The chief disadvantage of knowing more and seeing farther than others,
is not to be generally understood. A man is, in consequence of this,
liable to start paradoxes, which immediately transport him beyond the
reach of the common-place reader. A person speaking once in a slighting
manner of a very original-minded man, received for answer, "He strides
on so far before you that he dwindles in the distance!"
Petrarch complains that 'Nature had made him different from other
people'--_singular' d' altri genti._ The great happiness of life is, to
be neither better nor worse than the general run of those you meet with,
you soon find a mortifying level in their difference to what you
particularly pique yourself upon. What is the use of being moral in a
night-cellar, or wise in Bedlam? 'To be honest, as this world goes, is
to be one man picked out of ten thousand.' So says Shakespear; and the
commentators have not added that, under these circumstances, a man is
more likely to become the butt of slander than the mark of admiration
for being so. 'How now, thou particular fellow?'(1) is the common answer
to all such out-of-the-way pretensions. By not doing as those at Rome
do, we cut ourselves off from good-fellowship and society. We speak
another language, have notions of our own, and are treated as of a
different species. Nothing can be more awkward than to intrude with any
such far-fetched ideas among the common herd, who will be sure to
Stand all astonished, like a sort of steers,
'Mongst whom some beast of strange and foreign race
Unwares is chanced, far straying from his peers:
So will their ghastly gaze betray their hidden fears.
Ignorance of another's meaning is a sufficient cause of fear, and fear
produces hatred: hence the suspicion and rancour entertained against
all those who set up for greater refinement and wisdom than their
neighbours. It is in vain to think of softening down this spirit of
hostility by simplicity of manners, or by condescending to persons of
low estate. The more you condescend, the more they will presume upon
it; they will fear you less, but hate you more; and will be the more
determined to take their revenge on you for a superiority as to which
they are entirely in the dark, and of which you yourself seem to
entertain considerable doubt. All the humility in the world will only
pass for weakness and folly. They have no notion of such a thing. They
always put their best foot forward; and argue that you would do the same
if you had any such wonderful talents as people say. You had better,
therefore, play off the great man at once--hector, swagger, talk big,
and ride the high horse over them: you may by this means extort outward
respect or common civility; but you will get nothing (with low people)
by forbearance and good-nature but open insult or silent contempt.
Coleridge always talks to people about what they don't understand: I,
for one, endeavour to talk to them about what they do understand, and
find I only get the more ill-will by it. They conceive I do not think
them capable of anything better; that I do not think it worth while, as
the vulgar saying is, to _throw a word to a dog._ I once complained of
this to Coleridge, thinking it hard I should be sent to Coventry for
not making a prodigious display. He said: 'As you assume a certain
character, you ought to produce your credentials. It is a tax upon
people's good-nature to admit superiority of any kind, even where there
is the most evident proof of it; but it is too hard a task for the
imagination to admit it without any apparent ground at all.'
There is not a greater error than to suppose that you avoid the envy,
malice, and uncharitableness, so common in the world, by going among
people without pretensions. There are no people who have no pretensions;
or the fewer their pretensions, the less they can afford to acknowledge
yours without some sort of value received. The more information
individuals possess, or the more they have refined upon any subject, the
more readily can they conceive and admit the same kind of superiority
to themselves that they feel over others. But from the low, dull, level
sink of ignorance and vulgarity, no idea or love of excellence can
arise. You think you are doing mighty well with them; that you are
laying aside the buckram of pedantry and pretence, and getting the
character of a plain, unassuming, good sort of fellow. It will not do.
