It is astonishing, with all our opportunities and practice, how little
we know of this subject. For myself, I feel that the more I learn, the
less I understand it.
I remember, several years ago, a conversation in the diligence coming
from Paris, in which, on its being mentioned that a man had married
his wife after thirteen years' courtship, a fellow-countryman of
mine observed, that 'then, at least, he would be acquainted with her
character'; when a Monsieur P----, inventor and proprietor of the
_Invisible Girl,_ made answer, 'No, not at all; for that the very next
day she might turn out the very reverse of the character that she had
appeared in during all the preceding time.'(1) I could not help admiring
the superior sagacity of the French juggler, and it struck me then that
we could never be sure when we had got at the bottom of this riddle.
There are various ways of getting at a knowledge of character--by looks,
words, actions. The first of these, which seems the most superficial, is
perhaps the safest, and least liable to deceive: nay, it is that which
mankind, in spite of their pretending to the contrary, most generally go
by. Professions pass for nothing, and actions may be counterfeited; but
a man cannot help his looks. 'Speech,' said a celebrated wit, 'was given
to man to conceal his thoughts.' Yet I do not know that the greatest
hypocrites are the least silent. The mouth of Cromwell is pursed up in
the portraits of him, as if he was afraid to trust himself with words.
Lord Chesterfield advises us, if we wish to know the real sentiments of
the person we are conversing with, to look in his face, for he can more
easily command his words than his features. A man's whole life may be
picture painted of him by a great artist would probably stamp his
true character on the canvas, and betray the secret to posterity.
Men's opinions were divided, in their lifetimes, about such prominent
personages as Charles V. and Ignatius Loyola, partly, no doubt, from
passion and interest, but partly from contradictory evidence in their
ostensible conduct: the spectator, who has ever seen their pictures by
Titian, judges of them at once, and truly. I had rather leave a good
portrait of myself behind me than have a fine epitaph. The face, for the
most part, tells what we have thought and felt--the rest is nothing. I
prefixed to his poems than from anything he ever wrote. Caesar's
_Commentaries_ would not have redeemed him in my opinion, if the bust of
him had resembled the Duke of Wellington. My old friend Fawcett used
to say, that if Sir Isaac Newton himself had lisped, he could not have
thought anything of him. So I cannot persuade myself that any one is a
great man who looks like a fool. In this I may be wrong.
First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not unfrequently) to
our cost when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions
or actions. A man's look is the work of years, it is stamped on his
countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of
nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily. There is, as it has been
remarked repeatedly, something in a person's appearance at first sight
which we do not like, and that gives us an odd twinge, but which is
overlooked in a multiplicity of other circumstances, till the mask is
taken off, and we see this lurking character verified in the plainest
manner in the sequel. We are struck at first, and by chance, with what
is peculiar and characteristic; also with permanent _traits_ and general
effect: this afterwards goes off in a set of unmeaning, common-place
details. This sort of _prima facie_ evidence, then, shows what a man is
better than what he says or does; for it shows us the habit of his mind,
which is the same under all circumstances and disguises. You will say,
on the other hand, that there is no judging by appearances, as a general
rule. No one, for instance, would take such a person for a very clever
man without knowing who he was. Then, ten to one, he is not: he may have
got the reputation, but it is a mistake. You say, there is Mr. -----,
undoubtedly a person of great genius; yet, except when excited by
something extraordinary, he seems half dead. He has wit at will, yet
wants life and spirit. He is capable of the most generous acts,
yet meanness seems to cling to every motion. He looks like a poor
creature--and in truth he is one! The first impression he gives you of
him answers nearly to the feeling he has of his personal identity;
and this image of himself, rising from his thoughts, and shrouding his
faculties, is that which sits with him in the house, walks out with him
into the street, and haunts his bedside. The best part of his existence
is dull, cloudy, leaden: the flashes of light that proceed from it, or
streak it here and there, may dazzle others, but do not deceive himse
deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly
undervalued by others. Whatever good properties he may possess are,
in fact, neutralised by a 'cold rheum' running through his veins, and
taking away the zest of his pretensions, the pith and marrow of his
performances. What is it to me that I can write these TABLE-TALKS? It
is true I can, by a reluctant effort, rake up a parcel of half-forgotten
observations, but they do not float on the surface of my mind, nor
stir it with any sense of pleasure, nor even of pride. Others have more
property in them than I have: they may reap the benefit, I have only had
the pain. Otherwise, they are to me as if they had never existed; nor
should I know that I had ever thought at all, but that I am reminded of
it by the strangeness of my appearance, and my unfitness for everything
else. Look in Coleridge's face while he is talking. His words are such
as might 'create a soul under the ribs of death.' His face is a blank.
