TABLE-TALK

ESSAYS ON MEN AND MANNERS

By William Hazlitt

CONTENTS

VOLUME I

 1. On the Pleasure of Painting 2. The Same Subject Continued 3. On the Past and Future 4. On Genius and Common Sense 5. The Same Subject Continued 6. Character of Cobbett 7. On People With One Idea 8. On the Ignorance of the Learned 9. The Indian Jugglers 10. On Living To One's-Self 11. On Thought and Action 12. On Will-Making 13. On Certain Inconsistencies In Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses 14. The Same Subject Continued 15. On Paradox and Common-Place 16. On Vulgarity and Affectation

VOLUME II

 1. On a Landscape of Nicholas Poussin 2. On Milton's Sonnets 3. On Going a Journey 4. On Coffee-House Politicians 5. On the Aristocracy of Letters 6. On Criticism 7. On Great and Little Things 8. On Familiar Style 9. On Effeminacy of Character 10. Why Distant Objects Please 11. On Corporate Bodies 12. Whether Actors Ought To Sit in the Boxes 13. On the Disadvantages of Intellectual Superiority 14. On Patronage and Puffing 15. On the Knowledge of Character 16. On the Picturesque and Ideal 17. On the Fear of Death

VOLUME I

ESSAY I. ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING

'There is a pleasure in painting which none but painters know. ' Inwriting, you have to contend with the world; in painting, you have onlyto carry on a friendly strife with Nature. You sit down to your task, and are happy. From the moment that you take up the pencil, and lookNature in the face, you are at peace with your own heart. No angrypassions rise to disturb the silent progress of the work, to shake thehand, or dim the brow: no irritable humours are set afloat: you have noabsurd opinions to combat, no point to strain, no adversary to crush, no fool to annoy--you are actuated by fear or favour to no man. Thereis 'no juggling here, ' no sophistry, no intrigue, no tampering with theevidence, no attempt to make black white, or white black: but you resignyourself into the hands of a greater power, that of Nature, with thesimplicity of a child, and the devotion of an enthusiast--'study withjoy her manner, and with rapture taste her style. ' The mind is calm, andfull at the same time. The hand and eye are equally employed. Intracing the commonest object, a plant or the stump of a tree, youlearn something every moment. You perceive unexpected differences, anddiscover likenesses where you looked for no such thing. You try to setdown what you see--find out your error, and correct it. You need notplay tricks, or purposely mistake: with all your pains, you are stillfar short of the mark. Patience grows out of the endless pursuit, andturns it into a luxury. A streak in a flower, a wrinkle in a leaf, atinge in a cloud, a stain in an old wall or ruin grey, are seizedwith avidity as the _spolia opima_ of this sort of mental warfare, andfurnish out labour for another half-day. The hours pass away untold, without chagrin, and without weariness; nor would you ever wish topass them otherwise. Innocence is joined with industry, pleasurewith business; and the mind is satisfied, though it is not engaged inthinking or in doing any mischief. (1)

I have not much pleasure in writing these _Essays_, or in reading themafterwards; though I own I now and then meet with a phrase that I like, or a thought that strikes me as a true one. But after I begin them, I amonly anxious to get to the end of them, which I am not sure I shall do, for I seldom see my way a page or even a sentence beforehand; and when Ihave as by a miracle escaped, I trouble myself little more about them. I sometimes have to write them twice over: then it is necessary to readthe _proof_, to prevent mistakes by the printer; so that by the timethey appear in a tangible shape, and one can con them over with aconscious, sidelong glance to the public approbation, they have losttheir gloss and relish, and become 'more tedious than a twice-toldtale. ' For a person to read his own works over with any great delight, he ought first to forget that he ever wrote them. Familiarity naturallybreeds contempt. It is, in fact, like poring fondly over a piece ofblank paper; from repetition, the words convey no distinct meaningto the mind--are mere idle sounds, except that our vanity claims aninterest and property in them. I have more satisfaction in my ownthoughts than in dictating them to others: words are necessary toexplain the impression of certain things upon me to the reader, but theyrather weaken and draw a veil over than strengthen it to myself. HoweverI might say with the poet, 'My mind to me a kingdom is, ' yet I havelittle ambition 'to set a throne or chair of state in the understandingsof other men. ' The ideas we cherish most exist best in a kind of shadowyabstraction, Pure in the last recesses of the mind, and derive neither force nor interest from being exposed to public view. They are old familiar acquaintance, and any change in them, arisingfrom the adventitious ornaments of style or dress, is little to theiradvantage. After I have once written on a subject, it goes out of mymind: my feelings about it have been melted down into words, and _then_I forget. I have, as it were, discharged my memory of its old habitualreckoning, and rubbed out the score of real sentiment. For the futureit exists only for the sake of others. But I cannot say, from my ownexperience, that the same process takes place in transferring ourideas to canvas; they gain more than they lose in the mechanicaltransformation. One is never tired of painting, because you have to setdown not what you knew already, but what you have just discovered. Inthe former case you translate feelings into words; in the latter, namesinto things. There is a continual creation out of nothing going on. With every stroke of the brush a new field of inquiry is laid open;new difficulties arise, and new triumphs are prepared over them. Bycomparing the imitation with the original, you see what you have done, and how much you have still to do. The test of the senses is severerthan that of fancy, and an over-match even for the delusions of ourself-love. One part of a picture shames another, and you determine topaint up to yourself, if you cannot come up to Nature. Every objectbecomes lustrous from the light thrown back upon it by the mirror ofart: and by the aid of the pencil we may be said to touch and handlethe objects of sight. The air-drawn visions that hover on the verge ofexistence have a bodily presence given them on the canvas: the formof beauty is changed into a substance: the dream and the glory of theuniverse is made 'palpable to feeling as well as sight. '--And see! arainbow starts from the canvas, with its humid train of glory, as ifit were drawn from its cloudy arch in heaven. The spangled landscapeglitters with drops of dew after the shower. The 'fleecy fools' showtheir coats in the gleams of the setting sun. The shepherds pipe theirfarewell notes in the fresh evening air. And is this bright vision madefrom a dead, dull blank, like a bubble reflecting the mighty fabric ofthe universe? Who would think this miracle of Rubens' pencil possibleto be performed? Who, having seen it, would not spend his life to dothe like? See how the rich fallows, the bare stubble-field, the scantyharvest-home, drag in Rembrandt's landscapes! How often have I lookedat them and nature, and tried to do the same, till the very 'lightthickened, ' and there was an earthiness in the feeling of the air! Thereis no end of the refinements of art and nature in this respect. Onemay look at the misty glimmering horizon till the eye dazzles and theimagination is lost, in hopes to transfer the whole interminable expanseat one blow upon the canvas. Wilson said, he used to try to paint theeffect of the motes dancing in the setting sun. At another time, afriend, coming into his painting-room when he was sitting on theground in a melancholy posture, observed that his picture looked like alandscape after a shower: he started up with the greatest delight, and said, 'That is the effect I intended to produce, but thought I hadfailed. ' Wilson was neglected; and, by degrees, neglected his art toapply himself to brandy. His hand became unsteady, so that it was onlyby repeated attempts that he could reach the place or produce the effecthe aimed at; and when he had done a little to a picture, he would say toany acquaintance who chanced to drop in, 'I have painted enough for oneday: come, let us go somewhere. ' It was not so Claude left his pictures, or his studies on the banks of the Tiber, to go in search of otherenjoyments, or ceased to gaze upon the glittering sunny vales anddistant hills; and while his eye drank in the clear sparkling hues andlovely forms of nature, his hand stamped them on the lucid canvas tolast there for ever! One of the most delightful parts of my life wasone fine summer, when I used to walk out of an evening to catch the lastlight of the sun, gemming the green slopes or russet lawns, and gildingtower or tree, while the blue sky, gradually turning to purple and gold, or skirted with dusky grey, hung its broad marble pavement over all, as we see it in the great master of Italian landscape. But to come to amore particular explanation of the subject:--

The first head I ever tried to paint was an old woman with the upperpart of the face shaded by her bonnet, and I certainly laboured (at) itwith great perseverance. It took me numberless sittings to do it. I haveit by me still, and sometimes look at it with surprise, to think howmuch pains were thrown away to little purpose, --yet not altogether invain if it taught me to see good in everything, and to know that thereis nothing vulgar in Nature seen with the eye of science or of trueart. Refinement creates beauty everywhere: it is the grossness of thespectator that discovers nothing but grossness in the object. Be this asit may, I spared no pains to do my best. If art was long, I thought thatlife was so too at that moment. I got in the general effect the firstday; and pleased and surprised enough I was at my success. The rest wasa work of time--of weeks and months (if need were), of patient toiland careful finishing. I had seen an old head by Rembrandt at BurleighHouse, and if I could produce a head at all like Rembrandt in a year, inmy lifetime, it would be glory and felicity and wealth and fame enoughfor me! The head I had seen at Burleigh was an exact and wonderfulfacsimile of nature, and I resolved to make mine (as nearly as I could)an exact facsimile of nature. I did not then, nor do I now believe, with Sir Joshua, that the perfection of art consists in givinggeneral appearances without individual details, but in giving generalappearances with individual details. Otherwise, I had done my work thefirst day. But I saw something more in nature than general effect, andI thought it worth my while to give it in the picture. There was agorgeous effect of light and shade; but there was a delicacy as well asdepth in the chiaroscuro which I was bound to follow into its dim andscarce perceptible variety of tone and shadow. Then I had to makethe transition from a strong light to as dark a shade, preserving themasses, but gradually softening off the intermediate parts. It was soin nature; the difficulty was to make it so in the copy. I tried, andfailed again and again; I strove harder, and succeeded as I thought. The wrinkles in Rembrandt were not hard lines, but broken andirregular. I saw the same appearance in nature, and strained every nerveto give it. If I could hit off this edgy appearance, and insert thereflected light in the furrows of old age in half a morning, I did notthink I had lost a day. Beneath the shrivelled yellow parchment look ofthe skin, there was here and there a streak of the blood-colour tingingthe face; this I made a point of conveying, and did not cease to comparewhat I saw with what I did (with jealous, lynx-eyed watchfulness) tillI succeeded to the best of my ability and judgment. How many revisionswere there! How many attempts to catch an expression which I had seenthe day before! How often did we try to get the old position, and waitfor the return of the same light! There was a puckering up of the lips, a cautious introversion of the eye under the shadow of the bonnet, indicative of the feebleness and suspicion of old age, which at last wemanaged, after many trials and some quarrels, to a tolerable nicety. The picture was never finished, and I might have gone on with it to thepresent hour. (2) I used to sit it on the ground when my day's work wasdone, and saw revealed to me with swimming eyes the birth of new hopesand of a new world of objects. The painter thus learns to look at Naturewith different eyes. He before saw her 'as in a glass darkly, but nowface to face. ' He understands the texture and meaning of the visibleuniverse, and 'sees into the life of things, ' not by the help ofmechanical instruments, but of the improved exercise of his faculties, and an intimate sympathy with Nature. The meanest thing is not lost uponhim, for he looks at it with an eye to itself, not merely to his ownvanity or interest, or the opinion of the world. Even where there isneither beauty nor use--if that ever were--still there is truth, and asufficient source of gratification in the indulgence of curiosity andactivity of mind. The humblest printer is a true scholar; and the bestof scholars--the scholar of Nature. For myself, and for the real comfortand satisfaction of the thing, I had rather have been Jan Steen, orGerard Dow, than the greatest casuist or philologer that ever lived. The painter does not view things in clouds or 'mist, the common gloss oftheologians, ' but applies the same standard of truth and disinterestedspirit of inquiry, that influence his daily practice, to other subjects. He perceives form, he distinguishes character. He reads men and bookswith an intuitive eye. He is a critic as well as a connoisseur. Theconclusions he draws are clear and convincing, because they are takenfrom the things themselves. He is not a fanatic, a dupe, or a slave; forthe habit of seeing for himself also disposes him to judge for himself. The most sensible men I know (taken as a class) are painters; that is, they are the most lively observers of what passes in the world aboutthem, and the closest observers of what passes in their own minds. Fromtheir profession they in general mix more with the world than authors;and if they have not the same fund of acquired knowledge, are obligedto rely more on individual sagacity. I might mention the names of Opie, Fuseli, Northcote, as persons distinguished for striking descriptionand acquaintance with the subtle traits of character. (3) Painters inordinary society, or in obscure situations where their value isnot known, and they are treated with neglect and indifference, havesometimes a forward self-sufficiency of manner; but this is not so muchtheir fault as that of others. Perhaps their want of regular educationmay also be in fault in such cases. Richardson, who is very tenacious ofthe respect in which the profession ought to be held, tells a story ofMichael Angelo, that after a quarrel between him and Pope Julius II. , 'upon account of a slight the artist conceived the pontiff had put uponhim, Michael Angelo was introduced by a bishop, who, thinking to servethe artist by it, made it an argument that the Pope should be reconciledto him, because men of his profession were commonly ignorant, and of noconsequence otherwise; his holiness, enraged at the bishop, struck himwith his staff, and told him, it was he that was the blockhead, andaffronted the man himself would not offend: the prelate was drivenout of the chamber, and Michael Angelo had the Pope's benediction, accompanied with presents. This bishop had fallen into the vulgar error, and was rebuked accordingly. '

Besides the exercise of the mind, painting exercises the body. It is amechanical as well as a liberal art. To do anything, to dig a hole inthe ground, to plant a cabbage, to hit a mark, to move a shuttle, towork a pattern, --in a word, to attempt to produce any effect, and to_succeed, _ has something in it that gratifies the love of power, andcarries off the restless activity of the mind of man. Indolence isa delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to behappy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctivetendencies of the human frame; and painting combines them bothincessantly. (4) The hand is furnished a practical test of thecorrectness of the eye; and the eye, thus admonished, imposes freshtasks of skill and industry upon the hand. Every stroke tells as theverifying of a new truth; and every new observation, the instant it ismade, passes into an act and emanation of the will. Every step isnearer what we wish, and yet there is always more to do. In spite of thefacility, the fluttering grace, the evanescent hues, that play round thepencil of Rubens and Van-dyke, however I may admire, I do not envy themthis power so much as I do the slow, patient, laborious execution ofCorreggio, Leonardo da Vinci, and Andrea del Sarto, where every touchappears conscious of its charge, emulous of truth, and where the painfulartist has so distinctly wrought, That you might almost say his picture thought. 

In the one case the colours seem breathed on the canvas as if by magic, the work and the wonder of a moment; in the other they seem inlaid inthe body of the work, and as if it took the artist years of unremittinglabour, and of delightful never-ending progress to perfection. (5) Whowould wish ever to come to the close of such works, --not to dwell onthem, to return to them, to be wedded to them to the last? Rubens, withhis florid, rapid style, complains that when he had just learned hisart, he should be forced to die. Leonardo, in the slow advances of his, had lived long enough!

Painting is not, like writing, what is properly understood by asedentary employment. It requires not indeed a strong, but a continuedand steady exertion of muscular power. The precision and delicacy ofthe manual operation, makes up for the want of vehemence, --as to balancehimself for any time in the same position the rope-dancer must strainevery nerve. Painting for a whole morning gives one as excellent anappetite for one's dinner as old Abraham Tucker acquired for his byriding over Banstead Downs. It is related of Sir Joshua Reynolds, that'he took no other exercise than what he used in his painting-room, '--thewriter means, in walking backwards and forwards to look at his picture;but the act of painting itself, of laying on the colours in theproper place and proper quantity, was a much harder exercise than thisalternate receding from and returning to the picture. This last would berather a relaxation and relief than an effort. It is not to be wonderedat, that an artist like Sir Joshua, who delighted so much in thesensual and practical part of his art, should have found himself at aconsiderable loss when the decay of his sight precluded him, forthe last year or two of his life, from the following up of hisprofession, --'the source, ' according to his own remark, 'of thirtyyears' uninterrupted enjoyment and prosperity to him. ' It is only thosewho never think at all, or else who have accustomed themselves to broodincessantly on abstract ideas, that never feel ennui. 

To give one instance more, and then I will have done with this ramblingdiscourse. One of my first attempts was a picture of my father, who wasthen in a green old age, with strong-marked features, and scarredwith the smallpox. I drew it out with a broad light crossing the face, looking down, with spectacles on, reading. The book was Shaftesbury's_Characteristics_, in a fine old binding, with Gribelin's etchings. Myfather would as lieve it had been any other book; but for him to readwas to be content, was 'riches fineless. ' The sketch promised well; andI set to work to finish it, determined to spare no time nor pains. Myfather was willing to sit as long as I pleased; for there is a naturaldesire in the mind of man to sit for one's picture, to be the object ofcontinued attention, to have one's likeness multiplied; and besides hissatisfaction in the picture, he had some pride in the artist, though hewould rather I should have written a sermon than painted like Rembrandtor like Raphael. Those winter days, with the gleams of sunshinecoming through the chapel-windows, and cheered by the notes of therobin-redbreast in our garden (that 'ever in the haunch of wintersings'), --as my afternoon's work drew to a close, --were among thehappiest of my life. When I gave the effect I intended to any part ofthe picture for which I had prepared my colours; when I imitated theroughness of the skin by a lucky stroke of the pencil; when I hitthe clear, pearly tone of a vein; when I gave the ruddy complexion ofhealth, the blood circulating under the broad shadows of one side ofthe face, I thought my fortune made; or rather it was already morethan made, I might one day be able to say with Correggio, '_I also am apainter!_' It was an idle thought, a boy's conceit; but it did not makeme less happy at the time. I used regularly to set my work in the chairto look at it through the long evenings; and many a time did I return totake leave of it before I could go to bed at night. I remember sendingit with a throbbing heart to the Exhibition, and seeing it hung up thereby the side of one of the Honourable Mr. Skeffington (now Sir George). There was nothing in common between them, but that they were theportraits of two very good-natured men. I think, but am not sure, that Ifinished this portrait (or another afterwards) on the same day that thenews of the battle of Austerlitz came; I walked out in the afternoon, and, as I returned, saw the evening star set over a poor man's cottagewith other thoughts and feelings than I shall ever have again. Oh forthe revolution of the great Platonic year, that those times might comeover again! I could sleep out the three hundred and sixty-five thousandintervening years very contentedly!--The picture is left: the table, thechair, the window where I learned to construe Livy, the chapel where myfather preached, remain where they were; but he himself is gone to rest, full of years, of faith, of hope, and charity!

NOTES to ESSAY I

(1) There is a passage in Werter which contains a very pleasingillustration of this doctrine, and is as follows:--

'About a league from the town is a place called Walheim. It is veryagreeably situated on the side of a hill: from one of the paths whichleads out of the village, you have a view of the whole country; andthere to a good old woman who sells wine, coffee, and tea there: butbetter than all this are two lime-trees before the church, which spreadtheir branches over a little green, surrounded by barns and cottages. Ihave seen few places more retired and peaceful. I send for a chair andtable from the old woman's, and there I drink my coffee and read Homer. It was by accident that I discovered this place one fine afternoon: allwas perfect stillness; everybody was in the fields, except a little boyabout four years old, who was sitting on the ground, and holding betweenhis knees a child of about six months; he pressed it to his bosomwith his little arms, which made a sort of great chair for it; andnotwithstanding the vivacity which sparkled in his eyes, he satperfectly still. Quite delighted with the scene, I sat down on a ploughopposite, and had great pleasure in drawing this little picture ofbrotherly tenderness. I added a bit of the hedge, the barn-door, andsome broken cart-wheels, without any order, just as they happenedto lie; and in about an hour I found I had made a drawing of greatexpression and very correct design without having put in anything of myown. This confirmed me in the resolution I had made before, only tocopy Nature for the future. Nature is inexhaustible, and alone formsthe greatest masters. Say what you will of rules, they alter the truefeatures and the natural expression. '

(2) It is at present covered with a thick slough of oil and varnish(the perishable vehicle of the English school), like an envelope ofgoldbeaters' skin, so as to be hardly visible. 

(3) Men in business, who are answerable with their fortunes forthe consequences of their opinions, and are therefore accustomed toascertain pretty accurately the grounds on which they act, before theycommit themselves on the event, are often men of remarkably quick andsound judgements. Artists in like manner must know tolerably well whatthey are about, before they can bring the result of their observationsto the test of ocular demonstration. 

(4) The famous Schiller used to say, that he found the great happinessof life, after all, to consist in the discharge of some mechanical duty. 

(5) The rich _impasting_ of Titian and Giorgione combines something ofthe advantages of both these styles, the felicity of the one with thecarefulness of the other, and is perhaps to be preferred to either. 

ESSAY II. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

The painter not only takes a delight in nature, he has a newand exquisite source of pleasure opened to him in the study andcontemplation of works of art--

 Whate'er Lorraine light touch'd with soft'ning hue, Or savage Rosa dash'd, or learned Poussin drew. 

He turns aside to view a country gentleman's seat with eager looks, thinking it may contain some of the rich products of art. There isan air round Lord Radnor's park, for there hang the two Claudes, theMorning and Evening of the Roman Empire--round Wilton House, for thereis Vandyke's picture of the Pembroke family--round Blenheim, for thereis his picture of the Duke of Buckingham's children, and the mostmagnificent collection of Rubenses in the world--at Knowsley, for thereis Rembrandt's Handwriting on the Wall--and at Burleigh, for there aresome of Guido's angelic heads. The young artist makes a pilgrimage toeach of these places, eyes them wistfully at a distance, 'bosomed highin tufted trees, ' and feels an interest in them of which the owner isscarce conscious: he enters the well-swept walks and echoing archways, passes the threshold, is led through wainscoted rooms, is shown thefurniture, the rich hangings, the tapestry, the massy services ofplate--and, at last, is ushered into the room where his treasure is, theidol of his vows--some speaking face or bright landscape! It is stampedon his brain, and lives there thenceforward, a tally for nature, and atest of art. He furnishes out the chambers of the mind from the spoilsof time, picks and chooses which shall have the best places--nearest hisheart. He goes away richer than he came, richer than the possessor;and thinks that he may one day return, when he perhaps shall have donesomething like them, or even from failure shall have learned to admiretruth and genius more. 

My first initiation in the mysteries of the art was at the OrleansGallery: it was there I formed my taste, such as it is; so that I amirreclaimably of the old school in painting. I was staggered when I sawthe works there collected, and looked at them with wondering and withlonging eyes. A mist passed away from my sight: the scales fell off. Anew sense came upon me, a new heaven and a new earth stood before me. I saw the soul speaking in the face--'hands that the rod of empire hadswayed' in mighty ages past--'a forked mountain or blue promontory, '

 --with trees upon't That nod unto the world, and mock our eyes with air. 

Old Time had unlocked his treasures, and Fame stood portress atthe door. We had all heard of the names of Titian, Raphael, Guido, Domenichino, the Caracci--but to see them face to face, to be in thesame room with their deathless productions, was like breaking somemighty spell--was almost an effect of necromancy! From that time I livedin a world of pictures. Battles, sieges, speeches in parliament seemedmere idle noise and fury, 'signifying nothing, ' compared with thosemighty works and dreaded names that spoke to me in the eternal silenceof thought. This was the more remarkable, as it was but a short timebefore that I was not only totally ignorant of, but insensible to thebeauties of art. As an instance, I remember that one afternoon I wasreading _The Provoked Husband_ with the highest relish, with a greenwoody landscape of Ruysdael or Hobbima just before me, at which I lookedoff the book now and then, and wondered what there could be in that sortof work to satisfy or delight the mind--at the same time asking myself, as a speculative question, whether I should ever feel an interest in itlike what I took in reading Vanbrugh and Cibber?

I had made some progress in painting when I went to the Louvre to study, and I never did anything afterwards. I never shall forget conningover the Catalogue which a friend lent me just before I set out. Thepictures, the names of the painters, seemed to relish in the mouth. There was one of Titian's Mistress at her toilette. Even the colourswith which the painter had adorned her hair were not more golden, moreamiable to sight, than those which played round and tantalised my fancyere I saw the picture. There were two portraits by the same hand--'Ayoung Nobleman with a glove'--Another, 'a companion to it. ' I readthe description over and over with fond expectancy, and filled up theimaginary outline with whatever I could conceive of grace, and dignity, and an antique gusto--all but equal to the original. There was theTransfiguration too. With what awe I saw it in my mind's eye, andwas overshadowed with the spirit of the artist! Not to have beendisappointed with these works afterwards, was the highest compliment Ican pay to their transcendent merits. Indeed, it was from seeing otherworks of the same great masters that I had formed a vague, but nodisparaging idea of these. The first day I got there, I was kept forsome time in the French Exhibition Room, and thought I should not beable to get a sight of the old masters. I just caught a peep at themthrough the door (vile hindrance!) like looking out of purgatory intoparadise--from Poussin's noble, mellow-looking landscapes to whereRubens hung out his gaudy banner, and down the glimmering vista tothe rich jewels of Titian and the Italian school. At last, by muchimportunity, I was admitted, and lost not an instant in making use of mynew privilege. It was _un beau jour_ to me. I marched delighted througha quarter of a mile of the proudest efforts of the mind of man, a wholecreation of genius, a universe of art! I ran the gauntlet of all theschools from the bottom to the top; and in the end got admitted into theinner room, where they had been repairing some of their greatest works. Here the Transfiguration, the St. Peter Martyr, and the St. Jerome ofDomenichino stood on the floor, as if they had bent their knees, likecamels stooping, to unlade their riches to the spectator. On one side, on an easel, stood Hippolito de Medici (a portrait by Titian), with aboar-spear in his hand, looking through those he saw, till you turnedaway from the keen glance; and thrown together in heaps were landscapesof the same hand, green pastoral hills and vales, and shepherds pipingto their mild mistresses underneath the flowering shade. Reader, 'ifthou hast not seen the Louvre thou art damned!'--for thou hast not seenthe choicest remains of the works of art; or thou hast not seen allthese together with their mutually reflected glories. I say nothing ofthe statues; for I know but little of sculpture, and never liked anytill I saw the Elgin Marbles. .. . Here, for four months together, Istrolled and studied, and daily heard the warning sound--'Quatres heurespassees, il faut fermer, Citoyens'--(Ah! why did they ever change theirstyle?) muttered in coarse provincial French; and brought away withme some loose draughts and fragments, which I have been forced topart with, like drops of life-blood, for 'hard money. ' How often, thoutenantless mansion of godlike magnificence--how often has my heart sincegone a pilgrimage to thee!

It has been made a question, whether the artist, or the mere manof taste and natural sensibility, receives most pleasure from thecontemplation of works of art; and I think this question might beanswered by another as a sort of _experimentum crucis_, namely, whetherany one out of that 'number numberless' of mere gentlemen and amateurs, who visited Paris at the period here spoken of, felt as much interest, as much pride or pleasure in this display of the most striking monumentsof art as the humblest student would? The first entrance into the Louvrewould be only one of the events of his journey, not an event in hislife, remembered ever after with thankfulness and regret. He wouldexplore it with the same unmeaning curiosity and idle wonder as he wouldthe Regalia in the Tower, or the Botanic Garden in the Tuileries, butnot with the fond enthusiasm of an artist. How should he? His is'casual fruition, joyless, unendeared. ' But the painter is wedded to hisart--the mistress, queen, and idol of his soul. He has embarked hisall in it, fame, time, fortune, peace of mind--his hopes in youth, hisconsolation in age: and shall he not feel a more intense interestin whatever relates to it than the mere indolent trifler? Naturalsensibility alone, without the entire application of the mind to thatone object, will not enable the possessor to sympathise with allthe degrees of beauty and power in the conceptions of a Titian or aCorreggio; but it is he only who does this, who follows them into alltheir force and matchless race, that does or can feel their full value. Knowledge is pleasure as well as power. No one but the artist who hasstudied nature and contended with the difficulties of art, can be awareof the beauties, or intoxicated with a passion for painting. No one whohas not devoted his life and soul to the pursuit of art can feel thesame exultation in its brightest ornaments and loftiest triumphs whichan artist does. Where the treasure is, there the heart is also. It isnow seventeen years since I was studying in the Louvre (and I have onsince given up all thoughts of the art as a profession), but long afterI returned, and even still, I sometimes dream of being there again--ofasking for the old pictures--and not finding them, or finding themchanged or faded from what they were, I cry myself awake! Whatgentleman-amateur ever does this at such a distance of time, --that is, ever received pleasure or took interest enough in them to produce solasting an impression?

But it is said that if a person had the same natural taste, and thesame acquired knowledge as an artist, without the petty interests andtechnical notions, he would derive a purer pleasure from seeing a fineportrait, a fine landscape, and so on. This, however, is not so muchbegging the question as asking an impossibility: he cannot have the sameinsight into the end without having studied the means; nor the samelove of art without the same habitual and exclusive attachment to it. Painters are, no doubt, often actuated by jealousy to that only whichthey find useful to themselves in painting. Wilson has been seen poringover the texture of a Dutch cabinet-picture, so that he could not seethe picture itself. But this is the perversion and pedantry of theprofession, not its true or genuine spirit. If Wilson had never lookedat anything but megilps and handling, he never would have put the soulof life and manners into his pictures, as he has done. Another objectionis, that the instrumental parts of the art, the means, the firstrudiments, paints, oils, and brushes, are painful and disgusting;and that the consciousness of the difficulty and anxiety with whichperfection has been attained must take away from the pleasure of thefinest performance. This, however, is only an additional proof of thegreater pleasure derived by the artist from his profession; for thesethings which are said to interfere with and destroy the common interestin works of art do not disturb him; he never once thinks of them, heis absorbed in the pursuit of a higher object; he is intent, not on themeans, but the end; he is taken up, not with the difficulties, but withthe triumph over them. As in the case of the anatomist, who overlooksmany things in the eagerness of his search after abstract truth; or thealchemist who, while he is raking into his soot and furnaces, lives ina golden dream; a lesser gives way to a greater object. But it ispretended that the painter may be supposed to submit to the unpleasantpart of the process only for the sake of the fame or profit in view. Sofar is this from being a true state of the case, that I will venture tosay, in the instance of a friend of mine who has lately succeeded in animportant undertaking in his art, that not all the fame he has acquired, not all the money he has received from thousands of admiring spectators, not all the newspaper puffs, --nor even the praise of the _EdinburghReview_, --not all these put together ever gave him at any time the samegenuine, undoubted satisfaction as any one half-hour employed in theardent and propitious pursuit of his art--in finishing to his heart'scontent a foot, a hand, or even a piece of drapery. What is the stateof mind of an artist while he is at work? He is then in the act ofrealising the highest idea he can form of beauty or grandeur: heconceives, he embodies that which he understands and loves best: thatis, he is in full and perfect possession of that which is to him thesource of the highest happiness and intellectual excitement which he canenjoy. 

In short, as a conclusion to this argument, I will mention acircumstance which fell under my knowledge the other day. A friend hadbought a print of Titian's Mistress, the same to which I have alludedabove. He was anxious to show it me on this account. I told him it wasa spirited engraving, but it had not the look of the original. I believehe thought this fastidious, till I offered to show him a rough sketchof it, which I had by me. Having seen this, he said he perceived exactlywhat I meant, and could not bear to look at the print afterwards. He hadgood sense enough to see the difference in the individual instance;but a person better acquainted with Titian's manner and with art ingeneral--that is, of a more cultivated and refined taste--would knowthat it was a bad print, without having any immediate model to compareit with. He would perceive with a glance of the eye, with a sortof instinctive feeling, that it was hard, and without that bland, expansive, and nameless expression which always distinguished Titian'smost famous works. Any one who is accustomed to a head in a picture cannever reconcile himself to a print from it; but to the ignorant they areboth the same. To a vulgar eye there is no difference between a Guidoand a daub--between a penny print, or the vilest scrawl, and the mostfinished performance. In other words, all that excellence which liesbetween these two extremes, --all, at least, that marks the excess abovemediocrity, --all that constitutes true beauty, harmony, refinement, grandeur, is lost upon the common observer. But it is from this pointthat the delight, the glowing raptures of the true adept commence. Anuninformed spectator may like an ordinary drawing better than theablest connoisseur; but for that very reason he cannot like the highestspecimens of art so well. The refinements not only of execution but oftruth and nature are inaccessible to unpractised eyes. The exquisitegradations in a sky of Claude's are not perceived by such persons, andconsequently the harmony cannot be felt. Where there is no consciousapprehension, there can be no conscious pleasure. Wonder at the firstsights of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and novelty; butreal admiration and permanent delight in them are the growth of tasteand knowledge. 'I would not wish to have your eyes, ' said a good-naturedman to a critic who was finding fault with a picture in which the othersaw no blemish. Why so? The idea which prevented him from admiring thisinferior production was a higher idea of truth and beauty which wasever present with him, and a continual source of pleasing and loftycontemplations. It may be different in a taste for outward luxuries andthe privations of mere sense; but the idea of perfection, which actsas an intellectual foil, is always an addition, a support, and a proudconsolation!

Richardson, in his _Essays_, which ought to be better known, has leftsome striking examples of the felicity and infelicity of artists, bothas it relates to their external fortune and to the practice of theirart. In speaking of _the knowledge of hands_, he exclaims: 'When one isconsidering a picture or a drawing, one at the same time thinks this wasdone by him(1) who had many extraordinary endowments of body and mind, but was withal very capricious; who was honoured in life and death, expiring in the arms of one of the greatest princes of that age, FrancisI. , King of France, who loved him as a friend. Another is of him(2) wholived a long and happy life, beloved of Charles V. Emperor; and manyothers of the first princes of Europe. When one has another in hand, wethink this was done by one(3) who so excelled in three arts as that anyof them in that degree had rendered him worthy of immortality; and onemoreover that durst contend with his sovereign (one of the haughtiestpopes that ever was) upon a slight offered to him, and extricatedhimself with honour. Another is the work of him(4) who, without any oneexterior advantage but mere strength of genius, had the most sublimeimaginations, and executed them accordingly, yet lived and diedobscurely. Another we shall consider as the work of him(5) who restoredPainting when it had almost sunk; of him whom art made honourable, butwho, neglecting and despising greatness with a sort of cynical pride, was treated suitably to the figure he gave himself, not his intrinsicworth; which, (he) not having philosophy enough to bear it, brokehis heart. Another is done by one(6) who (on the contrary) was a finegentleman and lived in great magnificence, and was much honoured by hisown and foreign princes; who was a courtier, a statesman, and a painter;and so much all these, that when he acted in either character, _that_seemed to be his business, and the others his diversion. I say whenone thus reflects, besides the pleasure arising from the beauties andexcellences of the work, the fine ideas it gives us of natural things, the noble way of thinking it suggest to us, an additional pleasureresults from the above considerations. But, oh! the pleasure, when aconnoisseur and lover of art has before him a picture or drawing ofwhich he can say this is the hand, these are the thoughts of him(7)who was one of the politest, best-natured gentlemen that ever was; andbeloved and assisted by the greatest wits and the greatest men then inRome: of him who lived in great fame, honour, and magnificence, anddied extremely lamented; and missed a Cardinal's hat only by dying afew months too soon; but was particularly esteemed and favoured by twoPopes, the only ones who filled the chair of St. Peter in his time, andas great men as ever sat there since that apostle, if at least he everdid: one, in short, who could have been a Leonardo, a Michael Angelo, a Titian, a Correggio, a Parmegiano, an Annibal, a Rubens, or any otherwhom he pleased, but none of them could ever have been a Raffaelle. '

The same writer speaks feelingly of the change in the style of differentartists from their change of fortune, and as the circumstances arelittle known I will quote the passage relating to two of them:--

'Guido Reni, from a prince-like affluence of fortune (the just reward ofhis angelic works), fell to a condition like that of a hired servantto one who supplied him with money for what he did at a fixed rate; andthat by his being bewitched by a passion for gaming, whereby he lostvast sums of money; and even what he got in his state of servitudeby day, he commonly lost at night: nor could he ever be cured of thiscursed madness. Those of his works, therefore, which he did in thisunhappy part of his life may easily be conceived to be in a differentstyle to what he did before, which in some things, that is, in the airsof his heads (in the gracious kind) had a delicacy in them peculiar tohimself, and almost more than human. But I must not multiply instancevariation, and all the degrees of goodness, from the lowest of theindifferent up to the sublime. I can produce evident proofs of thisin so easy a gradation, that one cannot deny but that he that did thismight do that, and very probably did so; and thus one may ascend anddescend, like the angels on Jacob's ladder, whose foot was upon theearth, but its top reached to Heaven. 

'And this great man had his unlucky circumstance. He became mad afterthe philosopher's stone, and did but very little in painting or drawingafterwards. Judge what that was, and whether there was not an alterationof style from what he had done before this devil possessed him. Hiscreditors endeavoured to exorcise him, and did him some good, for heset himself to work again in his own way; but if a drawing I have of aLucretia be that he made for his last picture, as it probably is (Vasarisays that was the subject of it), it is an evident proof of his decay;it is good indeed, but it wants much of the delicacy which is commonlyseen in his works; and so I always thought before I knew or imagined itto be done in this his ebb of genius. '

We have had two artists of our own country whose fate has been assingular as it was hard: Gandy was a portrait-painter in the beginningof the last century, whose heads were said to have come near toRembrandt's, and he was the undoubted prototype of Sir Joshua Reynolds'sstyle. Yet his name has scarcely been heard of; and his reputation, likehis works, never extended beyond his own country. What did he think ofhimself and of a fame so bounded? Did he ever dream he was indeed anartist? Or how did this feeling in him differ from the vulgar conceitof the lowest pretender? The best known of his works is a portrait of analderman of Exeter, in some public building in that city. 

Poor Dan. Stringer! Forty years ago he had the finest hand and theclearest eye of any artist of his time, and produced heads and drawingsthat would not have disgraced a brighter period in the art. But he fella martyr (like Burns) to the society of country gentlemen, and then ofthose whom they would consider as more his equals. I saw him manyyears ago when he treated the masterly sketches he had by him (onein particular of the group of citizens in Shakespeare 'swallowing thetailor's news') as 'bastards of his genius, not his children, ' andseemed to have given up all thoughts of his art. Whether he is sincedead, I cannot say; the world do not so much as know that he ever lived!

NOTES to ESSAY II

(1) Leonardo da Vinci. 

(2) Titian. 

(3) Michael Angelo. 

(4) Correggio. 

(5) Annibal Caracci. 

(6) Rubens. 

(7) Raffaelle. 

ESSAY III. ON THE PAST AND FUTURE

I have naturally but little imagination, and am not of a very sanguineturn of mind. I have some desire to enjoy the present good, and somefondness for the past; but I am not at all given to build castles in theair, nor to look forward with much confidence or hope to the brilliantillusions held out by the future. Hence I have perhaps been led to forma theory, which is very contrary to the common notions and feelings onthe subject, and which I will here try to explain as well as I can. WhenSterne in the _Sentimental Journey_ told the French Minister, that ifthe French people had a fault, it was that they were too serious, thelatter replied that if that was his opinion, he must defend it with allhis might, for he would have all the world against him; so I shall haveenough to do to get well through the present argument. 

I cannot see, then, any rational or logical ground for that mightydifference in the value which mankind generally set upon the past andfuture, as if the one was everything, and the other nothing--of noconsequence whatever. On the other hand, I conceive that the past isas real and substantial a part of our being, that it is as much a _bonafide_, undeniable consideration in the estimate of human life, asthe future can possibly be. To say that the past is of no importance, unworthy of a moment's regard, because it has gone by, and is no longeranything, is an argument that cannot be held to any purpose; for if thepast has ceased to be, and is therefore to be accounted nothing in thescale of good or evil, the future is yet to come, and has never beenanything. Should any one choose to assert that the present only is ofany value in a strict and positive sense, because that alone has a realexistence, that we should seize the instant good, and give all else tothe winds, I can understand what he means (though perhaps he does nothimself);(1) but I cannot comprehend how this distinction between thatwhich has a downright and sensible, and that which has only a remote andairy existence, can be applied to establish the preference of thefuture over the past; for both are in this point of view equally ideal, absolutely nothing, except as they are conceived of by the mind's eye, and are thus rendered present to the thoughts and feelings. Nay, the oneis even more imaginary, a more fantastic creature of the brain than theother, and the interest we take in it more shadowy and gratuitous; forthe future, on which we lay so much stress, may never come to pass atall, that is, may never be embodied into actual existence in the wholecourse of events, whereas the past has certainly existed once, hasreceived the stamp of truth, and left an image of itself behind. It isso far then placed beyond the possibility of doubt, or as the poet hasit, Those joys are lodg'd beyond the reach of fate. 

It is not, however, attempted to be denied that though the future isnothing at present, and has no immediate interest while we are speaking, yet it is of the utmost consequence in itself, and of the utmostinterest to the individual, because it will have a real existence, andwe have an idea of it as existing in time to come. Well, then, thepast also has no real existence; the actual sensation and the interestbelonging to it are both fled; but it _has had_ a real existence, andwe can still call up a vivid recollection of it as having once been;and therefore, by parity of reasoning, it is not a thing perfectlyinsignificant in itself, nor wholly indifferent to the mind whether itever was or not. Oh no! Far from it! Let us not rashly quit our holdupon the past, when perhaps there may be little else left to bind usto existence. Is it nothing to have been, and to have been happy ormiserable? Or is it a matter of no moment to think whether I have beenone or the other? Do I delude myself, do I build upon a shadow or adream, do I dress up in the gaudy garb of idleness and folly a purefiction, with nothing answering to it in the universe of things andthe records of truth, when I look back with fond delight or with tenderregret to that which was at one time to me my all, when I revive theglowing image of some bright reality, The thoughts of which can never from my heart?

Do I then muse on nothing, do I bend my eyes on nothing, when I turnback in fancy to 'those suns and skies so pure' that lighted up my earlypath? Is it to think of nothing, to set an idle value upon nothing, tothink of all that has happened to me, an of all that can ever interestme? Or, to use the language of a fine poet (who is himself among myearliest and not least painful recollections)--

 What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever vanish'd from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flow'r--

yet am I mocked with a lie when I venture to think of it? Or do I notdrink in and breathe again the air of heavenly truth when I but 'retraceits footsteps, and its skirts far off adore'? I cannot say with the samepoet--

 And see how dark the backward stream, A little moment past so smiling--

for it is the past that gives me most delight and most assurance ofreality. What to me constitutes the great charm of the _Confessions_ ofRousseau is their turning so much upon this feeling. He seems to gatherup the past moments of his being like drops of honey-dew to distil aprecious liquor from them; his alternate pleasures and pains are thebead-roll that he tells over and piously worships; he makes a rosary ofthe flowers of hope and fancy that strewed his earliest years. Whenhe begins the last of the _Reveries of a Solitary Walker_, 'Il y aaujourd'hui, jour des Paques Fleuris, cinquante ans depuis que j'aipremier vu Madame Warens, ' what a yearning of the soul is implied inthat short sentence! Was all that had happened to him, all that he hadthought and felt in that sad interval of time, to be accounted nothing?Was that long, dim, faded retrospect of years happy or miserable--ablank that was not to make his eyes fail and his heart faint withinhim in trying to grasp all that had once filled it and that had sincevanished, because it was not a prospect into futurity? Was he wrong infinding more to interest him in it than in the next fifty years--whichhe did not live to see? Or if he had, what then? Would they have beenworth thinking of, compared with the times of his youth, of his firstmeeting with Madame Warens, with those times which he has traced withsuch truth and pure delight 'in our heart's tables'? When 'all the lifeof life was flown, ' was he not to live the first and best part of itover again, and once more be all that he then was?--Ye woods that crownthe clear lone brow of Norman Court, why do I revisit ye so oft, andfeel a soothing consciousness of your presence, but that your high topswaving in the wind recall to me the hours and years that are for everfled; that ye renew in ceaseless murmurs the story of long-cherishedhopes and bitter disappointment; that in your solitudes and tangledwilds I can wander and lose myself as I wander on and am lost in thesolitude of my own heart; and that as your rustling branches give theloud blast to the waste below--borne on the thoughts of other years, Ican look down with patient anguish at the cheerless desolation whichI feel within! Without that face pale as the primrose with hyacinthinelocks, for ever shunning and for ever haunting me, mocking my wakingthoughts as in a dream; without that smile which my heart could neverturn to scorn; without those eyes dark with their own lustre, stillbent on mine, and drawing the soul into their liquid mazes like a seaof love; without that name trembling in fancy's ear; without that formgliding before me like Oread or Dryad in fabled groves, what should Ido? how pass away the listless, leaden-footed hours? Then wave, wave on, ye woods of Tuderley, and lift your high tops in the air; my sighs andvows uttered by our mystic voice breathe into me my former being, andenable me to bear the thing I am!--The objects that we have knownin better days are the main props that sustain the weight of ouraffections, and give us strength to await our future lot. The future islike a dead wall or a thick mist hiding all objects from our view;the past is alive and stirring with objects, bright or solemn, and ofunfading interest. What is it in fact that we recur to oftenest? Whatsubjects do we think or talk of? Not the ignorant future, but thewell-stored past. Othello, the Moor of Venice, amused himself and hishearers at the house of Signor Brabantio by 'running through the storyof his life even from his boyish days'; and oft 'beguiled them of theirtears, when he did speak of some disastrous stroke which his youthsuffered. ' This plan of ingratiating himself would not have answered ifthe past had been, like the contents of an old almanac, of no use butto be thrown aside and forgotten. What a blank, for instance, does thehistory of the world for the next six thousand years present to themind, compared with that of the last! All that strikes the imaginationor excites any interest in the mighty scene is _what has been_!(2)

***

Neither in itself, then, nor as a subject of general contemplation, hasthe future any advantage over the past. But with respect to our grosserpassions and pursuits it has. As far as regards the appeal to theunderstanding or the imagination, the past is just as good, as real, of as much intrinsic and ostensible value as the future; but there isanother principle in the human mind, the principle of action or will;and of this the past has no hold, the future engrosses it entirely toitself. It is this strong lever of the affections that gives so powerfula bias to our sentiments on this subject, and violently transposes thenatural order of our associations. We regret the pleasures we havelost, and eagerly anticipate those which are to come: we dwell withsatisfaction on the evils from which we have escaped (_Posthaecmeminisse iuvabit_)--and dread future pain. The good that is past isin this sense like money that is spent, which is of no further use, andabout which we give ourselves little concern. The good we expect islike a store yet untouched, and in the enjoyment of which we promiseourselves infinite gratification. What has happened to us we think ofno consequence: what is to happen to us, of the greatest. Why so? Simplybecause the one is still in our power, and the other not--becausethe efforts of the will to bring any object to pass or to prevent itstrengthen our attachment or aversion to that object--because the painsand attention bestowed upon anything add to our interest in it--andbecause the habitual and earnest pursuit of any end redoubles theardour of our expectations, and converts the speculative and indolentsatisfaction we might otherwise feel in it into real passion. Ourregrets, anxiety, and wishes are thrown away upon the past; but theinsisting on the importance of the future is of the utmost use in aidingour resolutions and stimulating our exertions. If the future wereno more amenable to our wills than the past; if our precautions, oursanguine schemes, our hopes and fears were of as little avail in the onecase as the other; if we could neither soften our minds to pleasure, norsteel our fortitude to the resistance of pain beforehand; if all objectsdrifted along by us like straws or pieces of wood in a river, the willbeing purely passive, and as little able to avert the future as toarrest the past, we should in that case be equally indifferent to both;that is, we should consider each as they affected the thoughts andimagination with certain sentiments of approbation or regret, butwithout the importunity of action, the irritation of the will, throwingthe whole weight of passion and prejudice into one scale, and leavingthe other quite empty. While the blow is coming, we prepare to meet it, we think to ward off or break its force, we arm ourselves with patienceto endure what cannot be avoided, we agitate ourselves with fiftyneedless alarms about it; but when the blow is struck, the pang is over, the struggle is no longer necessary, and we cease to harass or tormentourselves about it more than we can help. It is not that the one belongsto the future and the other to time past; but that the one is a subjectof action, of uneasy apprehension, of strong passion, and that the otherhas passed wholly out of the sphere of action into the region of

 Calm contemplation and majestic pains. (3)

It would not give a man more concern to know that he should be put tothe rack a year hence, than to recollect that he had been put to it ayear ago, but that he hopes to avoid the one, whereas he must sit downpatiently under the consciousness of the other. In this hope he wearshimself out in vain struggles with fate, and puts himself to the rackof his imagination every day he has to live in the meanwhile. When theevent is so remote or so independent of the will as to set aside thenecessity of immediate action, or to baffle all attempts to defeat it, it gives us little more disturbance or emotion than if it had alreadytaken place, or were something to happen in another state of being, orto an indifferent person. Criminals are observed to grow more anxious astheir trial approaches; but after their sentence is passed, they becometolerably resigned, and generally sleep sound the night before itsexecution. 

It in some measure confirms this theory, that men attach more or lessimportance to past and future events according as they are more or lessengaged in action and the busy scenes of life. Those who have a fortuneto make, or are in pursuit of rank and power, think little of thepast, for it does not contribute greatly to their views: those who havenothing to do but to think, take nearly the same interest in the past asin the future. The contemplation of the one is as delightful and real asthat of the other. The season of hope has an end; but the remembrance ofit is left. The past still lives in the memory of those who haveleisure to look back upon the way that they have trod, and can fromit 'catch-glimpses that may make them less forlorn. ' The turbulence ofaction, and uneasiness of desire, must point to the future: it is onlyin the quiet innocence of shepherds, in the simplicity of pastoral ages, that a tomb was found with this inscription--'I ALSO WAS AN ARCADIAN!'

Though I by no means think that our habitual attachment to life is inexact proportion to the value of the gift, yet I am not one of thosesplenetic persons who affect to think it of no value at all. _Que peu dechose est la vie humaine_, is an exclamation in the mouths of moralistsand philosophers, to which I cannot agree. It is little, it is short, it is not worth having, if we take the last hour, and leave out all thathas gone before, which has been one way of looking at the subject. Suchcalculators seem to say that life is nothing when it is over, and thatmay in their sense be true. If the old rule--_Respice finem_--were to bemade absolute, and no one could be pronounced fortunate till the dayof his death, there are few among us whose existence would, upon thoseconditions, be much to be envied. But this is not a fair view of thecase. A man's life is his whole life, not the last glimmering snuff ofthe candle; and this, I say, is considerable, and not a _little matter_, whether we regard its pleasures or its pains. To draw a peevish conclusdesires or forgetful indifference is about as reasonable as to say, aman never was young because he has grown old, or never lived because heis now dead. The length or agreeableness of a journey does not depend onthe few last steps of it, nor is the size of a building to be judgedof from the last stone that is added to it. It is neither the first norlast hour of our existence, but the space that parts these two--not ourexit nor our entrance upon the stage, but what we do, feel, and thinkwhile there--that we are to attend to in pronouncing sentence upon it. Indeed it would be easy to show that it is the very extent of humanlife, the infinite number of things contained in it, its contradictoryand fluctuating interests, the transition from one situation to another, the hours, months, years spent in one fond pursuit after another; thatit is, in a word, the length of our common journey and the quantityof events crowded into it, that, baffling the grasp of our actualperception, make it slide from our memory, and dwindle into nothing inits own perspective. It is too mighty for us, and we say it is nothing!It is a speck in our fancy, and yet what canvas would be big enough tohold its striking groups, its endless subjects! It is light as vanity, and yet if all its weary moments, if all its head and heart aches werecompressed into one, what fortitude would not be overwhelmed withthe blow! What a huge heap, a 'huge, dumb heap, ' of wishes, thoughts, feelings, anxious cares, soothing hopes, loves, joys, friendships, it iscomposed of! How many ideas and trains of sentiment, long and deepand intense, often pass through the mind in only one day's thinking orreading, for instance! How many such days are there in a year, how manyyears in a long life, still occupied with something interesting, still recalling some old impression, still recurring to some difficultquestion and making progress in it, every step accompanied with a senseof power, and every moment conscious of 'the high endeavour or the gladsuccess'; for the mind seizes only on that which keeps it employed, and is wound up to a certain pitch of pleasurable excitement or livelysolicitude, by the necessity of its own nature. The division of themap of life into its component parts is beautifully made by King HenryVI. :--

 Oh God! methinks it were a happy life To be no better than a homely swain, To sit upon a hill as I do now, To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, Thereby to see the minutes how they run How many make the hour full complete, How many hours bring about the day, How many days will finish up the year, How many years a mortal man may live: When this is known, then to divide the times; So many hours must I tend my flock, So many hours must I take my rest, So many hours must I contemplate, So many hours must I sport myself; So many days my ewes have been with young, So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean, So many months ere I shall shear the fleece: So many minutes, hours, weeks, months, and years Past over to the end they were created, Would bring grey hairs unto a quiet grave. 

I myself am neither a king nor a shepherd: books have been my fleecycharge, and my thoughts have been my subjects. But these have found mesufficient employment at the time, and enough to think of for the timeto come. 

The passions contract and warp the natural progress of life. Theyparalyse all of it that is not devoted to their tyranny and caprice. This makes the difference between the laughing innocence of childhood, the pleasantness of youth, and the crabbedness of age. A load of careslies like a weight of guilt upon the mind: so that a man of businessoften has all the air, the distraction and restlessness and hurry offeeling of a criminal. A knowledge of the world takes away the freedomand simplicity of thought as effectually as the contagion of itsexample. The artlessness and candour of our early years are open to allimpressions alike, because the mind is not clogged and preoccupied withother objects. Our pleasures and our pains come single, make room forone another, and the spring of the mind is fresh and unbroken, itsaspect clear and unsullied. Hence 'the tear forgot as soon as shed, the sunshine of the breast. ' But as we advance farther, the willgets greater head. We form violent antipathies and indulge exclusivepreferences. We make up our minds to some one thing, and if we cannothave that, will have nothing. We are wedded to opinion, to fancy, to prejudice; which destroys the soundness of our judgments, and theserenity and buoyancy of our feelings. The chain of habit coils itselfround the heart, like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it. It grows rigidand callous; and for the softness and elasticity of childhood, full ofproud flesh and obstinate tumours. The violence and perversity of ourpassions come in more and more to overlay our natural sensibility andwell-grounded affections; and we screw ourselves up to aim only at thosethings which are neither desirable nor practicable. Thus life passesaway in the feverish irritation of pursuit and the certainty ofdisappointment. By degrees, nothing but this morbid state of feelingsatisfies us: and all common pleasures and cheap amusements aresacrificed to the demon of ambition, avarice, or dissipation. Themachine is overwrought: the parching heat of the veins dries up andwithers the flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy; and any pause, anyrelease from the rack of ecstasy on which we are stretched, seems moreinsupportable than the pangs which we endure. We are suspended betweentormenting desires and the horrors of _ennui_. The impulse of the will, like the wheels of a carriage going down hill, becomes too strong forthe driver, Reason, and cannot be stopped nor kept within bounds. Someidea, some fancy, takes possession of the brain; and however ridiculous, however distressing, however ruinous, haunts us by a sort of fascinationthrough life. 

