors.’ In toiling

for them, and sacrificing himself, is he properly attending to the

_main-chance_?

This is the turn the love of money takes in cautious, dry, recluse, and

speculative minds. If it were the pure and abstract love of money, it

could take no other turn but this. But in a different class of

characters, the sociable, the vain, and imaginative, it takes just the

contrary one, _viz._ to expense, extravagance, and ostentation. It then

loves to display itself in every fantastic shape and with every

reflected lustre, in houses, in equipage, in dress, in a retinue of

friends and dependants, in horses, in hounds—to glitter in the eye of

fashion, to be echoed by the roar of folly, and buoyed up for a while

like a bubble on the surface of vanity, to sink all at once and

irrecoverably into an abyss of ruin and bankruptcy. Does it foresee this

result? Does it care for it? What then becomes of the calculating

principle that can neither be hoodwinked nor bribed from its duty? Does

it do nothing for us in this critical emergency? It is blind, deaf, and

insensible to all but the noise, confusion, and glare of objects by

which it is fascinated and lulled into a fatal repose! One man ruins

himself by the vanity of associating with lords, another by his love of

low company, one by his fondness for building, another by his rage for

keeping open house and private theatricals, one by philosophical

experiments, another by embarking in every ticklish and fantastic

speculation that is proposed to him, one throws away an estate on a

law-suit, another on a die, a third on a horse-race, a fourth on

_virtù_, a fifth on a drab, a sixth on a contested election, &c. There

is no dearth of instances to fill the page, or complete the group of

profound calculators and inflexible martyrs to the _main-chance_. Let

any of these discreet and well-advised persons have the veil torn from

their darling follies by experience, and be gifted with a double share

of wisdom and a second fortune to dispose of, and each of them, so far

from being warned by experience or disaster, will only be the more

resolutely bent to assert the independence of his choice, and throw it

away the self-same road it went before, on his vanity in associating

with lords, on his love of low company, on his fondness for building, on

his rage for keeping open house or private theatricals, on philosophical

experiments, on fantastic speculations, on a law-suit, on a dice-box, on

a favourite horse, on a picture, on a mistress, or election contest, and

so on, through the whole of the chapter of accidents and cross-purposes.

There is an admirable description of this sort of infatuation with folly

and ruin in Madame D’Arblay’s account of Harrel in ‘Cecilia;’ and though

the picture is highly wrought and carried to the utmost length, yet I

maintain that the principle is common. I myself have known more than one

individual in the same predicament; and therefore cannot think that the

deviations from the line of strict prudence and wisdom are so rare or

trifling as the theory I am opposing represents them, or I must have

been singularly unfortunate in my acquaintance. Out of a score of

persons of this class I could mention several that have ruined their

fortunes out of mere freak, others that are in a state of dotage and

imbecility for fear of being robbed of all they are worth. The rest care

nothing about the matter. So that this boasted and unfailing attention

to the _main-chance_ resolves itself, when strong, into mad profusion or

griping penury, or if weak, is null and yields to other motives. Such is

the conclusion, to which my observation of life has led me: if I am

quite wrong, it is hard that in a world abounding in such characters I

should not have met with a single practical philosopher.[17]

A girl in a country-town resolves never to marry any one under a duke or

a lord. Good. This may be very well as an ebullition of spleen or

vanity; but is there much common sense or regard to her own satisfaction

in it? Were there any likelihood of her succeeding in her resolution,

she would not make it: for it is the very distinction to be attained

that piques her ambition, and leads her to gratify her conceit of

herself by affecting to look down on any lower matches. Let her suffer

ever so much mortification or chagrin in the prosecution of her scheme,

it only confirms her the more in it: the spirit of contradiction, and

the shame of owning herself defeated, increase with every new

disappointment and year of painful probation. At least this is the case

while there is any chance left. But what, after all, is this haughty and

ridiculous pretension founded on? Is it owing to a more commanding view

and a firmer grasp of consequences, or of her own interest? No such

thing: she is as much captivated by the fancied sound of ‘my lady,’ and

dazzled by the image of a coronet-coach, as the girl who marries a

footman is smit with his broad shoulders, laced coat, and rosy cheeks.

‘But why must I be always in extremes? Few misses make vows of celibacy

or marry their footmen.’ Take then the broad question:—Do they generally

marry from the convictions of the understanding, or make the choice that

is most likely to ensure their future happiness, or that they themselves

approve afterwards? I think the answer must be in the negative; and yet

love and marriage are among the weightiest and most serious concerns of

life. Mutual regard, good temper, good sense, good character, or a

conformity of tastes and dispositions, have notoriously and lamentably

little to say in it. On the contrary, it is most frequently those things

that pique and provoke opposition, instead of those which promise

concord and sympathy, that decide the choice and inflame the will by the

love of conquest or of overcoming difficulty. Or it is a complexion, or

a fine set of teeth, or air, or dress, or a fine person, or false

calves, or affected consequence, or a reputation for gallantry, or a

flow of spirits, or a flow of words, or forward coquetry, or assumed

indifference, something that appeals to the senses, the fancy, or to our

pride, and determines us to throw away our happiness for life. Neither

in this case, on which so much depends, are the _main-chance_ and our

real interest by any means the same thing.

‘Now, all ye ladies of fair Scotland,

And ladies of England that happy would prove,

Marry never for houses, nor marry for land,

Nor marry for nothing but only love.’[18]—_Old Ballad._

Or take the passion of love where it has other objects and consequences

in view. Is reason any match for the poison of this passion, where it

has been once imbibed? I might just as well be told that reason is a

cure for madness or the bite of a venomous serpent. Are not health,

fortune, friends, character, peace of mind, every thing sacrificed to

its idlest impulse? Are the instances rare, or are they not common and

tragical? The _main-chance_ does not serve the turn here. Does the

prospect of certain ruin break the fascination to its frail victim, or

does it not rather enhance and precipitate the result? Or does it not

render the conquest more easy and secure that the seducer has already

triumphed over and deserted a hundred other victims? A man _à bonnes

fortunes_ is the most irresistible personage in the lists of gallantry.

Take drunkenness again, that vice which till within these few years (and

even still) was fatal to the health, the constitution, the fortunes of

so many individuals, and the peace of so many families in Great Britain.

I would ask what remonstrance of friends, what lessons of experience,

what resolutions of amendment, what certainty of remorse and suffering,

however exquisite, would deter the confirmed sot (where the passion for

this kind of excitement had once become habitual and the immediate want

of it was felt) from indulging his propensity and taking his full swing,

notwithstanding the severe and imminent punishment to follow upon his

incorrigible excess? The consequence of not abstaining from his

favourite beverage is not doubtful and distant (a thing in the clouds)

but close at his side, staring him in the face, and felt perhaps in all

its aggravations the very morning, yet the recollection of this and of

the next day’s dawn is of no avail against the momentary craving and

headlong impulse given by the first application of the glass to his

lips. The present temptation is indeed heightened by the threatened

alternative. I know this as a rule, that the stronger the repentance,

the surer the relapse and the more hopeless the cure! The being

engrossed by the present moment, by the present feeling, whatever it be,

whether of pleasure or pain, is the evident cause of both. Few instances

have been heard of, of a final reformation on this head. Yet it is a

clear case; and reason, if it were that Giant that it is represented in

any thing but ledgers and books of accounts, would put down the abuse in

an instant. It is true, this infirmity is more particularly chargeable

to the English and to other Northern nations, and there has been a

considerable improvement among us of late years; but I suspect it is

owing to a change of manners, and to the opening of new sources of

amusement (without the aid of ardent spirits flung in to relieve the

depression of our animal spirits,) more than to the excellent treatises

which have been written against the ‘Use of Fermented Liquors,’ or to an

increasing, tender regard to our own comfort, health, and happiness in

the breast of individuals. We still find plenty of ways of tormenting

ourselves and sporting with the feelings of others! I will say nothing

of a passion for gaming here, as too obvious an illustration of what I

mean. It is more rare, and hardly to be looked on as epidemic with us.

But few that have dabbled in this vice have not become deeply involved,

and few (or none) that have done so have ever retraced their steps or

returned to sober calculations of the _main-chance_. The majority, it is

true, are not gamesters; but where the passion does exist, it completely

tyrannizes over and stifles the voice of common sense, reason, and

humanity. How many victims has the point of honour! I will not pretend

that, as matters stand, it may not be necessary to fight a duel, under

certain circumstances and on certain provocations, even in a prudential

point of view, (though this again proves how little the maxims and

practices of the world are regulated by a mere consideration of personal

safety and welfare)—but I do say that the rashness with which this

responsibility is often incurred, and the even seeking for trifling

causes of quarrel, shows any thing but a consistent regard to

self-interest as a general principle of action, or rather betrays a

total recklessness of consequences, when opposed to pique, petulance, or

passion.

Before I proceed to answer a principal objection (and indeed a

staggering one at first sight) I will mention here that I think it

strongly confirms my view of human nature, that men form their opinions

much more from prejudice than reason. The proof that they do so is that

they form such opposite ones, when the abstract premises and independent

evidence are the same. How few Calvinists become Lutherans! How few

Papists Protestants! How few Tories Whigs![19] Each shuts his eyes

equally to facts or arguments, and persists in the view of the subject

that custom, pride, and obstinacy dictate. Interest is no more regarded

than reason; for it is often at the risk both of life and fortune that

these opinions have been maintained, and it is uniformly when parties

have run highest and the strife has been deadliest that people have been

most forward to stake their existence and every thing belonging to them,

on some unintelligible dogma or article of an old-fashioned creed. Half

the wars and fightings, martyrdoms, persecutions, feuds, antipathies,

heart-burnings in the world have been about some distinction, ‘some

trick not worth an egg’—so ready are mankind to sacrifice their all to a

mere name! It may be urged, that the good of our souls or our welfare in

a future state of being is a rational and well-grounded motive for these

religious extravagances. And this is true, so far as religious zeal

falls in with men’s passions or the spirit of the times. A bigot was

formerly ready to cut his neighbour’s throat to go to Heaven, but not so

ready to reform his own life, or give up a single vice or gratification

for all the pains and penalties denounced upon it, and of which his

faith in Holy Church did not suffer him to doubt a moment!

But it is contended here, that in matters not of doctrinal speculation

but of private life and domestic policy, every one consults and

understands his own interest; that whatever other _hobbies_ he may have,

he minds this as the main object, and contrives to make both ends meet,

in spite of seeming inattention and real difficulties. ‘If we look

around us’ (says a shrewd, hard-headed Scotchman) ‘and take examples

from the neighbourhood in which we live, we shall find that allowing for

occasional exceptions, diversities and singularities, the _main-chance_

is still stuck to with rigid and unabated pertinacity—the accounts are

wound up and every thing is right at the year’s end, whatever freaks or

fancies may have intervened in the course of it. The business of life

goes on (which is the principal thing) and every man’s house stands on

its own bottom. This is the case in Nicholson-street, in the next street

to it, and in the next street to that, and in the whole of Edinburgh,

Scotland, and England to boot.’ This, I allow, is a _home-thrust_, and I

must parry it, how I can. It is a kind of heavy, broad-wheeled waggon of

an objection that makes a formidable, awkward appearance, and takes up

so much of the road, that I shall have a lucky escape if I can dash by

it in my light travelling gig without being upset or crushed to atoms.

The persons who in the present instance have the charge of it, in its

progress through the streets of Edinburgh, are a constitutional lawyer,

a political economist, an opposition editor, and an _ex-officio_

surveyor of the Customs—fearful odds against one poor metaphysician!

Their machine of human life, I confess, puts me a little in mind of

those square-looking caravans one sometimes meets on the road in which

they transport wild beasts from place to place; and dull, heavy, safe,

and flat as they look, the inmates continue their old habits, the

monkeys play their tricks, and the panthers lick their jaws for human

blood, though cramped and confined in their excursions. So the vices and

follies, when they cannot break loose, do their worst _inside_ this

formal conveyance, the _main-chance_. As this ovation is to pass up

High-street, for the honour of the Scottish capital, I should wish it to

stop at the shop-door of Mr. Bartholine Saddletree, to see if he is at

home or in the courts. Also, to inquire whether the suit of Peter

Peebles is yet ended; and to take the opinion of counsel, how many of

the Highland lairds or Scottish noblemen and gentlemen that were out in

the fifteen and the forty-five, perilled their lives and fortunes in the

good cause from an eye to the _main-chance_? The Baron of Bradwardine

would have scorned such a suggestion; nay, it would have been below

Balmawhapple or even Killancureit. But ‘the age of chivalry is gone, and

that of sophists, economists, and calculators has succeeded.’ I should

say that the risk, the secrecy, the possibility of the leaders having

their heads stuck on Temple-Bar, and their estates confiscated, were

among the foremost causes that inflamed their zeal and stirred their

blood to the enterprise. Hardship, danger, exile, death,—these words

‘smack of honour,’ more than the _main-chance_. The modern Scotch may be

loyal on this thriving principle: their ancestors found _their_ loyalty

a very losing concern. Yet they persevered in it till and long after it

became a desperate cause. But patriotism and loyalty (true or false) are

important and powerful principles in human affairs, though not always

selfish and calculating. Honour is one great standard-bearer and

puissant leader in the struggle of human life; and less than honour (a

nickname or a bugbear) is enough to set the multitude together by the

ears, whether in civil, religious, or private brawls. [But to return to

our Edinburgh shop-keepers, those practical models of wisdom, and

authentic epitomes of human nature. Say that by their ‘canny ways and

pawky looks’ they keep their names out of the ‘Gazette,’ yet still care

(not the less perhaps) mounts behind their counters, and sits in their

back-shops. A tradesman is not a bankrupt at the year’s end. But what

does it signify, if he is hen-pecked in the mean time, or quarrels with

his wife, or beats his apprentices, or has married a woman twice as old

as himself for her money, or has been jilted by his maid, or fuddles

himself every night, or is laying in an apoplexy by overeating himself,

or is believed by nobody, or is a furious Whig or Tory, or a knave, or a

fool, or one envious of the success of his neighbours, or dissatisfied

with his own, or surly, or eaten up with indolence and procrastination,

never easy but bashful and awkward in company (though with a vast desire

to shine) or has some personal defect or weak side on which the Devil is

sure to assail him, and the venting his spleen and irritability on

which, through some loop-hole or other, makes the real business and

torment of his life—that of his shop may go on as it pleases. Such is

the perfection of reason and the triumph of the sovereign good, where

there are no strong passions to disturb, or no great vices to sully it!

The humours collect, the will will have head, the petty passions

ferment, and we start some grievance or other, and hunt it down every

hour in the day, or the machine of _still-life_ could not go on even in

North Britain. But were I to grant the full force and extent of the

objection, I should still say that it does not bear upon my view of the

subject or general assertion, that reason is an unequal match for

passion. Business is a kind of gaoler or task-master, that keeps its

vassals in good order while they are under its eye, as the slave or

culprit performs his task with the whip hanging over him, and punishment

immediately to follow neglect; but the question is, what he would do

with his recovered freedom, or what course the mind will for the most

part pursue, when in the range of its general conduct it has its choice

to make between a distant, doubtful, sober, rational good (or _average_

state of being), and some one object of comparatively little value, that

strikes the senses, flatters our pride, gives scope to the imagination,

and has all the strength of passion and inclination on its side. The

_main-chance_ then is a considerable exception, but not a fair one or a

case in point, since it falls under a different head and line of

argument.] The fault of reason in general, (which takes in the _whole_

instead of _parts_,) is that objects, though of the utmost extent and

importance, are not defined and tangible. This fault cannot be found

with the pursuit of trade and commerce. It is not a mere dry, abstract,

undefined, speculative, however steady and well-founded conviction of

the understanding. It has other levers and pulleys to enforce it,

besides those of reason and reflection. As follows:—

1. The value of money is positive or specific. The interest in it is a

sort of mathematical interest, reducible to number and quantity. Ten is

always more than one; a part is never greater than the whole; the good

we seek or attain in this way has a technical denomination, and I do not

deny that in matters of strict calculation, the principle of calculation

will naturally bear great sway. The returns of profit and loss are

regular and mechanical, and the operations of business, or the

_main-chance_, are so too. But, commonly speaking, we judge by the

_degree_ of excitement, not by the ultimate quantity. Thus we prefer a

draught of nectar to the recovery of our health, [and are on most

occasions ready to exclaim,—

‘An ounce of sweet is worth a pound of sour.’]

Yet there is a point at which self-will and humour stop. A man will take

brandy, which is a _kind of slow poison_, but he will not take _actual_

poison, knowing it to be such, however slow the operation or bewitching

the taste; because here the effect is absolutely fixed and certain, not

variable, nor in the power of the imagination to elude or trifle with

it. I see no courage in battle, but in going on what is called the

_forlorn hope_.

2. Business is also an affair of habit: it calls for incessant and daily

application; and what was at first a matter of necessity to supply our

wants, becomes often a matter of necessity to employ our time. The man

of business wants work for his head; the labourer and mechanic for his

hands; so that the love of action, of difficulty and competition, the

stimulus of success or failure, is perhaps as strong an ingredient in

men’s ordinary pursuits as the love of gain. We find persons pursuing

science, or any _hobby-horsical_ whim or handicraft that they have taken

a fancy to, or persevering in a losing concern, with just the same

ardour and obstinacy. As to the choice of a pursuit in life, a man may

not be forward to engage in business, but being once in, does not like

to turn back amidst the pity of friends and the derision of enemies. How

difficult is it to prevent those who have a turn for any art or science

from going into these unprofitable pursuits! Nay, how difficult is it

often to prevent those who have no turn that way, but prefer starving to

a certain income! If there is one in a family brighter than the rest, he

is immediately designed for one of the learned professions. Really, the

dull and plodding people of the world have not much reason to boast of

their superior wisdom or numbers: they are in an involuntary majority!

3. The value of money is an _exchangeable_ value: that is, this pursuit

is available towards and convertible into a great many others. A person

is in want of money, and mortgages an estate, to throw it away upon a

round of entertainments and company. The passion or motive here is not a

hankering after money, but society, and the individual will ruin himself

for this object. Another, who has the same passion for show and a

certain style of living, tries to gain a fortune in trade to indulge it,

and only goes to work in a more round-about way. I remember a story of a

common mechanic at Manchester, who laid out the hard-earned savings of

the week in hiring a horse and livery-servant to ride behind him to

Stockport every Sunday, and to dine there at an ordinary like a

gentleman. The pains bestowed upon the _main-chance_ here was only a

cover for another object, which exercised a ridiculous predominance over

his mind. Money will purchase a horse, a house, a picture, leisure,

dissipation, or whatever the individual has a fancy for that is to be

purchased; but it does not follow that he is fond of all these, or of

whatever will promote his real interest, because he is fond of money,

but that he has a passion for some one of these objects, to which he

would probably sacrifice all the rest, and his own peace and happiness

into the bargain.

4. The _main-chance_ is an instrument of various passions, but is

directly opposed to none of them, with the single exception of indolence

or the _vis inertiæ_, which of itself is seldom strong enough to master

it, without the aid of some other incitement. A barrister sticks to his

duty as long as he has only his love of ease to prevent; but he flings

up his briefs, or neglects them, if he thinks he can make a figure in

Parliament. [A servant-girl stays in her place and does her work, though

perhaps lazy and slatternly, because no immediate temptation occurs

strong enough to interfere with the necessity of gaining her bread, but

she goes away with a bastard-child, because here passion and desire come

into play, though the consequence is that she loses not only her place,

but her character and every prospect in life.] No one flings away the

_main-chance_ without a motive, any more than he voluntarily walks into

the fire or breaks his neck out of window. A man must live; the first

step is a point of necessity: every man would live well; the second is a

point of luxury. The having, or even acquiring wealth does not prevent

our enjoying it in various ways. A man may give his mornings to

business, and his evenings to pleasure. There is no contradiction; nor

does he sacrifice his ruling passion by this, any more than the man of

letters by study, or the soldier by an attention to discipline. Reason

and passion are opposed, not passion and business. The sot, the glutton,

the debauchee, the gamester, must all have money, to make their own use

of it, and they may indulge all these passions and their avarice at the

same time. It is only when the last becomes the ruling passion that it

puts a prohibition on the others. In that case, every thing else is lost

sight of; but it is seldom carried to this length, or when it is, it is

far from being another name, either in its means or ends, for reason,

sense, or happiness, as I have already shown.

I have taken no notice hitherto of ambition or virtue, or scarcely of

the pursuits of fame or intellect. Yet all these are important and

respectable divisions of the map of human life. Who ever charged Mr.

Pitt with a want of common sense, because he did not die worth a plum?

Had it been proposed to Lord Byron to forfeit every penny of his estate,

or every particle of his reputation, would he have hesitated to part

with the former? Is there not a loss of character, a stain upon honour,

that is felt as a severer blow than any reverse of fortune? Do not the

richest heiresses in the city marry for a title, and think themselves

well off? Are there not patriots who think or dream all their lives

about their country’s good; philanthropists who rave about liberty and

humanity at a certain yearly loss? Are there not studious men, who never

once thought of bettering their circumstances? Are not the liberal

professions held more respectable than business, though less lucrative?

Might not most people do better than they do, but that they postpone

their interest to their indolence, their taste for reading, their love

of pleasure, or other pursuits? And is it not generally understood that

all men can make a fortune or succeed in the _main-chance_, who have but

that one idea in their heads?[20] Lastly, are there not those who pursue

or husband wealth for their own good, for the benefit of their friends

or the relief of the distressed? But as the examples are rare, and might

be supposed to make against myself, I shall not insist upon them. I

think I have said enough to vindicate or apologize for my first

position—

‘Masterless passion sways us to the mood

Of what it likes or loaths—’

or if not to make good my ground, to march out with flying colours and

beat of drum!

SELF-LOVE AND BENEVOLENCE

_The New Monthly Magazine._] [_October and December, 1828._

_A._ For my part, I think Helvetius has made it clear that self-love is

at the bottom of all our actions, even of those which are apparently the

most generous and disinterested.

_B._ I do not know what you mean by saying that Helvetius has made this

clear, nor what you mean by self-love.

_A._ Why, was not he the first who explained to the world that in

gratifying others, we gratify ourselves; that though the result may be

different, the motive is really the same, and a selfish one; and that if

we had not more pleasure in performing what are called friendly or

virtuous actions than the contrary, they would never enter our thoughts?

_B._ Certainly he is no more entitled to this discovery (if it be one)

than you are. Hobbes and Mandeville long before him asserted the same

thing in the most explicit and unequivocal manner;[21] and Butler, in

the Notes and Preface to his Sermons, had also long before answered it

in the most satisfactory way.

_A._ Ay, indeed! pray how so?

_B._ By giving the _common sense_ answer to the question which I have

just asked of you.

_A._ And what is that? I do not exactly comprehend.

_B._ Why, that self-love means, both in common and philosophical speech,

the love _of_ self.

_A._ To be sure, _there needs no ghost to tell us that_.

_B._ And yet, simple as it is, both you and many great philosophers seem

to have overlooked it.

_A._ You are pleased to be obscure—unriddle for the sake of the vulgar.

_B._ Well then, Bishop Butler’s statement in the volume I have

mentioned——

_A._ May I ask, is it the author of the _Analogy_ you speak of?

_B._ The same, but an entirely different and much more valuable work.

His position is, that the arguments of the opposite party go to prove

that in all our motives and actions it is the individual indeed who

loves or is interested in _something_, but not in the smallest degree

(which yet seems necessary to make out the full import of the compound

‘sound significant,’ _self-love_) that that something is _himself_. By

self-love is surely implied not only that it is I who feel a certain

passion, desire, good-will, and so forth, but that I feel this good-will

towards myself—in other words, that I am both the person feeling the

attachment, and the object of it. In short, the controversy between

self-love and benevolence relates not to the person who loves, but to

the person beloved—otherwise, it is flat and puerile nonsense. There

must always be some one to feel the love, that’s certain, or else there

could be no love of one thing or another—so far there can be no question

that it is a given individual who feels, thinks, and acts in all

possible cases of feeling, thinking, and acting—‘there needs,’ according

to your own allusion, ‘no ghost come from the grave to tell us that’—but

whether the said individual in so doing always thinks _of_, feels _for_,

and acts _with a view to himself_, that is a very important question,

and the only real one at issue; and the very statement of which, in a

distinct and intelligible form, gives at once the proper and inevitable

answer to it. Self-love, to mean any thing, must have a double meaning,

that is, must not merely signify love, but love defined and directed in

a particular manner, having _self_ for its object, reflecting and

reacting upon _self_; but it is downright and intolerable trifling to

persist that the love or concern which we feel for another still has

self for its object, because it is we who feel it. The same sort of

quibbling would lead to the conclusion that when I am thinking of any

other person, I am notwithstanding thinking of myself, because it is _I_

who have his image in my mind.

_A._ I cannot, I confess, see the connection.

_B._ I wish you would point out the distinction. Or let me ask

you—Suppose you were to observe me looking frequently and earnestly at

myself in the glass, would you not be inclined to laugh, and say that

this was vanity?

_A._ I might be half-tempted to do so.

_B._ Well; and if you were to find me admiring a fine picture, or

speaking in terms of high praise of the person or qualities of another,

would you not set it down equally to an excess of coxcombry and

self-conceit?

_A._ How, in the name of common sense, should I do so?

_B._ Nay, how should you do otherwise upon your own principles? For if

sympathy with another is to be construed into self-love because it is I

who feel it, surely, by the same rule, my admiration and praise of

another must be resolved into self-praise and self-admiration, and I am

the whole time delighted with myself, to wit, with my own thoughts and

feelings, while I pretend to be delighted with another. Another’s limbs

are as much mine, who contemplate them, as his feelings.

_A._ Now, my good friend, you go too far: I can’t think you serious.

_B._ Do I not tell you that I have a most grave Bishop (equal to a whole

Bench) on my side?

_A._ What! is this illustration of the looking-glass and picture his? I

thought it was in your own far-fetched manner.

_B._ And why far-fetched?

_A._ Because nobody can think of calling the praise of another

self-conceit—the words have a different meaning in the language.

_B._ Nobody has thought of confounding them hitherto, and yet they sound

to me as like as selfishness and generosity. If our vanity can be

brought to admire others disinterestedly, I do not see but our

good-nature may be taught to serve them as disinterestedly. Grant me but

this, that self-love signifies not simply, ‘I love,’ but requires to

have this further addition, ‘I love _myself_.’ understood in order to

make sense or grammar of it, and I defy you to make one or the other of

Helvetius’s theory, if you will needs have it to be his. If, as Fielding

says, all our passions are selfish merely because they are _ours_, then

in hating another we must be said to hate ourselves, just as wisely as

in loving another, we are said to be actuated by self-love. I have no

patience with such foolery. I respect that fine old sturdy fellow

Hobbes, or even the acute pertinacious sophistry of Mandeville; but I do

not like the flimsy, self-satisfied repetition of an absurdity, which

with its originality has lost all its piquancy.

_A._ You have, I know, very little patience with others who differ from

you, nor are you a very literal reporter of the arguments of those who

happen to be on your side of the question. You were about to tell me the

substance of Butler’s answer to Helvetius’s theory, if we can let the

anachronism pass; and I have as yet only heard certain quaint and verbal

distinctions of your own. I must still think that the most disinterested

actions proceed from a selfish motive. A man feels distress at the sight

of a beggar, and he parts with his money to remove this uneasiness. If

he did not feel this distress in his own mind, he would take no steps to

relieve the other’s wants.

_B._ And pray, does he feel this distress in his own mind out of love to

himself, or solely that he may have the pleasure of getting rid of it?

The first _move_ in the game of mutual obligation is evidently a social,

not a selfish impulse, and I might rest the dispute here and insist upon

going no farther till this step is got over, but it is not necessary. I

have already told you the substance of Butler’s answer to this

common-place and plausible objection. He says, in his fine broad manly

and yet unpretending mode of stating a question, that a living being may

be supposed to be actuated either by mere sensations, having no

reference to any one else, or else that having an idea and foresight of

the consequences to others, he is influenced by and interested in those

consequences only in so far as they have a distinct connexion with his

own ultimate good, in both which cases, seeing that the motives and

actions have both their origin and end in self, they may and must be

properly denominated _selfish_. But where the motive is neither

physically nor morally selfish, that is, where the impulse to act is

neither excited by a physical sensation nor by a reflection on the

consequence to accrue to the individual, it must be hard to say in what

sense it can be called so, except in that sense already exploded,

namely, that which would infer that an impulse of any kind is selfish

merely because it acts upon some one, or that before we can entertain

disinterested sympathy with another, we must feel no sympathy at all.

Benevolence, generosity, compassion, friendship, &c. imply, says the

Bishop, that we take an immediate and unfeigned interest in the welfare

of others; that their pleasures give us pleasure; that their pains give

us pain, barely to know of them, and from no thought about ourselves.

But no! retort the advocates of self-love, this is not enough: before

any person can pretend to the title of benevolent, generous, and so on,

he must prove, that so far from taking the deepest and most heartfelt

interest in the happiness of others, he has no feeling on the subject,

that he is perfectly indifferent to their weal or woe; and then taking

infinite pains and making unaccountable sacrifices for their good

without caring one farthing about them, he might pass for heroic and

disinterested. But if he lets it appear he has the smallest good-will

towards them and acts upon it, he then becomes a merely selfish agent;

so that to establish a character for generosity, compassion, humanity,

&c. in any of his actions, he must first plainly prove that he never

felt the slightest twinge of any of these passions thrilling in his

bosom. This, according to my author, is requiring men to act not from

charitable motives, but from no motives at all. Such reasoning has not

an appearance of philosophy, but rather of drivelling weakness or of

tacit irony. For my part, I can conceive of no higher strain of

generosity than that which justly and truly says, _Nihil humani â me

alienum puto_—but, according to your modern French friends and my old

English ones, there is no difference between this and the most sordid

selfishness; for the instant a man takes an interest in another’s

welfare, he makes it his own, and all the merit and disinterestedness is

gone. ‘Greater love than this hath no man, that he should give his life

for his friend.’ It must be rather a fanciful sort of self-love that at

any time sacrifices its own acknowledged and obvious interests for the

sake of another.

_A._ Not in the least. The expression you have just used explains the

whole mystery, and I think you must allow this yourself. The moment I

sympathise with another, I do in strictness make his interest my own.

The two things on this supposition become inseparable, and my

gratification is identified with his advantage. Every one, in short,

consults his particular taste and inclination, whatever may be its bias,

or acts from the strongest motive. Regulus, as Helvetius has so ably

demonstrated, would not have returned to Carthage, but that the idea of

dishonour gave him more uneasiness than the apprehension of a violent

death.