Which are we to consider as the true index of his mind? Pain, languor,
shadowy remembrances, are the uneasy inmates there: his lips move
mechanically!
There are people that we do not like, though we may have known them
long, and have no fault to find with them, 'their appearance, as we
say, is so much against them.' That is not all, if we could find it out.
There is, generally, a reason for this prejudice; for nature is true
to itself. They may be very good sort of people too, in their way, but
still something is the matter. There is a coldness, a selfishness, a
levity, an insincerity, which we cannot fix upon any particular phrase
or action, but we see it in their whole persons and deportment. One
reason that we do not see it in any other way may be, that they are all
the time trying to conceal this defect by every means in their power.
There is, luckily, a sort of _second sight_ in morals: we discern
the lurking indications of temper and habit a long while before their
palpable effects appear. I once used to meet with a person at an
ordinary, a very civil, good-looking man in other respects, but with
an odd look about his eyes, which I could not explain, as if he saw you
under their fringed lids, and you could not see him again: this man
was a common sharper. The greatest hypocrite I ever knew was a little,
demure, pretty, modest-looking girl, with eyes timidly cast upon the
ground, and an air soft as enchantment; the only circumstance that could
lead to a suspicion of her true character was a cold, sullen, watery,
glazed look about the eyes, which she bent on vacancy, as if determined
to avoid all explanation with yours. I might have spied in their
glittering, motionless surface the rocks and quicksands that awaited
me below! We do not feel quite at ease in the company or friendship
of those who have any natural obliquity or imperfection of person.
The reason is, they are not on the best terms with themselves, and are
sometimes apt to play off on others the tricks that nature has played
them. This, however, is a remark that, perhaps, ought not to have been
made. I know a person to whom it has been objected as a disqualification
for friendship, that he never shakes you cordially by the hand. I own
this is a damper to sanguine and florid temperaments, who abound in
these practical demonstrations and 'compliments extern.' The same person
who testifies the least pleasure at meeting you, is the last to quit
his seat in your company, grapples with a subject in conversation right
earnestly, and is, I take it, backward to give up a cause or a friend.
Cold and distant in appearance, he piques himself on being the king
of _good haters,_ and a no less zealous partisan. The most phlegmatic
constitutions often contain the most inflammable spirits--a fire is
struck from the hardest flints.