Not only is this principle of excessive irritability to be seen at workin our more turbulent passions and pursuits, but even in the formalstudy of arts and sciences, the same thing takes place, and underminesthe repose and happiness of life. The eagerness of pursuit overcomes thesatisfaction to result from the accomplishment. The mind is overstrainedto attain its purpose; and when it is attained, the ease and alacritynecessary to enjoy it are gone. The irritation of action does not ceaseand go down with the occasion for it; but we are first uneasy to get tothe end of our work, and then uneasy for want of something to do. Theferment of the brain does not of itself subside into pleasure and softrepose. Hence the disposition to strong stimuli observable in persons ofmuch intellectual exertion to allay and carry off the over-excitement. The _improvisatori_ poets (it is recorded by Spence in his _Anecdotesof Pope_) cannot sleep after an evening's continued display of theirsingular and difficult art. The rhymes keep running in their head inspite of themselves, and will not let them rest. Mechanics and labouringpeople never know what to do with themselves on a Sunday, though theyreturn to their work with greater spirit for the relief, and lookforward to it with pleasure all the week. Sir Joshua Reynolds was nevercomfortable out of his painting-room, and died of chagrin and regretbecause he could not paint on to the last moment of his life. He usedto say that he could go on retouching a picture for ever, as long as itstood on his easel; but as soon as it was once fairly out of the house, he never wished to see it again. An ingenious artist of our own time hasbeen heard to declare, that if ever the Devil got him into his clutches, he would set him to copy his own pictures. Thus secure, self-complacentretrospect to what is done is nothing, while the anxious, uneasy lookingforward to what is to come is everything. We are afraid to dwell uponthe past, lest it should retard our future progress; the indulgence ofease is fatal to excellence; and to succeed in life, we lose the ends ofbeing!

NOTES to ESSAY III

(1) If we take away from the _present_ the moment that Is just by andthe moment that is next to come, how much of it will be left for thisplain, practical theory to rest upon? Their solid basis of sense andreality will reduce itself to a pin's point, a hair line, on whichour moral balance-masters will have some difficulty to maintain theirfooting without falling over on either side. 

(2) A treatise on the Millennium is dull; but who was ever weary ofreading the fables of the Golden Age? On my once observing I should liketo have been Claude, a person said, 'they should not, for that thenby this time it would have been all over with them. ' As if it couldpossibly signify when we live (save and excepting the present minute), or as if the value of human life decreased or increased with successivecenturies. At that rate, we had better have our life still to come atsome future period, and so postpone our existence century after century_ad infinitum_. 

(3) In like manner, though we know that an event must have taken placeat a distance, long before we can hear the result, yet as long as weremain in Ignorance of it, we irritate ourselves about it, and sufferall the agonies of suspense, as if it was still to come; but as soon asour uncertainty is removed, our fretful impatience vanishes, we resignourselves to fate, and make up our minds to what has happened as well aswe can. 

ESSAY IV. ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE

We hear it maintained by people of more gravity than understanding, thatgenius and taste are strictly reducible to rules, and that there is arule for everything. So far is it from being true that the finest breathof fancy is a definable thing, that the plainest common sense is onlywhat Mr. Locke would have called a _mixed mode_, subject to a particularsort of acquired and undefinable tact. It is asked, "If you do not knowthe rule by which a thing is done, how can you be sure of doing it asecond time?" And the answer is, "If you do not know the muscles by thehelp of which you walk, how is it you do not fall down at every step youtake?" In art, in taste, in life, in speech, you decide from feeling, and not from reason; that is, from the impression of a number of thingson the mind, from which impression is true and well founded, though youmay not be able to analyse or account for it in the several particulars. In a gesture you use, in a look you see, in a tone you hear, you judgeof the expression, propriety, and meaning from habit, not from reasonor rules; that is to say, from innumerable instances of like gestures, looks, and tones, in innumerable other circumstances, variouslymodified, which are too many and too refined to be all distinctlyrecollected, but which do not therefore operate the less powerfullyupon the mind and eye of taste. Shall we say that these impressions (theimmediate stamp of nature) do not operate in a given manner till theyare classified and reduced to rules, or is not the rule itself grounded, upon the truth and certainty of that natural operation?

How then can the distinction of the understanding as to the manner inwhich they operate be necessary to their producing their due and uniformeffect upon the mind? If certain effects did not regularly arise out ofcertain causes in mind as well as matter, there could be no rule givenfor them: nature does not follow the rule, but suggests it. Reason isthe interpreter and critic of nature and genius, not their law-giver andjudge. He must be a poor creature indeed whose practical convictions donot in almost all cases outrun his deliberate understanding, or who doesnot feel and know much more than he can give a reason for. Hence thedistinction between eloquence and wisdom, between ingenuity and commonsense. A man may be dexterous and able in explaining the grounds of hisopinions, and yet may be a mere sophist, because he only sees one-halfof a subject. Another may feel the whole weight of a question, nothingrelating to it may be lost upon him, and yet he may be able to give noaccount of the manner in which it affects him, or to drag his reasonsfrom their silent lurking-places. This last will be a wise man, thoughneither a logician nor rhetorician. Goldsmith was a fool to Dr. Johnsonin argument; that is, in assigning the specific grounds of his opinions:Dr. Johnson was a fool to Goldsmith in the fine tact, the airy, intuitive faculty with which he skimmed the surfaces of things, andunconsciously formed his Opinions. Common sense is the just resultof the sum total of such unconscious impressions in the ordinaryoccurrences of life, as they are treasured up in the memory, andcalled out by the occasion. Genius and taste depend much upon the sameprinciple exercised on loftier ground and in more unusual combinations. 

I am glad to shelter myself from the charge of affectation orsingularity in this view of an often debated but ill-understood point, by quoting a passage from Sir Joshua Reynolds's _Discourses_, which isfull, and, I think, conclusive to the purpose. He says:--

'I observe, as a fundamental ground common to all the Arts with which wehave any concern in this Discourse, that they address themselves only totwo faculties of the mind, its imagination and its sensibility. 

'All theories which attempt to direct or to control the Art, upon anyprinciples falsely called rational, which we form to ourselves upona supposition of what ought in reason to be the end or means of Art, independent of the known first effect produced by objects on theimagination, must be false and delusive. For though it may appearbold to say it, the imagination is here the residence of truth. If theimagination be affected, the conclusion is fairly drawn; if it be notaffected, the reasoning is erroneous, because the end is not obtained;the effect itself being the test, and the only test, of the truth andefficacy of the means. 

'There is in the commerce of life, as in Art, a sagacity which isfar from being contradictory to right reason, and is superior to anyoccasional exercise of that faculty which supersedes it and does notwait for the slow progress of deduction, but goes at once, by whatappears a kind of intuition, to the conclusion. A man endowed with thisfaculty feels and acknowledges the truth, though it is not always in hispower, perhaps, to give a reason for it; because he cannot recollect andbring before him all the materials that gave birth to his opinion;for very many and very intricate considerations may unite to form theprinciple, even of small and minute parts, involved in, or dependent on, a great many things:--though these in process of time are forgotten, theright impression still remains fixed in his mind. 

'This impression is the result of the accumulated experience of ourwhole life, and has been collected, we do not always know how or when. But this mass of collective observation, however acquired, ought toprevail over that reason, which, however powerfully exerted on anyparticular occasion, will probably comprehend but a partial view of thesubject; and our conduct in life, as well as in the arts, is or ought tobe generally governed by this habitual reason: it is our happiness thatwe are enabled to draw on such funds. If we were obliged to enter into atheoretical deliberation on every occasion before we act, life would beat a stand, and Art would be impracticable. 

'It appears to me therefore' (continues Sir Joshua) 'that our firstthoughts, that is, the effect which any thing produces on our minds onits first appearance, is never to be forgotten; and it demands for thatreason, because it is the first, to be laid up with care. If this be notdone, the artist may happen to impose on himself by partial reasoning;by a cold consideration of those animated thoughts which proceed, notperhaps from caprice or rashness (as he may afterwards conceit), butfrom the fulness of his mind, enriched with the copious stores of allthe various inventions which he had ever seen, or had ever passed inhis mind. These ideas are infused into his design, without any consciouseffort; but if he be not on his guard, he may reconsider and correctthem, till the whole matter is reduced to a commonplace invention. 

'This is sometimes the effect of what I mean to caution you against;that is to say, an unfounded distrust of the imagination and feeling, in favour of narrow, partial, confined, argumentative theories, and ofprinciples that seem to apply to the design in hand, without consideringthose general impressions on the fancy in which real principles of_sound reason_, and of much more weight and importance, are involved, and, as it were, lie hid under the appearance of a sort of vulgarsentiment. Reason, without doubt, must ultimately determine everything;at this minute it is required to inform us when that very reason is togive way to feeling. '(1)

Mr. Burke, by whom the foregoing train of thinking was probablysuggested, has insisted on the same thing, and made rather aperverse use of it in several parts of his _Reflections on the FrenchRevolution_; and Windham in one of his _Speeches_ has clenched it intoan aphorism--'There is nothing so true as habit. ' Once more I wouldsay, common sense is tacit reason. Conscience is the same tacit senseof right and wrong, or the impression of our moral experience andmoral apprehensions on the mind, which, because it works unseen, yetcertainly, we suppose to be an instinct, implanted in the mind; as wesometimes attribute the violent operations of our passions, of which wecan neither trace the source nor assign the reason, to the instigationof the Devil!

I shall here try to go more at large into this subject, and to give suchinstances and illustrations of it as occur to me. 

One of the persons who had rendered themselves obnoxious to Governmentand been included in a charge for high treason in the year 1794, hadretired soon after into Wales to write an epic poem and enjoy theluxuries of a rural life. In his peregrinations through that beautifulscenery, he had arrived one fine morning at the inn at Llangollen, inthe romantic valley of that name. He had ordered his breakfast, and wassitting at the window in all the dalliance of expectation when aface passed, of which he took no notice at the instant--but when hisbreakfast was brought in presently after, he found his appetite forit gone--the day had lost its freshness in his eye--he was uneasy andspiritless; and without any cause that he could discover, a total changehad taken place in his feelings. While he was trying to account for thisodd circumstance, the same face passed again--it was the face of Taylorthe spy; and he was longer at a loss to explain the difficulty. He hadbefore caught only a transient glimpse, a passing side-view of the face;but though this was not sufficient to awaken a distinct idea in hismemory, his feelings, quicker and surer, had taken the alarm; a stringhad been touched that gave a jar to his whole frame, and would not lethim rest, though he could not at all tell what was the matter with him. To the flitting, shadowy, half-distinguished profile that had glided byhis window was linked unconsciously and mysteriously, but inseparably, the impression of the trains that had been laid for him by thisperson;--in this brief moment, in this dim, illegible short-hand ofthe mind he had just escaped the speeches of the Attorney andSolicitor-General over again; the gaunt figure of Mr. Pitt glared byhim; the walls of a prison enclosed him; and he felt the hands of theexecutioner near him, without knowing it till the tremor and disorder ofhis nerves gave information to his reasoning faculties that all wasnot well within. That is, the same state of mind was recalled by onecircumstance in the series of association that had been produced by thewhole set of circumstances at the time, though the manner in which thiswas done was not immediately perceptible. In other words, the feeling ofpleasure or pain, of good or evil, is revived, and acts instantaneouslyupon the mind, before we have time to recollect the precise objectswhich have originally given birth to it. (2) The incident here mentionedwas merely, then, one case of what the learned understand by the_association of ideas_: but all that is meant by feeling or common senseis nothing but the different cases of the association of ideas, moreor less true to the impression of the original circumstances, as reasonbegins with the more formal development of those circumstances, orpretends to account for the different cases of the association of ideas. But it does not follow that the dumb and silent pleading of the former(though sometimes, nay often, mistaken) is less true than that of itsbabbling interpreter, or that we are never to trust its dictates withoutconsulting the express authority of reason. Both are imperfect, both areuseful in their way, and therefore both are best together, to correct orto confirm one another. It does not appear that in the singular instanceabove mentioned, the sudden impression on the mind was superstition orfancy, though it might have been thought so, had it not been proved bythe event to have a real physical and moral cause. Had not the same facereturned again, the doubt would never have been properly cleared up, but would have remained a puzzle ever after, or perhaps have been soonforgot. --By the law of association as laid down by physiologists, anyimpression in a series can recall any other impression in that serieswithout going through the whole in order; so that the mind drops theintermediate links, and passes on rapidly and by stealth to the morestriking effects of pleasure or pain which have naturally taken thestrongest hold of it. By doing this habitually and skillfully withrespect to the various impressions and circumstances with which ourexperience makes us acquainted, it forms a series of unpremeditatedconclusions on almost all subjects that can be brought before it, asjust as they are of ready application to human life; and common sense isthe name of this body of unassuming but practical wisdom. Common sense, however, is an impartial, instinctive result of truth and nature, andwill therefore bear the test and abide the scrutiny of the most severeand patient reasoning. It is indeed incomplete without it. By ingraftingreason on feeling, we 'make assurance double sure. '

 'Tis the last key-stone that makes up the arch. .. Then stands it a triumphal mark! Then men Observe the strength, the height, the why and when It was erected; and still walking under, Meet some new matter to look up, and wonder. 

But reason, not employed to interpret nature, and to improve and perfectcommon sense and experience, is, for the most part, a building without afoundation. The criticism exercised by reason, then, on common sense maybe as severe as it pleases, but it must be as patient as it is severe. Hasty, dogmatical, self-satisfied reason is worse than idle fancy orbigoted prejudice. It is systematic, ostentatious in error, closes upthe avenues of knowledge, and 'shuts the gates of wisdom on mankind. ' Itis not enough to show that there is no reason for a thing that we donot see the reason of it: if the common feeling, if the involuntaryprejudice sets in strong in favour of it, if, in spite of all we can do, there is a lurking suspicion on the side of our first impressions, we must try again, and believe that truth is mightier than we. So, inordering a definition of any subject, if we feel a misgiving that thereis any fact or circumstance emitted, but of which we have only a vagueapprehension, like a name we cannot recollect, we must ask for moretime, and not cut the matter short by an arrogant assumption of thepoint in dispute. Common sense thus acts as a check-weight on sophistry, and suspends our rash and superficial judgments. On the other hand, ifnot only no reason can be given for a thing, but every reason is clearagainst it, and we can account from ignorance, from authority, frominterest, from different causes, for the prevalence of an opinion orsentiment, then we have a right to conclude that we have mistakena prejudice for an instinct, or have confounded a false and partialimpression with the fair and unavoidable inference from generalobservation. Mr. Burke said that we ought not to reject every prejudice, but should separate the husk of prejudice from the truth it encloses, and so try to get at the kernel within; and thus far he was right. Buthe was wrong in insisting that we are to cherish our prejudices 'becausethey are prejudices': for if all are well founded, there is no occasionto inquire into their origin or use; and he who sets out to philosophiseupon them, or make the separation Mr. Burke talks of in this spiritand with this previous determination, will be very likely to mistakea maggot or a rotten canker for the precious kernel of truth, as wasindeed the case with our Political sophist. 

There is nothing more distinct than common sense and vulgar opinion. Common sense is only a judge of things that fall under commonobservation, or immediately come home to the business and bosoms of men. This is of the very essence of its principle, the basis of itspretensions. It rests upon the simple process of feeling, --it anchorsin experience. It is not, nor it cannot be, the test of abstract, speculative opinions. But half the opinions and prejudices of mankind, those which they hold in the most unqualified approbation and whichhave been instilled into them under the strongest sanctions, are of thislatter kind, that is, opinions not which they have ever thought, known, or felt one tittle about, but which they have taken up on trust fromothers, which have been palmed on their understandings by fraud orforce, and which they continue to hold at the peril of life, limb, property, and character, with as little warrant from common sense in thefirst instance as appeal to reason in the last. The _ultima ratio regum_proceeds upon a very different plea. Common sense is neither priestcraftnor state-policy. Yet 'there's the rub that makes absurdity of so longlife, ' and, at the same time, gives the sceptical philosophers theadvantage over us. Till nature has fair play allowed it, and is notadulterated by political and polemical quacks (as it so often has been), it is impossible to appeal to it as a defence against the errors andextravagances of mere reason. If we talk of common sense, we are twittedwith vulgar prejudice, and asked how we distinguish the one from theother; but common and received opinion is indeed 'a compost heap' ofcrude notions, got together by the pride and passions of individuals, and reason is itself the thrall or manumitted slave of the same lordlyand besotted masters, dragging its servile chain, or committing allsorts of Saturnalian licenses, the moment it feels itself freed fromit. --If ten millions of Englishmen are furious in thinking themselvesright in making war upon thirty millions of Frenchmen, and if the lastare equally bent upon thinking the others always in the wrong, though itis a common and national prejudice, both opinions cannot be the dictateof good sense; but it may be the infatuated policy of one or bothgovernments to keep their subjects always at variance. If a fewcenturies ago all Europe believed in the infallibility of the Pope, this was not an opinion derived from the proper exercise or erroneousdirection of the common sense of the people; common sense had nothing todo with it--they believed whatever their priests told them. England atpresent is divided into Whigs and Tories, Churchmen and Dissenters; bothparties have numbers on their side; but common sense and party spiritare two different things. Sects and heresies are upheld partly bysympathy, and partly by the love of contradiction; if there was nobodyof a different way of thinking, they would fall to pieces of themselves. If a whole court say the same thing, this is no proof that they thinkit, but that the individual at the head of the court has said it; if amob agree for a while in shouting the same watchword, this is not tome an example of the _sensus communis_, they only repeat what they haveheard repeated by others. If indeed a large proportion of the people arein want of food, of clothing, of shelter--if they are sick, miserable, scorned, oppressed--an d if each feeling it in himself, they all say sowith one voice and one heart, and lift up their hands to second theirappeal, this I should say was but the dictate of common sense, the cryof nature. But to waive this part of the argument, which it is needlessto push farther, --l believe that the best way to instruct mankind isnot by pointing out to them their mutual errors, but by teaching themto think rightly on indifferent matters, where they will listen withpatience in order to be amused, and where they do not consider adefinition or a syllogism as the greatest injury you can offer them. 

There is no rule for expression. It is got at solely by _feeling_, thatis, on the principle of the association of ideas, and by transferringwhat has been found to hold good in one case (with the necessarymodifications) to others. A certain look has been remarked stronglyindicative of a certain passion or trait of character, and we attach thesame meaning to it or are affected in the same pleasurable or painfulmanner by it, where it exists in a less degree, though we can defineneither the look itself nor the modification of it. Having got thegeneral clue, the exact result may be left to the imagination tovary, to extenuate or aggravate it according to circumstances. In theadmirable profile of Oliver Cromwell after ----, the drooping eyelids, as if drawing a veil over the fixed, penetrating glance, the nostrilssomewhat distended, and lips compressed so as hardly to let the breathescape him, denote the character of the man for high-reaching policyand deep designs as plainly as they can be written. How is it that wedecipher this expression in the face? First, by feeling it. And how isit that we feel it? Not by re-established rules, but by the instinct ofanalogy, by the principle of association, which is subtle and sure inproportion as it is variable and indefinite. A circumstance, apparentlyof no value, shall alter the whole interpretation to be put upon anexpression or action and it shall alter it thus powerfully becausein proportion to its very insignificance it shows a strong generalprinciple at work that extends in its ramifications to the smallestthings. This in fact will make all the difference between minutenessand subtlety or refinement; for a small or trivial effect may in givencircumstances imply the operation of a great power. Stillness may be theresult of a blow too powerful to be resisted; silence may be imposedby feelings too agonising for utterance. The minute, the triflingand insipid is that which is little in itself, in its causes andits consequences; the subtle and refined is that which is slight andevanescent at first sight, but which mounts up to a mighty sum inthe end, which is an essential part of an important whole, which hasconsequences greater than itself, and where more is meant than meetsthe eye or ear. We complain sometimes of littleness in a Dutch picture, where there are a vast number of distinct parts and objects, each smallin itself, and leading to nothing else. A sky of Claude's cannot fallunder this censure, where one imperceptible gradation is as it werethe scale to another, where the broad arch of heaven is piled up ofendlessly intermediate gold and azure tints, and where an infinitenumber of minute, scarce noticed particulars blend and melt intouniversal harmony. The subtlety in Shakespear, of which there is animmense deal scattered everywhere up and down, is always the instrumentof passion, the vehicle of character. The action of a man pulling hishat over his forehead is indifferent enough in itself, and generallyspeaking, may mean anything or nothing; but in the circumstances inwhich Macduff is placed, it is neither insignificant nor equivocal. 

 What! man, ne'er pull your hat upon your brows, etc. 

It admits but of one interpretation or inference, that which followsit:--

 Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak, Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break. 

The passage in the same play, in which Duncan and his attendants areintroduced, commenting on the beauty and situation of Macbeth's castle, though familiar in itself, has been often praised for the strikingcontrast it presents to the scenes which follow. --The same look indifferent circumstances may convey a totally different expression. Thusthe eye turned round to look at you without turning the head indicatesgenerally slyness or suspicion; but if this is combined with largeexpanded eyelids or fixed eyebrows, as we see it in Titian's pictures, it will denote calm contemplation or piercing sagacity, without anythingof meanness or fear of being observed. In other cases it may implymerely indolent, enticing voluptuousness, as in Lely's portraits ofwomen. The languor and weakness of the eyelids give the amorous turnto the expression. How should there be a rule for all this beforehand, seeing it depends on circumstances ever varying, and scarce discerniblebut by their effect on the mind? Rules are applicable to abstractions, but expression is concrete and individual. We know the meaning ofcertain looks, and we feel how they modify one another in conjunction. But we cannot have a separate rule to judge of all their combinationsin different degrees and circumstances, without foreseeing all thosecombinations, which is impossible; or if we did foresee them, we shouldonly be where we are, that is, we could only make the rule as we nowjudge without it, from imagination and the feeling of the moment. Theabsurdity of reducing expression to a preconcerted system was perhapsnever more evidently shown than in a picture of the Judgment of Solomonby so great a man as N. Poussin, which I once heard admired for theskill and discrimination of the artist in making all the women, who areranged on one side, in the greatest alarm at the sentence of the judge, while all the men on the opposite side see through the design of it. Nature does not go to work or cast things in a regular mould in thissort of way. I once heard a person remark of another, 'He has an eyelike a vicious horse. ' This was a fair analogy. We all, I believe, havenoticed the look of a horse's eye just before he is going to bite orkick. But will any one, therefore, describe to me exactly what thatlook is? It was the same acute observer that said of a self-sufficient. , prating music-master, 'He talks on all subjects _at sight_'--whichexpressed the man at once by an allusion to his profession, thecoincidence was indeed perfect. Nothing else could compare with the easyassurance with which this gentleman would volunteer an explanation ofthings of which he was most ignorant, but the _nonchalance_ with whicha musician sits down to a harpsichord to play a piece he has never seenbefore. My physiognomical friend would not have hit on this mode ofillustration without knowing the profession of the subject of hiscriticism; but having this hint given him, it instantly suggested itselfto his 'sure trailing. ' The manner of the speaker was evident; and theassociation of the music-master sitting down to play at sight, lurking in his mind, was immediately called out by the strength of hisimpression of the character. The feeling of character and the felicityof invention in explaining it were nearly allied to each other. Thefirst was so wrought up and running over that the transition to the lastwas very easy and unavoidable. When Mr. Kean was so much praised for theaction of Richard in his last struggle with his triumphant antagonist, where he stands, after his sword is wrested from him, with his handsstretched out, 'as if his will could not be disarmed, and the veryphantoms of his despair had a withering power, ' he said that he borrowedit from seeing the last efforts of Painter in his fight with Oliver. This assuredly did not lessen the merit of it. Thus it ever is with theman of real genius. He has the feeling of truth already shrined in hisown breast, and his eye is still bent on Nature to see how she expressesherself. When we thoroughly understand the subject it is easy totranslate from one language into another. Raphael, in muffling up thefigure of Elymas the Sorcerer in his garments, appears to have extendedthe idea of blindness even to his clothes. Was this design? Probablynot; but merely the feeling of analogy thoughtlessly suggesting thisdevice, which being so suggested was retained and carried on, becauseit flattered or fell in with the original feeling. The tide of passion, when strong, overflows and gradually insinuates itself into all nooksand corners of the mind. Invention (of the best kind) I therefore do notthink so distinct a thing from feeling as some are apt to imagine. Thesprings of pure feeling will rise and fill the moulds of fancy that arefit to receive it. There are some striking coincidences of colourin well-composed pictures, as in a straggling weed in the foregroundstreaked with blue or red to answer to a blue or red drapery, to thetone of the flesh or an opening in the sky:--not that this was intended, or done by the rule (for then it would presently become affected andridiculous), but the eye, being imbued with a certain colour, repeatsand varies it from a natural sense of harmony, a secret craving andappetite for beauty, which in the same manner soothes and gratifies theeye of taste, though the cause is not understood. _Tact, finesse_, is nothing but the being completely aware of the feeling belonging tocertain situations, passions, etc. , and the being consequently sensibleto their slightest indications or movements in others. One of the mostremarkable instances of this sort of faculty is the following story, told of Lord Shaftesbury, the grandfather of the author of the_Characteristics_. He had been to dine with Lady Clarendon and herdaughter, who was at that time privately married to the Duke of York(afterwards James II. ), and as he returned home with another noblemanwho had accompanied him, he suddenly turned to him, and said, 'Dependupon it, the Duke has married Hyde's daughter. ' His companion couldnot comprehend what he meant; but on explaining himself, he said, 'Hermother behaved to her with an attention and a marked respect that it isimpossible to account for in any other way; and I am sure of it. ' Hisconjecture shortly afterwards proved to be the truth. This was carryingthe prophetic spirit of common sense as far as it could go. 

NOTES to ESSAY IV

(1) Discourse XIII. Vol. Ii. Pp. 113-117. 

(2) Sentiment has the same source as that here pointed out. Thus the_Ranz des Vaches_, which has such an effect on the minds of the Swisspeasantry, when its well-known sound is heard, does not merely recallto them the idea of their country, but has associated with it a thousandnameless ideas, numberless touches of private affection, of early hope, romantic adventure and national pride, all which rush in (with mingledcurrents) to swell the tide of fond remembrance, and make them languishor die for home. What a fine instrument the human heart is! Who shalltouch it? Who shall fathom it? Who shall 'sound it from Its lowest noteto the top of its compass?' Who shall put his hand among the strings, and explain their wayward music? The heart alone, when touched bysympathy, trembles and responds to their hidden meaning!

ESSAY V. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

Genius or originality is, for the most part, _some strong quality inthe mind, answering to and bringing out some new and striking quality innature. _

Imagination is, more properly, the power of carrying on a given feelinginto other situations, which must be done best according to the holdwhich the feeling itself has taken of the mind. (1) In new and unknowncombinations the impression must act by sympathy, and not by rule, but there can be no sympathy where there is no passion, no originalinterest. The personal interest may in some cases oppress andcircumscribe the imaginative faculty, as in the instance of Rousseau:but in general the strength and consistency of the imagination will bein proportion to the strength and depth of feeling; and it is rarelythat a man even of lofty genius will be able to do more than carry onhis own feelings and character, or some prominent and ruling passion, into fictitious and uncommon situations. Milton has by allusionembodied a great part of his political and personal history in thechief characters and incidents of _Paradise Lost_. He has, no doubt, wonderfully adapted and heightened them, but the elements are the same;you trace the bias and opinions of the man in the creations of the poeabove the definition of genius. 'Born universal heir to all humanity, 'he was 'as one, in suffering all who suffered nothing'; with a perfectsympathy with all things, yet alike indifferent to all: who did nottamper with Nature or warp her to his own purposes; who 'knew allqualities with a learned spirit, ' instead of judging of them by his ownpredilections; and was rather 'a pipe for the Muse's finger to play whatstop she pleasd, ' than anxious to set up any character or pretensions ofhis own. His genius consisted in the faculty of transforming himselfat will into whatever he chose: his originality was the power of seeingevery object from the exact point of view in which others would seeit. He was the Proteus of human intellect. Genius in ordinary is a moreobstinate and less versatile thing. It is sufficiently exclusive andself-willed, quaint and peculiar. It does some one thing by virtue ofdoing nothing else: it excels in some one pursuit by being blind to allexcellence but its own. It is just the reverse of the cameleon; forit does not borrow, but lends its colour to all about it; or like theglow-worm, discloses a little circle of gorgeous light in the twilightof obscurity, in the night of intellect that surrounds it. So didRembrandt. If ever there was a man of genius, he was one, in the propersense of the term. He lived in and revealed to otters a world of hisown, and might be said to have invented a new view of nature. He didnot discover things _out of_ nature, in fiction or fairy land, or makea voyage to the moon 'to descry new lands, rivers or mountains in herspotty globe, ' but saw things _in_ nature that every one had missedbefore him and gave others eyes to see them with. This is the test andtriumph of originality, not to show us what has never been, and what wemay therefore very easily never have dreamt of, but to point out tous what is before our eyes and under our feet, though we have hadno suspicion of its existence, for want of sufficient strength ofintuition, of determined grasp of mind, to seize and retain it. Rembrandt's conquests were not over the _ideal_, but the real. He didnot contrive a new story or character, but we nearly owe to him a fifthpart of painting, the knowledge of _chiaroscuro_--a distinct power andelement in art and nature. He had a steadiness, a firm keeping of mindand eye, that first stood the shock of 'fierce extremes' in light andshade, or reconciled the greatest obscurity and the greatest brilliancyinto perfect harmony; and he therefore was the first to hazard thisappearance upon canvas, and give full effect to what he saw anddelighted in. He was led to adopt this style of broad and startlingcontrast from its congeniality to his own feelings: his mind grappledwith that which afforded the best exercise to its master-powers: hewas bold in act, because he was urged on by a strong native impulse. Originality is then nothing but nature and feeling working in the mind. A man does not affect to be original: he is so, because he cannot helpit, and often without knowing it. This extraordinary artist indeed mightbe said to have had a particular organ for colour. His eye seemed tocome in contact with it as a feeling, to lay hold of it as a substance, rather than to contemplate it as a visual object. The texture of hislandscapes is 'of the earth, earthy'--his clouds are humid, heavy, slow;his shadows are 'darkness that may be felt, ' a 'palpable obscure'; hislights are lumps of liquid splendour! There is something more in thisthan can be accounted for from design or accident: Rembrandt was not aman made up of two or three rules and directions for acquiring genius. 

I am afraid I shall hardly write so satisfactory a character of Mr. Wordsworth, though he too, like Rembrandt, has a faculty of makingsomething out of nothing, that is, out of himself, by the medium throughwhich he sees and with which he clothes the barrenest subject. Mr. Wordsworth is the last man to 'look abroad into universality, ' if thatalone constituted genius: he looks at home into himself, and is 'contentwith riches fineless. ' He would in the other case be 'poor as winter, 'if he had nothing but general capacity to trust to. He is the greatest, that is, the most original poet of the present day, only because he isthe greatest egotist. He is 'self-involved, not dark. ' He sits in thecentre of his own being, and there 'enjoys bright day. ' He does notwaste a thought on others. Whatever does not relate exclusivelyand wholly to himself is foreign to his views. He contemplates awhole-length figure of himself, he looks along the unbroken line ofhis personal identity. He thrusts aside all other objects, all otherinterests, with scorn and impatience, that he may repose on his ownbeing, that he may dig out the treasures of thought contained in it, that he may unfold the precious stores of a mind for ever brooding overitself. His genius is the effect of his individual character. He stampsthat character, that deep individual interest, on whatever he meets. Theobject is nothing but as it furnishes food for internal meditation, forold associations. If there had been no other being in the universe, Mr. Wordsworth's poetry would have been just what it is. If there had beenneither love nor friendship, neither ambition nor pleasure nor businessin the World, the author of the _Lyrical Ballads_ need not have beengreatly changed from what he is--might still have 'kept the noiselesstenour of his way, ' retired in the sanctuary of his own heart, hallowingthe Sabbath of his own thoughts. With the passions, the pursuits, andimaginations of other men he does not profess to sympathise, but 'findstongues in the trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. ' With a mind averse from outward objects, butever intent upon its own workings, he hangs a weight of thought andfeeling upon every trifling circumstance connected with his pasthistory. The note of the cuckoo sounds in his ear like the voice ofother years; the daisy spreads its leaves in the rays of boyish delightthat stream from his thoughtful eyes; the rainbow lifts its proud archin heaven but to mark his progress from infancy to manhood; an old thornis buried, bowed down under the mass of associations he has wound aboutit; and to him, as he himself beautifully says, The meanest flow'r that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 

It is this power of habitual sentiment, or of transferring the interestof our conscious existence to whatever gently solicits attention, andis a link in the chain of association without rousing our passions orhurting our pride, that is the striking feature in Mr. Wordsworth's mindand poetry. Others have left and shown this power before, as Wither, Burns, etc. , but none have felt it so intensely and absolutely as tolend to it the voice of inspiration, as to make it the foundation of anew style and school in poetry. His strength, as it so often happens, arises from the excess of his weakness. But he has opened a new avenueto the human heart, has explored another secret haunt and nook ofnature, 'sacred to verse, and sure of everlasting fame. ' Compared withhis lines, Lord Byron's stanzas are but exaggerated common-place, andWalter Scott's poetry (not his prose) old wives' fables. (2) There is noone in whom I have been more disappointed than in the writer here spokenof, nor with whom I am more disposed on certain points to quarrel; butthe love of truth and justice which obliges me to do this, will notsuffer me to blench his merits. Do what he can, he cannot help being anoriginal-minded man. His poetry is not servile. While the cuckoo returnsin the spring, while the daisy looks bright in the sun, while therainbow lifts its head above the storm--

 Yet I'll remember thee, Glencairn, And all that thou hast done for me!

Sir Joshua Reynolds, in endeavouring to show that there is no such thingas proper originality, a spirit emanating from the mind of the artistand shining through his works, has traced Raphael through a number offigures which he has borrowed from Masaccio and others. This is a badcalculation. If Raphael had only borrowed those figures from others, would he, even in Sir Joshua's sense, have been entitled to the praiseof originality? Plagiarism, in so far as it is plagiarism, is notoriginality. Salvator is considered by many as a great genius. He iswhat they call an irregular genius. My notion of genius is not exactlythe same as theirs. It has also been made a question; whether there isnot more genius in Rembrandt's Three Trees than in all Claude Lorraine'slandscapes. I do not know how that may be; but it was enough for Claudeto have been a perfect landscape-painter. 

Capacity is not the same thing as genius. Capacity may be described torelate to the quantity of knowledge, however acquired; genius, to itsquality and the mode of acquiring it. Capacity is power over given ideascombinations of ideas; genius is the power over those which are notgiven, and for which no obvious or precise rule can be laid down. Orcapacity is power of any sort; genius is power of a different sort fromwhat has yet been shown. A retentive memory, a clear understanding, iscapacity, but it is not genius. The admirable Crichton was a person ofprodigious capacity; but there is no proof (that I know) that he had anatom of genius. His verses that remain are dull and sterile. He couldlearn all that was known of any subject; he could do anything if otherscould show him the way to do it. This was very wonderful; but thatis all you can say of it. It requires a good capacity to play well atchess; but, after all, it is a game of skill, and not of genius. Knowwhat you will of it, the understanding still moves in certain tracks inwhich others have trod it before, quicker or slower, with more or lesscomprehension and presence of mind. The greatest skill strikes outnothing for itself, from its own peculiar resources; the nature of thegame is a thing determinate and fixed: there is no royal or poeticalroad to checkmate your adversary. There is no place for genius but inthe indefinite and unknown. The discovery of the binomial theorem wasan effort of genius; but there was none shown in Jedediah Buxton's beingable to multiply 9 figures by 9 in his head. If he could have multiplied90 figures by 90 instead of 9, it would have been equally useless toiland trouble. (3) He is a man of capacity who possesses considerableintellectual riches: he is a man of genius who finds out a vein of newore. Originality is the seeing nature differently from others, andyet as it is in itself. It is not singularity or affectation, but thediscovery of new and valuable truth. All the world do not see the whlooking at. Habit blinds them to some things; short-sightedness toothers. Every mind is not a gauge and measure of truth. Nature has hersurface and her dark recesses. She is deep, obscure, and infinite. It isonly minds on whom she makes her fullest impressions that can penetrateher shrine or unveil her _Holy of Holies_. It is only those whom she hasfilled with her spirit that have the boldness or the power to reveal hermysteries to others. But Nature has a thousand aspects, and one man canonly draw out one of them. Whoever does this is a man of genius. Onedisplays her force, another her refinement; one her power of harmony, another her suddenness of contrast; one her beauty of form, another hersplendour of colour. Each does that for which he is bast fitted by hisparticular genius, that is to say, by some quality of mind into whichthe quality of the object sinks deepest, where it finds the most cordialwelcome, is perceived to its utmost extent, and where again it forcesits way out from the fulness with which it has taken possession ofthe mind of the student. The imagination gives out what it has firstabsorbed by congeniality of temperament, what it has attracted andmoulded into itself by elective affinity, as the loadstone draws andimpregnates iron. A little originality is more esteemed and sought forthan the greatest acquired talent, because it throws a new light uponthings, and is peculiar to the individual. The other is common; and maybe had for the asking, to any amount. 

The value of any work is to be judged of by the quantity of originalitycontained in it. A very little of this will go a great way. If Goldsmithhad never written anything but the two or three first chapters of the_Vicar of Wakefield_ or the character of a Village Schoolmaster, theywould have stamped him a man of genius. The editors of Encyclopedias arenot usually reckoned the first literary characters of the age. The worksof which they have the management contain a great deal of knowledge, like chests or warehouses, but the goods are not their own. We shouldas soon think of admiring the shelves of a library; but the shelves of alibrary are useful and respectable. I was once applied to, in adelicate emergency, to write an article on a difficult subject for anEncyclopedia, and was advised to take time and give it a systematic andscientific form, to avail myself of all the knowledge that was to beobtained on the subject, and arrange it with clearness and method. Imade answer that as to the first, I had taken time to do all that I everpretended to do, as I had thought incessantly on different matters fortwenty years of my life;(4) that I had no particular knowledge of thesubject in question, and no head for arrangement; and that the utmostI could do in such a case would be, when a systematic and scientificarticle was prepared, to write marginal notes upon it, to inserta remark or illustration of my own (not to be found in formerEncyclopedias), or to suggest a better definition than had been offeredin the text. There are two sorts of writing. The first is compilation;and consists in collecting and stating all that is already known of anyquestion in the best possible manner, for the benefit of the uninformedreader. An author of this class is a very learned amanuensis of otherpeople's thoughts. The second sort proceeds on an entirely differentprinciple: instead of bringing down the account of knowledge to thepoint at which it has already arrived, it professes to start fromthat point on the strength of the writer's individual reflections; andsupposing the reader in possession of what is already known, suppliesdeficiencies, fills up certain blanks, and quits the beaten road insearch of new tracts of observation or sources of feeling. It is in vainto object to this last style that it is disjointed, disproportioned, and irregular. It is merely a set of additions and corrections toother men's works, or to the common stock of human knowledge, printedseparately. You might as well expect a continued chain of reasoningin the notes to a book. It skips all the trite, intermediate, levelcommon-places of the subject, and only stops at the difficult passagesof the human mind, or touches on some striking point that has beenoverlooked in previous editions. A view of a subject, to be connectedand regular, cannot be all new. A writer will always be liable to becharged either with paradox or common-place, either with dulness oraffectation. But we have no right to demand from any one more thanhe pretends to. There is indeed a medium in all things, but to uniteopposite excellencies is a task ordinarily too hard for mortality. Hewho succeeds in what he aims at, or who takes the lead in any one modeor path of excellence, may think himself very well off. It would notbe fair to complain of the style of an Encyclopedia as dull, as wantingvolatile salt; nor of the style of an Essay because it is too light andsparkling, because it is not a _caput mortuum_. So it is rather anodd objection to a work that it is made up entirely of 'brilliantpassages'--at least it is a fault that can be found with few works, andthe book might be pardoned for its singularity. The censure might indeedseem like adroit flattery, if it were not passed on an author whom anyobjection is sufficient to render unpopular and ridiculous. I grant itis best to unite solidity with show, general information with particularingenuity. This is the pattern of a perfect style; but I myself do notpretend to be a perfect writer. In fine, we do not banish light Frenchwines from our tables, or refuse to taste sparkling Champagne when wecan get it because it has not the body of Old Port. Besides, I do notknow that dulness is strength, or that an observation is slight becauseit is striking. Mediocrity, insipidity, want of character is the greatfault. 

 Mediocribus esse poetis Non Dii, non homines, non concessere columnae. 

Neither is this privilege allowed to prose-writers in our time any morethan to poets formerly. 

It is not then acuteness of organs or extent of capacity thatconstitutes rare genius or produces the most exquisite models ofart, but an intense sympathy with some one beauty or distinguishingcharacteristic in nature. Irritability alone, or the interest taken incertain things, may supply the place of genius in weak and otherwiseordinary minds. As there are certain instruments fitted to performcertain kinds of labour, there are certain minds so framed as to producecertain _chef-d'oeuvres_ in art and literature, which is surely the bestuse they can be put to. If a man had all sorts of instruments in hisshop and wanted one, he would rather have that one than be supplied witha double set of all the others. If he had them twice over, he could onlydo what he can do as it is, whereas without that one he perhaps cannotfinish any one work he has in hand. So if a man can do one thing betterthan anybody else, the value of this one thing is what he must standor fall by, and his being able to do a hundred other things merely_as well_ as anybody else would not alter the sentence or add to hisrespectability; on the contrary, his being able to do so many otherthings well would probably interfere with and encumber him in theexecution of the only thing that others cannot do as well as he, and sofar be a drawback and a disadvantage. More people, in fact, fail from amultiplicity of talents and pretensions than from an absolute povertyof resources. I have given instances of this elsewhere. PerhapsShakespear's tragedies would in some respects have been better if he hadnever written comedies at all; and in that case his comedies might wellhave been spared, though they must have cost us some regret. Racine, it is said, might have rivalled Moliere in comedy; but he gave up thecultivation of his comic talents to devote himself wholly to the tragicMuse. If, as the French tell us, he in consequence attained to theperfection of tragic composition, this was better than writing comediesas well as Moliere and tragedies as well as Crebillon. Yet I count thosepersons fools who think it a pity Hogarth did not succeed better inserious subjects. The division of labour is an excellent principle intaste as well as in mechanics. Without this, I find from Adam Smith, wecould not have a pin made to the degree of perfection it is. We do not, on any rational scheme of criticism, inquire into the variety of a man'sexcellences, or the number of his works, or his facility of production. _Venice Preserved_ is sufficient for Otway's fame. I hate all thosenonsensical stories about Lope de Vega and his writing a play in amorning before breakfast. He had time enough to do it after. If a manleaves behind him any work which is a model in its kind, we have noright to ask whether he could do anything else, or how he did it, orhow long he was about it. All that talent which is not necessary to theactual quantity of excellence existing in the world, loses its object, is so much waste talent or _talent to let_. I heard a sensible man sayhe should like to do some one thing better than all the rest of theworld, and in everything else to be like all the rest of the world. Whyshould a man do more than his part? The rest is vanity and vexationof spirit. We look with jealous and grudging eyes at all thosequalifications which are not essential; first, because they aresuperfluous, and next, because we suspect they will be prejudicial. Why does Mr. Kean play all those harlequin tricks of singing, dancing, fencing, etc. ? They say, 'It is for his benefit. ' It is not for hisreputation. Garrick indeed shone equally in comedy and tragedy. But hewas first, not second-rate in both. There is not a greater impertinencethan to ask, if a man is clever out of his profession. I have heardof people trying to cross-examine Mrs. Siddons. I would as soon try toentrap one of the Elgin Marbles into an argument. Good nature and commonsense are required from all people; but one proud distinction is enoughfor any one individual to possess or to aspire to. 

NOTES to ESSAY V

(1) I do not here speak of the figurative or fanciful exercise of theimagination, which consists in finding out some striking object or imageto illustrate another. 

(2) Mr. Wordsworth himself should not say this, and yet I am not sure hewould not. 

(3) The only good thing I have ever heard come of this man's singularfaculty of memory was the following. A gentleman was mentioning hishaving been sent up to London from the place where he lived to seeGarrick act. When he went back into the country he was asked what hethought of the player and the play. 'Oh!' he said, 'he did not know: hehad only seen a little man strut about the stage and repeat 7956 wordsone hand to his forehead, and seeming mightily delighted, calledout, 'Ay, indeed! And pray, was he found to be correct?' This was thesupererogation of literal matter-of-fact curiosity. Jedediah Buxton'scounting the number of words was idle enough; but here was a fellow whowanted some one to count them over again to see if he was correct. 

 The force of _dulness_ could no farther go!

(4) Sir Joshua Reynolds, being asked how long it had taken him to do acertain picture, made answer, 'All my life!. '

ESSAY VI. CHARACTER OF COBBETT

People have about as substantial an idea of Cobbett as they have ofCribb. His blows are as hard, and he himself is as impenetrable. One hasno notion of him as making use of a fine pen, but a great mutton-fist;his style stuns his readers, and he 'fillips the ear of the public witha three-man beetle. ' He is too much for any single newspaper antagonist;'lays waste' a city orator or Member of Parliament, and bears hard uponthe Government itself. He is a kind of _fourth estate_ in the politicsof the country. He is not only unquestionably the most powerfulpolitical writer of the present day, but one of the best writers in thelanguage. He speaks and thinks plain, broad, downright English. He mightbe said to have the clearness of Swift, the naturalness of Defoe, and the picturesque satirical description of Mandeville; if all suchcomparisons were not impertinent. A really great and original writesense, Sterne was not a wit, nor Shakespear a poet. It is easy todescribe second-rate talents, because they fall into a class and enlistunder a standard; but first-rate powers defy calculation or comparison, and can be defined only by themselves. They are _sui generis_, andmake the class to which they belong. I have tried half a dozen timesto describe Burke's style without ever succeeding, --its severeextravagance; its literal boldness; its matter-of-fact hyperboles; itsrunning away with a subject, and from it at the same time, --but thereis no making it out, for there is no example of the same thinganywhere else. We have no common measure to refer to; and his qualitiescontradict even themselves. 

Cobbett is not so difficult. He has been compared to Paine; and so farit is true there are no two writers who come more into juxtapositionfrom the nature of their subjects, from the internal resources on whichthey draw, and from the popular effect of their writings and theiradaptation (though that is a bad word in the present case) to thecapacity of every reader. But still if we turn to a volume of Paine's(his _Common Sense_ or _Rights of Man_) we are struck (not to saysomewhat refreshed) by the difference. Paine is a much more sententiouswriter than Cobbett. You cannot open a page in any of his best andearlier works without meeting with some maxim, some antithetical andmemorable saying, which is a sort of starting-place for the argument, and the goal to which it returns. There is not a single _bon mot_, asingle sentence in Cobbett that has ever been quoted again. If anythingis ever quoted from him, it is an epithet of abuse or a nickname. He isan excellent hand at invention in that way, and has 'damnable iteration'in him. What could be better than his pestering Erskine year after yearwith his second title of Baron Clackmannan? He is rather too fond of_the Sons and Daughters of Corruption_. Paine affected to reduce thingsto first principles, to announce self-evident truths. Cobbett troubleshimself about little but the details and local circumstances. The firstappeared to have made up his mind beforehand to certain opinions, and totry to find the most compendious and pointed expressions for them: hissuccessor appears to have no clue, no fixed or leading principles, norever to have thought on a question till he sits down to write about it;but then there seems no end of his matters of fact and raw materials, which are brought out in all their strength and sharpness from nothaving been squared or frittered down or vamped up to suit a theory--hegoes on with his descriptions and illustrations as if he would nevercome to a stop; they have all the force of novelty with all thefamiliarity of old acquaintance; his knowledge grows out of the subject, and his style is that of a man who has an absolute intuition of whathe is talking about, and never thinks of anything else. He deals inpremises and speaks to evidence--the coming to a conclusion and summingup (which was Paine's _forte_) lies in a smaller compass. The one couldnot compose an elementary treatise on politics to become a manual forthe popular reader, nor could the other in all probability have keptup a weekly journal for the same number of years with the same spirit, interest, and untired perseverance. Paine's writings are a sort ofintroduction to political arithmetic on a new plan: Cobbett keepsa day-book, and makes an entry at full of all the occurrences andtroublesome questions that start up throughout the year. Cobbett, withvast industry, vast information, and the utmost power of making what hesays intelligible, never seems to get at the beginning or come tothe end of any question: Paine in a few short sentences seems by hisperemptory manner 'to clear it from all controversy, past, present, andto come. ' Paine takes a bird's-eye view of things. Cobbett sticksclose to them, inspects the component parts, and keeps fast hold of thesmallest advantages they afford him. Or, if I might here be indulgedin a pastoral allusion, Paine tries to enclose his ideas in a fold forsecurity and repose; Cobbett lets _his_ pour out upon the plain like aflock of sheep to feed and batten. Cobbett is a pleasanter writer forthose to read who do not agree with him; for he is less dogmatical, goesmore into the common grounds of fact and argument to which all appeal, is more desultory and various, and appears less to be driving at apresent conclusion than urged on by the force of present conviction. He is therefore tolerated by all parties, though he has made himself byturns obnoxious to all; and even those he abuses read him. The Reformersread him when he was a Tory, and the Tories read him now that he is aReformer. He must, I think, however, be _caviare_ to the Whigs. (1)

If he is less metaphysical and poetical than his celebrated prototype, he is more picturesque and dramatic. His episodes, which are numerousas they are pertinent, are striking, interesting, full of lifeand _naivete_, minute, double measure running over, but nevertedious--_nunquam sufflaminandus erat_. He is one of those writers whocan never tire us, not even of himself; and the reason is, he is always'full of matter. ' He never runs to lees, never gives us the vapidleavings of himself, is never 'weary, stale, and unprofitable, ' butalways setting out afresh on his journey, clearing away some oldnuisance, and turning up new mould. His egotism is delightful, forthere is no affectation in it. He does not talk of himself for lackof something to write about, but because some circumstance that hashappened to himself is the best possible illustration of the subject, and he is not the man to shrink from giving the best possibleillustration of the subject from a squeamish delicacy. He likes bothhimself and his subject too well. He does not put himself before it, and say, 'Admire me first, ' but places us in the same situation withhimself, and makes us see all that he does. There is no blindman's-buff, no conscious hints, no awkward ventriloquism, no testimonies ofapplause, no abstract, senseless self-complacency, no smuggledadmiration of his own person by proxy: it is all plain and above-board. He writes himself plain William Cobbett, strips himself quite as nakedas anybody would wish--in a word, his egotism is full of individuality, and has room for very little vanity in it. We feel delighted, rub ourhands, and draw our chair to the fire, when we come to a passage of thissort: we know it will be something new and good, manly and simple, notthe same insipid story of self over again. We sit down at table withthe writer, but it is to a course of rich viands, flesh, fish, andwild-fowl, and not to a nominal entertainment, like that given by theBarmecide in the _Arabian Nights_, who put off his visitors with callingfor a number of exquisite things that never appeared, and with thehonour of his company. Mr. Cobbett is not a _make-believe_ writer: hisworst enemy cannot say that of him. Still less is he a vulgar one: hemust be a puny, common-place critic indeed who thinks him so. Howfine were the graphical descriptions he sent us from America: what aTransatlantic flavour, what a native gusto, what a fine _sauce piquante_of contempt they were seasoned with! If he had sat down to lookat himself in the glass, instead of looking about him like Adam inParadise, he would not have got up these articles in so capital astyle. What a noble account of his first breakfast after his arrival inAmerica! It might serve for a month. There is no scene on the stage moreamusing. How well he paints the gold and scarlet plumage of the Americanbirds, only to lament more pathetically the want of the wild wood-notesof his native land! The groves of the Ohio that had just fallen beneaththe axe's stroke 'live in his description, ' and the turnips that hetransplanted from Botley 'look green' in prose! How well at another timehe describes the poor sheep that had got the tick and had bled down inthe agonies of death! It is a portrait in the manner of Bewick, withthe strength, the simplicity, and feeling of that great naturalist. Whathavoc be makes, when he pleases, of the curls of Dr. Parr's wig andof the Whig consistency of Mr. (Coleridge?)! His _Grammar_, too, is asentertaining as a story-book. He is too hard upon the style of others, and not enough (sometimes) on his own. 

As a political partisan no one can stand against him. With hisbrandished club, like Giant Despair in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, heknocks out their brains; and not only no individual but no corruptsystem could hold out against his powerful and repeated attacks, butwith the same weapon, swung round like a flail, that he levels hisantagonists, he lays his friends low, and puts his own party _hors decombat_. This is a bad propensity. , and a worse principle in politicaltactics, though a common one. If his blows were straightforward andsteadily directed to the same object, no unpopular minister could livebefore him; instead of which he lays about right and left, impartiallyand remorselessly, makes a clear stage, has all the ring to himself, andthen runs out of it, just when he should stand his ground. He throwshis head into his adversary's stomach, and takes away from him allinclination for the fight, hits fair or foul, strikes at everything, andas you come up to his aid or stand ready to pursue his advantage, tripsup your heels or lays you sprawling, and pummels you when down asmuch to his heart's content as ever the Yanguesian carriers belabouredRosinante with their pack-staves. 'He has the back-trick simply the bestof any man in Illyria. ' He pays off both scores of old friendship andnew-acquired enmity in a breath, in one perpetual volley, one rakingfire of 'arrowy sleet' shot from his pen. However his own reputation orthe cause may suffer in consequence, he cares not one pin about that, sothat he disables all who oppose, or who pretend to help him. In fact, hecannot bear success of any kind, not even of his own views or party; andif any principle were likely to become popular, would turn round againstit to show his power in shouldering it on one side. In short, whereverpower is, there he is against it: he naturally butts at all obstacles, as unicorns are attracted to oak trees, and feels his own strength onlyby resistance to the opinions and wishes of the rest of the world. Tosail with the stream, to agree with the company, is not his humour. Ifhe could bring about a Reform in Parliament, the odds are that he wouldinstantly fall foul of and try to mar his own handiwork; and he quarrelswith his own creatures as soon as he has written them into a littlevogue--and a prison. I do not think this is vanity or fickleness so muchas a pugnacious disposition, that must have an antagonistic power tocontend with, and only finds itself at ease in systematic opposition. If it were not for this, the high towers and rotten places of the worldwould fall before the battering-ram of his hard-headed reasoning; but ifhe once found them tottering, he would apply his strength to prop themup, and disappoint the expectations of his followers. He cannot agree toanything established, nor to set up anything else in its stead. While itis established, he presses hard against it, because it presses upon him, at least in imagination. Let it crumble under his grasp, and the motiveto resistance is gone. He then requires some other grievance to set hisface against. His principle is repulsion, his nature contradiction: heis made up of mere antipathies, an Ishmaelite indeed without a fellow. He is always playing at hunt-the-slipper in politics. He turns roundupon whoever is next him. The way to wean him from any opinion, andmake him conceive an intolerable hatred against it, would be to placesomebody near him who was perpetually dinning it in his ears. When he isin England he does nothing but abuse the Boroughmongers and laugh at thewhole system; when he is in America he grows impatient of freedom and arepublic. If he had stayed there a little longer he would have become aloyal and a loving subject of His Majesty King George IV. He lampoonedthe French Revolution when it was hailed as the dawn of liberty bymillions: by the time it was brought into almost universal ill-odour bysome means or other (partly no doubt by himself), he had turned, withone or two or three others, staunch Buonapartist. He is always of themilitant, not of the triumphant party: so far he bears a gallant showof magnanimity. But his gallantry is hardly of the right stamp. It wantsprinciple; for though he is not servile or mercenary, he is the victimof self-will. He must pull down and pull in pieces: it is not in hisdisposition to do otherwise. It is a pity; for with his great talentshe might do great things, if he would go right forward to any usefulobject, make thorough stitch-work of any question, or join hand andheart with any principle. He changes his opinions as he does hisfriends, and much on the same account. He has no comfort in fixedprinciples; as soon as anything is settled in his own mind, he quarrelswith it. He has no satisfaction but the chase after truth, runs aquestion down, worries and kills it, then quits it like a vermin, andstarts some new game, to lead him a new dance, and give him a freshbreathing through bog and brake, with the rabble yelping at his heelsand the leaders perpetually at fault. This he calls sport-royal. Hethinks it as good as cudgel-playing or single-stick, or anything elsethat has life in it. He likes the cut and thrust, the falls, bruises, and dry blows of an argument: as to any good or useful results that maycome of the amicable settling of it, any one is welcome to them for him. The amusement is over when the matter is once fairly decided. 

