Transcribed from the 1886 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: Book cover]
CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY
* * * * *
THE
MAN OF FEELING
BY
HENRY MACKENZIE.
[Picture: Decorative graphic]
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
_LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
1886.
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
HENRY MACKENZIE, the son of an Edinburgh physician, was born in August,
1745. After education in the University of Edinburgh he went to London
in 1765, at the age of twenty, for law studies, returned to Edinburgh,
and became Crown Attorney in the Scottish Court of Exchequer. When
Mackenzie was in London, Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy” was in course of
publication. The first two volumes had appeared in 1759, and the ninth
appeared in 1767, followed in 1768, the year of Sterne’s death, by “The
Sentimental Journey.” Young Mackenzie had a strong bent towards
literature, and while studying law in London, he read Sterne, and falling
in with the tone of sentiment which Sterne himself caught from the spirit
of the time and the example of Rousseau, he wrote “The Man of Feeling.”
This book was published, without author’s name, in 1771. It was so
popular that a young clergyman made a copy of it popular with imagined
passages of erasure and correction, on the strength of which he claimed
to be its author, and obliged Henry Mackenzie to declare himself. In
1773 Mackenzie published a second novel, “The Man of the World,” and in
1777 a third, “Julia de Roubigné.” An essay-reading society in
Edinburgh, of which he was a leader, started in January, 1779, a weekly
paper called _The Mirror_, which he edited until May, 1780. Its writers
afterwards joined in producing _The Lounger_, which lasted from February,
1785, to January, 1787. Henry Mackenzie contributed forty-two papers to
_The Mirror_ and fifty-seven to _The Lounger_. When the Royal Society of
Edinburgh was founded Henry Mackenzie was active as one of its first
members. He was also one of the founders of the Highland Society.
Although his “Man of Feeling” was a serious reflection of the false
sentiment of the Revolution, Mackenzie joined afterwards in writing
tracts to dissuade the people from faith in the doctrines of the
Revolutionists. Mackenzie wrote also a tragedy, “The Prince of Tunis,”
which was acted with success at Edinburgh, and a comedy, “The White
Hypocrite,” which was acted once only at Covent garden. He died at the
age of eighty-six, on the 13th June, 1831, having for many years been
regarded as an elder friend of their own craft by the men of letters who
in his days gave dignity to Edinburgh society, and caused the town to be
called the Modern Athens.
A man of refined taste, who caught the tone of the French sentiment of
his time, has, of course, pleased French critics, and has been translated
into French. “The Man of Feeling” begins with imitation of Sterne, and
proceeds in due course through so many tears that it is hardly to be
called a dry book. As guide to persons of a calculating disposition who
may read these pages I append an index to the Tears shed in “The Man of
Feeling.”
INDEX TO TEARS.
(_Chokings_, _&c._, _not counted_.)
PAGE
“Odds but should have wept” xiii
Tear, given, “cordial drop” repeated 17
,, like Cestus of Cytherea 26
,, one on a cheek 30
“I will not weep” 31
Tears add energy to benediction 31
,, tribute of some 52
„ blessings on 52
I would weep too 52
Not an unmoistened eye 53
Do you weep again? 53
Hand bathed with tears 53
Tears, burst into 54
„ sobbing and shedding 74
,, burst into 75
,, virtue in these 75
„ he wept at the recollection of her 80
,, glister of new-washed 81
Sweet girl (here she wept) 94
I could only weep 95
Tears, saw his 97
,, burst into 99
„ wrung from the heart 99
,, feet bathed with 100
,, mingled, _i.e._, his with hers 100
„ voice lost in 108
Eye met with a tear 108
Tear stood in eye 127
Tears, face bathed with 130
Dropped one tear, no more 131
Tears, press-gang could scarce keep from 136
Big drops wetted gray beard 137
Tears, shower of 138
,, scarce forced—blubbered like a boy 139
Moistened eye 141
Tears choked utterance 144
I have wept many a time 144
Girl wept, brother sobbed 145
Harley kissed off her tears as they flowed, and wept between 145
every kiss
Tears flowing down cheeks 148
,, gushed afresh 148
Beamy moisture 154
A tear dropped 165
Tear in her eye, the sick man kissed it off in its bud, 176
smiling through the dimness of his own
Hand wet by tear just fallen 185
Tears flowing without control 187
Cheek wiped (at the end of the last chapter) 189
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION
MY dog had made a point on a piece of fallow-ground, and led the curate
and me two or three hundred yards over that and some stubble adjoining,
in a breathless state of expectation, on a burning first of September.