And this is another reason that makes it difficult to judge of
character. Extremes meet; and qualities display themselves by the most
contradictory appearances. Any inclination, in consequence of
being generally suppressed, vents itself the more violently when
an opportunity presents itself: the greatest grossness sometimes
accompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief, one to the
other; and we find the most reserved and indifferent tempers at the
beginning of an entertainment, or an acquaintance, turn out the most
communicative and cordial at the end of it. Some spirits exhaust
themselves at first: others gain strength by progression. Some minds
have a greater facility of throwing off impressions--are, as it were,
more transparent or porous than others. Thus the French present a marked
contrast to the English in this respect. A Frenchman addresses you at
once with a sort of lively indifference: an Englishman is more on his
guard, feels his way, and is either exceedingly reserved, or lets you
into his whole confidence, which he cannot so well impart to an entire
stranger. Again, a Frenchman is naturally humane: an Englishman is, I
should say, only friendly by habit. His virtues and his vices cost him
more than they do his more gay and volatile neighbours. An Englishman is
said to speak his mind more plainly than others,--yes, if it will give
you pain to hear it. He does not care whom he offends by his discourse:
a foreigner generally strives to oblige in what he says. The French are
accused of promising more than they perform. That may be, and yet they
may perform as many good-natured acts as the English, if the latter are
as averse to perform as they are to promise. Even the professions of the
French may be sincere at the time, or arise out of the impulse of the
moment; though their desire to serve you may be neither very violent nor
very lasting. I cannot think, notwithstanding, that the French are not a
serious people; nay, that they are not a more reflecting people than
the common run of the English. Let those who think them merely light and
mercurial explain that enigma, their everlasting prosing tragedy. The
English are considered as comparatively a slow, plodding people. If the
French are quicker, they are also more plodding. See, for example, how
highly finished and elaborate their works of art are! How systematic and
correct they aim at being in all their productions of a graver cast!
'If the French have a fault,' as Yorick said, 'it is that they are
too grave.' With wit, sense, cheerfulness, patience, good-nature, and
refinement of manners, all they want is imagination and sturdiness of
moral principle! Such are some of the contradictions in the character
of the two nations, and so little does the character of either appear to
have been understood! Nothing can be more ridiculous indeed than the
way in which we exaggerate each other's vices and extenuate our own.
The whole is an affair of prejudice on one side of the question, and
of partiality on the other. Travellers who set out to carry back a
true report of the case appear to lose not only the use of their
understandings, but of their senses, the instant they set foot in a
foreign land. The commonest facts and appearances are distorted and
discoloured. They go abroad with certain preconceived notions on the
subject, and they make everything answer, in reason's spite, to their
favourite theory. In addition to the difficulty of explaining customs
and manners foreign to our own, there are all the obstacles of wilful
prepossession thrown in the way. It is not, therefore, much to be
wondered at that nations have arrived at so little knowledge of one
another's characters; and that, where the object has been to widen the
breach between them, any slight differences that occur are easily
blown into a blaze of fury by repeated misrepresentations, and all the
exaggerations that malice or folly can invent!
This ignorance of character is not confined to foreign nations: we are
ignorant of that of our own countrymen in a class a little below or
above ourselves. We shall hardly pretend to pronounce magisterially on
the good or bad qualities of strangers; and, at the same time, we are
ignorant of those of our friends, of our kindred, and of our own. We are
in all these cases either too near or too far off the object to judge of
it properly.
Persons, for instance, in a higher or middle rank of life know little
or nothing of the characters of those below them, as servants, country
people, etc. I would lay it down in the first place as a general rule
on this subject, that all uneducated people are hypocrites. Their sole
business is to deceive. They conceive themselves in a state of hostility
with others, and stratagems are fair in war. The inmates of the kitchen
and the parlour are always (as far as respects their feelings and
intentions towards each other) in Hobbes's; 'state of nature.' Servants
and others in that line of life have nothing to exercise their spare
talents for invention upon but those about them. Their superfluous
electrical particles of wit and fancy are not carried off by those
established and fashionable conductors, novels and romances. Their
faculties are not buried in books, but all alive and stirring, erect
and bristling like a cat's back. Their coarse conversation sparkles with