_B._ That is, had he not preferred the honour of his country to his own

interest. Surely, when self-love by all accounts takes so very wide a

range and embraces entirely new objects of a character so utterly

opposed to its general circumscribed and paltry routine of action, it

would be as well to designate it by some new and appropriate

appellation, unless it were meant, by the intervention of the old and

ambiguous term, to confound the important practical distinction which

subsists between the puny circle of a man’s physical sensations and

private interests and the whole world of virtue and honour, and thus to

bring back the last gradually and disingenuously within the verge of the

former. Things without names are unapt to take root in the human mind:

we are prone to reduce nature to the dimensions of language. If a

feeling of a refined and romantic character is expressed by a gross and

vulgar name, our habitual associations will be sure to degrade the first

to the level of the last, instead of conforming to a forced and

technical definition. But I beg to deny, not only that the objects in

this case are the same, but that the principle is similar.

_A._ Do you then seriously pretend that the end of sympathy is not to

get rid of the momentary uneasiness occasioned by the distress of

another?

_B._ And has that uneasiness, I again ask, its source in self-love? If

self-love were the only principle of action, we ought to receive no

uneasiness from the pains of others, we ought to be wholly exempt from

any such weakness: or the least that can be required to give the

smallest shadow of excuse to this exclusive theory is, that the instant

the pain was communicated by our foolish, indiscreet sympathy, we should

think of nothing but getting rid of it as fast as possible, by fair

means or foul, as a mechanical instinct. If the pain of sympathy, as

soon as it arose, was decompounded from the objects which gave it birth,

and acted upon the brain or nerves solely as a detached, desultory

feeling, or abstracted sense of uneasiness, from which the mind shrunk

with its natural aversion to pain, then I would allow that the impulse

in this case, having no reference to the good of another, and seeking

only to remove a present inconvenience from the individual, would still

be properly self-love: but no such process of abstraction takes place.

The feeling of compassion, as it first enters the mind, so it continues

to act upon it in conjunction with the idea of what another suffers;

refers every wish it forms or every effort it makes, to the removal of

pain from a fellow-creature, and is only satisfied when it believes this

end to be accomplished. It is not a blind, physical repugnance to pain,

as affecting ourselves, but rational or intelligible conception of it as

existing out of ourselves, that prompts and sustains our exertions in

behalf of humanity. Nor can it be otherwise, while man is the creature

of imagination and reason, and has faculties that implicate him (whether

he will or not) in the pleasures and pains of others, and bind up his

fate with theirs. Why, then, when an action or feeling is neither in its

commencement nor progress, nor ultimate objects, dictated by or subject

to the control of self-love, bestow the name where every thing but the

name is wanting?

_A._ I must give you fair warning, that in this last _tirade_ you have

more than once gone beyond my comprehension. Your distinctions are too

fine-drawn, and there is a want of relief in the expression. Are you not

getting back to what you describe as your _first manner_? Your present

style is more amusing. See if you cannot throw a few high lights into

that last argument!

_B._ _Un peu plus à l’Anglaise_—any thing to oblige! I say, then, it

appears to me strange that self-love should be asserted by any impartial

reasoner, (not the dupe of a play upon words), to be absolute and

undisputed master of the human mind, when compassion or uneasiness on

account of others enters it without leave and in spite of this

principle. What! to be instantly expelled by it without mercy, so that

it may still assert its pre-eminence? No; but to linger there, to hold

consultation with another principle, Imagination, which owes no

allegiance to self-interest, and to march out only under condition and

guarantee that the welfare of another is first provided for without any

special clause in its own favour. This is much as if you were to say and

swear, that though the bailiff and his man have taken possession of your

house, you are still the rightful owner of it.

_A._ And so I am.

_B._ Why, then, not turn out such unwelcome intruders without standing

upon ceremony?

_A._ You were too vague and abstracted before: now you are growing too

figurative. Always in extremes.

_B._ Give me leave for a moment, as you will not let me spin mere

metaphysical cobwebs.

_A._ I am patient.

_B._ Suppose that by sudden transformation your body were so contrived

that it could feel the actual sensations of another body, as if your

nerves had an immediate and physical communication; that you were

assailed by a number of objects you saw and knew nothing of before, and

felt desires and appetites springing up in your bosom for which you

could not at all account—would you not say that this addition of another

body made a material alteration in your former situation; that it called

for a new set of precautions and instincts to provide for its wants and

wishes? or would you persist in it that you were just where you were,

that no change had taken place in your being and interests, and that

your new body was in fact your old one, for no other reason than because

it was yours? To my thinking, the case would be quite altered by the

supererogation of such a new sympathetic body, and I should be for

dividing my care and time pretty equally between them.

_Captain C._ You mean that in that case you would have taken in partners

to the concern, as well as No. I.?

_B._ Yes; and my concern for No. II. would be something very distinct

from, and quite independent of, my original and hitherto exclusive

concern for No. I.

_A._ How very gross and vulgar! (whispering to D——, and then turning to

me, added,)—but why suppose an impossibility? I hate all such

incongruous and far-fetched illustrations.

_B._ And yet this very miracle takes place every day in the human mind

and heart, and you and your sophists would persuade us that it is

nothing, and would slur over its existence by a shallow misnomer. Do I

not by imaginary sympathy acquire a new interest (out of myself) in

others as much as I should on the former supposition by physical contact

or animal magnetism? and am I not compelled by this new law of my nature

(neither included in physical sensation nor a deliberate regard to my

own individual welfare) to consult the feelings and wishes of the new

social body of which I am become a member, often to the prejudice of my

own? The parallel seems to me exact, and I think the inference from it

unavoidable. I do not postpone a benevolent or friendly purpose to my

own personal convenience, or make it bend to it—

‘Letting _I should not_ wait upon _I would_,

Like the poor cat in the adage.’

The will is amenable not to our immediate sensibility but to reason and

imagination, which point out and enforce a line of duty very different

from that prescribed by self-love. The operation of sympathy or social

feeling, though it has its seat certainly in the mind of the individual,

is neither for his immediate behalf nor to his remote benefit, but is

constantly a diversion from both, and therefore, I contend, is not in

any sense selfish. The movements in my breast as much originate in, and

are regulated by, the _idea_ of what another feels, as if they were

governed by a chord placed there vibrating to another’s pain. If these

movements were mechanical, they would be considered as directed to the

good of another: it is odd, that because my bosom takes part and beats

in unison with them, they should become of a less generous character. In

the passions of hatred, resentment, sullenness, or even in low spirits,

we voluntarily go through a great deal of pain, because _such is our

pleasure_; or strictly, because certain objects have taken hold of our

imagination, and we cannot, or will not, get rid of the impression: why

should good-nature and generosity be the only feelings in which we will

not allow a little forgetfulness of ourselves? Once more. If self-love,

or each individual’s sensibility, sympathy, what you will, were like an

animalcule, sensitive, quick, shrinking instantly from whatever gave it

pain, seeking instinctively whatever gave it pleasure, and having no

other obligation or law of its existence, then I should be most ready to

acknowledge that this principle was in its nature, end, and origin,

selfish, slippery, treacherous, inert, inoperative but as an instrument

of some immediate stimulus, incapable of generous sacrifice or painful

exertion, and deserving a name and title accordingly, leading one to

bestow upon it its proper attributes. But the very reverse of all this

happens. The mind is tenacious of remote purposes, indifferent to

immediate feelings, which cannot consist with the nature of a rational

and voluntary agent. Instead of the animalcule swimming in pleasure and

gliding from pain, the principle of self-love is incessantly to the

imagination or sense of duty what the fly is to the spider—that fixes

its stings into it, involves it in its web, sucks its blood, and preys

upon its vitals! Does the spider do all this to please the fly? Just as

much as Regulus returned to Carthage and was rolled down a hill in a

barrel with iron spikes in it to please himself! The imagination or

understanding is no less the enemy of our pleasure than of our interest.

It will not let us be at ease till we have accomplished certain objects

with which we have ourselves no concern but as melancholy truths.

_A._ But the spider you have so quaintly conjured up is a different

animal from the fly. The imagination on which you lay so much stress is

a part of one’s-self.

_B._ I grant it: and for that very reason, self-love, or a principle

tending exclusively to our own immediate gratification or future

advantage, neither is nor can be the sole spring of action in the human

mind.

_A._ I cannot see that at all.

_D._ Nay, I think he has made it out better than usual.

_B._ Imagination is another name for an interest in things out of

ourselves, which must naturally run counter to our own. Self-love, for

so fine and smooth-spoken a gentleman, leads his friends into odd

scrapes. The situation of Regulus in a barrel with iron spikes in it was

not a very easy one: but, say the advocates of refined self-love, their

points were a succession of agreeable punctures in his sides, compared

with the stings of dishonour. But what bound him to this dreadful

alternative? Not self-love. When the pursuit of honour becomes

troublesome, ‘throw honour to the dogs—I’ll none of it!’ This seems the

true Epicurean solution. Philosophical self-love seems neither a

voluptuary nor an effeminate coward, but a cynic, and even a martyr, so

that I am afraid he will hardly dare show his face at Very’s, and that,

with this knowledge of his character, even the countenance of the Count

de Stutt-Tracy will not procure his admission to the saloons.

_A._ The Count de Stutt-Tracy, did you say? Who is he? I never heard of

him.

_B._ He is the author of the celebrated ‘Idéologie,’ which Bonaparte

denounced to the Chamber of Peers as the cause of his disasters in

Russia. He is equally hated by the Bourbons; and what is more

extraordinary still, he is patronised by Ferdinand VII. who settled a

pension of two hundred crowns a year on the translator of his works. He

speaks of Condillac as having ‘_created_ the science of Ideology,’ and

holds Helvetius for a true philosopher.

_A._ Which you do not! I think it a pity you should affect singularity

of opinion in such matters, when you have all the most sensible and

best-informed judges against you,

_B._ I am sorry for it too; but I am afraid I can hardly expect you with

me, till I have all Europe on my side, of which I see no chance while

the Englishman with his notions of solid beef and pudding holds fast by

his substantial identity, and the Frenchman with his lighter food and

air mistakes every shadowy impulse for himself.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

_The New Monthly Magazine._] [_December, 1828._

_D._ You deny, I think, that personal identity, in the qualified way in

which you think proper to admit it, is any ground for the doctrine of

self-interest?

_B._ Yes, in an exclusive and absolute sense I do undoubtedly, that is,

in the sense in which it is affirmed by metaphysicians, and ordinarily

believed in.

_D._ Could you not go over the ground briefly, without entering into

technicalities?

_B._ Not easily: but stop me when I entangle myself in difficulties. A

person fancies, or feels habitually, that he has a positive, substantial

interest in his own welfare, (generally speaking) just as much as he has

in any actual sensation that he feels, because he is always and

necessarily the same self. What is his interest at one time is therefore

equally _his_ interest at all other times. This is taken for granted as

a self-evident proposition. Say he does not feel a particular benefit or

injury at this present moment, yet it is he who is to feel it, which

comes to the same thing. Where there is this continued identity of

person, there must also be a correspondent identity of interest. I have

an abstract, unavoidable interest in whatever can befall myself, which I

can have or feel in no other person living, because I am always under

every possible circumstance the self-same individual, and not any other

individual whatsoever. In short, this word _self_ (so closely do a

number of associations cling round it and cement it together) is

supposed to represent as it were a given concrete substance, as much one

thing as any thing in nature can possibly be, and the centre or

_substratum_ in which the different impressions and ramifications of my

being meet and are indissolubly knit together.

_A._ And you propose then seriously to take ‘this one entire and perfect

chrysolite,’ this self, this ‘precious jewel of the soul,’ this rock on

which mankind have built their faith for ages, and at one blow shatter

it to pieces with the sledge-hammer, or displace it from its hold in the

imagination with the wrenching-irons of metaphysics?

_B._ I am willing to use my best endeavours for that purpose.

_D._ You really ought: for you have the prejudices of the whole world

against you.

_B._ I grant the prejudices are formidable; and I should despair, did I

not think the reasons even stronger. Besides, without altering the

opinions of the whole world, I might be contented with the suffrages of

one or two intelligent people.

_D._ Nay, you will prevail by flattery, if not by argument.

_A._ That is something newer than all the rest.

_B._ ‘Plain truth,’ dear A——, ‘needs no flowers of speech.’

_D._ Let me rightly understand you. Do you mean to say that I am not C.

D. and that you are not W. B. or that we shall not both of us remain so

to the end of the chapter, without a possibility of ever changing places

with each other?

_B._ I am afraid, if you go to that, there is very little chance that

‘_I_ shall be ever mistaken for _you_.’

But with all this precise individuality and inviolable identity that you

speak of, let me ask, Are you not a little changed (less so, it is true,

than most people) from what you were twenty years ago? Or do you expect

to appear the same that you are now twenty years hence?

_D._ ‘No more of that if thou lovest me.’ We know what we are, but we

know not what we shall be.

_B._ A truce then; but be assured that whenever you happen to fling up

your part, there will be no other person found to attempt it after you.

_D._ Pray, favour us with your paradox without farther preface.

_B._ I will then try to match my paradox against your prejudice, which

as it is armed all in proof, to make any impression on it, I must, I

suppose, take aim at the rivets; and if I can hit them, if I do not

(round and smooth as it is) cut it into three pieces, and show that two

parts in three are substance and the third and principal part shadow,

never believe me again. Your real self ends exactly where your pretended

self-interest begins; and in calculating upon this principle as a solid,

permanent, absolute, self-evident truth, you are mocked with a name.

_D._ How so? I hear, but do not see.

_B._ You must allow that this identical, indivisible, ostensible self is

at any rate distinguishable into three parts,—the past, the present, and

future?

_D._ I see no particular harm in that.

_B._ It is nearly all I ask. Well then, I admit that you have a

peculiar, emphatic, incommunicable and exclusive interest or

fellow-feeling in the two first of these selves; but I deny resolutely

and unequivocally that you have any such natural, absolute, unavoidable,

and mechanical interest in the last self, or in your future being, the

interest you take in it being necessarily the offspring of understanding

and imagination (aided by habit and circumstances), like that which you

take in the welfare of others, and yet this last interest is the only

one that is ever the object of rational and voluntary pursuit, or that

ever comes into competition with the interests of others.

_D._ I am still to seek for the connecting clue.

_B._ I am almost ashamed to ask for your attention to a statement so

very plain that it seems to border on a truism. I have an interest of a

peculiar and limited nature in my present self, inasmuch as I feel my

actual sensations not simply in a degree, but in a way and by means of

faculties which afford me not the smallest intimation of the sensations

of others. I cannot possibly feel the sensations of any one else, nor

consequently take the slightest interest in them as such. I have no

nerves communicating with another’s brain, and transmitting to me either

the glow of pleasure or the agony of pain which he may feel at the

present moment by means of his senses. So far, therefore, namely, so far

as my present self or immediate sensations are concerned, I am cut off

from all sympathy with others. I stand alone in the world, a perfectly

insulated individual, necessarily and in the most unqualified sense

indifferent to all that passes around me, and that does not in the first

instance affect myself, for otherwise I neither have nor can have the

remotest consciousness of it as a matter of organic sensation, any more

than the mole has of light or the deaf adder of sounds.

_D._ Spoken like an oracle.

_B._ Again, I have a similar peculiar, mechanical, and untransferable

interest in my past self, because I remember and can dwell upon my past

sensations (even after the objects are removed) also in a way and by

means of faculties which do not give me the smallest insight into or

sympathy with the past feelings of others. I may conjecture and fancy

what those feelings have been; and so I do. But I have no _memory_ or

continued consciousness of what either of good or evil may have found a

place in their bosoms, no secret spring that touched vibrates to the

hopes and wishes that are no more, unlocks the chambers of the past with

the same assurance of reality, or identifies my feelings with theirs in

the same intimate manner as with those which I have already felt in my

own person. Here again, then, there is a real, undoubted, original and

positive foundation for the notion of self to rest upon; for in relation

to my former self and past feelings, I do possess a faculty which serves

to unite me more especially to my own being, and at the same time draws

a distinct and impassable line around that being, separating it from

every other. A door of communication stands always open between my

present consciousness and my past feelings, which is locked and barred

by the hand of Nature and the constitution of the human understanding

against the intrusion of any straggling impressions from the minds of

others. I can only see into their real history darkly and by reflection.

To sympathise with their joys or sorrows, and place myself in their

situation either now or formerly, I must proceed by guess-work, and

borrow the use of the common faculty of imagination. I am ready to

acknowledge, then, that in what regards the past as well as the present,

there is a strict metaphysical distinction between myself and others,

and that my personal identity so far, or in the close, continued,

inseparable connection between my past and present impressions, is

firmly and irrevocably established.

_D._ You go on swimmingly. So far all is sufficiently clear.

_B._ But now comes the rub: for beyond that point I deny that the

doctrine of personal identity or self-interest (as a consequence from

it) has any foundation to rest upon but a confusion of names and ideas.

It has none in the nature of things or of the human mind. For I have no

faculty by which I can project myself into the future, or hold the same

sort of palpable, tangible, immediate, and exclusive communication with

my future feelings, in the same manner as I am made to feel the present

moment by means of the senses, or the past moment by means of memory. If

I have any such faculty, expressly set apart for the purpose, name it.

If I have no such faculty, I can have no such interest. In order that I

may possess a proper personal identity so as to live, breathe, and feel

along the whole line of my existence in the same intense and intimate

mode, it is absolutely necessary to have some general medium or faculty

by which my successive impressions are blended and amalgamated together,

and to maintain and support this extraordinary interest. But so far from

there being any foundation for this merging and incorporating of my

future in my present self, there is no link of connection, no sympathy,

no reaction, no mutual consciousness between them, nor even a

possibility of any thing of the kind, in a mechanical and personal

sense. Up to the present point, the spot on which we stand, the doctrine

of personal identity holds good; hitherto the proud and exclusive

pretensions of self ‘come, but no farther.’ The rest is air, is nothing,

is a name, or but the common ground of reason and humanity. If I wish to

pass beyond this point and look into my own future lot, or anticipate my

future weal or woe before it has had an existence, I can do so by means

of the same faculties by which I enter into and identify myself with the

welfare, the being, and interests of others, but only by these. As I

have already said, I have no particular organ or faculty of

self-interest, in that case made and provided. I have no sensation of

what is to happen to myself in future, no presentiment of it, no

instinctive sympathy with it, nor consequently any abstract and

unavoidable self-interest in it. Now mark. It is only in regard to my

past and present being, that a broad and insurmountable barrier is

placed between myself and others: as to future objects, there is no

absolute and fundamental distinction whatever. But it is only these last

that are the objects of any rational or practical interest. The idea of

self properly attaches to objects of sense or memory, but these can

never be the objects of action or of voluntary pursuit, which must, by

the supposition, have an eye to future events. But with respect to these

the chain of self-interest is dissolved and falls in pieces by the very

necessity of our nature, and our obligations to self as a blind,

mechanical, unsociable principle are lost in the general law which binds

us to the pursuit of good as it comes within our reach and knowledge.

_A._ A most lame and impotent conclusion, I must say. Do you mean to

affirm that you have really the same interest in another’s welfare that

you have in your own?

_B._ I do not wish to assert any thing without proof. Will you tell me

if you have this particular interest in yourself what faculty is it that

gives it you—to what conjuration and what mighty magic it is owing—or

whether it is merely the name of self that is to be considered as a

proof of all the absurdities and impossibilities that can be drawn from

it?

_A._ I do not see that you have hitherto pointed out any.

_B._ What! not the impossibility that you should be another being, with

whom you have not a particle of fellow-feeling?

_A._ Another being! Yes, I know it is always impossible for me to be

another being.

_B._ Ay, or yourself either, without such a fellow-feeling, for it is

that which constitutes self. If not, explain to me what you mean by

self. But it is more convenient for you to let that magical sound lie

involved in the obscurity of prejudice and language. You will please to

take notice that it is not I who commence these hairbreadth distinctions

and special-pleading. I take the old ground of common sense and natural

feeling, and maintain that though in a popular, practical sense mankind

are strongly swayed by self-interest, yet in the same ordinary sense

they are also governed by motives of good-nature, compassion,

friendship, virtue, honour, &c. Now all this is denied by your modern

metaphysicians, who would reduce every thing to abstract self-interest,

and exclude every other mixed motive or social tie in a strict,

philosophical sense. They would drive me from my ground by scholastic

subtleties and newfangled phrases; am I to blame then if I take them at

their word, and try to foil them at their own weapons? Either stick to

the unpretending _jog-trot_ notions on the subject, or if you are

determined to refine in analysing words and arguments, do not be angry

if I follow the example set me, or even go a little farther to arrive at

the truth. Shall we proceed on this understanding?

_A._ As you please.

_B._ We have got so far then (if I mistake not, and if there is not some

flaw in the argument which I am unable to detect) that the past and

present (which alone can appeal to our selfish faculties) are not the

objects of action, and that the future (which can alone be the object of

practical pursuit) has no particular claim or hold upon self. All

action, all passion, all morality and self-interest, is prospective.

_A._ You have not made that point quite clear. What then is meant by a

present interest, by the gratification of the present moment, as opposed

to a future one?

_B._ Nothing, in a strict sense; or rather in common speech, you mean a

near one, the interest of the next moment, the next hour, the next day,

the next year, as it happens.

_A._ What! would you have me believe that I snatch my hand out of the

flame of a candle from a calculation of future consequences?

_D._ (_laughing._) A. had better not meddle with that question. B. is in

his element there. It is his old and favourite illustration.

_B._ Do you not snatch your hand out of the fire to procure ease from

pain?

_A._ No doubt, I do.

_B._ And is not this case subsequent to the act, and the act itself to

the feeling of pain, which caused it?

_A._ It may be so; but the interval is so slight that we are not

sensible of it.

_B._ Nature is nicer in her distinctions than we. Thus you could not

lift the food to your mouth, but upon the same principle. The viands are

indeed tempting, but if it were the sight or smell of these alone that

attracted you, you would remain satisfied with them. But you use means

to ends, neither of which exist till you employ or produce them, and

which would never exist if the understanding which foresees them did not

run on before the actual objects and purvey to appetite. If you say it

is habit, it is partly so; but that habit would never have been formed,

were it not for the connection between cause and effect, which always

takes place in the order of time, or of what Hume calls _antecedents_

and _consequents_.

_A._ I confess I think this a mighty microscopic way of looking at the

subject.

_B._ Yet you object equally to more vague and sweeping generalities. Let

me, however, endeavour to draw the knot a little tighter, as it has a

considerable weight to bear—no less, in my opinion, than the whole world

of moral sentiments. All voluntary action must relate to the future: but

the future can only exist or influence the mind as an object of

imagination and forethought; therefore the motive to voluntary action,

to all that we seek or shun, must be in all cases _ideal_ and

problematical. The thing itself which is an object of pursuit can never

co-exist with the motives which make it an object of pursuit. No one

will say that the past can be an object either of prevention or pursuit.

It may be a subject of involuntary regrets, or may give rise to the

starts and flaws of passion; but we cannot set about seriously recalling

or altering it. Neither can that which at present exists, or is an

object of sensation, be at the same time an object of action or of

volition, since if it _is_, no volition or exertion of mine can for the

instant make it to be other than it is. I can make it _cease_ to be

indeed, but this relates to the future, to the supposed non-existence of

the object, and not to its actual impression on me. For a thing to be

_willed_, it must necessarily not be. Over my past and present

impressions my will has no control: they are placed, according to the

poet, beyond the reach of fate, much more of human means. In order that

I may take an effectual and consistent interest in any thing, that it

may be an object of hope or fear, of desire or dread, it must be a thing

still to come, a thing still in doubt, depending on circumstances and

the means used to bring about or avert it. It is my will that determines

its existence or the contrary (otherwise there would be no use in

troubling oneself about it); it does not itself lay its peremptory,

inexorable mandates on my will. For it is as yet (and must be in order

to be the rational object of a moment’s deliberation) a nonentity, a

possibility merely and it is plain that nothing can be the cause of

nothing. That which is not, cannot act, much less can it act

mechanically, physically, all-powerfully. So far is it from being true

that a real and practical interest in any thing are convertible terms,

that a practical interest can never by any possible chance be a real

one, that is, excited by the presence of a real object or by mechanical

sympathy. I cannot assuredly be induced by a present object to take

means to make it exist—it can be no more than present to me—or if it is

past, it is too late to think of recovering the occasion or preventing

it now. But the future, the future is all our own; or rather it belongs

equally to others. The world of action then, of business or pleasure, of

self-love or benevolence, is not made up of solid materials, moved by

downright, solid springs; it is essentially a void, an unreal mockery,

both in regard to ourselves and others, except as it is filled up,

animated, and set in motion by human thoughts and purposes. The

ingredients of passion, action, and properly of interest are never

positive, palpable matters-of-fact, concrete existences, but symbolical

representations of events lodged in the bosom of futurity, and teaching

us, by timely anticipation and watchful zeal, to build up the fabric of

our own or others’ future weal.

_A._ Do we not sometimes plot their woe with at least equal good-will?

_B._ Not much oftener than we are accessory to our own.

_A._ I must say that savours more to me of an antithesis than of an

answer.

_B._ For once, be it so.

_A._ But surely there is a difference between a real and an imaginary

interest? A history is not a romance.

_B._ Yes; but in this sense the feelings and interests of others are in

the end as real, as much matters of fact as mine or yours can be. The

history of the world is not a romance, though you and I have had only a

small share in it. You would turn every thing into autobiography. The

interests of others are no more chimerical, visionary, fantastic than my

own, being founded in truth, and both are brought home to my bosom in

the same way by the force of imagination and sympathy.

_D._ But in addition to all this sympathy that you make such a rout

about, it is _I_ who am to feel a real, downright interest in my own

future good, and I shall feel no such interest in another person’s. Does

not this make a wide, nay a total difference in the case? Am I to have

no more affection for my own flesh and blood than for another’s?

_B._ This would indeed make an entire difference in the case, if your

interest in your own good were founded in your affection for yourself,

and not your affection for yourself in your attachment to your own good.

If you were attached to your own good merely because it was _yours_, I

do not see why you should not be equally attached to your own ill—both

are equally yours! Your own person or that of others would, I take it,

be alike indifferent to you, but for the degree of sympathy you have

with the feelings of either. Take away the sense or apprehension of

pleasure and pain, and you would care no more about yourself than you do

about the hair of your head or the paring of your nails, the parting

with which gives you no sensible uneasiness at the time or on

after-reflection.

_D._ But up to the present moment you allow that I have a particular

interest in my proper self. Where then am I to stop, or how draw the

line between my real and my imaginary identity?

_B._ The line is drawn for you by the nature of things. Or if the

difference between reality and imagination is so small that you cannot

perceive it, it only shows the strength of the latter. Certain it is

that we can no more anticipate our future being than we change places

with another individual, except in an _ideal_ and figurative sense. But

it is just as impossible that I should have an actual sensation of and

interest in my future feelings as that I should have an actual sensation

of and interest in what another feels at the present instant. An

essential and irreconcileable difference in our primary faculties

forbids it. The future, were it the next moment, were it an object

nearest and dearest to our hearts, is a dull blank, opaque, impervious

to sense as an object close to the eye of the blind, did not the ray of

reason and reflection enlighten it. We can never say to its fleeting,

painted essence, ‘Come, let me clutch thee!’ it is a thing of air, a

phantom that flies before us, and we follow it, and with respect to all

but our past and present sensations, which are no longer any thing to

action, we totter on the brink of nothing. That self which we project

before us into it, that we make our proxy or representative, and empower

to embody, and transmit back to us all our real, substantial interests

before they have had an existence, except in our imaginations, is but a

shadow of ourselves, a bundle of habits, passions, and prejudices, a

body that falls in pieces at the touch of reason or the approach of

inquiry. It is true, we do build up such an imaginary self, and a

proportionable interest in it; we clothe it with the associations of the

past and present, we disguise it in the drapery of language, we add to

it the strength of passion and the warmth of affection, till we at

length come to class our whole existence under one head, and fancy our

future history a solid, permanent, and actual continuation of our

immediate being, but all this only proves the force of imagination and

habit to build up such a structure on a merely partial foundation, and

does not alter the true nature and distinction of things. On the same

foundation are built up nearly as high natural affection, friendship,

the love of country, of religion, &c. But of this presently. What shows

that the doctrine of self-interest, however high it may rear its head,

or however impregnable it may seem to attack, is a mere ‘contradiction,’

‘In terms a fallacy, in fact a fiction,’

is this single consideration, that we never know what is to happen to us

beforehand, no, not even for a moment, and that we cannot so much as

tell whether we shall be alive a year, a month, or a day hence. We have

no presentiment of what awaits us, making us feel the future in the

instant. Indeed such an insight into futurity would be inconsistent with

itself, or we must become mere passive instruments in the hands of fate.

A house may fall on my head as I go from this, I may be crushed to

pieces by a carriage running over me, or I may receive a piece of news

that is death to my hopes before another four-and-twenty hours are

passed over, and yet I feel nothing of the blow that is thus to stagger

and stun me. I laugh and am well. I have no warning given me either of

the course or the consequence (in truth if I had, I should, if possible,

avoid it). This continued self-interest that watches over all my

concerns alike, past, present, and future, and concentrates them all in

one powerful and invariable principle of action, is useless here, leaves

me at a loss at my greatest need, is torpid, silent, dead, and I have no

more consciousness of what so nearly affects me, and no more care about

it, (till I find out my danger by other and natural means,) than if no

such thing were ever to happen, or were to happen to the Man in the

Moon.

‘And coming events cast their shadows before.’

This beautiful line is not verified in the ordinary prose of life. That

it is not, is a staggering consideration for your fine, practical,

instinctive, abstracted, comprehensive, uniform principle of

self-interest. Don’t you think so, D——?

_D._ I shall not answer you. Am I to give up my existence for an idle

sophism? You heap riddle upon riddle; but I am mystery-proof. I still

feel my personal identity as I do the chair I sit on, though I am

enveloped in a cloud of smoke and words. Let me have your answer to a

plain question.—Suppose I were actually to see a coach coming along and

I was in danger of being run over, what I want to know is, should I not

try to save myself sooner than any other person?

_B._ No, you would first try to save a sister, if she were with you.

_A._ Surely that would be a very rare instance of self, though I do not

deny it.

_B._ I do not think so. I believe there is hardly any one who does not

prefer some one to themselves. For example, let us look into Waverley.

