A gentle usher, Vanity by name. --Spenser.
A lady was complaining to a friend of mine of the credulity of people in
attending to quack advertisements, and wondering who could be taken in
by them--"for that she had never bought but one half-guinea bottle of
Dr. -----'s Elixir of Life, and it had done her no sort of good!" This
anecdote seemed to explain pretty well what made it worth the doctor's
while to advertise his wares in every newspaper in the kingdom. He
would no doubt be satisfied if every delicate, sceptical invalid in
his majesty's dominions gave his Elixir one trial, merely to show the
absurdity of the thing. We affect to laugh at the folly of those who put
faith in nostrums, but are willing to see ourselves whether there is any
truth in them.
There is a strong tendency in the human mind to flatter itself with
secret hopes, with some lucky reservation in our own favour, though
reason may point out the grossness of the trick in general; and,
besides, there is a wonderful power in words, formed into regular
propositions, and printed in capital letters, to draw the assent after
them, till we have proof of their fallacy. The ignorant and idle believe
what they read, as Scotch philosophers demonstrate the existence of a
material world, and other learned propositions, from the evidence of
their senses. The ocular proof is all that is wanting in either case.
As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art
of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth. We can
hardly _believe_ a thing to be a lie, though we _know_ it to be so.
The 'puff direct,' even as it stands in the columns of the _Times_
newspaper, branded with the title of Advertisement before it, claims
some sort of attention and respect for the merits that it discloses,
though we think the candidate for public favour and support has hit
upon (perhaps) an injudicious way of laying them before the world. Still
there may be something in them; and even the outrageous improbability
and extravagance of the statement on the very face of it stagger us,
and leave a hankering to inquire farther into it, because we think the
advertiser would hardly have the impudence to hazard such barefaced
absurdities without some foundation. Such is the strength of the
association between words and things in the mind--so much oftener must
our credulity have been justified by the event than imposed upon.
If every second story we heard was an invention, we should lose our
mechanical disposition to trust to the meaning of sounds, just as when
we have met with a number of counterfeit pieces of coin, we suspect good
ones; but our implicit assent to what we hear is a proof how much more
sincerity and good faith there is in the sum total of our dealings with
one another than artifice and imposture.
'To elevate and surprise' is the great art of quackery and puffing;
to raise a lively and exaggerated image in the mind, and take it by
surprise before it can recover breath, as it were; so that by having
been caught in the trap, it is unwilling to retract entirely--has a
secret desire to find itself in the right, and a determination to see
whether it is or not. Describe a picture as _lofty,_ _imposing,_ and
_grand,_ these words excite certain ideas in the mind like the sound
of a trumpet, which are not to be quelled, except by seeing the picture
itself, nor even then, if it is viewed by the help of a catalogue,
written expressly for the occasion by the artist himself. It is not to
be supposed that _he_ would say such things of his picture unless they
were allowed by all the world; and he repeats them, on this gentle
understanding, till all the world allows them.(1) So Reputation runs in
a vicious circle, and Merit limps behind it, mortified and abashed
at its own insignificance. It has been said that the test of fame or
popularity is to consider the number of times your name is repeated by
others, or is brought to their recollection in the course of a year. At
this rate, a man has his reputation in his own hands, and, by the help
of puffing and the press, may forestall the voice of posterity, and
stun the 'groundling' ear of his contemporaries. A name let off in your
hearing continually, with some bouncing epithet affixed to it, startles
you like the report of a pistol close at your ear: you cannot help
the effect upon the imagination, though you know it is perfectly
harmless--_vox et praeterea nihil._ So, if you see the same name staring
you in the face in great letters at the corner of every street, you
involuntarily think the owner of it must be a great man to occupy so
large a space in the eye of the town. The appeal is made, in the first
instance, to the senses, but it sinks below the surface into the mind.