It was a false point, and our labour was vain: yet, to do Rover justice
(for he’s an excellent dog, though I have lost his pedigree), the fault
was none of his, the birds were gone: the curate showed me the spot where
they had lain basking, at the root of an old hedge.
I stopped and cried Hem! The curate is fatter than I; he wiped the sweat
from his brow.
There is no state where one is apter to pause and look round one, than
after such a disappointment. It is even so in life. When we have been
hurrying on, impelled by some warm wish or other, looking neither to the
right hand nor to the left—we find of a sudden that all our gay hopes are
flown; and the only slender consolation that some friend can give us, is
to point where they were once to be found. And lo! if we are not of that
combustible race, who will rather beat their heads in spite, than wipe
their brows with the curate, we look round and say, with the nauseated
listlessness of the king of Israel, “All is vanity and vexation of
spirit.”
I looked round with some such grave apophthegm in my mind when I
discovered, for the first time, a venerable pile, to which the enclosure
belonged. An air of melancholy hung about it. There was a languid
stillness in the day, and a single crow, that perched on an old tree by
the side of the gate, seemed to delight in the echo of its own croaking.
I leaned on my gun and looked; but I had not breath enough to ask the
curate a question. I observed carving on the bark of some of the trees:
’twas indeed the only mark of human art about the place, except that some
branches appeared to have been lopped, to give a view of the cascade,
which was formed by a little rill at some distance.
Just at that instant I saw pass between the trees a young lady with a
book in her hand. I stood upon a stone to observe her; but the curate
sat him down on the grass, and leaning his back where I stood, told me,
“That was the daughter of a neighbouring gentleman of the name of WALTON,
whom he had seen walking there more than once.
“Some time ago,” he said, “one HARLEY lived there, a whimsical sort of
man I am told, but I was not then in the cure; though, if I had a turn
for those things, I might know a good deal of his history, for the
greatest part of it is still in my possession.”
“His history!” said I. “Nay, you may call it what you please,” said the
curate; for indeed it is no more a history than it is a sermon. The way
I came by it was this: some time ago, a grave, oddish kind of a man
boarded at a farmer’s in this parish: the country people called him The
Ghost; and he was known by the slouch in his gait, and the length of his
stride. I was but little acquainted with him, for he never frequented
any of the clubs hereabouts. Yet for all he used to walk a-nights, he
was as gentle as a lamb at times; for I have seen him playing at teetotum
with the children, on the great stone at the door of our churchyard.
“Soon after I was made curate, he left the parish, and went nobody knows
whither; and in his room was found a bundle of papers, which was brought
to me by his landlord. I began to read them, but I soon grew weary of
the task; for, besides that the hand is intolerably bad, I could never
find the author in one strain for two chapters together; and I don’t
believe there’s a single syllogism from beginning to end.”
“I should be glad to see this medley,” said I. “You shall see it now,”
answered the curate, “for I always take it along with me a-shooting.”
“How came it so torn?” “’Tis excellent wadding,” said the curate.—This
was a plea of expediency I was not in a condition to answer; for I had
actually in my pocket great part of an edition of one of the German
Illustrissimi, for the very same purpose. We exchanged books; and by
that means (for the curate was a strenuous logician) we probably saved
both.
When I returned to town, I had leisure to peruse the acquisition I had
made: I found it a bundle of little episodes, put together without art,
and of no importance on the whole, with something of nature, and little
else in them. I was a good deal affected with some very trifling
passages in it; and had the name of Marmontel, or a Richardson, been on
the title-page—’tis odds that I should have wept: But
One is ashamed to be pleased with the works of one knows not whom.