_A._ Ay, that is the way that you take your ideas of philosophy, from

novels and romances, as if they were sound evidence.

_B._ If my conclusions are as true to nature as my premises, I shall be

satisfied. Here is the passage I was going to quote: ‘I was only ganging

to say, my lord,’ said Evan, in what he meant to be an insinuating

manner, ‘that if your excellent honour and the honourable court would

let Vich Ian Vohr go free just this once and let him gae back to France

and not trouble King George’s government again, that any six o’ the very

best of his clan will be willing to be justified in his stead; and if

you’ll just let me gae down to Glennaquoich, I’ll fetch them up to ye

myself to head or hang, and you may begin with me the very first

man.’[22]

_A._ But such instances as this are the effect of habit and strong

prejudice. We can hardly argue from so barbarous a state of society.

_B._ Excuse me there. I contend that our preference of ourselves is just

as much the effect of habit, and very frequently a more unaccountable

and unreasonable one than any other.

_A._ I should like to hear how you can possibly make that out.

_B._ If you will not condemn me before you hear what I have to say, I

will try. You allow that D——, in the case we have been talking of, would

perhaps run a little risk for you or me; but if it were a perfect

stranger, he would get out of the way as fast as his legs would carry

him, and leave the stranger to shift for himself.

_A._ Yes; and does not that overturn your whole theory?

_B._ It would if my theory were as devoid of common sense as you are

pleased to suppose; that is, if because I deny an original and absolute

distinction in nature (where there is no such thing,) it followed that I

must deny that circumstances, intimacy, habit, knowledge, or a variety

of incidental causes could have any influence on our affections and

actions. My inference is just the contrary. For would you not say that

D—— cared little about the stranger for this plain reason, that he knew

nothing about him?

_A._ No doubt.

_B._ And he would care rather more about you and me, because he knows

more about us?

_A._ Why yes, it would seem so.

_B._ And he would care still more about a sister, (according to the same

supposition) because he would be still better acquainted with her, and

had been more constantly with her?

_A._ I will not deny it.

_B._ And it is on the same principle (generally speaking) that a man

cares most of all about himself, because he knows more about himself

than about any body else, that he is more in the secret of his own most

intimate thoughts and feelings, and more in the habit of providing for

his own wants and wishes, which he can anticipate with greater

liveliness and certainty than those of others, from being more nearly

‘made and moulded of things past.’ The poetical fiction is rendered

easier and assisted by my acquaintance with myself, just as it is by the

ties of kindred or habits of friendly intercourse. There is no farther

approach made to the doctrines of self-love and personal identity.

_D._ E., here is B. trying to persuade me I am not myself.

_E._ Sometimes you are not.

_D._ But he says that I never am.—Or is it only that I am not to be so?

_B._ Nay, I hope ‘thou art to continue, thou naughty varlet’—

‘Here and hereafter, if the last may be!’

You have been yourself (nobody like you) for the last forty years of

your life: you would not prematurely stuff the next twenty into the

account, till you have had them fairly out?

_D._ Not for the world, I have too great an affection for them.

_B._ Yet I think you would have less if you did not look forward to pass

them among old books, old friends, old haunts. If you were cut off from

all these, you would be less anxious about what was left of yourself.

_D._ I would rather be the _Wandering Jew_ than not be at all.

_B._ Or you would not be the person I always took you for.

_D._ Does not this willingness to be the Wandering Jew rather than

nobody, seem to indicate that there is an abstract attachment to self,

to the bare idea of existence, independently of circumstances or habit?

_B._ It must be a very loose and straggling one. You mix up some of your

old recollections and favourite notions with your self elect, and

indulge them in your new character, or you would trouble yourself very

little about it. If you do not come in in some shape or other, it is

merely saying that you would be sorry if the Wandering Jew were to

disappear from the earth, however strictly he may have hitherto

maintained his _incognito_.

_D._ There is something in that; and as well as I remember there is a

curious but exceedingly mystical illustration of this point in an

original Essay of yours which I have read and spoken to you about.

_B._ I believe there is; but A—— is tired of making objections, and I of

answering them to no purpose.

_D._ I have the book in the closet, and if you like, we will turn to the

place. It is after that burst of enthusiastic recollection (the only one

in the book) that Southey said at the time was something between the

manner of Milton’s prose-works and Jeremy Taylor.

_B._ Ah! I as little thought then that I should ever be set down as a

florid prose-writer as that he would become poet-laureat!

_J. D._ here took the volume from his brother, and read the following

passage from it.

‘I do not think I should illustrate the foregoing reasoning so well by

any thing I could add on the subject, as by relating the manner in which

it first struck me. There are moments in the life of a solitary thinker

which are to him what the evening of some great victory is to the

conqueror and hero—milder triumphs long remembered with truer and deeper

delight. And though the shouts of multitudes do not hail his

success—though gay trophies, though the sounds of music, the glittering

of armour, and the neighing of steeds do not mingle with his joy, yet

shall he not want monuments and witnesses of his glory—the deep forest,

the willowy brook, the gathering clouds of winter, or the silent gloom

of his own chamber, “faithful remembrancers of his high endeavour, and

his glad success,” that, as time passes by him with unreturning wing,

still awaken the consciousness of a spirit patient, indefatigable in the

search of truth, and the hope of surviving in the thoughts and minds of

other men. I remember I had been reading a speech which Mirabaud (the

author of the “System of Nature”) has put into the mouth of a supposed

Atheist at the last judgment; and was afterwards led on, by some means

or other to consider the question, whether it could properly be said to

be an act of virtue in any one to sacrifice his own final happiness to

that of any other person or number of persons, if it were possible for

the one ever to be made the price of the other? Suppose it were my own

case—that it were in my power to save twenty other persons by

voluntarily consenting to suffer for them: Why should I not do a

generous thing, and never trouble myself about what might be the

consequence to myself the Lord knows when?

‘The reason why a man should prefer his own future welfare to that of

others is, that he has a necessary, absolute interest in the one, which

he cannot have in the other—and this, again, is a consequence of his

being always the same individual, of his continued identity with

himself. The difference, I thought, was this, that however insensible I

may be to my own interest at any future period, yet when the time comes

I shall feel differently about it. I shall then judge of it from the

actual impression of the object, that is, truly and certainly; and as I

shall still be conscious of my past feelings, and shall bitterly regret

my own folly and insensibility, I ought, as a rational agent, to be

determined now by what I shall then wish I had done, when I shall feel

the consequences of my actions most deeply and sensibly. It is this

continued consciousness of my own feelings which gives me an immediate

interest in whatever relates to my future welfare, and makes me at all

times accountable to myself for my own conduct. As, therefore, this

consciousness will be renewed in me after death, if I exist again at

all—But stop—as I must be conscious of my past feelings to be myself,

and as this conscious being will be myself, how if that consciousness

should be transferred to some other being? How am I to know that I am

not imposed upon by a false claim of identity? But that is ridiculous,

because you will have no other self than that which arises from this

very consciousness. Why, then, this self may be multiplied in as many

different beings as the Deity may think proper to endue with the same

consciousness; which, if it can be renewed at will in any one instance,

may clearly be so in a hundred others. Am I to regard all these as

equally myself? Am I equally interested in the fate of all? Or if I must

fix upon some one of them in particular as my representative and other

self, how am I to be determined in my choice? Here, then, I saw an end

put to my speculations about absolute self-interest and personal

identity. I saw plainly that the consciousness of my own feelings, which

is made the foundation of my continued interest in them, could not

extend to what had never been, and might never be; that my identity with

myself must be confined to the connection between my past and present

being; that with respect to my future feelings or interests, they could

have no communication with, or influence over, my present feelings and

interests, merely because they were future; that I shall be hereafter

affected by the recollection of my past feelings and actions; and my

remorse be equally heightened by reflecting on my past folly and

late-earned wisdom, whether I am really the same being, or have only the

same consciousness renewed in me; but that to suppose that this remorse

can re-act in the reverse order on my present feelings, or give me an

immediate interest in my future feelings, before they exist, is an

express contradiction in terms. It can only affect me as an imaginary

idea, or an idea of truth. But so may the interests of others; and the

question proposed was, whether I have not some real, necessary, absolute

interest in whatever relates to my future being, in consequence of my

immediate connection with myself—independently of the general impression

which all positive ideas have on my mind. How, then, can this pretended

unity of consciousness which is only reflected from the past—which makes

me so little acquainted with the future that I cannot even tell for a

moment how long it will be continued, whether it will be entirely

interrupted by or renewed in me after death, and which might be

multiplied in I don’t know how many different beings, and prolonged by

complicated sufferings, without my being any the wiser for it,—how, I

say, can a principle of this sort identify my present with my future

interests, and make me as much a participator in what does not at all

affect me as if it were actually impressed on my senses? It is plain, as

this conscious being may be decompounded, entirely destroyed, renewed

again, or multiplied in a great number of beings, and as, whichever of

these takes place, it cannot produce the least alteration in my present

being—that what I am does not depend on what I am to be, and that there

is no communication between my future interests, and the motives by

which my present conduct must be governed. This can no more be

influenced by what may be my future feelings with respect to it, than it

will then be possible for me to alter my past conduct by wishing that I

had acted differently. I cannot, therefore, have a principle of active

self-interest arising out of the immediate connection between my present

and future self, for no such connection exists, or is possible. I am

what I am in spite of the future. My feelings, actions, and interests,

must be determined by causes already existing and acting, and are

absolutely independent of the future. Where there is not an

intercommunity of feelings, there can be no identity of interests. My

personal interest in any thing must refer either to the interest excited

by the actual impression of the object, which cannot be felt before it

exists, and can last no longer than while the impression lasts; or it

may refer to the particular manner in which I am mechanically affected

by the idea of my own impressions in the absence of the object. I can,

therefore, have no proper personal interest in my future impressions,

since neither my ideas of future objects, nor my feelings with respect

to them, can be excited either directly or indirectly by the impressions

themselves, or by any ideas or feelings accompanying them, without a

complete transposition of the order in which causes and effects follow

one another in nature. The only reason for my preferring my future

interest to that of others, must arise from my anticipating it with

greater warmth of present imagination. It is this greater liveliness and

force with which I can enter into my future feelings, that in a manner

identifies them with my present being; and this notion of identity being

once formed, the mind makes use of it to strengthen its habitual

propensity, by giving to personal motives a reality and absolute truth

which they can never have. Hence it has been inferred that my real,

substantial interest in any thing, must be derived in some indirect

manner from the impression of the object itself, as if that could have

any sort of communication with my present feelings, or excite any

interest in my mind but by means of the imagination, which is naturally

affected in a certain manner by the prospect of future good or evil.’

_J. D._ ‘This is the strangest tale that e’er I heard,

_C. D._ ‘It is the strangest fellow, brother John!’

THE FREE ADMISSION

_The New Monthly Magazine._] [_July, 1830._

A free Admission is the _lotos_ of the mind: the leaf in which your name

is inscribed as having the privileges of the _entrée_ for the season is

of an oblivious quality—an antidote for half the ills of life. I speak

here not of a purchased but of a gift-ticket, an emanation of the

generosity of the Managers, a token of conscious desert. With the first

you can hardly bring yourself to go to the theatre; with the last, you

cannot keep away. If you have paid five guineas for a free admission for

the season, this _free admission_ turns to a mere slavery. You seem to

have done a foolish thing, and to have committed an extravagance under

the plea of economy. You are struck with remorse. You are impressed with

a conviction that pleasure is not to be bought. You have paid for your

privilege in the lump, and you receive the benefit in driblets. The five

pounds you are out of pocket does not meet with an adequate compensation

the first night, or on any single occasion—you must come again, and use

double diligence to strike a balance to make up your large arrears;

instead of an obvious saving, it hangs as a dead-weight on your

satisfaction all the year; and the improvident price you have paid for

them kills every ephemeral enjoyment, and poisons the flattering

illusions of the scene. You have incurred a debt, and must go every

night to redeem it; and as you do not like being tied to the oar, or

making a toil of a pleasure, you stay away altogether; give up the

promised luxury as a bad speculation; sit sullenly at home, or bend your

loitering feet in any other direction; and putting up with the first

loss, resolve never to be guilty of the like folly again. But it is not

thus with the possessor of a Free Admission, truly so called. His is a

pure pleasure, a clear gain. He feels none of these irksome qualms and

misgivings. He marches to the theatre like a favoured lover; if he is

compelled to absent himself, he feels all the impatience and compunction

of a prisoner. The portal of the Temple of the Muses stands wide open to

him, closing the vista of the day—when he turns his back upon it at

night with steps gradual and slow, mingled with the common crowd, but

conscious of a virtue which they have not, he says, ‘I shall come again

to-morrow!’ In passing through the streets, he casts a sidelong,

careless glance at the playbills: he reads the papers chiefly with a

view to see what is the play for the following day, or the ensuing week.

If it is something new, he is glad; if it is old, he is resigned—but he

goes in either case. His steps bend mechanically that way—pleasure

becomes a habit, and habit a duty—he fulfils his destiny—he walks

deliberately along Long-acre (you may tell a man going to the play, and

whether he pays or has a free admission)—quickens his pace as he turns

the corner of Bow-street, and arrives breathless and in haste at the

welcome spot, where on presenting himself, he receives a passport that

is a release from care, thought, toil, for the evening, and wafts him

into the regions of the blest! What is it to him how the world turns

round if the play goes on; whether empires rise or fall, so that Covent

Garden stands its ground? Shall he plunge into the void of politics,

that volcano burnt-out with the cold, sterile, sightless lava, hardening

all around? or con over the registers of births, deaths, and marriages,

when he may be present at Juliet’s wedding, and gaze on Juliet’s tomb?

or shall he wonder at the throng of coaches in Regent-street, when he

can feast his eyes with the coach (the fairy-vision of his childhood) in

which Cinderella rides to the ball? Here (by the help of that _Open

Sessame!_ a Free Admission), ensconced in his favourite niche, looking

from the ‘loop-holes of retreat’ in the second circle, he views the

pageant of the world played before him; melts down years to moments;

sees human life, like a gaudy shadow, glance across the stage; and here

tastes of all earth’s bliss, the sweet without the bitter, the honey

without the sting, and plucks ambrosial fruits and amaranthine flowers

(placed by the enchantress Fancy within his reach,) without having to

pay a tax for it at the time, or repenting of it afterwards. ‘He is all

ear and eye, and drinks in sounds or sights that might create a soul

under the ribs of death.’ ‘The fly,’ says Gay, ‘that sips treacle, is

lost in the sweets’: so he that has a free admission forgets every thing

else. Why not? It is the chief and enviable transfer of his being from

the real to the unreal world, and the changing half of his life into a

dream. ‘Oh! leave me to my repose,’ in my beloved corner at Covent

Garden Theatre! This (and not ‘the arm-chair at an inn,’ though that

too, at other times, and under different circumstances, is not without

its charms,) is to me ‘the throne of felicity.’ If I have business that

would detain me from this, I put it off till the morrow; if I have

friends that call in just at the moment, let them go away under pain of

bearing my maledictions with them. What is there in their conversation

to atone to me for the loss of one quarter of an hour at the ‘witching

time of night?’ If it is on indifferent subjects, it is flat and

insipid; if it grows animated and interesting, it requires a painful

effort, and begets a feverish excitement. But let me once reach, and

fairly establish myself in this favourite seat, and I can bid a gay

defiance to mischance, and leave debts and duns, friends and foes,

objections and arguments, far behind me. I would, if I could, have it

surrounded with a balustrade of gold, for it has been to me a palace of

delight. There golden thoughts unbidden betide me, and golden visions

come to me. There the dance, the laugh, the song, the scenic deception

greet me; there are wafted Shakspear’s winged words, or Otway’s

plaintive lines; and there how often have I heard young Kemble’s voice,

trembling at its own beauty, and prolonging its liquid tones, like the

murmur of the billowy surge on sounding shores! There I no longer

torture a sentence or strain a paradox: the mind is full without an

effort, pleased without asking why. It inhales an atmosphere of joy, and

is steeped in all the luxury of woe. To show how much sympathy has to do

with the effect, let us suppose any one to have a free admission to the

rehearsals of a morning, what mortal would make use of it? One might as

well be at the bottom of a well, or at the top of St. Paul’s for any

pleasure we should derive from the finest tragedy or comedy. No, a play

is nothing without an audience, it is a satisfaction too great and too

general not to be shared with others. But reverse this cold and

comfortless picture—let the eager crowd beset the theatre-doors ‘like

bees in spring-time, when the sun with Taurus rides’—let the boxes be

filled with innocence and beauty like beds of lilies on the first night

of Isabella or Belvidera, see the flutter, the uneasy delight of

expectation, see the big tear roll down the cheek of sensibility as the

story proceeds—let us listen to the deep thunder of the pit, or catch

the gallery’s shout at some true master-stroke of passion; and we feel

that a thousand hearts are beating in our bosoms, and hail the sparkling

illusion reflected in a thousand eyes. The stage has, therefore, been

justly styled ‘a discipline of humanity’; for there is no place where

the social principle is called forth with such strength and harmony, by

a powerful interest in a common object. A crowd is everywhere else

oppressive; but the fuller the play-house, the more intimately and

cordially do we sympathise with every individual in it. Empty benches

have as bad an effect on the spectator as on the players. This is one

reason why so many mistakes are made with respect to plays and players,

ere they come before the public. The taste is crude and uninformed till

it is ripened by the blaze of lighted lamps and the sunshine of happy

faces: the cold, critical faculty, the judgment of Managers and

Committees asks the glow of sympathy and the buzz of approbation to

prompt and guide it. We judge in a crowd with the sense and feelings of

others; and from the very strength of the impression, fancy we should

have come to the same unavoidable conclusion had we been left entirely

to ourselves. Let any one try the experiment by reading a manuscript

play, or seeing it acted—or by hearing a candidate for the stage

rehearse behind the scenes, or _top_ his part after the orchestra have

performed their fatal prelude. Nor is the air of a play-house favourable

only to social feeling—it aids the indulgence of solitary musing. The

brimming cup of joy or sorrow is full; but it runs over to other

thoughts and subjects. We can there (nowhere better) ‘retire, the world

shut out, our thoughts call home.’ We hear the revelry and the shout,

but ‘the still, small voice’ of other years and cherished recollections

is not wanting. It is pleasant to hear Miss Ford repeat _Love’s

Catechism_, or Mrs. Humby[23] sing ‘I cannot marry Crout’: but the ear

is not therefore deaf to Mrs. Jordan’s laugh in Nell; Mrs. Goodall’s

Rosalind still haunts the glades of Arden, and the echo of Amiens’ song,

‘Blow, blow, thou winter’s wind,’ lingers through a lapse of thirty

years. A pantomime (the Little Red Riding-Hood) recalls the innocence of

our childish thoughts: a dance (the Minuet de la Cour) throws us back to

the gorgeous days of Louis XIV. and tells us that the age of chivalry is

gone for ever. Who will be the Mrs. Siddons of a distant age? What

future Kean shall ‘strut and fret his hour upon the stage,’ full of

genius and free from errors? What favourite actor or actress will be

taking their farewell benefit a hundred years hence? What plays and what

players will then amuse the town? Oh, many-coloured scenes of human

life! where are ye more truly represented than in the mirror of the

stage? or where is that eternal principle of vicissitude which rules

over ye, the painted pageant and the sudden gloom, more strikingly

exemplified than here? At the entrance to our great theatres, in large

capitals over the front of the stage, might be written MUTABILITY! Does

not the curtain that falls each night on the pomps and vanities it was

withdrawn awhile to reveal (and the next moment all is dark) afford a

fine moral lesson? Here, in small room, is crowded the map of human

life; the lengthened, varied scroll is unfolded like rich tapestry with

its quaint and flaunting devices spread out; whatever can be saved from

the giddy whirl of ever-rolling time and of this round orb, which moves

on and never stops,[24] all that can strike the sense, can touch the

heart, can stir up laughter or call tears from their secret source, is

here treasured up and displayed ostentatiously—here is Fancy’s motley

wardrobe, the masks of all the characters that were ever played—here is

a glass set up clear and large enough to show us our own features and

those of all mankind—here, in this enchanted mirror, are represented,

not darkly, but in vivid hues and bold relief, the struggle of Life and

Death, the momentary pause between the cradle and the grave, with

charming hopes and fears, terror and pity in a thousand modes, strange

and ghastly apparitions, the events of history, the fictions of poetry

(warm from the heart); all these, and more than can be numbered in my

feeble page, fill that airy space where the green curtain rises, and

haunt it with evanescent shapes and indescribable yearnings.

‘See o’er the stage the ghost of Hamlet stalks,

Othello rages, Desdemona mourns,

And poor Monimia pours her soul in love.’

Who can collect into one audible pulsation the thoughts and feelings

that in the course of his life all these together have occasioned; or

what heart, if it could recall them at once, and in their undiminished

power and plenitude, would not burst with the load? Let not the style be

deemed exaggerated, but tame and creeping, that attempts to do justice

to this high and pregnant theme, and let tears blot out the unequal

lines that the pen traces! Quaffing these delights, inhaling this

atmosphere, brooding over these visions, this long trail of glory, is

the possessor of a Free Admission to be blamed if ‘he takes his ease’ at

the play; and turning theatrical recluse, and forgetful of himself and

his friends, devotes himself to the study of the drama, and to dreams of

the past? By constant habit (having nothing to do, little else to think

of), he becomes a tippler of the dews of Castaly—a dram-drinker on Mount

Parnassus. He tastes the present moment, while a rich sea of pleasure

presses to his lip and engulfs him round. The noise, the glare, the

warmth, the company, produce a sort of listless intoxication, and clothe

the pathos and the wit with a bodily sense. There is a weight, a

closeness even, in the air, that makes it difficult to breathe out of

it. The custom of going to the play night after night becomes a relief,

a craving, a necessity—one cannot do without it. To sit alone is

intolerable, to be in company is worse; we are attracted with pleasing

force to the spot where ‘all that mighty heart is beating still.’ It is

not that perhaps there is any thing new or fine to see—if there is, we

attend to it—but at any time, it kills time and saves the trouble of

thinking. O, Covent Garden! ‘thy _freedom_ hath made me effeminate!’ It

has hardly left me power to write this description of it. I am become

its slave, I have no other sense or interest left. There I sit and lose

the hours I live beneath the sky, without the power to stir, without any

determination to stay. ‘Teddy the Tiler’ is become familiar to me, and,

as it were, a part of my existence: ‘Robert the Devil’ has cast his

spell over me. I have seen both thirty times at least, (no offence to

the Management!) and could sit them out thirty times more. I am bed-rid

in the lap of luxury; am grown callous and inert with perpetual

excitement.

——‘What avails from iron chains

Exempt, if rosy fetters bind as fast?’

I have my favourite box too, as Beau Brummell had his favourite leg; one

must decide on something, not to be always deciding. Perhaps I may have

my reasons too—perhaps into the box next to mine a Grace enters; perhaps

from thence an air divine breathes a glance (of heaven’s own

brightness), kindles contagious fire;—but let us turn all such thoughts

into the lobbies. These may be considered as an Arabesque border round

the inclosed tablet of human life. If the Muses reign within, Venus

sports heedless, but not unheeded without. Here a bevy of fair damsels,

richly clad, knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, lead on ‘the

frozen winter and the pleasant spring!’ Would I were allowed to attempt

a list of some of them, and Cowley’s _Gallery_ would blush at mine! But

this is a licence which only poetry, and not even a Free Admission can

give. I can now understand the attachment to a player’s life, and how

impossible it is for those who are once engaged in it ever to wean

themselves from it. If the merely witnessing the bustle and the

splendour of the scene as an idle spectator creates such a fascination,

and flings such a charm over it, how much more must this be the case

with those who have given all their time and attention to it—who regard

it as the sole means of distinction—with whom even the monotony and

mortifications must please—and who, instead of being passive, casual

votaries, are the dispensers of the bounty of the gods, and the

high-priests at the altar?

THE SICK CHAMBER

_The New Monthly Magazine._] [_August, 1830._

What a difference between this subject and my last—a ‘Free Admission!’

Yet from the crowded theatre to the sick chamber, from the noise, the

glare, the keen delight, to the loneliness, the darkness, the dulness,

and the pain, there is but one step. A breath of air, an overhanging

cloud effects it; and though the transition is made in an instant, it

seems as if it would last for ever. A sudden illness not only puts a

stop to the career of our triumphs and agreeable sensations, but blots

out and cancels all recollection of and desire for them. We lose the

relish of enjoyment; we are effectually cured of our romance. Our bodies

are confined to our beds; nor can our thoughts wantonly detach

themselves and take the road to pleasure, but turn back with doubt and

loathing at the faint, evanescent phantom which has usurped its place.

If the folding-doors of the imagination were thrown open or left a-jar,

so that from the disordered couch where we lay, we could still hail the

vista of the past or future, and see the gay and gorgeous visions

floating at a distance, however denied to our embrace, the contrast,

though mortifying, might have something soothing in it, the

mock-splendour might be the greater for the actual gloom: but the misery

is that we cannot conceive any thing beyond or better than the present

evil; we are shut up and spell-bound in that, the curtains of the mind

are drawn close, we cannot escape from ‘the body of this death,’ our

souls are conquered, dismayed, ‘cooped and cabined in,’ and thrown with

the lumber of our corporeal frames in one corner of a neglected and

solitary room. We hate ourselves and everything else; nor does one ray

of comfort ‘peep through the blanket of the dark’ to give us hope. How

should we entertain the image of grace and beauty, when our bodies

writhe with pain? To what purpose invoke the echo of some rich strain of

music, when we ourselves can scarcely breathe? The very attempt is an

impossibility. We give up the vain task of linking delight to agony, of

urging torpor into ecstasy, which makes the very heart sick. We feel the

present pain, and an impatient longing to get rid of it. This were

indeed ‘a consummation devoutly to be wished’: on this we are intent, in

earnest, inexorable: all else is impertinence and folly; and could we

but obtain _ease_ (that Goddess of the infirm and suffering) at any

price, we think we could forswear all other joy and all other sorrows.

_Hoc erat in votis._ All other things but our disorder and its cure seem

less than nothing and vanity. It assumes a palpable form; it becomes a

demon, a spectre, an incubus hovering over and oppressing us: we grapple

with it: it strikes its fangs into us, spreads its arms round us,

infects us with its breath, glares upon us with its hideous aspect; we

feel it take possession of every fibre and of every faculty; and we are

at length so absorbed and fascinated by it, that we cannot divert our

reflections from it for an instant, for all other things but pain (and

that which we suffer most acutely,) appear to have lost their pith and

power to interest. They are turned to dust and stubble. This is the

reason of the fine resolutions we sometimes form in such cases, and of

the vast superiority of a sick bed to the pomps and thrones of the

world. We easily renounce wine when we have nothing but the taste of

physic in our mouths: the rich banquet tempts us not, when ‘our very

gorge rises’ within us: Love and Beauty fly from a bed twisted into a

thousand folds by restless lassitude and tormenting cares: the nerve of

pleasure is killed by the pains that shoot through the head or rack the

limbs: an indigestion seizes you with its leaden grasp and giant force

(down, Ambition!)—you shiver and tremble like a leaf in a fit of the

ague (Avarice, let go your palsied hold!). We then are in the mood,

without ghostly advice, to betake ourselves to the life of ‘hermit poor,

‘In pensive place obscure,’—

and should be glad to prevent the return of a fever raging in the blood

by feeding on pulse, and slaking our thirst at the limpid brook. These

sudden resolutions, however, or ‘vows made in pain as violent and void,’

are generally of short duration; the excess and the sorrow for it are

alike selfish; and those repentances which are the most loud and

passionate are the surest to end speedily in a relapse; for both

originate in the same cause, the being engrossed by the prevailing

feeling (whatever it may be), and an utter incapacity to look beyond it.

‘The Devil was sick, the Devil a monk would be:

The Devil grew well, the Devil a monk was he!’

It is amazing how little effect physical suffering or local

circumstances have upon the mind, except while we are subject to their

immediate influence. While the impression lasts, they are every thing:

when it is gone, they are nothing. We toss and tumble about in a sick

bed; we lie on our right side, we then change to the left; we stretch

ourselves on our backs, we turn on our faces; we wrap ourselves up under

the clothes to exclude the cold, we throw them off to escape the heat

and suffocation; we grasp the pillow in agony, we fling ourselves out of

bed, we walk up and down the room with hasty or feeble steps; we return

into bed; we are worn out with fatigue and pain, yet can get no repose

for the one, or intermission for the other; we summon all our patience,

or give vent to passion and petty rage: nothing avails; we seem wedded

to our disease, ‘like life and death in disproportion met;’ we make new

efforts, try new expedients, but nothing appears to shake it off, or

promise relief from our grim foe: it infixes its sharp sting into us, or

overpowers us by its sickly and stunning weight: every moment is as much

as we can bear, and yet there seems no end of our lengthening tortures;

we are ready to faint with exhaustion, or work ourselves up to frenzy:

we ‘trouble deaf Heaven with our bootless prayers:’ we think our last

hour is come, or peevishly wish it were, to put an end to the scene; we

ask questions as to the origin of evil and the necessity of pain; we

‘moralise our complaints into a thousand similes’; we deny the use of

medicine _in toto_, we have a full persuasion that all doctors are mad

or knaves, that our object is to gain relief, and theirs (out of the

perversity of human nature, or to seem wiser than we) to prevent it; we

catechise the apothecary, rail at the nurse, and cannot so much as

conceive the possibility that this state of things should not last for

ever; we are even angry at those who would give us encouragement, as if

they would make dupes or children of us; we might seek a release by

poison, a halter, or the sword, but we have not strength of mind

enough—our nerves are too shaken—to attempt even this poor revenge—when

lo! a change comes, the spell falls off, and the next moment we forget

all that has happened to us. No sooner does our disorder turn its back

upon us than we laugh at it. The state we have been in, sounds like a

dream, a fable; health is the order of the day, strength is ours _de

jure_ and _de facto_; and we discard all uncalled-for evidence to the

contrary with a smile of contemptuous incredulity, just as we throw our

physic-bottles out of the window! I see (as I awake from a short, uneasy

doze) a golden light shine through my white window-curtains on the

opposite wall:—is it the dawn of a new day, or the departing light of

evening? I do not well know, for the opium ‘they have drugged my posset

with’ has made strange havoc with my brain, and I am uncertain whether

time has stood still, or advanced, or gone backward. By ‘puzzling o’er

the doubt,’ my attention is drawn a little out of myself to external

objects; and I consider whether it would not administer some relief to

my monotonous languour, if I could call up a vivid picture of an evening

sky I witnessed a short while before, the white fleecy clouds, the azure

vault, the verdant fields and balmy air. In vain! The wings of fancy

refuse to mount from my bed-side. The air without has nothing in common

with the closeness within: the clouds disappear, the sky is instantly

overcast and black. I walk out in this scene soon after I recover; and

with those favourite and well-known objects interposed, can no longer

recall the tumbled pillow, the juleps or the labels, or the unwholesome

dungeon in which I was before immured. What is contrary to our present

sensations or settled habits, amalgamates indifferently with our belief:

the imagination rules over imaginary themes, the senses and custom have

a narrower sway, and admit but one guest at a time. It is hardly to be

wondered at that we dread physical calamities so little beforehand: we

think no more of them the moment after they have happened. _Out of

sight, out of mind._ This will perhaps explain why all actual punishment

has so little effect; it is a state contrary to nature, alien to the

will. If it does not touch honour and conscience (and where these are

not, how can it touch them?) it goes for nothing: and where these are,

it rather sears and hardens them. The gyves, the cell, the meagre fare,

the hard labour are abhorrent to the mind of the culprit on whom they

are imposed, who carries the love of liberty or indulgence to

licentiousness; and who throws the thought of them behind him (the

moment he can evade the penalty,) with scorn and laughter,

‘Like Samson his green wythes.’[25]

So, in travelling, we often meet with great fatigue and inconvenience

from heat or cold, or rather accidents, and resolve never to go a

journey again; but we are ready to set off on a new excursion to-morrow.