There are some, indeed, who publish their own disgrace, and make their
names a common by-word and nuisance, notoriety being all that they wa
though you may laugh in his face, it pays expenses. Parolles and his
drum typify many a modern adventurer and court-candidate for unearned
laurels and unblushing honours. Of all puffs, lottery puffs are the most
ingenious and most innocent. A collection of them would make an amusing
_Vade mecum._ They are still various and the same, with that infinite
ruse with which they lull the reader at the outset out of all suspicion.
the insinuating turn in the middle, the home-thrust at the ruling
passion at last, by which your spare cash is conjured clean out of
the pocket in spite of resolution, by the same stale, well-known,
thousandth-time repeated artifice of _All prizes_ and _No blanks_--a
self-evident imposition! Nothing, however, can be a stronger proof of
the power of fascinating the public judgment through the eye alone. I
know a gentleman who amassed a considerable fortune (so as to be able
to keep his carriage) by printing nothing but lottery placards and
handbills of a colossal size. Another friend of mine (of no mean
talents) was applied to (as a snug thing in the way of business) to
write regular lottery puffs for a large house in the city, and on having
a parcel of samples returned on his hands as done in too severe and
terse a style, complained quaintly enough, _'That modest merit never
could succeed!'_ Even Lord Byron, as he tells us, has been accused of
writing lottery-puffs. There are various ways of playing one's-self off
before the public, and keeping one's name alive. The newspapers, the
lamp-posts, the walls of empty houses, the shutters of windows, the
blank covers of magazines and reviews, are open to every one. I have
heard of a man of literary celebrity sitting in his study writing
letters of remonstrance to himself, on the gross defects of a plan
of education he had just published, and which remained unsold on the
bookseller's counter. Another feigned himself dead in order to see what
would be said of him in the newspapers, and to excite a sensation
in this way. A flashy pamphlet has been run to a five-and-thirtieth
edition, and thus ensured the writer a 'deathless date' among political
charlatans, by regularly striking off a new title-page to every fifty
or a hundred copies that were sold. This is a vile practice. It is
an erroneous idea got abroad (and which I will contradict here) that
paragraphs are paid for in the leading journals. It is quite out of the
question. A favourable notice of an author, an actress, etc., may be
inserted through interest, or to oblige a friend, but it must invariably
be done for _love,_ not _money!_
When I formerly had to do with these sort of critical verdicts, I was
generally sent out of the way when any _debutant_ had a friend at
court, and was to be tenderly handled. For the rest, or those of robust
constitutions, I had _carte blanche_ given me. Sometimes I ran out of
the course, to be sure. Poor Perry! what bitter complaints he used to
make, that by _running-a-muck_ at lords and Scotchmen I should not leave
him a place to dine out at! The expression of his face at these moments,
as if he should shortly be without a friend in the world, was truly
pitiable. What squabbles we used to have about Kean and Miss Stephens,
the only theatrical favourites I ever had! Mrs. Billington had got some
notion that Miss Stephens would never make a singer, and it was the
torment of Perry's life (as he told me in confidence) that he could not
get any two people to be of the same opinion on any one point. I shall
appearance in the _Beggar's Opera._ I have reason to remember that
article: it was almost the last I ever wrote with any pleasure to
myself. I had been down on a visit to my friends near Chertsey, and on
my return had stopped at an inn near Kingston-upon-Thames, where I had
got the _Beggar's Opera_, and had read it over-night. The next day I
walked cheerfully to town. It was a fine sunny morning, in the end of
autumn, and as I repeated the beautiful song, 'Life knows no return
of Spring,' I meditated my next day's criticism, trying to do all the
justice I could to so inviting a subject. I was not a little proud of it
by anticipation. I had just then begun to stammer out my sentiments on
paper, and was in a kind of honeymoon of authorship. But soon after, my
final hopes of happiness and of human liberty were blighted nearly at
the same time; and since then I have had no pleasure in anything--
And Love himself can flatter me no more.
It was not so ten years since (ten short years since.--Ah! how fast
those years run that hurry us away from our last fond dream of bliss!)