There is another point of view in which this may be put. I might saythat Mr. Cobbett is a very honest man with a total want of principle, and I might explain this paradox thus:--I mean that he is, I think, indownright earnest in what he says, in the part he takes at the time;but in taking that part, he is led entirely by headstrong obstinacy, caprice, novelty 'pique, or personal motive of some sort, and not bya steadfast regard for truth or habitual anxiety for what is rightuppermost in his mind. He is not a fee'd, time-serving, shufflingadvocate (no man could write as he does who did not believe himselfsincere); but his understanding is the dupe and slave of hismomentary, violent, and irritable humours. He does not adopt an opinion'deliberately or for money, ' yet his conscience is at the mercy of thefirst provocation he receives, of the first whim he takes in hishead: he sees things through the medium of heat and passion, not withreference to any general principles, and his whole system of thinking isderanged by the first object that strikes his fancy or sours his tempereducation. He is a self-taught man, and has the faults as well asexcellences of that class of persons in their most striking and glaringexcess. It must be acknowledged that the editor of the _PoliticalRegister_ (the _twopenny trash_, as it was called, till a bill passedthe House to raise the price to sixpence) is not 'the gentleman andscholar, ' though he has qualities that, with a little better management, would be worth (to the public) both those titles. For want of knowingwhat has been discovered before him, he has not certain generallandmarks to refer to, or a general standard of thought to apply toindividual cases. He relies on his own acuteness and the immediateevidence, without being acquainted with the comparative anatomy orphilosophical structure of opinion. He does not view things on a largescale or at the horizon (dim and airy enough, perhaps)--but as theyaffect himself, close, palpable, tangible. Whatever he finds out is hisown, and he only knows what he finds out. He is in the constant hurryand fever of gestation; his brain teems incessantly with some freshproject. Every new light is the birth of a new system, the dawn of anew world outstripping and overreaching himself. The last opinion is theonly true one. He is wiser to-day than he was yesterday. Why should henot be wiser to-morrow than he was to-day?--Men of a learned educationare not so sharp-witted as clever men without it; but they know thebalance of the human intellect better; if they are more stupid, they aremore steady, and are less liable to be led astray by their own sagacityand the overweening petulance of hard-earned and late-acquired wisdom. They do not fall in love with every meretricious extravagance at firstsight, or mistake an old battered hypothesis for a vestal, because theyare new to the ways of this old world. They do not seize upon it as aprize, but are safe from gross imposition by being as wise and no wiserthan those who went before them. 

Paine said on some occasion, 'What I have written, I have written'--asrendering any further declaration of his principles unnecessary. Not soMr. Cobbett. What he has written is no rule to him what he is to writemaintain the opinions of the last six days against friend or foe. Idoubt whether this outrageous inconsistency, this headstrong fickleness, this understood want of all rule and method, does not enable him to goon with the spirit, vigour, and variety that he does. He is not pledgedto repeat himself. Every new _Register_ is a kind of new Prospectus. Heblesses himself from all ties and shackles on his understanding; he hasno mortgages on his brain; his notions are free and unencumbered. If hewas put in trammels, he might become a vile hack like so many more. Buthe gives himself 'ample scope and verge enough. ' He takes both sides ofa question, and maintains one as sturdily as the other. If nobody elsecan argue against him, he is a very good match for himself. He writesbetter in favour of Reform than anybody else; he used to write betteragainst it. Wherever he is, there is the tug of war, the weight of theargument, the strength of abuse. He is not like a man in danger of being_bed-rid_ in his faculties--he tosses and tumbles about his unwieldybulk, and when he is tired of lying on one side, relieves himself byturning on the other. His shifting his point of view from time to timenot merely adds variety and greater compass to his topics (so that the_Political Register_ is an armoury and magazine for all the materialsand weapons of political warfare), but it gives a greater zest andliveliness to his manner of treating them. Mr. Cobbett takes nothingfor granted as what he has proved before; he does not write a book ofreference. We see his ideas in their first concoction, fermenting andoverflowing with the ebullitions of a lively conception. We look on atthe actual process, and are put in immediate possession of the groundsand materials on which he forms his sanguine, unsettled conclusions. Hedoes not give us samples of reasoning, but the whole solid mass, refuseand all. 

 He pours out all as plain As downright Shippen or as old Montaigne. 

This is one cause of the clearness and force of his writings. Anargument does not stop to stagnate and muddle in his brain, but passesat once to his paper. His ideas are served up, like pancakes, hot andhot. Fresh theories give him fresh courage. He is like a young and lustybridegroom that divorces a favourite speculation every morning, andmarries a new one every night. He is not wedded to his notions, not he. He has not one Mrs. Cobbett among all his opinions. He makes the mostof the last thought that has come in his way, seizes fast hold of it, rumbles it about in all directions with rough strong hands, has hiswicked will of it, takes a surfeit, and throws it away. --Our author'schanging his opinions for new ones is not so wonderful; what is moreremarkable is his facility in forgetting his old ones. He does notpretend to consistency (like Mr. Coleridge); he frankly disavows allconnection with himself. He feels no personal responsibility in thisway, and cuts a friend or principle with the same decided indifferencethat Antipholis of Ephesus cuts AEgeon of Syracuse. It is a hollowthing. The only time he ever grew romantic was in bringing over therelics of Mr. Thomas Paine with him from America to go a progresswith them through the disaffected districts. Scarce had he landed inLiverpool when he left the bones of a great man to shift for themselves;and no sooner did he arrive in London than he made a speech to disclaimall participation in the political and theological sentiments of hislate idol, and to place the whole stock of his admiration and enthusiasmtowards him to the account of his financial speculations, and of hishaving predicted the fate of paper-money. If he had erected a littlegold statue to him, it might have proved the sincerity of thisassertion; but to make a martyr and a patron saint of a man, and to digup 'his canonised bones' in order to expose them as objects of devotionto the rabble's gaze, asks something that has more life and spirit init, more mind and vivifying soul, than has to do with any calculationof pounds, shillings, and pence! The fact is, he _ratted_ from his ownproject. He found the thing not so ripe as he had expected. His heartfailed him; his enthusiasm fled, and he made his retractation. Hisadmiration is short-lived; his contempt only is rooted, and hisresentment lasting. --The above was only one instance of his building toomuch on practical _data_. He has an ill habit of prophesying, and goeson, though still decieved. The art of prophesying does not suit Mr. Cobbett's style. He has a knack of fixing names and times and places. According to him, the Reformed Parliament was to meet in March 1818--itdid not, and we heard no more of the matter. When his predictionsfail, he takes no further notice of them, but applies himself to newones--like the country people who turn to see what weather there is inthe almanac for the next week, though it has been out in its reckoningevery day of the last. 

Mr. Cobbett is great in attack, not in defence; he cannot fight anup-hill battle. He will not bear the least punishing. If any one turnsupon him (which few people like to do) he immediately turns tail. Likean overgrown schoolboy, he is so used to have it all his own way, thathe cannot submit to anything like competition or a struggle for themastery; he must lay on all the blows, and take none. He is bullyingand cowardly; a Big Ben in politics, who will fall upon others and crushthem by his weight, but is not prepared for resistance, and is soonstaggered by a few smart blows. Whenever he has been set upon, he hasslunk out of the controversy. The _Edinburgh Review_ made (what iscalled) a dead set at him some years ago, to which he only retorted byan eulogy on the superior neatness of an English kitchen-garden to aScotch one. I remember going one day into a bookseller's shop in FleetStreet to ask for the _Review_, and on my expressing my opinion to ayoung Scotchman, who stood behind the counter, that Mr. Cobbett mighthit as hard in his reply, the North Briton said with some alarm, 'Butyou don't think, sir, Mr. Cobbett will be able to injure the Scottishnation?' I said I could not speak to that point, but I thought he wasvery well able to defend himself. He, however, did not, but has borne agrudge to the _Edinburgh Review_ ever since, which he hates worse thanthe _Quarterly_. I cannot say I do. (2)

NOTES to ESSAY VI

(1) The late Lord Thurlow used to say that Cobbett was the only writerthat deserved the name of a political reasoner. 

(2) Mr. Cobbett speaks almost as well as he writes. The only time l eversaw him he seemed to me a very pleasant man--easy of access, affable, clear-headed, simple and mild in his manner, deliberate and unruffled inhis speech, though some of his expressions were not very qualified. Hisfigure is tall and portly. He has a good, sensible face--rather full, with little grey eyes, a hard, square forehead, a ruddy complexion, withhair grey or powdered; and had on a scarlet broadcloth waistcoatwith the flaps of the pockets hanging down, as was the custom forgentlemen-farmers in the last century, or as we see it in the picturesof Members of Parliament in the reign of George I. I certainly did notthink less favourably of him for seeing him. 

ESSAY VII. ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA

There are people who have but one idea: at least, if they have more, they keep it a secret, for they never talk but of one subject. 

There is Major Cartwright: he has but one idea or subject of discourse, Parliamentary Reform. Now Parliamentary Reform is (as far as I know) avery good subject to talk about; but why should it be the only one? Tohear the worthy and gallant Major resume his favourite topic, is likelaw-business, or a person who has a suit in Chancery going on. Nothingcan be attended to, nothing can be talked of but that. Now it is gettingon, now again it is standing still; at one time the Master has promisedto pass judgment by a certain day, at another he has put it off againand called for more papers, and both are equally reasons for speaking ofit. Like the piece of packthread in the barrister's hands, he turnsand twists it all ways, and cannot proceed a step without it. Someschoolboys cannot read but in their own book; and the man of one ideacannot converse out of his own subject. Conversation it is not; buta sort of recital of the preamble of a bill, or a collection of gravearguments for a man's being of opinion with himself. It would be well ifthere was anything of character, of eccentricity in all this; butthat is not the case. It is a political homily personified, a walkingcommon-place we have to encounter and listen to. It is just as if a manwas to insist on your hearing him go through the fifth chapter of theBook of Judges every time you meet, or like the story of the Cosmogonyin the _Vicar of Wakefield. _ It is a tine played on a barrel-organ. Itis a common vehicle of discourse into which they get and are set downwhen they please, without any pain or trouble to themselves. Neither isit professional pedantry or trading quackery: it has no excuse. The manhas no more to do with the question which he saddles on all his hearersthan you have. This is what makes the matter hopeless. If a farmer talksto you about his pigs or his poultry, or a physician about his patients, or a lawyer about his briefs, or a merchant about stock, or an authorabout himself, you know how to account for this, it is a commoninfirmity, you have a laugh at his expense and there is no more to besaid. But here is a man who goes out of his way to be absurd, and istroublesome by a romantic effort of generosity. You cannot say to him, 'All this may be interesting to you, but I have no concern in it':you cannot put him off in that way. He retorts the Latin adage uponyou-_Nihil humani a me alienum puto. _ He has got possession of a subjectwhich is of universal and paramount interest (not 'a fee-grief, due tosome single breast'), and on that plea may hold you by the button aslong as he chooses. His delight is to harangue on what nowise regardshimself: how then can you refuse to listen to what as little amuses you?Time and tide wait for no man. The business of the state admits of nodelay. The question of Universal Suffrage and Annual Parliaments standsfirst on the order of the day--takes precedence in its own right ofevery other question. Any other topic, grave or gay, is looked uponin the light of impertinence, and sent _to Coventry. _ Business is aninterruption; pleasure a digression from it. It is the question beforeevery company where the Major comes, which immediately resolves itselfinto a committee of the whole upon it, is carried on by means of aperpetual virtual adjournment, and it is presumed that no other isentertained while this is pending--a determination which gives itspersevering advocate a fair prospect of expatiating on it to his dyingday. As Cicero says of study, it follows him into the country, it stayswith him at home: it sits with him at breakfast, and goes out with himto dinner. It is like a part of his dress, of the costume of his person, without which he would be at a loss what to do. If he meets you in thestreet, he accosts you with it as a form of salutation: if you see himat his own house, it is supposed you come upon that. If you happen toremark, 'It is a fine day, ' or 'The town is full, ' it is considered as atemporary compromise of the question; you are suspected of not goingthe whole length of the principle. As Sancho, when reprimanded formentioning his homely favourite in the Duke's kitchen, defended himselfby saying, 'There I thought of Dapple, and there I spoke of him, ' sothe true stickler for Reform neglects no opportunity of introducingthe subject wherever he is. Place its veteran champion under the frozennorth, and he will celebrate sweet smiling Reform; place him under themid-day Afric suns, and he will talk of nothing but Reform--Reform sosweetly smiling and so sweetly promising for the last forty years--

 Dulce ridentem Lalagen, Dulce loquentem!

A topic of this sort of which the person himself may be considered asalmost sole proprietor and patentee is an estate for life, free fromall encumbrance of wit, thought, or study, you live upon it as a settledincome; and others might as well think to eject you out of a capitalfreehold house and estate as think to drive you out of it into the wideworld of common sense and argument. Every man's house is his castle; andevery man's common-place is his stronghold, from which he looks outand smiles at the dust and heat of controversy, raised by a number offrivolous and vexatious questions--'Rings the world with the vain stir!'A cure for this and every other evil would be a Parliamentary Reform;and so we return in a perpetual circle to the point from which we setout. Is not this a species of sober madness more provoking than thereal? Has not the theoretical enthusiast his mind as much warped, asmuch enslaved by one idea as the acknowledged lunatic, only that theformer has no lucid intervals? If you see a visionary of this classgoing along the street, you can tell as well what he is thinking of andwill say next as the man that fancies himself a teapot or the Czar ofMuscovy. The one is as inaccessible to reason as the other: if the oneraves, the other dotes!

There are some who fancy the Corn Bill the root of all evil, and otherswho trace all the miseries of life to the practice of muffling upchildren in night-clothes when they sleep or travel. They will declaimby the hour together on the first, and argue themselves black in theface on the last. It is in vain that you give up the point. They persistin the debate, and begin again--'But don't you see--?' These sort ofpartial obliquities, as they are more entertaining and original, arealso by their nature intermittent. They hold a man but for a season. Hemay have one a year or every two years; and though, while he is in theheat of any new discovery, he will let you hear of nothing else, hevaries from himself, and is amusing undesignedly. He is not like thechimes at midnight. 

People of the character here spoken of, that is, who tease you to deathwith some one idea, generally differ in their favourite notion from therest of the world; and indeed it is the love of distinction which ismostly at the bottom of this peculiarity. Thus one person is remarkablefor living on a vegetable diet, and never fails to entertain youall dinner-time with an invective against animal food. One of thisself-denying class, who adds to the primitive simplicity of this sort offood the recommendation of having it in a raw state, lamenting the deathof a patient whom he had augured to be in a good way as a convert to hissystem, at last accounted for his disappointment in a whisper--'But sheate meat privately, depend upon it. ' It is not pleasant, though it iswhat one submits to willingly from some people, to be asked every timeyou meet, whether you have quite left off drinking wine, and to becomplimented or condoled with on your looks according as you answer inthe negative or affirmative. Abernethy thinks his pill an infalliblecure for all disorders. A person once complaining to his physician thathe thought his mode of treatment had not answered, he assured him it wasthe best in the world, --'and as a proof of it, ' says he, 'I have had onegentleman, a patient with your disorder, under the same regimen for thelast sixteen years!'--l have known persons whose minds were entirelytaken up at all times and on all occasions with such questions asthe Abolition of the Slave Trade, the Restoration of the Jews, or theprogress of Unitarianism. I myself at one period took a pretty strongturn to inveighing against the doctrine of Divine Right, and am not yetcured of my prejudice on that subject. How many projectors have gone madin good earnest from incessantly harping on one idea: the discovery ofthe philosopher's stone, the finding out the longitude, or paying offthe national debt! The disorder at length comes to a fatal crisis;but long before this, and while they were walking about and talking asusual, the derangement of the fancy, the loss of all voluntary power tocontrol or alienate their ideas from the single subject that occupiedthem, was gradually taking place, and overturning the fabric of theunderstanding by wrenching it all on one side. Alderman Wood has, Ishould suppose, talked of nothing but the Queen in all companies for thelast six months. Happy Alderman Wood! Some persons have got a definitionof the verb, others a system of short-hand, others a cure for typhusfever, others a method for preventing the counterfeiting of bank-notes, which they think the best possible, and indeed the only one. Others inleaving you to add a fourth. A man who has been in Germany willsometimes talk of nothing but what is German: a Scotchman alwaysleads the discourse to his own country. Some descant on the Kanteanphilosophy. There is a conceited fellow about town who talks always andeverywhere on this subject. He wears the Categories round his neck likea pearl-chain: he plays off the names of the primary and transcendentalqualities like rings on his fingers. He talks of the Kantean systemwhile he dances; he talks of it while he dines; he talks of it to hischildren, to his apprentices, to his customers. He called on me toconvince me of it, and said I was only prevented from becoming acomplete convert by one or two prejudices. He knows no more about itthan a pikestaff. Why then does he make so much ridiculous fuss aboutit? It is not that he has got this one idea in his head, but that he hasgot no other. A dunce may talk on the subject of the Kantean philosophywith great impunity: if he opened his lips on any other he might befound out. A French lady who had married an Englishman who said little, excused him by saying, 'He is always thinking of Locke and Newton. 'This is one way of passing muster by following in the suite of greatnames!--A friend of mine, whom I met one day in the street, accostedme with more than usual vivacity, and said, 'Well, we're selling, we'reselling!' I thought he meant a house. 'No, ' he said, 'haven't you seenthe advertisement in the newspapers? I mean five and twenty copies ofthe Essay. ' This work, a comely, capacious quarto on the most abstrusemetaphysics, had occupied his sole thoughts for several years, and heconcluded that I must be thinking of what he was. I believe, however, Imay say I am nearly the only person that ever read, certainly that everpretended to understand it. It is an original and most ingenious work, nearly as incomprehensible as it is original, and as quaint as it isingenious. If the author is taken up with the ideas in his own head andno others, he has a right; for he has ideas there that are to be metwith nowhere else, and which occasionally would not disgrace a Berkeley. A dextrous plagiarist might get himself an immense reputation by puttingthem in a popular dress. Oh! how little do they know, who have neverdone anything but repeat after others by rote, the pangs, the labour, the yearnings and misgivings of mind it costs to get at the germ ofan original idea--to dig it out of the hidden recesses of thought andnature, and bring it half-ashamed, struggling, and deformed into theday--to give words and intelligible symbols to that which was neverimagined or expressed before! It is as if the dumb should speak for thefirst time, as if things should stammer out their own meaning throughthe imperfect organs of mere sense. I wish that some of our fluent, plausible declaimers, who have such store of words to cover the want ofideas, could lend their art to this writer. If he, 'poor, unfledged' inthis respect, 'who has scarce winged from view o' th' nest, ' could finda language for his ideas, truth would find a language for some of hersecrets. Mr. Fearn was buried in the woods of Indostan. In his leisurefrom business and from tiger-shooting, he took it into his head to lookinto his own mind. A whim or two, an odd fancy, like a film before theeye, now and then crossed it: it struck him as something curious, butthe impression at first disappeared like breath upon glass. He thoughtno more of it; yet still the same conscious feelings returned, and whatat first was chance or instinct became a habit. Several notions hadtaken possession of his brain relating to mental processes which he hadnever heard alluded to in conversation, but not being well versed insuch matters, he did not know whether they were to be found in learnedauthors or not. He took a journey to the capital of the Peninsula onpurpose, bout Locke, Reid, Stewart, and Berkeley, whom he consulted witheager curiosity when he got home, but did not find what he looked for. He set to work himself, and in a few weeks sketched out a rough draft ofhis thoughts and observations on bamboo paper. The eagerness of his newpursuit, together with the diseases of the climate, proved too much forhis constitution, and he was forced to return to this country. He puthis metaphysics, his bamboo manuscript, into the boat with him, and ashe floated down the Ganges, said to himself, 'If I live, this will live;if I die, it will not be heard of. ' What is fame to this feeling? Thebabbling of an idiot! He brought the work home with him and twice had itstereotyped. The first sketch he allowed was obscure, but the improvedcopy he thought could not fail to strike. It did not succeed. The world, as Goldsmith said of himself, made a point of taking no notice of it. Ever since he has had nothing but disappointment and vexation, --thegreatest and most heart-breaking of all others--that of not being ableto make yourself understood. Mr. Fearn tells me there is a sensiblewriter in the _Monthly Review_ who sees the thing in its properlight, and says so. But I have heard of no other instance. There are, notwithstanding, ideas in this work, neglected and ill-treated as it hasbeen, that lead to more curious and subtle speculations on some of themost disputed and difficult points of the philosophy of the human mind(such as _relation_, _abstraction_, etc. ) than have been thrown out inany work for the last sixty years, I mean since Hume; for since his timethere has been no metaphysician in this country worth the name. Yethis _Treatise on Human Nature_, he tells us, 'fell still-born from thepress. ' So it is that knowledge works its way, and reputation lingersfar behind it. But truth is better than opinion, I maintain it; andas to the two stereotyped and unsold editions of the Essay onConsciousness, I say, _Honi soit qui mal y pense!_'(1)--My Uncle Toby hadone idea in his head, that of his bowling-green, and another, that ofthe Widow Wadman. Oh, spare them both! I will only add one more anecdotein illustration of this theory of the mind's being occupied with oneidea, which is most frequently of a man's self. A celebrated lyricalwriter happened to drop into a small party where they had just gotthe novel of _Rob Roy, _ by the author of _Waverley_. The motto in thetitle-page was taken from a poem of his. This was a hint sufficient, aword to the wise. He instantly went to the book-shelf in the nextroom, took down the volume of his own poems, read the whole of that inquestion aloud with manifest complacency, replaced it on the shelf, andwalked away, taking no more notice of Rob Roy than if there had been nosuch person, nor of the new novel than if it had not been written byits renowned author. There was no reciprocity in this. But the writer inquestion does not admit of any merit second to his own. (2)

Mr. Owen is a man remarkable for one idea. It is that of himself and theLanark cotton-mills. He carries this idea backwards and forwards withhim from Glasgow to London, without allowing anything for attrition, and expects to find it in the same state of purity and perfection inthe latter place as at the former. He acquires a wonderful velocity andimpenetrability in his undaunted transit. Resistance to him is vain, while the whirling motion of the mail-coach remains in his head. 

 Nor Alps nor Apennines can keep him out, Nor fortified redoubt. 

He even got possession, in the suddenness of his onset, of thesteam-engine of the _Times_ newspaper, and struck off ten thousandwoodcuts of the Projected Villages, which afforded an oculardemonstration to all who saw them of the practicability of Mr. Owen'swhole scheme. He comes into a room with one of these documents in hishand, with the air of a schoolmaster and a quack doctor mixed, asks verykindly how you do, and on hearing you are still in an indifferent stateof health owing to bad digestion, instantly turns round and observesthat 'All that will be remedied in his plan; that indeed he thinks toomuch attention has been paid to the mind, and not enough to the body;that in his system, which he has now perfected and which will shortlybe generally adopted, he has provided effectually for both; that he hasbeen long of opinion that the mind depends altogether on the physicalorganisation, and where the latter is neglected or disordered the formermust languish and want its due vigour; that exercise is therefore a partof his system, with full liberty to develop every faculty of mind andbody; that two Objections had been made to his _New View of Society_, viz. Its want of relaxation from labour, and its want of variety; butthe first of these, the too great restraint, he trusted he had alreadyanswered, for where the powers of mind and body were freely exercisedand brought out, surely liberty must be allowed to exist in the highestdegree; and as to the second, the monotony which would be produced by aregular and general plan of co-operation, he conceived he had provedin his _New View_ and _Addresses to the Higher Classes_, that theco-operation he had recommended was necessarily conducive to the mostextensive improvement of the ideas and faculties, and where this was thecase there must be the greatest possible variety instead of a want ofit. ' And having said this, this expert and sweeping orator takes up hishat and walks downstairs after reading his lecture of truisms like aplaybill or an apothecary's advertisement; and should you stop him atthe door to say, by way of putting in a word in common, that Mr. Southeyseems somewhat favourable to his plan in his late Letter to Mr. WilliamSmith, he looks at you with a smile of pity at the futility of allopposition and the idleness of all encouragement. People who thus swellout some vapid scheme of their own into undue importance seem to me tolabour under water in the head--to exhibit a huge hydrocephalus! Theymay be very worthy people for all that, but they are bad companions andvery indifferent reasoners. Tom Moore says of some one somewhere, 'thathe puts his hand in his breeches pocket like a crocodile. ' The phrase ishieroglyphical; but Mr. Owen and others might be said to put theirfoot in the question of social improvement and reform much in the sameunaccountable manner. 

I hate to be surfeited with anything, however sweet. I do not want tobe always tied to the same question, as if there were no other in theworld. I like a mind more Catholic. 

 I love to talk with mariners, That come from a far countree. 

I am not for 'a collusion' but 'an exchange' of ideas. It is well tohear what other people have to say on a number of subjects. I do notwish to be always respiring the same confined atmosphere, but to varythe scene, and get a little relief and fresh air out of doors. Do allwe can to shake it off, there is always enough pedantry, egotism, and self-conceit left lurking behind; we need not seal ourselves uphermetically in these precious qualities, so as to think of nothing butour own wonderful discoveries, and hear nothing but the sound of our ownvoice. Scholars, like princes, may learn something by being incognito. Yet we see those who cannot go into a bookseller's shop, or bear to befive minutes in a stage-coach, without letting you know who they are. They carry their reputation about with them as the snail does itsshell, and sit under its canopy, like the lady in the lobster. I cannotunderstand this at all. What is the use of a man's always revolvinground his own little circle? He must, one should think, be tired of ithimself, as well as tire other people. A well-known writer says withmuch boldness, both in the thought and expression, that 'a Lord isimprisoned in the Bastille of a name, and cannot enlarge himself intoman'; and I have known men of genius in the same predicament. Why musta man be for ever mouthing out his own poetry, comparing himself withMilton, passage by passage, and weighing every line in a balance ofposthumous fame which he holds in his own hands? It argues a want ofimagination as well as common sense. Has he no ideas but what he has putinto verse; or none in common with his hearers? Why should he think itthe only scholar-like thing, the only 'virtue extant, ' to see the meritof his writings, and that 'men were brutes without them'? Why should hebear a grudge to all art, to all beauty, to all wisdom, that does notspring from his own brain? Or why should he fondly imagine that there isbut one fine thing in the world, namely, poetry, and that he is the onlypoet in it? It will never do. Poetry is a very fine thing; but there areother things besides it. Everything must have its turn. Does a wise manthink to enlarge his comprehension by turning his eyes only on himself, or hope to conciliate the admiration of others by scouting, proscribing, and loathing all that they delight in? He must either have adisproportionate idea of himself, or be ignorant of the world in whichhe lives. It is quite enough to have one class of people born to thinkthe universe made for them!--It seems also to argue a want of repose, of confidence, and firm faith in a man's real pretensions, to be alwaysdragging them forward into the foreground, as if the proverb heldhere--_Out of sight out of mind. _ Does he, for instance, conceive thatno one would ever think of his poetry unless he forced it upon them byrepeating it himself? Does he believe all competition, all allowanceof another's merit, fatal to him? Must he, like Moody in the _CountryGirl_, lock up the faculties of his admirers in ignorance of all otherfine things, painting, music, the antique, lest they should play truantto him? Methinks such a proceeding implies no good opinion of his owngenius or their taste: it is deficient in dignity and in decorum. Surelyif any one is convinced of the reality of an acquisition, he can bearnot to have it spoken of every minute. If he knows he has an undoubtedsuperiority in any respect, he will not be uneasy because every onehe meets is not in the secret, nor staggered by the report of rivalexcellence. One of the first mathematicians and classical scholars ofthe day was mentioning it as a compliment to himself that a cousin ofhis, a girl from school, had said to him, 'You know (Manning) is a veryplain good sort of a young man, but he is not anything at all out of thecommon. ' Leigh Hunt once said to me, 'I wonder I never heard you speakupon this subject before, which you seem to have studied a good deal. ' Ianswered, 'Why, we were not reduced to that, that I know of!'--

There are persons who, without being chargeable with the vice herespoken of, yet 'stand accountant for as great a sin'; though not dulland monotonous, they are vivacious mannerists in their conversation, and excessive egotists. Though they run over a thousand subjects inmere gaiety of heart, their delight still flows from one idea, namely, themselves. Open the book in what page you will, there is a frontispieceof themselves staring you in the face. They are a sort of Jacks o' theGreen, with a sprig of laurel, a little tinsel, and a little smut, but still playing antics and keeping in incessant motion, to attractattention and extort your pittance of approbation. Whether they talk ofthe town or the country, poetry or politics, it comes to much the samething. If they talk to you of the town, its diversions, 'its palaces, its ladies, and its streets, ' they are the delight, the grace, andornament of it. If they are describing the charms of the country, theygive no account of any individual spot or object or source of pleasurebut the circumstance of their being there. 'With them conversing, weforget all place, all seasons, and their change. ' They perhaps pluck aleaf or a flower, patronise it, and hand it you to admire, but select noone feature of beauty or grandeur to dispute the palm of perfectionwith their own persons. Their rural descriptions are mere landscapebackgrounds with their own portraits in an engaging attitude in front. They are not observing or enjoying the scene, but doing the honours asmasters of the ceremonies to nature, and arbiters of elegance to allhumanity. If they tell a love-tale of enamoured princesses, it is plainthey fancy themselves the hero of the piece. If they discuss poetry, their encomiums still turn on something genial and unsophisticated, meaning their own style. If they enter into politics, it is understoodthat a hint from them to the potentates of Europe is sufficient. Inshort, as a lover (talk of what you will) brings in his mistress atevery turn, so these persons contrive to divert your attention to thesame darling object--they are, in fact, in love with themselves, and, like lovers, should be left to keep their own company. 

NOTES to ESSAY VII. 

(1) Quarto poetry, as well as quarto metaphysics, does not always sell. Going one day into a shop in Paternoster Row to see for some lines inMr. Wordsworth's _Excursion_ to interlard some prose with, I applied tothe constituted authorities, and asked if I could look at a copy of the_Excursion?_ The answer was, 'Into which country, sir?'

(2) These fantastic poets are like a foolish ringer at Plymouth thatNorthcote tells the story of. He was proud of his ringing, and the boyswho made a jest of his foible used to get him in the belfry and ask him, 'Well now, John, how many good ringers are there in Plymouth?' 'Two, ' hewould say, without any hesitation. 'Ay, indeed! and who are they?' 'Why, first, there's myself, that's one; and-- and--' 'Well, and who's theother?' 'Why, there's-- there's-- Ecod, I can't think of any other butmyself. ' _Talk we of one Master Launcelot. _ The story is of ringers: itwill do for any vain, shallow, self-satisfied egotist of them all. 

ESSAY VIII. ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED

 For the more languages a man can speak, His talent has but sprung the greater leak: And, for the industry he has spent upon't, Must full as much some other way discount. The Hebrew, Chaldee, and the Syriac Do, like their letters, set men's reason back, And turn their wits that strive to understand It (Like those that write the characters) left-handed. Yet he that is but able to express No sense at all in several languages Will pass for learneder than he that's known To speak the strongest reason in his own. --BUTLER. 

The description of persons who have the fewest ideas of all others aremere authors and readers. It is better to be able neither to read norwrite than to be able to do nothing else. A lounger who is ordinarilyseen with a book in his hand is (we may be almost sure) equally withoutthe power or inclination to attend either to what passes around him orin his own mind. Such a one may be said to carry his understanding aboutwith him in his pocket, or to leave it at home on his library shelves. He is afraid of venturing on any train of reasoning, or of striking outany observation that is not mechanically suggested to him by parsinghis eyes over certain legible characters; shrinks from the fatigue ofthought, which, for want of practice, becomes insupportable to him; andsits down contented with an endless, wearisome succession of words andhalf-formed images, which fill the void of the mind, and continuallyefface one another. Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to commonsense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use ofas 'spectacles' to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep outits strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolentdispositions. The book-worm wraps himself up in his web of verbalgeneralities, and sees only the glimmering shadows of things reflectedfrom the minds of others. Nature _puts him out. _ The impressions of realobjects, stripped of the disguises of words and voluminous roundaboutdescriptions, are blows that stagger him; their variety distracts, theirrapidity exhausts him; and he turns from the bustle, the noise, andglare, and whirling motion of the world about him (which he has not aneye to follow in its fantastic changes, nor an understanding to reduceto fixed principles), to the quiet monotony of the dead languages, andthe less startling and more intelligible combinations of the letters ofthe alphabet. It is well, it is perfectly well. 'Leave me to my repose, 'is the motto of the sleeping and the dead. You might as well ask theparalytic to leap from his chair and throw away his crutch, or, withouta miracle, to 'take up his bed and walk, ' as expect the learned readerto throw down his book and think for himself. He clings to it for hisintellectual support; and his dread of being left to himself is like thehorror of a vacuum. He can only breathe a learned atmosphere, as othermen breathe common air. He is a borrower of sense. He has no ideas ofhis own, and must live on those of other people. The habit of supplyingour ideas from foreign sources 'enfeebles all internal strength ofthought, ' as a course of dram-drinking destroys the tone of the stomach. The faculties of the mind, when not exerted, or when cramped by customand authority, become listless, torpid, and unfit for the purposes ofthought or action. Can we wonder at the languor and lassitude which isthus produced by a life of learned sloth and ignorance; by poring overlines and syllables that excite little more idea or interest than ifthey were the characters of an unknown tongue, till the eye closes onvacancy, and the book drops from the feeble hand! I would rather be awood-cutter, or the meanest hind, that all day 'sweats in the eye ofPhoebus, and at night sleeps in Elysium, ' than wear out my life so, 'twixt dreaming and awake. ' The learned author differs from the learnedstudent in this, that the one transcribes what the other reads. Thelearned are mere literary drudges. If you set them upon originalcomposition, their heads turn, they don't know where they are. Theindefatigable readers of books are like the everlasting copiers ofpictures, who, when they attempt to do anything of their own, findthey want an eye quick enough, a hand steady enough, and colours brightenough, to trace the living forms of nature. 

Any one who has passed through the regular gradations of a classicaleducation, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as havinghad a very narrow escape. It is an old remark, that boys who shine atschool do not make the greatest figure when they grow up and come outinto the world. The things, in fact, which a boy is set to learn atschool, and on which his success depends, are things which do notrequire the exercise either of the highest or the most useful facultiesof the mind. Memory (and that of the lowest kind) is the chief facultycalled into play in conning over and repeating lessons by rote ingrammar, in languages, in geography, arithmetic, etc. , so that he whohas the most of this technical memory, with the least turn for otherthings, which have a stronger and more natural claim upon his childishattention, will make the most forward school-boy. The jargon containingthe definitions of the parts of speech, the rules for casting up anaccount, or the inflections of a Greek verb, can have no attraction tothe tyro of ten years old, except as they are imposed as a task uponhim by others, or from his feeling the want of sufficient relish ofamusement in other things. A lad with a sickly constitution and no veryactive mind, who can just retain what is pointed out to him, and hasneither sagacity to distinguish nor spirit to enjoy for himself, willgenerally be at the head of his form. An idler at school, on the otherhand, is one who has high health and spirits, who has the free use ofhis limbs, with all his wits about him, who feels the circulation of hisblood and the motion of his heart, who is ready to laugh and cry in abreath, and who had rather chase a ball or a butterfly, feel the openair in his face, look at the fields or the sky, follow a winding path, or enter with eagerness into all the little conflicts and interests ofhis acquaintances and friends, than doze over a musty spelling-book, repeat barbarous distichs after his master, sit so many hours pinionedto a writing-desk, and receive his reward for the loss of time andpleasure in paltry prize-medals at Christmas and Midsummer. There isindeed a degree of stupidity which prevents children from learning theusual lessons, or ever arriving at these puny academic honours. But whatpasses for stupidity is much oftener a want of interest, of a sufficientmotive to fix the attention and force a reluctant application to the dryand unmeaning pursuits of school-learning. The best capacities are asmuch above this drudgery as the dullest are beneath it. Our men of thegreatest genius have not been most distinguished for their acquirementsat school or at the university. 

 Th' enthusiast Fancy was a truant ever. 

Gray and Collins were among the instances of this wayward disposition. Such persons do not think so highly of the advantages, nor can theysubmit their imaginations so servilely to the trammels of strictscholastic discipline. There is a certain kind and degree of intellectin which words take root, but into which things have not power topenetrate. A mediocrity of talent, with a certain slenderness of moralconstitution, is the soil that produces the most brilliant specimens ofsuccessful prize-essayists and Greek epigrammatists. It should not beforgotten that the least respectable character among modern politicianswas the cleverest boy at Eton. 

Learning is the knowledge of that which is not generally known toothers, and which we can only derive at second-hand from books or otherartificial sources. The knowledge of that which is before us, or aboutus, which appeals to our experience, passions, and pursuits, to thebosoms and businesses of men, is not learning. Learning is the knowledgeof that which none but the learned know. He is the most learned man whoknows the most of what is farthest removed from common life and actualobservation, that is of the least practical utility, and least liable tobe brought to the test of experience, and that, having been handed downthrough the greatest number of intermediate stages, is the most fullof uncertainty, difficulties, and contradictions. It is seeing with theeyes of others, hearing with their ears, and pinning our faith on theirunderstandings. The learned man prides himself in the knowledge of namesand dates, not of men or things. He thinks and cares nothing about hisnext-door neighbours, but he is deeply read in the tribes and castes ofthe Hindoos and Calmue Tartars. He can hardly find his way into thenext street, though he is acquainted with the exact dimensionsof Constantinople and Pekin. He does not know whether his oldestacquaintance is a knave or a fool, but he can pronounce a pompouslecture on all the principal characters in history. He cannot tellwhether an object is black or white, round or square, and yet he is aprofessed master of the laws of optics and the rules of perspective. Heknows as much of what he talks about as a blind man does of colours. Hecannot give a satisfactory answer to the plainest question, nor is heever in the right in any one of his opinions upon any one matter offact that really comes before him, and yet he gives himself out for aninfallible judge on all these points, of which it is impossible that heor any other person living should know anything but by conjecture. He isexpert in all the dead and in most of the living languages; but he canneither speak his own fluently, nor write it correctly. A person ofthis class, the second Greek scholar of his day, undertook to point outseveral solecisms in Milton's Latin style; and in his own performancethere is hardly a sentence of common English. Such was Dr. ----. Suchis Dr. ----. Such was not Porson. He was an exception that confirmedthe general rule, a man that, by uniting talents and knowledge withlearning, made the distinction between them more striking and palpable. 

A mere scholar, who knows nothing but books, must be ignorant even ofthem. 'Books do not teach the use of books. ' How should he know anythingof a work who knows nothing of the subject of it? The learned pedant isconversant with books only as they are made of other books, and thoseagain of others, without end. He parrots those who have parroted others. He can translate the same word into ten different languages, but heknows nothing of the _thing_ which it means in any one of them. Hestuffs his head with authorities built on authorities, with quotationsquoted from quotations, while he locks up his senses, his understanding, and his heart. He is unacquainted with the maxims and manners of theworld; he is to seek in the characters of individuals. He sees no beautyin the face of nature or of art. To him 'the mighty world of eye andear' is hid; and 'knowledge, ' except at one entrance, 'quite shut out. 'His pride takes part with his ignorance; and his self-importance riseswith the number of things of which he does not know the value, and whichhe therefore despises as unworthy of his notice. He knows nothing ofpictures, --'Of the colouring of Titian, the grace of Raphael, thepurity of Domenichino, the _corregioscity_ of Correggio, the learningof Poussin, the airs of Guido, the taste of the Caracci, or the grandcontour of Michael Angelo, '--of all those glories of the Italian andmiracles of the Flemish school, which have filled the eyes of mankindwith delight, and to the study and imitation of which thousands have invain devoted their lives. These are to him as if they had never been, a mere dead letter, a by-word; and no wonder, for he neither seesnor understands their prototypes in nature. A print of Rubens'Watering-place or Claude's Enchanted Castle may be hanging on the wallsof his room for months without his once perceiving them; and if youpoint them out to him he will turn away from them. The language ofnature, or of art (which is another nature), is one that he does notunderstand. He repeats indeed the names of Apelles and Phidias, becausethey are to be found in classic authors, and boasts of their works asprodigies, because they no longer exist; or when he sees the finestremains of Grecian art actually before him in the Elgin Marbles, takesno other interest in them than as they lead to a learned dispute, and (which is the same thing) a quarrel about the meaning of a Greekparticle. He is equally ignorant of music; he 'knows no touch of it, 'from the strains of the all-accomplished Mozart to the shepherd's pipeupon the mountain. His ears are nailed to his books; and deadened withthe sound of the Greek and Latin tongues, and the din and smithery ofschool-learning. Does he know anything more of poetry? He knows thenumber of feet in a verse, and of acts in a play; but of the soul orspirit he knows nothing. He can turn a Greek ode into English, or aLatin epigram into Greek verse; but whether either is worth the troublehe leaves to the critics. Does he understand 'the act and practiquepart of life' better than 'the theorique'? No. He knows no liberalor mechanic art, no trade or occupation, no game of skill or chance. Learning 'has no skill in surgery, ' in agriculture, in building, inworking in wood or in iron; it cannot make any instrument of labour, or use it when made; it cannot handle the plough or the spade, or thechisel or the hammer; it knows nothing of hunting or hawking, fishing orshooting, of horses or dogs, of fencing or dancing, or cudgel-playing, or bowls, or cards, or tennis, or anything else. The learned professorof all arts and sciences cannot reduce any one of them to practice, though he may contribute an account of them to an Encyclopedia. He hasnot the use of his hands nor of his feet; he can neither run, nor walk, nor swim; and he considers all those who actually understand and canexercise any of these arts of body or mind as vulgar and mechanicalmen, --though to know almost any one of them in perfection requires longtime and practice, with powers originally fitted, and a turn of mindparticularly devoted to them. It does not require more than this toenable the learned candidate to arrive, by painful study, at a doctor'sdegree and a fellowship, and to eat, drink, and sleep the rest of hislife!

The thing is plain. All that men really understand is confined to a verysmall compass; to their daily affairs and experience; to what they havean opportunity to know, and motives to study or practise. The restis affectation and imposture. The common people have the use of theirlimbs; for they live by their labour or skill. They understand their ownbusiness and the characters of those they have to deal with; for itis necessary that they should. They have eloquence to express theirpassions, and wit at will to express their contempt and provokelaughter. Their natural use of speech is not hung up in monumentalmockery, in an obsolete language; nor is their sense of what isludicrous, or readiness at finding out allusions to express it, buriedin collections of _Anas_. You will hear more good things on the outsideof a stage-coach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass atwelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of thatfamous university; and more _home_ truths are to be learnt fromlistening to a noisy debate in an alehouse than from attending a formalone in the House of Commons. An elderly country gentlewoman will oftenknow more of character, and be able to illustrate it by more amusinganecdotes taken from the history of what has been said, done, andgossiped in a country town for the last fifty years, than the bestbluestocking of the age will be able to glean from that sort of learningwhich consists in an acquaintance with all the novels and satiricalpoems published in the same period. People in towns, indeed, arewoefully deficient in a knowledge of character, which they see only _inthe bust_, not as a whole-length. People in the country not only knowall that has happened to a man, but trace his virtues or vices, as theydo his features, in their descent through several generations, andsolve some contradiction in his behaviour by a cross in the breed halfa century ago. The learned know nothing of the matter, either in townor country. Above all, the mass of society have common sense, which thelearned in all ages want. The vulgar are in the right when they judgefor themselves; they are wrong when they trust to their blind guides. The celebrated nonconformist divine, Baxter, was almost stoned to deathby the good women of Kidderminster, for asserting from the pulpit that'hell was paved with infants' skulls'; but, by the force of argument, and of learned quotations from the Fathers, the reverend preacher atlength prevailed over the scruples of his congregation, and over reasonand humanity. 

Such is the use which has been made of human learning. The labourersin this vineyard seem as if it was their object to confound all commonsense, and the distinctions of good and evil, by means of traditionalmaxims and preconceived notions taken upon trust, and increasing inabsurdity with increase of age. They pile hypothesis on hypothesis, mountain high, till it is impossible to come at the plain truth on anyquestion. They see things, not as they are, but as they find them inbooks, and 'wink and shut their apprehensions up, ' in order that theymay discover nothing to interfere with their prejudices or convince themof their absurdity. It might be supposed that the height of human wisdomconsisted in maintaining contradictions and rendering nonsense sacred. There is no dogma, however fierce or foolish, to which these personshave not set their seals, and tried to impose on the understandings oftheir followers as the will of Heaven, clothed with all the terrorsand sanctions of religion. How little has the human understanding beendirected to find out the true and useful! How much ingenuity has beenthrown away in the defence of creeds and systems! How much timeand talents have been wasted in theological controversy, in law, inpolitics, in verbal criticism, in judicial astrology, and in finding outthe art of making gold! What actual benefit do we reap from the writingsof a Laud or a Whitgift, or of Bishop Bull or Bishop Waterland, orPrideaux' Connections, or Beausobre, or Calmet, or St. Augustine, orPuffendord, or Vattel, or from the more literal but equally learned andunprofitable labours of Scaliger, Cardan, and Scioppius? How many grainsof sense are there in their thousand folio or quarto volumes? What wouldthe world lose if they were committed to the flames to-morrow? Or arethey not already 'gone to the vault of all the Capulets'? Yet all thesewere oracles in their time, and would have scoffed at you or me, atcommon sense and human nature, for differing with them. It is our turnto laugh now. 

To conclude this subject. The most sensible people to be met with insociety are men of business and of the world, who argue from what theysee and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what thingsought to be. Women have often more of what is called _good sense_ thanmen. They have fewer pretensions; are less implicated in theories; andjudge of objects more from their immediate and involuntary impression onthe mind, and, therefore, more truly and naturally. They cannot reasonwrong; for they do not reason at all. They do not think or speak byrule; and they have in general more eloquence and wit, as well as sense, on that account. By their wit, sense, and eloquence together, theygenerally contrive to govern their husbands. Their style, when theywrite to their friends (not for the booksellers), is better than that ofmost authors. --Uneducated people have most exuberance of inventionand the greatest freedom from prejudice. Shakespear's was evidently anuneducated mind, both in the freshness of his imagination and in thevariety of his views; as Milton's was scholastic, in the texture both ofhis thoughts and feelings. Shakespear had not been accustomed to writethemes at school in favour of virtue or against vice. To this we owe theunaffected but healthy tone of his dramatic morality. If we wish to knowthe force of human genius we should read Shakespear. If we wish to seethe insignificance of human learning we may study his commentators. 

NOTES to ESSAY VIII

No notes for this essay. 

ESSAY IX. THE INDIAN JUGGLERS

Coming forward and seating himself on the ground in his white dress andtightened turban, the chief of the Indian Jugglers begins with tossingup two brass balls, which is what any of us could do, and concludes withkeeping up four at the same time, which is what none of us could do tosave our lives, nor if we were to take our whole lives to do it in. Isit then a trifling power we see at work, or is it not something next tomiraculous? It is the utmost stretch of human ingenuity, which nothingbut the bending the faculties of body and mind to it from the tenderestinfancy with incessant, ever anxious application up to manhood canaccomplish or make even a slight approach to. Man, thou art a wonderfulanimal, and thy ways past finding out! Thou canst do strange things, but thou turnest them to little account!--To conceive of this effort ofextraordinary dexterity distracts the imagination and makes admirationbreathless. Yet it costs nothing to the performer, any more than if itwere a mere mechanical deception with which he had nothing to do but towatch and laugh at the astonishment of the spectators. A single errorof a hairsbreadth, of the smallest conceivable portion of time, would befatal: the precision of the movements must be like a mathematical truth, their rapidity is like lightning. To catch four balls in succession inless than a second of time, and deliver them back so as to return withseeming consciousness to the hand again; to make them revolve round himat certain intervals like the planets in their spheres; to make themchase one another like sparkles of fire, or shoot up like flowers ormeteors; to throw them behind his back and twine them round his necklike ribbons or like serpents; to do what appears an impossibility, andto do if with all the ease, the grace, the carelessness imaginable; tolaugh at, to play with the glittering mockeries; to follow them with hiseye as if he could fascinate them with its lambent fire, or as if he hadonly to see that they kept time with the music on the stage, --there issomething in all this which he who does not admire may be quite surehe never really admired anything in the whole course of his life. It isskill surmounting difficulty, and beauty triumphing over skill. It seemsas if the difficulty once mastered naturally resolved itself into easeand grace, and as if to be overcome at all, it must be overcomewithout an effort. The smallest awkwardness or want of pliancy orself-possession would stop the whole process. It is the work ofwitchcraft, and yet sport for children. Some of the other feats arequite as curious and wonderful, such as the balancing the artificialtree and shooting a bird from each branch through a quill; though noneof them have the elegance or facility of the keeping up of the brassballs. You are in pain for the result, and glad when the experiment isover; they are not accompanied with the same unmixed, unchecked delightas the former; and I would not give much to be merely astonished withoutbeing pleased at the game time. As to the swallowing of the sword, thepolice ought to interfere to prevent it. When I saw the Indian Jugglerdo the same things before, his feet were bare, and he had large rings onthe toes, which kept turning round all the time of the performance, asif they moved of themselves. --The hearing a speech in Parliament drawledor stammered out by the Honourable Member or the Noble Lord; the ringingthe changes on their common-places, which any one could repeat afterthem as well as they, stirs me not a jot, shakes not my good opinion ofmyself; but the seeing the Indian Jugglers does. It makes me ashamed ofmyself. I ask what there is that I can do as well as this? Nothing. Whathave I been doing all my life? Have I been idle, or have I nothing toshow for all my labour and pains? Or have I passed my time in pouringwords like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and thendown again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, andlooking for causes in the dark and not finding them? Is there no onething in which I can challenge competition, that I can bring as aninstance of exact perfection in which others cannot find a flaw? Theutmost I can pretend to is to write a description of what this fellowcan do. I can write a book: so can many others who have not even learnedto spell. What abortions are these Essays! What errors, what ill-piecedtransitions, what crooked reasons, what lame conclusions! How littleis made out, and that little how ill! Yet they are the best I can do. I endeavour to recollect all I have ever observed or thought upon asubject, and to express it as nearly as I can. Instead of writing onfour subjects at a time, it is as much as I can manage to keep thethread of one discourse clear and unentangled. I have also time onmy hands to correct my opinions, and polish my periods; but the one Icannot, and the other I will not do. I am fond of arguing: yet with agood deal of pains and practice it is often as much as I can do to beatmy man; though he may be an indifferent hand. A common fencer woulddisarm his adversary in the twinkling of an eye, unless he were aprofessor like himself. A stroke of wit will sometimes produce thiseffect, but there is no such power or superiority in sense or reashardly know the professor from the impudent pretender or the mereclown. (1)

I have always had this feeling of the inefficacy and slow progress ofintellectual compared to mechanical excellence, and it has always mademe somewhat dissatisfied. It is a great many years since I saw Richer, the famous rope-dancer, perform at Sadler's Wells. He was matchlessin his art, and added to his extraordinary skill exquisite ease, andunaffected, natural grace. I was at that time employed in copying ahalf-length picture of Sir Joshua Reynolds's; and it put me out ofconceit with it. How ill this part was made out in the drawing! Howheavy, how slovenly this other was painted! I could not help sayingto myself, 'If the rope-dancer had performed his task in this manner, leaving so many gaps and botches in his work, he would have broken hisneck long ago; I should never have seen that vigorous elasticity ofnerve and precision of movement!'--Is it, then, so easy an undertaking(comparatively) to dance on a tight-rope? Let any one who thinks so getup and try. There is the thing. It is that which at first we cannot doat all which in the end is done to such perfection. To account for thisin some degree, I might observe that mechanical dexterity is confinedto doing some one particular thing, which you can repeat as often asyou please, in which you know whether you succeed or fail, and where thepoint of perfection consists in succeeding in a given undertaking. --Inmechanical efforts you improve by perpetual practice, and you do soinfallibly, because the object to be attained is not a matter of tasteor fancy or opinion, but of actual experiment, in which you must eitherdo the thing or not do it. If a man is put to aim at a mark with a bowand arrow, he must hit it or miss it, that's certain. He cannot deceivehimself, and go on shooting wide or falling short, and still fancy thathe is making progress. No distinction between right and wrong, betweentrue and false, is here palpable; and he must either correct his aim orpersevere in his error with his eyes open, for which there is neitherexcuse nor temptation. If a man is learning to dance on a rope, if hedoes not mind what he is about he will break his neck. After that itwill be in vain for him to argue that he did not make a false step. Hissituation is not like that of Goldsmith's pedagogue:--

 In argument they own'd his wondrous skill, And e'en though vanquish'd, he could argue still. 

Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is noopportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, nobeing off your guard (or you must take the consequences)--neither isthere any room for humour or caprice or prejudice. If the Indian Jugglerwere to play tricks in throwing up the three case-knives, which keeptheir positions like the leaves of a crocus in the air, he would cut hisfingers. I can make a very bad antithesis without cutting my fingers. The tact of style is more ambiguous than that of double-edgedinstruments. If the Juggler were told that by flinging himself under thewheels of the Juggernaut, when the idol issues forth on a gaudy day, hewould immediately be transported into Paradise, he might believe it, andnobody could disprove it. So the Brahmins may say what they please onthat subject, may build up dogmas and mysteries without end, and not bedetected; but their ingenious countryman cannot persuade the frequentersof the Olympic Theatre that he performs a number of astonishing featswithout actually giving proofs of what he says. --There is, then, in thissort of manual dexterity, first a gradual aptitude acquired to a givenexertion of muscular power, from constant repetition, and in the nextplace, an exact knowledge how much is still wanting and necessary to besupplied. The obvious test is to increase the effort or nicety of theoperation, and still to find it come true. The muscles ply instinctivelyto the dictates of habit. Certain movements and impressions of the handand eye, having been repeated together an infinite number of times, areunconsciously but unavoidable cemented into closer and closer union; thelimbs require little more than to be put in motion for them to follow aregular track with ease and certainty; so that the mere intention of thewill acts mathematically like touching the spring of a machine, and youcome with Locksley in _Ivanhoe_, in shooting at a mark, 'to allow forthe wind. '

Further, what is meant by perfection in mechanical exercises isthe performing certain feats to a uniform nicety, that is, in fact, undertaking no more than you can perform. You task yourself, the limityou fix is optional, and no more than human industry and skill canattain to; but you have no abstract, independent standard of difficultyor excellence (other than the extent of your own powers). Thus he whocan keep up four brass balls does this _to perfection_; but he cannotkeep up five at the same instant, and would fail every time he attemptedit. That is, the mechanical performer undertakes to emulate himself, notto equal another. (2) But the artist undertakes to imitate another, or todo what Nature has done, and this it appears is more difficult, viz. To copy what she has set before us in the face of nature or 'human facedivine, ' entire and without a blemish, than to keep up four brass ballsat the same instant, for the one is done by the power of human skilland industry, and the other never was nor will be. Upon the whole, therefore, I have more respect for Reynolds than I have for Richer; for, happen how it will, there have been more people in the world who coulddance on a rope like the one than who could paint like Sir Joshua. Thelatter was but a bungler in his profession to the other, it is true; butthen he had a harder taskmaster to obey, whose will was more wayward andobscure, and whose instructions it was more difficult to practise. You can put a child apprentice to a tumbler or rope-dancer with acomfortable prospect of success, if they are but sound of wind and limb;but you cannot do the same thing in painting. The odds are a million toone. You may make indeed as many Haydons and H----s as you put into thatsort of machine, but not one Reynolds amongst them all, with his grace, his grandeur, his blandness of gusto, 'in tones and gestures hit, 'unless you could make the man over again. To snatch this grace beyondthe reach of art is then the height of art--where fine art begins, and where mechanical skill ends. The soft suffusion of the soul, thespeechless breathing eloquence, the looks 'commercing with the skies, 'the ever-shifting forms of an eternal principle, that which is seen butfor a moment, but dwells in the heart always, and is only seized asit passes by strong and secret sympathy, must be taught by natureand genius, not by rules or study. It is suggested by feeling, not bylaborious microscopic inspection; in seeking for it without, we lose theharmonious clue to it within; and in aiming to grasp the substance, welet the very spirit of art evaporate. In a word, the objects of fine artare not the objects of sight, but as these last are the objects of tasteand imagination, that is, as they appeal to the sense of beauty, ofpleasure, and of power in the human breast, and are explained by thatfiner sense, and revealed in their inner structure to the eye in return. Nature is also a language. Objects, like words, have a meaning; and thetrue artist is the interpreter of this language, which he can only do byknowing its application to a thousand other objects in a thousand othersituations. Thus the eye is too blind a guide of itself to distinguishbetween the warm or cold tone of a deep-blue sky; but another sense actsas a monitor to it and does not err. The colour of the leaves in autumnwould be nothing without the feeling that accompanies it; but it isthat feeling that stamps them on the canvas, faded, seared, blighted, shrinking from the winter's flaw, and makes the sight as true as touch--

 And visions, as poetic eyes avow, Cling to each leaf and hang on every bough. 

The more ethereal, evanescent, more refined and sublime part of art isthe seeing nature through the medium of sentiment and passion, as eachobject is a symbol of the affections and a link in the chain of ourendless being. But the unravelling this mysterious web of thoughtand feeling is alone in the Muse's gift, namely, in the power ofthat trembling sensibility which is awake to every change and everymodification of its ever-varying impressions, that

 Thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line. 

This power is indifferently called genius, imagination, feeling, taste;but the manner in which it acts upon the mind can neither be defined byabstract rules, as is the case in science, nor verified by continual, unvarying experiments, as is the case in mechanical performances. Themechanical excellence of the Dutch painters in colouring and handlingis that which comes the nearest in fine art to the perfection of certainmanual exhibitions of skill. The truth of the effect and the facilitywith which it is produced are equally admirable. Up to a certain pointeverything is faultless. The hand and eye have done their part. Thereis only a want of taste and genius. It is after we enter upon thatenchanted ground that the human mind begins to droop and flag as in astrange road, or in a thick mist, benighted and making little way withmany attempts and many failures, and that the best of us only escapewith half a triumph. The undefined and the imaginary are the regionsthat we must pass like Satan, difficult and doubtful, 'half flying, halfon foot. ' The object in sense is a positive thing, and execution comeswith practice. 

Cleverness is a certain _knack_ or aptitude at doing certain things, which depend more on a particular adroitness and off-hand readiness thanon force or perseverance, such as making puns, making epigrams, makingextempore verses, mimicking the company, mimicking a style, etc. Cleverness is either liveliness and smartness, or something answeringto _sleight of hand_, like letting a glass fall sideways off a table, orelse a trick, like knowing the secret spring of a watch. Accomplishmentsare certain external graces, which are to be learned from others, andwhich are easily displayed to the admiration of the beholder, viz. Dancing, riding, fencing, music, and so on. These ornamentalacquirements are only proper to those who are at ease in mind andfortune. I know an individual who, if he had been born to an estate offive thousand a year, would have been the most accomplished gentleman ofthe age. He would have been the delight and envy of the circle in whichhe moved--would have graced by his manners the liberality flowing fromthe openness of his heart, would have laughed with the women, haveargued with the men, have said good things and written agreeable ones, have taken a hand at piquet or the lead at the harpsichord, and have setand sung his own verses--nugae canorae--with tenderness and spirit;a Rochester without the vice, a modern Surrey! As it is, all thesecapabilities of excellence stand in his way. He is too versatile for aprofessional man, not dull enough for a political drudge, too gay to behappy, too thoughtless to be rich. He wants the enthusiasm of the poet, the severity of the prose-writer, and the application of the manof business. Talent differs from genius as voluntary differs frominvoluntary power. Ingenuity is genius in trifles; greatness is geniusin undertakings of much pith and moment. A clever or ingenious man isone who can do anything well, whether it is worth doing or not; a greatman is one who can do that which when done is of the highest importancemake of a small city a great one. This gives one a pretty good idea ofthe distinction in question. 

Greatness is great power, producing great effects. It is not enough thata man has great power in himself; he must show it to all the world ina way that cannot be hid or gainsaid. He must fill up a certain idea inthe public mind. I have no other notion of greatness than this twofolddefinition, great results springing from great inherent energy. Thegreat in visible objects has relation to that which extends over space;the great in mental ones has to do with space and time. No man is trulygreat who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is thepage of history. Nothing can be said to be great that has a distinctlimit, or that borders on something evidently greater than itself. Besides, what is short-lived and pampered into mere notoriety is of agross and vulgar quality in itself. A Lord Mayor is hardly a great man. A city orator or patriot of the day only show, by reaching the heightof their wishes, the distance they are at from any true ambition. Popularity is neither fame nor greatness. A king (as such) is not agreat man. He has great power, but it is not his own. He merely wieldsthe lever of the state, which a child, an idiot, or a madman can do. It is the office, not the man we gaze at. Any one else in the samesituation would be just as much an object of abject curiosity. We laughat the country girl who having seen a king expressed her disappointmentby saying, 'Why, he is only a man!' Yet, knowing this, we run to see aking as if he was something more than a man. --To display the greatestpowers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing forthe character of greatness. To throw a barleycorn through the eye of aneedle, to multiply nine figures by nine in the memory, argues definitedexterity of body and capacity of mind, but nothing comes ofeither. There is a surprising power at work, but the effects are notproportionate, or such as take hold of the imagination. To impress theidea of power on others, they must be made in some way to feel it. Itmust be communicated to their understandings in the shape of an increaseof knowledge, or it must subdue and overawe them by subjecting theirwills. Admiration to be solid and lasting must be founded on proofsfrom which we have no means of escaping; it is neither a slight nor avoluntary gift. A mathematician who solves a profound problem, a poetwho creates an image of beauty in the mind that was not there before, imparts knowledge and power to others, in which his greatness andhis fame consists, and on which it reposes. Jedediah Buxton will beforgotten; but Napier's bones will live. Lawgivers, philosophers, founders of religion, conquerors and heroes, inventors and greatgeniuses in arts and sciences, are great men, for they are greatpublic benefactors, or formidable scourges to mankind. Among ourselves, Shakespear, Newton, Bacon, Milton, Cromwell, were great men, forthey showed great power by acts and thoughts, that have not yet beenconsigned to oblivion. They must needs be men of lofty stature, whoseshadows lengthen out to remote posterity. A great farce-writer may bea great man; for Moliere was but a great farce-writer. In my mind, theauthor of _Don Quixote_ was a great man. So have there been many others. A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the world as hefound it. No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. This willapply to all displays of power or trials of skill which are confined tothe momentary, individual effort, and construct no permanent image ortrophy of themselves without them. Is not an actor then a great man, because 'he dies and leaves the world no copy'? I must make an exceptionfor Mrs. Siddons, or else give up my definition of greatness for hersake. A man at the top of his profession is not therefore a great man. He is great in his way, but that is all, unless he shows the marks ofa great moving intellect, so that we trace the master-mind, and cansympathise with the springs that urge him on. The rest is but a craft or_mystery_. John Hunter was a great man--_that_ any one might see withoutthe smallest skill in surgery. His style and manner showed the man. He would set about cutting up the carcass of a whale with the samegreatness of gusto that Michael Angelo would have hewn a block ofmarble. Lord Nelson was a great naval commander; but for myself, Ihave not much opinion of a seafaring life. Sir Humphry Davy is a greatchemist, but I am not sure that he is a great man. I am not a bit thewiser for any of his discoveries, nor I never met with any one that was. But it is in the nature of greatness to propagate an idea of itself, aswave impels wave, circle without circle. It is a contradiction in termsfor a coxcomb to be a great man. A really great man has always anidea of something greater than himself. I have observed that certainsectaries and polemical writers have no higher compliment to pay theirmost shining lights than to say that "Such a one was a considerable manin his day. " Some new elucidation of a text sets aside the authority ofthe old interpretation, and a "great scholar's memory outlives him halfa century, " at the utmost. A rich man is not a great man, except to hisdependents and his steward. A lord is a great man in the idea we have ofhis ancestry, and probably of himself, if we know nothing of him but histitle. I have heard a story of two bishops, one of whom said (speakingof St. Peter's at Rome) that when he first entered it, he was ratherawe-struck, but that as he walked up it, his mind seemed to swell anddilate with it, and at last to fill the whole building: the other saidthat as he saw more of it, he appeared to himself to grow less and lessevery step he took, and in the end to dwindle into nothing. This wasin some respects a striking picture of a great and little mind; forgreatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness shrinks intoitself. The one might have become a Wolsey; the other was only fit tobecome a Mendicant Friar--or there might have been court reasons formaking him a bishop. The French have to me a character of littleness inall about them; but they have produced three great men that belong toevery country, Moliere, Rabelais, and Montaigne. 

To return from this digression, and conclude Essay. A singular instanceof manual dexterity was shown in the person of the late John Cavanaugh, whom I have several times seen. His death was celebrated at the timein an article in the _Examiner_ newspaper (Feb. 7, 1819), writtenapparently between jest and earnest; but as it is _pat_ to our purpose, and falls in with my own way of considering such subjects, I shall heretake leave to quote it:--

'Died at his house in Burbage Street, St. Giles's, John Cavanagh, thefamous hand fives-player. When a person dies who does any one thingbetter than any one else in the world, which so many others are tryingto do well, it leaves a gap in society. It is not likely that any onewill now see the game of fives played in its perfection for many yearsto come--for Cavanagh is dead, and has not left his peer behind him. It may be said that there are things of more importance than striking aball against a wall--there are things, indeed, that make more noise anddo as little good, such as making war and peace, making speeches andanswering them, making verses and blotting them, making money andthrowing it away. But the game of fives is what no one despises who hasever played at it. It is the finest exercise for the body, and the bestrelaxation for the mind. The Roman poet said that "Care mounted behindthe horseman and stuck to his skirts. " But this remark would not haveapplied to the fives-player. He who takes to playing at fives is twiceyoung. He feels neither the past nor future "in the instant. " Debts, taxes, "domestic treason, foreign levy, nothing can touch him further. "He has no other wish, no other thought, from the moment the game begins, but that of striking the ball, of placing it, of _making_ it! ThisCavanagh was sure to do. Whenever he touched the ball there was an endof the chase. His eye was certain, his hand fatal, his presence of mindcomplete. He could do what he pleased, and he always knew exactly whatto do. He saw the whole game, and played it; took instant advantage ofhis adversary's weakness, and recovered balls, as if by a miracle andfrom sudden thought, that every one gave for lost. He had equal powerand skill, quickness and judgment. He could either outwit his antagonistby finesse, or beat him by main strength. Sometimes, when he seemedpreparing to send the ball with the full swing of his arm, he would by aslight turn of his wrist drop it within an inch of the line. In general, the ball came from his hand, as if from a racket, in a straight, horizontal line; so that it was in vain to attempt to overtake or stopit. As it was said of a great orator that he never was at a loss fora word, and for the properest word, so Cavanagh always could tellthe degree of force necessary to be given to a ball, and the precisedirection in which it should be sent. He did his work with the greatestease; never took more pains than was necessary; and while others werefagging themselves to death, was as cool and collected as if he had justentered the court. His style of play was as remarkable as his power ofexecution. He had no affectation, no trifling. He did not throw awaythe game to show off an attitude or try an experiment. He was a fine, sensible, manly player, who did what he could, but that was more thanany one else could even affect to do. His blows were not undecided andineffectual--lumbering like Mr. Wordsworth's epic poetry, nor waveringlike Mr. Coleridge's lyric prose, nor short of the mark like Mr. Brougham's speeches, nor wide of it like Mr. Canning's wit, nor foullike the _Quarterly_, nor _let_ balls like the _Edinburgh Review_. Cobbett and Junius together would have made a Cavanagh. He was the best_up-hill_ player in the world; even when his adversary was fourteen, hewould play on the same or better, and as he never flung away the gamethrough carelessness and conceit, he never gave it through lazinessor want of heart. The only peculiarity of his play was that he never_volleyed_, but let the balls hop; but if they rose an inch from theground he never missed having them. There was not only nobody equal, butnobody second to him. It is supposed that he could give any otherplayer half the game, or beat him with his left hand. His service wastremendous. He once played Woodward and Meredith together (two of thebest players in England) in the Fives-court, St. Martin's street, andmade seven and twenty aces following by services alone--a thing unheardof. He another time played Peru, who was considered a first-ratefives-player, a match of the best out of five games, and in the threefirst games, which of course decided the match, Peru got only one ace. Cavanagh was an Irishman by birth, and a house-painter by profession. He had once laid aside his working-dress, and walked up, in his smartestclothes, to the Rosemary Branch to have an afternoon's pleasure. Aperson accosted him, and asked him if he would have a game. So theyagreed to play for half a crown a game and a bottle of cider. The firstgame began--it was seven, eight, ten, thirteen, fourteen, all. Cavanaghwon it. The next was the same. They played on, and each game was hardlycontested. "There, " said the unconscious fives-player, "there was astroke that Cavanagh could not take: I never played better in my life, and yet I can't win a game. I don't know how it is!" However, theyplayed on, Cavanagh winning every game, and the bystanders drinking thecider and laughing all the time. In the twelfth game, when Cavanagh wasonly four, and the stranger thirteen, a person came in and said, "What!are you here, Cavanagh?" The words were no sooner pronounced than theastonished player let the hall drop from his hand, and saying, "What!have I been breaking my heart all this time to beat Cavanagh?" refusedto make another effort. "And yet, I give you my word, " said Cavanagh, telling the story with some triumph, "I played all the while with myclenched fist. "--He used frequently to ploy matches at Copenhagen Housefor wagers and dinners. The wall against which they play is the samethat supports the kitchen-chimney, and when the wall resounded louderthan usual, the cooks exclaimed, "Those are the Irishman's balls, " andthe joints trembled on the spit!--Goldsmith consoled himself that therewere places where he too was admired: and Cavanagh was the admirationof all the fives-courts where he ever played. Mr. Powell, when he playedmatches in the Court in St. Martin's Street, used to fill his galleryat half a crown a head with amateurs and admirers of talent in whateverdepartment it is shown. He could not have shown himself in any ground inEngland but he would have been immediately surrounded with inquisitivegazers, trying to find out in what part of his frame his unrivalledskill lay, as politicians wonder to see the balance of Europe suspendedin Lord Castlereagh's face, and admire the trophies of the BritishNavy lurking under Mr. Croker's hanging brow. Now Cavanagh was asgood-looking a man as the Noble Lord, and much better looking than theRight Hon. Secretary. He had a clear, open countenance, and did not looksideways or down, like Mr. Murray the bookseller. He was a young fellowof sense, humour, and courage. He once had a quarrel with a waterman atHungerford Stairs, and, they say, served him out in great style. In aword, there are hundreds at this day who cannot mention his name withoutadmiration, as the best fives-player that perhaps ever lived (thegreatest excellence of which they have any notion); and the noisyshout of the ring happily stood him in stead of the unheard voiceof posterity!--The only person who seems to have excelled as muchin another way as Cavanagh did in his was the late John Davies, theracket-player. It was remarked of him that he did not seem to follow theball, but the ball seemed to follow him. Give him a foot of wall, and hewas sure to make the ball. The four best racket-players of that day wereJack Spines, Jem Harding, Armitage, and Church. Davies could give anyone of these two hands a time, that is, half the game, and each ofthese, at their best, could give the best player now in London the sameodds. Such are the gradations in all exertions of human skill and art. He once played four capital players together, and beat them. He was alsoa first-rate tennis-player and an excellent fives-player. In the Fleetor King's Bench he would have stood against Powell, who was reckoned thebest open-ground player of his time. This last-mentioned player is atpresent the keeper of the Fives-court, and we might recommend to him fora motto over his door, "Who enters here, forgets himself, his country, and his friends. " And the best of it is, that by the calculation of theodds, none of the three are worth remembering!--Cavanagh died from thebursting of a blood-vessel, which prevented him from playing for thelast two or three years. This, he was often heard to say, he thoughthard upon him. He was fast recovering, however, when he was suddenlycarried off, to the regret of all who knew him. As Mr. Peel made it aqualification of the present Speaker, Mr. Manners Sutton, that he was anexcellent moral character, so Jack Cavanagh was a zealous Catholic, and could not be persuaded to eat meat on a Friday, the day on which hedied. We have paid this willing tribute to his memory. 

 Let no rude hand deface it, And his forlorn "_Hic Jacet_. "'

NOTES to ESSAY IX

(1) The celebrated Peter Pindar (Dr. Wolcot) first discovered andbrought out the talents of the late Mr. Opie the painter. He was a poorCornish boy, and was out at work in the fields when the poet went insearch of him. 'Well, my lad, can you go and bring me your very bestpicture?' The other flew like lightning, and soon came back with what heconsidered as his masterpiece. The stranger looked at it, and the youngartist, after waiting for some time without his giving any opinion, atlength exclaimed eagerly, 'Well, what do you think of it?' 'Think ofit?' said Wolcot; 'Why, I think you ought to be ashamed of it--that you, who might do so well, do no better!' The same answer would have appliedto this artist's latest performances, that had been suggested by one ofhis earliest efforts. 

(2) If two persons play against each other at any game, one of themnecessarily fails. 

ESSAY X. ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF(1)

 Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow, Or by the lazy Scheldt or wandering Po. 

I never was in a better place or humour than I am at present for writingon this subject. I have a partridge getting ready for my supper, my fireis blazing on the hearth, the air is mild for the season of the year, I have had but a slight fit of indigestion to-day (the only thing thatmakes me abhor myself), I have three hours good before me, and thereforeI will attempt it. It is as well to do it at once as to have it to dofor a week to come. 

If the writing on this subject is no easy task, the thing itself is aharder one. It asks a troublesome effort to ensure the admirationof others: it is a still greater one to be satisfied with one's ownthoughts. As I look from the window at the wide bare heath before me, and through the misty moonlight air see the woods that wave over the topof Winterslow, While Heav'n's chancel-vault is blind with sleet, my mind takes its flight through too long a series of years, supportedonly by the patience of thought and secret yearnings after truth andgood, for me to be at a loss to understand the feeling I intend to writeabout; but I do not know that this will enable me to convey it moreagreeably to the reader. 

Lady Grandison, in a letter to Miss Harriet Byron, assures her that'her brother Sir Charles lived to-himself'; and Lady L. Soon after(for Richardson was never tired of a good thing) repeats the sameobservation; to which Miss Byron frequently returns in her answersto both sisters, 'For you know Sir Charles lives to himself, ' till atlength it passes into a proverb among the fair correspondents. This isnot, however, an example of what I understand by _living to one's-self_, for Sir Charles Grandison was indeed always thinking of himself; but bythis phrase I mean never thinking at all about one's-self, any more thanif there was no such person in existence. The character I speak of isas little of an egotist as possible: Richardson's great favourite wasas much of one as possible. Some satirical critic has represented himin Elysium 'bowing over the _faded_ hand of Lady Grandison' (Miss Byronthat was)--he ought to have been represented bowing over his own hand, for he never admired any one but himself, and was the God of his ownidolatry. --Neither do I call it living to one's-self to retire intoa desert (like the saints and martyrs of old) to be devoured by wildbeasts nor to descend into a cave to be considered as a hermit, nor togot to the top of a pillar or rock to do fanatic penance and be seen ofall men. What I mean by living to one's-self is living in the world, asin it, not of it: it is as if no one know there was such a person, andyou wished no one to know it: it is to be a silent spectator of themighty scene of things, not an object of attention or curiosity in it;to take a thoughtful, anxious interest in what is passing in the world, but not to feel the slightest inclination to make or meddle with it. Itis such a life as a pure spirit might be supposed to lead, and such aninterest as it might take in the affairs of men, calm, contemplative, passive, distant, touched with pity for their sorrows, smiling at theirfollies without bitterness, sharing their affections, but not troubledby their passions, not seeking their notice, nor once dreamt of by them. He who lives wisely to himself and to his own heart looks at the busyworld through the loop-holes of retreat, and does not want to mingle inthe fray. 'He hears the tumult, and is still. ' He is not able to mendit, nor willing to mar it. He sees enough in the universe to interesthim without putting himself forward to try what he can do to fix theeyes of the universe upon him. Vain the attempt! He reads the clouds, he looks at the stars, he watches the return of the seasons, the fallingleaves of autumn, the perfumed breath of spring, starts with delight atthe note of a thrush in a copse near him, sits by the fire, listens tothe moaning of the wind, pores upon a book, or discourses the freezinghours away, or melts down hours to minutes in pleasing thought. All thiswhile he is taken up with other things, forgetting himself. He relishesan author's style without thinking of turning author. He is fond oflooking at a print from an old picture in the room, without teasinghimself to copy it. He does not fret himself to death with trying tobe what he is not, or to do what he cannot. He hardly knows what he iscapable of, and is not in the least concerned whether he shall ever makea figure in the world. He feels the truth of the lines--

 The man whose eye is ever on himself, Doth look one, the least of nature's works; One who might move the wise man to that scorn Which wisdom holds unlawful ever. 

He looks out of himself at the wide, extended prospect of nature, andtakes an interest beyond his narrow pretensions in general humanity. Heis free as air, and independent as the wind. Woe be to him when he firstbegins to think what others say of him. While a man is contented withhimself and his own resources, all is well. When he undertakes to playa part on the stage, and to persuade the world to think more about himthan they do about themselves, he is got into a track where he will findnothing but briars and thorns, vexation and disappointment. I can speaka little to this point. For many years of my life I did nothing butthink. I had nothing else to do but solve some knotty point, or dipin some abstruse author, or look at the sky, or wander by the pebbledseaside--

 To see the children sporting on the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore

I cared for nothing, I wanted nothing. I took my time to considerwhatever occurred to me, and was in no hurry to give a sophisticalanswer to a question--there was no printer's devil waiting for me. I used to write a page or two perhaps in half a year; and rememberlaughing heartily at the celebrated experimentalist Nicholson, whotold me that in twenty years he had written as much as would make threehundred octavo volumes. If I was not a great author, I could read withever fresh delight, 'never ending, still beginning, ' and had no occasionto write a criticism when I had done. If I could not paint like Claude, I could admire 'the witchery of the soft blue sky' as I walked out, andwas satisfied with the pleasure it gave me. If I was dull, it gave melittle concern: if I was lively, I indulged my spirits. I wished wellto the world, and believed as favourably of it as I could. I was likea stranger in a foreign land, at which I looked with wonder, curiosity, and delight, without expecting to be an object of attention in return. Ihad no relations to the state, no duty to perform, no ties to bind me toothers: I had neither friend nor mistress, wife nor child. I lived in aworld of contemplation, and not of action. 

This sort of dreaming existence is the best. He who quits it to goin search of realities generally barters repose for repeateddisappointments and vain regrets. His time, thoughts, and feelings areno longer at his own disposal. From that instant he does not survey theobjects of nature as they are in themselves, but looks asquint at themto see whether he cannot make them the instruments of his ambition, interest, or pleasure; for a candid, undesigning, undisguised simplicityof character, his views become jaundiced, sinister, and double: he takesno farther interest in the great changes of the world but as he hasa paltry share in producing them: instead of opening his senses, hisunderstanding, and his heart to the resplendent fabric of the universe, he holds a crooked mirror before his face, in which he may admire hisown person and pretensions, and just glance his eye aside to see whetherothers are not admiring him too. He no more exists in the impressionwhich 'the fair variety of things' makes upon him, softened and subduedby habitual contemplation, but in the feverish sense of his own upstartself-importance. By aiming to fix, he is become the slave of opinion. Heis a tool, a part of a machine that never stands still, and is sickand giddy with the ceaseless motion. He has no satisfaction but in thereflection of his own image in the public gaze--but in the repetition ofhis own name in the public ear. He himself is mixed up with and spoilseverything. I wonder Buonaparte was not tired of the N. N. 's stuck allover the Louvre and throughout France. Goldsmith (as we all know) whenin Holland went out into a balcony with some handsome Englishwomen, and on their being applauded by the spectators, turned round and saidpeevishly, 'There are places where I also am admired. ' He could not givethe craving appetite of an author's vanity one day's respite. I haveseen a celebrated talker of our own time turn pale and go out of theroom when a showy-looking girl has come into it who for a moment dividedthe attention of his hearers. --Infinite are the mortifications of thebare attempt to emerge from obscurity; numberless the failures;and greater and more galling still the vicissitudes and tormentingaccompaniments of success--

 Whose top to climb Is certain falling, or so slippery, that The fear's as bad as falling. 

'Would to God, ' exclaimed Oliver Cromwell, when he was at any timethwarted by the Parliament, 'that I had remained by my woodside to tenda flock of sheep, rather than have been thrust on such a government asthis!' When Buonaparte got into his carriage to proceed on his Russianexpedition, carelessly twirling his glove, and singing the air, 'Malbrook to the war is going, ' he did not think of the tumble he hasgot since, the shock of which no one could have stood but himself. Wesee and hear chiefly of the favourites of Fortune and the Muse, of greatgenerals, of first-rate actors, of celebrated poets. These are at thehead; we are struck with the glittering eminence on which they stand, and long to set out on the same tempting career, --not thinking how manydiscontented half-pay lieutenants are in vain seeking promotion alltheir lives, and obliged to put up with 'the insolence of office, and the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes'; how manyhalf-starved strolling players are doomed to penury and tattered robesin country places, dreaming to the last of a London engagement; how manywretched daubers shiver and shake in the ague-fit of alternate hopesand fears, waste and pine away in the atrophy of genius, or else turndrawing-masters, picture-cleaners, or newspaper-critics; how manyhapless poets have sighed out their souls to the Muse in vain, withoutever getting their effusions farther known than the Poet's Corner of acountry newspaper, and looked and looked with grudging, wistful eyesat the envious horizon that bounded their provincial fame!--Suppose anactor, for instance, 'after the heart-aches and the thousand naturalpangs that flesh is heir to, ' _does_ get at the top of his profession, he can no longer bear a rival near the throne; to be second or onlyequal to another is to be nothing: he starts at the prospect of asuccessor, and retains the mimic sceptre with a convulsive grasp:perhaps as he is about to seize the first place which he has long had inhis eye, an unsuspected competitor steps in before him, and carries offthe prize, leaving him to commence his irksome toil again. He is in astate of alarm at every appearance or rumour of the appearance of anew actor: 'a mouse that takes up its lodgings in a cat's ear'(2) has amansion of peace to him: he dreads every hint of an objection, and leastof all, can forgive praise mingled with censure: to doubt is to insult;to discriminate is to degrade: he dare hardly look into a criticismunless some one has tasted it for him, to see that there is no offencein it: if he does not draw crowded houses every night, he can neithereat nor sleep; or if all these terrible inflections are removed, and hecan 'eat his meal in peace, ' he then becomes surfeited with applause anddissatisfied with his profession: he wants to be something else, to bedistinguished as an author, a collector, a classical scholar, a manof sense and information, and weighs every word he utters, and halfretracts it before he utters it, lest if he were to make the smallestslip of the tongue it should get buzzed abroad that _Mr. ---- was onlyclever as an actor!_ If ever there was a man who did not derive morepain than pleasure from his vanity, that man, says Rousseau, was noother than a fool. A country gentleman near Taunton spent his wholelife in making some hundreds of wretched copies of second-rate pictures, which were bought up at his death by a neighbouring baronet, to whom

 Some Demon whisper'd, L----, have a taste!

A little Wilson in an obscure corner escaped the man of _virtu_, andwas carried off by a Bristol picture-dealer for three guineas, whilethe muddled copies of the owner of the mansion (with the frames) fetchedthirty, forty, sixty, a hundred ducats a piece. A friend of mine found avery fine Canaletti in a state of strange disfigurement, with the upperpart of the sky smeared over and fantastically variegated with Englishclouds; and on inquiring of the person to whom it belonged whethersomething had not been done to it, received for answer 'that agentleman, a great artist in the neighbourhood, had retouched some partsof it. ' What infatuation! Yet this candidate for the honours of thepencil might probably have made a jovial fox-hunter or respectablejustice of the peace it he could only have stuck to what nature andfortune intended him for. Miss ---- can by no means be persuaded to quitthe boards of the theatre at ----, a little country town in the West ofEngland. Her salary has been abridged, her person ridiculed, her actinglaughed at; nothing will serve--she is determined to be an actress, andscorns to return to her former business as a milliner. Shall I go on? Anactor in the same company was visited by the apothecary of the place inan ague-fit, who, on asking his landlady as to his way of life, was toldthat the poor gentleman was very quiet and gave little trouble, that hegenerally had a plate of mashed potatoes for his dinner, and lay in bedmost of his time, repeating his part. A young couple, every way amiableand deserving, were to have been married, and a benefit-play was bespokeby the officers of the regiment quartered there, to defray the expenseof a license and of the wedding-ring, but the profits of the night didnot amount to the necessary sum, and they have, I fear, 'virgined ite'er since'! Oh, for the pencil of Hogarth or Wilkie to give a view ofthe comic strength of the company at ----, drawn up in battle-array inthe _Clandestine Marriage, _ with a _coup d'oeil_ of the pit, boxes, andgallery, to cure for ever the love of the _ideal_, and the desire toshine and make holiday in the eyes of others, instead of retiring withinourselves and keeping our wishes and our thoughts at home!--Even in thecommon affairs of life, in love, friendship, and marriage, how littlesecurity have we when we trust our happiness in the hands of others!Most of the friends I have seen have turned out the bitterest enemies, or cold, uncomfortable acquaintance. Old companions are like meatsserved up too often, that lose their relish and their wholesomeness. Hewho looks at beauty to admire, to adore it, who reads of its wondrouspower in novels, in poems, or in plays, is not unwise; but let no manfall in love, for from that moment he is 'the baby of a girl. ' I likevery well to repeat such lines as these in the play of _Mirandola_--

 With what a waving air she goes Along the corridor! How like a fawn! Yet statelier. Hark! No sound, however soft, Nor gentlest echo telleth when she treads, But every motion of her shape doth seem Hallowed by silence. 

But however beautiful the description, defend me from meeting with theoriginal!

 The fly that sips treacle Is lost in the sweets; So he that tastes woman Ruin meets. 

The song is Gay's, not mine, and a bitter-sweet it is. How few out ofthe infinite number of those that marry and are given in marriage wedwith those they would prefer to all the world! nay, how far the greaterproportion are joined together by mere motives of convenience, accident, recommendation of friends, or indeed not unfrequently by the very fearof the event, by repugnance and a sort of fatal fascination! yet the tieis for life, not to be shaken off but with disgrace or death: a manno longer lives to himself, but is a body (as well as mind) chained toanother, in spite of himself--

 Like life and death in disproportion met. 

So Milton (perhaps from his own experience) makes Adam exclaim in thevehemence of his despair, For either He never shall find out fit mate, but such As some misfortune brings him or mistake Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain Through her perverseness, but shall sea her gain'd By a far worse; or it she love, withheld By parents; or his happiest choice too late Shall meet, already link'd and wedlock-bound To a fell adversary, his hate and shame; Which infinite calamity shall cause To human life, and household peace confound. 

If love at first sight were mutual, or to be conciliated by kindoffices; if the fondest affection were not so often repaid and chilledby indifference and scorn; if so many lovers both before and since themadman in Don Quixote had not 'worshipped a statue, hunted the wind, cried aloud to the desert'; if friendship were lasting; if merit wererenown, and renown were health, riches, and long life; or if the homageof the world were paid to conscious worth and the true aspirationsafter excellence, instead of its gaudy signs and outward trappings, thenindeed I might be of opinion that it is better to live to others thanone's-self; but as the case stands, I incline to the negative side ofthe question. (3)

 I have not loved the world, nor the world me; I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bow'd To its idolatries a patient knee-- Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles--nor cried aloud In worship of an echo; in the crowd They could not deem me one of such; I stood Among them, but not of them; in a shroud Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could, Had I not filled my mind which thus itself subdued. 

 I have not loved the world, nor the world me-- But let us part fair foes; I do believe, Though I have found them not, that there may be Words which are things--hopes which will not deceive, And virtues which are merciful nor weave Snares for the failing: I would also deem O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve; That two, or one, are almost what they seem-- That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream. 

Sweet verse embalms the spirit of sour misanthropy; but woe betide theignoble prose-writer who should thus dare to compare notes with theworld, or tax it roundly with imposture. 

If I had sufficient provocation to rail at the public, as Ben Jonson didat the audience in the Prologues to his plays, I think I should do itin good set terms, nearly as follows:--There is not a more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiful, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal thanthe Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is afraid of itself. From its unwieldy, overgrown dimensions, it dreads the least oppositionto it, and shakes like isinglass at the touch of a finger. It starts atits own shadow, like the man in the Hartz mountains, and trembles atthe mention of its own name. It has a lion's mouth, the heart of a hare, with ears erect and sleepless eyes. It stands 'listening its fears. 'It is so in awe of its own opinion that it never dares to form any, butcatches up the first idle rumour, lest it should be behindhand in itsjudgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the sound of its ownvoice. The idea of what the public will think prevents the public fromever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of privatejudgment, so that, in short, the public ear is at the mercy of the firstimpudent pretender who chooses to fill it with noisy assertions, orfalse surmises, or secret whispers. What is said by one is heard by all;the supposition that a thing is known to all the world makes all theworld believe it, and the hollow repetition of a vague report drowns the'still, small voice' of reason. We may believe or know that what is saidis not true; but we know or fancy that others believe it, --we dare notcontradict or are too indolent to dispute with them, and therefore giveup our internal, and, as we think, our solitary conviction to a soundwithout substance, without proof, and often without meaning. Nay more, we may believe and know not only that a thing is false, but that othersbelieve and know it to be so, that they are quite as much in the secretof the imposture as we are, that they see the puppets at work, thenature of the machinery, and yet if any one has the art or power toget the management of it, he shall keep possession of the public earby virtue of a cant phrase or nickname, and by dint of effrontery andperseverance make all the world believe and repeat what all the worldknow to be false. The ear is quicker than the judgment. We know thatcertain things are said; by that circumstance alone, we know that theyproduce a certain effect on the imagination of others, and we conformto their prejudices by mechanical sympathy, and for want of sufficientspirit to differ with them. So far then is public opinion from restingon a broad and solid basis, as the aggregate of thought and feeling ina community, that it is slight and shallow and variable to the lastdegree--the bubble of the moment; so that we may safely say thepublic is the dupe of public opinion, not its parent. The public ispusillanimous and cowardly, because it is weak. It knows itself to be agreat dunce, and that it has no opinions but upon suggestion. Yet it isunwilling to appear in leading-strings, and would have it thought thatits decisions are as wise as they are weighty. It is hasty in takingup its favourites, more hasty in laying them aside, lest it should besupposed deficient in sagacity in either case. It is generally dividedinto two strong parties, each of which will allow neither common sensenor common honesty to the other side. It reads the _Edinburgh_ and_Quarterly Reviews_, and believes them both--or if there is a doubt, malice turns the scale. Taylor and Hessey told me that they had soldnearly two editions of the _Characters of Shakespear's Plays_ in aboutthree months, but that after the _Quarterly Review_ of them came outthey never sold another copy. The public, enlightened as they are, musthave known the meaning of that attack as well as those who made it. Itwas not ignorance then, but cowardice, that led them to give up theirown opinion. A crew of mischievous critics at Edinburgh having affixedthe epithet of the _Cockney School_ to one or two writers born in themetropolis, all the people in London became afraid of looking intotheir works, lest they too should be convicted of cockneyism. Oh, bravepublic! This epithet proved too much for one of the writers in question, and stuck like a barbed arrow in his heart. Poor Keats! What was sportto the town was death to him. Young, sensitive, delicate, he was like

 A bud bit by an envious worm, Ere he could spread his sweet leaves to the air Or dedicate his beauty to the sun;

and unable to endure the miscreant cry and idiot laugh, withdrew tosigh his last breath in foreign climes. The public is as envious andungrateful as it is ignorant, stupid, and pigeon-livered--

 A huge-sized monster of ingratitudes. 

It reads, it admires, it extols, only because it is the fashion, notfrom any love of the subject or the man. It cries you up or runs youdown out of mere caprice and levity. If you have pleased it, it isjealous of its own involuntary acknowledgment of merit, and seizes thefirst opportunity, the first shabby pretext, to pick a quarrel with youand be quits once more. Every petty caviller is erected into a judge, every tale-bearer is implicitly believed. Every little, low, paltrycreature that gaped and wondered, only because others did so, is glad tofind you (as he thinks) on a level with himself. An author is not then, after all, a being of another order. Public admiration is forced, andgoes against the grain. Public obloquy is cordial and sincere: everyindividual feels his own importance in it. They give you up bound handand foot into the power of your accusers. To attempt to defend yourselfis a high crime and misdemeanor, a contempt of court, an extreme pieceof impertinence. Or if you prove every charge unfounded, they neverthink of retracing their error or making you amends. It would be acompromise of their dignity; they consider themselves as the partyinjured, and resent your innocence as an imputation on their judgment. The celebrated Bub Doddington, when out of favour at court, said 'hewould not _justify_ before his sovereign: it was for Majesty to bedispleased, and for him to believe himself in the wrong!' The public arenot quite so modest. People already begin to talk of the Scotch Novelsas overrated. How then can common authors be supposed to keep theirheads long above water? As a general rule, all those who live by thepublic starve, and are made a by-word and a standing jest into thebargain. Posterity is no better (not a bit more enlightened or moreliberal), except that you are no longer in their power, and that thevoice of common fame saves them the trouble of deciding on your claims. The public now are the posterity of Milton and Shakespear. Our posteritywill be the living public of a future generation. When a man is dead, they put money in his coffin, erect monuments to his memory, andcelebrate the anniversary of his birthday in set speeches. Would theytake any notice of him if he were living? No!--I was complaining of thisto a Scotchman who had been attending a dinner and a subscription toraise a monument to Burns. He replied he would sooner subscribe twentypounds to his monument than have given it him while living; so that ifthe poet were to come to life again, he would treat him just as he wastreated in fact. This was an honest Scotchman. What _he_ said, the restwould do. 

Enough: my soul, turn from them, and let me try to regain theobscurity and quiet that I love, 'far from the madding strife, ' in somesequestered corner of my own, or in some far-distant land! In the lattercase, I might carry with me as a consolation the passage in Bolinbroke's_Reflections on Exile, _ in which he describes in glowing colours theresources which a man may always find within himself, and of which theworld cannot deprive him:--

'Believe me, the providence of God has established such an order inthe world, that of all which belongs to us the least valuable parts canalone fall under the will of others. Whatever is best is safest; liesout of the reach of human power; can neither be given nor taken away. Such is this great and beautiful work of nature, the world. Such is themind of man, which contemplates and admires the world, whereof it makesthe noblest part. These are inseparably ours, and as long as we remainin one we shall enjoy the other. Let us march therefore intrepidlywherever we are led by the course of human accidents. Wherever theylead us, on what coast soever we are thrown by them, we shall not findourselves absolutely strangers. We shall feel the same revolution ofseasons, and the same sun and moon(4) will guide the course of our year. The same azure vault, bespangled with stars, will be everywhere spreadover our heads. There is no part of the world from whence we may notadmire those planets which roll, like ours, in different orbits roundthe same central sun; from whence we may not discover an object stillmore stupendous, that army of fixed stars hung up in the immense spaceof the universe, innumerable suns whose beams enlighten and cherish theunknown worlds which roll around them: and whilst I am ravished by suchcontemplations as these, whilst my soul is thus raised up to heaven, itimports me little what ground I tread-upon. '

NOTES to ESSAY X

(1) Written at Winterslow Hut, January 18-19, 1821. 

(2) Webster's _Duchess of Malfy. _

(3) Shenstone and Gray were two men, one of whom pretended live tohimself, and the other really did so. Gray shrunk from the public gaze(he did not even like his portrait to be prefixed to his works) into hisown thoughts and indolent musings; Shenstone affected privacy that hemight be sought out by the world; the one courted retirement in orderto enjoy leisure and repose, as the other coquetted with it merely tobe interrupted with the importunity of visitors and the flatteries ofabsent friends. 

(4) Plut. Of Banishment. He compares those who cannot live out of theirown country to the simple people who fancied the moon of Athens was afiner moon than that of Corinth, Labentem coelo quae ducitis annum. --VIRG. _Georg. _

ESSAY XI. ON THOUGHT AND ACTION

Those persons who are much accustomed to abstract contemplation aregenerally unfitted for active pursuits, and _vice versa_. I myself amsufficiently decided and dogmatical in my opinions, and yet in actionI am as imbecile as a woman or a child. I cannot set about the mostindifferent thing without twenty efforts, and had rather write one ofthese Essays than have to seal a letter. In trying to throw a hat or abook upon a table, I miss it; it just reaches the edge and falls backagain, and instead of doing what I mean to perform, I do what I intendto avoid. Thought depends on the habitual exercise of the speculativefaculties; action, on the determination of the will. The one assignsreasons for things, the other puts causes into act. Abraham Tuckerrelates of a friend of his, an old special pleader, that once coming outof his chambers in the Temple with him to take a walk, he hesitated atthe bottom of the stairs which way to go--proposed different directions, to Charing Cross, to St. Paul's--found some objection to them all, andat last turned back for want of a casting motive to incline the scale. Tucker gives this as an instance of professional indecision, or of thattemper of mind which having been long used to weigh the reasons forthings with scrupulous exactness, could not come to any conclusion atall on the spur of the occasion, or without some grave distinction tojustify its choice. Louvet in his Narrative tells us, that when severalof the Brisotin party were collected at the house of Barbaroux (I thinkit was) ready to effect their escape from the power of Robespierre, one of them going to the window and finding a shower of rain coming on, seriously advised their stopping till the next morning, for that theemissaries of government would not think of coming in search of them insuch bad weather. Some of them deliberated on this wise proposal, and were nearly taken. Such is the effeminacy of the speculative andphilosophical temperament, compared with the promptness and vigour ofthe practical! It is on such unequal terms that the refined and romanticspeculators on possible good and evil contend with their strong-nerved, remorseless adversaries, and we see the result. Reasoners in generalare undecided, wavering, and sceptical, or yield at last to the weakestmotive as most congenial to their feeble habit of soul. (1)

Some men are mere machines. They are put in a go-cart of business, andare harnessed to a profession--yoked to Fortune's wheels. They plod on, and succeed. Their affairs conduct them, not they their affairs. Allthey have to do is to let things take their course, and not go out ofthe beaten road. A man may carry on the business of farming on the samespot and principle that his ancestors have done for many generationsbefore him without any extraordinary share of capacity: the proof is, itis done every day, in every county and parish in the kingdom. Allthat is necessary is that he should not pretend to be wiser than hisneighbours. If he has a grain more wit or penetration than they, if hisvanity gets the start of his avarice only half a neck, if he has everthought or read anything upon the subject, it will most probably be theruin of him. He will turn theoretical or experimental farmer, andno more need be said. Mr. Cobbett, who is a sufficiently shrewd andpractical man, with an eye also to the main chance, had got somenotions in his head (from Tull's _Husbandry_) about the method ofsowing turnips, to which he would have sacrificed not only his estate atBotley, but his native county of Hampshire itself, sooner than give upan inch of his argument. 'Tut! will you baulk a man in the career ofhis humour?' Therefore, that a man may not be ruined by his humours, heshould be too dull and phlegmatic to have any: he must have 'no figuresnor no fantasies which busy thought draws in the brains of men. ' Thefact is, that the ingenuity or judgment of no one man is equal to thatof the world at large, which is the fruit of the experience and abilityof all mankind. Even where a man is right in a particular notion, he will be apt to overrate the importance of his discovery, to thedetriment of his affairs. Action requires co-operation, but in generalif you set your face against custom, people will set their faces againstyou. They cannot tell whether you are right or wrong, but they knowthat you are guilty of a pragmatical assumption of superiority over themwhich they do not like. There is no doubt that if a person two hundredyears ago had foreseen and attempted to put in practice the mostapproved and successful methods of cultivation now in use, it wouldhave been a death-blow to his credit and fortune. So that though theexperiments and improvements of private individuals from time to timegradually go to enrich the public stock of information and reform thegeneral practice, they are mostly the ruin of the person who makes them, because he takes a part for the whole, and lays more stress upon thesingle point in which he has found others in the wrong than on all therest in which they are substantially and prescriptively in the right. The great requisite, it should appear, then, for the prosperousmanagement of ordinary business is the want of imagination, or of anyideas but those of custom and interest on the narrowest scale; and asthe affairs of the world are necessarily carried on by the common runof its inhabitants, it seems a wise dispensation of Providence thatit should be so. If no one could rent a piece of glebe-land without agenius for mechanical inventions, or stand behind a counter withouta large benevolence of soul, what would become of the commercial andagricultural interests of this great (and once flourishing) country?--Iwould not be understood as saying that there is not what may be calleda genius for business, an extraordinary capacity for affairs, quicknessand comprehension united, an insight into character, an acquaintancewith a number of particular circumstances, a variety of expedients, atact for finding out what will do: I grant all this (in Liverpool andManchester they would persuade you that your merchant and manufactureris your only gentleman and scholar)--but still, making every allowancefor the difference between the liberal trader and the sneakingshopkeeper, I doubt whether the most surprising success is to beaccounted for from any such unusual attainments, or whether a man'smaking half a million of money is a proof of his capacity for thoughtin general. It is much oftener owing to views and wishes bounded butconstantly directed to one particular object. To succeed, a man shouldaim only at success. The child of Fortune should resign himself into thehands of Fortune. A plotting head frequently overreaches itself: a mindconfident of its resources and calculating powers enters on criticalspeculations, which in a game depending so much on chance and unforeseenevents, and not entirely on intellectual skill, turn the odds greatlyagainst any one in the long run. The rule of business is to take whatyou can get, and keep what you have got; or an eagerness in seizingevery opportunity that offers for promoting your own interest, and aplodding, persevering industry in making the most of the advantagesyou have already obtained, are the most effectual as well as the safestingredients in the composition of the mercantile character. The worldis a book in which the _Chapter of Accidents_ is none of the leastconsiderable; or it is a machine that must be left, in a great measure, to turn itself. The most that a worldly-minded man can do is to stand atthe receipt of custom, and be constantly on the lookout for windfalls. The true devotee in this way waits for the revelations of Fortune asthe poet waits for the inspiration of the Muse, and does not rashlyanticipate her favours. He must be neither capricious nor wilful. I haveknown people untrammelled in the ways of business, but with so intensean apprehension of their own interest, that they would grasp at theslightest possibility of gain as a certainty, and were led into as manymistakes by an overgriping, usurious disposition as they could have beenby the most thoughtless extravagance. --We hear a great outcry about thewant of judgment in men of genius. It is not a want of judgment, but anexcess of other things. They err knowingly, and are wilfully blind. The understanding is out of the question. The profound judgment whichsoberer people pique themselves upon is in truth a want of passion andimagination. Give them an interest in anything, a sudden fancy, a baitfor their favourite foible, and who so besotted as they? Stir theirfeelings, and farewell to their prudence! The understanding operatesas a motive to action only in the silence of the passions. I have heardpeople of a sanguine temperament reproached with betting according totheir wishes, instead of their opinion who should win; and I have seenthose who reproached them do the very same thing the instant their ownvanity or prejudices are concerned. The most mechanical people, oncethrown off their balance, are the most extravagant and fantastical. What passion is there so unmeaning and irrational as avarice itself? TheDutch went mad for tulips, and ---- ---- for love! To return to what wassaid a little way back, a question might be started, whether as thoughtrelates to the whole circumference of things and interests, and businessis confined to a very small part of them, viz. To a knowledge of a man'sown affairs and the making of his own fortune, whether a talent forthe latter will not generally exist in proportion to the narrowness andgrossness of his ideas, nothing drawing his attention out of his ownsphere, or giving him an interest except in those things which he canrealise and bring home to himself in the most undoubted shape? To theman of business all the world is a fable but the Stock Exchange: to themoney-getter nothing has a real existence that he cannot convert into atangible feeling, that he does not recognise as property, that he cannot'measure with a two-foot rule or count upon ten fingers. ' The wantof thought, of imagination, drives the practical man upon immediaterealities: to the poet or philosopher all is real and interesting thatis true or possible, that can reach in its consequences to others, or bemade a subject of curious speculation to himself!

But is it right, then, to judge of action by the quantity of thoughtimplied in it, any more than it would be to condemn a life ofcontemplation for being inactive? Or has not everything a source andprinciple of its own, to which we should refer it, and not to theprinciples of other things? He who succeeds in any pursuit in whichothers fail may be presumed to have qualities of some sort or otherwhich they are without. If he has not brilliant wit, he may have solidsense; if he has not subtlety of understanding, he may have energyand firmness of purpose; if he has only a few advantages, he may havemodesty and prudence to make the most of what he possesses. Propriety isone great matter in the conduct of life; which, though, like a gracefulcarriage of the body, it is neither definable nor striking at firstsight, is the result of finely balanced feelings, and lends a secretstrength and charm to the whole character. 

 Quicquid agit, quoquo vestigia vertit, Componit furtim, subsequiturque decor. 

There are more ways than one in which the various faculties of themind may unfold themselves. Neither words nor ideas reducible to wordsconstitute the utmost limit of human capacity. Man is not a merelytalking nor a merely reasoning animal. Let us then take him as he is, instead of 'curtailing him of nature's fair proportions' to suit ourprevious notions. Doubtless, there are great characters both in activeand contemplative life. There have been heroes as well as sages, legislators and founders of religion, historians and able statesmenand generals, inventors of useful arts and instruments and explorers ofundiscovered countries, as well as writers and readers of books. Itwill not do to set all these aside under any fastidious or pedanticdistinction. Comparisons are odious, because they are impertinent, andlead only to the discovery of defects by making one thing the standardof another which has no relation to it. If, as some one proposed, wewere to institute an inquiry, 'Which was the greatest man, Milton orCromwell, Buonaparte or Rubens?' we should have all the authors andartists on one side, and all the military men and the whole diplomaticbody on the other, who would set to work with all their might to pullin pieces the idol of the other party, and the longer the disputecontinued, the more would each grow dissatisfied with his favourite, though determined to allow no merit to any one else. The mind is notwell competent to take in the full impression of more than one style ofexcellence or one extraordinary character at once; contradictory claimspuzzle and stupefy it; and however admirable any individual may bein himself and unrivalled in his particular way, yet if we try him byothers in a totally opposite class, that is, if we consider not whathe was but what he was not, he will be found to be nothing. We do notreckon up the excellences on either side, for then these would satisfythe mind and put an end to the comparison: we have no way of exclusivelysetting up our favourite but by running down his supposed rival; and forthe gorgeous hues of Rubens, the lofty conceptions of Milton, the deeppolicy and cautious daring of Cromwell, or the dazzling exploits andfatal ambition of the modern chieftain, the poet is transformed into apedant, the artist sinks into a mechanic, the politician turns out nobetter than a knave, and the hero is exalted into a madman. It is aseasy to get the start of our antagonist in argument by frivolous andvexatious objections to one side of the question as it is difficultto do full and heaped justice to the other. If I am asked which isthe greatest of those who have been the greatest in different ways, Ianswer, the one that we happen to be thinking of at the time; for whilethat is the case, we can conceive of nothing higher. If there is apropensity in the vulgar to admire the achievements of personal prowessor instances of fortunate enterprise too much, it cannot be denied thatthose who have to weigh out and dispense the meed of fame in books havebeen too much disposed, by a natural bias, to confine all merit andtalent to the productions of the pen, or at least to those works which, being artificial or abstract representations of things, are transmittedto posterity, and cried up as models in their kind. This, thoughunavoidable, is hardly just. Actions pass away and are forgotten, or areonly discernible in their effects; conquerors, statesmen, and kings livebut by their names stamped on the page of history. Hume says rightlythat more people think about Virgil and Homer (and that continually)than ever trouble their heads about Caesar or Alexander. In fact, poetsare a longer-lived race than heroes: they breathe more of the air ofimmortality. They survive more entire in their thoughts and acts. Wehave all that Virgil or Homer did, as much as if we had lived at thesame time with them: we can hold their works in our hands, or lay themon our pillows, or put them to our lips. Scarcely a trace of what theothers did is left upon the earth, so as to be visible to common eyes. The one, the dead authors, are living men, still breathing and movingin their writings. The others, the conquerors of the world, are but theashes in an urn. The sympathy (so to speak) between thought and thoughtis more intimate and vital than that between thought and action. Thoughof admiration to the manes of departed heroism is like burning incensein a marble monument. Words, ideas, feelings, with the progress of timeharden into substances: things, bodies, actions, moulder away, or meltinto a sound, into thin air!--Yet though the Schoolmen in the MiddleAges disputed more about the texts of Aristotle than the battle ofArbela, perhaps Alexander's Generals in his lifetime admired his pupilas much and liked him better. For not only a man's actions are effacedand vanish with him; his virtues and generous qualities die with himalso: his intellect only is immortal and bequeathed unimpaired toposterity. Words are the only things that last for ever. 