'wild wit, invention ever new.' Their betters try all they can to set
themselves up above them, and they try all they can to pull them down to
their own level. They do this by getting up a little comic interlude,
a daily, domestic, homely drama out of the odds and ends of the family
failings, of which there is in general a pretty plentiful supply, or
make up the deficiency of materials out of their own heads. They turn
the qualities of their masters and mistresses inside out, and any real
kindness or condescension only sets them the more against you. They are
not to be taken in that way--they will not be baulked in the spite they
have to you. They only set to work with redoubled alacrity, to lessen
the favour or to blacken your character. They feel themselves like a
degraded _caste,_ and cannot understand how the obligations can be all
on one side, and the advantages all on the other. You cannot come to
equal terms with them--they reject all such overtures as insidious and
hollow--nor can you ever calculate upon their gratitude or goodwill, any
more than if they were so many strolling Gipsies or wild Indians. They
have no fellow-feeling, they keep no faith with the more privileged
classes. They are in your power, and they endeavour to be even with you
by trick and cunning, by lying and chicanery. In this they have nothing
to restrain them. Their whole life is a succession of shifts, excuses,
and expedients. The love of truth is a principle with those only who
have made it their study, who have applied themselves to the pursuit of
some art or science, where the intellect is severely tasked, and learns
by habit to take a pride in, and to set a just value on, the correctness
of its conclusions. To have a disinterested regard to truth, the mind
must have contemplated it in abstract and remote questions; whereas the
ignorant and vulgar are only conversant with those things in which their
own interest is concerned. All their notions are local, personal, and
consequently gross and selfish. They say whatever comes uppermost--turn
whatever happens to their own account--and invent any story, or give any
answer that suits their purposes. Instead of being bigoted to general
principles, they trump up any lie for the occasion, and the more of a
_thumper_ it is, the better they like it; the more unlooked-for it is,
why, so much the more of a _God-send!_ They have no conscience about
the matter; and if you find them out in any of their manoeuvres, are not
ashamed of themselves, but angry with you. If you remonstrate with
them, they laugh in your face. The only hold you have of them is their
interest--you can but dismiss them from your employment; and _service is
no inheritance._ If they effect anything like decent remorse, and hope
you will pass it over, all the while they are probably trying to recover
the wind of you. Persons of liberal knowledge or sentiments have no kind
of chance in this sort of mixed intercourse with these barbarians in
civilised life. You cannot tell, by any signs or principles, what is
passing in their minds. There is no common point of view between you.
You have not the same topics to refer to, the same language to express
yourself. Your interests, your feelings are quite distinct. You take
certain things for granted as rules of action: they take nothing for
granted but their own ends, pick up all their knowledge out of their own
occasions, are on the watch only for what they can catch--are
Subtle as the fox for prey:
Like warlike as the wolf, for what they eat.
They have indeed a regard to their character, as this last may affect
their livelihood or advancement, none as it is connected with a sense
of propriety; and this sets their mother-wit and native talents at work
upon a double file of expedients, to bilk their consciences, and salve
their reputation. In short, you never know where to have them, any more
than if they were of a different species of animals; and in trusting to
them, you are sure to be betrayed and overreached. You have other
things to mind; they are thinking only of you, and how to turn you to
advantage. _Give and take_ is no maxim here. You can build nothing
on your own moderation or on their false delicacy. After a familiar
conversation with a waiter at a tavern, you overhear him calling you by
some provoking nickname. If you make a present to the daughter of the
house where you lodge, the mother is sure to recollect some addition to
her bill. It is a running fight. In fact, there is a principle in
human nature not willingly to endure the idea of a superior, a sour,
jacobinical disposition to wipe out the score of obligation, or efface
the tinsel of external advantages--and where others have the opportunity
of coming in contact with us, they generally find the means to establish
a sufficiently marked degree of degrading equality. No man is a hero
to his valet-de-chambre, is an old maxim. A new illustration of this
principle occurred the other day. While Mrs. Siddons was giving her
readings of Shakespear to a brilliant and admiring drawing-room, one of
the servants in the hall below was saying, 'What, I find the old lady is
making as much noise as ever!' So little is there in common between the
different classes of society, and so impossible is it ever to unite the
diversities of custom and knowledge which separate them.