when I loitered along thy green retreats, O Twickenham! and conned
over (with enthusiastic delight) the chequered view which one of thy
favourites drew of human life! I deposited my account of the play at the
Morning Chronicle office in the afternoon, and went to see Miss Stephens
as Polly. Those were happy times, in which she first came out in this
character, in Mandane, where she sang the delicious air, 'If o'er the
cruel tyrant, Love' (so as it can never be sung again), in _Love in a
Village_, where the scene opened with her and Miss Matthews in a painted
garden of roses and honeysuckles, and 'Hope, thou nurse of young Desire'
thrilled from two sweet voices in turn. Oh! may my ears sometimes still
drink the same sweet sounds, embalmed with the spirit of youth, of
health, and joy, but in the thoughts of an instant, but in a dream of
fancy, and I shall hardly need to complain! When I got back, after the
play, Perry called out, with his cordial, grating voice, 'Well, how did
she do?' and on my speaking in high terms, answered, that 'he had been
to dine with his friend the Duke, that some conversation had passed on
the subject, he was afraid it was not the thing, it was not the true
_sostenuto_ style; but as I had written the article' (holding my
peroration on the _Beggar's Opera_ carelessly in his hand), 'it might
pass!' I could perceive that the rogue licked his lips at it, and had
already in imagination 'bought golden opinions of all sorts of people'
by this very criticism, and I had the satisfaction the next day to meet
Miss Stephens coming out of the editor's room, who had been to thank him
for his very flattering account of her.
I was sent to see Kean the first night of his performance in Shylock,
when there were about a hundred people in the pit; but from his masterly
and spirited delivery of the first striking speech, 'On such a day you
called me a dog,' etc., I perceived it was a hollow thing. So it was
given out in the _Chronicle_; but Perry was continually at me as other
people were at him, and was afraid it would not last. It was to no
purpose I said _it would last:_ yet I am in the right hitherto. It
has been said, ridiculously, that Mr. Kean was written up in the
_Chronicle._ I beg leave to state my opinion that no actor can be
written up or down by a paper. An author may be puffed into notice, or
damned by criticism, because his book may not have been read. An artist
may be overrated, or undeservedly decried, because the public is not
much accustomed to see or judge of pictures. But an actor is judged
by his peers, the play-going public, and must stand or fall by his own
merits or defects. The critic may give the tone or have a casting
voice where popular opinion is divided; but he can no more _force_
that opinion either way, or wrest it from its base in common sense and
feeling, than he can move Stonehenge. Mr. Kean had, however, physical
disadvantages and strong prejudices to encounter, and so far the
_liberal_ and _independent_ part of the press might have been of service
in helping him to his seat in the public favour. May he long keep it
with dignity and firmness!(2)
It was pretended by the Covent Garden people, and some others at the
time, that Mr. Kean's popularity was a mere effect of love of novelty, a
nine days' wonder, like the rage after Master Betty's acting, and would
be as soon over. The comparison did not hold. Master Betty's acting
was so far wonderful, and drew crowds to see it as a mere singularity,
because he was a boy. Mr. Kean was a grown man, and there was no rule
or precedent established in the ordinary course of nature why some
other man should not appear in tragedy as great as John Kemble. Farther,
Master Betty's acting was a singular phenomenon, but it was also as
beautiful as it was singular. I saw him in the part of Douglas, and
he seemed almost like 'some gay creature of the element,' moving about
gracefully, with all the flexibility of youth, and murmuring AEolian
sounds with plaintive tenderness. I shall never forget the way in which
he repeated the line in which young Norval says, speaking of the fate of
two brothers:
And in my mind happy was he that died!
The tones fell and seemed to linger prophetic on my ear. Perhaps the
wonder was made greater than it was. Boys at that age can often read
remarkably well, and certainly are not without natural grace and
sweetness of voice. The Westminster schoolboys are a better company of
comedians than we find at most of our theatres. As to the understanding
a part like Douglas, at least, I see no difficulty on that score.