CHAPTER XI. {15}
ON BASHFULNESS.—A CHARACTER.—HIS OPINION ON THAT SUBJECT.
THERE is some rust about every man at the beginning; though in some
nations (among the French for instance) the ideas of the inhabitants,
from climate, or what other cause you will, are so vivacious, so
eternally on the wing, that they must, even in small societies, have a
frequent collision; the rust therefore will wear off sooner: but in
Britain it often goes with a man to his grave; nay, he dares not even pen
a _hic jacet_ to speak out for him after his death.
“Let them rub it off by travel,” said the baronet’s brother, who was a
striking instance of excellent metal, shamefully rusted. I had drawn my
chair near his. Let me paint the honest old man: ’tis but one passing
sentence to preserve his image in my mind.
He sat in his usual attitude, with his elbow rested on his knee, and his
fingers pressed on his cheek. His face was shaded by his hand; yet it
was a face that might once have been well accounted handsome; its
features were manly and striking, a dignity resided on his eyebrows,
which were the largest I remember to have seen. His person was tall and
well-made; but the indolence of his nature had now inclined it to
corpulency.
His remarks were few, and made only to his familiar friends; but they
were such as the world might have heard with veneration: and his heart,
uncorrupted by its ways, was ever warm in the cause of virtue and his
friends.
He is now forgotten and gone! The last time I was at Silton Hall, I saw
his chair stand in its corner by the fire-side; there was an additional
cushion on it, and it was occupied by my young lady’s favourite lap dog.
I drew near unperceived, and pinched its ears in the bitterness of my
soul; the creature howled, and ran to its mistress. She did not suspect
the author of its misfortune, but she bewailed it in the most pathetic
terms; and kissing its lips, laid it gently on her lap, and covered it
with a cambric handkerchief. I sat in my old friend’s seat; I heard the
roar of mirth and gaiety around me: poor Ben Silton! I gave thee a tear
then: accept of one cordial drop that falls to thy memory now.
“They should wear it off by travel.”—Why, it is true, said I, that will
go far; but then it will often happen, that in the velocity of a modern
tour, and amidst the materials through which it is commonly made, the
friction is so violent, that not only the rust, but the metal too, is
lost in the progress.
“Give me leave to correct the expression of your metaphor,” said Mr.
Silton: “that is not always rust which is acquired by the inactivity of
the body on which it preys; such, perhaps, is the case with me, though
indeed I was never cleared from my youth; but (taking it in its first
stage) it is rather an encrustation, which nature has given for purposes
of the greatest wisdom.”
“You are right,” I returned; “and sometimes, like certain precious
fossils, there may be hid under it gems of the purest brilliancy.”
“Nay, farther,” continued Mr. Silton, “there are two distinct sorts of
what we call bashfulness; this, the awkwardness of a booby, which a few
steps into the world will convert into the pertness of a coxcomb; that, a
consciousness, which the most delicate feelings produce, and the most
extensive knowledge cannot always remove.”
From the incidents I have already related, I imagine it will be concluded
that Harley was of the latter species of bashful animals; at least, if
Mr. Silton’s principle is just, it may be argued on this side; for the
gradation of the first mentioned sort, it is certain, he never attained.
Some part of his external appearance was modelled from the company of
those gentlemen, whom the antiquity of a family, now possessed of bare
£250 a year, entitled its representative to approach: these indeed were
not many; great part of the property in his neighbourhood being in the
hands of merchants, who had got rich by their lawful calling abroad, and
the sons of stewards, who had got rich by their lawful calling at home:
persons so perfectly versed in the ceremonial of thousands, tens of
thousands, and hundreds of thousands (whose degrees of precedency are
plainly demonstrable from the first page of the Complete Accomptant, or
Young Man’s Best Pocket Companion) that a bow at church from them to such
a man as Harley would have made the parson look back into his sermon for
some precept of Christian humility.