Women, according to Mrs. Peachum, are 'bitter bad judges' of the
characters of men; and men are not much better of theirs, if we can form
any guess from their choice in marriage. Love is proverbially blind. The
whole is an affair of whim and fancy. Certain it is that the greatest
favourites with the other sex are not those who are most liked or
respected among their own. I never knew but one clever man who was
what is called a _lady's man;_ and he (unfortunately for the argument)
happened to be a considerable coxcomb. It was by this irresistible
quality, and not by the force of his genius, that he vanquished. Women
seem to doubt their own judgments in love, and to take the opinion which
a man entertains of his own prowess and accomplishments for granted. The
wives of poets are (for the most part) mere pieces of furniture in the
room. If you speak to them of their husbands' talents or reputation in
the world, it is as if you made mention of some office that they held.
It can hardly be otherwise, when the instant any subject is started or
conversation arises, in which men are interested, or try one another's
strength, the women leave the room, or attend to something else. The
qualities, then, in which men are ambitious to excel, and which ensure
the applause of the world,--eloquence, genius, learning, integrity,--are
not those which gain the favour of the fair. I must not deny, however,
that wit and courage have this effect. Neither is youth or beauty the
sole passport to their affections.
The way of woman's will is hard to find,
Harder to hit.
Yet there is some clue to this mystery, some determining cause; for we
find that the same men are universal favourites with women, as others
are uniformly disliked by them. Is not the loadstone that attracts so
powerfully, and in all circumstances, a strong and undisguised bias
towards them, a marked attention, a conscious preference of them to
every other passing object or topic? I am not sure, but I incline
to think so. The successful lover is the _cavalier servente_ of all
nations. The man of gallantry behaves as if he had made an assignation
with every woman he addresses. An argument immediately draws off my
attention from the prettiest woman in the room. I accordingly succeed
better in argument--than in love!--I do not think that what is called
_Love at first sight_ is so great an absurdity as it is sometimes
imagined to be. We generally make up our minds beforehand to the sort of
person we should like,--grave or gay, black, brown, or fair; with golden
tresses or with raven locks;--and when we meet with a complete example
of the qualities we admire, the bargain is soon struck. We have never
seen anything to come up to our newly-discovered goddess before, but she
is what we have been all our lives looking for. The idol we fall down
and worship is an image familiar to our minds. It has been present to
our waking thoughts, it has haunted us in our dreams, like some fairy
vision. Oh! thou who, the first time I over beheld thee, didst draw my
soul into the circle of thy heavenly looks, and wave enchantment
round me, do not think thy conquest less complete because it was
instantaneous; for in that gentle form (as if another Imogen had
entered) I saw all that I had ever loved of female grace, modesty, and
sweetness!
I shall not say much of friendship as giving an insight into character,
because it is often founded on mutual infirmities and prejudices.
Friendships are frequently taken up on some sudden sympathy, and we
see only as much as we please of one another's characters afterwards.
Intimate friends are not fair witnesses to character, any more than
professed enemies. They cool, indeed, in time, part, and retain only a
rankling grudge of past errors and oversights. Their testimony in the
latter case is not quite free from suspicion.
One would think that near relations, who live constantly together, and
always have done so, must be pretty well acquainted with one another's
characters. They are nearly in the dark about it. Familiarity confounds
all traits of distinction: interest and prejudice take away the power
of judging. We have no opinion on the subject, any more than of one
another's faces. The Penates, the household gods, are veiled. We do not
see the features of those we love, nor do we clearly distinguish their
virtues or their vices. We take them as they are found in the lump,--by
weight, and not by measure. We know all about the individuals, their
sentiments, history, manners, words, actions, everything; but we know
all these too much as facts, as inveterate, habitual impressions,
as clothed with too many associations, as sanctified with too many
affections, as woven too much into the web of our hearts, to be able to
pick out the different threads, to cast up the items of the debtor and
creditor account, or to refer them to any general standard of right and
wrong. Our impressions with respect to them are too strong, too real,
too much _sui generis,_ to be capable of a comparison with anything
but themselves. We hardly inquire whether those for whom we are thus
interested, and to whom we are thus knit, are _better_ or _worse_ than
others--the question is a kind of profanation--all we know is, they are
_more_ to us than any one else can be. Our sentiments of this kind are
rooted and grow in us, and we cannot eradicate them by voluntary means.