I myself used to recite the speech in Enfield's _Speaker_ with good
emphasis and discretion when at school, and entered, about the same age,
into the wild sweetness of the sentiments in Mrs. Radcliffe's _Romance
of the Forest_, I am sure, quite as much as I should do now; yet the
same experiment has been often tried since and has uniformly failed.(3)
It was soon after this that Coleridge returned from Italy, and he got
one day into a long tirade to explain what a ridiculous farce the whole
was, and how all the people abroad wore shocked at the _gullibility_ of
the English nation, who on this and every other occasion were open to
the artifices of all sorts of quacks, wondering how any persons with the
smallest pretensions to common sense could for a moment suppose that
a boy could act the characters of men without any of their knowledge,
their experience, or their passions. We made some faint resistance, but
in vain. The discourse then took a turn, and Coleridge began a laboured
eulogy on some promising youth, the son of an English artist, whom he
had met in Italy, and who had wandered all over the Campagna with him,
whose talents, he assured us, were the admiration of all Rome, and whose
early designs had almost all the grace and purity of Raphael's. At last,
some one interrupted the endless theme by saying a little impatiently,
'Why just now you would not let us believe our own eyes and ears about
young Betty, because you have a theory against premature talents, and
now you start a boy phenomenon that nobody knows anything about but
yourself--a young artist that, you tell us, is to rival Raphael!' The
truth is, we like to have something to admire ourselves, as well as to
make other people gape and stare at; but then it must be a discovery of
our own, an idol of our own making and setting up:--if others stumble on
the discovery before us, or join in crying it up to the skies, we
then set to work to prove that this is a vulgar delusion, and show our
sagacity and freedom from prejudice by pulling it in pieces with all
the coolness imaginable. Whether we blow the bubble or crush it in our
hands, vanity and the desire of empty distinction are equally at the
bottom of our sanguine credulity or fastidious scepticism. There are
some who always fall in with the fashionable prejudice as others affect
singularity of opinion on all such points, according as they think they
have more or less wit to judge for themselves.
If a little varnishing and daubing, a little puffing and quacking, and
giving yourself a good name, and getting a friend to speak a word
for you, is excusable in any profession, it is, I think, in that
of painting. Painting is an occult science, and requires a little
ostentation and mock-gravity in the professor. A man may here rival
Katterfelto, 'with his hair on end at his own wonders, wondering for
his bread'; for, if he does not, he may in the end go without it. He may
ride on a high-trotting horse, in green spectacles, and attract notice
to his person anyhow he can, if he only works hard at his profession.
If 'it only is when he is _out_ he is acting,' let him make the fools
stare, but give others something worth looking at. Good Mr. Carver and
Gilder, good Mr. Printer's Devil, good Mr. Billsticker, 'do me your
offices' unmolested! Painting is a plain ground, and requires a great
many heraldic quarterings and facings to set it off. Lay on, and do not
spare. No man's merit can be fairly judged of if he is not known; and
how can he be known if he keeps entirely in the background?(4) A great
name in art goes but a little way, is chilled as it creeps along the
surface of the world without something to revive and make it blaze up
with fresh splendour. Fame is here almost obscurity. It is long
before your name affixed to a sterling design will be spelt out by an
undiscerning regardless public. Have it proclaimed, therefore, as a
necessary precaution, by sound of trumpet at the corners of the street,
let it be stuck as a label in your mouth, carry it on a placard at your
back. Otherwise, the world will never trouble themselves about you, or
will very soon forget you. A celebrated artist of the present day, whose
name is engraved at the bottom of some of the most touching specimens
of English art, once had a frame-maker call on him, who, on entering his
room, exclaimed with some surprise, 'What, are you a painter, sir?' The
other made answer, a little startled in his turn, 'Why, didn't you know
that? Did you never see my name at the bottom of prints?' He could
not recollect that he had. 'And yet you sell picture-frames and
prints?'--'Yes.'--'What painter's names, then, did he recollect: did
he know West's?' 'Oh! yes.'--'And Opie's?' 'Yes.'--'And Fuseli's?' 'Oh!
yes.'--'But you never heard of me?' 'I cannot say that I ever did!' It
was plain from this conversation that Mr. Northcote had not kept company
enough with picture-dealers and newspaper critics. On another occasion,
a country gentleman, who was sitting to him for his portrait, asked him
if he had any pictures in the Exhibition at Somerset House, and on
his replying in the affirmative, desired to know what they were. He
mentioned, among others, The Marriage of Two Children; on which the
gentleman expressed great surprise, and said that was the very picture
his wife was always teasing him to go and have another look at, though
he had never noticed the painter's name. When the public are so eager
to be amused, and care so little who it is that amuses them, it is not
amiss to remind them of it now and then; or even to have a starling
taught to repeat the name, to which they owe such misprised obligations,
in their drowsy ears. On any other principle I cannot conceive how
painters (not without genius or industry) can fling themselves at
the head of the public in the manner they do, having lives written of
themselves, busts made of themselves, prints stuck in the shop-windows
of themselves, and their names placed in 'the first row of the
rubric,' with those of Rubens, Raphael, and Michael Angelo, swearing by
themselves or their proxies that these glorified spirits would do well
to leave the abodes of the blest in order to stand in mute wonder and
with uplifted hands before some production of theirs which is yet hardly
dry! Oh! whatever you do, leave that string untouched. It will jar the
rash and unhallowed hand that meddles with it. Profane not the mighty
dead by mixing them up with the uncanonised living. Leave yourself a
reversion in immortality, beyond the noisy clamour of the day. Do not
quite lose your respect for public opinion by making it in all cases a
palpable cheat, the echo of your own lungs that are hoarse with calling
on the world to admire. Do not think to bully posterity, or to cozen
your contemporaries. Be not always anticipating the effect of your
picture on the town--think more about deserving success than commanding
it. In issuing so many promissory notes upon the bank of fame, do not
forget you have to pay in sterling gold. Believe that there is something
in the pursuit of high art, beyond the manufacture of a paragraph or
the collection of receipts at the door of an exhibition. Venerate art as
art. Study the works of others, and inquire into those of nature.
