La vie eat un sommeil. Les vieillards sont ceux dont le sommeil a ete
plus long: ils ne commencent a se reveiller que quand il faut mourir.
--LA BRUYERE.
["Life is a sleep. The aged are those whose sleep has been the
longest they begin to awaken themselves just as they are obliged to
die."]
"You wonder why I have never turned author, with my constant love of
literature and my former desire of fame," said Talbot, as he and
Clarence sat alone after dinner, discussing many things: "the fact is,
that I have often intended it, and as often been frightened from my
design. Those terrible feuds; those vehement disputes; those
recriminations of abuse, so inseparable from literary life,--appear to
me too dreadful for a man not utterly hardened or malevolent
voluntarily to encounter. Good Heavens! what acerbity sours the blood
of an author! The manifestoes of opposing generals, advancing to
pillage, to burn, to destroy, contain not a tithe of the ferocity
which animates the pages of literary oontroversialists! No term of
reproach is too severe, no vituperation too excessive! the blackest
passions, the bitterest, the meanest malice, pour caustic and poison
upon every page! It seems as if the greatest talents, the most
elaborate knowledge, only sprang from the weakest and worst-regulated
mind, as exotics from dung. The private records, the public works of
men of letters, teem with an immitigable fury! Their histories might
all be reduced into these sentences: they were born; they quarrelled;
they died!"
"But," said Clarence, "it would matter little to the world if these
quarrels were confined merely to poets and men of imaginative
literature, in whom irritability is perhaps almost necessarily allied
to the keen and quick susceptibilities which constitute their genius.
These are more to be lamented and wondered at among philosophers,
theologians, and men of science; the coolness, the patience, the
benevolence, which ought to characterize their works, should at least
moderate their jealousy and soften their disputes."
"Ah!" said Talbot, "but the vanity of discovery is no less acute than
that of creation: the self-love of a philosopher is no less self-love
than that of a poet. Besides, those sects the most sure of their
opinions, whether in religion or science, are always the most bigoted
and persecuting. Moreover, nearly all men deceive themselves in
disputes, and imagine that they are intolerant, not through private
jealousy, but public benevolence: they never declaim against the
injustice done to themselves; no, it is the terrible injury done to
society which grieves and inflames them. It is not the bitter
expressions against their dogmas which give them pain; by no means: it
is the atrocious doctrines (so prejudicial to the country, if in
polities; so pernicious to the world, if in philosophy), which their
duty, not their vanity, induces them to denounce and anathematize."
"There seems," said Clarence, "to be a sort of reaction in sophistry
and hypocrisy: there has, perhaps, never been a deceiver who was not,
by his own passions, himself the deceived."
"Very true," said Talbot; "and it is a pity that historians have not
kept that fact in view: we should then have had a better notion of the
Cromwells and Mohammeds of the past than we have now, nor judged those
as utter impostors who were probably half dupes. But to return to
myself. I think you will already be able to answer your own question,
why I did not turn author, now that we have given a momentary
consideration to the penalties consequent on such a profession. But
in truth, as I near the close of my life, I often regret that I had
not more courage, for there is in us all a certain restlessness in the
persuasion, whether true or false, of superior knowledge or intellect,
and this urges us on to the proof; or, if we resist its impulse;
renders us discontented with our idleness and disappointed with the
past. I have everything now in my possession which it has been the
desire of my later years to enjoy: health, retirement, successful
study, and the affection of one in whose breast, when I am gone, my
memory will not utterly pass away. With these advantages, added to
the gifts of fortune, and an habitual elasticity of spirit, I confess
that my happiness is not free from a biting and frequent regret: I
would fain have been a better citizen; I would fain have died in the
consciousness not only that I had improved my mind to the utmost, but
that I had turned that improvement to the benefit of my fellow-
creatures. As it is, in living wholly for myself, I feel that my
philosophy has wanted generosity; and my indifference to glory has
proceeded from a weakness, not, as I once persuaded myself, from a
virtue but the fruitlessness of my existence has been the consequence
of the arduous frivolities and the petty objects in which my early
years were consumed; and my mind, in losing the enjoyments which it
formerly possessed, had no longer the vigour to create for itself a
new soil, from which labour it could only hope for more valuable
fruits. It is no contradiction to see those who most eagerly courted
society in their youth shrink from it the most sensitively in their
age; for they who possess certain advantages, and are morbidly vain of
them, will naturally be disposed to seek that sphere for which those
advantages are best calculated: and when youth and its concomitants
depart, the vanity so long fed still remains, and perpetually
mortifies them by recalling not so much the qualities they have lost,
as the esteem which those qualities conferred; and by contrasting not
so much their own present alteration, as the change they experience in
the respect and consideration of others. What wonder, then, that they
eagerly fly from the world, which has only mortification for their
self-love, or that we find, in biography, how often the most assiduous
votaries of pleasure have become the most rigid of recluses? For my
part, I think that that love of solitude which the ancients so
eminently possessed, and which, to this day, is considered by some as
the sign of a great mind, nearly always arises from a tenderness of
vanity, easily wounded in the commerce of the rough world; and that it
is under the shadow of Disappointment that we must look for the
hermitage. Diderot did well, even at the risk of offending Rousseau,
to write against solitude. The more a moralist binds man to man, and
forbids us to divorce our interests from our kind, the more
effectually is the end of morality obtained. They only are
justifiable in seclusion who, like the Greek philosophers, make that
very seclusion the means of serving and enlightening their race; who
from their retreats send forth their oracles of wisdom, and render the
desert which surrounds them eloquent with the voice of truth. But
remember, Clarence (and let my life, useless in itself, have at least
this moral), that for him who in no wise cultivates his talent for the
benefit of others; who is contented with being a good hermit at the
expense of being a bad citizen; who looks from his retreat upon a life
wasted in the difficiles nugae of the most frivolous part of the
world, nor redeems in the closet the time he has misspent in the
saloon,--remember that for him seclusion loses its dignity, philosophy
its comfort, benevolence its hope, and even religion its balm.