Besides, our judgments are bespoke, our interests take part with our
blood. If any doubt arises, if the veil of our implicit confidence is
drawn aside by any accident for a moment, the shock is too great, like
that of a dislocated limb, and we recoil on our habitual impressions
again. Let not that veil ever be rent entirely asunder, so that those
images may be left bare of reverential awe, and lose their religion; for
nothing can ever support the desolation of the heart afterwards.
The greatest misfortune that can happen among relations is a different
way of bringing up, so as to set one another's opinions and characters
in an entirely new point of view. This often lets in an unwelcome
daylight on the subject, and breeds schisms, coldness, and incurable
heart-burnings in families. I have sometimes thought whether the
progress of society and march of knowledge does not do more harm in this
respect, by loosening the ties of domestic attachment, and preventing
those who are most interested in and anxious to think well of one
another from feeling a cordial sympathy and approbation of each
other's sentiments, manners, views, etc., than it does good by any real
advantage to the community at large. The son, for instance, is brought
up to the Church, and nothing can exceed the pride and pleasure the
father takes in him while all goes on well in this favourite direction.
His notions change, and he imbibes a taste for the Fine Arts. From
this moment there is an end of anything like the same unreserved
communication between them. The young man may talk with enthusiasm
of his 'Rembrandts, Correggios, and stuff': it is all _Hebrew_ to the
elder; and whatever satisfaction he may feel in the hearing of his son's
progress, or good wishes for his success, he is never reconciled to the
new pursuit, he still hankers after the first object that he had set
his mind upon. Again, the grandfather is a Calvinist, who never gets the
better of his disappointment at his son's going over to the Unitarian
side of the question. The matter rests here till the grandson, some
years after, in the fashion of the day and 'infinite agitation of men's
wit,' comes to doubt certain points in the creed in which he has
been brought up, and the affair is all abroad again. Here are three
generations made uncomfortable and in a manner set at variance by a
veering point of theology, and the officious, meddling biblical critics!
Nothing, on the other hand, can be more wretched or common than that
upstart pride and insolent good fortune which is ashamed of its origin;
nor are there many things more awkward than the situation of rich and
poor relations. Happy, much happier, are those tribes and people who
are confined to the same _caste_ and way of life from sire to son, where
prejudices are transmitted like instincts, and where the same unvarying
standard of opinion and refinement blends countless generations in its
improgressive, everlasting mould!
Not only is there a wilful and habitual blindness in near kindred to
each other's defects, but an incapacity to judge from the quantity of
materials, from the contradictoriness of the evidence. The chain of
particulars is too long and massy for us to lift it or put it into the
most approved ethical scales. The concrete result does not answer to any
abstract theory, to any logical definition. There is black, and white,
and grey, square and round--there are too many anomalies, too many
redeeming points, in poor human nature, such as it actually is, for us
to arrive at a smart, summary decision on it. We know too much to come
to any hasty or partial conclusion. We do not pronounce upon the present
act, because a hundred others rise up to contradict it. We suspend our
judgments altogether, because in effect one thing unconsciously balances
another; and perhaps this obstinate, pertinacious indecision would be
the truest philosophy in other cases, where we dispose of the question
of character easily, because we have only the smallest part of the
evidence to decide upon. Real character is not one thing, but a thousand
things; actual qualities do not conform to any factitious standard in
the mind, but rest upon their own truth and nature. The dull stupor
under which we labour in respect of those whom we have the greatest
opportunities of inspecting nearly, we should do well to imitate before
we give extreme and uncharitable verdicts against those whom we only
see in passing or at a distance. If we knew them better, we should be
disposed to say less about them.