Gaze at beauty. Become great by great efforts, and not by pompous
pretensions. Do not think the world was blind to merit before your time,
nor make the reputation of great geniuses the stalking-horse to your
vanity. You have done enough to insure yourself attention: you have now
only to do something to deserve it, and to make good all that you have
aspired to do.
There is a silent and systematic assumption of superiority which is as
barefaced and unprincipled an imposture as the most impudent puffing.
You may, by a tacit or avowed censure on all other arts, on all works of
art, on all other pretensions, tastes, talents, but your own, produce
a complete ostracism in the world of intellect, and leave yourself and
your own performances alone standing, a mighty monument in an universal
waste and wreck of genius. By cutting away the rude block and removing
the rubbish from around it, the idol may be effectually exposed to view,
placed on its pedestal of pride, without any other assistance. This
method is more inexcusable than the other. For there is no egotism
or vanity so hateful as that which strikes at our satisfaction in
everything else, and derives its nourishment from preying, like the
vampire, on the carcase of others' reputation. I would rather, in a
word, that a man should talk for ever of himself with vapid, senseless
assurance, than preserve a malignant, heartless silence when the merit
of a rival is mentioned. I have seen instances of both, and can judge
pretty well between them.
There is no great harm in putting forward one's own pretensions (of
whatever kind) if this does not bear a sour, malignant aspect towards
others. Every one sets himself off to the best advantage he can, and
tries to steal a march upon public opinion. In this sense, too, 'all the
world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.' Life itself
is a piece of harmless quackery. A great house over your head is of
no use but to announce the great man within. Dress, equipage, title,
livery-servants are only so many quack advertisements and assumptions
of the question of merit. The star that glitters at the breast would
be worth nothing but as a badge of personal distinction; and the crown
itself is but a symbol of the virtues which the possessor inherits from
a long line of illustrious ancestors! How much honour and honesty have
been forfeited to be graced with a title or a ribbon; how much genius
and worth have sunk to the grave without an escutcheon and without an
epitaph!
As men of rank and fortune keep lackeys to reinforce their claims to
self-respect, so men of genius sometimes surround themselves with a
coterie of admirers to increase their reputation with the public. These
_proneurs,_ or satellites, repeat all their good things, laugh loud at
all their jokes, and remember all their oracular decrees. They are their
shadows and echoes. They talk of them in all companies, and bring back
word of all that has been said about them. They hawk the good qualities
of their patrons as shopmen and _barkers_ tease you to buy goods. I have
no notion of this vanity at second-hand; nor can I see how this servile
testimony from inferiors ('some followers of mine own') can be a proof
of merit. It may soothe the ear, but that it should impose on the
understanding, I own, surprises me; yet there are persons who cannot
exist without a _cortege_ of this kind about them, in which they smiling
read the opinion of the world, in the midst of all sorts of rancorous
abuse and hostility, as Otho called for his mirror in the Illyrian
field. One good thing is, that this evil, in some degree, cures itself;
and when a man has been nearly ruined by a herd of these sycophants,
he finds them leaving him, like thriftless dependants, for some more
eligible situation, carrying away with them all the tattle they can pick
up, and some left-off suit of finery. The same proneness to adulation
which made them lick the dust before one idol makes them bow as low to
the rising Sun; they are as lavish of detraction as they were prurient
with praise; and the _protege_ and admirer of the editor of the -----
figures in Blackwood's train. The man is a lackey, and it is of little
consequence whose livery he wears!