We remember the landscape, the change of scene, the romantic

expectation, and think no more of the heat, the noise, and dust. The

body forgets its grievances, till they recur; but imagination, passion,

pride, have a longer memory and quicker apprehensions. To the first the

pleasure or the pain is nothing when once over; to the last it is only

then that they begin to exist. The line in Metastasio,

‘The worst of every evil is the fear,’

is true only when applied to this latter sort.—It is curious that, on

coming out of a sick room, where one has been pent some time, and grown

weak and nervous, and looking at Nature for the first time, the objects

that present themselves have a very questionable and spectral

appearance, the people in the street resemble flies crawling about, and

seem scarce half-alive. It is we who are just risen from a torpid and

unwholesome state, and who impart our imperfect feelings of existence,

health, and motion to others. Or it may be that the violence and

exertion of the pain we have gone through make common every-day objects

seem unreal and unsubstantial. It is not till we have established

ourselves in form in the sitting-room, wheeled round the arm-chair to

the fire (for this makes part of our re-introduction to the ordinary

modes of being in all seasons,) felt our appetite return, and taken up a

book, that we can be considered as at all restored to ourselves. And

even then our first sensations are rather empirical than positive; as

after sleep we stretch out our hands to know whether we are awake. This

is the time for reading. Books are then indeed ‘a world, both pure and

good,’ into which we enter with all our hearts, after our revival from

illness and respite from the tomb, as with the freshness and novelty of

youth. They are not merely acceptable as without too much exertion they

pass the time and relieve _ennui_; but from a certain suspension and

deadening of the passions, and abstraction from worldly pursuits, they

may be said to bring back and be friendly to the guileless and

enthusiastic tone of feeling with which we formerly read them. Sickness

has weaned us _pro tempore_ from contest and cabal; and we are fain to

be docile and children again. All strong changes in our present pursuits

throw us back upon the past. This is the shortest and most complete

emancipation from our late discomfiture. We wonder that any one who has

read _The History of a Foundling_ should labour under an indigestion;

nor do we comprehend how a perusal of the _Faery Queen_ should not

ensure the true believer an uninterrupted succession of halcyon days.

Present objects bear a retrospective meaning, and point to ‘a foregone

conclusion.’ Returning back to life with half-strung nerves and

shattered strength, we seem as when we first entered it with uncertain

purposes and faltering aims. The machine has received a shock, and it

moves on more tremulously than before, and not all at once in the beaten

track. Startled at the approach of death, we are willing to get as far

from it as we can by making a proxy of our former selves; and finding

the precarious tenure by which we hold existence, and its last sands

running out, we gather up and make the most of the fragments that memory

has stored up for us. Every thing is seen through a medium of reflection

and contrast. We hear the sound of merry voices in the street; and this

carries us back to the recollections of some country-town or

village-group—

‘We see the children sporting on the shore,

And hear the mighty waters roaring evermore.’

A cricket chirps on the hearth, and we are reminded of Christmas gambols

long ago. The very cries in the street seem to be of a former date; and

the dry toast eats very much as it did—twenty years ago. A rose smells

doubly sweet, after being stifled with tinctures and essences; and we

enjoy the idea of a journey and an inn the more for having been bed-rid.

But a book is the secret and sure charm to bring all these implied

associations to a focus. I should prefer an old one, Mr. Lamb’s

favourite, the _Journey to Lisbon_; or the _Decameron_, if I could get

it; but if a new one, let it be _Paul Clifford_. That book has the

singular advantage of being written by a gentleman, and not about his

own class. The characters he commemorates are every moment at fault

between life and death, hunger and a _forced loan_ on the public; and

therefore the interest they take in themselves, and which we take in

them, has no cant or affectation in it, but is ‘lively, audible, and

full of vent.’ A set of well-dressed gentlemen picking their teeth with

a graceful air after dinner, endeavouring to keep their cravats from the

slightest discomposure, and saying the most insipid things in the most

insipid manner, do not make a _scene_. Well, then, I have got the new

paraphrase on the _Beggar’s Opera_, am fairly embarked on it; and at the

end of the first volume, where I am galloping across the heath with the

three highwaymen, while the moon is shining full upon them, feel my

nerves so braced, and my spirits so exhilarated, that, to say truth, I

am scarce sorry for the occasion that has thrown me upon the work and

the author—have quite forgot my _Sick Room_, and am more than half ready

to recant the doctrine that a _Free Admission_ to the theatre is

—‘The true pathos and sublime

Of human life’:—

for I feel as I read that if the stage shows us the masks of men and the

pageant of the world, books let us into their souls and lay open to us

the secrets of our own. They are the first and last, the most home-felt,

the most heartfelt of all our enjoyments.

FOOTMEN

_The New Monthly Magazine._] [_September, 1830._

Footmen are no part of Christianity; but they are a very necessary

appendage to our happy Constitution in Church and State. What would the

bishop’s mitre be without these grave supporters to his dignity? Even

the plain presbyter does not dispense with his decent serving-man to

stand behind his chair and load his duly emptied plate with beef and

pudding, at which the genius of Ude turns pale. What would become of the

coronet-coach filled with elegant and languid forms, if it were not for

the triple row of powdered, laced, and liveried footmen, clustering,

fluttering, and lounging behind it? What an idea do we not conceive of

the fashionable _belle_ who is making the most of her time and tumbling

over silks and satins within at Sewell and Cross’s, or at the Bazaar in

Soho-square, from the tall lacquey in blue and silver with gold-headed

cane, cocked-hat, white thread stockings and large calves to his legs,

who stands as her representative without! The sleek shopman appears at

the door, at an understood signal the livery-servant starts from his

position, the coach-door flies open, the steps are let down, the young

lady enters the carriage as young ladies are taught to step into

carriages, the footman closes the door, mounts behind, and the glossy

vehicle rolls off, bearing its lovely burden and her gaudy attendant

from the gaze of the gaping crowd! Is there not a spell in beauty, a

charm in rank and fashion, that one would almost wish to be this

fellow—to obey its nod, to watch its looks, to breathe but by its

permission, and to live but for its use, its scorn, or pride?

Footmen are in general looked upon as a sort of supernumeraries in

society—they have no place assigned them in any Scotch Encyclopædia—they

do not come under any of the heads in Mr. Mill’s Elements, or Mr.

Maculloch’s Principles of Political Economy; and they nowhere have had

impartial justice done them, except in Lady Booby’s love for one of that

order. But if not ‘the Corinthian capitals of polished society,’ they

are ‘a graceful ornament to the civil order.’ Lords and ladies could not

do without them. Nothing exists in this world but by contrast. A foil is

necessary to make the plainest truths self-evident. It is the very

insignificance, the nonentity as it were of the gentlemen of the cloth,

that constitutes their importance, and makes them an indispensable

feature in the social system, by setting off the pretensions of their

superiors to the best advantage. What would be the good of having a will

of our own, if we had not others about us who are deprived of all will

of their own, and who wear a badge to say ‘I serve?’ How can we show

that we are the lords of the creation but by reducing others to the

condition of machines, who never move but at the beck of our caprices?

Is not the plain suit of the master wonderfully relieved by the borrowed

trappings and mock-finery of his servant? You see that man on horseback

who keeps at some distance behind another, who follows him as his

shadow, turns as he turns, and as he passes or speaks to him, lifts his

hand to his hat and observes the most profound attention—what is the

difference between these two men? The one is as well mounted, as well

fed, is younger and seemingly in better health than the other; but

between these two there are perhaps seven or eight classes of society,

each of whom is dependent on and trembles at the frown of the other—it

is a nobleman and his lacquey. Let any one take a stroll towards the

West-end of the town, South Audley or Upper Grosvenor-street; it is then

he will feel himself first entering into the _beau-ideal_ of civilized

life, a society composed entirely of lords and footmen! Deliver me from

the filth and cellars of St. Giles’s, from the shops of Holborn and the

Strand, from all that appertains to middle and to low life; and commend

me to the streets with the straw at the doors and hatchments overhead to

tell us of those who are just born or who are just dead, and with groups

of footmen lounging on the steps and insulting the passengers—it is then

I feel the true dignity and imaginary pretensions of human nature

realised! There is here none of the squalidness of poverty, none of the

hardships of daily labour, none of the anxiety and petty artifice of

trade; life’s business is changed into a romance, a summer’s dream, and

nothing painful, disgusting, or vulgar intrudes. All is on a liberal and

handsome scale. The true ends and benefits of society are here enjoyed

and bountifully lavished, and all the trouble and misery banished, and

not even allowed so much as to exist in thought. Those who would find

the real Utopia, should look for it somewhere about Park-lane or May

Fair. It is there only any feasible approach to equality is made—for it

is _like master like man_. Here, as I look down Curzon Street, or catch

a glimpse of the taper spire of South Audley Chapel, or the family-arms

on the gate of Chesterfield-House, the vista of years opens to me, and I

recall the period of the triumph of Mr. Burke’s ‘Reflections on the

French Revolution,’ and the overthrow of ‘The Rights of Man!’ You do not

indeed penetrate to the interior of the mansion where sits the stately

possessor, luxurious and refined; but you draw your inference from the

lazy, pampered, motley crew poured forth from his portals. This

mealy-coated, moth-like, butterfly-generation, seem to have no earthly

business but to enjoy themselves. Their green liveries accord with the

budding leaves and spreading branches of the trees in Hyde Park—they

seem ‘like brothers of the groves’—their red faces and powdered heads

harmonise with the blossoms of the neighbouring almond-trees, that shoot

their sprays over old-fashioned brick-walls. They come forth like

grasshoppers in June, as numerous and as noisy. They bask in the sun and

laugh in your face. Not only does the master enjoy an uninterrupted

leisure and tranquillity—those in his employment have nothing to do. He

wants drones, not drudges, about him, to share his superfluity, and give

a haughty pledge of his exemption from care. They grow sleek and wanton,

saucy and supple. From being independent of the world, they acquire the

look of _gentlemen’s gentlemen_. There is a cast of the aristocracy,

with a slight shade of distinction. The saying, ‘Tell me your company,

and I’ll tell you your manners,’ may be applied _cum grano salis_ to the

servants in great families. Mr. N—— knew an old butler who had lived

with a nobleman so long, and had learned to imitate his walk, look, and

way of speaking, so exactly that it was next to impossible to tell them

apart. See the porter in the great leather-chair in the hall—how big,

and burly, and self-important he looks; while my Lord’s gentleman (the

politician of the family) is reading the second edition of ‘The Courier’

(once more in request) at the side window, and the footman is romping,

or taking tea with the maids in the kitchen below. A match-girl

meanwhile plies her shrill trade at the railing; or a gipsey-woman

passes with her rustic wares through the street, avoiding the closer

haunts of the city. What a pleasant farce is that of ‘High Life Below

Stairs!’ What a careless life do the domestics of the Great lead! For,

not to speak of the reflected self-importance of their masters and

mistresses, and the contempt with which they look down on the herd of

mankind, they have only to eat and drink their fill, talk the scandal of

the neighbourhood, laugh at the follies, or assist the intrigues of

their betters, till they themselves fall in love, marry, set up a public

house, (the only thing they are fit for,) and without habits of

industry, resources in themselves, or self-respect, and drawing

fruitless comparisons with the past, are, of all people, the most

miserable! Service is no inheritance; and when it fails, there is not a

more helpless, or more worthless set of devils in the world. Mr. C——

used to say he should like to be a footman to some elderly lady of

quality, to carry her prayer-book to church, and place her cassock right

for her. There can be no doubt that this would have been better, and

quite as useful as the life he has led, dancing attendance on Prejudice,

but flirting with Paradox in such a way as to cut himself out of the old

lady’s will. For my part, if I had to choose, I should prefer the

service of a young mistress, and might share the fate of the footman

recorded in heroic verse by Lady Wortley Montagu. Certainly it can be no

hard duty, though a sort of _forlorn hope_, to have to follow three

sisters, or youthful friends, (resembling the three Graces,) at a slow

pace, and with grave demeanour, from Cumberland Gate to Kensington

Gardens—to be there shut out, a privation enhancing the privilege, and

making the sense of distant, respectful, idolatrous admiration more

intense—and then, after a brief interval lost in idle chat, or idler

reverie, to have to follow them back again, observing, not observed, to

keep within call, to watch every gesture, to see the breeze play with

the light tresses or lift the morning robe aside, to catch the

half-suppressed laugh, and hear the low murmur of indistinct words and

wishes, like the music of the spheres. An _amateur footman_ would seem a

more rational occupation than that of an amateur author, or an amateur

artist. An insurmountable barrier, if it excludes passion, does not

banish sentiment, but draws an atmosphere of superstitious, trembling

apprehension round the object of so much attention and respect; nothing

makes women seem so much like angels as always to see, never to converse

with them; and those whom we have to dangle a cane after must, to a

lacquey of any spirit, appear worthy to wield sceptres.

But of all situations of this kind, the most enviable is that of a

lady’s maid in a family travelling abroad. In the obtuseness of

foreigners to the nice gradations of English refinement and manners, the

maid has not seldom a chance of being taken for the mistress—a

circumstance never to be forgot! See our Abigail mounted in the _dicky_

with my Lord, or John, snug and comfortable—setting out on the grand

tour as fast as four horses can carry her, whirled over the

‘vine-covered hills and gay regions of France,’ crossing the Alps and

Apennines in breathless terror and wonder—frightened at a precipice,

laughing at her escape—coming to the inn, going into the kitchen to see

what is to be had—not speaking a word of the language, except what she

picks up, ‘as pigeons pick up peas:‘—the bill paid, the passport _visé_,

the horses put to, and _au route_ again—seeing every thing, and

understanding nothing, in a full tide of health, fresh air, and animal

spirits, and without one qualm of taste or sentiment, and arriving at

Florence, the city of palaces, with its amphitheatre of hills and

olives, without suspecting that such a person as Boccacio, Dante, or

Galileo, had ever lived there, while her young mistress is puzzled with

the varieties of the Tuscan dialect, is disappointed in the Arno, and

cannot tell what to make of the statue of David by Michael Angelo, in

the Great Square. The difference is, that the young lady, on her return,

has something to think of; but the maid absolutely forgets every thing,

and is only giddy and out of breath, as if she had been up in a balloon.

‘No more: where ignorance is bliss,

’Tis folly to be wise!’

English servants abroad, notwithstanding the comforts they enjoy, and

although travelling as it were _en famille_, must be struck with the

ease and familiar footing on which foreigners live with their domestics,

compared with the distance and reserve with which they are treated. The

housemaid (_la bonne_) sits down in the room, or walks abreast with you

in the street; and the valet who waits behind his master’s chair at

table, gives Monsieur his advice or opinion without being asked for it.

We need not wonder at this familiarity and freedom, when we consider

that those who allowed it could (formerly at least, when the custom

began) send those who transgressed but in the smallest degree to the

Bastille or the galleys at their pleasure. The licence was attended with

perfect impunity. With us the law leaves less to discretion; and by

interposing a real independence (and plea of right) between the servant

and master, does away with the appearance of it on the surface of

manners. The insolence and tyranny of the Aristocracy fell more on the

tradespeople and mechanics than on their domestics, who were attached to

them by a semblance of feudal ties. Thus an upstart lady of quality (an

imitator of the old school) would not deign to speak to a milliner while

fitting on her dress, but gave her orders to her waiting-women to tell

her what to do. Can we wonder at twenty _reigns of terror_ to efface

such a feeling?

I have alluded to the inclination in servants in great houses to ape the

manners of their superiors, and to their sometimes succeeding. What

facilitates the metamorphosis is, that the Great, in their character of

_courtiers_, are a sort of footmen in their turn. There is the same

crouching to interest and authority in either case, with the same

surrender or absence of personal dignity—the same submission to the

trammels of outward form, with the same suppression of inward

impulses—the same degrading finery, the same pretended deference in the

eye of the world, and the same lurking contempt from being admitted

behind the scenes, the same heartlessness, and the same eye-service—in a

word, they are alike puppets governed by motives not their own, machines

made of coarser or finer materials. It is not, therefore, surprising, if

the most finished courtier of the day cannot, by a vulgar eye, be

distinguished from a gentleman’s servant. M. de Bausset, in his amusing

and excellent _Memoirs_, makes it an argument of the legitimacy of

Napoleon’s authority, that from denying it, it would follow that his

lords of the bed-chamber were valets, and he himself (as prefect of the

palace) no better than head-cook. The inference is logical enough.

According to the author’s view, there was no other difference between

the retainers of the court and the kitchen than the rank of the master!

I remember hearing it said that ‘all men were equal but footmen.’ But of

all footmen the lowest class is _literary footmen_. These consist of

persons who, without a single grain of knowledge, taste, or feeling, put

on the livery of learning, mimic its phrases by rote, and are retained

in its service by dint of quackery and assurance alone. As they have

none of the essence, they have all the externals of men of gravity and

wisdom. They wear green spectacles, walk with a peculiar strut, thrust

themselves into the acquaintance of persons they hear talked of, get

introduced into the clubs, are seen reading books they do not understand

at the Museum and public libraries, dine (if they can) with lords or

officers of the Guards, abuse any party as _low_ to show what fine

gentlemen they are, and the next week join the same party to raise their

own credit and gain a little consequence, give themselves out as wits,

critics, and philosophers (and as they have never done any thing, no man

can contradict them), and have a great knack of turning editors, and not

paying their contributors. If you get five pounds from one of them, he

never forgives it. With the proceeds thus appropriated, the book-worm

graduates a dandy, hires expensive apartments, sports a tandem, and it

is inferred that he must be a great author who can support such an

appearance with his pen, and a great genius who can conduct so many

learned works while his time is devoted to the gay, the fair, and the

rich. This introduces him to new editorships, to new and more select

friendships, and to more frequent and importunate demands from debts and

duns. At length the bubble bursts and disappears, and you hear no more

of our classical adventurer, except from the invectives and

self-reproaches of those who took him for a great scholar from his

wearing green spectacles and Wellington-boots. Such a candidate for

literary honours bears the same relation to the man of letters, that the

valet with his second-hand finery and servile airs does to his master.

ON THE WANT OF MONEY

_The Monthly Magazine._] [_January, 1827._

It is hard to be without money. To get on without it is like travelling

in a foreign country without a passport—you are stopped, suspected, and

made ridiculous at every turn, besides being subjected to the most

serious inconveniences. The want of money I here allude to is not

altogether that which arises from absolute poverty—where there is a

downright absence of the common necessaries of life, this must be

remedied by incessant hard labour, and the least we can receive in

return is a supply of our daily wants—but that uncertain, casual,

precarious mode of existence, in which the temptation to spend remains

after the means are exhausted, the want of money joined with the hope

and possibility of getting it, the intermediate state of difficulty and

suspense between the last guinea or shilling and the next that we may

have the good luck to encounter. This gap, this unwelcome interval

constantly recurring, however shabbily got over, is really full of many

anxieties, misgivings, mortifications, meannesses, and deplorable

embarrassments of every description. I may attempt (this essay is not a

fanciful speculation) to enlarge upon a few of them.

It is hard to go without one’s dinner through sheer distress, but harder

still to go without one’s breakfast. Upon the strength of that first and

aboriginal meal, one may muster courage to face the difficulties before

one, and to dare the worst: but to be roused out of one’s warm bed, and

perhaps a profound oblivion of care, with golden dreams (for poverty

does not prevent golden dreams), and told there is nothing for

breakfast, is cold comfort for which one’s half-strung nerves are not

prepared, and throws a damp upon the prospects of the day. It is a bad

beginning. A man without a breakfast is a poor creature, unfit to go in

search of one, to meet the frown of the world, or to borrow a shilling

of a friend. He may beg at the corner of a street—nothing is too mean

for the tone of his feelings—robbing on the highway is out of the

question, as requiring too much courage, and some opinion of a man’s

self. It is, indeed, as old Fuller, or some worthy of that age,

expresses it, ‘the heaviest stone which melancholy can throw at a man,’

to learn, the first thing after he rises in the morning, or even to be

dunned with it in bed, that there is no loaf, tea, or butter in the

house, and that the baker, the grocer, and butterman have refused to

give any farther credit. This is taking one sadly at a disadvantage. It

is striking at one’s spirit and resolution in their very source,—the

stomach—it is attacking one on the side of hunger and mortification at

once; it is casting one into the very mire of humility and Slough of

Despond. The worst is, to know what face to put upon the matter, what

excuse to make to the servants, what answer to send to the tradespeople;

whether to laugh it off, or be grave, or angry, or indifferent; in

short, to know how to parry off an evil which you cannot help. What a

luxury, what a God’s-send in such a dilemma, to find a half-crown which

had slipped through a hole in the lining of your waistcoat, a crumpled

bank-note in your breeches-pocket, or a guinea clinking in the bottom of

your trunk, which had been thoughtlessly left there out of a former

heap! Vain hope! Unfounded illusion! The experienced in such matters

know better, and laugh in their sleeves at so improbable a suggestion.

Not a corner, not a cranny, not a pocket, not a drawer has been left

unrummaged, or has not been subjected over and over again to more than

the strictness of a custom-house scrutiny. Not the slightest rustle of a

piece of bank-paper, not the gentlest pressure of a piece of hard metal,

but would have given notice of its hiding-place with electrical

rapidity, long before, in such circumstances. All the variety of

pecuniary resources which form a legal tender on the current coin of the

realm, are assuredly drained, exhausted to the last farthing before this

time. But is there nothing in the house that one can turn to account! Is

there not an old family-watch, or piece of plate, or a ring, or some

worthless trinket that one could part with? nothing belonging to

one’s-self or a friend, that one could raise the wind upon, till

something better turns up? At this moment an old clothes-man passes, and

his deep, harsh tones sound like an intended insult on one’s distress,

and banish the thought of applying for his assistance, as one’s eye

glanced furtively at an old hat or a great coat, hung up behind a

closet-door. Humiliating contemplations! Miserable uncertainty! One

hesitates, and the opportunity is gone by; for without one’s breakfast,

one has not the resolution to do any thing!—The late Mr. Sheridan was

often reduced to this unpleasant predicament. Possibly he had little

appetite for breakfast himself; but the servants complained bitterly on

this head, and said that Mrs. Sheridan was sometimes kept waiting for a

couple of hours, while they had to hunt through the neighbourhood, and

beat up for coffee, eggs, and French rolls. The same perplexity in this

instance appears to have extended to the providing for the dinner; for

so sharp-set were they, that to cut short a debate with a butcher’s

apprentice about leaving a leg of mutton without the money, the cook

clapped it into the pot: the butcher’s boy, probably used to such

encounters, with equal coolness took it out again, and marched off with

it in his tray in triumph. It required a man to be the author of THE

SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL, to run the gauntlet of such disagreeable occurrences

every hour of the day. There was one comfort, however, that poor

Sheridan had: he did not foresee that Mr. Moore would write his

Life![26]

The going without a dinner is another of the miseries of wanting money,

though one can bear up against this calamity better than the former,

which really ‘blights the tender blossom and promise of the day.’ With

one good meal, one may hold a parley with hunger and moralize upon

temperance. One has time to turn one’s-self and look about one—to ‘screw

one’s courage to the sticking-place,’ to graduate the scale of

disappointment, and stave off appetite till supper-time. You gain time,

and time in this weather-cock world is everything. You may dine at two,

or at six, or seven—as most convenient. You may in the meanwhile receive

an invitation to dinner, or some one (not knowing how you are

circumstanced) may send you a present of a haunch of venison or a brace

of pheasants from the country, or a distant relation may die and leave

you a legacy, or a patron may call and overwhelm you with his smiles and

bounty,

‘As kind as kings upon their coronation-day;’

or there is no saying what may happen. One may wait for dinner—breakfast

admits of no delay, of no interval interposed between that and our first

waking thoughts.[27] Besides, there are shifts and devices, shabby and

mortifying enough, but still available in case of need. How many

expedients are there in this great city (London), time out of mind and

times without number, resorted to by the dilapidated and thrifty

speculator, to get through this grand difficulty without utter failure!

One may dive into a cellar, and dine on boiled beef and carrots for

tenpence, with the knives and forks chained to the table, and jostled by

greasy elbows that seem to make such a precaution not unnecessary

(hunger is proof against indignity!)—or one may contrive to part with a

superfluous article of wearing apparel, and carry home a mutton-chop and

cook it in a garret; or one may drop in at a friend’s at the

dinner-hour, and be asked to stay or not; or one may walk out and take a

turn in the Park, about the time, and return home to tea, so as at least

to avoid the sting of the evil—the appearance of not having dined. You

then have the laugh on your side, having deceived the gossips, and can

submit to the want of a sumptuous repast without murmuring, having saved

your pride, and made a virtue of necessity. I say all this may be done

by a man without a family (for what business has a man without money

with one?—_See English Malthus and Scotch Macculloch_)—and it is only my

intention here to bring forward such instances of the want of money as

are tolerable both in theory and practice. I once lived on coffee (as an

experiment) for a fortnight together, while I was finishing the copy of

a half-length portrait of a Manchester manufacturer, who had died worth

a plum. I rather slurred over the coat, which was a reddish brown, ‘of

formal cut,’ to receive my five guineas, with which I went to market

myself, and dined on sausages and mashed potatoes, and while they were

getting ready, and I could hear them hissing in the pan, read a volume

of Gil Blas, containing the account of the fair Aurora. This was in the

days of my youth. Gentle reader, do not smile! Neither Monsieur de Very,

nor Louis XVIII., over an oyster-pâté, nor Apicius himself, ever

understood the meaning of the word _luxury_, better than I did at that

moment! If the want of money has its drawbacks and disadvantages, it is

not without its contrasts and counterbalancing effects, for which I fear

nothing else can make us amends. Amelia’s _hashed mutton_ is immortal;

and there is something amusing, though carried to excess and caricature

(which is very unusual with the author) in the contrivances of old

Caleb, in ‘The Bride of Lammermuir,’ for raising the wind at breakfast,

dinner, and supper-time. I recollect a ludicrous instance of a

disappointment in a dinner which happened to a person of my acquaintance

some years ago. He was not only poor but a very poor creature, as will

be imagined. His wife had laid by fourpence (their whole remaining

stock) to pay for the baking of a shoulder of mutton and potatoes, which

they had in the house, and on her return home from some errand, she

found he had expended it in purchasing a new string for a guitar. On

this occasion a witty friend quoted the lines from Milton:

‘And ever against _eating_ cares,

Wrap me in soft Lydian airs!’

Defoe, in his _Life of Colonel Jack_, gives a striking picture of his

young beggarly hero sitting with his companion for the first time in his

life at a three-penny ordinary, and the delight with which he relished

the hot smoking soup, and the airs with which he called about him—‘and

every time,’ he says, ‘we called for bread, or beer, or whatever it

might be, the waiter answered, “coming, gentlemen, coming;” and this

delighted me more than all the rest!’ It was about this time, as the

same pithy author expresses it, ‘the Colonel took upon him to wear a

shirt!’ Nothing can be finer than the whole of the feeling conveyed in

the commencement of this novel, about wealth and finery from the

immediate contrast of privation and poverty. One would think it a

labour, like the Tower of Babel, to build up a beau and a fine gentleman

about town. The little vagabond’s admiration of the old man at the

banking-house, who sits surrounded by heaps of gold as if it were a

dream or poetic vision, and his own eager anxious visits, day by day, to

the hoard he had deposited in the hollow tree, are in the very foremost

style of truth and nature. See the same intense feeling expressed in

Luke’s address to his riches in the _City Madam_, and in the

extraordinary raptures of the ‘Spanish Rogue’ in contemplating and

hugging his ingots of pure gold and Spanish pieces of eight: to which

Mr. Lamb has referred in excuse for the rhapsodies of some of our elder

poets on this subject, which to our present more refined and tamer

apprehensions sound like blasphemy.[28] In earlier times, before the

diffusion of luxury, of knowledge, and other sources of enjoyment had

become common, and acted as a diversion to the cravings of avarice, the

passionate admiration, the idolatry, the hunger and thirst of wealth and

all its precious symbols, was a kind of madness or hallucination, and

Mammon was truly worshipped as a god!