All the while that you are making these familiar advances, and wanting
to be at your ease, they are trying to recover the wind of you. You
may forget that you are an author, an artist, or what not--they do not
forget that they are nothing, nor bate one jot of their desire to prove
you in the same predicament. They take hold of some circumstance in your
dress; your manner of entering a room is different from that of other
people; you do not eat vegetables--that's odd; you have a particular
phrase, which they repeat, and this becomes a sort of standing joke; you
look grave, or ill; you talk, or are more silent than usual; you are
in or out of pocket: all these petty, inconsiderable circumstances, in
which you resemble, or are unlike other people, form so many counts in
the indictment which is going on in their imaginations against you, and
are so many contradictions in your character. In any one else they would
pass unnoticed, but in a person of whom they had heard so much they
cannot make them out at all. Meanwhile, those things in which you may
really excel go for nothing, because they cannot judge of them. They
speak highly of some book which you do not like, and therefore you make
no answer. You recommend them to go and see some Picture in which they
do not find much to admire. How are you to convince them that you are
right? Can you make them perceive that the fault is in them, and not
in the picture, unless you could give them your knowledge? They hardly
distinguish the difference between a Correggio and a common daub. Does
this bring you any nearer to an understanding? The more you know of the
difference, the more deeply you feel it, or the more earnestly you
wish to convey it, the farther do you find yourself removed to an
immeasurable distance from the possibility of making them enter into
views and feelings of which they have not even the first rudiments. You
cannot make them see with your eyes, and they must judge for themselves.
Intellectual is not like bodily strength. You have no hold of the
understanding of others but by their sympathy. Your knowing, in fact,
so much more about a subject does not give you a superiority, that is, a
power over them, but only renders it the more impossible for you to make
the least impression on them. Is it, then, an advantage to you? It may
be, as it relates to your own private satisfaction, but it places a
greater gulf between you and society. It throws stumbling-blocks in your
way at every turn. All that you take most pride and pleasure in is
lost upon the vulgar eye. What they are pleased with is a matter of
indifference or of distaste to you. In seeing a number of persons turn
over a portfolio of prints from different masters, what a trial it is to
the patience, how it jars the nerves to hear them fall into raptures at
some common-place flimsy thing, and pass over some divine expression
of countenance without notice, or with a remark that it is very
singular-looking? How useless it is in such cases to fret or argue,
or remonstrate? Is it not quite as well to be without all this
hypercritical, fastidious knowledge, and to be pleased or displeased as
it happens, or struck with the first fault or beauty that is pointed
out by others? I would be glad almost to change my acquaintance with
pictures, with books, and, certainly, what I know of mankind, for
anybody's ignorance of them!
It is recorded in the life of some worthy (whose name I forget) that he
was one of those 'who loved hospitality and respect': and I profess
to belong to the same classification of mankind. Civility is with me a
jewel. I like a little comfortable cheer, and careless, indolent chat,
I hate to be always wise, or aiming at wisdom. I have enough to do with
literary cabals, questions, critics, actors, essay-writing, without
taking them out with me for recreation, and into all companies. I wish
at these times to pass for a good-humoured fellow; and good-will is
all I ask in return to make good company. I do not desire to be
always posing myself or others with the questions of fate, free-will,
foreknowledge absolute, etc. I must unbend sometimes. I must
occasionally lie fallow. The kind of conversation that I affect most is
what sort of a day it is, and whether it is likely to rain or hold
up fine for to-morrow. This I consider as enjoying the _otium cum
dignitate,_ as the end and privilege of a life of study. I would resign
myself to this state of easy indifference, but I find I cannot. I must
maintain a certain pretension, which is far enough from my wish. I must
he put on my defence, I must take up the gauntlet continually, or I find
I lose ground. 'I am nothing, if not critical.' While I am thinking what
o'clock it is, or how I came to blunder in quoting a well-known passage,
as if I had done it on purpose, others are thinking whether I am not
really as dull a fellow as I am sometimes said to be. If a drizzling
shower patters against the windows, it puts me in mind of a mild spring
rain, from which I retired twenty years ago, into a little public-house
near Wem in Shropshire, and while I saw the plants and shrubs before
the door imbibe the dewy moisture, quaffed a glass of sparkling ale, and
walked home in the dusk of evening, brighter to me than noonday suns
at present are! Would I indulge this feeling? In vain. They ask me what
news there is, and stare if I say I don't know. If a new actress has
come out, why must I have seen her? If a new novel has appeared, why
must I have read it? I, at one time, used to go and take a hand at
cribbage with a friend, and afterwards discuss a cold sirloin of beef,
and throw out a few lackadaisical remarks, in a way to please myself,
but it would not do long. I set up little pretension, and therefore the
little that I did set up was taken from me. As I said nothing on that
subject myself, it was continually thrown in my teeth that I was an
author. From having me at this disadvantage, my friend wanted to peg on
a hole or two in the game, and was displeased if I would not let him. If
I won off him, it was hard he should be beat by an author. If he won, it
would be strange if he did not understand the game better than I did. If
I mentioned my favourite game of rackets, there was a general silence,
as if this was my weak point. If I complained of being ill, it was asked
why I made myself so. If I said such an actor had played a part well,
the answer was, there was a different account in one of the newspapers.