I would advise those who volunteer the office of puffing to go the whole
length of it. No half-measures will do. Lay it on thick and threefold,
or not at all. If you are once harnessed into that vehicle, it will be
in vain for you to think of stopping. You must drive to the devil at
once. The mighty Tamburlane, to whose car you are yoked, cries out:
Holloa, you pamper'd jades of Asia,
Can you not drive but twenty miles a day?
He has you on the hip, for you have pledged your taste and judgment to
his genius. Never fear but he will drive this wedge. If you are once
screwed into such a machine, you must extricate yourself by main force.
No hyperboles are too much: any drawback, any admiration on this side
idolatry, is high treason. It is an unpardonable offence to say that the
last production of your patron is not so good as the one before it, or
that a performer shines more in one character than another. I remember
once hearing a player declare that he never looked into any newspapers
or magazines on account of the abuse that was always levelled at himself
in them, though there were not less than three persons in company who
made it their business through these conduit pipes of fame to 'cry him
up to the top of the compass.' This sort of expectation is a little
_exigeante!_
One fashionable mode of acquiring reputation is by patronising it. This
may be from various motives--real good nature, good taste, vanity, or
pride. I shall only speak of the spurious ones in this place. The quack
and the _would-be_ patron are well met. The house of the latter is a
sort of curiosity shop or _menagerie,_ where all sorts of intellectual
pretenders and grotesques, musical children, arithmetical prodigies,
occult philosophers, lecturers, _accoucheurs,_ apes, chemists, fiddlers,
and buffoons are to be seen for the asking, and are shown to the company
for nothing. The folding doors are thrown open, and display a collection
that the world cannot parallel again. There may be a few persons of
common sense and established reputation, _rari nantes in gurgite vasto,_
otherwise it is a mere scramble or lottery. The professed encourager of
_virtu_ and letters, being disappointed of the great names, sends out
into the highways for the halt, the lame, and the blind, for all who
pretend to distinction, defects, and obliquities, for all the disposable
vanity or affectation floating on the town, in hopes that, among so many
oddities, chance may bring some jewel or treasure to his door, which he
may have the good fortune to appropriate in some way to his own use,
or the credit of displaying to others. The art is to encourage rising
genius--to bring forward doubtful and unnoticed merit. You thus get a
set of novices and raw pretenders about you, whose actual productions do
not interfere with your self-love, and whose future efforts may reflect
credit on your singular sagacity and faculty for finding out talent
in the germ; and in the next place, by having them completely in your
power, you are at liberty to dismiss them whenever you will, and to
supply the deficiency by a new set of wondering, unwashed faces in a
rapid succession; an 'aiery of children,' embryo actors, artists, poets,
or philosophers. Like unfledged birds, they are hatched, nursed, and fed
by hand: this gives room for a vast deal of management, meddling, care,
and condescending solicitude; but the instant the callow brood are
fledged, they are driven from the nest, and forced to shift for
themselves in the wide world. One sterling production decides the
question between them and their patrons, and from that time they become
the property of the public. Thus a succession of importunate, hungry,
idle, overweening candidates for fame are encouraged by these fickle
keepers, only to be betrayed, and left to starve or beg, or pine in
obscurity, while the man of merit and respectability is neglected,
discountenanced, and stigmatised, because he will not lend himself as
a tool to this system of splendid imposition, or pamper the luxury and
weaknesses of the Vulgar Great. When a young artist is too independent
to subscribe to the dogmas of his superiors, or fulfils their
predictions and prognostics of wonderful contingent talent too soon, so
as to get out of leading-strings, and lean on public opinion for partial
support, exceptions are taken to his dress, dialect, or manners, and he
is expelled the circle with a character for ingratitude and treachery.
None can procure toleration long but those who do not contradict the
opinions or excite the jealousy of their betters. One independent step
is an appeal from them to the public, their natural and hated rivals,
and annuls the contract between them, which implies ostentatious
countenance on the one part and servile submission on the other. But
enough of this.
