Ha! here's three of us are sophisticated:--off, you lendings.
There is such a thing as an aristocracy or privileged order in letters
which has sometimes excited my wonder, and sometimes my spleen. We
meet with authors who have never done anything, but who have a vast
reputation for what they could have done. Their names stand high, and
are in everybody's mouth, but their works are never heard of, or had
better remain undiscovered for the sake of their admirers.--_Stat
nominis umbra_--their pretensions are lofty and unlimited, as they have
nothing to rest upon, or because it is impossible to confront them with
the proofs of their deficiency. If you inquire farther, and insist
upon some act of authorship to establish the claims of these Epicurean
votaries of the Muses, you find that they had a great reputation
at Cambridge, that they were senior wranglers or successful
prize-essayists, that they visit at Holland House, and, to support that
honour, must be supposed, of course, to occupy the first rank in the
world of letters.(1) It is possible, however, that they have some
manuscript work in hand, which is of too much importance (and the writer
has too much at stake in publishing it) hastily to see the light: or
perhaps they once had an article in the Edinburgh Review, which was much
admired at the time, and is kept by them ever since as a kind of diploma
and unquestionable testimonial of merit. They are not like Grub Street
authors, who write for bread, and are paid by the sheet. Like misers who
hoard their wealth, they are supposed to be masters of all the wit and
sense they do not impart to the public. 'Continents have most of what
they contain,' says a considerable philosopher; and these persons, it
must be confessed, have a prodigious command over themselves in the
expenditure of light and learning. The Oriental curse, '0 that
mine enemy had written a book!' hangs suspended over them. By never
committing themselves, they neither give a handle to the malice of the
world, nor excite the jealousy of friends; and keep all the reputation
they have got, not by discreetly blotting, but by never writing a line.
Some one told Sheridan, who was always busy about some new work and
never advancing any farther in it, that he would not write because he
was afraid of the author of the _School for Scandal._ So these idle
pretenders are afraid of undergoing a comparison with themselves in
something they have never done, but have had credit for doing. They do
not acquire celebrity, they assume it; and escape detection by never
venturing out of their imposing and mysterious incognito. They do not
let themselves down by everyday work: for them to appear in print is a
work of supererogation as much as in lords and kings; and like gentlemen
with a large landed estate, they live on their established character,
and do nothing (or as little as possible) to increase or lose it. There
is not a more deliberate piece of grave imposture going. I know a person
of this description who has been employed many years (by implication)
in a translation of Thucydides, of which no one ever saw a word, but it
does not answer the purpose of bolstering up a factitious reputation the
less on that account. The longer it is delayed and kept sacred from the
vulgar gaze, the more it swells into imaginary consequence; the labour
and care required for a work of this kind being immense;--and then there
are no faults in an unexecuted translation. The only impeccable writers
are those that never wrote. Another is an oracle on subjects of taste
and classical erudition, because (he says at least) he reads Cicero
once a year to keep up the purity of his Latinity. A third makes the
indecency pass for the depth of his researches and for a high gusto in
_virtu,_ till, from his seeing nothing in the finest remains of ancient
art, the world by the merest accident find out that there is nothing in
him. There is scarcely anything that a grave face with an impenetrable
manner will not accomplish, and whoever is weak enough to impose upon
himself will have wit enough to impose upon the public--particularly if
he can make it their interest to be deceived by shallow boasting, and
contrives not to hurt their self-love by sterling acquirements. Do you
suppose that the understood translation of Thucydides costs its supposed
author nothing? A select party of friends and admirers dine with
him once a week at a magnificent town mansion, or a more elegant and
picturesque retreat in the country. They broach their Horace and their
old hock, and sometimes allude with a considerable degree of candour to
the defects of works which are brought out by contemporary writers--the
ephemeral offspring of haste and necessity!
Among other things, the learned languages are a ready passport to this
sort of unmeaning, unanalysed reputation. They presently lift a man up
among the celestial constellations, the signs of the zodiac (as it were)
and third heaven of inspiration, from whence he looks down on those
who are toiling on in this lower sphere, and earning their bread by the
sweat of their brain, at leisure and in scorn. If the graduates in this
way condescend to express their thoughts in English, it is understood to
be _infra dignitatem_--such light and unaccustomed essays do not fit
the ponderous gravity of their pen--they only draw to advantage and
with full justice to themselves in the bow of the ancients. Their native
tongue is to them strange, inelegant, unapt, and crude. They 'cannot
command it to any utterance of harmony. They have not the skill.' This
is true enough; but you must not say so, under a heavy penalty--the
displeasure of pedants and blockheads. It would be sacrilege against the
privileged classes, the Aristocracy of Letters. What! will you affirm
that a profound Latin scholar, a perfect Grecian, cannot write a page of
common sense or grammar? Is it not to be presumed, by all the charters
of the Universities and the foundations of grammar-schools, that he who
can speak a dead language must be _a fortiori_ conversant with his own?