If any allusion was made to men of letters, there was a suppressed
smile. If I told a humorous story, it was difficult to say whether the
laugh was at me or at the narrative. The wife hated me for my ugly face;
the servants, because I could not always get them tickets for the play,
and because they could not tell exactly what an author meant. If a
paragraph appeared against anything I had written, I found it was ready
there before me, and I was to undergo a regular _roasting._ I submitted
to all this till I was tired, and then I gave it up.
One of the miseries of intellectual pretensions is, that nine-tenths of
those you come in contact with do not know whether you are an impostor
or not. I dread that certain anonymous criticisms should get into the
hands of servants where I go, or that my hatter or shoemaker should
happen to read them, who cannot possibly tell whether they are well or
ill founded. The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy of
its malice. There are people whose good opinion or good-will you want,
setting aside all literary pretensions; and it is hard to lose by an ill
report (which you have no means of rectifying) what you cannot gain by a
good one. After a _diatribe_ in the _Quarterly_ (which is taken in by
a gentleman who occupies my old apartments on the first floor), my
landlord brings me up his bill (of some standing), and on my offering
to give him so much in money and a note of hand for the rest, shakes his
head, and says he is afraid he could make no use of it. Soon after, the
daughter comes in, and, on my mentioning the circumstance carelessly to
her, replies gravely, 'that indeed her father has been almost ruined
by bills.' _This is the unkindest cut of all._ It is in vain for me to
endeavour to explain that the publication in which I am abused is a mere
government engine--an organ of a political faction. They know nothing
about that. They only know such and such imputations are thrown out; and
the more I try to remove them, the more they think there is some truth
in them. Perhaps the people of the house are strong Tories--government
agents of some sort. Is it for me to enlighten their ignorance? If
I say, I once wrote a thing called _Prince Maurice's Parrot_, and an
_Essay on the Regal Character_, in the former of which allusion is made
to a noble marquis, and in the latter to a great personage (so at least,
I am told, it has been construed), and that Mr. Croker has peremptory
instructions to retaliate, they cannot conceive what connection there
can be between me and such distinguished characters. I can get no
farther. Such is the misery of pretensions beyond your situation,
and which are not backed by any external symbols of wealth or rank,
intelligible to all mankind!