Knowledge unemployed may preserve us from vice; but knowledge
beneficently employed is virtue. Perfect happiness, in our present
state, is impossible; for Hobbes says justly that our nature is
inseparable from desires, and that the very word desire (the craving
for something not possessed) implies that our present felicity is not
complete. But there is one way of attaining what we may term, if not
utter, at least mortal, happiness; it is this,--a sincere and
unrelaxing activity for the happiness of others. In that one maxim is
concentrated whatever is noble in morality, sublime in religion, or
unanswerable in truth. In that pursuit we have all scope for whatever
is excellent in our hearts, and none for the petty passions which our
nature is heir to. Thus engaged, whatever be our errors, there will
be nobility, not weakness, in our remorse; whatever our failure,
virtue, not selfishness, in our regret; and, in success, vanity itself
will become holy and triumph eternal. As astrologers were wont to
receive upon metals 'the benign aspect of the stars, so as to detain
and fix, as it were, the felicity of that hour which would otherwise
be volatile and fugitive,' [Bacon] even so will that success leave
imprinted upon our memory a blessing which cannot pass away; preserve
forever upon our names, as on a signet, the hallowed influence of the
hour in which our great end was effected, and treasure up 'the relics
of heaven' in the sanctuary of a human fane."
As the old man ceased, there was a faint and hectic flush over his
face, an enthusiasm on his features, which age made almost holy, and
which Clarence had never observed there before. In truth, his young
listener was deeply affected, and the advice of his adopted parent was
afterwards impressed with a more awful solemnity upon his remembrance.
Already he had acquired much worldly lore from Talbot's precepts and
conversation. He had obtained even something better than worldly
lore,--a kindly and indulgent disposition to his fellow-creatures; for
he had seen that foibles were not inconsistent with generous and great
qualities, and that we judge wrongly of human nature when we ridicule
its littleness. The very circumstances which make the shallow
misanthropical incline the wise to be benevolent. Fools discover that
frailty is not incompatible with great men; they wonder and despise:
but the discerning find that greatness is not incompatible with
frailty; and they admire and indulge.
But a still greater benefit than this of toleration did Clarence
derive from the commune of that night. He became strengthened in his
honourable ambition and nerved to unrelaxing exertion. The
recollection of Talbot's last words, on that night, occurred to him
often and often, when sick at heart and languid with baffled hope, it
roused him from that gloom and despondency which are always
unfavourable to virtue, and incited him once more to that labour in
the vineyard which, whether our hour be late or early, will if earnest
obtain a blessing and reward.
The hour was now waxing late; and Talbot, mindful of his companion's
health, rose to retire. As he pressed Clarence's hand and bade him
farewell for the night, Linden thought there was something more than
usually impressive in his manner and affectionate in his words.
Perhaps this was the natural result of their conversation.
The next morning, Clarence was awakened by a noise. He listened, and
heard distinctly an alarmed cry proceeding from the room in which
Talbot slept, and which was opposite to his own. He rose hastily and
hurried to the chamber. The door was open; the old servant was
bending over the bed: Clarence approached, and saw that he supported
his master in his arms.
"Good God!" he cried, "what is the matter?" The faithful old man
lifted up his face to Clarence, and the big tears rolled fast from
eyes in which the sources of such emotion were well-nigh dried up.
"He loved you well, sir!" he said, and could say no more. He dropped
the body gently, and throwing himself on the floor sobbed aloud. With
a foreboding and chilled heart, Clarence bent forward; the face of his
benefactor lay directly before him, and the hand of death was upon it.
The soul had passed to its account hours since, in the hush of night,
--passed, apparently, without a struggle or a pang, like the wind,
which animates the harp one moment, and the next is gone.
Linden seized his hand; it was heavy and cold: his eye rested upon the
miniature of the unfortunate Lady Merton, which, since the night of
the attempted robbery, Talbot had worn constantly round his neck.
Strange and powerful was the contrast of the pictured face--in which
not a colour had yet faded, and where the hues and fulness and prime
of youth dwelt, unconscious of the lapse of years--with the aged and
shrunken countenance of the deceased.
In that contrast was a sad and mighty moral: it wrought, as it were, a
contract between youth and age, and conveyed a rapid but full history
of our passions and our life.
The servant looked up once more on the countenance; he pointed towards
it, and muttered, "See, see how awfully it is changed!"
"But there is a smile upon it!" said Clarence, as he flung himself
beside the body and burst into tears.