Surely the greater implies the less. He who knows every science and
every art cannot be ignorant of the most familiar forms of speech. Or
if this plea is found not to hold water, then our scholastic bungler is
said to be above this vulgar trial of skill, 'something must be excused
to want of practice--but did you not observe the elegance of the
Latinity, how well that period would become a classical and studied
dress?' Thus defects are 'monster'd' into excellences, and they screen
their idol, and require you, at your peril, to pay prescriptive homage
to false concords and inconsequential criticisms, because the writer of
them has the character of the first or second Greek or Latin scholar
in the kingdom. If you do not swear to the truth of these spurious
credentials, you are ignorant and malicious, a quack and a
scribbler--_flagranti delicto!_ Thus the man who can merely read and
construe some old author is of a class superior to any living one, and,
by parity of reasoning, to those old authors themselves: the poet or
prose-writer of true and original genius, by the courtesy of custom,
'ducks to the learned fool'; or, as the author of _Hudibras_ has so well
stated the same thing--
He that is but able to express
No sense at all in several languages,
Will pass for learneder than he that's known
To speak the strongest reason in his own.
These preposterous and unfounded claims of mere scholars to precedence
in the commonwealth of letters which they set up so formally themselves
and which others so readily bow to, are partly owing to traditional
prejudice: there was a time when learning was the only distinction
from ignorance, and when there was no such thing as popular English
literature. Again, there is something more palpable and positive in
this kind of acquired knowledge, like acquired wealth, which the vulgar
easily recognise. That others know the meaning of signs which they are
confessedly and altogether ignorant of is to them both a matter of fact
and a subject of endless wonder. The languages are worn like a dress by
a man, and distinguish him sooner than his natural figure; and we are,
from motives of self-love, inclined to give others credit for the ideas
they have borrowed or have come into indirect possession of, rather than
for those that originally belong to them and are exclusively their own.
The merit in them and the implied inferiority in ourselves is less.
Learning is a kind of external appendage or transferable property--
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and may be any man's.
Genius and understanding are a man's self, an integrant part of his
personal identity; and the title to these last, as it is the most
difficult to be ascertained, is also the most grudgingly acknowledged.
Few persons would pretend to deny that Porson had more Greek than they;
it was a question of fact which might be put to the immediate proof, and
could not be gainsaid; but the meanest frequenter of the Cider Cellar or
the Hole in the Wall would be inclined, in his own conceit, to dispute
the palm of wit or sense with him, and indemnify his self-complacency
for the admiration paid to living learning by significant hints to
friends and casual droppers-in, that the greatest men, when you came to
know them, were not without their weak sides as well as others. Pedants,
I will add here, talk to the vulgar as pedagogues talk to schoolboys, on
an understood principle of condescension and superiority, and therefore
make little progress in the knowledge of men or things. While they
fancy they are accommodating themselves to, or else assuming airs of
importance over, inferior capacities, these inferior capacities are
really laughing at them. There can be no true superiority but what
arises out of the presupposed ground of equality: there can be no
improvement but from the free communication and comparing of ideas.
Kings and nobles, for this reason, receive little benefit from
society--where all is submission on one side, and condescension on the
other. The mind strikes out truth by collision, as steel strikes fire
from the flint!
There are whole families who are born classical, and are entered in
the heralds' college of reputation by the right of consanguinity.
Literature, like nobility, runs in the blood. There is the Burney
family. There is no end of it or its pretensions. It produces wits,
scholars, novelists, musicians, artists in 'numbers numberless.' The
name is alone a passport to the Temple of Fame. Those who bear it
are free of Parnassus by birthright. The founder of it was himself an
historian and a musician, but more of a courtier and man of the world
than either. The secret of his success may perhaps be discovered in the
following passage, where, in alluding to three eminent performers on
different instruments, he says: 'These three illustrious personages were
introduced at the Emperor's court,' etc.; speaking of them as if they
were foreign ambassadors or princes of the blood, and thus magnifying
himself and his profession. This overshadowing manner carries nearly
everything before it, and mystifies a great many. There is nothing like
putting the best face upon things, and leaving others to find out the
difference. He who could call three musicians 'personages' would himself
play a personage through life, and succeed in his leading object. Sir
Joshua Reynolds, remarking on this passage, said: 'No one had a greater
respect than he had for his profession, but that he should never think
of applying to it epithets that were appropriated merely to external
rank and distinction.' Madame d'Arblay, it must be owned, had cleverness
enough to stock a whole family, and to set up her cousin-germans, male
and female, for wits and virtuosos to the third and fourth generation.
The rest have done nothing, that I know of, but keep up the name.