The impertinence of admiration is scarcely more tolerable than the
demonstrations of contempt. I have known a person whom I had never
seen before besiege me all dinner-time with asking what articles I had
written in the _Edinburgh Review?_ I was at last ashamed to answer to my
splendid sins in that way. Others will pick out something not yours, and
say they are sure no one else could write it. By the first sentence they
can always tell your style. Now I hate my style to be known, as I hate
all _idiosyncrasy._ These obsequious flatterers could not pay me a worse
compliment. Then there are those who make a point of reading everything
you write (which is fulsome); while others, more provoking, regularly
lend your works to a friend as soon as they receive them. They pretty
well know your notions on the different subjects, from having heard you
talk about them. Besides, they have a greater value for your personal
character than they have for your writings. You explain things better in
a common way, when you are not aiming at effect. Others tell you of the
faults they have heard found with your last book, and that they defend
your style in general from a charge of obscurity. A friend once told me
of a quarrel he had had with a near relation, who denied that I knew
how to spell the commonest words. These are comfortable confidential
communications to which authors who have their friends and excusers are
subject. A gentleman told me that a lady had objected to my use of the
word _learneder_ as bad grammar. He said he thought it a pity that I
did not take more care, but that the lady was perhaps prejudiced, as her
husband held a government office. I looked for the word, and found it
in a motto from Butler. I was piqued, and desired him to tell the fair
critic that the fault was not in me, but in one who had far more wit,
more learning, and loyalty than I could pretend to. Then, again, some
will pick out the flattest thing of yours they can find to load it with
panegyrics; and others tell you (by way of letting you see how high they
rank your capacity) that your best passages are failures. Lamb has a
knack of tasting (or as he would say, _palating_) the insipid. Leigh
Hunt has a trick of turning away from the relishing morsels you put on
his plate. There is no getting the start of some people. Do what you
will, they can do it better; meet with what success you may, their own
good opinion stands them in better stead, and runs before the applause
of the world. I once showed a person of this overweening turn (with no
small triumph, I confess) a letter of a very flattering description I
had received from the celebrated Count Stendhal, dated Rome. He returned
it with a smile of indifference, and said, he had had a letter from
Rome himself the day before, from his friend S----! I did not think this
'germane to the matter.' Godwin pretends I never wrote anything worth
a farthing but my 'Answers to Vetus,' and that I fail altogether when I
attempt to write an essay, or anything in a short compass.
What can one do in such cases? Shall I confess a weakness? The only
set-off I know to these rebuffs and mortifications is sometimes in an
accidental notice or involuntary mark of distinction from a stranger. I
feel the force of Horace's _digito monstrari_--I like to be pointed out
in the street, or to hear people ask in Mr. Powell's court, _Which
is Mr. Hazlitt?_ This is to me a pleasing extension of one's personal
identity. Your name so repeated leaves an echo like music on the ear: it
stirs the blood like the sound of a trumpet. It shows that other people
are curious to see you; that they think of you, and feel an interest in
you without your knowing it. This is a bolster to lean upon; a lining to
your poor, shivering, threadbare opinion of yourself. You want some such
cordial to exhausted spirits, and relief to the dreariness of abstract
speculation. You are something; and, from occupying a place in the
thoughts of others, think less contemptuously of yourself. You are the
better able to run the gauntlet of prejudice and vulgar abuse. It is
pleasant in this way to have your opinion quoted against yourself, and
your own sayings repeated to you as good things. I was once talking to
an intelligent man in the pit, and criticising Mr. Knight's performance
of Filch. 'Ah!' he said, 'little Simmons was the fellow to play that
character.' He added, 'There was a most excellent remark made upon his
acting it in the _Examiner_ (I think it was)--_That he looked as if
he had the gallows in one eye and a pretty girl in the other._' I said
nothing, but was in remarkably good humour the rest of the evening. I
have seldom been in a company where fives-playing has been talked of but
some one has asked in the course of it, 'Pray, did any one ever see
an account of one Cavanagh that appeared some time back in most of the
papers? Is it known who wrote it?' These are trying moments. I had a
triumph over a person, whose name I will not mention, on the following
occasion. I happened to be saying something about Burke, and was
expressing my opinion of his talents in no measured terms, when this
gentleman interrupted me by saying he thought, for his part, that Burke
had been greatly overrated, and then added, in a careless way, 'Pray,
did you read a character of him in the last number of the -----?'
'I wrote it!'--I could not resist the antithesis, but was afterwards
ashamed of my momentary petulance. Yet no one that I find ever spares
me.