If, however, the empire of words and general knowledge is more durablein proportion as it is abstracted and attenuated, it is less immediateand dazzling: if authors are as good after they are dead as when theywere living, while living they might as well be dead: and moreover withrespect to actual ability, to write a book is not the only proofof taste, sense, or spirit, as pedants would have us suppose. To doanything well, to paint a picture, to fight a battle, to make a ploughor a threshing-machine, requires, one would think, as much skill andjudgment as to talk about or write a description of it when done. Wordsare universal, intelligible signs, but they are not the only real, existing things. Did not Julius Caesar show himself as much of a man inconducting his campaigns as in composing his Commentaries? Or was theRetreat of the Ten Thousand under Xenophon, or his work of that name, the most consummate performance? Or would not Lovelace, supposing him tohave existed and to have conceived and executed all his fine stratagemson the spur of the occasion, have been as clever a fellow as Richardson, who invented them in cold blood? If to conceive and describe an heroiccharacter is the height of a literary ambition, we can hardly make itout that to be and to do all that the wit of man can feign is nothing. To use means to ends; to set causes in motion; to wield the machine ofsociety; to subject the wills of others to your own; to manage ablermen than yourself by means of that which is stronger in them than theirwisdom, viz. Their weakness and their folly; to calculate the resistanceof ignorance and prejudice to your designs, and by obviating, to turnthem to account; to foresee a long, obscure, and complicated train ofevents, of chances and openings of success; to unwind the web of others'policy and weave your own out of it; to judge of the effects ofthings, not in the abstract, but with reference to all their bearings, ramifications, and impediments; to understand character thoroughly; tosee latent talent or lurking treachery; to know mankind for what theyare, and use them as they deserve; to have a purpose steadily in view, and to effect it after removing every obstacle; to master others and betrue to yourself, --asks power and knowledge, both nerves and brain. 

Such is the sort of talent that that may be shown and that has beenpossessed by the great leaders on the stage of the world. To accomplishgreat things argues, I imagine, great resolution: to design great thingsimplies no common mind. Ambition is in some sort genius. Though I wouldrather wear out my life in arguing a broad speculative question than incaballing for the election to a wardmote, or canvassing for votes ina rotten borough, yet I should think that the loftiest Epicureanphilosopher might descend from his punctilio to identify himself withthe support of a great principle, or to prop a falling state. Thisis what the legislators and founders of empire did of old; and thepermanence of their institutions showed the depth of the principles fromwhich they emanated. A tragic poem is not the worse for acting well:if it will not bear this test it savours of effeminacy. Well-digestedschemes will stand the touchstone of experience. Great thoughts reducedto practice become great acts. Again, great acts grow out of greatoccasions, and great occasions spring from great principles, workingchanges in society, and tearing it up by the roots. But I still conceivethat a genius for actions depends essentially on the strength of thewill rather than on that of the understanding; that the long-headedcalculation of causes and consequences arises from the energy of thefirst cause, which is the will setting others in motion and preparedto anticipate the results; that its sagacity is activity delighting inmeeting difficulties and adventures more than half-way, and its wisdomcourage not to shrink from danger, but to redouble its efforts withopposition. Its humanity, if it has much, is magnanimity to spare thevanquished, exulting in power but not prone to mischief, with good senseenough to be aware of the instability of fortune, and with some regardto reputation. What may serve as a criterion to try this question byis the following consideration, that we sometimes find as remarkablea deficiency of the speculative faculty coupled with great strength ofwill and consequent success in active life as we do a want of voluntarypower and total incapacity for business frequently joined to the highestmental qualifications. In some cases it will happen that 'to be wiseis to be obstinate. ' If you are deaf to reason but stick to your ownpurposes, you will tire others out, and bring them over to your way ofthinking. Self-will and blind prejudice are the best defence of actualpower and exclusive advantages. The forehead of the late king was notremarkable for the character of intellect, but the lower part of hisface was expressive of strong passions and fixed resolution. Charles Foxhad an animated, intelligent eye, and brilliant, elastic forehead(with a nose indicating fine taste), but the lower features were weak, unsettled, fluctuating, and without _purchase_--it was in them the Whigswere defeated. What a fine iron binding Buonaparte had round his face, as if it bad been cased in steel! What sensibility about the mouth! Whatwatchful penetration in the eye! What a smooth, unruffled forehead! Mr. Pitt, with little sunken eyes, had a high, retreating forehead, and anose expressing pride and aspiring self-opinion: it was on that (withsubmission) that he suspended the decisions of the House of Commons anddangled the Opposition as he pleased. Lord Castlereagh is a man ratherdeficient than redundant in words and topics. He is not (any more thanSt. Augustine was, in the opinion of La Fontaine) so great a wit asRabelais, nor is he so great a philosopher as Aristotle; but he has thatin him which is not to be trifled with. He has a noble mask of a face(not well filled up in the expression, which is relaxed and dormant)with a fine person and manner. On the strength of these he hazards hisspeeches in the House. He has also a knowledge of mankind, and of thecomposition of the House. He takes a thrust which he cannot parry on hisshield--is 'all tranquillity and smiles' under a volley of abuse, seeswhen to pay a compliment to a wavering antagonist, soothes the meltingmood of his hearers, or gets up a speech full of indignation, and knowshow to bestow his attentions on that great public body, whether hewheedles or bullies, so as to bring it to compliance. With a long reachof undefined purposes (the result of a temper too indolent for thought, too violent for repose) he has equal perseverance and pliancy inbringing his objects to pass. I would rather be Lord Castlereagh, as faras a sense of power is concerned (principle is out of the question), than such a man as Mr. Canning, who is a mere fluent sophist, and neverknows the limit of discretion, or the effect which will be produced bywhat he says, except as far as florid common-places may be depended on. Buonaparte is referred by Mr. Coleridge to the class of active ratherthan of intellectual characters; and Cowley has left an invidious butsplendid eulogy on Oliver Cromwell, which sets out on much the sameprinciple. 'What, ' he says, 'can be more extraordinary than that aperson of mean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities of body, whichhave sometimes, or of mind, which have often, raised men to the highestdignities, should have the courage to attempt, and the happiness tosucceed in, so improbable a design as the destruction of one of the mostancient and most solidly-founded monarchies upon the earth? That heshould have the power or boldness to put his prince and master to anopen and infamous death; to banish that numerous and strongly-alliedfamily; to do all this under the name and wages of a Parliament; totrample upon them too as he pleased, and spurn them out of doors when hegrow weary of them; to raise up a new and unheard-of monster out oftheir ashes; to stifle that in the very infancy, and set up himselfabove all things that ever were called sovereign in England; to oppressall his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by artifice; toserve all parties patiently for a while, and to command themvictoriously at last; to overrun each corner of the three nations, andovercome with equal facility both the riches of the south and thepoverty of the north; to be feared and courted by all foreign princes, and adopted a brother to the Gods of the earth; to call togetherParliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them again with thebreath of his mouth; to be humbly and daily petitioned that he wouldplease to be hired, at the rate of two millions a year, to be the masterof those who had hired him before to be their servant; to have theestates and lives of three kingdoms as much at his disposal as was thelittle inheritance of his father, and to be as noble and liberal in thespending of them; and lastly (for there is no end of all the particularsof his glory), to bequeath all this with one word to his posterity; todie with peace at home, and triumph abroad; to be buried among kings, and with more than regal solemnity; and to leave a name behind him, notto be extinguished but with the whole world; which as it is now toolittle for his praises, so might have been too for his conquests, if theshort line of his human life could have been stretched out to the extentof his immortal designs!'

Cromwell was a bad speaker and a worse writer. Milton wrote hisdespatches for him in elegant and erudite Latin; and the pen of the one, like the sword of the other, was 'sharp and sweet. ' We have not thatunion in modern times of the heroic and literary character which wascommon among the ancients. Julius Caesar and Xenophon recorded their ownacts with equal clearness of style and modesty of temper. The Duke ofWellington (worse off than Cromwell) is obliged to get Mr. Mudford towrite the History of his Life. Sophocles, AEschylus, and Socrates weredistinguished for their military prowess among their contemporaries, though now only remembered for what they did in poetry and philosophy. Cicero and Demosthenes, the two greatest orators of antiquity, appearto have been cowards: nor does Horace seem to give a very favourablepicture of his martial achievements. But in general there was not thatdivision in the labours of the mind and body among the Greeks and Romansthat has been introduced among us either by the progress of civilisationor by a greater slowness and inaptitude of parts. The French, forinstance, appear to unite a number of accomplishments, the literarycharacter and the man of the world, better than we do. Among us, ascholar is almost another name for a pedant or a clown: it is not sowith them. Their philosophers and wits went into the world and mingledin the society of the fair. Of this there needs no other proof than thespirited print of most of the great names in French literature, to whomMoliere is reading a comedy in the presence of the celebrated Ninon del'Enclos. D'Alembert, one of the first mathematicians of his age, was awit, a man of gallantry and letters. With us a learned man is absorbedin himself and some particular study, and minds nothing else. There issomething ascetic and impracticable in his very constitution, and heanswers to the description of the Monk in Spenser--

 From every work he challenged essoin For contemplation's sake. 

Perhaps the superior importance attached to the institutions ofreligion, as well as the more abstracted and visionary nature of itsobjects, has led (as a general result) to a wider separation betweenthought and action in modern times. 

Ambition is of a higher and more heroic strain than avarice. Its objectsare nobler, and the means by which it attains its ends less mechanical. 

 Better be lord of them that riches have, Than riches have myself, and be their servile slave. 

The incentive to ambition is the love of power; the spur to avarice iseither the fear of poverty or a strong desire of self-indulgence. Theamassers of fortunes seem divided into two opposite classes--lean, penurious-looking mortals, or jolly fellows who are determined to getpossession of, because they want to enjoy, the good things of the woothers, in the fulness of their persons and the robustness of theirconstitutions, seem to bespeak the reversion of a landed estate, richacres, fat beeves, a substantial mansion, costly clothing, a chine andcurkey, choice wines, and all other good things consonant to the wantsand full-fed desires of their bodies. Such men charm fortune by thesleekness of their aspects and the goodly rotundity of their honestfaces, as the others scare away poverty by their wan, meagre looks. Thelast starve themselves into riches by care and carking; the firsteat, drink, and sleep their way into the good things of this life. Thegreatest number of _warm_ men in the city are good, jolly follows. Lookat Sir William -----. Callipash and callipee are written in his face: herolls about his unwieldy bulk in a sea of turtle-soup. How many haunchesof venison does he carry on his back! He is larded with jobs andcontracts: he is stuffed and swelled out with layers of bank-notesand invitations to dinner! His face hangs out a flag of defiance tomischance: the roguish twinkle in his eye with which he lures half thecity and beats Alderman ----- hollow, is a smile reflected from heapsof unsunned gold! Nature and Fortune are not so much at variance as todiffer about this fellow. To enjoy the good the Gods provide us is todeserve it. Nature meant him for a Knight, Alderman, and City Member;and Fortune laughed to see the goodly person and prospects of theman!(2) I am not, from certain early prejudices, much to admire theostentatious marks of wealth (there are persons enough to admire themwithout me)--but I confess, there is something in the look of the oldbanking-houses in Lombard Street, the posterns covered with mud, thedoors opening sullenly and silently, the absence of all pretence, thedarkness and the gloom within, the gleaming of lamps in the day-time, Like a faint shadow of uncertain light, that almost realises the poetical conception of the cave of Mammon inSpenser, where dust and cobwebs concealed the roofs and pillars of solidgold, and lifts the mind quite off its ordinary hinges. The accountof the manner in which the founder of Guy's Hospital accumulated hisimmense wealth has always to me something romantic in it, from the sameforce of contrast. He was a little shop-keeper, and out of his savingsbought Bibles and purchased seamen's tickets in Queen Anne's wars, by which he left a fortune of two hundred thousand pounds. The storysuggests the idea of a magician; nor is there anything in the _ArabianNights_ that looks more like a fiction. 

NOTES to ESSAY XI

(1) When Buonaparte left the Chamber of Deputies to go and fight hislast fatal battle, he advised them not to be debating the forms ofConstitutions when the enemy was at their gates. Benjamin Constantthought otherwise. He wanted to play a game at _cat's-cradle_ betweenthe Republicans and Royalists, and lost his match. He did not care, sothat he hampered a more efficient man than himself. 

(2) A thorough fitness for any end implies the means. Where there is awill, there is a way. A real passion, an entire devotion to any object, always succeeds. The strong sympathy with what we wish and imaginerealises it, dissipates all obstacles, and removes all scruples. Thedisappointed lover may complain as much as he pleases. He was himself toblame. He was a half-witted, _wishy-washy_ fellow. His love might be asgreat as he makes it out; but it was not his ruling passion. His fear, his pride, his vanity was greater. Let any one's whole soul be steepedin this passion; let him think and care for nothing else; let nothingdivert, cool, or intimidate him; let the _ideal_ feeling become anactual one and take possession of his whole faculties, looks, andmanner; let the same voluptuous hopes and wishes govern his actions inthe presence of his mistress that haunt his fancy in her absence, and Iwill answer for his success. But I will not answer for the success of 'adish of skimmed milk' in such a case. --I could always get to see a finecollection of pictures myself. The fact is, I was set upon it. Neitherthe surliness of porters nor the impertinence of footmen could keep meback. I had a portrait of Titian in my eye, and nothing could put me outin my determination. If that had not (as it were) been looking on meall the time I was battling my way, I should have been irritated ordisconcerted, and gone away. But my liking to the end conquered myscruples or aversion to the means. I never understood the Scotchcharacter but on these occasions. I would not take 'No' for an answer. If I had wanted a place under government or a writership to India, Icould have got it from the same importunity, and on the same terms. 

ESSAY XII. ON WILL-MAKING

Few things show the human character in a more ridiculous light than thecircumstance of will-making. It is the latest opportunity we have ofexercising the natural perversity of the disposition, and we take careto make a good use of it. We husband it with jealousy, put it off aslong as we can, and then use every precaution that the world shall beno gainer by our deaths. This last act of our lives seldom belies theformer tenor of them for stupidity, caprice, and unmeaning spite. Allthat we seem to think of is to manage matters so (in settling accountswith those who are so unmannerly as to survive us) as to do as littlegood, and to plague and disappoint as many people, as possible. 

Many persons have a superstition on the subject of making their lastwill and testament, and think that when everything is ready signed andsealed, there is nothing further left to delay their departure. I haveheard of an instance of one person who, having a feeling of this kindon his mind, and being teased into making his will by those about him, actually fell ill with pure apprehension, and thought he was going todie in good earnest, but having executed the deed over-night, awoke, tohis great surprise, the next morning, and found himself as well as everhe was. (1)

An elderly gentleman possessed of a good estate and the same idlenotion, and who found himself in a dangerous way, was anxious to do thispiece of justice to those who remained behind him, but when it came tothe point, his heart failed him, and his nervous fancies returned infull force. Even on his death-bed he still held back and was averse tosign what he looked upon as his own death-warrant, and just at the lastgasp, amidst the anxious looks and silent upbraidings of friends andrelatives that surrounded him, he summoned resolution to hold out hisfeeble hand, which was guided by others, to trace his name, and he fellback--a corpse! If there is any pressing reason for it, that is, ifany particular person would be relieved from a state of harassinguncertainty or materially benefited by their making a will, the old andinfirm (who do not like to be put out of their way) generally make thisan excuse to themselves for putting it off to the very last moment, probably till it is too late; or where this is sure to make the greatestnumber of blank faces, contrive to give their friends the slip, withoutsignifying their final determination in their favour. Where someunfortunate individual has been kept long in suspense, who has beenperhaps sought out for that very purpose, and who may be in a greatmeasure dependent on this as a last resource, it is nearly a certaintythat there will be no will to be found; no trace, no sign to discoverwhether the person dying thus intestate ever had any intention of thesort, or why they relinquished it. This is to bespeak the thoughts andimaginations of others for victims after we are dead, as well astheir persons and expectations for hangers-on while we are living. Acelebrated beauty of the middle of the last century, towards its close, sought out a female relative, the friend and companion of her youth, who had lived during the forty years of their separation in ratherstraitened circumstances, and in a situation which admitted of somealleviations. Twice they met after that long lapse of time--once herrelation visited her in the splendour of a rich old family mansion, andonce she crossed the country to become an inmate of the humble dwellingof her early and only remaining friend. What was this for? Was it torevive the image of her youth in the pale and careworn face of herfriend? Or was it to display the decay of her charms and recall herlong-forgotten triumphs to the memory of the only person who could bearwitness to them? Was it to show the proud remains of herself to thosewho remembered or had often heard what she was--her skin like shrivelledalabaster, her emaciated features chiselled by Nature's finest hand, hereyes that, when a smile lighted them up, still shone like diamonds, the vermilion hues that still bloomed among wrinkles? Was it to talkof bone-lace, of the flounces and brocades of the last century, ofrace-balls in the year '62, and of the scores of lovers that had died ather feet, and to set whole counties in a flame again, only with a dreamof faded beauty? Whether it was for this, or whether she meant to leaveher friend anything (as was indeed expected, all things considered, notwithout reason), nobody knows--for she never breathed a syllable on thesubject herself, and died without a will. The accomplished coquetteof twenty, who had pampered hopes only to kill them, who had kindledrapture with a look and extinguished it with a breath, could find nobetter employment at seventy than to revive the fond recollections andraise up the drooping hopes of her kinswoman only to let them fall--torise no more. Such is the delight we have in trifling with andtantalising the feelings of others by the exquisite refinements, thestudied sleights of love or friendship!

Where a property is actually bequeathed, supposing the circumstances ofthe case and the usages of society to leave a practical discretion tothe testator, it is most frequently in such portions as can be of theleast service. Where there is much already, much is given; where much iswanted, little or nothing. Poverty invites a sort of pity, a miserabledole of assistance; necessity, neglect and scorn; wealth attracts andallures to itself more wealth by natural association of ideas or by thatinnate love of inequality and injustice which is the favourite principleof the imagination. Men like to collect money into large heaps in theirlifetime; they like to leave it in large heaps after they are dead. Theygrasp it into their own hands, not to use it for their own good, but tohoard, to lock it up, to make an object, an idol, and a wonder of it. Doyou expect them to distribute it so as to do others good; that they willlike those who come after them better than themselves; that if theywere willing to pinch and starve themselves, they will not deliberatelydefraud their sworn friends and nearest kindred of what would be of theutmost use to them? No, they will thrust their heaps of gold and silverinto the hands of others (as their proxies) to keep for them untouched, still increasing, still of no use to any one, but to pamper pride andavarice, to glitter in the huge, watchful, insatiable eye of fancy, tobe deposited as a new offering at the shrine of Mammon, their God, --thisis with them to put it to its intelligible and proper use; this isfulfilling a sacred, indispensable duty; this cheers them in thesolitude of the grave, and throws a gleam of satisfaction across thestony eye of death. But to think of frittering it down, of sinking itin charity, of throwing it away on the idle claims of humanity, whereit would no longer peer in monumental pomp over their heads, --and that, too, when on the point of death themselves, _in articulo mortis, _ oh!it would be madness, waste, extravagance, impiety!--Thus worldlings feeland argue without knowing it; and while they fancy they are studyingtheir own interest or that of some booby successor, their _alteridem, _ are but the dupes and puppets of a favourite idea, a phantom, aprejudice, that must be kept up somewhere (no matter where), if it stillplays before and haunts their imagination, while they have sense orunderstanding left to cling to their darling follies. 

There was a remarkable instance of this tendency _to the heap, _ thisdesire to cultivate an abstract passion for wealth, in a will of one ofthe Thelussons some time back. This will went to keep the greater partof a large property from the use of the natural heirs and next-of-kinfor a length of time, and to let it accumulate at compound interest insuch a way and so long, that it would at last mount up in value to thepurchase-money of a whole county. The interest accruing from the fundedproperty or the rent of the lands at certain periods was to be employedto purchase other estates, other parks and manors in the neighbourhoodor farther off, so that the prospect of the future demesne that was todevolve at some distant time to the unborn lord of acres swelled andenlarged itself, like a sea, circle without circle, vista beyond vista, till the imagination was staggered and the mind exhausted. Now here wasa scheme for the accumulation of wealth and for laying the foundation offamily aggrandisement purely imaginary, romantic--one might almostsay, disinterested. The vagueness, the magnitude, the remoteness of theobject, the resolute sacrifice of all immediate and gross advantages, clothe it with the privileges of an abstract idea, so that the projecthas the air of a fiction or of a story in a novel. It was an instanceof what might be called posthumous avarice, like the love of posthumousfame. It had little more to do with selfishness than if the testatorhad appropriated the same sums in the same way to build a pyramid, to construct an aqueduct, to endow a hospital, or effect any otherpatriotic or merely fantastic purpose. He wished to heap up a pile ofwealth (millions of acres) in the dim horizon of future years, thatcould be of no use to him or to those with whom he was connected bypositive and personal ties, but as a crotchet of the brain, a gewgaw ofthe fancy. (2) Yet to enable himself to put this scheme in execution, hehad perhaps toiled and watched all his life, denied himself rest, food, pleasure, liberty, society, and persevered with the patience andself-denial of a martyr. I have insisted on this point the more, to showhow much of the imaginary and speculative there is interfused even inthose passions and purposes which have not the good of others for theirobject, and how little reason this honest citizen and builder of castlesin the air would have had to treat those who devoted themselves to thepursuit of fame, to obloquy and persecution for the sake of truth andliberty, or who sacrificed their lives for their country in a justcause, as visionaries and enthusiasts, who did not understand what wasproperly due to their own interest and the securing of the main chance. Man is not the creature of sense and selfishness, even in those pursuitswhich grow out of that origin, so much as of imagination, custom, passion, whim, and humour. 

I have heard of a singular instance of a will made by a person who wasaddicted to a habit of lying. He was so notorious for this propensity(not out of spite or cunning, but as a gratuitous exercise of invention)that from a child no one could ever believe a syllable he uttered. Fromthe want of any dependence to be placed on him, he became the jest andby-word of the school where he was brought up. The last act of hislife did not disgrace him; for, having gone abroad, and falling into adangerous decline, he was advised to return home. He paid all thathe was worth for his passage, went on ship-board, and employed a fewremaining days he had to live in making and executing his will; in whichhe bequeathed large estates in different parts of England, money in thefunds, rich jewels, rings, and all kinds of valuables to his old friendsand acquaintance, who, not knowing how far the force of nature could go, were not for some time convinced that all this fairy wealth had neverhad an existence anywhere but in the idle coinage of his brain, whosewhims and projects were no more!--The extreme keeping in this characteris only to be accounted for by supposing such an original constitutionallevity as made truth entirely indifferent to him, and the seriousimportance attached to it by others an object of perpetual sport andridicule!

The art of will-making chiefly consists in baffling the importunity ofexpectation. I do not so much find fault with this when it is done asa punishment and oblique satire on servility and selfishness. It isin that case _Diamond cut Diamond_--a trial of skill between thelegacy-hunter and the legacy-maker, which shall fool the other. Thecringing toad-eater, the officious tale-bearer, is perhaps well paid foryears of obsequious attendance with a bare mention and a mourning-ring;nor can I think that Gil Blas' library was not quite as much as thecoxcombry of his pretensions deserved. There are some admirable scenesin Ben Jonson's _Volpone, _ showing the humours of a legacy-hunter, andthe different ways of fobbing him off with excuses and assurances of notbeing forgotten. Yet it is hardly right, after all, to encourage thiskind of pitiful, barefaced intercourse without meaning to pay for it, as the coquette has no right to jilt the lovers she has trifled with. Flattery and submission are marketable commodities like any other, havetheir price, and ought scarcely to be obtained under false pretences. Ifwe see through and despise the wretched creature that attempts to imposeon our credulity, we can at any time dispense with his services: if weare soothed by this mockery of respect and friendship, why not pay himlike any other drudge, or as we satisfy the actor who performs a partin a play by our particular desire? But often these premeditateddisappointments are as unjust as they are cruel, and are marked withcircumstances of indignity, in proportion to the worth of the object. The suspecting, the taking it for granted that your name is down in thewill, is sufficient provocation to have it struck out: the hinting atan obligation, the consciousness of it on the part of the testator, will make him determined to avoid the formal acknowledgment of it at anyexpense. The disinheriting of relations is mostly for venial offences, not for base actions: we punish out of pique, to revenge some case inwhich we been disappointed of our wills, some act of disobedienceto what had no reasonable ground to go upon; and we are obstinate inadhering to our resolution, as it was sudden and rash, and doubly benton asserting our authority in what we have least right to interfere in. It is the wound inflicted upon our self-love, not the stain uponthe character of the thoughtless offender, that calls for condignpunishment. Crimes, vices may go unchecked or unnoticed; but it is thelaughing at our weaknesses, or thwarting our humours, that is neverto be forgotten. It is not the errors of others, but our ownmiscalculations, on which we wreak our lasting vengeance. It isourselves that we cannot forgive. In the will of Nicholas Gimcrack thevirtuoso, recorded in the _Tatler, _ we learn, among other items, thathis eldest son is cut off with a single cockleshell for his undutifulbehaviour in laughing at his little sister whom his father keptpreserved in spirits of wine. Another of his relations has a collectionof grasshoppers bequeathed him, as in the testator's opinion an adequatereward and acknowledgment due to his merit. The whole will of the saidNicholas Gimcrack, Esq. , is a curious document and exact picture ofthe mind of the worthy virtuoso defunct, where his various follies, littlenesses, and quaint humours are set forth as orderly and distinctas his butterflies' wings and cockle-shells and skeletons of fleas inglass cases. (3) We often successfully try, in this way, to give thefinishing stroke to our pictures, hang up our weaknesses in perpetuity, and embalm our mistakes in the memories of others. 

 Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries, Even in our ashes live their wonted fires. 

I shall not speak here of unwarrantable commands imposed upon survivors, by which they were to carry into effect the sullen and revengefulpurposes of unprincipled men, after they had breathed their last; but wemeet with continual examples of the desire to keep up the farce (if notthe tragedy) of life after we, the performers in it, have quitted thestage, and to have our parts rehearsed by proxy. We thus make a capriceimmortal, a peculiarity proverbial. Hence we see the number of legaciesand fortunes left on condition that the legatee shall take the name andstyle of the testator, by which device we provide for the continuanceof the sounds that formed our names, and endow them with an estate, thatthey may be repeated with proper respect. In the _Memoirs of an Heiress_all the difficulties of the plot turn on the necessity imposed by aclause in her uncle's will that her future husband should take thefamily name of Beverley. Poor Cecilia! What delicate perplexities shewas thrown into by this improvident provision; and with what minute, endless, intricate distresses has the fair authoress been enabled toharrow up the reader on this account! There was a Sir Thomas Dyot in thereign of Charles II. Who left the whole range of property which formsDyot Street, in St. Giles's, and the neighbourhood, on the sole andexpress condition that it should be appropriated entirely to that sortof buildings, and to the reception of that sort of population, whichstill keeps undisputed, undivided possession of it. The name was changedthe other day to George Street as a more genteel appellation, which, Ishould think, is an indirect forfeiture of the estate. This SirThomas Dyot I should be disposed to put upon the list of old Englishworthies--as humane, liberal, and no flincher from what he took inhis head. He was no common-place man in his line. He was the bestcommentator on that old-fashioned text--'The foxes have holes, and thebirds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to layhis head. ' We find some that are curious in the mode in which theyshall be buried, and others in the place. Lord Camelford had hisremains buried under an ash tree that grew on one of the mountains inSwitzerland; and Sir Francis Bourgeois had a little mausoleum built forhim in the college at Dulwich, where he once spent a pleasant, jovialday with the masters and wardens. (4) It is, no doubt, proper to attend, except for strong reasons to the contrary, to these sort of requests;for by breaking faith with the dead we loosen the confidence of theliving. Besides, there is a stronger argument: we sympathise with thedead as well as with the living, and are bound to them by the mostsacred of all ties, our own involuntary follow-feeling with others!

Thieves, as a last donation, leave advice to their friends, physicians anostrum, authors a manuscript work, rakes a confession of their faithin the virtue of the sex--all, the last drivellings of their egotism andimpertinence. One might suppose that if anything could, the approachand contemplation of death might bring men to a sense of reason andself-knowledge. On the contrary, it seems only to deprive them of thelittle wit they had, and to make them even more the sport of theirwilfulness and shortsightedness. Some men think that because they aregoing to be hanged, they are fully authorised to declare a future stateof rewards and punishments. All either indulge their caprices or clingto their prejudices. They make a desperate attempt to escape fromreflection by taking hold of any whim or fancy that crosses their minds, or by throwing themselves implicitly on old habits and attachments. 

An old man is twice a child: the dying man becomes the property of hisfamily. He has no choice left, and his voluntary power is merged inold saws and prescriptive usages. The property we have derived from ourkindred reverts tacitly to them; and not to let it take its course is asort of violence done to nature as well as custom. The idea of property, of something in common, does not mix cordially with friendship, but isinseparable from near relationship. We owe a return in kind, where wefeel no obligation for a favour; and consign our possessions to ournext-of-kin as mechanically as we lean our heads on the pillow, and goout of the world in the same state of stupid amazement that we came intoit!. .. _Caetera desunt. _

NOTES to ESSAY XII

(1) A poor woman at Plymouth who did not like the formality, or couldnot afford the expense of a will, thought to leave what little propertyshe had in wearing apparel and household moveables to her friends andrelations, _viva voce_, and before Death stopped her breath. She gaveand willed away (of her proper authority) her chair and table to one, her bed to another, an old cloak to a third, a night-cap and petticoatto a fourth, and so on. The old crones sat weeping round, and soonafter carried off all they could lay their hands upon, and left theirbenefactress to her fate. They were no sooner gone than she unexpectedlyrecovered, and sent to have her things back again; but not one of themcould she get, and she was left without a rag to her back, or a friendto condole with her. 

(2) The law of primogeniture has its origin in the principle herestated, the desire of perpetuating some one palpable and prominent proofof wealth and power. 

(3) It is as follows:

'The Will of a Virtuoso. 

I, Nicholas Gimcrack, being in sound Health of Mind, but in greatWeakness of Body, do by this my Last Will and Testament bequeath myworldly Goods and Chattels in Manner following:--

Imprimis, To my dear Wife, One Box of Butterflies, One Drawer of Shells, A Female Skeleton, A Dried Cockatrice. 

Item, To my Daughter Elizabeth, My Receipt for preserving deadCaterpillars, As also my Preparations of Winter May-Dew, and EmbrioPickle. 

Item, to my little Daughter Fanny, Three Crocodiles' Eggs. 

And upon the Birth of her first Child, if she marries with her Mother'sConsent, The Nest of a Humming Bird. 

Item, To my eldest Brother, as an acknowledgment for the Lands hehas vested in my Son Charles, I bequeath My last Year's Collection ofGrasshoppers. 

Item, To his Daughter Susanna, being his only Child, I bequeath myEnglish Weeds pasted on Royal Paper, With my large Folio of IndianCabbage. 

Having fully provided for my Nephew Isaac, by making over to him someyears since A horned Searaboeus, The Skin of a Rattle-Snake, and TheMummy of an Egyptian King, I make no further Provision for him in thismy Will. 

I My eldest Son John having spoken disrespectfully of his little Sister, whom I keep by me in Spirits of Wine, and in many other Instancesbehaved himself undutifully towards me, I do disinherit, and wholly cutoff from any Part of this my Personal Estate, by giving him a singleCockle-Shell. 

To my Second Son Charles, I give and bequeath all my Flowers, Plants, Minerals, Mosses, Shells, Pebbles, Fossils, Beetles, Butterflies, Caterpillars, Grasshoppers, and Vermin, not above specified: As alsomy Monsters, both wet and dry, making the said Charles whole and soleExecutor of this my Last Will and Testament, he paying or causing tobe paid the aforesaid Legacies within the Space of Six Months aftermy Decease. And I do hereby revoke all other Wills whatsoever by meformerly made. '--_Tatler, _ vol. Iv. No. 216. 

(4) Kellerman lately left his heart to be buried in the field of Valmy, where the first great battle was fought in the year 1792, in which theAllies were repulsed. Oh! might that heart prove the root from which thetree of Liberty may spring up and flourish once more, as the basil treegrew and grew from the cherished head of Isabella's lover!

ESSAY XIII. ON CERTAIN INCONSISTENCIES IN SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'SDISCOURSES

The two chief points which Sir Joshua aims at in his _Discourses_ are toshow that excellence in the Fine Arts is the result of pains and studyrather than of genius, and that all beauty, grace, and grandeur are tobe found, not in actual nature, but in an idea existing in the mind. On both these points he appears to have fallen into considerableinconsistencies or very great latitude of expression, so as to make itdifficult to know what conclusion to draw from his various reasonings. I shall attempt little more in this Essay than to bring together severalpassages that, from their contradictory import, seem to imply someradical defect in Sir Joshua's theory, and a doubt as to the possibilityof placing an implicit reliance on his authority. 

To begin with the first of these subjects, the question of originalgenius. In the Second Discourse, 'On the Method of Study, ' Sir Joshuaobserves towards the end:

'There is one precept, however, in which I shall only be opposed by thevain, the ignorant, and the idle. I am not afraid that I shall repeat ittoo often. You must have no dependence on your own genius. If you havegreat talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderateabilities, industry will supply their deficiency. Nothing is denied towell-directed labour; nothing is to be obtained without it. Not to enterinto metaphysical discussions on the nature or essence of genius, Iwill venture to assert that assiduity unabated by difficulty, and adisposition eagerly directed to the object of its pursuit, willproduce effects similar to those which some call the result of _naturalpowers. '_

The only tendency of the maxim here laid down seems to be to lurethose students on with the hopes of excellence who have no chance ofsucceeding, and to deter those who have from relying on the only propand source of real excellence--the strong bent and impulse of theirnatural powers. Industry alone can only produce mediocrity; butmediocrity in art is not worth the trouble of industry. Genius, greatnatural powers, will give industry and ardour in the pursuit of theirproper object, but not if you divert them from that object intothe trammels of common-place mechanical labour. By this method youneutralise all distinction of character--make a pedant of the blockheadand a drudge of the man of genius. What, for instance, would have beenthe effect of persuading Hogarth or Rembrandt to place no dependence ontheir own genius, and to apply themselves to the general study of thedifferent branches of the art and of every sort of excellence, with aconfidence of success proportioned to their misguided efforts, but todestroy both those great artists? 'You take my house when you do takethe prop that doth sustain my house!' You undermine the superstructureof art when you strike at its main pillar and support, confidence andfaith in nature. We might as well advise a person who had discovered asilver or a lead mine on his estate to close it up, or the common farmerto plough up every acre he rents in the hope of discovering hiddentreasure, as advise the man of original genius to neglect his particularvein for the study of rules and the imitation of others, or try topersuade the man of no strong natural powers that he can supply theirdeficiency by laborious application. Sir Joshua soon after, in the ThirdDiscourse, alluding to the terms, _inspiration, genius, gusto, _ appliedby critics and orators to painting, proceeds:

'Such is the warmth with which both the Ancients and Moderns speak ofthis divine principle of the art; but, as I have formerly observed, enthusiastic admiration seldom promotes knowledge. Though a studentby such praise may have his attention roused and a desire excited ofrunning in this great career, yet it is possible that what has been saidto excite may only serve to deter him. He examines his own mind, andperceives there nothing of that divine inspiration with which, he istold, so many others have been favoured. He never travelled to heavento gather new ideas; and he finds himself possessed of no otherqualifications than what mere common observation and a plainunderstanding can confer. Thus he becomes gloomy amidst the splendour offigurative declamation, and thinks it hopeless to pursue an object whichhe supposes out of the reach of human industry. '

Yet presently after he adds:

'It is not easy to define in what this great style consists; nor todescribe by words the proper means of acquiring it, _if the mind of thestudent should be at all capable of such an acquisition. _ Could we teachtaste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius. '

Here, then, Sir Joshua admits that it is a question whether the studentis likely _to be at all capable of such an acquisition_ as the higherexcellencies of art, though he had said in the passage just quoted abovethat it is within the reach of constant assiduity and of a dispositioneagerly directed to the object of its pursuit to effect all that isusually considered as the result of natural powers. Is the theorywhich our author means to inculcate a mere delusion, a mere arbitraryassumption? At one moment Sir Joshua attributes the hopelessness of thestudent to attain perfection to the discouraging influence of certainfigurative and overstrained expressions, and in the next doubts hiscapacity for such an acquisition under any circumstances. Would he havehim hope against hope, then? If he 'examines his own mind and findsnothing there of that divine inspiration with which he is told so manyothers have been favoured, ' but which he has never felt himself; if'he finds himself possessed of no other qualifications' for the highestefforts of genius and imagination 'than what mere common observation anda plain understanding can confer, ' he may as well desist at once from'ascending the brightest heaven of invention':--if the very idea of thedivinity of art deters instead of animating him, if the enthusiasmwith which others speak of it damps the flame in his own breast, he hadbetter not enter into a competition where he wants the first principleof success, the daring to aspire and the hope to excel. He may beassured he is not the man. Sir Joshua himself was not struck at firstby the sight of the masterpieces of the great style of art, and he seemsunconsciously to have adopted this theory to show that he might stillhave succeeded in it but for want of due application. His hypothesisgoes to this--to make the common run of his readers fancy they can doall that can be done by genius, and to make the mail of genius believehe can only do what is to be done by mechanical rules and systematicindustry. This is not a very feasible scheme; nor is Sir Joshuasufficiently clear and explicit in his reasoning in support of it. 

In speaking of Carlo Maratti, he confesses the inefficiency of thisdoctrine in a very remarkable manner:--

'Carlo Maratti succeeded better than those I have first named, and Ithink owes his superiority to the extension of his views: besides hismaster Andrea Sacchi, he imitated Raffaelle, Guido, and the Caraccis. It is true, there is nothing very captivating in Carlo Maratti; but thisproceeded from a want which cannot be completely supplied; that is, wantof strength of parts. _In this certainly men are not equal;_ and a mancan bring home wares only in proportion with the capital with which hegoes to market. Carlo, by diligence, made the most of what he had;but there was undoubtedly a heaviness about him, which extended itselfuniformly to his invention, expression, his drawing, colouring, and thegeneral effect of his pictures. The truth is, he never equalled any ofhis patterns in any one thing, and he added little of his own. '

Here, then, Reynolds, we see, fairly gives up the argument. Carlo, afterall, was a heavy hand; nor could all his diligence and his makingthe most of what he had make up for the want of 'natural powers. ' SirJoshua's good sense pointed out to him the truth in the individualinstance, though he might be led astray by a vague general theory. Such, however, is the effect of a false principle that there is an evidentbias in the artist's mind to make genius lean upon others for support, instead of trusting to itself and developing its own incommunicableresources. So in treating in the Twelfth Discourse of the way in whichgreat artists are formed, Sir Joshua reverts very nearly to his firstposition:

'The daily food and nourishment of the mind of an Artist is found in thegreat works of his predecessors. There is no other way for him to becomegreat himself. _Serpens, nigi serpentem comederit, non fit draco. _Raffaelle, as appears from what has been said, had carefully studied theworks of Masaccio, and indeed there was no other, if we except MichaelAngelo (whom he likewise imitated), (1) so worthy of his attention; andthough his manner was dry and hard, his compositions formal, and notenough diversified, according to the custom of Painters in that earlyperiod, yet his works possess that grandeur and simplicity whichaccompany, and even sometimes proceed from, regularity and hardnessof manner. We must consider the barbarous state of the arts before histime, when skill in drawing was so little understood, that the bestof the painters could not even foreshorten the foot, but every figureappeared to stand upon his toes, and what served for drapery had, fromthe hardness and smallness of the folds, too much the appearance ofcords clinging round the body. He first introduced large drapery, flowing in an easy and natural manner; indeed, he appears to be thefirst who discovered the path that leads to every excellence to whichthe art afterwards arrived, and may therefore be justly considered asone of the Great Fathers of Modern Art. 

'Though I have been led on to a longer digression respecting thisgreat painter than I intended, yet I cannot avoid mentioning anotherexcellence which he possessed in a very eminent degree: he was as muchdistinguished among his contemporaries for his diligence and industry_as he was for the natural faculties of his mind. _ We are told thathis whole attention was absorbed in the pursuit of his art, and that heacquired the name of Masaccio from his total disregard to his dress, his person, and all the common concerns of life. He is indeed _a signalinstance of what well-directed diligence_ will do in a short time: helived but twenty-seven years, yet in that short space carried the art sofar beyond what it had before reached, that he appears to stand aloneas a model for his successors. Vasari gives a long catalogue of paintersand sculptors who formed their taste and learned their art by studyinghis works; among those, he names Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino, Raffaelle, Bartholomeo, Andrea del Sarto, Il Rosso, andPierino del Vaga. '

Sir Joshua here again halts between two opinions. He tells us the namesof the painters who formed themselves upon Masaccio's style: he does nottell us on whom he formed himself. At one time the natural faculties ofhis mind were as remarkable as his industry; at another he was only asignal instance of what well-directed diligence will do in a short tthat leads to every excellence to which the Art afterwards arrived, 'though he is introduced in an argument to show that 'the daily food andnourishment of the mind of the Artist must be found in the works ofhis predecessors. ' There is something surely very wavering andunsatisfactory in all this. 

Sir Joshua, in another part of his work, endeavours to reconcile andprop up these contradictions by a paradoxical sophism which I thinkturns upon himself. He says: 'I am on the contrary persuaded, that byimitation only' (by which he has just explained himself to mean thestudy of other masters), 'variety, and even originality of invention isproduced. I will go further: even genius, at least, what is so called, is the child of imitation. But as this appears to be contrary to thegeneral opinion, I must explain my position before I enforce it. 

'Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellencies which areout of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts canteach, and which no industry can acquire. 

'This opinion of the impossibility of acquiring those beauties whichstamp the work with the character of genius, supposes that it issomething more fixed than in reality it is, and that we always do andever did agree in opinion with respect to what should be considered asthe characteristic of genius. But the truth is, that the _degree_ ofexcellence which proclaims _Genius_ is different in different times anddifferent places; and what shows it to be so is, that mankind have oftenchanged their opinion upon this matter. 

'When the Arts were in their infancy, the power of merely drawing thelikeness of any object was considered as one of its greatest efforts. The common people, ignorant of the principles of art, talk the samelanguage even to this day. But when it was found that every man couldbe taught to do this, and a great deal more, merely by the observance ofcertain precepts, the name of Genius then shifted its application, andwas given only to him who added the peculiar character of the object herepresented--to him who had invention, expression, grace, or dignity;in short, those qualities or excellencies, the power of producing whichcould not _then_ be taught by any known and promulgated rules. 

'We are very sure that the beauty of form, the expression of thepassions, the art of composition, even the power of giving a generalair of grandeur to a work, is at present very much under the dominionof rules. These excellencies were heretofore considered merely as theeffects of genius; and justly, if genius is not taken for inspiration, but as the effect of close observation and experience. '

Sir Joshua began with undertaking to show that 'genius was the childof the imitation of others, and now it turns out not to be inspirationindeed, but the effect of close observation and experience. ' Thewhole drift of this argument appears to be contrary to what the writerintended, for the obvious inference is that the essence of geniusconsists entirely, both in kind and degree, in the single circumstanceof originality. The very same things are or are not genius, according asthey proceed from invention or from mere imitation. In so far as athing is original, as it has never been done before, it acquires and itdeserves the appellation of genius: in so far as it is not original, and is borrowed from others or taught by rule, it is not, neither is itcalled, genius. This does not make much for the supposition that geniusis a traditional and second-hand quality. Because, for example, a manwithout much genius can copy a picture of Michael Angelo's, does itfollow that there was no genius in the original design, or that theinventor and copyist are equal? If indeed, as Sir Joshua labours toprove, mere imitation of existing models and attention to establishedrules could produce results exactly similar to those of natural powers, if the progress of art as a learned profession were a gradual butcontinual accumulation of individual excellence, instead of being asudden and almost miraculous start to the highest beauty and grandeurnearly at first, and a regular declension to mediocrity ever after, then indeed the distinction between genius and imitation would be littleworth contending for; the causes might be different, the effects wouldbe the same, or rather skill to avail ourselves of external advantageswould be of more importance and efficacy than the most powerful internalresources. But as the case stands, all the great works of art have beenthe offspring of individual genius, either projecting itself before thegeneral advances of society or striking out a separate path for itself;all the rest is but labour in vain. For every purpose of emulationor instruction we go back to the original inventors, not to those whoimitated, and, as it is falsely pretended, improved upon their models:or if those who followed have at any time attained as high a rankor surpassed their predecessors, it was not from borrowing theirexcellencies, but by unfolding new and exquisite powers of their own, of which the moving principle lay in the individual mind, and not inthe stimulus afforded by previous example and general knowledge. Greatfaults, it is true, may be avoided, but great excellencies can neverbe attained in this way. If Sir Joshua's hypothesis of progressiverefinement in art was anything more than a verbal fallacy, why does hego back to Michael Angelo as the God of his idolatry? Why does he findfault with Carlo Maratti for being heavy? Or why does he declare asexplicitly as truly, that 'the judgment, after it has been longpassive, by degrees loses its power of becoming active when exertionis necessary'?--Once more to point out the fluctuation in Sir Joshua'snotions on this subject of the advantages of natural genius andartificial study, he says, when recommending the proper objects ofambition to the young artist:

'My advice in a word is this: keep your principal attention fixed uponthe higher excellencies. If you compass them, and compass nothing more, you are still in the first class. We may regret the innumerable beautieswhich you may want; you may be very imperfect, but still you are animperfect artist of the highest order. '

This is the Fifth Discourse. In the Seventh our artist seems to waver, and flings a doubt on his former decision, whereby 'it loses somecolour. '

'Indeed perfection in an inferior style may be reasonably preferred tomediocrity in the highest walks of art. A landscape of Claude Lorraine_may_(2) be preferred to a history by Luca Giordano: but hence appearsthe necessity of the connoisseur's knowing in what consists theexcellency of each class, in order to judge how near it approaches toperfection. '

As he advances, however, he grows bolder, and altogether discards histheory of judging of the artist by the class to which he belongs--'Butwe have the sanction of all mankind, ' he says, 'in preferring genius ina lower rank of art to feebleness and insipidity in the highest. ' Thisis in speaking of Gainsborough. The whole passage is excellent, and, Ishould think, conclusive against the general and factitious style of arton which he insists so much at other times. 

'On this ground, however unsafe, I will venture to prophesy, that two ofthe last distinguished painters of that country, I mean Pompeio Battoniand Rafaelle Mengs, however great their names may at present sound inour ears, (3) will very soon fall into the rank of Imperiale, SebastianConcha, Placido Constanza, Musaccio, and the rest of their immediatepredecessors; whose names, though equally renowned in their lifetime, are now fallen into what is little short of total oblivion. I do not saythat those painters were not superior to the artist I allude to, (4) andwhose loss we lament, in a certain routine of practice, which, to theeyes of common observers, has the air of a learned composition, andbears a sort of superficial resemblance to the manner of the great menwho went before them. I know this perfectly well; but I know likewise, that a man looking for real and lasting reputation must unlearn much ofthe common-place method so observable in the works of the artists whomI have named. For my own part, I confess, I take more interest in andam more captivated with the powerful impression of nature, whichGainsborough exhibited in his portraits and in his landscapes, andthe interesting simplicity and elegance of his little ordinarybeggar-children, than with any of the works of that school, since thetime of Andrea Sacchi, or perhaps we may say Carlo Maratti: two painterswho may truly be said to be ULTIMI ROMANORUM. 

'I am well aware how much I lay myself open to the censure and ridiculeof the academical professors of other nations in preferring the humbleattempts of Gainsborough to the works of those regular graduates inthe great historical style. _But we have the sanction of all mankind inpreferring genius in a lower rank of art to feebleness and insipidity inthe highest. '_

Yet this excellent artist and critic had said but a few pages beforewhen working upon his theory--'For this reason I shall beg leave to laybefore you a few thoughts on the subject; to throw out some hints thatmay lead your minds to an opinion (which I take to be the true one) thatPainting is not only not to be considered as an imitation operating bydeception, but that it is, and ought to be, in many points of view andstrictly speaking, no imitation at all of external nature. Perhaps itought to be as far removed from the vulgar idea of imitation as therefined, civilised state in which we live is removed from a gross stateof nature; and those who have not cultivated their imaginations, whichthe majority of mankind certainly have not, may be said, in regard toarts, to continue in this state of nature. Such men will always preferimitation' (the imitation of nature) 'to that excellence which isaddressed to another faculty that they do not possess; but these arenot the persons to whom a painter is to look, any more than a judgeof morals and manners ought to refer controverted points upon thosesubjects to the opinions of people taken from the banks of the Ohio orfrom New Holland. '

In opposition to the sentiment here expressed that 'Painting is andought to be, in many points of view and strictly speaking, no imitationat all of external nature, ' it is emphatically said in another place:'Nature is and must be the fountain which alone is inexhaustible, andfrom which all excellences must originally flow. '

I cannot undertake to reconcile so many contradictions, nor do I thinkit an easy task for the student to derive any simple or intelligibleclue from these conflicting authorities and broken hints in theprosecution of his art. Sir Joshua appears to have imbibed from others(Burke or Johnson) a spurious metaphysical notion that art was to bepreferred to nature, and learning to genius, with which his own goodsense and practical observation were continually at war, but from whichhe only emancipates himself for a moment to relapse into the same erroragain shortly after. (5) The conclusion of the Twelfth Discourse is, Ithink, however, a triumphant and unanswerable denunciation of his ownfavourite paradox on the objects and study of art. 

'Those artists' (he says with a strain of eloquent truth) 'who havequitted the service of nature (whose service, when well understood, isperfect freedom) and have put themselves under the direction of I knownot what capricious fantastical mistress, who fascinates and overpowerstheir whole mind, and from whose dominion there are no hopes of theirbeing ever reclaimed (since they appear perfectly satisfied, and notat all conscious of their forlorn situation), like the transformedfollowers of Comus, Not once perceive their foul disfigurement; But boast themselves more comely than before. 

'Methinks such men who have found out so short a path have no reason tocomplain of the shortness of life and the extent of art; since lifeis so much longer than is wanted for their improvement, or is indeednecessary for the accomplishment of their idea of perfection. (6) Onthe contrary, he who recurs to nature, at every recurrence renews hisstrength. The rules of art he is never likely to forget; they are fewand simple: but Nature is refined, subtle, and infinitely various, beyond the power and retention of memory; it is necessary therefore tohave continual recourse to her. In this intercourse there is no end ofhis improvement: the longer he lives, the nearer he approaches to thetrue and perfect idea of Art. '

NOTES to ESSAY XIII

(1) How careful is Sir Joshua, even in a parenthesis, to insinuate theobligations of this great genius to others, as if he would have beennothing without them. 

(2) If Sir Joshua had an offer to exchange a Luca Giordano in hiscollection for a Claude Lorraine, he would not have hesitated long aboutthe preference. 

(3) Written in 1788. 

(4) Gainsborough. 

(5) Sir Joshua himself wanted academic skill and patience In the detailsof his profession. From these defects he seems to have been alternatelyrepelled by each theory and style of art, the simply natural andelaborately scientific, as it came before him; and in his impatience ofeach, to have been betrayed into a tissue of inconsistencies somewhatdifficult to unravel. 

(6) He had been before speaking of Boucher, Director of the FrenchAcademy, who told him that 'when he was young, studying his art, hefound it necessary to use models, but that he had left them off for manyyears. '

ESSAY XIV. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

The first inquiry which runs through Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discoursesis whether the student ought to look at nature with his own eyes orwith the eyes of others, and on the whole, he apparently inclines tothe latter. The second question is what is to be understood bynature; whether it is a general and abstract idea, or an aggregate ofparticulars; and he strenuously maintains the former of these positions. Yet it is not easy always to determine how far or with what preciselimitations he does so. 