It is among the miseries of the want of money, not to be able to pay

your reckoning at an inn—or, if you have just enough to do that, to have

nothing left for the waiter;—to be stopped at a turnpike gate, and

forced to turn back;—not to venture to call a hackney-coach in a shower

of rain—(when you have only one shilling left yourself, it is a _bore_

to have it taken out of your pocket by a friend, who comes into your

house eating peaches in a hot summer’s day, and desiring you to pay for

the coach in which he visits you);—not to be able to purchase a

lottery-ticket, by which you might make your fortune, and get out of all

your difficulties;—or to find a letter lying for you at a country

post-office, and not to have money in your pocket to free it, and be

obliged to return for it the next day. The letter so unseasonably

withheld may be supposed to contain money, and in this case there is a

foretaste, a sort of actual possession taken through the thin folds of

the paper and the wax, which in some measure indemnifies us for the

delay: the bank-note, the post-bill seems to smile upon us, and shake

hands through its prison bars;—or it may be a love-letter, and then the

tantalization is at its height: to be deprived in this manner of the

only consolation that can make us amends for the want of money, by this

very want—to fancy you can see the name—to try to get a peep at the

hand-writing—to touch the seal, and yet not dare to break it open—is

provoking indeed—the climax of amorous and gentlemanly distress. Players

are sometimes reduced to great extremity, by the seizure of their scenes

and dresses, or (what is called) _the property of the theatre_, which

hinders them from acting; as authors are prevented from finishing a

work, for want of money to buy the books necessary to be consulted on

some material point or circumstance, in the progress of it. There is a

set of poor devils, who live upon a printed _prospectus_ of a work that

never will be written, for which they solicit your name and

half-a-crown. Decayed actresses take an annual benefit at one of the

theatres; there are patriots who live upon periodical subscriptions, and

critics who go about the country lecturing on poetry. I confess I envy

none of these; but there are persons who, provided they can live, care

not how they live—who are fond of display, even when it implies

exposure; who court notoriety under every shape, and embrace the public

with demonstrations of wantonness. There are genteel beggars, who send

up a well-penned epistle requesting the loan of a shilling. Your snug

bachelors and retired old maids pretend they can distinguish the knock

of one of these at their door. I scarce know which I dislike the

most—the patronage that affects to bring premature genius into notice,

or that extends its piecemeal, formal charity towards it in its decline.

I hate your Literary Funds, and Funds for Decayed Artists—they are

corporations for the encouragement of meanness, pretence, and insolence.

Of all people, I cannot tell how it is, but players appear to me the

best able to do without money. They are a privileged class. If not

exempt from the common calls of necessity and business, they are enabled

‘by their so potent art’ to soar above them. As they make imaginary ills

their own, real ones become imaginary, sit light upon them, and are

thrown off with comparatively little trouble. Their life is

theatrical—its various accidents are the shifting scenes of a play—rags

and finery, tears and laughter, a mock-dinner or a real one, a crown of

jewels or of straw, are to them nearly the same. I am sorry I cannot

carry on this reasoning to actors who are past their prime. The gilding

of their profession is then worn off, and shews the false metal beneath;

vanity and hope (the props of their existence) have had their day; their

former gaiety and carelessness serve as a foil to their present

discouragements; and want and infirmities press upon them at once. ‘We

know what we are,’ as Ophelia says, ‘but we know not what we shall be.’

A workhouse seems the last resort of poverty and distress—a

_parish-pauper_ is another name for all that is mean and to be

deprecated in human existence. But that name is but an abstraction, an

average term—‘within that lowest deep, a lower deep may open to receive

us.’ I heard not long ago of a poor man, who had been for many years a

respectable tradesman in London, and who was compelled to take shelter

in one of those receptacles of age and wretchedness, and who said he

could be contented with it—he had his regular meals, a nook in the

chimney, and a coat to his back—but he was forced to lie three in a bed,

and one of the three was out of his mind and crazy, and his great

delight was, when the others fell asleep, to tweak their noses, and

flourish his night-cap over their heads, so that they were obliged to

lie awake, and hold him down between them. One should be quite mad to

bear this. To what a point of insignificance may not human life dwindle!

To what fine, agonizing threads will it not cling! Yet this man had been

a lover in his youth, in a humble way, and still begins his letters to

an old maid (his former flame), who sometimes comforts him by listening

to his complaints, and treating him to a dish of weak tea, ‘MY DEAR MISS

NANCY!’

Another of the greatest miseries of a want of money, is the tap of a

dun at your door, or the previous silence when you expect it—the

uneasy sense of shame at the approach of your tormentor; the wish to

meet, and yet to shun the encounter; the disposition to bully; the

fear of irritating; the real and the sham excuses; the submission to

impertinence; the assurances of a speedy supply; the disingenuousness

you practise on him and on yourself; the degradation in the eyes of

others and your own. Oh! it is wretched to have to confront a just and

oft-repeated demand, and to be without the means to satisfy it; to

deceive the confidence that has been placed in you; to forfeit your

credit; to be placed at the power of another, to be indebted to his

lenity; to stand convicted of having played the knave or the fool; and

to have no way left to escape contempt, but by incurring pity. The

suddenly meeting a creditor on turning the corner of a street, whom

you have been trying to avoid for months, and had persuaded you were

several hundred miles off, discomposes the features and shatters the

nerves for some time. It is also a serious annoyance to be unable to

repay a loan to a friend, who is in want of it—nor is it very pleasant

to be so hard run, as to be induced to request the repayment. It is

difficult to decide the preference between debts of honour and legal

demands; both are bad enough, and almost a fair excuse for driving any

one into the hands of money-lenders—to whom an application, if

successful, is accompanied with a sense of being in the vulture’s

gripe—a reflection akin to that of those who formerly sold themselves

to the devil—or, if unsuccessful, is rendered doubly galling by the

smooth, civil leer of cool contempt with which you are dismissed, as

if they had escaped from your clutches—not you from their’s. If any

thing can be added to the mortification and distress arising from

straitened circumstances, it is when vanity comes in to barb the dart

of poverty—when you have a picture on which you had calculated,

rejected from an Exhibition, or a manuscript returned on your hands,

or a tragedy damned, at the very instant when your cash and credit are

at the lowest ebb. This forlorn and helpless feeling has reached its

_acme_ in the prison-scene in Hogarth’s RAKE’S PROGRESS, where his

unfortunate hero has just dropped the Manager’s letter from his hands,

with the laconic answer written in it:—‘Your play has been read, and

won’t do.’[29] To feel poverty is bad; but to feel it with the

additional sense of our incapacity to shake it off, and that we have

not merit enough to retrieve our circumstances—and, instead of being

held up to admiration, are exposed to persecution and insult—is the

last stage of human infirmity. My friend, Mr. Leigh Hunt (no one is

better qualified than he to judge) thinks, that the most pathetic

story in the world is that of Smollett’s fine gentleman and lady in

gaol, who have been roughly handled by the mob for some paltry attempt

at raising the wind, and she exclaims in extenuation of the pitiful

figure he cuts, ‘Ah! he was a fine fellow once!’

It is justly remarked by the poet, that poverty has no greater

inconvenience attached to it than that of making men ridiculous. It not

only has this disadvantage with respect to ourselves, but it often shews

us others in a very contemptible point of view. People are not soured by

misfortune, but by the reception they meet with in it. When we do not

want assistance, every one is ready to obtrude it on us, as if it were

advice. If we do, they shun us instantly. They anticipate the increased

demand on their sympathy or bounty, and escape from it as from a falling

house. It is a mistake, however, that we court the society of the rich

and prosperous, merely with a view to what we can get from them. We do

so, because there is something in external rank and splendour that

gratifies and imposes on the imagination; just as we prefer the company

of those who are in good health and spirits to that of the sickly and

hypochondriacal, or as we would rather converse with a beautiful woman

than with an ugly one. I never knew but one man who would lend his money

freely and fearlessly in spite of circumstances (if you were likely to

pay him, he grew peevish, and would pick a quarrel with you). I can only

account for this from a certain sanguine buoyancy and magnificence of

spirit, not deterred by distant consequences, or damped by untoward

appearances. I have been told by those, who shared of the same bounty,

that it was not owing to generosity, but ostentation—if so, he kept his

ostentation a secret from me, for I never received a hint or a look from

which I could infer that I was not the lender, and he the person

obliged. Neither was I expected to keep in the back-ground or play an

under-part. On the contrary, I was encouraged to do my best; my dormant

faculties roused, the ease of my circumstances was on condition of the

freedom and independence of my mind, my lucky hits were applauded, and I

was paid to shine. I am not ashamed of such patronage as this, nor do I

regret any circumstance relating to it but its termination. People

endure existence even in Paris: the rows of chairs on the Boulevards are

gay with smiles and dress: the saloons, they say, are brilliant; at the

theatre there is Mademoiselle Mars—what is all this to me? After a

certain period, we live only in the past. Give me back one single

evening at Boxhill, after a stroll in the deep-empurpled woods, before

Buonaparte was yet beaten, ‘with wine of attic taste,’ when wit, beauty,

friendship presided at the board! Oh no! Neither the time nor friends

that are fled, can be recalled!—Poverty is the test of sincerity, the

touchstone of civility. Even abroad, they treat you scurvily if your

remittances do not arrive regularly, and though you have hitherto lived

like a _Milord Anglais_. The want of money loses us friends not worth

the keeping, mistresses who are naturally jilts or coquets; it cuts us

out of society, to which dress and equipage are the only introduction;

and deprives us of a number of luxuries and advantages of which the only

good is, that they can only belong to the possessors of a large fortune.

Many people are wretched because they have not money to buy a fine

horse, or to hire a fine house, or to keep a carriage, or to purchase a

diamond necklace, or to go to a race-ball, or to give their servants new

liveries. I cannot myself enter into all this. If I can _live to think,

and think to live_, I am satisfied. Some want to possess pictures,

others to collect libraries. All I wish is, sometimes, to see the one

and read the other. Gray was mortified because he had not a hundred

pounds to bid for a curious library; and the Duchess of —— has

immortalized herself by her liberality on that occasion, and by the

handsome compliment she addressed to the poet, that ‘if it afforded him

any satisfaction, she had been more than paid, by her pleasure in

reading the _Elegy in a Country Church-yard_.’

Literally and truly, one cannot get on well in the world without money.

To be in want of money, is to pass through life with little credit or

pleasure; it is to live out of the world, or to be despised if you come

into it; it is not to be sent for to court, or asked out to dinner, or

noticed in the street; it is not to have your opinion consulted or else

rejected with contempt, to have your acquirements carped at and doubted,

your good things disparaged, and at last to lose the wit and the spirit

to say them; it is to be scrutinized by strangers, and neglected by

friends; it is to be a thrall to circumstances, an exile in a foreign

land; to forego leisure, freedom, ease of body and mind, to be dependent

on the good-will and caprice of others, or earn a precarious and irksome

livelihood by some laborious employment: it is to be compelled to stand

behind a counter, or to sit at a desk in some public office, or to marry

your landlady, or not the person you would wish; or to go out to the

East or West-Indies, or to get a situation as judge abroad, and return

home with a liver-complaint; or to be a law-stationer, or a scrivener or

scavenger, or newspaper reporter; or to read law and sit in court

without a brief, or be deprived of the use of your fingers by

transcribing Greek manuscripts, or to be a seal engraver and pore

yourself blind; or to go upon the stage, or try some of the Fine Arts;

with all your pains, anxiety, and hopes, most probably to fail, or, if

you succeed, after the exertions of years, and undergoing constant

distress of mind and fortune, to be assailed on every side with envy,

backbiting, and falsehood, or to be a favourite with the public for

awhile, and then thrown into the back-ground—or a jail, by the

fickleness of taste and some new favourite; to be full of enthusiasm and

extravagance in youth, of chagrin and disappointment in after-life; to

be jostled by the rabble because you do not ride in your coach, or

avoided by those who know your worth and shrink from it as a claim on

their respect or their purse; to be a burden to your relations, or

unable to do any thing for them; to be ashamed to venture into crowds;

to have cold comfort at home; to lose by degrees your confidence and any

talent you might possess; to grow crabbed, morose, and querulous,

dissatisfied with every one, but most so with yourself; and plagued out

of your life, to look about for a place to die in, and quit the world

without any one’s asking after your will. The _wiseacres_ will possibly,

however, crowd round your coffin, and raise a monument at a considerable

expense, and after a lapse of time, to commemorate your genius and your

misfortunes!

The only reason why I am disposed to envy the professions of the church

or army is, that men can afford to be poor in them without being

subjected to insult. A girl with a handsome fortune in a country town

may marry a poor lieutenant without degrading herself. An officer is

always a gentleman; a clergyman is something more. Echard’s book _On the

Contempt of the Clergy_ is unfounded. It is surely sufficient for any

set of individuals, raised above actual want, that their characters are

not merely respectable, but sacred. Poverty, when it is voluntary, is

never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect. What are the begging

friars? Have they not put their base feet upon the necks of princes?

Money as a luxury is valuable only as a passport to respect. It is one

instrument of power. Where there are other admitted and ostensible

claims to this, it becomes superfluous, and the neglect of it is even

admired and looked up to as a mark of superiority over it. Even a

strolling beggar is a popular character, who makes an open profession of

his craft and calling, and who is neither worth a doit nor in want of

one. The Scotch are proverbially poor and proud: we know they can remedy

their poverty when they set about it. No one is sorry for them. The

French emigrants were formerly peculiarly situated in England. The

priests were obnoxious to the common people on account of their

religion; both they and the nobles, for their politics. Their poverty

and dirt subjected them to many rebuffs; but their privations being

voluntarily incurred, and also borne with the characteristic patience

and good-humour of the nation, screened them from contempt. I little

thought, when I used to meet them walking out in the summer’s-evenings

at Somers’ Town, in their long great coats, their beards covered with

snuff, and their eyes gleaming with mingled hope and regret in the rays

of the setting sun, and regarded them with pity bordering on respect, as

the last filmy vestige of the ancient regime, as shadows of loyalty and

superstition still flitting about the earth and shortly to disappear

from it for ever, that they would one day return over the bleeding

corpse of their country, and sit like harpies, a polluted triumph, over

the tomb of human liberty! To be a lord, a papist, and poor, is perhaps

to some temperaments a consummation devoutly to be wished. There is all

the subdued splendour of external rank, the pride of self-opinion,

irritated and goaded on by petty privations and vulgar obloquy to a

degree of morbid acuteness. Private and public annoyances must

perpetually remind him of what he is, of what his ancestors were (a

circumstance which might otherwise be forgotten); must narrow the circle

of conscious dignity more and more, and the sense of personal worth and

pretension must be exalted by habit and contrast into a refined

abstraction—‘pure in the last recesses of the mind’—unmixed with, or

unalloyed by ‘baser matter!’—It was an hypothesis of the late Mr. Thomas

Wedgwood, that there is a principle of compensation in the human mind

which equalizes all situations, and by which the absence of any thing

only gives us a more intense and intimate perception of the reality;

that insult adds to pride, that pain looks forward to ease with delight,

that hunger already enjoys the unsavoury morsel that is to save it from

perishing; that want is surrounded with imaginary riches, like the poor

poet in Hogarth, who has a map of the mines of Peru hanging on his

garret walls; in short, that ‘we can hold a fire in our hand by thinking

on the frosty Caucasus’—but this hypothesis, though ingenious and to a

certain point true, is to be admitted only in a limited and qualified

sense.

There are two classes of people that I have observed who are not so

distinct as might be imagined—those who cannot keep their own money in

their hands, and those who cannot keep their hands from other people’s.

The first are always in want of money, though they do not know what they

do with it. They _muddle_ it away, without method or object, and without

having any thing to show for it. They have not, for instance, a fine

house, but they hire two houses at a time; they have not a hot-house in

their garden, but a shrubbery within doors; they do not gamble, but they

purchase a library, and dispose of it when they move house. A princely

benefactor provides them with lodgings, where, for a time, you are sure

to find them at home: and they furnish them in a handsome style for

those who are to come after them. With all this sieve-like economy, they

can only afford a leg of mutton and a bottle of wine, and are glad to

get a lift in a common stage; whereas with a little management and the

same disbursements, they might entertain a round of company and drive a

smart tilbury. But they set no value upon money, and throw it away on

any object or in any manner that first presents itself, merely to have

it off their hands, so that you wonder what has become of it. The second

class above spoken of not only make away with what belongs to

themselves, but you cannot keep any thing you have from their rapacious

grasp. If you refuse to lend them what you want, they insist that you

_must_: if you let them have any thing to take charge of for a time (a

print or a bust) they swear that you have given it them, and that they

have too great a regard for the donor ever to part with it. You express

surprise at their having run so largely in debt; but where is the

singularity while others continue to lend? And how is this to be helped,

when the manner of these sturdy beggars amounts to dragooning you out of

your money, and they will not go away without your purse, any more than

if they came with a pistol in their hand? If a person has no delicacy,

he has you in his power, for you necessarily feel some towards him; and

since he will take no denial, you must comply with his peremptory

demands, or send for a constable, which out of respect for his character

you will not do. These persons are also poor—_light come, light go_—and

the bubble bursts at last. Yet if they had employed the same time and

pains in any laudable art or study that they have in raising a

surreptitious livelihood, they would have been respectable, if not rich.

It is their facility in borrowing money that has ruined them. No one

will set heartily to work, who has the face to enter a strange house,

ask the master of it for a considerable loan, on some plausible and

pompous pretext, and walk off with it in his pocket. You might as well

suspect a highwayman of addicting himself to hard study in the intervals

of his profession.

There is only one other class of persons I can think of, in connexion

with the subject of this Essay—those who are always in want of money

from the want of spirit to make use of it. Such persons are perhaps more

to be pitied than all the rest. They live in want, in the midst of

plenty—dare not touch what belongs to them, are afraid to say that their

soul is their own, have their wealth locked up from them by fear and

meanness as effectually as by bolts and bars, scarcely allow themselves

a coat to their backs or a morsel to eat, are in dread of coming to the

parish all their lives, and are not sorry when they die, to think that

they shall no longer be an expense to themselves—according to the old

epigram:

‘Here lies Father Clarges,

Who died to save charges!’

ON THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH

_The Monthly Magazine._] [_March, 1827._

‘Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.’

—SIR THOMAS BROWN.

No young man believes he shall ever die. It was a saying of my

brother’s, and a fine one. There is a feeling of Eternity in youth,

which makes us amends for every thing. To be young is to be as one of

the Immortal Gods. One half of time indeed is flown—the other half

remains in store for us with all its countless treasures; for there is

no line drawn, and we see no limit to our hopes and wishes. We make the

coming age our own.——

‘The vast, the unbounded prospect lies before us.’

Death, old age, are words without a meaning, that pass by us like the

idle air which we regard not. Others may have undergone, or may still be

liable to them—we ‘bear a charmed life,’ which laughs to scorn all such

sickly fancies. As in setting out on a delightful journey, we strain our

eager gaze forward——

‘Bidding the lovely scenes at distance hail,’—

and see no end to the landscape, new objects presenting themselves as we

advance; so, in the commencement of life, we set no bounds to our

inclinations, nor to the unrestricted opportunities of gratifying them.

We have as yet found no obstacle, no disposition to flag; and it seems

that we can go on so for ever. We look round in a new world, full of

life, and motion, and ceaseless progress; and feel in ourselves all the

vigour and spirit to keep pace with it, and do not foresee from any

present symptoms how we shall be left behind in the natural course of

things, decline into old age, and drop into the grave. It is the

simplicity, and as it were _abstractedness_ of our feelings in youth,

that (so to speak) identifies us with nature, and (our experience being

slight and our passions strong) deludes us into a belief of being

immortal like it. Our short-lived connection with existence, we fondly

flatter ourselves, is an indissoluble and lasting union—a honey-moon

that knows neither coldness, jar, nor separation. As infants smile and

sleep, we are rocked in the cradle of our wayward fancies, and lulled

into security by the roar of the universe around us—we quaff the cup of

life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only

overflows the more—objects press around us, filling the mind with their

magnitude and with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we

have no room for the thoughts of death. From that plenitude of our

being, we cannot change all at once to dust and ashes, we cannot imagine

‘this sensible, warm motion, to become a kneaded clod’—we are too much

dazzled by the brightness of the waking dream around us to look into the

darkness of the tomb. We no more see our end than our beginning: the one

is lost in oblivion and vacancy, as the other is hid from us by the

crowd and hurry of approaching events. Or the grim shadow is seen

lingering in the horizon, which we are doomed never to overtake, or

whose last, faint, glimmering outline touches upon Heaven and translates

us to the skies! Nor would the hold that life has taken of us permit us

to detach our thoughts from present objects and pursuits, even if we

would. What is there more opposed to health, than sickness; to strength

and beauty, than decay and dissolution; to the active search of

knowledge than mere oblivion? Or is there none of the usual advantage to

bar the approach of Death, and mock his idle threats; Hope supplies

their place, and draws a veil over the abrupt termination of all our

cherished schemes. While the spirit of youth remains unimpaired, ere the

‘wine of life is drank up,’ we are like people intoxicated or in a

fever, who are hurried away by the violence of their own sensations: it

is only as present objects begin to pall upon the sense, as we have been

disappointed in our favourite pursuits, cut off from our closest ties,

that passion loosens its hold upon the breast, that we by degrees become

weaned from the world, and allow ourselves to contemplate, ‘as in a

glass, darkly,’ the possibility of parting with it for good. The example

of others, the voice of experience, has no effect upon us whatever.

Casualties we must avoid: the slow and deliberate advances of age we can

play at _hide-and-seek_ with. We think ourselves too lusty and too

nimble for that blear-eyed decrepid old gentleman to catch us. Like the

foolish fat scullion, in Sterne, when she hears that Master Bobby is

dead, our only reflection is—‘So am not I!’ The idea of death, instead

of staggering our confidence, rather seems to strengthen and enhance our

possession and our enjoyment of life. Others may fall around us like

leaves, or be mowed down like flowers by the scythe of Time: these are

but tropes and figures to the unreflecting ears and overweening

presumption of youth. It is not till we see the flowers of Love, Hope,

and Joy, withering around us, and our own pleasures cut up by the roots,

that we bring the moral home to ourselves, that we abate something of

the wanton extravagance of our pretensions, or that the emptiness and

dreariness of the prospect before us reconciles us to the stillness of

the grave!

‘Life! thou strange thing, that hast a power to feel

Thou art, and to perceive that others are.’[30]

Well might the poet begin his indignant invective against an art, whose

professed object is its destruction, with this animated apostrophe to

life. Life is indeed a strange gift, and its privileges are most

miraculous. Nor is it singular that when the splendid boon is first

granted us, our gratitude, our admiration, and our delight should

prevent us from reflecting on our own nothingness, or from thinking it

will ever be recalled. Our first and strongest impressions are taken

from the mighty scene that is opened to us, and we very innocently

transfer its durability as well as magnificence to ourselves. So newly

found, we cannot make up our minds to parting with it yet and at least

put off that consideration to an indefinite term. Like a clown at a

fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have no thoughts of

going home, or that it will soon be night. We know our existence only

from external objects, and we measure it by them. We can never be

satisfied with gazing; and nature will still want us to look on and

applaud. Otherwise, the sumptuous entertainment, ‘the feast of reason

and the flow of soul,’ to which they were invited, seems little better

than a mockery and a cruel insult. We do not go from a play till the

scene is ended, and the lights are ready to be extinguished. But the

fair face of things still shines on; shall we be called away, before the

curtain falls, or ere we have scarce had a glimpse of what is going on?

Like children, our step-mother Nature holds us up to see the raree-show

of the universe; and then, as if life were a burthen to support, lets us

instantly down again. Yet in that short interval, what ‘brave sublunary

things’ does not the spectacle unfold; like a bubble, at one minute

reflecting the universe, and the next, shook to air!—To see the golden

sun and the azure sky, the outstretched ocean, to walk upon the green

earth, and to be lord of a thousand creatures, to look down giddy

precipices or over distant flowery vales, to see the world spread out

under one’s finger in a map, to bring the stars near, to view the

smallest insects in a microscope, to read history, and witness the

revolutions of empires and the succession of generations, to hear of the

glory of Sidon and Tyre, of Babylon and Susa, as of a faded pageant, and

to say all these were, and are now nothing, to think that we exist in

such a point of time, and in such a corner of space, to be at once

spectators and a part of the moving scene, to watch the return of the

seasons, of spring and autumn, to hear

——‘The stockdove plain amid the forest deep,

That drowsy rustles to the sighing gale’——

to traverse desert wildernesses, to listen to the midnight choir, to

visit lighted halls, or plunge into the dungeon’s gloom, or sit in

crowded theatres and see life itself mocked, to feel heat and cold,

pleasure and pain, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, to study the

works of art and refine the sense of beauty to agony, to worship fame

and to dream of immortality, to have read Shakspeare and belong to the

same species as Sir Isaac Newton;[31] to be and to do all this, and then

in a moment to be nothing, to have it all snatched from one like a

juggler’s ball or a phantasmagoria; there is something revolting and

incredible to sense in the transition, and no wonder that, aided by

youth and warm blood, and the flush of enthusiasm, the mind contrives

for a long time to reject it with disdain and loathing as a monstrous

and improbable fiction, like a monkey on a house-top, that is loath,

amidst its fine discoveries and specious antics, to be tumbled headlong

into the street, and crushed to atoms, the sport and laughter of the

multitude!

The change, from the commencement to the close of life, appears like a

fable, after it has taken place; how should we treat it otherwise than

as a chimera before it has come to pass? There are some things that

happened so long ago, places or persons we have formerly seen, of which

such dim traces remain, we hardly know whether it was sleeping or waking

they occurred; they are like dreams within the dream of life, a mist, a

film before the eye of memory, which, as we try to recall them more

distinctly, elude our notice altogether. It is but natural that the lone

interval that we thus look back upon, should have appeared long and

endless in prospect. There are others so distinct and fresh, they seem

but of yesterday—their very vividness might be deemed a pledge of their

permanence. Then, however far back our impressions may go, we find

others still older (for our years are multiplied in youth); descriptions

of scenes that we had read, and people before our time, Priam and the

Trojan war; and even then, Nestor was old and dwelt delighted on his

youth, and spoke of the race, of heroes that were no more;—what wonder

that, seeing this long line of being pictured in our minds, and reviving

as it were in us, we should give ourselves involuntary credit for an

indeterminate period of existence? In the Cathedral at Peterborough

there is a monument to Mary, Queen of Scots, at which I used to gaze

when a boy, while the events of the period, all that had happened since,

passed in review before me. If all this mass of feeling and imagination

could be crowded into a moment’s compass, what might not the whole of

life be supposed to contain? We are heirs of the past; we count upon the

future as our natural reversion. Besides, there are some of our early

impressions so exquisitely tempered, it appears that they must always

last—nothing can add to or take away from their sweetness and purity—the

first breath of spring, the hyacinth dipped in the dew, the mild lustre

of the evening-star, the rainbow after a storm—while we have the full

enjoyment of these, we must be young; and what can ever alter us in this

respect? Truth, friendship, love, books, are also proof against the

canker of time; and while we live, but for them, we can never grow old.

We take out a new lease of existence from the objects on which we set

our affections, and become abstracted, impassive, immortal in them. We

cannot conceive how certain sentiments should ever decay or grow cold in

our breasts; and, consequently, to maintain them in their first youthful

glow and vigour, the flame of life must continue to burn as bright as

ever, or rather, they are the fuel that feed the sacred lamp, that

kindle ‘the purple light of love,’ and spread a golden cloud around our

heads! Again, we not only flourish and survive in our affections (in

which we will not listen to the possibility of a change, any more than

we foresee the wrinkles on the brow of a mistress), but we have a

farther guarantee against the thoughts of death in our favourite studies

and pursuits, and in their continual advance. Art we know is long; life,

we feel, should be so too. We see no end of the difficulties we have to

encounter: perfection is slow of attainment, and we must have time to

accomplish it in. Rubens complained that when he had just learnt his

art, he was snatched away from it: we trust we shall be more fortunate!

A wrinkle in an old head takes whole days to finish it properly: but to

catch ‘the Raphael grace, the Guido air,’ no limit should be put to our

endeavours. What a prospect for the future! What a task we have entered

upon! and shall we be arrested in the middle of it? We do not reckon our

time thus employed lost, or our pains thrown away, or our progress

slow—we do not droop or grow tired, but ‘gain new vigour at our endless

task;‘—and shall Time grudge us the opportunity to finish what we have

auspiciously begun, and have formed a sort of compact with nature to

achieve? The fame of the great names we look up to is also imperishable;

and shall not we, who contemplate it with such intense yearnings, imbibe

a portion of ethereal fire, the _divinæ particula auræ_, which nothing

can extinguish? I remember to have looked at a print of Rembrandt for

hours together, without being conscious of the flight of time, trying to

resolve it into its component parts, to connect its strong and sharp

gradations, to learn the secret of its reflected lights, and found

neither satiety nor pause in the prosecution of my studies. The print

over which I was poring would last long enough; why should the idea in

my mind, which was finer, more impalpable, perish before it? At this, I

redoubled the ardour of my pursuit, and by the very subtlety and

refinement of my inquiries, seemed to bespeak for them an exemption from

corruption and the rude grasp of Death.[32]

Objects, on our first acquaintance with them, have that singleness and

integrity of impression that it seems as if nothing could destroy or

obliterate them, so firmly are they stamped and rivetted on the brain.

We repose on them with a sort of voluptuous indolence, in full faith and

boundless confidence. We are absorbed in the present moment, or return

to the same point—idling away a great deal of time in youth, thinking we

have enough and to spare. There is often a local feeling in the air,

which is as fixed as if it were of marble; we loiter in dim cloisters,

losing ourselves in thought and in their glimmering arches; a winding

road before us seems as long as the journey of life, and as full of

events. Time and experience dissipate this illusion; and by reducing

them to detail, circumscribe the limits of our expectations. It is only

as the pageant of life passes by and the masques turn their backs upon

us, that we see through the deception, or believe that the train will

have an end. In many cases, the slow progress and monotonous texture of

our lives, before we mingle with the world and are embroiled in its

affairs, has a tendency to aid the same feeling. We have a difficulty,

when left to ourselves, and without the resource of books or some more

lively pursuit, to ‘beguile the slow and creeping hours of time,’ and

argue that if it moves on always at this tedious snail’s-pace, it can

never come to an end. We are willing to skip over certain portions of it

that separate us from favourite objects, that irritate ourselves at the

unnecessary delay. The young are prodigal of life from a superabundance

of it; the old are tenacious on the same score, because they have little

left, and cannot enjoy even what remains of it.

For my part, I set out in life with the French Revolution, and that

event had considerable influence on my early feelings, as on those of

others. Youth was then doubly such. It was the dawn of a new era, a new

impulse had been given to men’s minds, and the sun of Liberty rose upon

the sun of Life in the same day, and both were proud to run their race

together. Little did I dream, while my first hopes and wishes went hand

in hand with those of the human race, that long before my eyes should

close, that dawn would be overcast, and set once more in the night of

despotism—‘total eclipse!’ Happy that I did not. I felt for years, and

during the best part of my existence, _heart-whole_ in that cause, and

triumphed in the triumphs over the enemies of man! At that time, while

the fairest aspirations of the human mind seemed about to be realized,

ere the image of man was defaced and his breast mangled in scorn,

philosophy took a higher, poetry could afford a deeper range. At that

time, to read the ‘ROBBERS,’ was indeed delicious, and to hear

‘From the dungeon of the tower time-rent,

That fearful voice, a famish’d father’s cry,’

could be borne only amidst the fulness of hope, the crash of the fall of

the strong holds of power, and the exulting sounds of the march of human

freedom. What feelings the death-scene in Don Carlos sent into the soul!