In the truth of things, there are none utterly worthless, none without
some drawback on their pretensions or some alloy of imperfection. It has
been observed that a familiarity with the worst characters lessens our
abhorrence of them; and a wonder is often expressed that the greatest
criminals look like other men. The reason is that _they are like other
men in many respects._ If a particular individual was merely the wretch
we read of, or conceive in the abstract, that is, if he was the mere
personified idea of the criminal brought to the bar, he would not
disappoint the spectator, but would look like what he would be--a
monster! But he has other qualities, ideas, feelings, nay, probably
virtues, mixed up with the most profligate habits or desperate acts.
This need not lessen our abhorrence of the crime, though it does of
the criminal; for it has the latter effect only by showing him to us in
different points of view, in which he appears a common mortal, and not
the caricature of vice we took him for, or spotted all over with infamy.
I do not, at the same time, think this is a lax or dangerous, though it
is a charitable view of the subject. In my opinion, no man ever answered
in his own mind (except in the agonies of conscience or of repentance,
in which latter case he throws the imputation from himself in another
way) to the abstract idea of a _murderer._ He may have killed a man
in self-defence, or 'in the trade of war,' or to save himself from
starving, or in revenge for an injury, but always 'so as with a
difference,' or from mixed and questionable motives. The individual, in
reckoning with himself, always takes into the account the considerations
of time, place, and circumstance, and never makes out a case of
unmitigated, unprovoked villainy, of 'pure defecated evil' against
himself. There are degrees in real crimes: we reason and moralise only
by names and in classes. I should be loth, indeed, to say that 'whatever
is, is right'; but almost every actual choice inclines to it, with some
sort of imperfect, unconscious bias. This is the reason, besides the
ends of secrecy, of the invention of _slang_ terms for different acts
of profligacy committed by thieves, pickpockets, etc. The common names
suggest associations of disgust in the minds of others, which those who
live by them do not willingly recognise, and which they wish to sink in
a technical phraseology. So there is a story of a fellow who, as he was
writing down his confession of a murder, stopped to ask how the word
_murder_ was spelt; this, if true, was partly because his imagination
was staggered by the recollection of the thing, and partly because he
shrunk from the verbal admission of it. '_Amen_ stuck in his throat'!
The defence made by Eugene Aram of himself against a charge of murder,
some years before, shows that he in imagination completely flung from
himself the _nominal_ crime imputed to him: he might, indeed, have
staggered an old man with a blow, and buried his body in a cave, and
lived ever since upon the money he found upon him, but there was 'no
malice in the case, none at all,' as Peachum says. The very coolness,
subtlety, and circumspection of his defence (as masterly a legal
document as there is upon record) prove that he was guilty of the act,
as much as they prove that he was unconscious of the _crime_.(2) In
the same spirit, and I conceive with great metaphysical truth, Mr.
Coleridge, in his tragedy of _Remorse,_ makes Ordonio (his chief
character) wave the acknowledgment of his meditated guilt to his own
mind, by putting into his mouth that striking soliloquy:
Say, I had lay'd a body in the sun!
Well! in a month there swarm forth from the corse
A thousand, nay, ten thousand sentient beings
In place of that one man. Say I had _kill'd_ him!
Yet who shall tell me, that each one and all
Of these ten thousand lives Is not as happy
As that one life, which being push'd aside,
Made room for these unnumber'd.--Act ii. Sc. 2.
I am not sure, indeed, that I have not got this whole train of
speculation from him; but I should not think the worse of it on that
account. That gentleman, I recollect, once asked me whether I thought
that the different members of a family really liked one another so well,
or had so much attachment, as was generally supposed; and I said that
I conceived the regard they had towards each other was expressed by the
word _interest_ rather than by any other, which he said was the true
answer. I do not know that I could mend it now. Natural affection is
not pleasure in one another's company, nor admiration of one another's
qualities; but it is an intimate and deep knowledge of the things that
affect those to whom we are bound by the nearest ties, with pleasure
or pain; it is an anxious, uneasy fellow-feeling with them, a jealous
watchfulness over their good name, a tender and unconquerable yearning
for their good. The love, in short, we bear them is the nearest to that
we bear ourselves. _Home,_ according to the old saying, _is home, be it
never so homely._ We love ourselves, not according to our deserts, but
our cravings after good: so we love our immediate relations in the next
degree (if not, even sometimes a higher one), because we know best
what they have suffered and what sits nearest to their hearts. We are
implicated, in fact, in their welfare by habit and sympathy, as we are
in our own.