The first germ of his speculations on this subject is to be found in twopapers in the _Idler. _ In the last paragraph of the second of these, hesays:

'If it has been proved that the painter, by attending to the invariableand general ideas of nature, produces beauty, he must, by regardingminute particularities and accidental discrimination, deviate from theuniversal rule, and pollute his canvas with deformity. '

In answer to this, I would say that deformity is not the being varied inthe particulars, in which all things differ (for on this principle allnature, which is made up of individuals, would be a heap of deformity), but in violating general rules, in which they all or almost all agree. Thus there are no two noses in the world exactly alike, or without agreat variety of subordinate parts, which may still be handsome, but aface without any nose at all, or a nose (like that of a mask) withoutany particularity in the details, would be a great deformity in artor nature. Sir Joshua seems to have been led into his notions on thissubject either by an ambiguity of terms, or by taking only one view ofnature. He supposes grandeur, or the general effect of the whole, toconsist in leaving out the particular details, because these detailsare sometimes found without any grandeur of effect, and he thereforeconceives the two things to be irreconcilable and the alternatives ofeach other. This is very imperfect reasoning. If the mere leaving outthe detail constituted grandeur, any one could do this: the greatestdauber would at that rate be the greatest artist. A house or signpainter might instantly enter the lists with Michael Angelo, and mightlook down on the little, dry, hard manner of Raphael. But grandeurdepends on a distinct principle of its own, not on a negation of theparts; and as it does not arise from their omission, so neither is itincompatible with their insertion or the highest finishing. In fact, anartist may give the minute particulars of any object one by one and withthe utmost care, and totally neglect the proportions, arrangement, and general masses, on which the effect of the whole more immediatelydepends; or he may give the latter, viz. The proportions and arrangementof the larger parts and the general masses of light and shade, and leaveall the minuter parts of which those parts are composed a mere blotch, one general smear, like the first crude and hasty getting in of thegroundwork of a picture: he may do either of these, or he may combineboth, that is, finish the parts, but put them in their right places, andkeep them in due subordination to the general effect and massing of thewhole. If the exclusion of the parts were necessary to the grandeur ofthe whole composition, if the more entire this exclusion, if themore like a _tabula rasa, _ a vague, undefined, shadowy and abstractedrepresentation the picture was, the greater the grandeur, there could beno danger of pushing this principle too far, and going the full lengthof Sir Joshua's theory without any restrictions or mental reservations. But neither of these suppositions is true. The greatest grandeur maycoexist with the most perfect, nay with a microscopic accuracy ofdetail, as we see it does often in nature: the greatest looseness andslovenliness of execution may be displayed without any grandeur atall either in the outline or distribution of the masses of colour. Toexplain more particularly what I mean. I have seen and copied portraitsby Titian, in which the eyebrows were marked with a number of smallstrokes, like hairlines (indeed, the hairs of which they were composedwere in a great measure given)--but did this destroy the grandeur ofexpression, the truth of outline, arising from the arrangement of thesehair-lines in a given form? The grandeur, the character, the expressionremained, for the general form or arched and expanded outline remained, just as much as if it had been daubed in with a blacking-brush: theintroduction of the internal parts and texture only added delicacy andtruth to the general and striking effect of the whole. Surely a numberof small dots or lines may be arranged into the form of a square ora circle indiscriminately; the square or circle, that is, the largerfigure, remains the same, whether the line of which it consists isbroken or continuous; as we may see in prints where the outlines, features, and masses remain the same in all the varieties of mezzotinto, dotted and lined engraving. If Titian in marking the appearance of thehairs had deranged the general shape and contour of the eyebrows, hewould have destroyed the look of nature; but as he did not, but keptboth in view, he proportionably improved his copy of it. So, in whatregards the masses of light and shade, the variety, the delicatetransparency and broken transitions of the tints is not inconsistentwith the greatest breadth or boldest contrasts. If the light, forinstance, is thrown strongly on one side of a face, and the otheris cast into deep shade, let the individual and various parts of thesurface be finished with the most scrupulous exactness both in thedrawing and in the colours, provided nature is not exceeded, this willnot nor cannot destroy the force and harmony of the composition. Oneside of the face will still have that great and leading distinction ofbeing seen in shadow, and the other of being seen in the light, let thesubordinate differences be as many and as precise as they will. Supposea panther is painted in the sun: will it be necessary to leave out thespots to produce breadth and the great style, or will not this be donemore effectually by painting the spots of one side of his shaggy coat asthey are seen in the light, and those of the other as they really appearin natural shadow? The two masses are thus preserved completely, andno offence is done to truth and nature. Otherwise we resolve thedistribution of light and shade into _local colouring. _ The masses, thegrandeur exist equally in external nature with the local differences ofdifferent colours. Yet Sir Joshua seems to argue that the grandeur, theeffect of the whole object, is confined to the general idea in the mind, and that all the littleness and individuality is in nature. This isan essentially false view of the subject. This grandeur, this generaleffect, is indeed always combined with the details, or what ourtheoretical reasoner would designate as _littleness_ in nature: and soit ought to be in art, as far as art can follow nature with prudence andprofit. What is the fault of Denner's style?--It is, that he does _not_give this combination of properties: that he gives only one view ofnature; that he abstracts the details, the finishing, the curiosities ofnatural appearances from the general result, truth, and character of thewhole, and in finishing every part with elaborate care, totally losessight of the more important and striking appearance of the object as itpresents itself to us in nature. He gives every part of a face; but theshape, the expression, the light and shade of the whole is wrong, andas far as can be from what is natural. He gives an infinite varietyof tints of the human face, nor are they subjected to any principle oflight and shade. He is different from Rembrandt or Titian. The Englishschools, formed on Sir Joshua's theory, give neither the finishing ofthe parts nor the effect of the whole, but an inexplicable dumb masswithout distinction or meaning. They do not do as Denner did, and thinkthat not to do as he did is to do as Titian and Rembrandt did; I donot know whether they would take it as a compliment to be supposedto imitate nature. Some few artists, it must be said, have 'oflate reformed this indifferently among us! Oh! let them reform italtogether!' I have no doubt they would if they could; but I havesome doubts whether they can or not. --Before I proceed to consider thequestion of beauty and grandeur as it relates to the selection of form, I will quote a few passages from Sir Joshua with reference to what hasbeen said on the imitation of particular objects. In the Third Discoursehe observes: 'I will now add that nature herself is not to be tooclosely copied. .. . A mere copier of nature _can never produce anythinggreat; can never raise and enlarge the conceptions, or warm the heart ofthe spectator. _ The wish of the genuine painter must be more extensive:instead of endeavouring to amuse mankind with the minute neatness ofhis imitations, he must endeavour to improve them by the grandeur of hisideas; instead of seeking praise by deceiving the superficial sense ofthe spectator, he must strive for fame by captivating the imagination. '

From this passage it would surely seem that there was nothing in naturebut minute neatness and superficial effect: nothing great in _her_style, for an imitator of it can produce nothing great; nothing 'toenlarge the conceptions or warm the heart of the spectator. '

 What word hath passed thy lips, Adam severe!

All that is truly grand or excellent is a figment of the imagination, avapid creation out of nothing, a pure effect of overlooking and scorningthe minute neatness of natural objects. This will not do. Again, SirJoshua lays it down without any qualification that--

'The whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists in being able to getabove all singular forms, local customs, peculiarities, and _details_ ofevery kind. '

Yet we find him acknowledging a different opinion. 

'I am very ready to allow' (he says, in speaking of history-painting)'that _some_ circumstances of minuteness and particularity _frequently_tend to give an air of truth to a piece, and _to interest the spectatorin an extraordinary manner. _ Such circumstances therefore cannot whollybe rejected; but if there be anything in the Art which requirespeculiar nicety of discernment, it is the disposition of these minute, circumstantial parts, which, according to the judgment employed in thechoice, become so useful to truth or so injurious to grandeur. '

That's true; but the sweeping clause against 'all particularities anddetails of every kind' is clearly got rid of. The undecided state ofSir Joshua's feelings on this subject of the incompatibility betweenthe whole and the details is strikingly manifested in two short passageswhich follow each other in the space of two pages. Speaking of somepictures of Paul Veronese and Rubens as distinguished by the dexterityand the unity of style displayed in them, he adds:

'It is by this, and this alone, that the mechanical power is ennobled, and raised much above its natural rank. And it appears to me that withpropriety it acquires this character, as an instance of that superioritywith which mind predominates over matter, by contracting into one wholewhat nature has made multifarious. '

This would imply that the principle of unity and integrity is onlyin the mind, and that nature is a heap of disjointed, disconnectedparticulars, a chaos of points and atoms. In the very next page thefollowing sentence occurs:

'As painting is an art, they' (the ignorant) 'think they ought to bepleased in proportion as they see that art ostentatiously displayed;they will from this supposition prefer neatness, high finishing, andgaudy corlouring, to the truth, simplicity, and unity of nature. '

Before, neatness and high finishing were supposed to belong exclusivelyto the littleness of nature, but here truth, simplicity, and unity areher characteristics. Soon after, Sir Joshua says: 'I should be sorryif what has been said should be understood to have any tendency toencourage that carelessness which leaves work in an unfinished state. Icommend nothing for the want of exactness; I mean to point out thatkind of exactness which is the best, and which is alone truly to be soesteemed. ' This Sir Joshua has already told us consists in getting above'all particularities and details of every kind. ' Once more we find itstated that--

'It is in vain to attend to the variation of tints, if in that attentionthe general hue of flesh is lost; or to finish ever so minutely theparts, if the masses are not observed, or the whole not well puttogether. '

Nothing can be truer; but why always suppose the two things at variancewith each other?

'Titian's manner was then new to the world, but that unshaken truth onwhich it is founded has fixed it as a model to all succeeding painters;and those who will examine into the artifice will find it to consist inthe power of generalising, and in the shortness and simplicity of themeans employed. '

Titian's real excellence consisted in the power of generalising and of_individualising_ at the same time: if it wore merely the former, itwould be difficult to account for the error immediately after pointedout by Sir Joshua. He says in the very next paragraph:

'Many artists, as Vasari likewise observes, have ignorantly imaginedthey are imitating the manner of Titian when they leave their coloursrough and neglect the detail; but not possessing the principles on whichhe wrought, they have produced what he calls _goffe pitture_--absurd, foolish pictures. '

Many artists have also imagined they were following the directions ofSir Joshua when they did the same thing, that is, neglected the detail, and produced the same results--vapid generalities, absurd, foolishpictures. 

I will only give two short passages more, and have done with thispart of the subject. I am anxious to confront Sir Joshua with his ownauthority:

'The advantage of this method of considering objects (as a whole) iswhat I wish now more particularly to enforce. At the same time I donot forget that a painter must have the power of contracting as well asdilating his sight; because he that does not at all express particularsexpresses nothing; yet it is certain that a nice discrimination ofminute circumstances and a punctilious delineation of them, whateverexcellence it may have (and I do not mean to detract from it), never didconfer on the artist the character of Genius. '

At page 53 we find the following words:

'Whether it is the human figure, an animal, or even inanimate objects, there is nothing, however unpromising in appearance, but may be raisedinto dignity, convey sentiment, and produce emotion, in the hands of aPainter of genius. What was said of Virgil, that he threw even thedung about the ground with an air of dignity, may be applied to Titian;whatever he touched, however naturally mean, and habitually familiar, bya kind of magic he invested with grandeur and importance. '--No, not bymagic, but by seeking and finding in individual nature, and combinedwith details of every kind, that grace and grandeur and unity of effectwhich Sir Joshua supposes to be a mere creation of the artist's brain!Titian's practice was, I conceive, to give general appearances withindividual forms and circumstances: Sir Joshua's theory goes too often, and in its prevailing bias, to separate the two things as inconsistentwith each other, and thereby to destroy or bring into question thatunion of striking effect with accuracy of resemblance in which theessence of sound art (as far as relates to imitation) consists. 

Farther, as Sir Joshua is inclined to merge the details of individualobjects in general effect, so he is resolved to reduce all beauty orgrandeur in natural objects to a central form or abstract idea of acertain class, so as to exclude all peculiarities or deviations fromthis ideal standard as unfit subjects for the artist's pencil, and aspolluting his canvas with deformity. As the former principle went todestroy all exactness and solidity in particular things, this goes toconfound all variety, distinctness, and characteristic force in thebroader scale of nature. There is a principle of conformity in natureor of something in common between a number of individuals of the sameclass, but there is also a principle of contrast, of discrimination andidentity, which is equally essential in the system of the universe andin the structure of our ideas both of art and nature. Sir Joshua wouldhardly neutralise the tints of the rainbow to produce a dingy grey, as amedium or central colour; why, then, should he neutralise all features, forms, etc. , to produce an insipid monotony? He does not indeed considerhis theory of beauty as applicable to colour, which he well understood, but insists upon and literally enforces it as to form and idealconceptions, of which he knew comparatively little, and where hisauthority is more questionable. I will not in this place undertake toshow that his theory of a middle form (as the standard of taste andbeauty) is not true of the outline of the human face and figure or otherorganic bodies, though I think that even there it is only one principleor condition of beauty; but I do say that it has little or nothing todo with those other capital parts of painting, colour, character, expression, and grandeur of conception. Sir Joshua himself contends that'beauty in creatures of the same species is the medium or centre ofall its various forms'; and he maintains that grandeur is the sameabstraction of the species in the individual. Therefore beauty andgrandeur must be the same thing, which they are not; so that thisdefinition must be faulty. Grandeur I should suppose to imply somethingthat elevates and expands the mind, which is chiefly power or magnitude. Beauty is that which soothes and melts it; and its source, I apprehend, is a certain harmony, softness, and gradation of form, within the limitsof our customary associations, no doubt, or of what we expect of certainspecies, but not independent of every other consideration. Our critichimself confesses of Michael Angelo, whom he regards as the pattern ofthe great or sublime style, that 'his people are a superior order ofbeings: there is nothing about them, nothing in the air of their actionsor their attitudes, or the style or cast of their limbs or features, that reminds us of their belonging to our own species. Raffaelle'simagination is not so elevated; his figures are not so much disjoinedfrom our own diminutive race of beings, though his ideas are chaste, noble, and of great conformity to their subjects. Michael Angelo's workshave a strong, peculiar, and marked character: they seem to proceed fromhis own mind entirely, and that mind so rich and abundant that henever needed, or seemed to disdain to look abroad for foreign help. Raffaelle's materials are generally borrowed, though the noble structureis his own. (1) How does all this accord with the same writer'sfavourite theory that all beauty, all grandeur, and all excellenceconsist in an approximation to that central form or habitual ideaof mediocrity, from which every deviation is so much deformity andlittleness? Michael Angelo's figures are raised above our diminutiverace of beings, yet they are confessedly the standard of sublimity inwhat regards the human form. Grandeur, then, admits of an exaggerationof our habitual impressions; and 'the strong, marked, and peculiarcharacter which Michael Angelo has at the same time given to his works'does not take away from it. This is fact against argument. I wouldtake Sir Joshua's word for the goodness of a picture, and for itsdistinguishing properties, sooner than I would for an abstractmetaphysical theory. Our artist also speaks continually of high and lowsubjects. There can be no distinction of this kind upon his principle, that the standard of taste is the adhering to the central form of eachspecies, and that every species is in itself equally beautiful. Thepainter of flowers, of shells, or of anything else, is equally elevatedwith Raphael or Michael, if he adheres to the generic or establishedform of what he paints: the rest, according to this definition, is amatter of indifference. There must therefore be something besides thecentral or customary form to account for the difference of dignity, forthe high and low style in nature or in art. Michael Angelo's figures, weare told, are more than ordinarily grand; why, by the same rule, maynot Raphael's be more than ordinarily beautiful, have more than ordinarysoftness, symmetry, and grace?--Character and expression are still lessincluded in the present theory. All character is a departure from thecommon-place form; and Sir Joshua makes no scruple to declare thatexpression destroys beauty. Thus he says:

'If you mean to preserve the most perfect beauty _in its most perfectstate, _ you cannot express the passions, all of which produce distortionand deformity, more or less, in the most beautiful faces. '

He goes on: 'Guido, from want of choice in adapting his subject to hisideas and his powers, or from attempting to preserve beauty where itcould not be preserved, has in this respect succeeded very ill. Hisfigures are often engaged in subjects that required great expression;yet his Judith and Holofernes, the daughter of Herodias with theBaptist's head, the Andromeda, and some even of the Mothers of theInnocents, have little more expression than his Venus attired by theGraces. '

What a censure is this passed upon Guido, and what a condemnation ofhis own theory, which would reduce and level all that is truly greatand praiseworthy in art to this insipid, tasteless standard, by settingaside as illegitimate all that does riot come within the middle, central form! Yet Sir Joshua judges of Hogarth as he deviates from thisstandard, not as he excels in individual character, which he says isonly good or tolerable as it partakes of general nature; and he mightaccuse Michael Angelo and Raphael, the one for his grandeur of style, the other for his expression; for neither are what he sets up as thegoal of perfection--I will just stop to remark here that Sir Joshuahas committed himself very strangely in speaking of the character andexpression to be found in the Greek statues. He says in one place:

'I cannot quit the Apollo without making one observation on thecharacter of this figure. He is supposed to have just discharged hisarrow at the Python; and by the head retreating a little towards theright shoulder, he appears attentive to its effect. What I would remarkis the difference of this attention from that of the Discobolus, whois engaged in the same purpose, watching the effect of his Discus. Thegraceful, negligent, though animated air of the one, and the vulgareagerness of the other, furnish an instance of the judgment of theancient Sculptors _in their nice discrimination of character. _ Theyare both equally true to nature, and equally admirable. ' After a fewobservations on the limited means of the art of sculpture, and theinattention of the ancients to almost everything but form, we meet withthe following passage:--

'Those who think Sculpture can express more than we have allowed mayask, by what means we discover, at the first glance, the character thatis represented in a Bust, a Cameo, or Intaglio? I suspect it will befound, on close examination, by him who is resolved not to see morethan he really does see, that the figures are distinguished by their_insignia_ more than by any variety of form or beauty. Take from Apollohis Lyre, from Bacchus his Thyrsus and Vine-leaves, and Meleager theBoar's Head, and there will remain little or no difference in theircharacters. In a Juno, Minerva, or Flora, the idea of the artist seemsto have gone no further than representing perfect beauty, and afterwardsadding the proper attributes, with a total indifference to which theygave them. '

(What, then, becomes of that 'nice discrimination of character' forwhich our author has just before celebrated them?)

'Thus John De Bologna, after he had finished a group of a young manholding up a young woman in his arms, with an old man at his feet, called his friends together, to tell him what name he should give it, and it was agreed to call it The Rape of the Sabines; and this is thecelebrated group which now stands before the old Palace at Florence. Thefigures have the same general expression which is to be found in most ofthe antique Sculpture; and yet it would be no wonder if future criticsshould find out delicacy of expression which was never intended, and goso far as to see, in the old man's countenance, the exact relation whichhe bore to the woman who appears to be taken from him. '

So it is that Sir Joshua's theory seems to rest on an inclined plane, and is always glad of an excuse to slide, from the severity of truthand nature, into the milder and more equable regions of insipidity andinanity; I am sorry to say so, but so it appears to me. 

I confess, it strikes me as a self-evident truth that variety orcontrast is as essential a principle in art and nature as uniformity, and as necessary to make up the harmony of the universe and thecontentment of the mind. Who would destroy the shifting effects of lightand shade, the sharp, lively opposition of colours in the same or indifferent objects, the streaks in a flower, the stains in a piece ofmarble, to reduce all to the same neutral, dead colouring, the samemiddle tint? Yet it is on this principle that Sir Joshua would get ridof all variety, character, expression, and picturesque effect in forms, or at least measure the worth or the spuriousness of all these accordingto their reference to or departure from a given or average standard. Surely, nature is more liberal, art is wider than Sir Joshua's theory. Allow (for the sake of argument) that all forms are in themselvesindifferent, and that beauty or the sense of pleasure in forms cantherefore only arise from customary association, or from that middleimpression to which they all tend: yet this cannot by the same ruleapply to other things. Suppose there is no capacity in form to affectthe mind except from its corresponding to previous expectation, the samething cannot be said of the idea of power or grandeur. No one can saythat the idea of power does not affect the mind with the sense of aweand sublimity. That is, power and weakness, grandeur and littleness, are not indifferent things, the perfection of which consists in a mediumbetween both. Again, expression is not a thing indifferent in itself, which derives its value or its interest solely from its conformity toa neutral standard. Who would neutralise the expression of pleasureand pain? or say that the passions of the human mind--pity, love, joy, sorrow, etc. --are only interesting to the imagination and worth theattention of the artist, as he can reduce them to an equivocal statewhich is neither pleasant nor painful, neither one thing nor the other?Or who would stop short of the utmost refinement, precision, and forcein the delineation of each? Ideal expression is not neutral expression, but extreme expression. Again, character is a thing of peculiarity, of striking contrast, of distinction, and not of uniformity. It isnecessarily opposed to Sir Joshua's exclusive theory, and yet it issurely a curious and interesting field of speculation for the humanmind. Lively, spirited discrimination of character is one source ofgratification to the lover of nature and art, which it could not be ifall truth and excellence consisted in rejecting individual traits. Ideal character is not common-place, but consistent character markedthroughout, which may take place in history or portrait. Historicaltruth in a picture is the putting the different features of the face ormuscles of the body into consistent action. The picturesque altogetherdepends on particular points or qualities of an object, projecting asit were beyond the middle line of beauty, and catching the eye of thespectator. It was less, however, my intention to hazard any speculationsof my own than to confirm the common-sense feelings on the subject bySir Joshua's own admissions in different places. In the Tenth Discourse, speaking of some objections to the Apollo, he has these remarkablewords:--

'In regard to the last objection (viz. That the lower half of the figureis longer than just proportion allows) it must be remembered thatApollo is here in the exertion of _one of his peculiar powers, _ whichis swiftness; he has therefore that proportion which is best adapted tothat character. This is no more incorrectness than when there is givento a Hercules an extraordinary swelling and strength of muscles. '

Strength and activity then do not depend on the middle form; and themiddle form is to be sacrificed to the representation of these positivequalities. Character is thus allowed not only to be an integrant part ofthe antique and classical style of art, but even to take precedence ofand set aside the abstract idea of beauty. Little more would be requiredto justify Hogarth in his Gothic resolution, that if he were to makea figure of Charon, he would give him bandy legs, because watermen aregenerally bandy-legged. It is very well to talk of the abstract ideaof a man or of a God, but if you come to anything like an intelligibleproposition, you must either individualise and define, or destroythe very idea you contemplate. Sir Joshua goes into this question atconsiderable length in the Third Discourse:

'To the principle I have laid down, that the idea of beauty in eachspecies of beings is an invariable one, it may be objected, ' he says, 'that in every particular species there are various central forms, which are separate and distinct from each other, and yet are undeniablybeautiful; that in the human figure, for instance the beauty ofHercules is one, of the Gladiator another, of the Apollo another, whichmakes so many different ideas of beauty. It is true, indeed, that thesefigures are each perfect in their kind, though of different charactersand proportions; but still none of them is the representation of anindividual, but of a class. And as there is one general form, which, as I have said, belongs to the human kind at large, so in each of theseclasses there is one common idea which is the abstract of the variousindividual forms belonging to that class. Thus, though the formsof childhood and age differ exceedingly, there is a common form inchildhood, and a common form in age, which is the more perfect as it isremote from all peculiarities. But I must add further, that though themost perfect forms of each of the general divisions of the human figureare ideal, and superior to any individual form of that class, yet thehighest perfection of the human figure is not to be found in any ofthem. It is not in the Hercules, nor in the Gladiator, nor in theApollo; but in that form which is taken from all, and which partakesequally of the activity of the Gladiator, of the delicacy of the Apollo, and of the muscular strength of the Hercules. For perfect beauty inany species must combine all the characters which are beautiful in thatspecies. It cannot consist in any one to the exclusion of the rest: noone, therefore, must be predominant, that no one may be deficient. '

Sir Joshua here supposes the distinctions of classes and character tobe necessarily combined with the general leading idea of a middle form. This middle form is not to confound age, sex, circumstance, under onesweeping abstraction; but we must limit the general ideas by certainspecific differences and characteristic marks, belonging to the severalsubordinate divisions and ramifications of each class. This is enoughto show that there is a principle of individuality as well as ofabstraction inseparable from works of art as well as nature. We are tokeep the human form distinct from that of other living beings, that ofmen from that of women; we are to distinguish between age and infancy, between thoughtfulness and gaiety, between strength and softness. Whereis this to stop? But Sir Joshua turns round upon himself in this verypassage, and says: 'No: we are to unite the strength of the Herculeswith the delicacy of the Apollo; for perfect beauty in any species mustcombine all the characters which are beautiful in that species. ' Nowif these different characters are beautiful in themselves, why not givethem for their own sakes and in their most striking appearances, insteadof qualifying and softening them down in a neutral form; which mustproduce a compromise, not a union of different excellences. If allexcess of beauty, if all character is deformity, then we must try tolose it as fast as possible in other qualities. But if strength is anexcellence, if activity is an excellence, if delicacy is an excellence, then the perfection, i. E. The highest degree of each of these qualities, cannot be attained but by remaining satisfied with a less degree of therest. But let us hear what Sir Joshua himself advances on this subjectin another part of the _Discourses:_

'Some excellences bear to be united, and are improved by union: othersare of a discordant nature, and the attempt to unite them only producesa harsh jarring of incongruent principles. The attempt to unite contraryexcellences (of form, for instance(2)) in a single figure can neverescape degenerating into the monstrous but by sinking into the insipid;by taking away its marked character, and weakening its expression. 

'Obvious as these remarks appear, there are many writers on our art who, not being of the profession and consequently not knowing what canor cannot be done, have been very liberal of absurd praises in theirdescription of favourite works. They always find in them what theyare resolved to find. They praise excellences that can hardly existtogether; and, above all things, are fond of describing with greatexactness the expression of a mixed passion, which more particularlyappears to me out of the reach of our art. (3)

'Such are many disquisitions which I have read on some of the Cartoonsand other pictures of Raffaelle, where the critics have described theirown imaginations; or indeed where the excellent master himself may haveattempted this expression of passions above the powers of the art, andhas, therefore, by an indistinct and imperfect marking, left room forevery imagination with equal probability to find a passion of hisown. What has been, and what can be done in the art, is sufficientlydifficult: we need not be mortified or discouraged at not being ableto execute the conceptions of a romantic imagination. Art has itsboundaries, though imagination has none. We can easily, like theancients, suppose a Jupiter to be possessed of all those powers andperfections which the subordinate Deities were endowed with separately. Yet when they employed their art to represent him, they confined hischaracter to majesty alone. Pliny, therefore, though we are under greatobligations to him for the information he has given us in relationto the works of the ancient artists, is very frequently wrong when hespeaks of them, which he does very often, in the style of many ofour modern connoisseurs. He observes that in a statue of Paris, by Euphranor, you might discover at the same time three differentcharacters: the dignity of a Judge of the Goddesses, the Lover of Helen, and the Conqueror of Achilles. A statue in which you endeavour tounite stately dignity, youthful elegance, and stern valour, must surelypossess none of these to any eminent degree. 

'From hence it appears that there is much difficulty as well as dangerin an endeavour to concentrate in a single subject those variouspowers which, rising from various points, naturally move in differentdirections. '

What real clue to the art or sound principles of judging the studentcan derive from these contradictory statements, or in what manner it ispossible to reconcile them one to the other, I confess I am at a lossto discover. As it appears to me, all the varieties of nature in theinfinite number of its qualities, combinations, characters, expressions, incidents, etc. , rise from distinct points or centres and must movein distinct directions, as the forms of different species are to bereferred to a separate standard. It is the object of art to bring themout in all their force, clearness, and precision, and not to blend theminto a vague, vapid, nondescript _ideal_ conception, which pretends tounite, but in reality destroys. Sir Joshua's theory limits nature andparalyses art. According to him, the middle form or the average ofour various impressions is the source from which all beauty, pleasure, interest, imagination springs. I contend, on the contrary, that thisvery variety is good in itself, nor do I agree with him that the wholeof nature as it exists in fact is stark naught, and that there isnothing worthy of the contemplation of a wise man but that _idealperfection_ which never existed in the world nor even on canvas. Thereis something fastidious and sickly in Sir Joshua's system. His codeof taste consists too much of negations, and not enough of positive, prominent qualities. It accounts for nothing but the beauty of thecommon Antique, and hardly for that. The merit of Hogarth, I grant, isdifferent from that of the Greek statues; but I deny that Hogarth isto be measured by this standard or by Sir Joshua's middle forms: hehas powers of instruction and amusement that, 'rising from a differentpoint, naturally move in a different direction, ' and completely attaintheir end. It would be just as reasonable to condemn a comedy for nothaving the pathos of a tragedy or the stateliness of an epic poem. IfSir Joshua Reynolds's theory were true, Dr. Johnson's _Irene_ would be abetter tragedy than any of Shakespear's. 

The reasoning of the _Discourses_ is, I think, then, deficient in thefollowing particulars:

1. It seems to imply that general effect in a picture is produced byleaving out the details, whereas the largest masses and the grandestoutline are consistent with the utmost delicacy of finishing in theparts. 

2. It makes no distinction between beauty and grandeur, but refers bothto an _ideal_ or middle form, as the centre of the various forms ofthe species, and yet inconsistently attributes the grandeur of MichaelAngelo's style to the superhuman appearance of his prophets andapostles. 

3. It does not at any time make mention of power or magnitude in anobject as a distinct source of the sublime (though this is acknowledgedunintentionally in the case of Michael Angelo, etc. ), nor of softnessor symmetry of form as a distinct source of beauty, independently of, though still in connection with another source arising from what we areaccustomed to expect from each individual species. 

4. Sir Joshua's theory does not leave room for character, but rejects itas an anomaly. 

5. It does not point out the source of expression, but considers itas hostile to beauty; and yet, lastly, he allows that the middle form, carried to the utmost theoretical extent, neither defined by character, nor impregnated by passion, would produce nothing but vague, insipid, unmeaning generality. 

In a word, I cannot think that the theory here laid down is clear andsatisfactory, that it is consistent with itself, that it accounts forthe various excellences of art from a few simple principles, or that themethod which Sir Joshua has pursued in treating the subject is, as hehimself expresses it, 'a plain and honest method. ' It is, I fear, morecalculated to baffle and perplex the student in his progress than togive him clear lights as to the object he should have in view, or tofurnish him with strong motives of emulation to attain it. 

NOTES to ESSAY XIV

(1) The Fifth Discourse. 

(2) These are Sir Joshua's words. 

(3) I do not know that; but I do not think the two passions could beexpressed by expressing neither or something between both. 

ESSAY XV. ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE

I have been sometimes accused of a fondness for paradoxes, but I cannotin my own mind plead guilty to the charge. I do not indeed swear byan opinion because it is old; but neither do I fall in love with everyextravagance at first sight because it is new. I conceive that athing may have been repeated a thousand times without being a bit morereasonable than it was the first time: and I also conceive that anargument or an observation may be very just, though it may so happenthat it was never stated before: but I do not take it for granted thatevery prejudice is ill-founded; nor that every paradox is self-evident, merely because it contradicts the vulgar opinion. Sheridan once said ofsome speech in his acute, sarcastic way, that 'it contained a great dealboth of what was new and what was true: but that unfortunately what wasnew was not true, and what was true was not new. ' This appears to meto express the whole sense of the question. I do not see much use indwelling on a common-place, however fashionable or well established:nor am I very ambitious of starting the most specious novelty, unlessI imagine I have reason on my side. Originality implies independence ofopinion; but differs as widely from mere singularity as from the tritesttruism. It consists in seeing and thinking for one's-self: whereassingularity is only the affectation of saying something to contradictother people, without having any real opinion of one's own upon thematter. Mr. Burke was an original, though an extravagant writer: Mr. Windham was a regular manufacturer of paradoxes. 

The greatest number of minds seem utterly incapable of fixing on anyconclusion, except from the pressure of custom and authority: opposed tothese there is another class less numerous but pretty formidable, whoin all their opinions are equally under the influence of novelty andrestless vanity. The prejudices of the one are counterbalanced by theparadoxes of the other; and folly, 'putting in one scale a weight ofignorance, in that of pride, ' might be said to 'smile delighted with theeternal poise. ' A sincere and manly spirit of inquiry is neither blindedby example nor dazzled by sudden flashes of light. Nature is always thesame, the storehouse of lasting truth, and teeming with inexhaustiblevariety; and he who looks at her with steady and well-practised eyeswill find enough to employ all his sagacity, whether it has or has notbeen seen by others before him. Strange as it may seem, to learn what anobject is, the true philosopher looks at the object itself, instead ofturning to others to know what they think or say or have heard of it, or instead of consulting the dictates of his vanity, petulance, andingenuity to see what can be said against their opinion, and to provehimself wiser than all the rest of the world. For want of this the realpowers and resources of the mind are lost and dissipated in a conflictof opinions and passions, of obstinacy against levity, of bigotryagainst self-conceit, of notorious abuses against rash innovations, ofdull, plodding, old-fashioned stupidity against new-fangled folly, of worldly interest against headstrong egotism, of the incorrigibleprejudices of the old and the unmanageable humours of the young; whiletruth lies in the middle, and is overlooked by both parties. Or asLuther complained long ago, 'human reason is like a drunken manon horseback: set it up on one side, and it tumbles over on theother. '--With one sort, example, authority, fashion, ease, interest, rule all: with the other, singularity, the love of distinction, merewhim, the throwing off all restraint and showing an heroic disregardof consequences, an impatient and unsettled turn of mind, the wantof sudden and strong excitement, of some new play-thing for theimagination, are equally 'lords of the ascendant, ' and are at every stepgetting the start of reason, truth, nature, common sense, and feeling. With one party, whatever is, is right: with their antagonists, whateveris, is wrong. These swallow every antiquated absurdity: those catchat every new, unfledged project--and are alike enchanted withthe velocipedes or the French Revolution. One set, wrapped up inimpenetrable forms and technical traditions, are deaf to everything thathas not been dinned in their ears, and in those of their forefathers, from time immemorial: their hearing is _thick_ with the same old saws, the same unmeaning form of words, everlastingly repeated: the otherspique themselves on a jargon of their own, a Babylonish dialect, crude, unconcocted, harsh, discordant, to which it is impossible for any oneelse to attach either meaning or respect. These last turn away atthe mention of all usages, creeds, institutions of more than a day'sstanding as a mass of bigotry, superstition, and barbarous ignorance, whose leaden touch would petrify and benumb their quick, mercurial, 'apprehensive, forgetive' faculties. The opinion of to-day supersedesthat of yesterday: that of to-morrow supersedes, by anticipation, thatof to-day. The wisdom of the ancients, the doctrines of the learned, thelaws of nations, the common sentiments of morality, are to them like abundle of old almanacs. As the modern politician always asks for thisday's paper, the modern sciolist always inquires after the latestparadox. With him instinct is a dotard, nature a changeling, and commonsense a discarded by-word. As with the man of the world, what everybodysays must be true, the citizen of the world has quite a different notionof the matter. With the one, the majority; 'the powers that be' havealways been in the right in all ages and places, though they have beencutting one another's throats and turning the world upside down withtheir quarrels and disputes from the beginning of time: with the other, what any two people have ever agreed in is an error on the face ofit. The credulous bigot shudders at the idea of altering anything in'time-hallowed' institutions; and under this cant phrase can bringhimself to tolerate any knavery or any folly, the Inquisition, Holy Oil, the Right Divine, etc. ;--the more refined sceptic will laugh in yourface at the idea of retaining anything which has the damning stamp ofcustom upon it, and is for abating all former precedents, 'all trivial, fond records, ' the whole frame and fabric of society as a nuisance inthe lump. Is not this a pair of wiseacres well matched? The one sticklesthrough thick and thin for his own religion and government: the otherscouts all religions and all governments with a smile of ineffabledisdain. The one will not move for any consideration out of the broadand beaten path: the other is continually turning off at rightangles, and losing himself in the labyrinths of his own ignorance andpresumption. The one will not go along with any party: the otheralways joins the strongest side. The one will not conform to any commonpractice: the other will subscribe to any thriving system. The one isthe slave of habit: the other is the sport of caprice. The first is likea man obstinately bed-rid: the last is troubled with St. Vitus's dance. He cannot stand still, he cannot rest upon any conclusion. 'He neveris--but always to be _right. '_

The author of the Prometheus Unbound (to take an individual instanceof the last character) has a fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, amaggot in his brain, a hectic flutter in his speech, which mark out thephilosophic fanatic. He is sanguine-complexioned and shrill-voiced. Asis often observable in the case of religious enthusiasts, there is aslenderness of constitutional stamina, which renders the flesh no matchfor the spirit. His bending, flexible form appears to take no stronghold of things, does not grapple with the world about him, but slidesfrom it like a river--

 And in its liquid texture mortal wound Receives no more than can the fluid air. 

The shock of accident, the weight of authority make no impression on hisopinions, which retire like a feather, or rise from the encounterunhurt through their own buoyancy. He is clogged by no dull system ofrealities, no earth-bound feelings, no rooted prejudices, by nothingthat belongs to the mighty trunk and hard husk of nature and habit, butis drawn up by irresistible levity to the regions of mere speculationand fancy, to the sphere of air and fire, where his delighted spiritfloats in 'seas of pearl and clouds of amber. ' There is no _caputmortuum_ of worn-out, threadbare experience to serve as ballast to hismind; it is all volatile intellectual salt of tartar, that refusesto combine its evanescent, inflammable essence with anything solid oranything lasting. Bubbles are to him the only realities:--touch them, and they vanish. Curiosity is the only proper category of his mind, and though a man in knowledge, he is a child in feeling. Hence he putseverything into a metaphysical crucible to judge of it himself andexhibit it to others as a subject of interesting experiment, withoutfirst making it over to the ordeal of his common sense or trying it onhis heart. This faculty of speculating at random on all questions mayin its overgrown and uninformed state do much mischief without intendingit, like an overgrown child with the power of a man. Mr. Shelley hasbeen accused of vanity--I think he is chargeable with extreme levity;but this levity is so great that I do not believe he is sensible of itsconsequences. He strives to overturn all established creeds and systems;but this is in him an effect of constitution. He runs before the mostextravagant opinions; but this is because he is held back by none ofthe merely mechanical checks of sympathy and habit. He tampers with allsorts of obnoxious subjects; but it is less because he is gratifiedwith the rankness of the taint than captivated with the intellectualphosphoric light they emit. It would seem that he wished not so muchto convince or inform as to shock the public by the tenor of hisproductions; but I suspect he is more intent upon startling himself withhis electrical experiments in morals and philosophy; and though theymay scorch other people, they are to him harmless amusements, thecoruscations of an Aurora Borealis, that 'play round the head, but donot reach the heart. ' Still I could wish that he would put a stop tothe incessant, alarming whirl of his voltaic battery. With his zeal, histalent, and his fancy, he would do more good and less harm if he wereto give, up his wilder theories, and if he took less pleasure in feelinghis heart flutter in unison with the panic-struck apprehensions of hisreaders. Persons of this class, instead of consolidating useful andacknowledged truths, and thus advancing the cause of science and virtue, are never easy but in raising doubtful and disagreeable questions, whichbring the former into disgrace and discredit. They are not contented tolead the minds of men to an eminence overlooking the prospect of socialamelioration, unless, by forcing them up slippery paths and to theutmost verge of possibility, they can dash them down the precipice theinstant they reach the promised Pisgah. They think it nothing to hang upa beacon to guide or warn, if they do not at the same time frighten thecommunity like a comet. They do not mind making their principles odious, provided they can make themselves notorious. To win over the publicopinion by fair means is to them an insipid, common-place mode ofpopularity: they would either force it by harsh methods, or seduce itby intoxicating potions. Egotism, petulance, licentiousness, levity ofprinciple (whatever be the source) is a bad thing in any one, and mostof all in a philosophical reformer. Their humanity, their wisdom, is always 'at the horizon. ' Anything new, anything remote, anythingquestionable, comes to them in a shape that is sure of a cordialwelcome--a welcome cordial in proportion as the object is new, as itis apparently impracticable, as it is a doubt whether it is at alldesirable. Just after the final failure, the completion of the last actof the French Revolution, when the legitimate wits were crying out, 'Thefarce is over, now let us go to supper, ' these provoking reasoners gotup a lively hypothesis about introducing the domestic government of theNayrs into this country as a feasible set-off against the success of theBorough-mongers. The practical is with them always the antipodes of theideal; and like other visionaries of a different stamp, they date theMillennium or New Order of Things from the Restoration of the Bourbons. 'Fine words butter no parsnips, ' says the proverb. 'While you aretalking of marrying, I am thinking of hanging, ' says Captain Macheath. Of all people the most tormenting are those who bid you hope in themidst of despair, who, by never caring about anything but their ownsanguine, hair-brained Utopian schemes, have at no time any particularcause for embarrassment and despondency because they have never theleast chance of success, and who by including whatever does not hittheir idle fancy, kings, priests, religion, government, public abuses orprivate morals, in the same sweeping clause of ban and anathema, do allthey can to combine all parties in a common cause against them, and toprevent every one else from advancing one step farther in the career ofpractical improvement than they do in that of imaginary and unattainableperfection. 

Besides, all this untoward heat and precocity often argues rottennessand a falling-off. I myself remember several instances of this sort ofunrestrained license of opinion and violent effervescence of sentimentin the first period of the French Revolution. Extremes meet: and themost furious anarchists have since become the most barefaced apostates. Among the foremost of these I might mention the present poet-laureateand some of his friends. The prose-writers on that side of thequestion--Mr. Godwin, Mr. Bentham, etc. --have not turned round in thisextraordinary manner: they seem to have felt their ground (howevermistaken in some points), and have in general adhered to their firstprinciples. But 'poets (as it has been said) have _such seethingbrains, _ that they are disposed to meddle with everything, and mar all. They make bad philosophers and worse politicians. (1) They live, for themost part, in an ideal world of their own; and it would perhaps beas well if they were confined to it. Their flights and fancies aredelightful to themselves and to everybody else: but they make strangework with matter of fact; and if they were allowed to act in publicaffairs, would soon turn the world the wrong side out. They indulge onlytheir own flattering dreams or superstitious prejudices, and make idolsor bugbears of whatever they please, caring as little for history orparticular facts as for general reasoning. They are dangerous leadersand treacherous followers. Their inordinate vanity runs them into allsorts of extravagances; and their habitual effeminacy gets them out ofthem at any price. Always pampering their own appetite for excitement, and wishing to astonish others, their whole aim is to produce a dramaticeffect, one way or other--to shock or delight the observers; and theyare apparently as indifferent to the consequences of what they write asif the world were merely a stage for them to play their fantastictricks on, and to make their admirers weep. Not less romantic in theirservility than their independence, and equally importunate candidatesfor fame or infamy, they require only to be distinguished, and arenot scrupulous as to the means of distinction. Jacobins orAnti-Jacobins--outrageous advocates for anarchy and licentiousness, orflaming apostles of political persecution--always violent and vulgar intheir opinions, they oscillate, with a giddy and sickening motion, from one absurdity to another, and expiate the follies of youth by theheartless vices of advancing age. None so ready as they to carry everyparadox to its most revolting and ridiculous excess--none so sureto caricature, in their own persons, every feature of the prevailingphilosophy! In their days of blissful innovation, indeed, thephilosophers crept at their heels like hounds, while they darted ontheir distant quarry like hawks; stooping always to the lowest game;eagerly snuffing up the most tainted and rankest scents; feeding theirvanity with a notion of the strength of their digestion of poisons, andmost ostentatiously avowing whatever would most effectually startlethe prejudices of others. (2) Preposterously seeking for the stimulusof novelty in abstract truth, and the eclat of theatrical exhibition inpure reason, it is no wonder that these persons at last became disgustedwith their own pursuits, and that, in consequence of the violence of thechange, the most inveterate prejudices and uncharitable sentiments haverushed in to fill up the void produced by the previous annihilation ofcommon sense, wisdom, and humanity!'

I have so far been a little hard on poets and reformers. Lest I shouldbe thought to have taken a particular spite to them, I will try to makethem the _amende honorable_ by turning to a passage in the writings ofone who neither is nor ever pretended to be a poet or a reformer, butthe antithesis of both, an accomplished man of the world, a courtier, and a wit, and who has endeavoured to move the previous question on allschemes of fanciful improvement, and all plans of practical reform, bythe following declaration. It is in itself a finished _common-place;_and may serve as a test whether that sort of smooth, verbal reasoningwhich passes current because it excites no one idea in the mind, is muchfreer from inherent absurdity than the wildest paradox. 

'My lot, ' says Mr. Canning in the conclusion of his Liverpool speech, 'is cast under the British Monarchy. Under that I have lived; under thatI have seen my country flourish;(3) under that I have seen it enjoy asgreat a share of prosperity, of happiness, and of glory as I believe anymodification of human society to be capable of bestowing; and I am notprepared to sacrifice or to hazard the fruit of centuries of experience, of centuries of struggles, and of more than one century of liberty, as perfect as ever blessed any country upon the earth, for visionaryschemes of ideal perfectibility, for doubtful experiments even ofpossible improvement. '(4)

Such is Mr. Canning's common-place; and in giving the following answerto it, I do not think I can be accused of falling into that extravagantand unmitigated strain of paradoxical reasoning with which I havealready found so much fault. 

The passage, then, which the gentleman here throws down as an effectualbar to all change, to all innovation, to all improvement, contains atevery step a refutation of his favourite creed. He is not 'preparedto sacrifice or to hazard the fruit of centuries of experience, ofcenturies of struggles, and of one century of liberty, for visionaryschemes of ideal perfectibility. ' So here are centuries of experienceand centuries of struggles to arrive at one century of liberty; andyet, according to Mr. Canning's general advice, we are never to make anyexperiments or to engage in any struggles either with a view to futureimprovement, or to recover benefits which we have lost. Man (they repeatin our cars, line upon line, precept upon precept) is always to turn hisback upon the future, and his face to the past. He is to believe thatnothing is possible or desirable but what he finds already establishedto his hands in time-worn institutions or inveterate abuses. His undeto be made into a political automaton, a go-cart of superstition andprejudice, never stirring hand or foot but as he is pulled by thewires and strings of the state-conjurers, the legitimate managers andproprietors of the show. His powers of will, of thought, and actionare to be paralysed in him, and he is to be told and to believe thatwhatever is, must be. Perhaps Mr. Canning will say that men were to makeexperiments and to resolve upon struggles formerly, but that now theyare to surrender their understandings and their rights into his keeping. But at what period of the world was the system of political wisdom_stereotyped, _ like Mr. Cobbett's _Gold against Paper, _ so as to admitof no farther alterations or improvements, or correction of errorsof the press? When did the experience of mankind become stationary orretrograde, so that we must act from the obsolete inferences of pastperiods, not from the living impulse of existing circumstances, and theconsolidated force of the knowledge and reflection of ages up to thepresent instant, naturally projecting us forward into the future, andnot driving us back upon the past? Did Mr. Canning never hear, did henever think, of Lord Bacon's axiom, 'That those times are the ancienttimes in which we live, and not those which, counting backwards fromourselves, _ordine retrogrado, _ we call ancient'? The latest periodsmust necessarily have the advantage of the sum-total of the experiencethat has gone before them, and of the sum-total of human reason exertedupon that experience, or upon the solid foundation of nature andhistory, moving on in its majestic course, not fluttering in the emptyair of fanciful speculation, nor leaving a gap of centuries between usand the long-mouldered grounds on which we are to think and act. Mr. Canning cannot plead with Mr. Burke that no discoveries, no improvementshave been made in political science and institutions; for he says wehave arrived through centuries of experience and of struggles at onecentury of liberty. Is the world, then, at a stand? Mr. Canning knowswell enough that it is in ceaseless progress and everlasting change, buthe would have it to be the change from liberty to slavery, the progressof corruption, not of regeneration and reform. Why, no longer ago thanthe present year, the two epochs of November and January last presented(he tells us in this very speech) as great a contrast in the state ofthe country as any two periods of its history the most opposite or mostremote. Well then, are our experience and our struggles at an end?No, he says, 'the crisis is at hand for every man to take part for oragainst the institutions of the British Monarchy. ' His part is taken:'but of this be sure, to do aught good will never be his task!' He willguard carefully against all possible improvements, and maintain allpossible abuses sacred, impassive, immortal. He will not give up thefruit of centuries of experience, of struggles, and of one centuryat least of liberty, since the Revolution of 1688, for any doubtfulexperiments whatever. We are arrived at the end of our experience, ourstruggles, and our liberty--and are to anchor through time and eternityin the harbour of passive obedience and non-resistance. We (thepeople of England) will tell Mr. Canning frankly what we think of hismagnanimous and ulterior resolution. It is our own; and it has been theresolution of mankind in all ages of the world. No people, no age, ever threw away the fruits of past wisdom, or the enjoyment of presentblessings, for visionary schemes of ideal perfection. It is theknowledge of the past, the actual infliction of the present, that hasproduced all changes, all innovations, and all improvements--not (as ispretended) the chimerical anticipation of possible advantages, but theintolerable pressure of long-established, notorious, aggravated, andgrowing abuses. It was the experience of the enormous and disgustingabuses and corruptions of the Papal power that produced the Reformation. It was the experience of the vexations and oppressions of the feudalsystem that produced its abolition after centuries of sufferings andof struggles. It was the experience of the caprice and tyranny of theMonarch that extorted _Magna Charta_ at Runnymede. It was the experienceof the arbitrary and insolent abuse of the prerogative in the reigns ofthe Tudors and the first Stuarts that produced the resistance to it inthe reign of Charles I. And the Grand Rebellion. It was the experienceof the incorrigible attachment of the same Stuarts to Popery andSlavery, with their many acts of cruelty, treachery, and bigotry, thatproduced the Revolution, and set the House of Brunswick on the Throne. It was the conviction of the incurable nature of the abuse, increasingwith time and patience, and overcoming the obstinate attachment to oldhabits and prejudices, --an attachment not to be rooted out by fancyor theory, but only by repeated, lasting, and incontrovertibleproofs, --that has abated every nuisance that ever was abated, andintroduced every innovation and every example of revolution and reform. It was the experience of the abuses, licentiousness, and innumerableoppressions of the old Government in France that produced the FrenchRevolution. It was the experience of the determination of the BritishMinistry to harass, insult, and plunder them, that produced theRevolution of the United States. Away then with this miserable cantagainst fanciful theories, and appeal to acknowledged experience! Mennever act against their prejudices but from the spur of their feelings, the necessity of their situations--their theories are adapted to theirpractical convictions and their varying circumstances. Nature hasordered it so, and Mr. Canning, by showing off his rhetorical paces, byhis 'ambling and lisping and nicknaming God's creatures, ' cannot invertthat order, efface the history of the past, or arrest the progress ofthe future. --Public opinion is the result of public events and publicfeelings; and government must be moulded by that opinion, or maintainitself in opposition to it by the sword. Mr. Canning indeed will notconsent that the social machine should in any case receive a differentdirection from what it has had, 'lest it should be hurried over theprecipice and dashed to pieces. ' These warnings of national ruin andterrific accounts of political precipices put one in mind of Edgar'sexaggerations to Gloster; they make one's hair stand on end in theperusal but the poor old man, like poor old England, could fall no lowerthan he was. Mr. Montgomery, the ingenious and amiable poet, afterhe had been shut up in solitary confinement for a year and a half forprinting the Duke of Richmond's Letter on Reform, when he first walkedout into the narrow path of the adjoining field, was seized with anapprehension that he should fall over it, as if he had trod on the brinkof an abrupt declivity. The author of the loyal Speech at the LiverpoolDinner has been so long kept in the solitary confinement of hisprejudices, and the dark cells of his interest and vanity, that he isafraid of being dashed to pieces if he makes a single false step, to theright or the left, from his dangerous and crooked policy. As to himself, his ears are no doubt closed to any advice that might here be offeredhim; and as to his country, he seems bent on its destruction. If, however, an example of the futility of all his projects and all hisreasonings on a broader scale, 'to warn and scare, be wanting, ' let himlook at Spain, and take leisure to recover from his incredulity andhis surprise. Spain, as Ferdinand, as the Monarchy, has fallen from itspernicious height, never to rise again: Spain, as Spain, as the Spanishpeople, has risen from the tomb of liberty, never (it is to be hoped) tosink again under the yoke of the bigot and the oppressor!

NOTES to ESSAY XV

(1) As for politics, I think poets are _tories_ by nature, supposingthem to be by nature poets. The love of an individual person or family, that has worn a crown for many successions, is an inclination greatlyadapted to the fanciful tribe. On the other hand, mathematicians, abstract reasoners of no manner of attachment to persons, at leastto the visible part of them, but prodigiously devoted to the ideasof virtue, liberty, and so forth, are generally _whigs. _ It happensagreeably enough to this maxim, that the whigs are friends to that wise, plodding, unpoetical people, the Dutch. '--_Shenstone's Letters, _ p. 105. 

(2) To give the modern reader _un petit apercu_ of the tone of literaryconversation about five or six and twenty years ago, I remember beingpresent in a large party composed of men, women, and children, in whichtwo persons of remarkable candour and ingenuity were labouring (as hardas if they had been paid for it) to prove that all prayer was a mode ofdictating to the Almighty, and an arrogant assumption of superiority. Agentleman present said, with great simplicity and _naivete, _ that therewas one prayer which did not strike him as coming exactly underthis description, and being asked what that was made answer, 'TheSamaritan's--"Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner!"' This appeal by nomeans settled the sceptical dogmatism of the two disputants, and soonafter the proposer of the objection went away; on which one of themobserved with great marks of satisfaction and triumph--'I am afraid wehave shocked that gentleman's prejudices. ' This did not appear to me atthat time quite the thing and this happened in the year 1794. --Twice hasthe iron entered my soul. Twice have the dastard, vaunting, venal Crewgone over it: once as they went forth, conquering and to conquer, with reason by their side, glittering like a falchion, trampling onprejudices and marching fearlessly on in the work of regeneration;once again when they returned with retrograde steps, like Cacus's oxendragged backward by the heels, to the den of Legitimacy, 'rout on rout, confusion worse confounded, ' with places and pensions and the _QuarterlyReview_ dangling from their pockets, and shouting, 'Deliverance formankind, ' for 'the worst, the second fall of man. ' Yet I have enduredall this marching and countermarching of poets, philosophers, andpoliticians over my head as well as I could, like 'the camomile thatthrives, the more 'tis trod upon. ' By Heavens, I think, I'll endure itno longer!

(3) _Troja fuit. _

(4) _Mr. Canning's Speech at the Liverpool Dinner, given in celebrationof his Re-election, _ March 18, 1820. Fourth edition, revised andcorrected. 

ESSAY XVI. ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION

Few subjects are more nearly allied than these two--vulgarity andaffectation. It may be said of them truly that 'thin partitions do theirbounds divide. ' There cannot be a surer proof of a low origin or of aninnate meanness of disposition than to be always talking and thinkingof being genteel. One must feel a strong tendency to that which one isalways trying to avoid: whenever we pretend, on all occasions, a mightycontempt for anything, it is a pretty clear sign that we feel ourselvesvery nearly on a level with it. Of the two classes of people, I hardlyknow which is to be regarded with most distaste, the vulgar aping thegenteel, or the genteel constantly sneering at and endeavouring todistinguish themselves from the vulgar. These two sets of persons arealways thinking of one another; the lower of the higher with envy, themore fortunate of their less happy neighbours with contempt. Theyare habitually placed in opposition to each other; jostle in theirpretensions at every turn; and the same objects and train of thought(only reversed by the relative situation of either party) occupytheir whole time and attention. The one are straining every nerve, andoutraging common sense, to be thought genteel; the others have no otherobject or idea in their heads than not to be thought vulgar. This isbut poor spite; a very pitiful style of ambition. To be merely not thatwhich one heartily despises is a very humble claim to superiority: todespise what one really is, is still worse. Most of the characters inMiss Burney's novels--the Branghtons, the Smiths, the Dubsters, theCecilias, the Delvilles, etc. --are well met in this respect, and much ofa piece: the one half are trying not to be taken for themselves, and theother half not to be taken for the first. They neither of them have anypretensions of their own, or real standard of worth. 'A feather willturn the scale of their avoirdupois'; though the fair authoress wasnot aware of the metaphysical identity of her principal and subordinatecharacters. Affectation is the master-key to both. 