The patronage of men of talent, even when it proceeds from vanity, is
often carried on with a spirit of generosity and magnificence, as long
as these are in difficulties and a state of dependence; but as the
principle of action in this case is a love of power, the complacency in
the object of friendly regard ceases with the opportunity or necessity
for the same manifest display of power; and when the unfortunate
_protege_ is just coming to land, and expects a last helping hand, he
is, to his surprise, pushed back, in order that he may be saved from
drowning once more. You are not hailed ashore, as you had supposed, by
these kind friends, as a mutual triumph after all your struggles and
their exertions in your behalf. It is a piece of presumption in you to
be seen walking on _terra firma_: you are required, at the risk of their
friendship, to be always swimming in troubled waters, that they may
have the credit of throwing out ropes, and sending out lifeboats to you,
without ever bringing you ashore. Your successes, your reputation,
which you think would please them, as justifying their good opinion,
are coldly received, and looked at askance, because they remove your
dependence on them: if you are under a cloud, they do all they can to
keep you there by their goodwill: they are so sensible of your gratitude
that they wish your obligations never to cease, and take care you shall
owe no one else a good turn; and provided you are compelled or contented
to remain always in poverty, obscurity, and disgrace, they will continue
your very good friends and humble servants to command, to the end of
the chapter. The tenure of these indentures is hard. Such persons
will wilfully forfeit the gratitude created by years of friendship, by
refusing to perform the last act of kindness that is likely ever to be
demanded of them: will lend you money, if you have no chance of repaying
them: will give you their good word, if nobody will believe it; and the
only thing they do not forgive is an attempt or probability on your
part of being able to repay your obligations. There is something
disinterested in all this: at least, it does not show a cowardly
or mercenary disposition, but it savours too much of arrogance and
arbitrary pretension. It throws a damning light on this question, to
consider who are mostly the subjects of the patronage of the great, and
in the habit of receiving cards of invitation to splendid dinners. I
confess, for one, I am not on the list; at which I do not grieve much,
nor wonder at all. Authors, in general, are not in much request. Dr.
Johnson was asked why he was not more frequently invited out; and he
said, 'Because great lords and ladies do not like to have their mouths
stopped.' Garrick was not in this predicament: he could amuse the
company in the drawing-room by imitating the great moralist and
lexicographer, and make the negro-boy in the courtyard die with laughing
to see him take off the swelling airs and strut of the turkey-cock. This
was clever and amusing, but it did not involve an opinion, it did not
lead to a difference of sentiment, in which the owner of the house might
be found in the wrong. Players, singers, dancers, are hand and glove
with the great. They embellish, and have an _eclat_ in their names,
but do not come into collision. Eminent portrait-painters, again, are
tolerated, because they come into personal contact with the great; and
sculptors hold equality with lords when they have a certain quantity
of solid marble in their workshops to answer for the solidity of their
pretensions. People of fashion and property must have something to show
for their patronage, something visible or tangible. A sentiment is a
visionary thing; an argument may lead to dangerous consequences,
and those who are likely to broach either one or the other ate not,
therefore, fit for good company in general. Poets and men of genius who
find their way there, soon find their way out. They are not of that ilk,
with some exceptions. Painters who come in contact with majesty get on
by servility or buffoonery, by letting themselves down in some way. Sir
Joshua was never a favourite at court. He kept too much at a distance.
Beechey gained a vast deal of favour by familiarity, and lost it by
taking too great freedoms.(5) West ingratiated himself in the same
quarter by means of practices as little creditable to himself as his
august employer, namely, by playing the hypocrite, and professing
sentiments the reverse of those he naturally felt. Kings (I know not how
justly) have been said to be lovers of low company and low conversation.
They are also said to be fond of dirty practical jokes. If the fact is
so, the reason is as follows. From the elevation of their rank, aided by
pride and flattery, they look down on the rest of mankind, and would
not be thought to have all their advantages for nothing. They wish to
maintain the same precedence in private life that belongs to them as a
matter of outward ceremony. This pretension they cannot keep up by fair
means; for in wit or argument they are not superior to the common run of
men. They therefore answer a repartee by a practical joke, which turns
the laugh against others, and cannot be retaliated with safety. That
is, they avail themselves of the privilege of their situation to take
liberties, and degrade those about them, as they can only keep up the
idea of their own dignity by proportionably lowering their company.