In that headlong career of lofty enthusiasm, and the joyous opening of

the prospects of the world and our own, the thought of death crossing

it, smote doubly cold upon the mind; there was a stifling sense of

oppression and confinement, an impatience of our present knowledge, a

desire to grasp the whole of our existence in one strong embrace, to

sound the mystery of life and death, and in order to put an end to the

agony of doubt and dread, to burst through our prison-house, and

confront the King of Terrors in his grisly palace!... As I was writing

out this passage, my miniature-picture when a child lay on the

mantle-piece, and I took it out of the case to look at it. I could

perceive few traces of myself in it; but there was the same placid brow,

the dimpled mouth, the same timid, inquisitive glance as ever. But its

careless smile did not seem to reproach me with having become a recreant

to the sentiments that were then sown in my mind, or with having written

a sentence that could call up a blush in this image of ingenuous youth!

‘That time is past with all its giddy raptures.’ Since the future was

barred to my progress, I have turned for consolation to the past,

gathering up the fragments of my early recollections, and putting them

into a form that might live. It is thus, that when we find our personal

and substantial identity vanishing from us, we strive to gain a

reflected and substituted one in our thoughts: we do not like to perish

wholly, and wish to bequeath our names at least to posterity. As long as

we can keep alive our cherished thoughts and nearest interests in the

minds of others, we do not appear to have retired altogether from the

stage, we still occupy a place in the estimation of mankind, exercise a

powerful influence over them, and it is only our bodies that are

trampled into dust or dispersed to air. Our darling speculations still

find favour and encouragement, and we make as good a figure in the eyes

of our descendants, nay, perhaps, a better than we did in our lifetime.

This is one point gained; the demands of our self-love are so far

satisfied. Besides, if by the proofs of intellectual superiority we

survive ourselves in this world, by exemplary virtue or unblemished

faith, we are taught to ensure an interest in another and a higher state

of being, and to anticipate at the same time the applauses of men and

angels.

‘Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries;

Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.’

As we advance in life, we acquire a keener sense of the value of time.

Nothing else, indeed, seems of any consequence; and we become misers in

this respect. We try to arrest its few last tottering steps, and to make

it linger on the brink of the grave. We can never leave off wondering

how that which has ever been should cease to be, and would still live

on, that we may wonder at our own shadow, and when ‘all the life of life

is flown,’ dwell on the retrospect of the past. This is accompanied by a

mechanical tenaciousness of whatever we possess, by a distrust and a

sense of fallacious hollowness in all we see. Instead of the full, pulpy

feeling of youth, every thing is flat and insipid. The world is a

painted witch, that puts us off with false shews and tempting

appearances. The ease, the jocund gaiety, the unsuspecting security of

youth are fled: nor can we, without flying in the face of common sense,

‘From the last dregs of life, hope to receive

What its first sprightly runnings could not give.’

If we can slip out of the world without notice or mischance, can tamper

with bodily infirmity, and frame our minds to the becoming composure of

_still-life_, before we sink into total insensibility, it is as much as

we ought to expect. We do not in the regular course of nature die all at

once: we have mouldered away gradually long before; faculty after

faculty, attachment after attachment, we are torn from ourselves

piecemeal while living; year after year takes something from us; and

death only consigns the last remnant of what we were to the grave. The

revulsion is not so great, and a quiet _euthanasia_ is a winding-up of

the plot, that is not out of reason or nature.

That we should thus in a manner outlive ourselves, and dwindle

imperceptibly into nothing, is not surprising, when even in our prime

the strongest impressions leave so little traces of themselves behind,

and the last object is driven out by the succeeding one. How little

effect is produced on us at any time by the books we have read, the

scenes we have witnessed, the sufferings we have gone through! Think

only of the variety of feelings we experience in reading an interesting

romance, or being present at a fine play—what beauty, what sublimity,

what soothing, what heart-rending emotions! You would suppose these

would last for ever, or at least subdue the mind to a correspondent tone

and harmony—while we turn over the page, while the scene is passing

before us, it seems as if nothing could ever after shake our resolution,

that ‘treason domestic, foreign levy, nothing could touch us farther!’

The first splash of mud we get, on entering the street, the first

pettifogging shop-keeper that cheats us out of twopence, and the whole

vanishes clean out of our remembrance, and we become the idle prey of

the most petty and annoying circumstances. The mind soars by an effort

to the grand and lofty: it is at home, in the grovelling, the

disagreeable, and the little. This happens in the height and hey-day of

our existence, when novelty gives a stronger impulse to the blood and

takes a faster hold of the brain, (I have known the impression on coming

out of a gallery of pictures then last half a day)—as we grow old, we

become more feeble and querulous, every object ‘reverbs its own

hollowness,’ and both worlds are not enough to satisfy the peevish

importunity and extravagant presumption of our desires! There are a few

superior, happy beings, who are born with a temper exempt from every

trifling annoyance. This spirit sits serene and smiling as in its native

skies, and a divine harmony (whether heard or not) plays around them.

This is to be at peace. Without this, it is in vain to fly into deserts,

or to build a hermitage on the top of rocks, if regret and ill-humour

follow us there: and with this, it is needless to make the experiment.

The only true retirement is that of the heart; the only true leisure is

the repose of the passions. To such persons it makes little difference

whether they are young or old; and they die as they have lived, with

graceful resignation.

ON READING NEW BOOKS

_The Monthly Magazine._] [_July, 1827._

‘And what of this new book, that the whole world make such a rout

about?’—STERNE.

I cannot understand the rage manifested by the greater part of the world

for reading New Books. If the public had read all those that have gone

before, I can conceive how they should not wish to read the same work

twice over; but when I consider the countless volumes that lie unopened,

unregarded, unread, and unthought-of, I cannot enter into the pathetic

complaints that I hear made, that Sir Walter writes no more—that the

press is idle—that Lord Byron is dead. If I have not read a book before,

it is, to all intents and purposes, new to me, whether it was printed

yesterday or three hundred years ago. If it be urged that it has no

modern, passing incidents, and is out of date and old-fashioned, then it

is so much the newer; it is farther removed from other works that I have

lately read, from the familiar routine of ordinary life, and makes so

much more addition to my knowledge. But many people would as soon think

of putting on old armour, as of taking up a book not published within

the last month, or year at the utmost. There is a fashion in reading as

well as in dress, which lasts only for the season. One would imagine

that books were, like women, the worse for being old;[33] that they have

a pleasure in being read for the first time; that they open their leaves

more cordially; that the spirit of enjoyment wears out with the spirit

of novelty; and that, after a certain age, it is high time to put them

on the shelf. This conceit seems to be followed up in practice. What is

it to me that another—that hundreds or thousands have in all ages read a

work? Is it on this account the less likely to give me pleasure, because

it has delighted so many others? Or can I taste this pleasure by proxy?

Or am I in any degree the wiser for their knowledge? Yet this might

appear to be the inference. _Their_ having read the work may be said to

act upon us by sympathy, and the knowledge which so many other persons

have of its contents deadens our curiosity and interest altogether. We

set aside the subject as one on which others have made up their minds

for us (as if we really could have ideas in their heads), and are quite

on the alert for the next new work, teeming hot from the press, which we

shall be the first to read, criticise, and pass an opinion on. Oh,

delightful! To cut open the leaves, to inhale the fragrance of the

scarcely dry paper, to examine the type, to see who is the printer

(which is some clue to the value that is set upon the work), to launch

out into regions of thought and invention never trod till now, and to

explore characters that never met a human eye before—this is a luxury

worth sacrificing a dinner-party, or a few hours of a spare morning to.

Who, indeed, when the work is critical and full of expectation, would

venture to dine out, or to face a coterie of bluestockings in the

evening, without having gone through this ordeal, or at least without

hastily turning over a few of the first pages, while dressing, to be

able to say that the beginning does not promise much, or to tell the

name of the heroine?

A new work is something in our power: we mount the bench, and sit in

judgment on it: we can damn or recommend it to others at pleasure, can

decry or extol it to the skies, and can give an answer to those who have

not yet read it and expect an account of it; and thus shew our

shrewdness and the independence of our taste before the world have had

time to form an opinion. If we cannot write ourselves, we become, by

busying ourselves about it, a kind of _accessaries after the fact_.

Though not the parent of the bantling that ‘has just come into this

breathing world, scarce half made up,’ without the aid of criticism and

puffing, yet we are the gossips and foster-nurses on the occasion, with

all the mysterious significance and self-importance of the tribe. If we

wait, we must take our report from others; if we make haste, we may

dictate our’s to them. It is not a race, then, for priority of

information, but for precedence in tattling and dogmatising. The work

last out is the first that people talk and inquire about. It is the

subject on the _tapis_—the cause that is pending. It is the last

candidate for success (other claims have been disposed of), and appeals

for this success to us, and us alone. Our predecessors can have nothing

to say to this question, however they may have anticipated us on others;

future ages, in all probability, will not trouble their heads about it;

we are the panel. How hard, then, not to avail ourselves of our

immediate privilege to give sentence of life or death—to seem in

ignorance of what every one else is full of—to be behind-hand with the

polite, the knowing, and fashionable part of mankind—to be at a loss and

dumb-founded, when all around us are in their glory, and figuring away,

on no other ground than that of having read a work that we have not!

Books that are to be written hereafter cannot be criticised by us; those

that were written formerly have been criticised long ago: but a new book

is the property, the prey of ephemeral criticism, which it darts

triumphantly upon; there is a raw thin air of ignorance and uncertainty

about it, not filled up by any recorded opinion; and curiosity,

impertinence, and vanity rush eagerly into the vacuum. A new book is the

fair field for petulance and coxcombry to gather laurels in—the butt set

up for roving opinion to aim at. Can we wonder, then, that the

circulating libraries are besieged by literary dowagers and their

granddaughters, when a new novel is announced? That Mail-Coach copies of

the Edinburgh Review are or were coveted? That the Manuscript of the

Waverley romances is sent abroad in time for the French, German, or even

Italian translation to appear on the same day as the original work, so

that the longing Continental public may not be kept waiting an instant

longer than their fellow-readers in the English metropolis, which would

be as tantalising and insupportable as a little girl being kept without

her new frock, when her sister’s is just come home and is the talk and

admiration of every one in the house? To be sure, there is something in

the taste of the times; a modern work is expressly adapted to modern

readers. It appeals to our direct experience, and to well-known

subjects; it is part and parcel of the world around us, and is drawn

from the same sources as our daily thoughts. There is, therefore, so

far, a natural or habitual sympathy between us and the literature of the

day, though this is a different consideration from the mere circumstance

of novelty. An author now alive has a right to calculate upon the living

public: he cannot count upon the dead, nor look forward with much

confidence to those that are unborn. Neither, however, is it true that

we are eager to read all new books alike: we turn from them with a

certain feeling of distaste and distrust, unless they are recommended to

us by some peculiar feature or obvious distinction. Only young ladies

from the boarding-school, or milliners’ girls, read all the new novels

that come out. It must be spoken of or against; the writer’s name must

be well known or a great secret; it must be a topic of discourse and a

mark for criticism—that is, it must be likely to bring us into notice in

some way—or we take no notice of it. There is a mutual and tacit

understanding on this head. We can no more read all the new books that

appear, than we can read all the old ones that have disappeared from

time to time. A question may be started here, and pursued as far as

needful, whether, if an old and worm-eaten Manuscript were discovered at

the present moment, it would be sought after with the same avidity as a

new and hot-pressed poem, or other popular work? Not generally,

certainly, though by a few with perhaps greater zeal. For it would not

affect present interests, or amuse present fancies, or touch on present

manners, or fall in with the public _egotism_ in any way: it would be

the work either of some obscure author—in which case it would want the

principle of excitement; or of some illustrious name, whose style and

manner would be already familiar to those most versed in the subject,

and his fame established—so that, as a matter of comment and

controversy, it would only go to account on the old score: there would

be no room for learned feuds and heart-burnings. Was there not a

Manuscript of Cicero’s talked of as having been discovered about a year

ago? But we have heard no more of it. There have been several other

cases, more or less in point, in our time or near it. A Noble Lord

(which may serve to shew at least the interest taken in books _not for

being new_) some time ago gave 2000_l._ for a copy of the first edition

of the Decameron: but did he read it? It has been a fashion also of late

for noble and wealthy persons to go to a considerable expense in

ordering reprints of the old Chronicles and black-letter works. Does not

this rather prove that the books did not circulate very rapidly or

extensively, or such extraordinary patronage and liberality would not

have been necessary? Mr. Thomas Taylor, at the instance, I believe, of

the old Duke of Norfolk, printed fifty copies in quarto of a translation

of the works of Plato and Aristotle. He did not choose that a larger

impression should be struck off, lest these authors should get into the

hands of the vulgar. There was no danger of a run in that way. I tried

to read some of the Dialogues in the translation of Plato, but, I

confess, could make nothing of it: ‘the logic was so different from

ours!’[34] A startling experiment was made on this sort of retrospective

curiosity, in the case of Ireland’s celebrated Shakspeare forgery. The

public there certainly manifested no backwardness nor lukewarmness: the

enthusiasm was equal to the folly. But then the spirit exhibited on this

occasion was partly critical and polemical, and it is a problem whether

an actual and undoubted play of Shakspeare’s would have excited the same

ferment; and, on the other hand, Shakspeare is an essential modern.

People read and go to see his real plays, as well as his pretended ones.

The _fuss_ made about Ossian is another test to refer to. It was its

being the supposed revival of an old work (known only by scattered

fragments or lingering tradition) which gave it its chief interest,

though there was also a good deal of mystery and quackery concerned

along with the din and stir of national jealousy and pretension. Who

reads Ossian now? It is one of the reproaches brought against Buonaparte

that he was fond of it when young. I cannot for myself see the

objection. There is no doubt an antiquarian spirit always at work, and

opposed to the spirit of novelty-hunting; but, though opposed, it is

scarcely a match for it in a general and popular point of view. It is

not long ago that I happened to be suggesting a new translation of Don

Quixote to an enterprising bookseller; and his answer was,—‘We want new

Don Quixotes.’ I believe I deprived the same active-minded person of a

night’s rest, by telling him there was the beginning of another novel by

Goldsmith in existence. This, if it could be procured, would satisfy

both tastes for the new and the old at once. I fear it is but a

fragment, and that we must wait till a new Goldsmith appears. We may

observe of late a strong craving after _Memoirs_ and _Lives of the

Dead_. But these, it may be remarked, savour so much of the real and

familiar, that the persons described differ from us only in being dead,

which is a reflection to our advantage: or, if remote and romantic in

their interest and adventures, they require to be bolstered up in some

measure by the embellishments of modern style and criticism. The

accounts of Petrarch and Laura, of Abelard and Eloise, have a

lusciousness and warmth in the subject which contrast quaintly and

pointedly with the coldness of the grave; and, after all, we prefer

Pope’s Eloise and Abelard with the modern dress and flourishes, to the

sublime and affecting simplicity of the original Letters.

In some very just and agreeable reflections on the story of Abelard and

Eloise, in a late number of a contemporary publication, there is a

quotation of some lines from Lucan, which Eloise is said to have

repeated in broken accents as she was advancing to the altar to receive

the veil:

‘O maxime conjux!

O thalamis indigne meis! Hoc juris habebat

In tantum fortuna caput? Cur impia nupsi,

Si miserum factura fui? Nunc accipe pœnas,

Sed quas sponte luam.’ _Pharsalia_, lib. 8.

This speech, quoted by another person, on such an occasion, might seem

cold and pedantic; but from the mouth of the passionate and unaffected

Eloise it cannot bear that interpretation. What sounding lines! What a

pomp, and yet what a familiar boldness in their application—‘proud as

when blue Iris bends!’ The reading this account brought forcibly to mind

what has struck me often before—the unreasonableness of the complaint we

constantly hear of the ignorance and barbarism of former ages, and the

folly of restricting all refinement and literary elegance to our own. We

are indeed, indebted to the ages that have gone before us, and could not

well do without them. But in all ages there will be found still others

that have gone before with nearly equal lustre and advantage, though by

distance and the intervention of multiplied excellence, this lustre may

be dimmed or forgotten. Had it then no existence? We might, with the

same reason, suppose that the horizon is the last boundary and verge of

the round earth. Still, as we advance, it recedes from us; and so time

from its store-house pours out an endless succession of the productions

of art and genius; and the farther we explore the obscurity, other

trophies and other landmarks rise up. It is only our ignorance that

fixes a limit—as the mist gathered round the mountain’s brow makes us

fancy we are treading the edge of the universe! Here was Heloise living

at a period when monkish indolence and superstition were at their

height—in one of those that are emphatically called the _dark ages_; and

yet, as she is led to the altar to make her last fatal vow, expressing

her feelings in language quite natural to her, but from which the most

accomplished and heroic of our modern females would shrink back with

pretty and affected wonder and affright. The glowing and impetuous lines

which she murmured, as she passed on, with spontaneous and rising

enthusiasm, were engraven on her heart, familiar to her as her daily

thoughts; her mind must have been full of them to overflowing, and at

the same time enriched with other stores and sources of knowledge

equally elegant and impressive; and we persist, notwithstanding this and

a thousand similar circumstances, in indulging our surprise how people

could exist, and see, and feel, in those days, without having access to

our opportunities and acquirements, and how Shakspeare wrote long after,

_in a barbarous age_! The mystery in this case is of our own making. We

are struck with astonishment at finding a fine moral sentiment or a

noble image nervously expressed in an author of the age of Queen

Elizabeth; not considering that, independently of nature and feeling,

which are the same in all periods, the writers of that day, who were

generally men of education and learning, had such models before them as

the one that has been just referred to—were thoroughly acquainted with

those masters of classic thought and language, compared with whom, in

all that relates to the artificial graces of composition, the most

studied of the moderns are little better than Goths and Vandals. It is

true, we have lost sight of, and neglected the former, because the

latter have, in a great degree, superseded them, as the elevations

nearest to us intercept those farthest off; but our not availing

ourselves of this vantage-ground is no reason why our forefathers should

not (who had not our superfluity of choice), and most assuredly they did

study and cherish the precious fragments of antiquity, collected

together in their time, ‘like sunken wreck and sumless treasuries;’ and

while they did this, we need be at no loss to account for any examples

of grace, of force, or dignity in their writings, if these must always

be traced back to a previous source. One age cannot understand how

another could subsist without its lights, as one country thinks every

other must be poor for want of its physical productions. This is a

narrow and superficial view of the subject: we should by all means rise

above it. I am not for devoting the whole of our time to the study of

the classics, or of any other set of writers, to the exclusion and

neglect of nature; but I think we should turn our thoughts enough that

way to convince us of the existence of genius and learning before our

time, and to cure us of an overweening conceit of ourselves, and of a

contemptuous opinion of the world at large. Every civilised age and

country (and of these there is not one, but a hundred) has its

literature, its arts, its comforts, large and ample, though we may know

nothing of them; nor is it (except for our own sakes) important that we

should.

Books have been so multiplied in our days (like the Vanity Fair of

knowledge), and we have made such progress beyond ourselves in some

points, that it seems at first glance as if we had monopolised every

possible advantage, and the rest of the world must be left destitute and

in darkness. This is the _cockneyism_ (with leave be it spoken) of the

nineteenth century. There is a tone of smartness and piquancy in modern

writing, to which former examples may, in one sense, appear flat and

pedantic. Our allusions are more pointed and personal: the ancients are,

in this respect, formal and prosaic personages. Some one, not long ago,

in this vulgar, shallow spirit of criticism (which sees every thing from

its own point of view), said that the tragedies of Sophocles and

Æschylus were about as good as the pieces brought out at Sadler’s Wells

or the Adelphi Theatre. An oration of Demosthenes is thought dry and

meagre, because it is not ‘full of wise saws and modern instances:’ one

of Cicero’s is objected to as flimsy and extravagant, for the same

reason. There is a style in one age which does not fall in with the

taste of the public in another, as it requires greater effeminacy and

softness, greater severity or simplicity, greater force or refinement.

Guido was more admired than Raphael in his day, because the manners were

grown softer without the strength: Sir Peter Lely was thought in his to

have eclipsed Vandyke—an opinion that no one holds at present: Holbein’s

faces must be allowed to be very different from Sir Thomas

Lawrence’s—yet the one was the favourite painter of Henry VIII., as the

other is of George IV. What should we say in our time to the _euphuism_

of the age of Elizabeth, when style was made a riddle, and the court

talked in conundrums? This, as a novelty and a trial of the wits, might

take for a while: afterwards, it could only seem absurd. We must always

make some allowance for a change of style, which those who are

accustomed to read none but works written within the last twenty years

neither can nor will make. When a whole generation read, they will read

none but contemporary productions. The taste for literature becomes

superficial, as it becomes universal and is spread over a larger space.

When ten thousand boarding-school girls, who have learnt to play on the

harpsichord, are brought out in the same season, Rossini will be

preferred to Mozart, as the last new composer. I remember a very genteel

young couple in the boxes at Drury Lane being very much scandalised some

years ago at the phrase in _A New Way to Pay Old Debts_—‘an insolent

piece of paper’—applied to the contents of a letter—it wanted the modern

lightness and indifference. Let an old book be ever so good, it treats

(generally speaking) of topics that are stale in a style that has grown

‘somewhat musty;’ of manners that are exploded, probably by the very

ridicule thus cast upon them; of persons that no longer figure on the

stage; and of interests that have long since given place to others in

the infinite fluctuations of human affairs. Longinus complains of the

want of interest in the Odyssey, because it does not, like the Iliad,

treat of war. The very complaint we make against the latter is that it

treats of nothing else; or that, as Fuseli expresses it, every thing is

seen ‘through the blaze of war.’ Books of devotion are no longer read

(if we read Irving’s _Orations_, it is merely that we may go as a

_lounge_ to see the man): even attacks on religion are out of date and

insipid. Voltaire’s jests, and the _Jew’s Letters_ in answer (equal in

wit, and more than equal in learning), repose quietly on the shelf

together. We want something in England about Rent and the Poor Laws, and

something in France about the Charter—or Lord Byron. With the attempts,

however, to revive superstition and intolerance, a spirit of opposition

has been excited, and Pascall’s _Provincial Letters_ have been once more

enlisted into the service. In France you meet with no one who has read

the _New Heloise_: the _Princess of Cleves_ is not even mentioned in

these degenerate days. Is it not provoking with us to see the _Beggar’s

Opera_ cut down to two acts, because some of the allusions are too

broad, and others not understood? And in America—that Van Diemen’s Land

of letters—this sterling satire is hooted off the stage, because

fortunately they have no such state of manners as it describes before

their eyes; and because, unfortunately, they have no conception of any

thing but what they see. America is singularly and awkwardly situated in

this respect. It is a new country with an old language; and while every

thing about them is of a day’s growth, they are constantly applying to

us to know what to think of it, and taking their opinions from our books

and newspapers with a strange mixture of servility and of the spirit of

contradiction. They are an independent state in politics: in literature

they are still a colony from us—not out of their leading strings, and

strangely puzzled how to determine between the Edinburgh and Quarterly

Reviews. We have naturalised some of their writers, who had formed

themselves upon us. This is at once a compliment to them and to

ourselves. Amidst the scramble and lottery for fame in the present day,

besides puffing, which may be regarded as the hotbed of reputation,

another mode has been attempted by _transplanting_ it; and writers who

are set down as drivellers at home, shoot up great authors on the other

side of the water; pack up their all—a title-page and sufficient

impudence; and a work, of which the _flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication_,

in Shenstone’s phrase, is well known to every competent judge, is

_placarded_ into eminence, and ‘flames in the forehead of the morning

sky’ on the walls of Paris or St. Petersburgh. I dare not mention the

instances, but so it is. Some reputations last only while the possessors

live, from which one might suppose that they gave themselves a character

for genius: others are cried up by their gossiping acquaintances, as

long as they give dinners, and make their houses places of polite

resort; and, in general, in our time, a book may be considered to have

passed the ordeal that is mentioned at all three months after it is

printed. Immortality is not even a dream—a boy’s conceit; and posthumous

fame is no more regarded by the author than by his bookseller.[35]

This idle, dissipated turn seems to be a set-off to, or the obvious

reaction of, the exclusive admiration of the ancients, which was

formerly the fashion: as if the sun of human intellect rose and set at

Rome and Athens, and the mind of man had never exerted itself to any

purpose since. The ignorant, as well as the adept, were charmed only

with what was obsolete and far-fetched, wrapped up in technical terms

and in a learned tongue. Those who spoke and wrote a language which

hardly any one at present even understood, must of course be wiser than

we. Time, that brings so many reputations to decay, had embalmed others

and rendered them sacred. From an implicit faith and overstrained homage

paid to antiquity, we of the modern school have taken too strong a bias

to what is new; and divide all wisdom and worth between ourselves and

posterity,—not a very formidable rival to our self-love, as we attribute

all its advantages to ourselves, though we pretend to owe little or

nothing to our predecessors. About the time of the French Revolution, it

was agreed that the world had hitherto been in its dotage or its

infancy; and that Mr. Godwin, Condorcet, and others were to begin a new

race of men—a new epoch in society. Every thing up to that period was to

be set aside as puerile or barbarous; or, if there were any traces of

thought and manliness now and then discoverable, they were to be

regarded with wonder as prodigies—as irregular and fitful starts in that

long sleep of reason and night of philosophy. In this liberal spirit Mr.

Godwin composed an Essay, to prove that, till the publication of _The

Enquiry concerning Political Justice_, no one knew how to write a word

of common grammar, or a style that was not utterly uncouth, incongruous,

and feeble. Addison, Swift, and Junius were included in this censure.

The English language itself might be supposed to owe its stability and

consistency, its roundness and polish, to the whirling motion of the

French Revolution. Those who had gone before us were, like our

grandfathers and grandmothers, decrepit, superannuated people, blind and

dull; poor creatures, like flies in winter, without pith or marrow in

them. The past was barren of interest—had neither thought nor object

worthy to arrest our attention; and the future would be equally a

senseless void, except as we projected ourselves and our theories into

it. There is nothing I hate more than I do this exclusive, upstart

spirit.

‘By Heavens, I’d rather be

A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,

So might I, standing on some pleasant lea,

Catch glimpses that might make me less forlorn,

Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea,

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.’

WORDSWORTH’S SONNETS.

Neither do I see the good of it even in a personal and interested point

of view. By despising all that has preceded us, we teach others to

despise ourselves. Where there is no established scale nor rooted faith

in excellence, all superiority—our own as well as that of others—soon

comes to the ground. By applying the wrong end of the magnifying glass

to all objects indiscriminately, the most respectable dwindle into

insignificance, and the best are confounded with the worst. Learning, no

longer supported by opinion, or genius by fame, is cast into the mire,

and ‘trampled under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.’ I would rather

endure the most blind and bigotted respect for great and illustrious

names, than that pitiful, grovelling humour which has no pride in

intellectual excellence, and no pleasure but in decrying those who have

given proofs of it, and reducing them to its own level. If, with the

diffusion of knowledge, we do not gain an enlargement and elevation of

views, where is the benefit? If, by tearing asunder names from things,

we do not leave even the name or shadow of excellence, it is better to

let them remain as they were; for it is better to have something to

admire than nothing—names, if not things—the shadow, if not the

substance—the tinsel, if not the gold. All can now read and write

equally; and, it is therefore presumed, equally well. Any thing short of

this sweeping conclusion is an invidious distinction; and those who

claim it for themselves or others are _exclusionists_ in letters. Every

one at least can call names—can invent a falsehood, or repeat a story

against those who have galled their pragmatical pretensions by really

adding to the stock of general amusement or instruction. Every one in a

crowd has the power to throw dirt: nine out of ten have the inclination.

It is curious that, in an age when the most universally-admitted claim

to public distinction is literary merit, the attaining of this

distinction is almost a sure title to public contempt and obloquy.[36]

They cry you up, because you are unknown, and do not excite their

jealousy; and run you down, when they have thus distinguished you, out

of envy and spleen at the very idol they have set up. A public favourite

is ‘kept like an apple in the jaw of an ape—first mouthed, to be

afterwards swallowed. When they need what you have gleaned, it is but

squeezing you, and spunge, you shall be dry again.’ At first they think

only of the pleasure or advantage they receive; but, on reflection, they

are mortified at the superiority implied in this involuntary concession,

and are determined to be even with you the very first opportunity. What

is the prevailing spirit of modern literature? To defame men of letters.

What are the publications that succeed? Those that pretend to teach the

public that the persons they have been accustomed unwittingly to look up

to as the lights of the earth are no better than themselves, or a set of

vagabonds or miscreants that should be hunted out of society.[37] Hence

men of letters, losing their self-respect, become government-tools, and

prostitute their talents to the most infamous purposes, or turn _dandy

scribblers_, and set up for gentlemen authors in their own defence. I

like the Order of the Jesuits better than this: they made themselves

respected by the laity, kept their own secret, and did not prey on one

another. Resume then, oh! Learning, thy robe pontifical; clothe thyself

in pride and purple; join the sacred to the profane; wield both worlds;

instead of twopenny trash and mechanics’ magazines, issue bulls and

decretals; say not, let there be light, but darkness visible; draw a

bandage over the eyes of the ignorant and unlettered; hang the terrors

of superstition and despotism over them;—and for thy pains they will

bless thee: children will pull off their caps as thou dost pass; women

will courtesy; the old will wipe their beards; and thou wilt rule once

more over the base serving people, clowns, and nobles, with a rod of

iron!

ON DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE

_The Monthly Magazine._] [_August, 1827._

Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are disagreeable to

others. I do not here mean to speak of persons who offend intentionally,

or are obnoxious to dislike from some palpable defect of mind or body,

ugliness, pride, ill-humour, &c.,—but of those who are disagreeable in

spite of themselves, and, as it might appear, with almost every

qualification to recommend them to others. This want of success is owing

chiefly to something in what is called their _manner_; and this again

has its foundation in a certain cross-grained and unsociable state of

feeling on their part, which influences us, perhaps, without our

distinctly adverting to it. The mind is a finer instrument than we

sometimes suppose it, and is not only swayed by overt acts and tangible

proofs, but has an instinctive feeling of the air of truth. We find many

individuals in whose company we pass our time, and have no particular

fault to find with their understandings or character, and yet we are

never thoroughly satisfied with them: the reason will turn out to be,

upon examination, that they are never thoroughly satisfied with

themselves, but uneasy and out of sorts all the time; and this makes us

uneasy with them, without our reflecting on, or being able to discover

the cause.