Gentility is only a more select and artificial kind of vulgarity. Itcannot exist but by a sort of borrowed distinction. It plumes itself upand revels in the homely pretensions of the mass of mankind. It judgesof the worth of everything by name, fashion, and opinion; and hence, from the conscious absence of real qualities or sincere satisfactionin itself, it builds its supercilious and fantastic conceit on thewretchedness and wants of others. Violent antipathies are alwayssuspicious, and betray a secret affinity. The difference between the'Great Vulgar and the Small' is mostly in outward circumstances. Thecoxcomb criticises the dress of the clown, as the pedant cavils atthe bad grammar of the illiterate, or the prude is shocked at thebackslidings of her frail acquaintance. Those who have the fewestresources in themselves naturally seek the food of their self-loveelsewhere. The most ignorant people find most to laugh at in strangers:scandal and satire prevail most in country-places; and a propensity toridicule every the slightest or most palpable deviation from whatwe happen to approve, ceases with the progress of common sense anddecency. (1) True worth does not exult in the faults and deficienciesof others; as true refinement turns away from grossness and deformity, instead of being tempted to indulge in an unmanly triumph over it. Raphael would not faint away at the daubing of a signpost, nor Homerhold his head the higher for being in the company of a Grub Street bard. Real power, real excellence, does not seek for a foil in inferiority;nor fear contamination from coming in contact with that which is coarseand homely. It reposes on itself, and is equally free from spleen andaffectation. But the spirit of gentility is the mere essence of spleenand affectation; of affected delight in its own would-be qualifications, and of ineffable disdain poured out upon the involuntary blundersor accidental disadvantages of those whom it chooses to treat as itsinferiors. Thus a fashionable Miss titters till she is ready to bursther sides at the uncouth shape of a bonnet or the abrupt drop of acurtsey (such as Jeanie Deans would make) in a country-girl who comesto be hired by her Mamma as a servant; yet to show how little foundationthere is for this hysterical expression of her extreme good opinion ofherself and contempt for the untutored rustic, she would herself thenext day be delighted with the very same shaped bonnet if brought her bya French milliner and told it was all the fashion, and in a week's timewill become quite familiar with the maid, and chatter with her (uponequal terms) about caps and ribbons and lace by the hour together. Thereis no difference between them but that of situation in the kitchen orin the parlour: let circumstances bring them together, and they fitlike hand and glove. It is like mistress, like maid. Their talk, theirthoughts, their dreams, their likings and dislikes are the same. Themistress's head runs continually on dress and finery, so does themaid's: the young lady longs to ride in a coach and six, so does themaid, if she could; Miss forms a _beau-ideal_ of a lover with black eyesand rosy cheeks, which does not differ from that of her attendant; bothlike a smart man, the one the footman and the other his master, for thesame reason; both like handsome furniture and fine houses; both applythe terms shocking and disagreeable to the same things and persons; bothhave a great notion of balls, plays, treats, song-books, and love-tales;both like a wedding or a christening, and both would give their littlefingers to see a coronation--with this difference, that the one has achance of getting a seat at it, and the other is dying with envy thatshe has not. Indeed, this last is a ceremony that delights equally thegreatest monarch and the meanest of his subjects--the vilest of therabble. Yet this which is the height of gentility and consummation ofexternal distinction and splendour, is, I should say, a vulgar ceremony. For what degree of refinement, of capacity, of virtue is required inthe individual who is so distinguished, or is necessary to his enjoyingthis idle and imposing parade of his person? Is he delighted with thestage-coach and gilded panels? So is the poorest wretch that gazes atit. Is he struck with the spirit, the beauty, and symmetry of the eightcream-coloured horses? There is not one of the immense multitude whoflock to see the sight from town or country, St. Giles's or Whitechapel, young or old, rich or poor, gentle or simple, who does not agree toadmire the same object. Is he delighted with the yeomen of the guard, the military escort, the groups of ladies, the badges of sovereignpower, the kingly crown, the marshal's truncheon and the judge's robe, the array that precedes and follows him, the crowded streets, thewindows hung with eager looks? So are the mob, for they 'have eyes andsee them!' There is no one faculty of mind or body, natural or acquired, essential to the principal figure in this procession more than is commonto the meanest and most despised attendant on it. A waxwork figure wouldanswer the same purpose: a Lord Mayor of London has as much tinsel to beproud of. I would rather have a king do something that no one else hasthe power or magnanimity to do, or say something that no one else hasthe wisdom to say, or look more handsome, more thoughtful, or benignthan any one else in his dominions. But I see nothing to raise one'sidea of him in his being made a show of: if the pageant would do as wellwithout the man, the man would do as well without the pageant! Kingshave been declared to be 'lovers of low company'; and this maxim, besides the reason sometimes assigned for it, viz. That they meet withless opposition to their wills from such persons, will I suspect befound to turn at last on the consideration I am here stating, that theyalso meet with more sympathy in their tastes. The most ignorant andthoughtless have the greatest admiration of the baubles, the outwardsymbols of pomp and power, the sound and show, which are the habitualdelight and mighty prerogative of kings. The stupidest slave worshipsthe gaudiest tyrant. The same gross motives appeal to the same grosscapacities, flatter the pride of the superior and excite the servilityof the dependant; whereas a higher reach of moral and intellectualrefinement might seek in vain for higher proofs of internal worth andinherent majesty in the object of its idolatry, and not finding thedivinity lodged within, the unreasonable expectation raised wouldprobably end in mortification on both sides!--There is little todistinguish a king from his subjects but the rabble's shout--if he losesthat and is reduced to the forlorn hope of gaining the suffrages of thewise and good, he is of all men the most miserable. --But enough of this. 

'I like it, ' says Miss Branghton(2) in _Evelina_ (meaning the opera), 'because it is not vulgar. ' That is, she likes it, not because thereis anything to like in it, but because other people are prevented fromliking or knowing anything about it. Janus Weathercock, Esq. , laughethto scorn and spitefully entreateth and hugely condemneth my dramaticcriticisms in the _London, _ for a like exquisite reason. I musttherefore make an example of him _in terrorem_ to all such hypercritics. He finds fault with me and calls my taste vulgar, because I go toSadler's Wells ('a place he has heard of'--0 Lord, sir!)--becauseI notice the Miss Dennetts, 'great favourites with the Whitechapelorders'--praise Miss Valancy, 'a bouncing Columbine at Ashley's and themthere places, as his barber informs him' (has he no way of establishinghimself in his own good opinion but by triumphing over his barber's badEnglish?)--and finally, because I recognised the existence of the Coburgand the Surrey theatres, at the names of which he cries 'Faugh' withgreat significance, as if he had some personal disgust at them, and yethe would be supposed never to have entered them. It is not his cue as awell-bred critic. _C'est beau ca. _ Now this appears to me a very crude, unmeaning, indiscriminate, wholesale, and vulgar way of thinking. It is prejudicing things in the lump, by names and places and classes, instead of judging of them by what they are in themselves, by their realqualities and shades of distinction. There is no selection, truth, ordelicacy in such a mode of proceeding. It is affecting ignorance, andmaking it a title to wisdom. It is a vapid assumption of superiority. It is exceeding impertinence. It is rank coxcombry. It is nothing in theworld else. To condemn because the multitude admire is as essentiallyvulgar as to admire because they admire. There is no exercise of tasteor judgment in either case: both are equally repugnant to good sense, and of the two I should prefer the good-natured side. I would as soonagree with my barber as differ from him; and why should I make a pointof reversing the sentence of the Whitechapel orders? Or how can itaffect my opinion of the merits of an actor at the Coburg or the Surreytheatres, that these theatres are in or out of the Bills of Mortality?This is an easy, short-hand way of judging, as gross as it ismechanical. It is not a difficult matter to settle questions of tasteby consulting the map of London, or to prove your liberality bygeographical distinctions. Janus jumbles things together strangely. Ifhe had seen Mr. Kean in a provincial theatre, at Exeter or Taunton, hewould have thought it vulgar to admire him; but when he had been stampedin London, Janus would no doubt show his discernment and the subtletyof his tact for the display of character and passion by not being behindthe fashion. The Miss Dennetts are 'little unformed girls, ' for no otherreason than because they danced at one of the minor theatres: let thembut come out on the opera boards, and let the beauty and fashion of theseason greet them with a fairy shower of delighted applause, and theywould outshine Milanie 'with the foot of fire. ' His gorge rises at themention of a certain quarter of the town: whatever passes current inanother, he 'swallows total grist unsifted, husks and all. ' This is nottaste, but folly. At this rate, the hackney-coachman who drives him, orhis horse Contributor whom he has introduced as a select personage tothe vulgar reader, knows as much of the matter as he does. --In a word, the answer to all this in the first instance is to say what vulgarityis. Now its essence, I imagine, consists in taking manners, actions, words, opinions on trust from others, without examining one's ownfeelings or weighing the merits of the case. It is coarseness orshallowness of taste arising from want of individual refinement, together with the confidence and presumption inspired by example andnumbers. It may be defined to be a prostitution of the mind or body toape the more or less obvious defects of others, because by so doingwe shall secure the suffrages of those we associate with. To affecta gesture, an opinion, a phrase, because it is the rage with a largenumber of persons, or to hold it in abhorrence because another setof persons very little, if at all, better informed cry it down todistinguish themselves from the former, is in either case equalvulgarity and absurdity. A thing is not vulgar merely because it iscommon. 'Tis common to breathe, to see, to feel, to live. Nothing isvulgar that is natural, spontaneous, unavoidable. Grossness is notvulgarity, ignorance is not vulgarity, awkwardness is not vulgarity;but all these become vulgar when they are affected and shown off on theauthority of others, or to fall in with _the fashion_ or the company wekeep. Caliban is coarse enough, but surely he is not vulgar. We might aswell spurn the clod under our feet and call it vulgar. Cobbett is coarseenough, but he is not vulgar. He does not belong to the herd. Nothingreal, nothing original, can be vulgar; but I should think an imitatorof Cobbett a vulgar man. Emery's Yorkshireman is vulgar, because he is aYorkshireman. It is the cant and gibberish, the cunning and low lifeof a particular district; it has 'a stamp exclusive and provincial. ' Hemight 'gabble most brutishly' and yet not fall under the letter of thedefinition; but 'his speech bewrayeth him, ' his dialect (like the jargonof a Bond Street lounger) is the damning circumstance. If he were a mereblockhead, it would not signify; but he thinks himself a _knowing hand, _according to the notions and practices of those with whom he was broughtup, and which he thinks _the go_ everywhere. In a word, this characteris not the offspring of untutored nature but of bad habits; it is madeup of ignorance and conceit. It has a mixture of _slang_ in it. Allslang phrases are for the same reason vulgar; but there is nothingvulgar in the common English idiom. Simplicity is not vulgarity; but thelooking to affectation of any sort for distinction is. A cockney is avulgar character, whose imagination cannot wander beyond the suburbsof the metropolis; so is a fellow who is always thinking of the HighStreet, Edinburgh. We want a name for this last character. An opinion isvulgar that is stewed in the rank breath of the rabble; nor is it a bitpurer or more refined for having passed through the well-cleansed teethof a whole court. The inherent vulgarity is in having no other feelingon any subject than the crude, blind, headling, gregarious notionacquired by sympathy with the mixed multitude or with a fastidiousminority, who are just as insensible to the real truth, and asindifferent to everything but their own frivolous and vexatiouspretensions. The upper are not wiser than the lower orders because theyresolve to differ from them. The fashionable have the advantage ofthe unfashionable in nothing but the fashion. The true vulgar are the_servum pecus imitatorum_--the herd of pretenders to what they do notfeel and to what is not natural to them, whether in high or low life. To belong to any class, to move in any rank or sphere of life, is not avery exclusive distinction or test of refinement. Refinement will in allclasses be the exception, not the rule; and the exception may fall outin one class as well as another. A king is but an hereditary title. Anobleman is only one of the House of Peers. To be a knight or aldermanis confessedly a vulgar thing. The king the other day made Sir WalterScott a baronet, but not all the power of the Three Estates could makeanother Author of _Waverley_. Princes, heroes, are often commonplacepeople: Hamlet was not a vulgar character, neither was Don Quixote. Tobe an author, to be a painter, is nothing. It is a trick, it is a trade. 

 An author! 'tis a venerable name: How few deserve it, yet what numbers claim!

Nay, to be a Member of the Royal Academy or a Fellow of the RoyalSociety is but a vulgar distinction; but to be a Virgil, a Milton, aRaphael, a Claude, is what fell to the lot of humanity but once! I donot think they were vulgar people; though, for anything I know to thecontrary, the first Lord of the Bedchamber may be a very vulgar man; foranything I know to the contrary, he may not be so. --Such are pretty muchmy notions of gentility and vulgarity. 

There is a well-dressed and an ill-dressed mob, both which I hate. _Odiprofanum vulgus, et arceo. _ The vapid affectation of the one to me iseven more intolerable than the gross insolence and brutality of theother. If a set of low-lived fellows are noisy, rude, and boisterous toshow their disregard of the company, a set of fashionable coxcombs are, to a nauseous degree, finical and effeminate to show their thoroughbreeding. The one are governed by their feelings, however coarse andmisguided, which is something; the others consult only appearances, which are nothing, either as a test of happiness or virtue. Hogarth inhis prints has trimmed the balance of pretension between the downrightblackguard and the _soi-disant_ fine gentleman unanswerably. It does notappear in his moral demonstrations (whatever it may do in the genteelletter-writing of Lord Chesterfield or the chivalrous rhapsodies ofBurke) that vice by losing all its grossness loses half its evil. Itbecomes more contemptible, not less disgusting. What is there in common, for instance, between his beaux and belles, his rakes and his coquettes, and the men and women, the true heroic and ideal characters in Raphael?But his people of fashion and quality are just upon a par with the low, the selfish, the _unideal_ characters in the contrasted view of humanlife, and are often the very same characters, only changing places. Ifthe lower ranks are actuated by envy and uncharitableness towards theupper, the latter have scarcely any feelings but of pride, contempt, andaversion to the lower. If the poor would pull down the rich to getat their good things, the rich would tread down the poor as in awine-press, and squeeze the last shilling out of their pockets and thelast drop of blood out of their veins. If the headstrong self-will andunruly turbulence of a common alehouse are shocking, what shall wesay to the studied insincerity, the insipid want of common sense, thecallous insensibility of the drawing-room and boudoir? I would rathersee the feelings of our common nature (for they are the same at bottom)expressed in the most naked and unqualified way, than see every feelingof our nature suppressed, stifled, hermetically sealed under the smooth, cold, glittering varnish of pretended refinement and conventionalpoliteness. The one may be corrected by being better informed; the otheris incorrigible, wilful, heartless depravity. I cannot describe thecontempt and disgust I have felt at the tone of what would be thoughtgood company, when I have witnessed the sleek, smiling, glossy, gratuitous assumption of superiority to every feeling of humanity, honesty, or principle, as a part of the etiquette, the mental and moral_costume_ of the table, and every profession of toleration or favour forthe lower orders, that is, for the great mass of our fellow-creatures, treated as an indecorum and breach of the harmony of well-regulatedsociety. In short, I prefer a bear-garden to the adder's den; or, to putthis case in its extremest point of view, I have more patience with menin a rude state of nature outraging the human form than I have with apes'making mops and mows' at the extravagances they have first provoked. I can endure the brutality (as it is termed) of mobs better than theinhumanity of courts. The violence of the one rages like a fire; theinsidious policy of the other strikes like a pestilence, and is morefatal and inevitable. The slow poison of despotism is worse than theconvulsive struggles of anarchy. 'Of all evils, ' says Hume, 'anarchy isthe shortest lived. ' The one may 'break out like a wild overthrow'; butthe other from its secret, sacred stand, operates unseen, and underminesthe happiness of kingdoms for ages, lurks in the hollow cheek, andstares you in the face in the ghastly eye of want and agony and woe. It is dreadful to hear the noise and uproar of an infuriated multitudestung by the sense of wrong and maddened by sympathy; it is moreappalling to think of the smile answered by other gracious smiles, ofthe whisper echoed by other assenting whispers, which doom them first todespair and then to destruction. Popular fury finds its counterpart incourtly servility. If every outrage is to be apprehended from the one, every iniquity is deliberately sanctioned by the other, without regardto justice or decency. The word of a king, 'Go thou and do likewise, 'makes the stoutest heart dumb: truth and honesty shrink before it. (3) Ifthere are watchwords for the rabble, have not the polite and fashionabletheir hackneyed phrases, their fulsome, unmeaning jargon as well? Bothare to me anathema!

To return to the first question, as it regards individual and privatemanners. There is a fine illustration of the effects of preposterous andaffected gentility in the character of Gertrude, in the old comedyof _Eastward Hoe, _ written by Ben Jonson, Marston, and Chapman inconjunction. This play is supposed to have given rise to Hogarth'sseries of prints of the Idle and Industrious Apprentice; and thereis something exceedingly Hogarthian in the view both of vulgar and ofgenteel life here displayed. The character of Gertrude, in particular, the heroine of the piece, is inimitably drawn. The mixture of vanity andmeanness, the internal worthlessness and external pretence, the rusticignorance and fine lady-like airs, the intoxication of novelty andinfatuation of pride, appear like a dream or romance, rather thananything in real life. Cinderella and her glass slipper are common-placeto it. She is not, like Millamant (a century afterwards), theaccomplished fine lady, but a pretender to all the foppery and finery ofthe character. It is the honeymoon with her ladyship, and her follyis at the full. To be a wife, and the wife of a knight, are to herpleasures 'worn in their newest gloss, ' and nothing can exceed herraptures in the contemplation of both parts of the dilemma. It is notfamiliarity, but novelty, that weds her to the court. She rises intothe air of gentility from the ground of a city life, and fluttersabout there with all the fantastic delight of a butterfly that has justchanged its caterpillar state. The sound of My Lady intoxicates herwith delight, makes her giddy, and almost turns her brain. On the barestrength of it she is ready to turn her father and mother out of doors, and treats her brother and sister with infinite disdain and judicialhardness of heart. With some speculators the modern philosophy hasdeadened and distorted all the natural affections; and before abstractideas and the mischievous refinements of literature were introduced, nothing was to be met with in the primeval state of society butsimplicity and pastoral innocence of manners--

 And all was conscience and tender heart

This historical play gives the lie to the above theory pretty broadly, yet delicately. Our heroine is as vain as she is ignorant, and asunprincipled as she is both, and without an idea or wish of any kind butthat of adorning her person in the glass, and being called and thoughta lady, something superior to a citizen's wife. (4) She is so bent onfinery that she believes in miracles to obtain it, and expects thefairies to bring it her. (5) She is quite above thinking of a settlement, jointure, or pin-money. She takes the will for the deed all through thepiece, and is so besotted with this ignorant, vulgar notion of rank andtitle as a real thing that cannot be counterfeited that she is thedupe of her own fine stratagems, and marries a gull, a dolt, a brokenadventurer for an accomplished and brave gentleman. Her meanness isequal to her folly and her pride (and nothing can be greater), yet sheholds out on the strength of her original pretensions for a long time, and plays the upstart with decency and imposing consistency. Indeed, her infatuation and caprices are akin to the flighty perversity of adisordered imagination; and another turn of the wheel of good orevil fortune would have sent her to keep company with Hogarth's_Merveilleuses_ in Bedlam, or with Decker's group of coquettes in thesame place. --The other parts of the play are a dreary lee-shore, likeCuckold's Point on the coast of Essex, where the preconcerted shipwrecktakes place that winds up the catastrophe of the piece. But this isalso characteristic of the age, and serves as a contrast to the airy andfactitious character which is the principal figure in the plot. We hadmade but little progress from that point till Hogarth's time, if Hogarthis to be believed in his description of city manners. How wonderfully wehave distanced it since!

Without going into this at length, there is one circumstance 1 wouldmention in which I think there has been a striking improvement inthe family economy of modern times--and that is in the relation ofmistresses and servants. After visits and finery, a married woman of theold school had nothing to do but to attend to her housewifery. She hadno other resource, no other sense of power, but to harangue and lordit over her domestics. Modern book-education supplies the place of theold-fashioned system of kitchen persecution and eloquence. Awell-bred woman now seldom goes into the kitchen to look after theservants:--formerly what was called a good manager, an exemplarymistress of a family, did nothing but hunt them from morning to night, from one year's end to another, without leaving them a moment's rest, peace, or comfort. Now a servant is left to do her work without thissuspicious and tormenting interference and fault-finding at every step, and she does it all the better. The proverbs about the mistress's eye, etc. , are no longer held for current. A woman from this habit, which atlast became an uncontrollable passion, would scold her maids for fiftyyears together, and nothing could stop her: now the temptation to readthe last new poem or novel, and the necessity of talking of it in thenext company she goes into, prevent her--and the benefit to all partiesis incalculable. 

NOTES to ESSAY XVI

(1) If a European, when he has cut off his beard and put false hair onhis head, or bound up his own natural hair in regular hard knots, asunlike nature as he could possibly make it; and after having renderedthem immovable by the help of the fat of hogs, has covered the wholewith flour, laid on by a machine with the utmost regularity; if whenthus attired he issues forth, and meets with a Cherokee Indian, who hasbestowed as much time at his toilet, and laid on with equal care andattention his yellow and red oker on particular parts of his foreheador cheeks, as he judges most becoming; whoever of these two despises theother for this attention to the fashion of his country, whicheverfirst feels himself provoked to laugh, is the barbarian. '--Sir JoshuaReynolds's _Discourses, _ vol. I. Pp. 231, 232. 

(2) This name was originally spelt Braughton in the manuscript, and wasaltered to Branghton by a mistake of the printer. Branghton, however, was thought a good name for the occasion and was suffered to stand. 'Dipit in the ocean, ' as Sterne's barber says of the buckle, 'and it willstand!'

(3) A lady of quality, in allusion to the gallantries of a reigningprince, being told, 'I suppose it will be your turn next?' said, 'No, Ihope not; for you know it is impossible to refuse!'

(4) '_Gertrude. _ For the passion of patience, look if Sir Petronelapproach. That sweet, that fine, that delicate, that--for love's sake, tell me if he come. Oh, sister Mill, though my father be a low-capttradesman, yet I must be a lady, and I praise God my mother must call memadam. Does he come? Off with this gown for shame's sake, off with thisgown! Let not my knight take me in the city cut, in any hand! Tear't!Pox on't (does he come?), tear't off! _Thus while she sleeps, I sorrowfor her sake. _ (Sings. )

_Mildred. _ Lord, sister, with what an immodest impatiency anddisgraceful scorn do you put off your city-tire! I am sorry to think youimagine to right yourself in wronging that which hath made both you andus. 

_Ger. _ I tell you, I cannot endure it: I must be a lady: do you wearyour quoiff with a London licket! your stamel petticoat with two guards!the buffin gown with the tuftafitty cap and the velvet lace! I must be alady, and I will be a lady. I like some humours of the city dames well;to eat cherries only at an angel a pound; good: to dye rich scarletblack; pretty: to line a grogram gown clean through with velvet;tolerable: their pure linen, their smocks of three pound a smock, areto be borne withal: but your mincing niceries, taffity pipkins, durancepetticoats, and silver bodkins--God's my life! as I shall be a lady, Icannot endure it. 

_Mil. _ Well, sister, those that scorn their nest oft fly with a sickwing. 

_Ger. _ Bow-bell! Alas! poor Mill, when I am a lady, I'll pray for theeyet i'faith; nay, and I'll vouchsafe to call thee sister Mill still; forthou art not like to be a lady as I am, yet surely thou art a creatureof God's making, and may'st peradventure be saved as soon as I (does hecome?). _And ever and anon she doubled in her song. _

_Mil. _ Now (lady's my comfort), what a profane ape's here!

Enter SIR PETRONEL FLASH, MR. TOUCHSTONE, and MRS. TOUCHSTONE. 

_Ger. _ Is my knight come? 0 the lord, my band! Sister, do my cheeks lookwell? Give me a little box o' the ear, that I may seem to blush. Now, now! so, there, there! here he is! 0 my dearest delight! Lord, lord! andhow does my knight?

_Touchstone. _ Fie, with more modesty. 

_Ger. _ Modesty! why, I am no citizen now. Modesty! am I not to bemarried? You're best to keep me modest, now I am to be a lady. 

_Sir Petronel. _ Boldness is a good fashion and court-like. 

_Ger. _ Aye, in, a country lady I hope it is, as I shall be. And howchance ye came no sooner, knight?

_Sir Pet. _ Faith, I was so entertained in the progress with one CountEpernoun, a Welch knight: we had a match at baloon too with my LordWhackum for four crowns. 

_Ger. _ And when shall's be married, my knight?

_Sir Pet. _ I am come now to consummate: and your father may call a poorknight son-in-law. 

_Mrs. Touchstone. _ Yes, that he is a knight: I know where he had moneyto pay the gentlemen ushers and heralds their fees. Aye, that he is aknight: and so might you have been too, if you had been aught else butan ass, as well as some of your neighbours. An I thought you wouldnot ha' been knighted, as I am an honest woman, I would ha' dubbed youmyself. I praise God, I have wherewithal. But as for you, daughter--

_Ger. _ Aye, mother, I must be a lady to-morrow; and by your leave, mother (I speak it not without my duty, but only in the right of myhusband), I must take place of you, mother. 

_Mrs. Touch. _ That you shall, lady-daughter; and have a coach as well asI. 

_Ger. _ Yes, mother; but my coach-horses must take the wall of yourcoach-horses. 

_Touch. _ Come, come, the day grows low; 'tis supper time: and, sir, respect my daughter; she has refused for you wealthy and honest matches, known good men. 

_Ger. _ Body o' truth, citizen, citizens! Sweet knight, as soon asever we are married, take me to thy mercy, out of this miserable city. Presently: carry me out of the scent of Newcastle coal and the hearingof Bow-bell, I beseech thee; down with me, for God's sake. '-Act I. Scenei. 

This dotage on sound and show seemed characteristic of that age (see_New Way to Pay Old Debts, _ etc. )--as if in the grossness of sense, and the absence of all intellectual and abstract topics of thought anddiscourse (the thin, circulating medium of the present day) the mind wasattracted without the power of resistance to the tinkling sound ofits own name with a title added to it, and the image of its own persontricked out in old-fashioned finery. The effect, no doubt, was also moremarked and striking from the contrast between the ordinary penury andpoverty of the age and the first and more extravagant demonstrations ofluxury and artificial refinement. 

(5) _'Gertrude. _ Good lord, that there are no fairies nowadays, Syn. 

_Syndefy. _ Why, Madam?

_Ger. _ To do miracles, and bring ladies money. Sure, if we lay in acleanly house, they would haunt it, Synne? I'll sweep the chamber soonat night, and set a dish of water o' the hearth. A fairy may come andbring a pearl or a diamond. We do not know, Synne: or there may be a potof gold hid in the yard, if we had tools to dig for't. Why may not wetwo rise early i' the morning, Synne, afore anybody is up, and finda jewel i' the streets worth a hundred pounds? May not some greatcourt-lady, as she comes from revels at midnight, look out of her coach, as 'tis running, and lose such a jewel, and we find it? ha!

_Syn. _ They are pretty waking dreams, these. 

_Ger. _ Or may not some old usurer be drunk overnight with a bag ofmoney, and leave it behind him on a stall? For God's sake, Syn, let'srise to-morrow by break of day, and see. I protest, la, if I had as muchmoney as an alderman, I would scatter some on't i' the streets for poorladies to find when their knights were laid up. And now I remember mysong of the Golden Shower, why may not I have such a fortune? I'll singit, and try what luck I shall have after it. '--Act V. Scene i. '

VOLUME II

ESSAY I. ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN

 And blind Orion hungry for the morn. 

Orion, the subject of this landscape, was the classical Nimrod; and iscalled by Homer, 'a hunter of shadows, himself a shade. ' He was the sonof Neptune; and having lost an eve in some affray between the Godsand men, was told that if he would go to meet the rising sun he wouldrecover his sight. He is represented setting out on his journey, withmen on his shoulders to guide him, a bow in his hand, and Diana in theclouds greeting him. He stalks along, a giant upon earth, and reels andfalters in his gait, as if just awakened out of sleep, or uncertain ofhis way;--you see his blindness, though his back is turned. Mists risearound him, and veil the sides of the green forests; earth is dank andfresh with dews, the 'gray dawn and the Pleiades before him dance, ' andin the distance are seen the blue hills and sullen ocean. Nothingwas ever more finely conceived or done. It breathes the spirit of themorning; its moisture, its repose, its obscurity, waiting the miracle oflight to kindle it into smiles; the whole is, like the principal figurein it, 'a forerunner of the dawn. ' The same atmosphere tinges and imbuesevery object, the same dull light 'shadowy sets off' the face of nature:one feeling of vastness, of strangeness, and of primeval forms pervadesthe painter's canvas, and we are thrown back upon the first integrity ofthings. This great and learned man might be said to see nature throughthe glass of time; he alone has a right to be considered as the painterof classical antiquity. Sir Joshua has done him justice in this respect. He could give to the scenery of his heroic fables that unimpaired lookof original nature, full, solid, large, luxuriant, teeming with life andpower; or deck it with all the pomp of art, with tempyles and towers, and mythologic groves. His pictures 'denote a foregone conclusion. ' Heapplies Nature to his purposes, works out her images according tothe standard of his thoughts, embodies high fictions; and the firstconception being given, all the rest seems to grow out of and beassimilated to it, by the unfailing process of a studious imagination. Like his own Orion, he overlooks the surrounding scene, appears to 'takeup the isles as a very little thing, and to lay the earth in a balance. 'With a laborious and mighty grasp, he puts nature into the mould of theideal and antique; and was among painters (more than any one else) whatMilton was among poets. There is in both something of the same pedantry, the same stiffness, the same elevation, the same grandeur, the samemixture of art and nature, the same richness of borrowed materials, thesame unity of character. Neither the poet nor the painter lowered thesubjects they treated, but filled up the outline in the fancy, and addedstrength and reality to it; and thus not only satisfied, but surpassedthe expectations of the spectator and the reader. This is held for thetriumph and the perfection of works of art. To give us nature, such aswe see it, is well and deserving of praise; to give us nature, suchas we have never seen, but have often wished to see it, is better, anddeserving of higher praise. He who can show the world in its first nakedglory, with the hues of fancy spread over it, or in its high and palmystate, with the gravity of history stamped on the proud monuments ofvanished empire, --who, by his 'so potent art, ' can recall time past, transport us to distant places, and join the regions of imagination (anew conquest) to those of reality, --who shows us not only what Natureis, but what she has been, and is capable of, --he who does this, anddoes it with simplicity, with truth, and grandeur, is lord of Nature andher powers; and his mind is universal, and his art the master-art!

There is nothing in this 'more than natural, ' if criticism couldbe persuaded to think so. The historic painter does not neglect orcontravene Nature, but follows her more closely up into her fantasticheights or hidden recesses. He demonstrates what she would be inconceivable circumstances and under implied conditions. He 'gives toairy nothing a local habitation, ' not 'a name. ' At his touch, wordsstart up into images, thoughts become things. He clothes a dream, aphantom, with form and colour, and the wholesome attributes of reality. _His_ art is a second nature; not a different one. There are those, indeed, who think that not to copy nature is the rule for attainingperfection. Because they cannot paint the objects which they have theyhave, they fancy themselves qualified to paint the ideas which they havenot seen. But it is possible to fail in this latter and more difficultstyle of imitation, as well as in the former humbler one. The detection, it is true, is not so easy, because the objects are not so nigh at handto compare, and therefore there is more room both for false pretensionand for self-deceit. They take an epic motto or subject, and concludethat the spirit is implied as a thing of course. They paint inferiorportraits, maudlin lifeless faces, without ordinary expression, or onelook, feature, or particle of nature in them, and think that this isto rise to the truth of history. They vulgarise and degrade whatever isinteresting or sacred to the mind, and suppose that they thus add to thedignity of their profession. They represent a face that seems as if nothought or feeling of any kind had ever passed through it, and wouldhave you believe that this is the very sublime of expression, such asit would appear in heroes, or demigods of old, when rapture or agony wasraised to its height. They show you a landscape that looks as if the sunnever shone upon it, and tell you that it is not modern--that so earthlooked when Titan first kissed it with his rays. This is not the trueideal. It is not to fill the moulds of the imagination, but to defaceand injure them; it is not to come up to, but to fall short of thepoorest conception in the public mind. Such pictures should not be hungin the same room with that of Orion. (1)

Poussin was, of all painters, the most poetical. He was the painter ofideas. No one ever told a story half so well, nor so well knew what wascapable of being told by the pencil. He seized on, and struck off withgrace and precision, just that point of view which would be likely tocatch the reader's fancy. There is a significance, a consciousness inwhatever he does (sometimes a vice, but oftener a virtue) beyond anyother painter. His Giants sitting on the tops of craggy mountains, ashuge themselves, and playing idly on their Pan's-pipes, seem to havebeen seated there these three thousand years, and to know the beginningand the end of their own story. An infant Bacchus or Jupiter is big withhis future destiny. Even inanimate and dumb things speak a language oftheir own. His snakes, the messengers of fate, are inspired with humanintellect. His trees grow and expand their leaves in the air, glad ofthe rain, proud of the sun, awake to the winds of heaven. In his Plagueof Athens, the very buildings seem stiff with horror. His picture of theDeluge is, perhaps, the finest historical landscape in the world. Yousee a waste of waters, wide, interminable the sun is labouring, wan andweary, up the sky the clouds, dull and leaden, lie like a load upon theeye, and heaven and earth seem commingling into one confused mass! Hishuman figures are sometimes 'o'erinformed' with this kind of feeling. Their actions have too much gesticulation, and the set expression of thefeatures borders too much on the mechanical and caricatured style. Inthis respect they form a contrast to Raphael's, whose figures neverappear to be sitting for their pictures, or to be conscious of aspectator, or to have come from the painter's hand. In Nicolas Poussin, on the contrary, everything seems to have a distinct understanding withthe artist; 'the very stones prate of their whereabout'; each object hasits part and place assigned, and is in a sort of compact with therest of the picture. It is this conscious keeping, and, as it were, _internal_ design, that gives their peculiar character to the works ofthis artist. There was a picture of Aurora in the British Gallery a yearor two ago. It was a suffusion of golden light. The Goddess wore hersaffron-coloured robes, and appeared just risen from the gloomy bed ofold Tithonus. Her very steeds, milk-white, were tinged with the yellowdawn. It was a personification of the morning. Poussin succeeded betterin classic than in sacred subjects. The latter are comparatively heavy, forced, full of violent contrasts of colour, of red, blue, and black, and without the true prophetic inspiration of the characters. But in hispagan allegories and fables he was quite at home. The native gravity andnative levity of the Frenchman were combined with Italian scenery andan antique gusto, and gave even to his colouring an air of learnedindifference. He wants, in one respect, grace, form, expression; buthe has everywhere sense and meaning, perfect costume and propriety. His personages always belong to the class and time represented, and arestrictly versed in the business in hand. His grotesque compositionsin particular, his Nymphs and Fauns, are superior (at least, as faras style is concerned) even to those of Rubens. They are taken moreimmediately out of fabulous history. Rubens' Satyrs and Bacchantes havea more jovial and voluptuous aspect, are more drunk with pleasure, more full of animal spirits and riotous impulses; they laugh and boundalong--

 Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring:

but those of Poussin have more of the intellectual part of thecharacter, and seem vicious on reflection, and of set purpose. Rubens'are noble specimens of a class; Poussin's are allegorical abstractionsof the same class, with bodies less pampered, but with minds moresecretly depraved. The Bacchanalian groups of the Flemish painter were, however, his masterpieces in composition. Witness those prodigies ofcolour, character, and expression at Blenheim. In the more chaste andrefined delineation of classic fable, Poussin was without a rival. Rubens, who was a match for him in the wild and picturesque, could notpretend to vie with the elegance and purity of thought in his picture ofApollo giving a poet a cup of water to drink, nor with the gracefulnessof design in the figure of a nymph squeezing the juice of a bunch ofgrapes from her fingers (a rosy wine-press) which falls into the mouthof a chubby infant below. But, above all, who shall celebrate, in termsof fit praise, his picture of the shepherds in the Vale of Tempe goingout in a fine morning of the spring, and coming to a tomb with thisinscription: ET EGO IN ARCADIA VIXI! The eager curiosity of some, theexpression of others who start back with fear and surprise, the clearbreeze playing with the branches of the shadowing trees, 'the valleyslow, where the mild zephyrs use, ' the distant, uninterrupted, sunnyprospect speak (and for ever will speak on) of ages past to ages yet tocome!(2)

Pictures are a set of chosen images, a stream of pleasant thoughtspassing through the mind. It is a luxury to have the walls of our roomshung round with them, and no less so to have such a gallery in the mind, to con over the relies of ancient art bound up 'within the book andvolume of the brain, unmixed (if it were possible) with baser matter!' Alife passed among pictures, in the study and the love of art, is a happynoiseless dream: or rather, it is to dream and to be awake at the sametime; for it has all 'the sober certainty of waking bliss, ' with theromantic voluptuousness of a visionary and abstracted being. They arethe bright consummate essences of things, and 'he who knows of thesedelights to taste and interpose them oft, is not unwise!'--The Orion, which I have here taken occasion to descant upon, is one of a collectionof excellent pictures, as this collection is itself one of a series fromthe old masters, which have for some years back embrowned the walls ofthe British Gallery, and enriched the public eye. What hues (those ofnature mellowed by time) breathe around as we enter! What forms arethere, woven into the memory! What looks, which only the answering looksof the spectator can express! What intellectual stores have been yearlypoured forth from the shrine of ancient art! The works are various, but the names the same--heaps of Rembrandts frowning from the darkenedwalls, Rubens' glad gorgeous groups, Titians more rich and rare, Claudesalways exquisite, sometimes beyond compare, Guido's endless cloyingsweetness, the learning of Poussin and the Caracci, and Raphael'sprincely magnificence crowning all. We read certain letters andsyllables in the Catalogue, and at the well-known magic sound a miracleof skill and beauty starts to view. One might think that one year'sprodigal display of such perfection would exhaust the labours of oneman's life; but the next year, and the next to that, we find anotherharvest reaped and gathered in to the great garner of art, by the sameimmortal hands--

 Old GENIUS the porter of them was; He letteth in, he letteth out to wend. --

Their works seem endless as their reputation--to be many as they arecomplete--to multiply with the desire of the mind to see more and moreof them; as if there were a living power in the breath of Fame, and inthe very names of the great heirs of glory 'there were propagation toyear; to have one last, lingering look yet to come. Pictures arescattered like stray gifts through the world; and while they remain, earth has yet a little gilding left, not quite rubbed off, dishonoured, and defaced. There are plenty of standard works still to be found inthis country, in the collections at Blenheim, at Burleigh, and in thosebelonging to Mr. Angerstein, Lord Grosvenor, the Marquis of Stafford, and others, to keep up this treat to the lovers of art for many years;and it is the more desirable to reserve a privileged sanctuary ofthis sort, where the eye may dote, and the heart take its fill ofsuch pictures as Poussin's Orion, since the Louvre is stripped of itstriumphant spoils, and since he who collected it, and wore it as arich jewel in his Iron Crown, the hunter of greatness and of glory, ishimself a shade!

NOTES to ESSAY I

(1) Everything tends to show the manner in which a great artistis formed. If any person could claim an exemption from the carefulimitation of individual objects, it was Nicolas Poussin. He studiedthe antique, but he also studied nature. 'I have often admired, ' saysVignuel do Marville, who knew him at a late period of his life, 'thelove he had for his art. Old as he was, I frequently saw him among theruins of ancient Rome, out in the Campagna, or along the banks of theTyber, sketching a scene that had pleased him; and I often met him withhis handkerchief full of stones, moss, or flowers, which he carriedhome, that he might copy them exactly from nature. One day I asked himhow he had attained to such a degree of perfection as to have gainedso high a rank among the great painters of Italy? He answered, "I HAVENEGLECTED NOTHING. "'--_See his Life lately published. _ It appears fromthis account that he had not fallen Into a recent error, that Natureputs the man of genius out. As a contrast to the foregoing description, I might mention, that I remember an old gentleman once asking Mr. WestIn the British Gallery if he had ever been at Athens? To which thePresident made answer, No; nor did he feel any great desire to go; forthat he thought he had as good an idea of the place from the Catalogueas he could get by living there for any number of years. What would hehave said, if any one had told him he could get as good an idea of thesubject of one of his great works from reading the Catalogue of it, asfrom seeing the picture itself? Yet the answer was characteristic of thegenius of the painter. 

(2) Poussin has repeated this subject more than once, and appears tohave revelled in its witcheries. I have before alluded to it, and mayagain. It is hard that we should not be allowed to dwell as often as weplease on what delights us, when things that are disagreeable recur sooften against our will. 

ESSAY II. ON MILTON'S SONNETS

The great object of the Sonnet seems to be, to express in musicalnumbers, and as it were with undivided breath, some occasional thoughtor personal feeling, 'some fee-grief due to the poet's breast. ' It isa sigh uttered from the fulness of the heart, an involuntary aspirationborn and dying in the same moment. I have always been fond of Milton'sSonnets for this reason, that they have more of this personal andinternal character than any others; and they acquire a double value whenwe consider that they come from the pen of the loftiest of our poets. Compared with _Paradise_ Lost, they are like tender flowers that adornthe base of some proud column or stately temple. The author in the onecould work himself up with unabated fortitude 'to the height of hisgreat argument'; but in the other he has shown that he could condescendto men of low estate, and after the lightning and the thunderbolt ofhis pen, lets fall some drops of natural pity over hapless infirmity, mingling strains with the nightingale's, 'most musical, mostmelancholy. ' The immortal poet pours his mortal sorrows into ourbreasts, and a tear falls from his sightless orbs on the friendlyhand he presses. The Sonnets are a kind of pensive record of pastachievements, loves, and friendships, and a noble exhortation to himselfto bear up with cheerful hope and confidence to the last. Some of themare of a more quaint and humorous character; but I speak of those onlywhich are intended to be serious and pathetical. --I do not know indeedbut they may be said to be almost the first effusions of this sort ofnatural and personal sentiment in the language. Drummond's oughtperhaps to be excepted, were they formed less closely on the modelof Petrarch's, so as to be often little more than translations ofthe Italian poet. But Milton's Sonnets are truly his own in allusion, thought, and versification. Those of Sir Philip Sydney, who was agreat transgressor in his way, turn sufficiently on himself and his ownadventures; but they are elaborately quaint and intricate, and more likeriddles than sonnets. They are 'very tolerable and not to be endured. 'Shakespear's, which some persons better informed in such matters than Ican pretend to be, profess to cry up as 'the divine, the matchless, whatyou will, '--to say nothing of the want of point or a leading, prominentidea in most of them, are I think overcharged and monotonous, and as totheir ultimate drift, as for myself, I can make neither head nor tailof it. Yet some of them, I own, are sweet even to a sense of faintness, luscious as the woodbine, and graceful and luxuriant like it. Here isone:

 From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing; That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him. Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odour and in hue, Could make me any summer's story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew: Nor did I wonder at the lilies white, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; They were but sweet, but figures of delight, Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. Yet seem'd it winter still, and you away, As with your shadow, I with these did play. 

I am not aware of any writer of Sonnets worth mentioning here till longafter Milton, that is, till the time of Warton and the revival of ataste for Italian and for our own early literature. During the ragefor French models the Sonnet had not been much studied. It is a mode ofcomposition that depends entirely on _expression, _ and this the Frenchand artificial style gladly dispenses with, as it lays no particularstress on anything--except vague, general common-places. Warton'sSonnets are undoubtedly exquisite, both in style and matter; they arepoetical and philosophical effusions of very delightful sentiment;but the thoughts, though fine and deeply felt, are not, like Milton'ssubjects, identified completely with the writer, and so far want a moreindividual interest. Mr. Wordsworth's are also finely conceived andhigh-sounding Sonnets. They mouth it well, and are said to be sacred toLiberty. Brutus's exclamation, 'Oh Virtue, I thought thee a substance, but I find thee a shadow, ' was not considered as a compliment, but as abitter sarcasm. The beauty of Milton's Sonnets is their sincerity, thespirit of poetical patriotism which they breathe. Either Milton's orthe living bard's are defective in this respect. There is no Sonnet ofMilton's on the Restoration of Charles II. There is no Sonnet of Mr. Wordsworth's corresponding to that of 'the poet blind and bold' 'Onthe late Massacre in Piedmont. ' It would be no niggard praise to Mr. Wordsworth to grant that he was either half the man or half the poetthat Milton was. He has not his high and various imagination, nor hisdeep and fixed principle. Milton did not worship the rising sun, norturn his back on a losing and fallen cause. 

 Such recantation had no charms for him!

Mr. Southey has thought proper to put the author of _Paradise Lost_ intohis late Heaven, on the understood condition that he is 'no longer tokings and to hierarchs hostile. ' In his lifetime he gave no sign of suchan alteration; and it is rather presumptuous in the poet-laureate topursue the deceased antagonist of Salmasius into the other world tocompliment him with his own infirmity of purpose. It is a wonder he didnot add in a note that Milton called him aside to whisper in his earthat he preferred the new English hexameters to his own blank verse!

Our first of poets was one of our first of men. He was an eminentinstance to prove that a poet is not another name for the slave of powerand fashion, as is the case with painters and musicians--things withoutan opinion--and who merely aspire to make up the pageant and show of theday. There are persons in common life who have that eager curiosity andrestless admiration of bustle and splendour, that sooner than not beadmitted on great occasions of feasting and luxurious display, they willgo in the character of livery-servants to stand behind the chairs of thegreat. There are others who can so little bear to be left for any lengthof time out of the grand carnival and masquerade of pride and folly, that they will gain admittance to it at the expense of their charactersas well as of a change of dress. Milton was not one of these. He had toomuch of the _ideal_ faculty in his composition, a lofty contemplativeprinciple, and consciousness of inward power and worth, to be temptedby such idle baits. We have plenty of chanting and chiming in among somemodern writers with the triumphs over their own views and principles;but none of a patient resignation to defeat, sustaining and nourishingitself with the thought of the justice of their cause, and withfirm-fixed rectitude. I do not pretend to defend the tone of Milton'spolitical writings (which was borrowed from the style of controversialdivinity), or to say that he was right in the part he took, --I say thathe was consistent in it, and did not convict himself of error: he wasconsistent in it in spite of danger and obloquy, 'on evil days thoughfallen, and evil tongues, ' and therefore his character has the salt ofhonesty about it. It does not offend in the nostrils of posterity. Hehad taken his part boldly and stood to it manfully, and submitted to thechange of times with pious fortitude, building his consolations on theresources of his own mind and the recollection of the past, insteadof endeavouring to make himself a retreat for the time to come. As aninstance of this we may take one of the best and most admired of theseSonnets, that addressed to Cyriac Skinner, on his own blindness:--

 Cyriac, this three years' day, these eyes, though clear, To outward view, of blemish or of spot, Bereft of light their seeing have forgot, Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear Of sun or moon or stars throughout the year, Or man or woman. Yet I argue not Against Heav'n's hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask? The conscience, Friend, to have lost them overply'd In liberty's defence, my noble task, Of which all Europe talks from side to side. This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask, Content though blind, had I no better guide. 

Nothing can exceed the mild, subdued tone of this Sonnet, nor thestriking grandeur of the concluding thought. It is curious to remarkwhat seems to be a trait of character in the two first lines. FromMilton's care to inform the reader that 'his eyes wore still clear, tooutward view, of spot or blemish, ' it would be thought that he had notyet given up all regard to personal appearance; a feeling to which hissingular beauty at an earlier age might be supposed naturally enoughto lead. Of the political or (what may be called) his _State-Sonnets, _those to Cromwell, to Fairfax, and to the younger Vane are full ofexalted praise and dignified advice. They are neither familiar norservile. The writer knows what is due to power and to fame. He feelsthe true, unassumed equality of greatness. He pays the full tribute ofadmiration for great acts achieved, and suggests becoming occasion todeserve higher praise. That to Cromwell is a proof how completely ourpoet maintained the erectness of his understanding and spirit in hisintercourse with men in power. It is such a compliment as a poet mightpay to a conqueror and head of the state without the possibility ofself-degradation:

 Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud, Not of war only, but detractions rude, Guided by faith and matchless fortitude, To peace and truth thy glorious way hast plough'd, And on the neck of crowned fortune proud Hast rear'd God's trophies and his work pursued While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbrued, And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud, And Worcester's laureat wreath. Yet much remains To conquer still; peace hath her victories No less renown'd than war: new foes arise Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains; Help us to save free conscience from the paw Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw. 

The most spirited and impassioned of them all, and the most inspiredwith a sort of prophetic fury, is the one entitled, 'On the lateMassacre in Piedmont. '

 Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold; Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones, Forgot not: in thy book record their groans Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that roll'd Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To Heav'n. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow A hundred fold, who having learn'd thy way Early may fly the Babylonian woe. 

In the Nineteenth Sonnet, which is also 'On his blindness, ' we see thejealous watchfulness of his mind over the use of his high gifts, and thebeautiful manner in which he satisfies himself that virtuous thoughtsand intentions are not the least acceptable offering to the Almighty:

 When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent, To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide; Doth God exact day-labour, light denied, I fondly ask: But patience to prevent That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts; who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait. 

Those to Mr. Henry Lawes _on his Airs, _ and to Mr. Lawrence, can neverbe enough admired. They breathe the very soul of music and friendship. Both have a tender, thoughtful grace; and for their lightness, with acertain melancholy complaining intermixed, might be stolen from the harpof Aeolus. The last is the picture of a day spent in social retirementand elegant relaxation from severer studies. We sit with the poet attable and hear his familiar sentiments from his own lips afterwards:--

 Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, Now that the fields are dank and ways are mire, Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire Help waste a sullen day, what may be won From the hard season gaining? Time will run On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire The lily and rose, that neither sow'd nor spun. What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise To hear the lute well-touched, or artful voice Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? He who of these delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft, is not unwise. 

In the last, 'On his deceased Wife, ' the allusion to Alcestis isbeautiful, and shows how the poet's mind raised and refined his thoughtsby exquisite classical conceptions, and how these again were enrichedby a passionate reference to actual feelings and images. It is this rareunion that gives such voluptuous dignity and touching purity to Milton'sdelineation of the female character:--

 Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint. Mine, as whom wash'd from spot of child-bed taint Purification in the old law did save, And such, as yet once more I trust to have Full sight of her in Heav'n without restraint, Came vested all in white, pure as her mind: Her face was veil'd, yet to my fancied sight Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined So clear, as in no face with more delight: But O as to embrace me she inclined, I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night. 

There could not have been a greater mistake or a more unjust piece ofcriticism than to suppose that Milton only shone on great subjects, andthat on ordinary occasions and in familiar life his mind was unwieldy, averse to the cultivation of grace and elegance, and unsusceptibleof harmless pleasures. The whole tenor of his smaller compositionscontradicts this opinion, which, however, they have been cited toconfirm. The notion first got abroad from the bitterness (or vehemence)of his controversial writings, and has been kept up since with littlemeaning and with less truth. His Letters to Donatus and others are notmore remarkable for the display of a scholastic enthusiasm than for thatof the most amiable dispositions. They are 'severe in youthful virtueunreproved. ' There is a passage in his prose-works (the Treatise onEducation) which shows, I think, his extreme openness and proneness topleasing outward impressions in a striking point of view. 'But to returnto our own institute, ' he says, 'besides these constant exercises athome, there is another opportunity of gaining experience to be won frompleasure itself abroad. _In those vernal seasons of the year, whenthe air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness againstNature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicingwith Heaven and earth. _ I should not therefore be a persuader to themof studying much then, but to ride out in companies with prudentand well-staid guides, to all quarters of the land, ' etc. Manyother passages might be quoted, in which the poet breaks through thegroundwork of prose, as it were, by natural fecundity and a genial, unrestrained sense of delight. To suppose that a poet is not easilyaccessible to pleasure, or that he does not take an interest inindividual objects and feelings, is to suppose that he is no poet; andproceeds on the false theory, which has been so often applied to poetryand the Fine Arts, that the whole is not made up of the particulars. Ifour author, according to Dr. Johnson s account of him, could only havetreated epic, high-sounding subjects, he would not have been what hewas, but another Sir Richard Blackmore. --I may conclude with observing, that I have often wished that Milton had lived to see the Revolution of1688. This would have been a triumph worthy of him, and which he wouldhave earned by faith and hope. He would then have been old, but wouldnot have lived in vain to see it, and might have celebrated the event inone more undying strain!

NOTES to ESSAY II

No notes for this essay

ESSAY III. ON GOING A JOURNEY

One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey; but Ilike to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than whenalone. 

 The fields his study, nature was his book. 

I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. When Iam in the country I wish to vegetate like the country. I am not forcriticising hedge-rows and black cattle. I go out of town in order toforget the town and all that is in it. There are those who for thispurpose go to watering-places, and carry the metropolis with them. Ilike more elbow-room and fewer encumbrances. I like solitude, when Igive myself up to it, for the sake of solitude; nor do I ask for

 A friend in my retreat, Whom I may whisper solitude is sweet. 