If our devotion to our own interests is much the same as to theirs, we
are ignorant of our own characters for the same reason. We are parties
too much concerned to return a fair verdict, and are too much in
the secret of our own motives or situation not to be able to give a
favourable turn to our actions. We exercise a liberal criticism upon
ourselves, and put off the final decision to a late day. The field is
large and open. Hamlet exclaims, with a noble magnanimity, 'I count
myself indifferent honest, and yet I could accuse me of such things!'
If you could prove to a man that he is a knave, it would not make much
difference in his opinion, his self-love is stronger than his love of
virtue. Hypocrisy is generally used as a mask to deceive the world, not
to impose on ourselves: for once detect the delinquent in his knavery,
and he laughs in your face or glories in his iniquity. This at least
happens except where there is a contradiction in the character, and our
vices are involuntary and at variance with our convictions. One
great difficulty is to distinguish ostensible motives, or such as we
acknowledge to ourselves, from tacit or secret springs of action. A man
changes his opinion readily, he thinks it candour: it is levity of min
We are callous by custom to our defects or excellences, unless where
vanity steps in to exaggerate or extenuate them. I cannot conceive how
it is that people are in love with their own persons, or astonished at
their own performances, which are but a nine days' wonder to every one
else. In general it may be laid down that we are liable to this twofold
mistake in judging of our own talents: we, in the first place, nurse the
rickety bantling, we think much of that which has cost us much pains
and labour, and comes against the grain; and we also set little store by
what we do with most ease to ourselves, and therefore best. The works of
the greatest genius are produced almost unconsciously, with an ignorance
on the part of the persons themselves that they have done anything
extraordinary. Nature has done it for them. How little Shakespear seems
to have thought of himself or of his fame! Yet, if 'to know another
well were to know one's self,' he must have been acquainted with his
own pretensions and character, 'who knew all qualities with a learned
spirit.' His eye seems never to have been bent upon himself, but
outwards upon nature. A man who thinks highly of himself may almost set
it down that it is without reason. Milton, notwithstanding, appears to
have had a high opinion of himself, and to have made it good. He was
conscious of his powers, and great by design. Perhaps his tenaciousness,
on the score of his own merit, might arise from an early habit of
polemical writing, in which his pretensions were continually called to
the bar of prejudice and party-spirit, and he had to plead not guilty to
the indictment. Some men have died unconscious of immortality, as others
have almost exhausted the sense of it in their lifetimes. Correggio
might be mentioned as an instance of the one, Voltaire of the other.
There is nothing that helps a man in his conduct through life more
than a knowledge of his own characteristic weaknesses (which, guarded
against, become his strength), as there is nothing that tends more
to the success of a man's talents than his knowing the limits of his
faculties, which are thus concentrated on some practicable object. One
man can do but one thing. Universal pretensions end in nothing. Or, as
Butler has it, too much wit requires
As much again to govern it.
There are those who have gone, for want of this self-knowledge,
strangely out of their way, and others who have never found it. We find
many who succeed in certain departments, and are yet melancholy and
dissatisfied, because they failed in the one to which they first
devoted themselves, like discarded lovers who pine after their scornful
mistress. I will conclude with observing that authors in general
overrate the extent and value of posthumous fame: for what (as it has
been asked) is the amount even of Shakespear's fame? That in that very
country which boasts his genius and his birth, perhaps, scarce one
person in ten has ever heard of his name or read a syllable of his
writings!