Thus, for instance, we meet with persons who do us a number of

kindnesses, who shew us every mark of respect and good-will, who are

friendly and serviceable,—and yet we do not feel grateful to them, after

all. We reproach ourselves with this as caprice or insensibility, and

try to get the better of it; but there is something in their way of

doing things that prevents us from feeling cordial or sincerely obliged

to them. We think them very worthy people, and would be glad of an

opportunity to do them a good turn if it were in our power; but we

cannot get beyond this: the utmost we can do is to save appearances, and

not come to an open rupture with them. The truth is, in all such cases,

we do not sympathise (as we ought) with them, because they do not

sympathise (as they ought) with us. They have done what they did from a

sense of duty in a cold dry manner, or from a meddlesome busybody

humour; or to shew their superiority over us, or to patronise our

infirmity; or they have dropped some hint by the way, or blundered upon

some topic they should not, and have shewn, by one means or other, that

they were occupied with any thing but the pleasure they were affording

us, or a delicate attention to our feelings. Such persons may be styled

_friendly grievances_. They are commonly people of low spirits and

disappointed views, who see the discouraging side of human life, and,

with the best intentions in the world, contrive to make every thing they

have to do with uncomfortable. They are alive to your distress, and take

pains to remove it; but they have no satisfaction in the gaiety and ease

they have communicated, and are on the _look-out_ for some new occasion

of signalizing their zeal; nor are they backward to insinuate that you

will soon have need of their assistance, to guard you against running

into fresh difficulties, or to extricate you from them. From large

benevolence of soul and ‘discourse of reason, looking before and after,’

they are continually reminding you of something that has gone wrong in

time past, or that may do so in that which is to come, and are surprised

that their awkward hints, sly inuendos, blunt questions, and solemn

features do not excite all the complacency and mutual good understanding

in you which it is intended that they should. When they make themselves

miserable on your account, it is hard that you will not lend them your

countenance and support. This deplorable humour of theirs does not hit

any one else. They are useful, but not agreeable people; they may assist

you in your affairs, but they depress and tyrannise over your feelings.

When they have made you happy, they will not let you be so—have no

enjoyment of the good they have done—will on no account part with their

melancholy and desponding tone—and, by their mawkish insensibility and

doleful grimaces, throw a damp over the triumph they are called upon to

celebrate. They would keep you in hot water, that they may help you out

of it. They will nurse you in a fit of sickness (congenial

sufferers!)—arbitrate a law-suit for you, and embroil you deeper—procure

you a loan of money;—but all the while they are only delighted with

rubbing the sore place, and casting the colour of your mental or other

disorders. ‘The whole need not a physician;’ and, being once placed at

ease and comfort, they have no farther use for you as subjects for their

singular beneficence, and you are not sorry to be quit of their tiresome

interference. The old proverb, _A friend in need is a friend indeed_, is

not verified in them. The class of persons here spoken of are the very

reverse of _summer-friends_, who court you in prosperity, flatter your

vanity, are the humble servants of your follies, never see or allude to

any thing wrong, minister to your gaiety, smooth over every difficulty,

and, with the slightest approach of misfortune or of any thing

unpleasant, take French leave:—

‘As when, in prime of June, a burnished fly,

Sprung from the meads, o’er which he sweeps along,

Cheered by the breathing bloom and vital sky,

Tunes up amid these airy halls his song,

Soothing at first the gay reposing throng;

And oft he sips their bowl, or nearly drowned,

He thence recovering drives their beds among,

And scares their tender sleep with trump profound;

Then out again he flies to wing his mazy round.’

THOMSON’S CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.

However we may despise such triflers, yet we regret them more than those

well-meaning friends on whom a dull melancholy vapour hangs, that drags

them and every one about them to the ground.

Again, there are those who might be very agreeable people, if they had

but spirit to be so; but there is a narrow, unaspiring, under-bred tone

in all they say or do. They have great sense and information—abound in a

knowledge of character—have a fund of anecdote—are unexceptionable in

manners and appearance—and yet we cannot make up our minds to like them:

we are not glad to see them, nor sorry when they go away. Our

familiarity with them, however great, wants the principle of cement,

which is a certain appearance of frank cordiality and social enjoyment.

They have no pleasure in the subjects of their own thoughts, and

therefore can communicate none to others. There is a dry, husky, grating

manner—a pettiness of detail—a tenaciousness of particulars, however

trifling or unpleasant—a disposition to cavil—an aversion to enlarged

and liberal views of things—in short, a hard, painful, unbending

_matter-of-factness_, from which the spirit and effect are banished, and

the letter only is attended to, which makes it impossible to sympathise

with their discourse. To make conversation interesting or agreeable,

there is required either the habitual tone of good company, which gives

a favourable colouring to every thing—or the warmth and enthusiasm of

genius, which, though it may occasionally offend or be thrown off its

guard, makes amends by its rapturous flights, and flings a glancing

light upon all things. The literal and _dogged_ style of conversation

resembles that of a French picture, or its mechanical fidelity is like

evidence given in a court of justice, or a police report.

From the literal to the plain-spoken, the transition is easy. The most

efficient weapon of offence is truth. Those who deal in dry and

repulsive matters-of-fact, tire out their friends; those who blurt out

hard and home truths, make themselves mortal enemies wherever they come.

There are your blunt, honest creatures, who omit no opportunity of

letting you know their minds, and are sure to tell you all the ill, and

conceal all the good they hear of you. They would not flatter you for

the world, and to caution you against the malice of others, they think

the province of a friend. This is not candour, but impudence; and yet

they think it odd you are not charmed with their unreserved

communicativeness of disposition. Gossips and tale-bearers, on the

contrary, who supply the _tittle-tattle_ of the neighbourhood, flatter

you to your face, and laugh at you behind your back, are welcome and

agreeable guests in all companies. Though you know it will be your turn

next, yet for the sake of the immediate gratification, you are contented

to pay your share of the public tax upon character, and are better

pleased with the falsehoods that never reach your ears, than with the

truths that others (less complaisant and more sincere) utter to your

face—so short-sighted and willing to be imposed upon is our self-love!

There is a man, who has the air of not being convinced without an

argument: you avoid him as if he were a lion in your path. There is

another, who asks you fifty questions as to the commonest things you

advance: you would sooner pardon a fellow who held a pistol to your

breast and demanded your money. No one regards a turnpike-keeper, or a

custom-house officer, with a friendly eye: he who stops you in an

excursion of fancy, or ransacks the articles of your belief obstinately

and churlishly, to distinguish the spurious from the genuine, is still

more your foe. These inquisitors and cross-examiners upon system make

ten enemies for every controversy in which they engage. The world dread

nothing so much as being convinced of their errors. In doing them this

piece of service, you make war equally on their prejudices, their

interests, their pride, and indolence. You not only set up for a

superiority of understanding over them, which they hate, but you deprive

them of their ordinary grounds of action, their topics of discourse, of

their confidence in themselves, and those to whom they have been

accustomed to look up for instruction and advice. It is making children

of them. You unhinge all their established opinions and trains of

thought; and after leaving them in this listless, vacant, unsettled

state—dissatisfied with their own notions and shocked at yours—you

expect them to court and be delighted with your company, because,

forsooth, you have only expressed your sincere and conscientious

convictions. Mankind are not deceived by professions, unless they

choose. They think that this pill of true doctrine, however it may be

gilded over, is full of gall and bitterness to them; and, again, it is a

maxim of which the vulgar are firmly persuaded, that plain-speaking (as

it is called) is, nine parts in ten, spleen and self-opinion; and the

other part, perhaps, honesty. Those who will not abate an inch in

argument, and are always seeking to recover the wind of you, are, in the

eye of the world, disagreeable, unconscionable people, who ought to be

_sent to Coventry_, or left to wrangle by themselves. No persons,

however, are more averse to contradiction than these same dogmatists.

What shews our susceptibility on this point is, there is no flattery so

adroit or effectual as that of implicit assent. Any one, however mean

his capacity or ill-qualified to judge, who gives way to all our

sentiments, and never seems to think but as we do, is indeed an _alter

idem_—another self; and we admit him without scruple into our entire

confidence, ‘yea, into our heart of hearts.’

It is the same in books. Those which, under the disguise of

plain-speaking, vent paradoxes, and set their faces against the common

sense of mankind, are neither ‘the volumes

——‘That enrich the shops,

That pass with approbation through the land;’

nor, I fear, can it be added—

‘That bring their authors an immortal fame.’

They excite a clamour and opposition at first, and are in general soon

consigned to oblivion. Even if the opinions are in the end adopted, the

authors gain little by it, and their names remain in their original

obloquy; for the public will own no obligations to such ungracious

benefactors. In like manner, there are many books written in a very

delightful vein, though with little in them, and that are accordingly

popular. Their principle is to please, and not to offend; and they

succeed in both objects. We are contented with the deference shown to

our feelings for the time, and grant a truce both to wit and wisdom. The

‘courteous reader’ and the good-natured author are well matched in this

instance, and find their account in mutual tenderness and forbearance to

each other’s infirmities. I am not sure that Walton’s Angler is not a

book of this last description—

‘That dallies with the innocence of thought,

Like the old age.’

Hobbes and Mandeville are in the opposite extreme, and have met with a

correspondent fate. The Tatler and the Spectator are in the golden mean,

carry instruction as far as it can go without shocking, and give the

most exquisite pleasure without one particle of pain. ‘_Desire to

please, and you will infallibly please_,’ is a maxim equally applicable

to the study or the drawing-room. Thus also we see actors of very small

pretensions, and who have scarce any other merit than that of being on

good terms with themselves, and in high good humour with their parts

(though they hardly understand a word of them), who are universal

favourites with the audience. Others, who are masters of their art, and

in whom no slip or flaw can be detected, you have no pleasure in seeing,

from something dry, repulsive, and unconciliating in their manner; and

you almost hate the very mention of their names, as an unavailing appeal

to your candid decision in their favour, and as taxing you with

injustice for refusing it.

We may observe persons who seem to take a peculiar delight in the

_disagreeable_. They catch all sorts of uncouth tones and gestures, the

manners and dialect of clowns and hoydens, and aim at vulgarity as

desperately as others ape gentility. [This is what is often understood

by a _love of low life_.] They say the most unwarrantable things,

without meaning or feeling what they say. What startles or shocks other

people, is to them a sport—an amusing excitement—a fillip to their

constitutions; and from the bluntness of their perceptions, and a

certain wilfulness of spirit, not being able to enter into the refined

and agreeable, they make a merit of despising every thing of the kind.

Masculine women, for example, are those who, not being distinguished by

the charms and delicacy of the sex, affect a superiority over it by

throwing aside all decorum. We also find another class, who continually

do and say what they ought not, and what they do not intend, and who are

governed almost entirely by an instinct of absurdity. Owing to a

perversity of imagination or irritability of nerve, the idea that a

thing is improper acts as a provocation to it: the fear of committing a

blunder is so strong, that in their agitation they _bolt_ out whatever

is uppermost in their minds, before they are aware of the consequence.

The dread of something wrong haunts and rivets their attention to it;

and an uneasy, morbid apprehensiveness of temper takes away their

self-possession, and hurries them into the very mistakes they are most

anxious to avoid.

If we look about us, and ask who are the agreeable and disagreeable

people in the world, we shall see that it does not depend on their

virtues or vices—their understanding or stupidity—but as much on the

degree of pleasure or pain they seem to feel in ordinary social

intercourse. What signify all the good qualities any one possesses, if

he is none the better for them himself? If the cause is so delightful,

the effect ought to be so too. We enjoy a friend’s society only in

proportion as he is satisfied with ours. Even wit, however it may

startle, is only agreeable as it is sheathed in good-humour. There are a

kind of _intellectual stammerers_, who are delivered of their good

things with pain and effort; and consequently what costs them such

evident uneasiness does not impart unmixed delight to the bystanders.

There are those, on the contrary, whose sallies cost them nothing—who

abound in a flow of pleasantry and good-humour; and who float down the

stream with them carelessly and triumphantly,—

‘Wit at the helm, and Pleasure at the prow.’

Perhaps it may be said of English wit in general, that it too much

resembles pointed lead: after all, there is something heavy and dull in

it! The race of small wits are not the least agreeable people in the

world. They have their little joke to themselves, enjoy it, and do not

set up any preposterous pretensions to thwart the current of our

self-love. Toad-eating is accounted a thriving profession; and a _butt_,

according to the Spectator, is a highly useful member of society—as one

who takes whatever is said of him in good part, and as necessary to

conduct off the spleen and superfluous petulance of the company. Opposed

to these are the swaggering bullies—the licensed wits—the

free-thinkers—the loud talkers, who, in the jockey phrase, have _lost

their mouths_, and cannot be reined in by any regard to decency or

common sense. The more obnoxious the subject, the more are they charmed

with it, converting their want of feeling into a proof of superiority to

vulgar prejudice and squeamish affectation. But there is an unseemly

exposure of the mind, as well as of the body. There are some objects

that shock the sense, and cannot with propriety be mentioned: there are

naked truths that offend the mind, and ought to be kept out of sight as

much as possible. For human nature cannot bear to be too hardly pressed

upon. One of these cynical truisms, when brought forward to the world,

may be forgiven as a slip of the pen: a succession of them, denoting a

deliberate purpose and _malice prepense_, must ruin any writer. Lord

Byron had got into an irregular course of these a little before his

death—seemed desirous, in imitation of Mr. Shelley, to run the gauntlet

of public obloquy—and, at the same time, wishing to screen himself from

the censure he defied, dedicated his Cain to Sir Walter Scott—a pretty

godfather to such a bantling!

Some persons are of so teazing and fidgetty a turn of mind, that they do

not give you a moment’s rest. Every thing goes wrong with them. They

complain of a headache or the weather. They take up a book, and lay it

down again—venture an opinion, and retract it before they have half

done—offer to serve you, and prevent some one else from doing it. If you

dine with them at a tavern, in order to be more at your ease, the fish

is too little done—the sauce is not the right one; they ask for a sort

of wine which they think is not to be had, or if it is, after some

trouble, procured, do not touch it; they give the waiter fifty

contradictory orders, and are restless and sit on thorns the whole of

dinner-time. All this is owing to a want of robust health, and of a

strong spirit of enjoyment; it is a fastidious habit of mind, produced

by a valetudinary habit of body: they are out of sorts with every thing,

and of course their ill-humour and captiousness communicates itself to

you, who are as little delighted with them as they are with other

things. Another sort of people, equally objectionable with this helpless

class, who are disconcerted by a shower of rain or stopped by an

insect’s wing, are those who, in the opposite spirit, will have every

thing their own way, and carry all before them—who cannot brook the

slightest shadow of opposition—who are always in the heat of an

argument—who knit their brows and clench their teeth in some speculative

discussion, as if they were engaged in a personal quarrel—and who,

though successful over almost every competitor, seem still to resent the

very offer of resistance to their supposed authority, and are as angry

as if they had sustained some premeditated injury. There is an

impatience of temper and an intolerance of opinion in this that

conciliates neither our affection nor esteem. To such persons nothing

appears of any moment but the indulgence of a domineering intellectual

superiority to the disregard and discomfiture of their own and every

body else’s comfort. Mounted on an abstract proposition, they trample on

every courtesy and decency of behaviour; and though, perhaps, they do

not intend the gross personalities they are guilty of, yet they cannot

be acquitted of a want of due consideration for others, and of an

intolerable egotism in the support of truth and justice. You may hear

one of these Quixotic declaimers pleading the cause of humanity in a

voice of thunder, or expatiating on the beauty of a Guido with features

distorted with rage and scorn. This is not a very amiable or edifying

spectacle.

There are persons who cannot make friends. Who are they? Those who

cannot be friends. It is not the want of understanding or good-nature,

of entertaining or useful qualities, that you complain of: on the

contrary, they have probably many points of attraction; but they have

one that neutralises all these—they care nothing about you, and are

neither the better nor worse for what you think of them. They manifest

no joy at your approach; and when you leave them, it is with a feeling

that they can do just as well without you. This is not sullenness, nor

indifference, nor absence of mind; but they are intent solely on their

own thoughts, and you are merely one of the subjects they exercise them

upon. They live in society as in a solitude; and, however their brain

works, their pulse beats neither faster nor slower for the common

accidents of life. There is, therefore, something cold and repulsive in

the air that is about them—like that of marble. In a word, they are

_modern philosophers_; and the modern philosopher is what the pedant was

of old—a being who lives in a world of his own, and has no

correspondence with this. It is not that such persons have not done you

services—you acknowledge it; it is not that they have said severe things

of you—you submit to it as a necessary evil: but it is the cool manner

in which the whole is done that annoys you—the speculating upon you, as

if you were nobody—the regarding you, with a view to experiment _in

corpore vili_—the principle of dissection—the determination to spare no

blemishes—to cut you down to your real standard;—in short, the utter

absence of the partiality of friendship, the blind enthusiasm of

affection, or the delicacy of common decency, that whether they ‘hew you

as a carcase fit for hounds, or carve you as a dish fit for the gods,’

the operation on your feelings and your sense of obligation is just the

same; and, whether they are demons or angels in themselves, you wish

them equally _at the devil_!

Other persons of worth and sense give way to mere violence of

temperament (with which the understanding has nothing to do)—are burnt

up with a perpetual fury—repel and throw you to a distance by their

restless, whirling motion—so that you dare not go near them, or feel as

uneasy in their company as if you stood on the edge of a volcano. They

have their _tempora mollia fandi_; but then what a stir may you not

expect the next moment! Nothing is less inviting or less comfortable

than this state of uncertainty and apprehension. Then there are those

who never approach you without the most alarming advice or information,

telling you that you are in a dying way, or that your affairs are on the

point of ruin, by way of disburthening their consciences; and others,

who give you to understand much the same thing as a good joke, out of

sheer impertinence, constitutional vivacity, and want of something to

say. All these, it must be confessed, are disagreeable people; and you

repay their overanxiety or total forgetfulness of you, by a

determination to cut them as speedily as possible. We meet with

instances of persons who overpower you by a sort of boisterous mirth and

rude animal spirits, with whose ordinary state of excitement it is as

impossible to keep up as with that of any one really intoxicated; and

with others who seem scarce alive—who take no pleasure or interest in

any thing—who are born to exemplify the maxim,

‘Not to admire is all the art I know

To make men happy, or to keep them so,—

and whose mawkish insensibility or sullen scorn are equally annoying. In

general, all people brought up in remote country places, where life is

crude and harsh—all sectaries—all partisans of a losing cause, are

discontented and disagreeable. Commend me above all to the Westminster

School of Reform, whose blood runs as cold in their veins as the

torpedo’s, and whose touch jars like it. Catholics are, upon the whole,

more amiable than Protestants—foreigners than English people. Among

ourselves, the Scotch, as a nation, are particularly disagreeable. They

hate every appearance of comfort themselves, and refuse it to others.

Their climate, their religion, and their habits are equally averse to

pleasure. Their manners are either distinguished by a fawning sycophancy

(to gain their own ends, and conceal their natural defects), that makes

one sick; or by a morose unbending callousness, that makes one shudder.

I had forgot to mention two other descriptions of persons who fall under

the scope of this essay:—those who take up a subject, and run on with it

interminably, without knowing whether their hearers care one word about

it, or in the least minding what reception their oratory meets

with—these are pretty generally voted _bores_ (mostly German ones);—and

others, who may be designated as practical paradox-mongers—who discard

the ‘milk of human kindness,’ and an attention to common observances,

from all their actions, as effeminate and puling—who wear a white hat as

a mark of superior understanding, and carry home a handkerchief-full of

mushrooms in the top of it as an original discovery—who give you

craw-fish for supper instead of lobsters; seek their company in a

garret, and over a gin-bottle, to avoid the imputation of affecting

genteel society; and discard them after a term of years, and warn others

against them, as being _honest fellows_, which is thought a vulgar

prejudice. This is carrying the harsh and repulsive even beyond the

disagreeable—to the hateful. Such persons are generally people of

common-place understandings, obtuse feelings, and inordinate vanity.

They are formidable if they get you in their power—otherwise, they are

only to be laughed at.

There are a vast number who are disagreeable from meanness of spirit,

from downright insolence, from slovenliness of dress or disgusting

tricks, from folly or ignorance: but these causes are positive moral or

physical defects, and I only meant to speak of that repulsiveness of

manners which arises from want of tact and sympathy with others. So far

of friendship: a word, if I durst, of love. Gallantry to women (the sure

road to their favour) is nothing but the appearance of extreme devotion

to all their wants and wishes—a delight in their satisfaction, and a

confidence in yourself, as being able to contribute towards it. The

slightest indifference with regard to them, or distrust of yourself, are

equally fatal. The amiable is the voluptuous in looks, manner, or words.

No face that exhibits this kind of expression—whether lively or serious,

obvious or suppressed, will be thought ugly—no address, awkward—no lover

who approaches every woman he meets as his mistress, will be

unsuccessful. Diffidence and awkwardness are the two antidotes to love.

To please universally, we must be pleased with ourselves and others.

There should be a tinge of the coxcomb, an oil of self-complacency, an

anticipation of success—there should be no gloom, no moroseness no

shyness—in short, there should be very little of an Englishman, and a

good deal of a Frenchman. But though, I believe, this is the receipt, we

are none the nearer making use of it. It is impossible for those who are

naturally disagreeable ever to become otherwise. This is some

consolation, as it may save a world of useless pains and anxiety.

‘_Desire to please, and you will infallibly please_,’ is a true maxim;

but it does not follow that it is in the power of all to practise it. A

vain man, who thinks he is endeavouring to please, is only endeavouring

to shine, and is still farther from the mark. An irritable man, who puts

a check upon himself, only grows dull, and loses spirit to be any thing.

Good temper and a happy spirit (which are the indispensable requisites)

can no more be commanded than good health or good looks; and though the

plain and sickly need not distort their features, and may abstain from

success, this is all they can do. The utmost a disagreeable person can

do is to hope to be less disagreeable than with care and study he might

become, and to pass unnoticed in society. With this negative character

he should be contented, and may build his fame and happiness on other

things.

I will conclude with a character of men who neither please nor aspire to

please anybody, and who can come in nowhere so properly as at the

fag-end of an essay:—I mean that class of discontented but amusing

persons, who are infatuated with their own ill success, and reduced to

despair by a lucky turn in their favour. While all goes well, they are

_like fish out of water_. They have no reliance on or sympathy with

their good fortune, and look upon it as a momentary delusion. Let a

doubt be thrown on the question, and they begin to be full of lively

apprehensions again: let all their hopes vanish, and they feel

themselves on firm ground once more. From want of spirit or of habit,

their imaginations cannot rise above the low ground of humility—cannot

reflect the gay, flaunting tints of the fancy—flag and droop into

despondency—and can neither indulge the expectation, nor employ the

means of success. Even when it is within their reach, they dare not lay

hands upon it; and shrink from unlooked-for bursts of prosperity, as

something of which they are both ashamed and unworthy. The class of

_croakers_ here spoken of are less delighted at other people’s

misfortunes than their own. Their neighbours may have some

pretensions—they have none. Querulous complaints and anticipations of

discomfort are the food on which they live; and they at last acquire a

passion for that which is the favourite theme of their thoughts, and can

no more do without it than without the pinch of snuff with which they

season their conversation, and enliven the pauses of their daily

prognostics.

ON MEANS AND ENDS

_The Monthly Magazine._] [_September, 1827._

‘We work by wit, and not by witchcraft.’—IAGO.

It is impossible to have things done without doing them. This seems a

truism; and yet what is more common than to suppose that we shall find

things done, merely by wishing it? _To put the will for the deed_ is as

usual in practice as it is contrary to common sense. There is, in fact,

no absurdity, no contradiction, of which the mind is not capable. This

weakness is, I think, more remarkable in the English than in any other

people, in whom (to judge by what I discover in myself) the will bears

great and disproportioned sway. We desire a thing: we contemplate the

end intently, and think it done, neglecting the necessary means to

accomplish it. The strong tendency of the mind towards it, the internal

effort it makes to give birth to the object of its idolatry, seems an

adequate cause to produce the wished-for effect, and is in a manner

identified with it. This is more particularly the case in what relates

to the _Fine Arts_, and will account for some phenomena in the national

character.

The English style is distinguished by what are called

_ébauches_[38]—rude sketches, or violent attempts at effect, with a

total inattention to the details or delicacy of finishing. Now this, I

apprehend, proceeds not exactly from grossness of perception, but from

the wilfulness of our characters, our determination to have every thing

our own way without any trouble, or delay, or distraction of mind. An

object strikes us: we see and feel the whole effect at once. We wish to

produce a likeness of it; but we wish to transfer the impression to the

canvas as it is conveyed to us, simultaneously and intuitively—that is,

to stamp it there at a blow—or, otherwise, we turn away with impatience

and disgust, as if the means were an obstacle to the end, and every

attention to the mechanical process were a deviation from our original

purpose. We thus degenerate, by repeated failures, into a slovenly style

of art; and that which was at first an undisciplined and irregular

impulse, becomes a habit, and then a theory. It seems a little strange

that the zealous devotion to the end should produce aversion to the

means; but so it is: neither is it, however irrational, altogether

unnatural. That which we are struck with, which we are enamoured of, is

the general appearance or result; and it would certainly be most

desirable to produce the effect we aim at by a word or wish, if it were

possible, without being taken up with the mechanical drudgery or

pettiness of detail, or dexterity of execution, which, though they are

essential and component parts of the work, do not enter into our

thoughts, or form any part of our contemplation. In a word, the hand

does not keep pace with the eye; and it is the desire that it should,

that causes all the contradiction and confusion. We would have a face to

start out from the canvas at once—not feature by feature, or touch by

touch; we would be glad to convey an attitude or a divine expression to

the spectator by a stroke of the pencil, as it is conveyed by a glance

of the eye, or by the magic of feeling, independently of measurements,

and distances, and foreshortening, and numberless minute particulars,

and all the instrumentality of the art. We may find it necessary, on a

cool calculation, to go through and make ourselves masters of these;

but, in so doing, we submit only to necessity, and they are still a

diversion to, and a suspension of, our favourite purpose for the time—at

least unless practice has given that facility which almost identifies

the two together, and makes the process an unconscious one. The end thus

devours up the means; or our eagerness for the one, where it is strong

and unchecked, renders us in proportion impatient of the other. So we

view an object at a distance, which excites in us an inclination to

visit it: this, after many tedious steps and intricate windings, we do;

but, if we could fly, we should never consent to go on foot. The mind,

however, has wings, though the body has not; and, wherever the

imagination can come into play, our desires outrun their accomplishment.

Persons of this extravagant humour should addict themselves to eloquence

or poetry, where the thought ‘leaps at once to its effect,’ and is

wafted, in a metaphor or an apostrophe, ‘from Indus to the Pole;’ though

even there we should find enough, in the preparatory and mechanical

parts of those arts, to try our patience and mortify our vanity! The

first and strongest impulse of the mind is to achieve any object, on

which it is set, at once, and by the shortest and most decisive means;

but, as this cannot always be done, we ought not to neglect other more

indirect and subordinate aids; nor should we be tempted to do so, but

that the delusions of the will interfere with the convictions of the

understanding, and what we ardently wish, we fancy to be both possible

and true. Let us take the instance of copying a fine picture. We are

full of the effect we intend to produce; and so powerfully does this

prepossession affect us, that we imagine we have produced it, in spite

of the evidence of our senses and the suggestions of friends. In truth,

after a number of violent and anxious efforts to strike off a

resemblance which we passionately long for, it seems an injustice not to

have succeeded; it is too late to retrace our steps, and begin over

again in a different method; we prefer even failure to arriving at our

end by petty, mechanical tricks and rules; we have copied Titian or

Rubens in the spirit in which they ought to be copied; though the

likeness may not be perfect, there is a look, a tone, a _something_,

which we chiefly aimed at, and which we persuade ourselves, seeing the

copy only through the dazzled, hectic flush of feverish imagination, we

have really given; and thus we persist, and make fifty excuses, sooner

than own our error, which would imply its abandonment; or, if the light

breaks in upon us, through all the disguises of sophistry and self-love,

it is so painful that we shut our eyes to it. The more evident our

failure, the more desperate the struggles we make to conceal it from

ourselves, to stick to our original determination, and end where we

began.

What makes me think that this is the real stumbling-block in our way,

and not mere rusticity or want of discrimination, is that you will see

an English artist admiring and thrown into downright raptures by the

tucker of Titian’s _Mistress_, made up of an infinite number of little

delicate folds; and, if he attempts to copy it, he proceeds deliberately

to omit all these details, and dash it off by a single smear of his

brush. This is not ignorance, or even laziness, I conceive, so much as

what is called _jumping at a conclusion_. It is, in a word, an

overweening presumption. ‘A wilful man must have his way.’ He sees the

details, the varieties, and their effect: he sees and is charmed with

all this; but he would reproduce it with the same rapidity and

unembarrassed freedom that he sees it—or not at all. He scorns the slow

but sure method, to which others conform, as tedious and inanimate. The

mixing his colours, the laying in the ground, the giving all his

attention to a minute break or nice gradation in the several lights and

shades, is a mechanical and endless operation, very different from the

delight he feels in studying the effect of all these, when properly and

ably executed. _Quam nihil ad tuum, Papiniane, ingenium!_ Such fooleries

are foreign to his refined taste and lofty enthusiasm; and a doubt

crosses his mind, in the midst of his warmest raptures, how Titian could

resolve upon the drudgery of going through them, or whether it was not

rather owing to extreme facility of hand, and a sort of trick in laying

on the colours, abridging the mechanical labour! No one wrote or talked

more eloquently about Titian’s harmony and clearness of colouring than

the late Mr. Barry—discoursing of his greens, his blues, his yellows,

‘the little red and white of which he composed his flesh-colour,’ _con

amore_; yet his own colouring was dead and dingy, and, if he had copied

a Titian, he would have made it a mere daub, leaving out all that caused

his wonder or admiration, or that induced him to copy it after the

English or Irish fashion. We not only grudge the labour of beginning,

but we stop short, for the same reason, when we are near touching the

goal of success, and, to save a few last touches, leave a work

unfinished and an object unattained. The immediate steps, the daily

gradual improvement, the successive completion of parts, give us no

pleasure; we strain at the final result; we wish to have the whole done,

and, in our anxiety to get it off our hands, say _it will do_, and lose

the benefit of all our pains by stinting a little more, and being unable

to command a little patience. In a day or two, we will suppose, a copy

of a fine Titian would be as like as we could make it: the prospect of

this so enchants us, that we skip the intervening space, see no great

use in going on with it, fancy that we may spoil it, and, in order to

put an end to the question, take it home with us, where we immediately

see our error, and spend the rest of our lives in regretting that we did

not finish it properly when we were about it. We can execute only a

part; we see the whole of nature or of a picture at once. _Hinc illæ

lachrymæ._ The English grasp at this whole—nothing less interests or

contents them; and, in aiming at too much, they miss their object

altogether.