The most celebrated author in modern times has written without a name,
and has been knighted for anonymous productions. Lord Byron complains
that Horace Walpole was not properly appreciated, 'first, because he
was a gentleman; and secondly, because he was a nobleman.' His Lordship
stands in one, at least, of the predicaments here mentioned, and yet he
has had justice, or somewhat more, done him. He towers above his fellows
by all the height of the peerage. If the poet lends a grace to the
nobleman, the nobleman pays it back to the poet with interest. What
a fine addition is ten thousand a year and a title to the flaunting
pretensions of a modern rhapsodist! His name so accompanied becomes
the mouth well: it is repeated thousands of times, instead of hundreds,
because the reader in being familiar with the Poet's works seems to
claim acquaintance with the Lord.
Let but a lord once own the happy lines:
How the wit brightens, and the style refines!
He smiles at the high-flown praise or petty cavils of little men. Does
he make a slip in decorum, which Milton declares to be the principal
thing? His proud crest and armorial bearings support him: no
bend-sinister slurs his poetical escutcheon! Is he dull, or does he
put of some trashy production on the public? It is not charged to his
account, as a deficiency which he must make good at the peril of
his admirers. His Lordship is not answerable for the negligence or
extravagances of his Muse. He 'bears a charmed reputation, which must
not yield' like one of vulgar birth. The Noble Bard is for this
reason scarcely vulnerable to the critics. The double barrier of his
pretensions baffles their puny, timid efforts. Strip off some of his
tarnished laurels, and the coronet appears glittering beneath: restore
them, and it still shines through with keener lustre. In fact, his
Lordship's blaze of reputation culminates from his rank and place in
society. He sustains two lofty and imposing characters; and in order to
simplify the process of our admiration, and 'leave no rubs or botches in
the way,' we equalise his pretensions, and take it for granted that he
must be as superior to other men in genius as he is in birth. Or, to
give a more familiar solution of the enigma, the Poet and the Peer agree
to honour each other's acceptances on the bank of Fame, and sometimes
cozen the town to some tune between them. Really, however, and with all
his privileges, Lord Byron might as well not have written that strange
letter about Pope. I could not afford it, poor as I am. Why does he
pronounce, _ex cathedra_ and robed, that Cowper is no poet? Cowper was
a gentleman and of noble family like his critic. He was a teacher
of morality as well as a describer of nature, which is more than his
Lordship is. His _John Gilpin_ will last as long as _Beppo,_ and his
verses to Mary are not less touching than the _Farewell._ If I had
ventured upon such an assertion as this, it would have been worse for me
than finding out a borrowed line in the _Pleasures of Hope._
There is not a more helpless or more despised animal than a mere author,
without any extrinsic advantages of birth, breeding, or fortune to set
him off. The real ore of talents or learning must be stamped before it
will pass current. To be at all looked upon as an author, a man must
be something more or less than an author--a rich merchant, a banker, a
lord, or a ploughman. He is admired for something foreign to himself,
that acts as a bribe to the servility or a set-off to the envy of the
community. 'What should such fellows as we do, crawling betwixt heaven
and earth';--'coining our hearts for drachmas'; now scorched in the sun,
now shivering in the breeze, now coming out in our newest gloss and best
attire, like swallows in the spring, now 'sent back like hollowmas or
shortest day'? The best wits, like the handsomest faces _upon the town,_
lead a harassing, precarious life--are taken up for the bud and promise
of talent, which they no sooner fulfil than they are thrown aside
like an old fashion--are caressed without reason, and insulted with
impunity--are subject to all the caprice, the malice, and fulsome
advances of that great keeper, the Public--and in the end come to no
good, like all those who lavish their favours on mankind at large, and
look to the gratitude of the world for their reward. Instead of this set
of Grub Street authors, the mere _canaille_ of letters, this corporation
of Mendicity, this ragged regiment of genius suing at the corners of
streets in _forma pauperis,_ give me the gentleman and scholar, with a
good house over his head and a handsome table 'with wine of Attic taste'
to ask his friends to, and where want and sorrow never come. Fill up the
sparkling bowl; heap high the dessert with roses crowned; bring out the
hot-pressed poem, the vellum manuscripts, the medals, the portfolios,
the intaglios--this is the true model of the life of a man of taste and
_virtu_--the possessors, not the inventors of these things, are the true
benefactors of mankind and ornaments of letters. Look in, and there,
amidst silver services and shining chandeliers, you will see the man
of genius at his proper post, picking his teeth and mincing an opinion,
sheltered by rank, bowing to wealth--a poet framed, glazed, and hung
in a striking light; not a straggling weed, torn and trampled on; not
a poor _Kit-run-the-street,_ but a powdered beau, a sycophant plant, an
exotic reared in a glass case, hermetically sealed,