Some persons seek out and obtrude themselves on public characters in
order, as it might seem, to pick out their failings, and afterwards
betray them. Appearances are for it, but truth and a better knowledge
of nature are against this interpretation of the matter. Sycophants and
flatterers are undesignedly treacherous and fickle. They are prone to
admire inordinately at first, and not finding a constant supply of food
for this kind of sickly appetite, take a distaste to the object of their
idolatry. To be even with themselves for their credulity, they sharpen
their wits to spy out faults, and are delighted to find that this
answers better than their first employment. It is a course of study,
'lively, audible, and full of vent.' They have the organ of wonder and
the organ of fear in a prominent degree. The first requires new objects
of admiration to satisfy its uneasy cravings: the second makes them
crouch to power wherever its shifting standard appears, and willing
to curry favour with all parties, and ready to betray any out of sheer
weakness and servility. I do not think they mean any harm: at least, I
can look at this obliquity with indifference in my own particular case.
I have been more disposed to resent it as I have seen it practised upon
others, where I have been better able to judge of the extent of the
mischief, and the heartlessness and idiot folly it discovered.
I do not think great intellectual attainments are any recommendation to
the women. They puzzle them, and are a diversion to the main question.
If scholars talk to ladies of what they understand, their hearers are
none the wiser: if they talk of other things, they prove themselves
fools. The conversation between Angelica and Foresight in _Love for
Love_ is a receipt in full for all such overstrained nonsense: while he
is wandering among the signs of the zodiac, she is standing a-tiptoe on
the earth. It has been remarked that poets do not choose mistresses very
wisely. I believe it is not choice, but necessity. If they could throw
the handkerchief like the Grand Turk, I imagine we should see scarce
mortals, but rather goddesses, surrounding their steps, and each
exclaiming, with Lord Byron's own Ionian maid--
So shalt thou find me ever at thy side,
Here and hereafter, if the last may be!
Ah! no, these are bespoke, carried of by men of mortal, not of ethereal
mould, and thenceforth the poet from whose mind the ideas of love and
beauty are inseparable as dreams from sleep, goes on the forlorn hope of
the passion, and dresses up the first Dulcinea that will take compassion
on him in all the colours of fancy. What boots it to complain if the
delusion lasts for life, and the rainbow still paints its form in the
cloud?
There is one mistake I would wish, if possible, to correct. Men of
letters, artists, and others not succeeding with women in a certain rank
of life, think the objection is to their want of fortune, and that they
shall stand a better chance by descending lower, where only their
good qualities or talents will be thought of. Oh! worse and worse. The
objection is to themselves, not to their fortune--to their abstraction,
to their absence of mind, to their unintelligible and romantic notions.
Women of education may have a glimpse of their meaning, may get a clue
to their character, but to all others they are thick darkness. If the
mistress smiles at their ideal advances, the maid will laugh outright;
she will throw water over you, get her sister to listen, send her
sweetheart to ask you what you mean, will set the village or the house
upon your back; it will be a farce, a comedy, a standing jest for
a year, and then the murder will out. Scholars should be sworn
at Highgate. They are no match for chambermaids, or wenches at
lodging-houses. They had better try their hands on heiresses or ladies
of quality. These last have high notions of themselves that may fit some
of your epithets! They are above mortality; so are your thoughts!
But with low life, trick, ignorance, and cunning, you have nothing
in common. Whoever you are, that think you can make a compromise or
a conquest there by good nature or good sense, be warned by a friendly
voice, and retreat in time from the unequal contest.
If, as I have said above, scholars are no match for chambermaids, on
the other hand gentlemen are no match for blackguards. The former are
on their honour, act on the square; the latter take all advantages, and
have no idea of any other principle. It is astonishing how soon a fellow
without education will learn to cheat. He is impervious to any ray of
liberal knowledge; his understanding is