A French artist, on the contrary, has none of this uneasy, anxious

feeling—of this desire to master the whole of his subject, and

anticipate his good fortune at a blow—of this _massing_ and

concentrating principle. He takes the thing more easy and rationally. He

has none of the mental qualms, the nervous agitation, the wild,

desperate plunges and convulsive throes of the English artist. He does

not set off headlong without knowing where he is going, and find himself

up to the neck in all sorts of difficulties and absurdities, from

impatience to begin and have the matter off his mind (as if it were an

evil conscience); but takes time to consider, arranges his plans, gets

in his outline and his distances, and lays a foundation before he

attempts a superstructure which he may have to pull in pieces again, or

let it remain—a monument of his folly. _He looks before he leaps_, which

is contrary to the true blindfold English rule; and I should think that

we had invented this proverb from seeing so many fatal examples of the

violation of it. Suppose he undertakes to make a copy of a picture: he

first looks at it, and sees what it is. He does not make his sketch all

black or all white, because one part of it is so, and because he cannot

alter an idea he has once got into his head and must always run into

extremes, but varies his tints (strange as it may seem) from green to

red, from orange-tawny to yellow, from grey to brown, according as they

vary in the original. He sees no inconsistency, no forfeiture of a

principle, in this (any more than Mr. Southey in the change of the

colours of his coat), but a great deal of right reason, and indeed an

absolute necessity for it, if he wishes to succeed in what he is about.

This is the last thing in an Englishman’s thoughts: he only wishes to

have his own way, though it ends in defeat and ruin—strives hard to do

what he is sensible he cannot—or, if he finds he can, gives over and

leaves the matter short of a triumphant conclusion, which is too

flattering an idea for him to indulge in. The French artist proceeds

with due deliberation, and bit by bit. He takes some one part—a hand, an

eye, a piece of drapery, an object in the back-ground—and finishes it

carefully; then another, and so on to the end. When he has gone through

every part, his picture is done: there is nothing more that he can add

to it; it is a numerical calculation, and there are only so many items

in the account. An Englishman may go on _slobbering_ his over for the

hundredth time, and be no nearer than when he began. As he tries to

finish the whole at once, and as this is not possible, he always leaves

his work in an imperfect state, or as if he had begun on a new

canvas—like a man who is determined to leap to the top of a tower,

instead of scaling it step by step, and who is necessarily thrown on his

back every time he repeats the experiment. Again, the French student

does not, from a childish impatience, when he is near the end, destroy

the effect of the whole, by leaving some one part eminently deficient,

an eye-sore to the rest; nor does he fly from what he is about, to any

thing else that happens to catch his eye, neglecting the one and

spoiling the other. He is, in our old poet’s phrase, ‘constrained by

mastery,’ by the mastery of common sense and pleasurable feeling. He is

in no hurry to get to the end; for he has a satisfaction in the work,

and touches and retouches perhaps a single head, day after day and week

after week, without repining, uneasiness, or apparent progress. The very

lightness and buoyancy of his feeling renders him (where the necessity

of this is pointed out) patient and laborious. An Englishman, whatever

he undertakes, is as if he was carrying a heavy load that oppresses both

his body and mind, and that he is anxious to throw down as soon as

possible. The Frenchman’s hopes and fears are not excited to a pitch of

intolerable agony, so that he is compelled, in mere compassion to

himself, to bring the question to a speedy issue, even to the loss of

his object. He is calm, easy, collected, and takes his time and improves

his advantages as they occur, with vigilance and alacrity. Pleased with

himself, he is pleased with whatever occupies his attention nearly

alike. He is never taken at a disadvantage. Whether he paints an angel

or a joint-stool, it is much the same to him: whether it is landscape or

history, still it is he who paints it. Nothing puts him out of his way,

for nothing puts him out of conceit with himself. This self-complacency

forms an admirable ground-work for moderation and docility in certain

particulars, though not in others.

I remember an absurd instance enough of this deliberate mode of setting

to work in a young French artist, who was copying the Titian’s

_Mistress_ in the Louvre, some twenty years ago. After getting in his

chalk-outline, one would think he might have been attracted to the

face—that heaven of beauty (as it appears to some), clear, transparent,

open, breathing freshness, that ‘makes a sunshine in the shady place’;

or to the lustre of the golden hair; or some part of the poetry of the

picture (for, with all its materiality, this picture has a poetry about

it); instead of which he began to finish a square he had marked out in

the right-hand corner of the picture, containing a piece of board and a

bottle of some kind of ointment. He set to work like a cabinet-maker or

an engraver, and appeared to have no sympathy with the soul of the

picture. On a Frenchman (generally speaking), the distinction between

the great and the little, the exquisite and the indifferent, is in a

great measure lost: his self-satisfied egotism supplies whatever is

wanting up to a certain point, and neutralizes whatever goes beyond it.

Another young man, at the time I speak of, was for eleven weeks daily

employed in making a black-lead pencil drawing of a small Leonardo: he

sat with his legs balanced across a rail to do it, kept his hat on,

every now and then consulted with his friends about his progress, rose

up, went to the fire to warm himself, talked of the styles of the

different masters—praising Titian _pour les coloris_, Raphael _pour

l’expression_, Poussin _pour la composition_—all being alike to him,

provided they had each something to help him on in his harangue (for

that was all he thought about),—and then returned to _perfectionate_ (as

he called it) his copy. This would drive an Englishman out of his

senses, supposing him to be ever so stupid. The perseverance and the

interruptions, the labour without impulse, the attention to the parts in

succession, and disregard of the whole together, are to him utterly

incomprehensible. He wants to do something striking, and bends all his

thoughts and energies to one mighty effort. A Frenchman has no notion of

this summary proceeding, exists mostly in his present sensations, and,

if he is left at liberty to enjoy or trifle with these, cares about

nothing farther, looking neither backwards nor forwards. They forgot the

reign of terror under Robespierre in a month; they forgot that they had

ever been called the _great nation_ under Buonaparte in a week. They sat

in chairs on the Boulevards (just as they do at other times), when the

shots were firing into the next street, and were only persuaded to quit

them when their own soldiers were seen pouring down all the avenues from

the heights of Montmartre, crying ‘_Sauve qui peut!_’ They then went

home and dressed themselves to see the _Allies_ enter Paris, as a fine

sight, just as they would witness a procession at a theatre. This is

carrying the instinct of levity as far as it will go. With all their

affectation and want of sincerity, there is, on the principle here

stated, a kind of simplicity and nature about them after all. They lend

themselves to the impression of the moment with good humour and good

will, making it not much better nor worse than it is: the English

constantly over-do or under-do every thing, and are either mad with

enthusiasm or in despair. The extreme slowness and regularity of the

French school have then arisen, as a natural consequence, out of their

very fickleness and frivolity (their severally supposed national

characteristics); for, owing to the last, their studious exactness costs

them nothing; and, again, they have no headstrong impulses or ardent

longings that urge them on to the violation of rules, or hurry them away

with a subject or with the interest belonging to it. All is foreseen and

settled beforehand, so as to assist the fluttering and feeble hold they

have of things. When they venture beyond the literal and formal, and

(mistaking pedantry and bombast for genius) attempt the grand and the

impressive style, as in David’s and Girodet’s pictures, the Lord deliver

us from sublimity engrafted on insipidity and _petit maître-ism_! You

see a solitary French artist in the Louvre copying a Raphael or a

Rubens, standing on one leg, not quite sure of what he is about: you see

them collected in groupes about David’s, elbowing each other, thinking

them even finer than Raphael, more truly themselves, a more perfect

combination of all that can be taught by the Greek sculptor and the

French posture-master! Is this patriotism, or want of taste? If the

former, it is excusable, and why not, if the latter?

Even should a French artist fail, he is not disconcerted—there is

something else he excels in: ‘for one unkind and cruel fair, another

still consoles him.’ He studies in a more graceful posture, or pays

greater attention to his dress; or he has a friend, who has _beaucoup du

talent_, and conceit enough for them both. His self-love has always a

salvo, and comes upon its legs again, like a cat or a monkey. Not so

with Bruin the Bear. If an Englishman (God help the mark!) fails in one

thing, it is all over with him; he is enraged at the mention of any

thing else he can do, and at every consolation offered him on that

score; he banishes all other thoughts, but of his disappointment and

discomfiture, from his breast—neither eats nor sleeps (it is well if he

does not swallow down double ‘potations, pottle-deep,’ to drown

remembrance)—will not own, even to himself, any other thing in which he

takes an interest or feels a pride; and is in the horrors till he

recovers his good opinion of himself in the only point on which he now

sets a value, and for which his anxiety and disorder of mind

incapacitate him as effectually as if he were drunk with strong liquor

instead of spleen and passion. I have here drawn the character of an

Englishman, I am sure; for it is a portrait of myself, and, I am sorry

to add, an unexaggerated one. I intend these Essays as studies of human

nature; and as, in the prosecution of this design, I do not spare

others, I see no reason why I should spare myself. I lately tried to

make a copy of a portrait by Titian (after several years’ want of

practice), with a view to give a friend in England some notion of the

picture, which is equally remarkable and fine. I failed, and floundered

on for some days, as might be expected. I must say the effect on me was

painful and excessive. My sky was suddenly overcast. Every thing seemed

of the colour of the paints I used. Nature in my eyes became dark and

gloomy. I had no sense or feeling left, but of the unforeseen want of

power, and of the tormenting struggle to do what I could not. I was

ashamed ever to have written or spoken on art: it seemed a piece of

vanity and affectation in me to do so—all whose reasonings and

refinements on the subject ended in an execrable daub. Why did I think

of attempting such a thing without weighing the consequences of exposing

my presumption and incapacity so unnecessarily? It was blotting from my

mind, covering with a thick veil all that I remembered of these pictures

formerly—my hopes when young, my regrets since, one of the few

consolations of my life and of my declining years. I was even afraid to

walk out of an evening by the barrier of Neuilly, or to recall the

yearnings and associations that once hung upon the beatings of my heart.

All was turned to bitterness and gall. To feel any thing but the

consciousness of my own helplessness and folly, appeared a want of

sincerity, a mockery, and an insult to my mortified pride! The only

relief I had was in the excess of pain I felt: this was at least some

distinction. I was not insensible on that side. No French artist, I

thought, would regret _not_ copying a Titian so much as I did, nor so

far shew the same value for it, however he might have the advantage of

me in drawing or mechanical dexterity. Besides, I had copied this very

picture very well formerly. If ever I got out of my present scrape, I

had at any rate received a lesson not to run the same risk of vexation,

or commit myself gratuitously again upon any occasion whatever. Oh!

happy ought they to be, I said, who can do any thing, when I feel the

misery, the agony, the dull, gnawing pain of being unable to do what I

wish in this single instance! When I copied this picture before, I had

no other resource, no other language. My tongue then stuck to the roof

of my mouth: now it is unlocked, and I have done what I then despaired

of doing in another way. Ought I not to be grateful and contented? Oh,

yes!—and think how many there are who have nothing to which they can

turn themselves, and fail in every object they undertake. Well, then,

_Let bygones be bygones_ (as the Scotch proverb has it); give up the

attempt, and think no more of Titian, or of the portrait of a Man in

black in the Louvre. This would be very well for any one else; but for

me, who had nearly exhausted the subject on paper, that I should take it

into my head to paint a libel of what I had composed so many and such

fine panegyrics upon—it was a fatality, a judgment upon me for my

vapouring and conceit. I must be as shy of the subject for the future as

a damned author is of the title of his play or the name of his hero ever

after. Yet the picture would look the same as ever. I could hardly bear

to think so: it would be hid or defaced to me as ‘in a phantasma or a

hideous dream.’ I must turn my thoughts from it, or they would lead to

madness! The copy went on better afterwards, and the affair ended less

tragically than I apprehended. I did not cut a hole in the canvas, or

commit any other extravagance: it is now hanging up very quietly facing

me; and I have considerable satisfaction in occasionally looking at it,

as I write this paragraph.

Such are the agonies into which we throw ourselves about trifles—our

rage and disappointment at want of success in any favourite pursuit,

and, our neglect of the means to ensure it. A Frenchman, under the

penalty of half the chagrin at failure, would take just twice the pains

and consideration to avoid it: but our morbid eagerness and blundering

impetuosity, together with a certain _concreteness_ of imagination which

prevents our dividing any operation into steps and stages, defeat the

very end we have in view. The worst of these wilful mischiefs of our own

making is, that they admit of no relief or intermission. Natural

calamities or great griefs, as we do not bring them upon ourselves, so

they find a seasonable respite in tears or resignation, or in some

alleviating contrast or reflection: but pride scorns all alliance with

natural frailty or indulgence; our wilful purposes regard every

relaxation or moment’s ease as a compromise of their very essence, which

consists in violence and effort: they turn away from whatever might

afford diversion or solace, and goad us on to exertions as painful as

they are unavailable, and with no other companion than remorse,—the most

intolerable of all inmates of the breast; for it is constantly urging us

to retrieve our peace of mind by an impossibility—the undoing of what is

past. One of the chief traits of sublimity in Milton’s character of

Satan is this dreadful display of unrelenting pride and self-will—the

sense of suffering joined with the sense of power and ‘courage never to

submit or yield’—and the aggravation of the original purpose of lofty

ambition and opposition to the Almighty, with the total overthrow and

signal punishment,—which ought to be reasons for its relinquishment.

‘His thoughts burn like a hell within him!’ but he gives them ‘neither

truce nor rest,’ and will not even sue for mercy. This kind of sublimity

must be thrown away upon the French critic, who would only think Satan a

very ridiculous old gentleman for adhering so obstinately to his

original pretensions, and not making the most of circumstances, and

giving in his resignation to the ruling party! When Buonaparte fell, an

English editor (of virulent memory) exhausted a great number of the

finest passages in _Paradise Lost_, in applying them to his ill-fated

ambition. This was an equal compliment to the poet and the conqueror: to

the last, for having realized a conception of himself in the mind of his

enemies on a par with the most stupendous creations of imagination; to

the first, for having embodied in fiction what bore so strong a

resemblance to, and was constantly brought to mind by, the fearful and

imposing reality! But to return to our subject.

It is the same with us in love and literature. An Englishman makes love

without thinking of the chances of success, his own disadvantages, or

the character of his mistress—that is, without the adaptation of means

to ends, consulting only his own humour or fancy;[39] and he writes a

book of history or travels, without acquainting himself with geography,

or appealing to documents or dates; substituting his own will or opinion

in the room of these technical helps or hindrances, as he considers

them. It is not right. In business it is not by any means the same;

which looks as if, where interest was the moving principle, and acted as

a counterpoise to caprice and will, our headstrong propensity gave way,

though it sometimes leads us into extravagant and ruinous speculations.

Nor is it a disadvantage to us in war; for there the spirit of

contradiction does every thing, and an Englishman will go to the devil

sooner than yield to any odds. Courage is nothing but will, defying

consequences; and this the English have in perfection. Burns somewhere

calls out lustily, inspired by rhyme and _usquebaugh_,—

‘Set but a Scotsman on a hill;

Say such is royal George’s will,

And there’s the foe:-

His only thought is how to kill

Twa at a blow.’

I apprehend, with his own countrymen or ours, all the love and loyalty

would come to little, but for their hatred of the army opposed to them.

It is the resistance, ‘the two to kill at a blow,’ that is the charm,

and makes our fingers’-ends tingle. The Greek cause makes no progress

with us for this reason: it is one of pure sympathy, but our sympathies

must arise out of our antipathies; they were devoted to the Queen to

spite the King. We had a wonderful affection for the Spaniards—the

secret of which was that we detested the French. Our love must begin

with hate. It is so far well that the French are opposed to us in almost

every way; for the spirit of contradiction alone to foreign fopperies

and absurdities keeps us within some bounds of decency and order. When

an English lady of quality introduces a favourite by saying, ‘This is

his lordship’s physician, and my atheist,’ the humour might become

epidemic; but we can stop it at once by saying, ‘That is so like a

Frenchwoman!’—The English excel in the practical and mechanic arts,

where mere plodding and industry are expected and required; but they do

not combine business and pleasure well together. Thus, in the Fine Arts,

which unite the mechanical with the sentimental, they will probably

never succeed; for the one spoils and diverts them from the other. An

Englishman can attend but to one thing at a time. He hates music at

dinner. He can go through any labour or pain with prodigious fortitude;

but he cannot make a pleasure of it, or persuade himself he is doing a

_fine thing_, when he is not. Again, they are great in original

discoveries, which come upon them by surprise, and which they leave to

others to perfect. It is a question whether, if they foresaw they were

about to make the discovery, at the very point of projection as it were,

they would not turn their backs upon it, and leave it to shift for

itself; or obstinately refuse to take the last step, or give up the

pursuit, in mere dread and nervous apprehension lest they should not

succeed. Poetry is also their undeniable element; for the essence of

poetry is will and passion, ‘and it alone is highly fantastical.’ French

poetry is _verbiage_ or dry detail.

I have thus endeavoured to shew why it is the English fail as a people

in the Fine Arts, because the idea of the end absorbs that of the means.

Hogarth was an exception to this rule; but then every stroke of his

pencil was instinct with genius. As it has been well said, that ‘we

_read_ his works,’ so it might be said he _wrote_ them. Barry is an

instance more to my purpose. No one could argue better about _gusto_ in

painting, and yet no one ever painted with less. His pictures were dry,

coarse, and wanted all that his descriptions of those of others

indicate. For example, he speaks of ‘the dull, dead, watery look’ of the

Medusa’s head of Leonardo, in a manner that conveys an absolute idea of

the character: had he copied it, you would never have suspected any

thing of the kind. His pen grows almost wanton in praise of Titian’s

nymph-like figures. What _drabs_ he has made of his own sea-nymphs,

floating in the Thames, with Dr. Burney at their head, with his wig on!

He is like a person admiring the grace of an accomplished rope-dancer;

place him on the rope himself, and his head turns;—or he is like

Luther’s comparison of Reason to a drunken man on horseback—‘set him up

on one side, and he tumbles over on the other.’ Why is this? His mind

was essentially ardent and discursive, not sensitive or observant; and

though the immediate object acted as a stimulus to his imagination, it

was only as it does to the poet’s—that is, as a link in the chain of

association, as implying other strong feelings and ideas, and not for

its intrinsic beauty or individual details. He had not the painter’s

eye, though he had the painter’s general knowledge. There is as great a

difference in this respect between our views of things as between the

telescope and microscope. People in general see objects only to

distinguish them in practice and by name—to know that a hat is black,

that a chair is not a table, that John is not James; and there are

painters, particularly of history in England, who look very little

farther. They cannot finish any thing, or go over a head twice: the

first _coup-d’œil_ is all they ever arrive at, nor can they refine on

their impressions, soften them down, or reduce them to their component

parts, without losing their spirit. The inevitable result of this is

grossness, and also want of force and solidity; for, in reality, the

parts cannot be separated without injury from the whole. Such people

have no pleasure in the art as such: it is merely to astonish or to

thrive that they follow it; or, if thrown out of it by accident, they

regret it only as a bankrupt tradesman does a business which was a

handsome subsistence to him. Barry did not live, like Titian, on the

taste of colours (there was here, perhaps—and I will not disguise it—in

English painters in general, a defect of organic susceptibility); they

were not a _pabulum_ to his senses; he did not hold green, blue, red,

and yellow for ‘the darlings of his precious eye.’ They did not,

therefore, sink into his mind with all their hidden harmonies, nor

nourish and enrich it with material beauty, though he knew enough of

them to furnish hints for other ideas and to suggest topics of

discourse. If he had had the most enchanting object in nature before him

in his painting-room at the Adelphi, he would have turned from it, after

a moment’s burst of admiration, to talk of the subject of his next

composition, and to scrawl in some new and vast design, illustrating a

series of great events in history, or some vague moral theory. The art

itself was nothing to him, though he made it the stalking-horse to his

ambition and display of intellectual power in general; and, therefore,

he neglected its essential qualities to daub in huge allegories, or

carry on cabals with the Academy, in which the violence of his will and

the extent of his views found proper food and scope. As a painter, he

was tolerable merely as a draftsman, or in that part of the art which

may be best reduced to rules and precepts, or to positive measurements.

There is neither colouring, nor expression, nor delicacy, nor striking

effect in his pictures at the Adelphi. The group of youths and horses,

in the representation of the Olympic Games, is the best part of them,

and has more of the grace and spirit of a Greek bas-relief than any

thing of the same kind in the French school of painting. Barry was, all

his life, a thorn in the side of Sir Joshua, who was irritated by the

temper and disconcerted by the powers of the man; and who, conscious of

his own superiority in the exercise of his profession, yet looked

askance at Barry’s loftier pretensions and more gigantic scale of art.

But he had no more occasion to be really jealous of him than of an Irish

porter or orator. It was like Imogen’s mistaking the dead body of Cloten

for her lord’s—‘the jovial thigh, the brawns of Hercules’: the head,

which would have detected the cheat, was missing!

I might have gone more into the subject of our apparent indifference to

the pleasure of mere imitation, if I had had to run a parallel between

English and Italian or even Flemish art; but really, though I find a

great deal of what is finical, I find nothing of the pleasurable in the

details of French more than of English art. The English artist, it is an

old and just complaint, can with difficulty be prevailed upon to finish

any part of a picture but the face, even if he does that any tolerable

justice: the French artist bestows equal and elaborate pains on every

part of his picture—the dress, the carpet, &c.; and it has been objected

to the latter method, that it has the effect of making the face look

unfinished; for as this is variable and in motion, it can never admit of

the same minuteness of imitation as objects of _still-life_, and must

suffer in the comparison, if these have the utmost possible degree of

attention bestowed on them, and do not fall into their relative place in

the composition from their natural insignificance. But does not this

distinction shew generally that the English have no pleasure in art,

unless there is an additional interest beyond what is borrowed from the

eye, and that the French have the same pleasure in it, provided the

mechanical operation is the same—like the fly that settles equally on

the face or dress, and runs over the whole surface with the same

lightness and indifference? The collar of a coat is out of drawing: this

may be and is wrong. But I cannot say that it gives me the same

disturbance as if the nose was awry. A Frenchman thinks that both are

equally out of drawing, and sets about correcting them both with equal

gravity and perseverance. A part of the back-ground of a picture is left

in an unfinished state: this is a sad eye-sore to the French artist or

connoisseur. We English care little about it: if the head and character

are well given, we pass it over as of small consequence; and if they are

failures, it is of even less. A French painter, after having made you

look like a baboon, would go on finishing the cravat or the buttons of

your coat with all the nicety of a man milliner or button-maker, and the

most perfect satisfaction with himself and his art. This with us would

be quite impossible. ‘They are careful after many things: with us, there

is one thing needful’—which is effect. We certainly throw our

impressions more into masses (they are not taken off by pattern, every

part alike): there may be a slowness and repugnance at first; but,

afterwards, there is an impulse, a _momentum_ acquired—one interest

absorbing and being strengthened by several others; and if we gain our

principal object, we can overlook the rest, or at least cannot find time

to attend to them till we have secured this. We have nothing of the

_petit maître_, of the _martinet_ style about us: we run into the

opposite fault. If we had time, if we had power, there could be no

objection to giving every part with the utmost perfection, as it is

given in a looking-glass. But if we have only a month to do a portrait

in, is it not better to give three weeks to the face and one to the

dress, than one week to the face and three to the dress. How often do we

look at the face compared to the dress? ‘On a good foundation,’ says

Sancho Panza, ‘a good house may be built’; so a good picture should have

a good back-ground, and be finished in every part. It is entitled to

this mark of respect, which is like providing a frame for it, and

hanging it in a good light. I can easily understand how Rubens or

Vandyke finished the back grounds and drapery of their pictures:—they

were worth the trouble; and, besides, it cost them nothing. It was to

them no more than blowing a bubble in the air. One would no doubt have

every thing right—a feather in a cap, or a plant in the foreground—if a

thought or a touch would do it. But to labour on for ever, and labour to

no purpose, is beyond mortal or English patience. Our clumsiness is one

cause of our negligence. Depend upon it, people do with readiness what

they can do well. I rather wonder, therefore, that Raphael took such

pains in finishing his draperies and back grounds, which he did so

indifferently. The expression is like an emanation of the soul, or like

a lamp shining within and illuminating the whole face and body; and

every part, charged with so sacred a trust as the conveying of this

expression (even to the hands and feet), would be wrought up to the

highest perfection. But his inanimate objects must have cost him some

trouble; and yet he laboured them too. In what he could not do well, he

was still determined to do his best; and that nothing should be wanting

in decorum and respect to an art that he had consecrated to virtue, and

to that genius that burnt like a flame upon its altars! We have nothing

that for myself I can compare with this high and heroic pursuit of art

for its own sake. The French fancy their own pedantic abortions equal to

it, thrust them into the Louvre, ‘and with their darkness dare affront

that light!’—thus proving themselves without the germ or the possibility

of excellence—the feeling of it in others. We at least claim some

interest in art, by looking up to its loftiest monuments—retire to a

distance, and reverence the sanctuary, if we cannot enter it.

‘They also serve who only stare and wait.’[40]

ON PERSONAL IDENTITY

_The Monthly Magazine._] [_January, 1828._

‘Ha! here be three of us sophisticated.’—LEAR.

‘If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes!’ said the Macedonian

hero; and the cynic might have retorted the compliment upon the prince

by saying, that, ‘were he not Diogenes, he would be Alexander!’ This is

the universal exception, the invariable reservation that our self-love

makes, the utmost point at which our admiration or envy ever arrives—to

wish, if we were not ourselves, to be some other individual. No one ever

wishes to be another, _instead_ of himself. We may feel a desire to

change places with others—to have one man’s fortune—another’s health or

strength—his wit or learning, or accomplishments of various kinds—

‘Wishing to be like one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope:’

but we would still be our selves, to possess and enjoy all these, or we

would not give a doit for them. But, on this supposition, what in truth

should we be the better for them? It is not we, but another, that would

reap the benefit; and what do we care about that other? In that case,

the present owner might as well continue to enjoy them. _We_ should not

be gainers by the change. If the meanest beggar who crouches at a

palace-gate, and looks up with awe and suppliant fear to the proud

inmate as he passes, could be put in possession of all the finery, the

pomp, the luxury, and wealth that he sees and envies on the sole

condition of getting rid, together with his rags and misery, of all

recollection that there ever was such a wretch as himself, he would

reject the proffered boon with scorn. He might be glad to change

situations; but he would insist on keeping his own thoughts, to _compare

notes_, and point the transition by the force of contrast. He would not,

on any account, forego his self-congratulation on the unexpected

accession of good fortune, and his escape from past suffering. All that

excites his cupidity, his envy, his repining or despair, is the

alternative of some great good to himself; and if, in order to attain

that object, he is to part with his own existence to take that of

another, he can feel no farther interest in it. This is the language

both of passion and reason.

Here lies ‘the rub that makes calamity of so long life:’ for it is not

barely the apprehension of the ills that ‘in that sleep of death may

come,’ but also our ignorance and indifference to the promised good,

that produces our repugnance and backwardness to quit the present scene.

No man, if he had his choice, would be the angel Gabriel to-morrow! What

is the angel Gabriel to him but a splendid vision? He might as well have

an ambition to be turned into a bright cloud, or a particular star. The

interpretation of which is, he can have no sympathy with the angel

Gabriel. Before he can be transformed into so bright and ethereal an

essence, he must necessarily ‘put off this mortal coil’—be divested of

all his old habits, passions, thoughts, and feelings—to be endowed with

other lofty and beatific attributes, of which he has no notion; and,

therefore, he would rather remain a little longer in this mansion of

clay, which, with all its flaws, inconveniences, and perplexities,

contains all that he has any real knowledge of, or any affection for.

When, indeed, he is about to quit it in spite of himself, and has no

other chance left to escape the darkness of the tomb, he may then have

no objection (making a virtue of necessity) to put on angels’ wings, to

have radiant locks, to wear a wreath of amaranth, and thus to masquerade

it in the skies.

It is an instance of the truth and beauty of the ancient mythology, that

the various transmutations it recounts are never voluntary, or of

favourable omen, but are interposed as a timely release to those who,

driven on by fate, and urged to the last extremity of fear or anguish,

are turned into a flower, a plant, an animal, a star, a precious stone,

or into some object that may inspire pity or mitigate our regret for

their misfortunes. Narcissus was transformed into a flower; Daphne into

a laurel; Arethusa into a fountain (by the favour of the gods)—but not

till no other remedy was left for their despair. It is a sort of smiling

cheat upon death, and graceful compromise with annihilation. It is

better to exist by proxy, in some softened type and soothing allegory,

than not at all—to breathe in a flower or shine in a constellation, than

to be utterly forgot; but no one would change his natural condition (if

he could help it) for that of a bird, an insect, a beast, or a fish,

however delightful their mode of existence, or however enviable he might

deem their lot compared to his own. Their thoughts are not our

thoughts—their happiness is not our happiness; nor can we enter into it

except with a passing smile of approbation, or as a refinement of fancy.

As the poet sings:—

‘What more felicity can fall to creature

Than to enjoy delight with liberty,

And to be lord of all the works of nature?

To reign in the air from earth to highest sky;

To feed on flowers and weeds of glorious feature;

To taste whatever thing doth please the eye?—

Who rests not pleased with such happiness,

Well worthy he to taste of wretchedness!’

This is gorgeous description and fine declamation: yet who would be

found to act upon it, even in the forming of a wish; or would not rather

be the thrall of wretchedness, than launch out (by the aid of some magic

spell) into all the delights of such a butterfly state of existence? The

French (if any people can) may be said to enjoy this airy, heedless

gaiety and unalloyed exuberance of satisfaction: yet what Englishman

would deliberately change with them? We would sooner be miserable after

our own fashion than happy after their’s. It is not happiness, then, in

the abstract, which we seek, that can be addressed as

‘That something still that prompts th’ eternal sigh,