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do, just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be free of allimpediments and of all inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind muchmore to get rid of others. It is because I want a little breathing-spaceto muse on indifferent matters, where Contemplation

 May plume her feathers and let grow her wings, That in the various bustle of resort Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd, that I absent myself from the town for a while, without feeling at aloss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend in a postchaiseor in a Tilbury, to exchange good things with, and vary the same staletopics over again, for once let me have a truce with impertinence. Giveme the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner--andthen to thinking! It is hard if I cannot start some game on these loneheaths. I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing for joy. From the point of yonderrolling cloud I plunge into my past being, and revel there, as thesun-burnt Indian plunges headlong into the wave that wafts him to hisnative shore. Then long-forgotten things, like 'sunken wrack and sumlesstreasuries, ' burst upon my eager sight, and I begin to feel, think, andbe myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts atwit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heartwhich alone is perfect eloquence. No one likes puns, alliterations, antitheses, argument, and analysis better than I do; but I sometimes hadrather be without them. 'Leave, oh, leave me to my repose!' I have justnow other business in hand, which would seem idle to you, but is withme 'very stuff o' the conscience. ' Is not this wild rose sweet withouta comment? Does not this daisy leap to my heart set in its coat ofemerald? Yet if I wore to explain to you the circumstance that has soendeared it to me, you would only smile. Had I not better then keep itto myself, and let it serve me to brood over, from here to yonder craggypoint, and from thence onward to the far-distant horizon? I should bebut bad company all that way, and therefore prefer being alone. I haveheard it said that you may, when the moody fit comes on, walk or ride onby yourself, and indulge your reveries. But this looks like a breach ofmanners, a neglect of others, and you are thinking all the time that youought to rejoin your party. 'Out upon such half-faced fellowship, ' sayI. I like to be either entirely to myself, or entirely at the disposalof others; to talk or be silent, to walk or sit still, to be sociable orsolitary. I was pleased with an observation of Mr. Cobbett's, that 'hethought it a bad French custom to drink our wine with our meals, andthat an Englishman ought to do only one thing at a time. ' So I cannottalk and think, or indulge in melancholy musing and lively conversationby fits and starts. 'Let me have a companion of my way, ' says Sterne, 'were it but to remark how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines. 'It is beautifully said; but, in my opinion, this continual comparingof notes interferes with the involuntary impression of things upon themind, and hurts the sentiment. If you only hint what you feel in a kindof dumb show, it is insipid: if you have to explain it, it is making atoil of a pleasure. You cannot read the book of nature without beingperpetually put to the trouble of translating it for the benefit ofothers. I am for this synthetical method on a journey in preference tothe analytical. I am content to lay in a stock of ideas then, and toexamine and anatomise them afterwards. I want to see my vague notionsfloat like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and not to havethem entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy. For once, I liketo have it all my own way; and this is impossible unless you are alone, or in such company as I do not covet. I have no objection to argue apoint with any one for twenty miles of measured road, but not forpleasure. If you remark the scent of a bean-field crossing the road, perhaps your fellow-traveller has no smell. If you point to a distantobject, perhaps he is short-sighted, and has to take out his glass tolook at it. There is a feeling in the air, a tone in the colour of acloud, which hits your fancy, but the effect of which you are unable toaccount for. There is then no sympathy, but an uneasy craving after it, and a dissatisfaction which pursues you on the way, and in the endprobably produces ill-humour. Now I never quarrel with myself, and takeall my own conclusions for granted till I find it necessary to defendthem against objections. It is not merely that you may not be of accordon the objects and circumstances that present themselves before you--these may recall a number of objects, and lead to associations toodelicate and refined to be possibly communicated to others. Yet these Ilove to cherish, and sometimes still fondly clutch them, when I canescape from the throng to do so. To give way to our feelings beforecompany seems extravagance or affectation; and, on the other hand, tohave to unravel this mystery of our being at every turn, and to makeothers take an equal interest in it (otherwise the end is not answered), is a task to which few are competent. We must 'give it an understanding, but no tongue. ' My old friend Coleridge, however, could do both. Hecould go on in the most delightful explanatory way over hill and dale asummer's day, and convert a landscape into a didactic poem or a Pindaricode. 'He talked far above singing. ' If I could so clothe my ideas insounding and flowing words, I might perhaps wish to have some one withme to admire the swelling theme; or I could be more content, were itpossible for me still to hear his echoing voice in the woods ofAll-Foxden. (1) They had 'that fine madness in them which our first poetshad'; and if they could have been caught by some rare instrument, wouldhave breathed such strains as the following:--

 Here be woods as green As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet As when smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet Face of the curled streams, with flow'rs as many As the young spring gives, and as choice as any; Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells, Arbours o'ergrown with woodbines, caves and dells; Choose where thou wilt, whilst I sit by and sing, Or gather rushes to make many a ring For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love, How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove, First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes She took eternal fire that never dies; How she convey'd him softly in a sleep, His temples bound with poppy, to the steep Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night, Gilding the mountain with her brother's light, To kiss her sweetest. (2)

Had I words and images at command like these, I would attempt to wakethe thoughts that lie slumbering on golden ridges in the evening clouds:but at the sight of nature my fancy, poor as it is, droops and closes upits leaves, like flowers at sunset. I can make nothing out on the spot:I must have time to collect myself. 

In general, a good thing spoils out-of-door prospects: it should bereserved for Table-talk. Lamb is for this reason, I take it, the worstcompany in the world out of doors; because he is the best within. Igrant there is one subject on which it is pleasant to talk on a journey, and that is, what one shall have for supper when we get to our innat night. The open air improves this sort of conversation or friendlyaltercation, by setting a keener edge on appetite. Every mile of theroad heightens the flavour of the viands we expect at the end of it. Howfine it is to enter some old town, walled and turreted, just at approachof nightfall, or to come to some straggling village, with the lightsstreaming through the surrounding gloom; and then, after inquiring forthe best entertainment that the place affords, to 'take one's easeat one's inn'! These eventful moments in our lives' history are tooprecious, too full of solid, heartfelt happiness to be frittered anddribbled away in imperfect sympathy. I would have them all to myself, and drain them to the last drop: they will do to talk of or to writeabout afterwards. What a delicate speculation it is, after drinkingwhole goblets of tea--

 The cups that cheer, but not inebriate--

and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit considering what weshall have for supper--eggs and a rasher, a rabbit smothered in onions, or an excellent veal-cutlet! Sancho in such a situation once fixed oncow-heel; and his choice, though he could not help it, is not to bedisparaged. Then, in the intervals of pictured scenery and Shandeancontemplation, to catch the preparation and the stir in the kitchen(getting ready for the gentleman in the parlour). _Procul, O proculeste profani!_ These hours are sacred to silence and to musing, to betreasured up in the memory, and to feed the source of smiling thoughtshereafter. I would not waste them in idle talk; or if I must have theintegrity of fancy broken in upon, I would rather it were by a strangerthan a friend. A stranger takes his hue and character from the time andplace; he is a part of the furniture and costume of an inn. If he is aQuaker, or from the West Riding of Yorkshire, so much the better. I donot even try to sympathise with him, and he breaks no squares. (How Ilove to see the camps of the gypsies, and to sigh my soul into that sortof life. If I express this feeling to another, he may qualify andspoil it with some objection. ) I associate nothing with my travellingcompanion but present objects and passing events. In his ignorance of meand my affairs, I in a manner forget myself. But a friend reminds oneof other things, rips up old grievances, and destroys the abstractionof the scene. He comes in ungraciously between us and our imaginarycharacter. Something is dropped in the course of conversation that givesa hint of your profession and pursuits; or from having some one withyou that knows the less sublime portions of your history, it seems thatother people do. You are no longer a citizen of the world; but your'unhoused free condition is put into circumspection and confine. ' Theincognito of an inn is one of its striking privileges--'lord of one'sself, uncumbered with a name. ' Oh! it is great to shake off the trammelsof the world and of public opinion--to lose our importunate, tormenting, everlasting personal identity in the elements of nature, and become thecreature of the moment, clear of all ties--to hold to the universeonly by a dish of sweetbreads, and to owe nothing but the score of theevening--and no longer seeking for applause and meeting with contempt, to be known by no other title than _the Gentleman in the parlour!_One may take one's choice of all characters in this romantic stateof uncertainty as to one's real pretensions, and become indefinitelyrespectable and negatively right-worshipful. We baffle prejudice anddisappoint conjecture; and from being so to others, begin to beobjects of curiosity and wonder even to ourselves. We are no more thosehackneyed common-places that we appear in the world; an inn restores usto the level of nature, and quits scores with society! I have certainlyspent some enviable hours at inns--sometimes when I have been leftentirely to myself, and have tried to solve some metaphysical problem, as once at Witham Common, where I found out the proof that likeness isnot a case of the association of ideas--at other times, when there havebeen pictures in the room, as at St. Neot's (I think it was), whereI first met with Gribelin's engravings of the Cartoons, into which Ientered at once, and at a little inn on the borders of Wales, wherethere happened to be hanging some of Westall's drawings, which Icompared triumphantly (for a theory that I had, not for the admiredartist) with the figure of a girl who had ferried me over the Severn, standing up in a boat between me and the twilight--at other times Imight mention luxuriating in books, with a peculiar interest inthis way, as I remember sitting up half the night to read _Paul andVirginia, _ which I picked up at an inn at Bridgewater, after beingdrenched in the rain all day; and at the same place I got through twovolumes of Madame D'Arblay's _Camilla. _ It was on the 10th of April1798 that I sat down to a volume of the _New Eloise, _ at the inn atLlangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken. The letter Ichose was that in which St. Preux describes his feelings as he firstcaught a glimpse from the heights of the Jura of the Pays de Vaud, whichI had brought with me as a _bon bouche_ to crown the evening with. Itwas my birthday, and I had for the first time come from a place in theneighbourhood to visit this delightful spot. The road to Llangollenturns off between Chirk and Wrexham; and on passing a certain pointyou come all at once upon the valley, which opens like an amphitheatre, broad, barren hills rising in majestic state on either side, with 'greenupland swells that echo to the bleat of flocks' below, and the riverDee babbling over its stony bed in the midst of them. The valley at thistime 'glittered green with sunny showers, ' and a budding ash-tree dippedits tender branches in the chiding stream. How proud, how glad I wasto walk along the high road that overlooks the delicious prospect, repeating the lines which I have just quoted from Mr. Coleridge's poems!But besides the prospect which opened beneath my feet, another alsoopened to my inward sight, a heavenly vision, on which were written, in letters large as Hope could make them, these four words, LIBERTY, GENIUS, LOVE, VIRTUE; which have since faded into the light of commonday, or mock my idle gaze. 

The beautiful is vanished, and returns not. 

Still I would return some time or other to this enchanted spot; but Iwould return to it alone. What other self could I find to share thatinflux of thoughts, of regret, and delight, the fragments of which Icould hardly conjure up to myself, so much have they been broken anddefaced. I could stand on some tall rock, and overlook the precipice ofyears that separates me from what I then was. I was at that time goingshortly to visit the poet whom I have above named. Where is he now? Notonly I myself have changed; the world, which was then new to me, hasbecome old and incorrigible. Yet will I turn to thee in thought, Osylvan Dee, in joy, in youth and gladness as thou then wert; and thoushalt always be to me the river of Paradise, where I will drink of thewaters of life freely!

There is hardly anything that shows the short-sightedness orcapriciousness of the imagination more than travelling does. With changeof place we change our ideas; nay, our opinions and feelings. We can byan effort indeed transport ourselves to old and long-forgotten scenes, and then the picture of the mind revives again; but we forget thosethat we have just left. It seems that we can think but of one place ata time. The canvas of the fancy is but of a certain extent, and if wepaint one set of objects upon it, they immediately efface every other. We cannot enlarge our conceptions, we only shift our point of view. Thelandscape bares its bosom to the enraptured eye, we take our fill of it, and seem as if we could form no other image of beauty or grandeur. Wepass on, and think no more of it: the horizon that shuts it from oursight also blots it from our memory like a dream. In travelling througha wild barren country I can form no idea of a woody and cultivated one. It appears to me that all the world must be barren, like what I seeof it. In the country we forget the town, and in town we despisethe country. 'Beyond Hyde Park, ' says Sir Topling Flutter, 'all is adesert. ' All that part of the map that we do not see before us is blank. The world in our conceit of it is not much bigger than a nutshell. It isnot one prospect expanded into another, county joined to county, kingdomto kingdom, land to seas, making an image voluminous and vast; the mindcan form no larger idea of space than the eye can take in at asingle glance. The rest is a name written in a map, a calculation ofarithmetic. For instance, what is the true signification of that immensemass of territory and population known by the name of China to us? Aninch of pasteboard on a wooden globe, of no more account than a Chinaorange! Things near us are seen of the size of life: things at adistance are diminished to the size of the understanding. We measure theuniverse by ourselves, and even comprehend the texture of our being onlypiecemeal. In this way, however, we remember an infinity of things andplaces. The mind is like a mechanical instrument that plays a greatvariety of tunes, but it must play them in succession. One idea recallsanother, but it at the same time excludes all others. In trying to renewold recollections, we cannot as it were unfold the whole web of ourexistence; we must pick out the single threads. So in coming to aplace where we have formerly lived, and with which we have intimateassociations, every one must have found that the feeling grows morevivid the nearer we approach the spot, from the mere anticipation of theactual impression: we remember circumstances, feelings, persons, faces, names that we had not thought of for years; but for the time all therest of the world is forgotten!--To return to the question I havequitted above:

I have no objection to go to see ruins, aqueducts, pictures, in companywith a friend or a party, but rather the contrary, for the former reasonreversed. They are intelligible matters, and will bear talking about. The sentiment here is not tacit, but communicable and overt. SalisburyPlain is barren of criticism, but Stonehenge will bear a discussionantiquarian, picturesque, and philosophical. In setting out on a partyof pleasure, the first consideration always is where we shall go to: intaking a solitary ramble, the question is what we shall meet with by theway. 'The mind is its own place'; nor are we anxious to arrive at theend of our journey. I can myself do the honours indifferently well toworks of art and curiosity. I once took a party to Oxford with no meaneclat--showed them that seat of the Muses at a distance, With glistering spires and pinnacles adorn'd--

descanted on the learned air that breathes from the grassy quadranglesand stone walls of halls and colleges--was at home in the Bodleian; andat Blenheim quite superseded the powdered Cicerone that attended us, andthat pointed in vain with his wand to commonplace beauties in matchlesspictures. As another exception to the above reasoning, I should notfeel confident in venturing on a journey in a foreign country withouta companion. I should want at intervals to hear the sound of my ownlanguage. There is an involuntary antipathy in the mind of an Englishmanto foreign manners and notions that requires the assistance of socialsympathy to carry it off. As the distance from home increases, thisrelief, which was at first a luxury, becomes a passion and an appetite. A person would almost feel stifled to find himself in the deserts ofArabia without friends and countrymen: there must be allowed to besomething in the view of Athens or old Rome that claims the utteranceof speech; and I own that the Pyramids are too mighty for any singlecontemplation. In such situations, so opposite to all one's ordinarytrain of ideas, one seems a species by one's-self, a limb torn off fromsociety, unless one can meet with instant fellowship and support. Yet Idid not feel this want or craving very pressing once, when I firstset my foot on the laughing shores of France. Calais was peopled withnovelty and delight. The confused, busy murmur of the place was like oiland wine poured into my ears; nor did the mariners' hymn, which wassung from the top of an old crazy vessel in the harbour, as the sunwent down, send an alien sound into my soul. I only breathed the air ofgeneral humanity. I walked over 'the vine-covered hills and gay regionsof France, ' erect and satisfied; for the image of man was not castdown and chained to the foot of arbitrary thrones: I was at no loss forlanguage, for that of all the great schools of painting was open to me. The whole is vanished like a shade. Pictures, heroes, glory, freedom, all are fled: nothing remains but the Bourbons and the Frenchpeople!--There is undoubtedly a sensation in travelling into foreignparts that is to be had nowhere else; but it is more pleasing at thetime than lasting. It is too remote from our habitual associations to bea common topic of discourse or reference, and, like a dream or anotherstate of existence, does not piece into our daily modes of life. It is an animated but a momentary hallucination. It demands an effortto exchange our actual for our ideal identity; and to feel the pulse ofour old transports revive very keenly, we must 'jump' all our presentcomforts and connections. Our romantic and itinerant character is not tobe domesticated. Dr. Johnson remarked how little foreign travel addedto the facilities of conversation in those who had been abroad. Infact, the time we have spent there is both delightful, and in one senseinstructive; but it appears to be cut out of our substantial, downrightexistence, and never to join kindly on to it. We are not the same, butanother, and perhaps more enviable individual, all the time we are outof our own country. We are lost to ourselves, as well as our friends. Sothe poet somewhat quaintly sings:

 Out of my country and myself I go. 

Those who wish to forget painful thoughts, do well to absent themselvesfor a while from the ties and objects that recall them; but we canbe said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us birth. Ishould on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my lifein travelling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spendafterwards at home!

NOTES to ESSAY III

(1) Near Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire, where the author of this Essayvisited Coleridge in 1798. He was there again in 1803. 

(2) Fletcher's 'Faithful Shepherdess, ' i. 3 (Dyce's _Beaumont andFletcher, _ ii. 38, 39). 

ESSAY IV. ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS

There is a set of people who fairly come under this denomination. Theyspend their time and their breath in coffee-houses and other placesof public resort, hearing or repeating some new thing. They sit with apaper in their hands in the morning, and with a pipe in their mouths inthe evening, discussing the contents of it. The _Times, _ the _MorningChronicle, _ and the _Herald_ are necessary to their existence: inthem 'they live and move and have their being. ' The Evening Paper isimpatiently expected and called for at a certain critical minute:the news of the morning becomes stale and vapid by the dinner-hour. A fresher interest is required, an appetite for the latest-stirringinformation is excited with the return of their meals; and a glass ofold port or humming ale hardly relishes as it ought without the infusionof some lively topic that had its birth with the day, and perishesbefore night. 'Then come in the sweets of the evening':--the Queen, thecoronation, the last new play, the next fight, the insurrection of theGreeks or Neapolitans, the price of stocks, or death of kings, keep themon the alert till bedtime. No question comes amiss to them that is quitenew--none is ever heard of that is at all old. 

 That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker. 

The World before the Flood or the Intermediate State of the Soul arenever once thought of--such is the quick succession of subjects, thesuddenness and fugitiveness of the interest taken in them, that the_Twopenny Post Bag_ would be at present looked upon as an old-fashionedpublication; and the Battle of Waterloo, like the proverb, is somewhatmusty. It is strange that people should take so much interest at onetime in what they so soon forget;--the truth is, they feel no interestin it at any time, but it does for something to talk about. Their ideasare served up to them, like their bill of fare, for the day; and thewhole creation, history, war, politics, morals, poetry, metaphysics, is to them like a file of antedated newspapers, of no use, not even forreference, except the one which lies on the table! You cannot take anyof these persons at a greater disadvantage than before they are providedwith their cue for the day. They ask with a face of dreary vacuity, 'Have you anything new?'--and on receiving an answer in the negative, have nothing further to say. (They are like an oyster at the ebb of thetide, gaping for fresh _tidings. _) Talk of the Westminster Election, theBridge Street Association, or Mr. Cobbett's Letter to John Cropper ofLiverpool, and they are alive again. Beyond the last twenty-four hours, or the narrow round in which they move, they are utterly to seek, without ideas, feelings, interests, apprehensions of any sort; so thatif you betray any knowledge beyond the vulgar routine of SECOND EDITIONSand first-hand private intelligence, you pass with them for a dullfellow, not acquainted with what is going forward in the world, orwith the practical value of things. I have known a person of this stampcensure John Cam Hobhouse for referring so often as he does to theaffairs of the Greeks and Romans, as if the affairs of the nation werenot sufficient for his hands: another asks you if a general in moderntimes cannot throw a bridge over a river without having studied Caesar's_Commentaries;_ and a third cannot see the use of the learned languages, as he has observed that the greatest proficients in them are rathertaciturn than otherwise, and hesitate in their speech more than otherpeople. A dearth of general information is almost necessary to thethorough-paced coffee-house politician; in the absence of thought, imagination, sentiment, he is attracted immediately to the nearestcommonplace, and floats through the chosen regions of noise and emptyrumours without difficulty and without distraction. Meet 'any six ofthese men in buckram, ' and they will accost you with the same questionand the same answer: they have seen it somewhere in print, or had itfrom some city oracle, that morning; and the sooner they vent theiropinions the better, for they will not keep. Like tickets of admissionto the theatre for a particular evening, they must be used immediately, or they will be worth nothing: and the object is to find auditors forthe one and customers for the other, neither of which is difficult;since people who have no ideas of their own are glad to hear what anyone else has to say, as those who have not free admissions to the playwill very obligingly take up with an occasional order. It sometimesgives one a melancholy but mixed sensation to see one of the better sortof this class of politicians, not without talents or learning, absorbedfor fifty years together in the all-engrossing topic of the day:mounting on it for exercise and recreation of his faculties, like thegreat horse at a riding-school, and after his short, improgressive, untired career, dismounting just where he got up; flying abroad incontinual consternation on the wings of all the newspapers; waving hisarm like a pump-handle in sign of constant change, and spouting outtorrents of puddled politics from his mouth; dead to all interestsbut those of the state; seemingly neither older nor wiser for age;unaccountably enthusiastic, stupidly romantic, and actuated by no othermotive than the mechanical operations of the spirit of newsmongering. (1)

'What things, ' exclaims Beaumont in his verses to Ben Jonson, 'have wenot seen done at the Mermaid!

 'Then when there hath been thrown Wit able enough to justify the town For three days past, wit that might warrant be For the whole city to talk foolishly!'

I cannot say the same of the Southampton, though it stands on classicground, and is connected by vocal tradition with the great names ofthe Elizabethan age. What a falling off is here I Our ancestors ofthat period seem not only to be older by two hundred years, andproportionably wiser and wittier than we, but hardly a trace of them isleft, not even the memory of what has been. How should I make my friendMounsey stare, if I were to mention the name of my still better friend, old honest Signor Friscobaldo, the father of Bellafront;--yet his namewas perhaps invented, and the scenes in which he figures unrivalledmight for the first time have been read aloud to thrilling ears on thisvery spot! Who reads Decker now? Or if by chance any one awakes thestrings of that ancient lyre, and starts with delight as they yieldwild, broken music, is he not accused of envy to the living Muse? Whatwould a linen-draper from Holborn think, if I were to ask him after theclerk of St. Andrew's, the immortal, the forgotten Webster? His name andhis works are no more heard of: though _these_ were written with a penof adamant, 'within the red-leaved tables of the heart, ' his famewas 'writ in water. ' So perishable is genius, so swift is time, sofluctuating is knowledge, and so far is it from being true that menperpetually accumulate the means of improvement and refinement. On thecontrary, living knowledge is the tomb of the dead, and while lightand worthless materials float on the surface, the solid and sterlingas often sink to the bottom, and are swallowed up for ever in weeds andquicksands!--A striking instance of the short-lived nature of popularreputation occurred one evening at the Southampton, when we got intoa dispute, the most learned and recondite that over took place, on thecomparative merits of Lord Byron and Gray. A country gentleman happenedto drop in, and thinking to show off in London company, launched intoa lofty panegyric on _The Bard_ of Gray as the sublimest compositionin the English language. This assertion presently appeared to be ananachronism, though it was probably the opinion in vogue thirty yearsago, when the gentleman was last in town. After a little floundering, one of the party volunteered to express a more contemporary sentiment, by asking in a tone of mingled confidence and doubt--'But you don'tthink, sir, that Gray is to be mentioned as a poet in the same day withmy Lord Byron?' The disputants were now at issue: all that resulted wasthat Gray was set aside as a poet who would not go down among readers ofthe present day, and his patron treated the works of the Noble Bardas mere ephemeral effusions, and spoke of poets that would be admiredthirty years hence, which was the farthest stretch of his criticalimagination. His antagonist's did not even reach so far. This was themost romantic digression we over had; and the subject was not afterwardsresumed. --No one here (generally speaking) has the slightest notion ofanything that has happened, that has been said, thought, or done outof his own recollection. It would be in vain to hearken after those'wit-skirmishes, ' those 'brave sublunary things' which were theemployment and delight of the Beaumonts and Bens of former times: but wemay happily repose on dulness, drift with the tide of nonsense, and gainan agreeable vertigo by lending an ear to endless controversies. Theconfusion, provided you do not mingle in the fray and try to disentangleit, is amusing and edifying enough. Every species of false wit andspurious argument may be learnt here by potent examples. Whateverobservations you hear dropt have been picked up in the same place or ina kindred atmosphere. There is a kind of conversation made up entirelyof scraps and hearsay, as there are a kind of books made up entirelyof references to other books. This may account for the frequentcontradictions which abound in the discourse of persons educatedand disciplined wholly in coffee-houses. There is nothing stable orwell-grounded in it: it is 'nothing but vanity, chaotic vanity. ' Theyhear a remark at the Globe which they do not know what to make of;another at the Rainbow in direct opposition to it; and not having timeto reconcile them, vent both at the Mitre. In the course of half anhour, if they are not more than ordinarily dull, you are sure to findthem on opposite sides of the question. This is the sickening partof it. People do not seem to talk for the sake of expressing theiropinions, but to maintain an opinion for the sake of talking. We meetneither with modest ignorance nor studious acquirement. Their knowledgehas been taken in too much by snatches to digest properly. There isneither sincerity nor system in what they say. They hazard the firstcrude notion that comes to hand, and then defend it how they can; whichis for the most part but ill. 'Don't you think, ' says Mounsey, 'thatMr. ----- is a very sensible, well-informed man?' 'Why, no, ' I say, 'heseems to me to have no ideas of his own, and only to wait to see whatothers will say in order to set himself against it. I should not thinkthat is the way to get at the truth. I do not desire to be driven outof my conclusions (such as they are) merely to make way for his upstartpretensions. '--'Then there is -----: what of him?' 'He might very wellexpress all he has to say in half the time, and with half the trouble. Why should he beat about the bush as he does? He appears to be gettingup a little speech and practising on a smaller scale for a DebatingSociety--the lowest ambition a man can have. Besides, by his manner ofdrawling out his words, and interlarding his periods with innuendos andformal reservations, he is evidently making up his mind all the timewhich side he shall take. He puts his sentences together as printersset up types, letter by letter. There is certainly no principle ofshort-hand in his mode of elocution. He goes round for a meaning, andthe sense waits for him. It is not conversation, but rehearsing a part. Men of education and men of the world order this matter better. Theyknow what they have to say on a subject, and come to the point at once. Your coffee-house politician balances between what he heard last andwhat he shall say next; and not seeing his way clearly, puts you offwith circumstantial phrases, and tries to gain time for fear of making afalse step. This gentleman has heard some one admired for precision andcopiousness of language; and goes away, congratulating himself that hehas not made a blunder in grammar or in rhetoric the whole evening. He is a theoretical _Quidnunc_--is tenacious in argument, though wary;carries his point thus and thus, bandies objections and answers withuneasy pleasantry, and when he has the worst of the dispute, puns veryemphatically on his adversary's name, if it admits of that kind ofmisconstruction. ' George Kirkpatrick is admired by the waiter, who isa sleek hand, (2) for his temper in managing an argument. Any oneelse would perceive that the latent cause is not patience with hisantagonist, but satisfaction with himself. I think this unmovedself-complacency, this cavalier, smooth, simpering indifference is moreannoying than the extremest violence or irritability. The one shows thatyour opponent does care something about you, and may be put out of hisway by your remarks; the other seems to announce that nothing you saycan shake his opinion a jot, that he has considered the whole of whatyou have to offer beforehand, and that he is in all respects much wiserand more accomplished than you. Such persons talk to grown people withthe same air of patronage and condescension that they do to children. 'They will explain'--is a familiar expression with them, thinking youcan only differ from them in consequence of misconceiving what they say. Or if you detect them in any error in point of fact (as to acknowledgeddeficiency in wit or argument, they would smile at the idea), they addsome correction to your correction, and thus have the whip-hand of youagain, being more correct than you who corrected them. If you hint someobvious oversight, they know what you are going to say, and were awareof the objection before you uttered it:--'So shall theiranticipation prevent your discovery. ' By being in the right you gainno advantage: by being in the wrong you are entitled to the benefit oftheir pity or scorn. It is sometimes curious to see a select group ofour little Gotham getting about a knotty point that will bear a wager, as whether Dr. Johnson's Dictionary was originally published in quartoor folio. The confident assertions, the cautious overtures, the lengthof time demanded to ascertain the fact, the precise terms of theforfeit, the provisos for getting out of paying it at last, lead to along and inextricable discussion. George Kirkpatrick was, however, so convinced in his own mind that the _Mourning Bride_ was written byShakespear, that he ran headlong into the snare: the bet was decided, and the punch was drunk. He has skill in numbers, and seldom exceedshis sevenpence. --He had a brother once, no Michael Cassio, no greatarithmetician. Roger Kirkpatrick was a rare fellow, of the driesthumour, and the nicest tact, of infinite sleights and evasions, of apicked phraseology, and the very soul of mimicry. I fancy I have someinsight into physiognomy myself, but he could often expound to me at asingle glance the characters of those of my acquaintance that I had beenmost at fault about. The account as it was cast up and balanced betweenus was not always very favourable. How finely, how truly, how gaily hetook off the company at the Southampton! Poor and faint are my sketchescompared to his! It was like looking into a _camera obscura_--you sawfaces shining and speaking--the smoke curled, the lights dazzled, theoak wainscotting took a higher polish--there was old Sarratt, tall andgaunt, with his couplet from Pope and case at Nisi Prius, Mounsey eyeingthe ventilator and lying _perdu_ for a moral, and Hume and Ayrton takinganother friendly finishing glass!--These and many more windfalls ofcharacter he gave us in thought, word, and action. I remember his oncedescribing three different persons together to myself and Martin Burney, viz. The manager of a country theatre, a tragic and a comic performer, till we were ready to tumble on the floor with laughing at the oddityof their humours, and at Roger's extraordinary powers of ventriloquism, bodily and mental; and Burney said (such was the vividness of the scene)that when he awoke the next morning, he wondered what three amusingcharacters he had been in company with the evening before. Oh! it wasa rich treat to see him describe Mudford, him of the _Courier, _ theContemplative Man, who wrote an answer to Coelebs, coming into a room, folding up his greatcoat, taking out a little pocket volume, laying itdown to think, rubbing the calf of his leg with grave self-complacency, and starting out of his reverie when spoken to with an inimitable vapidexclamation of 'Eh!' Mudford is like a man made of fleecy hosiery: Rogerwas lank and lean 'as is the ribbed sea-sand. ' Yet he seemed the veryman he represented, as fat, pert, and dull as it was possible to be. Ihave not seen him of late:--

 For Kais is fled, and our tents are forlorn. 

But I thought of him the other day, when the news of the death ofBuonaparte came, whom we both loved for precisely contrary reasons, hefor putting down the rabble of the people, and I because he had putdown the rabble of kings. Perhaps this event may rouse him from hislurking-place, where he lies like Reynard, 'with head declined, infeigned slumbers!'(3)

I had almost forgotten the Southampton Tavern. We for some time tookC---- for a lawyer, from a certain arguteness of voice and slendernessof neck, and from his having a quibble and a laugh at himself alwaysready. On inquiry, however, he was found to be a patent-medicine seller, and having leisure in his apprenticeship, and a forwardness of parts, hehad taken to study Blackstone and the _Statutes at Large. _ On appealingto Mounsey for his opinion on this matter, he observed pithily, 'I don'tlike so much law: the gentlemen here seem fond of law, but I have lawenough at chambers. ' One sees a great deal of the humours and tempers ofmen in a place of this sort, and may almost gather their opinionsfrom their characters. There is C----, a fellow that is always in thewrong--who puts might for right on all occasions--a Tory in grain--whohas no one idea but what has been instilled into him by customand authority--an everlasting babbler on the stronger side of thequestion--querulous and dictatorial, and with a peevish whine in hisvoice like a beaten schoolboy. He is a great advocate for the Bourbonsand for the National Debt. The former he affirms to be the choice of theFrench people, and the latter he insists is necessary to the salvationof these kingdoms. This last point a little inoffensive gentleman amongus, of a saturnine aspect but simple conceptions, cannot comprehend. 'Iwill tell you, sir--I will make my propositions so clear that you willbe convinced of the truth of my observation in a moment. Consider, sir, the number of trades that would be thrown out of employ if it were doneaway with: what would become of the porcelain manufacture without it?'Any stranger to overhear one of these debates would swear that theEnglish as a nation are bad logicians. Mood and figure are unknown tothem. They do not argue by the book. They arrive at conclusions throughthe force of prejudice, and on the principles of contradiction. Mr. C---- having thus triumphed in argument, offers a flower to the noticeof the company as a specimen of his flower-garden, a curious exotic, nothing like it to be found in this kingdom; talks of his carnations, ofhis country-house, and old English hospitality, but never invites any ofhis friends to come down and take their Sunday's dinner with him. He ismean and ostentatious at the same time, insolent and servile, doesnot know whether to treat those he converses with as if they were hisporters or his customers: the prentice-boy is not yet wiped out of him, and his imagination still hovers between his mansion at ----- andthe workhouse. Opposed to him and to every one else is B. , a radicalreformer and logician, who makes clear work of the taxes and NationalDebt, reconstructs the Government from the first principles of things, shatters the Holy Alliance at a blow, grinds out the future prospects ofsociety with a machine, and is setting out afresh with the commencementof the French Revolution five and twenty years ago, as if on an untriedexperiment. He minds nothing but the formal agreement of his premisesand his conclusions, and does not stick at obstacles in the way, norconsequences in the end. If there was but one side of a question, hewould be always in the right. He casts up one column of the account toadmiration, but totally forgets and rejects the other. His ideas lielike square pieces of wood in his brain, and may be said to be piledup on a stiff architectural principle, perpendicularly, and atright angles. There is no inflection, no modification, no gracefulembellishment, no Corinthian capitals. I never heard him agree to twopropositions together, or to more than half a one at a time. His rigidlove of truth bends to nothing but his habitual love of disputation. Heputs one in mind of one of those long-headed politicians and frequentersof coffee-houses mentioned in Berkeley's _Minute Philosopher, _ who wouldmake nothing of such old-fashioned fellows as Plato and Aristotle. Hehas the new light strong upon him, and he knocks other people down withits solid beams. He denies that he has got certain views out of Cobbett, though he allows that there are excellent ideas occasionally to be metwith in that writer. It is a pity that this enthusiastic and unqualifiedregard to truth should be accompanied with an equal exactness ofexpenditure and unrelenting eye to the main chance. He brings a bunchof radishes with him for cheapness, and gives a band of musicians at thedoor a penny, observing that he likes their performance better thanall the Opera squalling. This brings the severity of his politicalprinciples into question, if not into contempt. He would abolish theNational Debt from motives of personal economy, and objects to Mr. Canning's pension because it perhaps takes a farthing a year out of hisown pocket. A great deal of radical reasoning has its source in thisfeeling. --He bestows no small quantity of his tediousness upon Mounsey, on whose mind all these formulas and diagrams fall like seed on stonyground: 'while the manna is descending, ' he shakes his ears, and, in theintervals of the debate, insinuates an objection, and calls for anotherhalf-pint. I have sometimes said to him, 'Any one to come in herewithout knowing you, would take you for the most disputatious man alive, for you are always engaged in an argument with somebody or other. 'The truth is, that Mounsey is a good-natured, gentlemanly man, whonotwithstanding, if appealed to, will not let an absurd or unjustproposition pass without expressing his dissent; and therefore he is asort of mark for all those (and we have several of that stamp) who liketo tease other people's understandings as wool-combers tease wool. Heis certainly the flower of the flock. He is the oldest frequenter of theplace, the latest sitter-up, well-informed, inobtrusive, and thatsturdy old English character, a lover of truth and justice. I never knewMounsey approve of anything unfair or illiberal. There is a candour anduprightness about his mind which can neither be wheedled nor browbeatinto unjustifiable complaisance. He looks straight forward as he sitswith his glass in his hand, turning neither to the right nor the left, and I will venture to say that he has never had a sinister object inview through life. Mrs. Battle (it is recorded in her Opinions on Whist)could not make up her mind to use the word _'Go. '_ Mounsey, from longpractice, has got over this difficulty, and uses it incessantly. Itis no matter what adjunct follows in the train of this despisedmonosyllable, --whatever liquid comes after this prefix is welcome. Mounsey, without being the most communicative, is the most conversibleman I know. The social principle is inseparable from his person. If hehas nothing to say, he drinks your health; and when you cannot, fromthe rapidity and carelessness of his utterance, catch what he says, youassent to it with equal confidence: you know his meaning is good. Hisfavourite phrase is, 'We have all of us something of the coxcomb';and yet he has none of it himself. Before I had exchanged half adozen sentences with Mounsey, I found that he knew several of my oldacquaintance (an immediate introduction of itself, for the discussingthe characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetener andcement of friendship)--and had been intimate with most of the wits andmen about town for the last twenty years. He knew Tobin, Wordsworth, Porson, Wilson, Paley, Erskine, and many others. He speaks of Paley'spleasantry and unassuming manners, and describes Porson's long potationsand long quotations formerly at the Cider Cellar in a very lively way. He has doubts, however, as to that sort of learning. On my saying thatI had never seen the Greek Professor but once, at the Library of theLondon Institution, when he was dressed in an old rusty black coat withcobwebs hanging to the skirts of it, and with a large patch of coarsebrown paper covering the whole length of his nose, looking for all theworld like a drunken carpenter, and talking to one of the proprietorswith an air of suavity, approaching to condescension, Mounsey couldnot help expressing some little uneasiness for the credit of classicalliterature. 'I submit, sir, whether common sense is not the principalthing? What is the advantage of genius and learning if they are of nouse in the conduct of life?'--Mounsey is one who loves the hours thatusher in the morn, when a select few are left in twos and threes likestars before the break of day, and when the discourse and the ale are'aye growing better and better. ' Wells, Mounsey, and myself were allthat remained one evening. We had sat together several hours withoutbeing tired of one another's company. The conversation turned on theBeauties of Charles the Second's Court at Windsor, and from thence toCount Grammont, their gallant and gay historian. We took our favouritepassages in turn--one preferring that of Killigrew's country cousin, who, having been resolutely refused by Miss Warminster (one of the Maidsof Honour), when he found she had been unexpectedly brought to bed, fell on his knees and thanked God that now she might take compassion onhim--another insisting that the Chevalier Hamilton's assignation withLady Chesterfield, when she kept him all night shivering in an oldout-house, was better. Jacob Hall's prowess was not forgotten, nor thestory of Miss Stuart's garters. I was getting on in my way with thatdelicate _endroit_ in which Miss Churchill is first introduced at courtand is besieged (as a matter of course) by the Duke of York, who wasgallant as well as bigoted on system. His assiduities, however, soonslackened, owing (it is said) to her having a pale, thin face: till oneday, as they were riding out hunting together, she fell from her horse, and was taken up almost lifeless. The whole assembled court was thrownby this event into admiration that such a body should belong to such aface(4) (so transcendent a pattern was she of the female form), and theDuke was fixed. This, I contended, was striking, affecting, and grand, the sublime of amorous biography, and said I could conceive of nothingfiner than the idea of a young person in her situation, who was theobject of indifference or scorn from outward appearance, with the proudsuppressed consciousness of a Goddess-like symmetry, locked up by 'fearand niceness, the handmaids of all women, ' from the wonder and worshipof mankind. I said so then, and I think so now: my tongue grew wantonin the praise of this passage, and I believe it bore the bell from itscompetitors. Wells then spoke of Lucius Apuleius and his Golden Ass, which contains the story of Cupid and Psyche, with other matter rich andrare, and went on to the romance of Heliodorus, Theagenes and Charicleaand in it the presiding deities of Love and Wine appear in all theirpristine strength, youth, and grace, crowned and worshipped as of yore. The night waned, but our glasses brightened, enriched with the pearlsof Grecian story. Our cup-bearer slept in a corner of the room, likeanother Endymion, in the pale ray of a half-extinguished lamp, andstarting up at a fresh summons for a further supply, he swore it was toolate, and was inexorable to entreaty. Mounsey sat with his hat on andwith a hectic flush in his face while any hope remained, but as soonas we rose to go, he darted out of the room as quick as lightning, determined not to be the last that went. --I said some time after to thewaiter, that 'Mr. Mounsey was no flincher. ' 'Oh! sir, ' says he, 'youshould have known him formerly, when Mr. Hume and Mr. Ayrton used tobe here. Now he is quite another man: he seldom stays later than one ortwo. '--'Why, did they keep it up much then?' 'Oh! yes; and used tosing catches and all sorts. '--'What, did Mr. Mounsey sing catches?' 'Hejoined chorus, sir, and was as merry as the best of them. He was alwaysa pleasant gentleman!'--This Hume and Ayrton succumbed in the fight. Ayrton was a dry Scotchman, Hume a good-natured, hearty Englishman. Ido not mean that the same character applies to all Scotchmen or to allEnglishmen. Hume was of the Pipe-Office (not unfitly appointed), andin his cheerfuller cups would delight to speak of a widow and abowling-green, that ran in his head to the last. 'What is the good oftalking of those things now?' said the man of utility. 'I don't know, 'replied the other, quaffing another glass of sparkling ale, and with alambent fire playing in his eye and round his bald forehead--(he had ahead that Sir Joshua would have made something bland and genial of)--'Idon't know, but they were delightful to me at the time, and are stillpleasant to talk and think of. '--_Such a one, _ in Touchstone's phrase, _is a natural philosopher;_ and in nine cases out of ten that sort ofphilosophy is the best! I could enlarge this sketch, such as it is; butto prose on to the end of the chapter might prove less profitable thantedious. 

I like very well to sit in a room where there are people talking onsubjects I know nothing of, if I am only allowed to sit silent and asa spectator; but I do not much like to join in the conversation, exceptwith people and on subjects to my taste. Sympathy is necessary tosociety. To look on, a variety of faces, humours, and opinions issufficient; to mix with others, agreement as well as variety isindispensable. What makes good society? I answer, in one word, realfellowship. Without a similitude of tastes, acquirements, and pursuits(whatever may be the difference of tempers and characters) there can beno intimacy or even casual intercourse worth the having. What makesthe most agreeable party? A number of people with a number of ideas incommon, 'yet so as with a difference'; that is, who can put one ormore subjects which they have all studied in the greatest variety ofentertaining or useful lights. Or, in other words, a succession of goodthings said with good-humour, and addressed to the understandings ofthose who hear them, make the most desirable conversation. Ladies, lovers, beaux, wits, philosophers, the fashionable or the vulgar, arethe fittest company for one another. The discourse at Randal's is thebest for boxers; that at Long's for lords and loungers. I prefer Hunt'sconversation almost to any other person's, because, with a familiarrange of subjects, he colours with a totally new and sparkling light, reflected from his own character. Elia, the grave and witty, says thingsnot to be surpassed in essence; but the manner is more painful andless a relief to my own thoughts. Some one conceived he could not be anexcellent companion, because he was seen walking down the side of theThames, _passibus iniquis, _ after dining at Richmond. The objectionwas not valid. I will, however, admit that the said Elia is the worstcompany in the world in bad company, if it be granted me that in goodcompany he is nearly the best that can be. He is one of those of whom itmay be said, Tell me your company, and I'll tell you your manners. Heis the creature of sympathy, and makes good whatever opinion you seem toentertain of him. He cannot outgo the apprehensions of the circle, andinvariably acts up or down to the point of refinement or vulgarity atwhich they pitch him. He appears to take a pleasure in exaggeratingthe prejudice of strangers against him; a pride in confirming theprepossessions of friends. In whatever scale of intellect he is placed, he is as lively or as stupid as the rest can be for their lives. If youthink him odd and ridiculous, he becomes more and more so every minute, _a la folie, _ till he is a wonder gazed (at) by all--set him against agood wit and a ready apprehension, and he brightens more and more--

 Or like a gate of steel Fronting the sun, receives and renders back Its figure and its heat. 

We had a pleasant party one evening at Procter's. A young literarybookseller who was present went away delighted with the elegance of therepast, and spoke in raptures of a servant in green livery and a patentlamp. I thought myself that the charm of the evening consisted in sometalk about Beaumont and Fletcher and the old poets, in which every onetook part or interest, and in a consciousness that we could not pay ourhost a better compliment than in thus alluding to studies in which heexcelled, and in praising authors whom he had imitated with feeling andsweetness!--I should think it may also be laid down as a rule on thissubject, that to constitute good company a certain proportion of hearersand speakers is requisite. Coleridge makes good company for this reason. He immediately establishes the principle of the division of labour inthis respect wherever he comes. He takes his cue as speaker, and therest of the party theirs as listeners--a 'Circa herd'--without anyprevious arrangement having been gone through. I will just add thatthere can be no good society without perfect freedom from affectationand constraint. If the unreserved communication of feeling or opinionleads to offensive familiarity, it is not well; but it is no betterwhere the absence of offensive remarks arises only from formality and anassumed respectfulness of manner. 

I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to befound out of London; and that for the two following reasons. First, there is _neighbourhood_ elsewhere, accidental or unavoidableacquaintance: people are thrown together by chance or grow together liketrees; but you can pick your society nowhere but in London. The verypersons that of all others you would wish to associate with in almostevery line of life (or at least of intellectual pursuit) are to be metwith there. It is hard if out of a million of people you cannot findhalf a dozen to your liking. Individuals may seem lost and hid in thesize of the place; but in fact, from this very circumstance, you arewithin two or three miles' reach of persons that, without it, you wouldbe some hundreds apart from. Secondly, London is the only place in whicheach individual in company is treated according to his value in company, and to that only. In every other part of the kingdom he carries anothercharacter about with him, which supersedes the intellectual or socialone. It is known in Manchester or Liverpool what every man in the roomis worth in land or money; what are his connections and prospectsin life--and this gives a character of servility or arrogance, ofmercenaries or impertinence to the whole of provincial intercourse. You laugh not in proportion to a man's wit, but his wealth; you have toconsider not what, but whom you contradict. You speak by the pound, and are heard by the rood. In the metropolis there is neither time norinclination for these remote calculations. Every man depends on thequantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings into society for thereception he meets with in it. A Member of Parliament soon finds hislevel as a commoner: the merchant and manufacturer cannot bring hisgoods to market here: the great landed proprietor shrinks from being thelord of acres into a pleasant companion or a dull fellow. When a visitorenters or leaves a room, it is not inquired whether he is rich or poor, whether he lives in a garret or a palace, or comes in his own or ahackney coach, but whether he has a good expression of countenance, with an unaffected manner, and whether he is a man of understanding ora blockhead. These are the circumstances by which you make a favourableimpression on the company, and by which they estimate you in theabstract. In the country, they consider whether you have a vote atthe next election or a place in your gift, and measure the capacity ofothers to instruct or entertain them by the strength of their pocketsand their credit with their banker. Personal merit is at a prodigiousdiscount in the provinces. I like the country very well if I want toenjoy my own company; but London is the only place for equal society, or where a man can say a good thing or express an honest opinion withoutsubjecting himself to being insulted, unless he first lays his purse onthe table to back his pretensions to talent or independence of spirit. Ispeak from experience. (5)

NOTES to ESSAY IV. 

(1) It is not very long ago that I saw two Dissenting Ministers (the_Ultima Thud_ of the sanguine, visionary temperament in politics)stuffing their pipes with dried currant-leaves, calling it RadicalTobacco, lighting it with a lens in the rays of the sun, and at everypuff fancying that they undermined the Boroughmongers, as Trim blew upthe army opposed to the Allies! They had _deceived the Senate. _ MethinksI see them now, smiling as in scorn of Corruption. 

 Dream on, blest pair: Yet happier if you knew your happiness, And knew to know no more!

The world of Reform that you dote on, like Berkeley's material world, lives only in your own brain, and long may it live there! Those sameDissenting Ministers throughout the country (I mean the descendants ofthe old Puritans) are to this hour a sort of Fifth-monarchy men: veryturbulent fellows, in my opinion altogether incorrigible, and accordingto the suggestions of others, should be hanged out of the way withoutjudge or jury for the safety of church and state. Marry, hang them!they may be left to die a natural death: the race is nearly extinct ofitself, and can do little more good or harm!

(2) William, our waiter, is dressed neatly in black, takes in theTICKLER (which many of the gentlemen like to look into), wears, I amtold, a diamond pin in his shirt-collar, has a music-master to teach himto play on the flageolet two hours before the maids are up, complainsof confinement and a delicate constitution, and is a complete MasterStephen in his way. 

(3) His account of Dr. Whittle was prodigious-of his occult sagacity, of his eyes prominent and wild like a hare's, fugacious of followers, of the arts by which he had left the City to lure the patients that hewanted after him to the West End, of the ounce of tea that he purchasedby stratagem as an unusual treat to his guest, and of the narrow windingstaircase, from the height of which he contemplated in security theimaginary approach of duns. He was a large, plain, fair-faced Moravianpreacher, turned physician. He was an honest man, but vain of he knewnot what. He was once sitting where Sarratt was playing a game at chesswithout seeing the board; and after remaining for some time absorbedin silent wonder, he turned suddenly to me and said, 'Do you know, Mr. Hazlitt, that I think there is something I could do?' 'Well, what isthat?' 'Why, perhaps you would not guess, but I think I could dance, I'msure I could; ay, I could dance like Vestris!' Sarratt, who was a manof various accomplishments (among others one of the Fancy), afterwardsbared his arm to convince us of his muscular strength, and Mrs. Sarrattgoing out of the room with another lady said, 'Do you know, Madam, theDoctor is a great jumper!' Moliere could not outdo this. Never shall Iforget his pulling off his coat to eat beef-steaks on equal terms withMartin Burney. Life is short, but full of mirth and pastime, did we notso soon forget what we have laughed at, perhaps that we may not rememberwhat we have cried at! Sarratt, the chess-player, was an extraordinaryman. He had the same tenacious, epileptic faculty in other things thathe had at chess, and could no more get any other ideas out of his mindthan he could those of the figures on the board. He was a greatreader, but had not the least taste. Indeed the violence of his memorytyrannised over and destroyed all power of selection. He could repeat(all) Ossian by heart, without knowing the best passage from the worst;and did not perceive he was tiring you to death by giving an account ofthe breed, education, and manners of fighting-dogs for hours together. The sense of reality quite superseded the distinction between thepleasurable and the painful. He was altogether a mechanical philosopher. 

(4) Ils ne pouvoient croire qu'un corps de cette beaute fut de quelquechose au visage de Mademoiselle Churchill. '--_Memoires de Grammont, _vol. Ii. P. 254. 

(5) When I was young I spent a good deal of my time at Manchester andLiverpool; and I confess I give the preference to the former. There youwere oppressed only by the aristocracy of wealth; in the latter by thearistocracy of wealth and letters by turns. You could not help feelingthat some of their great men were authors among merchants and merchantsamong authors. Their bread was buttered on both sides, and they had youat a disadvantage either way. The Manchester cotton-spinners, on thecontrary, set up no pretensions beyond their looms, were hearty goodfellows, and took any information or display of ingenuity onother subjects in good part. I remember well being introduced to adistinguished patron of art and rising merit at a little distance fromLiverpool, and was received with every mark of attention and politeness;till, the conversation turning on Italian literature, our host remarkedthat there was nothing in the English language corresponding to theseverity of the Italian ode--except perhaps Dryden's _Alexander's Feast_and Pope's _St. Cecilia!_ I could no longer contain my desire to displaymy smattering in criticism, and began to maintain that Pope's Ode was, as it appeared to me, far from an example of severity in writing. Isoon perceived what I had done, but here am I writing _Table-talks_ inconsequence. Alas! I knew as little of the world then as I do now. Inever could understand anything beyond an abstract definition. 

ESSAY V. ON THE ARISTOCRACY OF LETTERS

 Ha! here's three of us are sophisticated:--off, you lendings. 

There is such a thing as an aristocracy or privileged order in letterswhich has sometimes excited my wonder, and sometimes my spleen. Wemeet with authors who have never done anything, but who have a vastreputation for what they could have done. Their names stand high, andare in everybody's mouth, but their works are never heard of, or hadbetter remain undiscovered for the sake of their admirers. --_Statnominis umbra_--their pretensions are lofty and unlimited, as they havenothing to rest upon, or because it is impossible to confront them withthe proofs of their deficiency. If you inquire farther, and insistupon some act of authorship to establish the claims of these Epicureanvotaries of the Muses, you find that they had a great reputationat Cambridge, that they were senior wranglers or successfulprize-essayists, that they visit at Holland House, and, to support thathonour, must be supposed, of course, to occupy the first rank in theworld of letters. (1) It is possible, however, that they have somemanuscript work in hand, which is of too much importance (and the writerhas too much at stake in publishing it) hastily to see the light: orperhaps they once had an article in the Edinburgh Review, which was muchadmired at the time, and is kept by them ever since as a kind of diplomaand unquestionable testimonial of merit. They are not like Grub Streetauthors, who write for bread, and are paid by the sheet. Like misers whohoard their wealth, they are supposed to be masters of all the wit andsense they do not impart to the public. 'Continents have most of whatthey contain, ' says a considerable philosopher; and these persons, itmust be confessed, have a prodigious command over themselves in theexpenditure of light and learning. The Oriental curse, '0 thatmine enemy had written a book!' hangs suspended over them. By nevercommitting themselves, they neither give a handle to the malice of theworld, nor excite the jealousy of friends; and keep all the reputationthey have got, not by discreetly blotting, but by never writing a line. Some one told Sheridan, who was always busy about some new work andnever advancing any farther in it, that he would not write because hewas afraid of the author of the _School for Scandal. _ So these idlepretenders are afraid of undergoing a comparison with themselves insomething they have never done, but have had credit for doing. They donot acquire celebrity, they assume it; and escape detection by neverventuring out of their imposing and mysterious incognito. They do notlet themselves down by everyday work: for them to appear in print is awork of supererogation as much as in lords and kings; and like gentlemenwith a large landed estate, they live on their established character, and do nothing (or as little as possible) to increase or lose it. Thereis not a more deliberate piece of grave imposture going. I know a personof this description who has been employed many years (by implication)in a translation of Thucydides, of which no one ever saw a word, but itdoes not answer the purpose of bolstering up a factitious reputation theless on that account. The longer it is delayed and kept sacred from thevulgar gaze, the more it swells into imaginary consequence; the labourand care required for a work of this kind being immense;--and then thereare no faults in an unexecuted translation. The only impeccable writersare those that never wrote. Another is an oracle on subjects of tasteand classical erudition, because (he says at least) he reads Ciceroonce a year to keep up the purity of his Latinity. A third makes theindecency pass for the depth of his researches and for a high gusto in_virtu, _ till, from his seeing nothing in the finest remains of ancientart, the world by the merest accident find out that there is nothing inhim. There is scarcely anything that a grave face with an impenetrablemanner will not accomplish, and whoever is weak enough to impose uponhimself will have wit enough to impose upon the public--particularly ifhe can make it their interest to be deceived by shallow boasting, andcontrives not to hurt their self-love by sterling acquirements. Do yousuppose that the understood translation of Thucydides costs its supposedauthor nothing? A select party of friends and admirers dine withhim once a week at a magnificent town mansion, or a more elegant andpicturesque retreat in the country. They broach their Horace and theirold hock, and sometimes allude with a considerable degree of candour tothe defects of works which are brought out by contemporary writers--theephemeral offspring of haste and necessity!

Among other things, the learned languages are a ready passport to thissort of unmeaning, unanalysed reputation. They presently lift a man upamong the celestial constellations, the signs of the zodiac (as it were)and third heaven of inspiration, from whence he looks down on thosewho are toiling on in this lower sphere, and earning their bread by thesweat of their brain, at leisure and in scorn. If the graduates in thisway condescend to express their thoughts in English, it is understood tobe _infra dignitatem_--such light and unaccustomed essays do not fitthe ponderous gravity of their pen--they only draw to advantage andwith full justice to themselves in the bow of the ancients. Their nativetongue is to them strange, inelegant, unapt, and crude. They 'cannotcommand it to any utterance of harmony. They have not the skill. ' Thisis true enough; but you must not say so, under a heavy penalty--thedispleasure of pedants and blockheads. It would be sacrilege against theprivileged classes, the Aristocracy of Letters. What! will you affirmthat a profound Latin scholar, a perfect Grecian, cannot write a page ofcommon sense or grammar? Is it not to be presumed, by all the chartersof the Universities and the foundations of grammar-schools, that he whocan speak a dead language must be _a fortiori_ conversant with his own?Surely the greater implies the less. He who knows every science andevery art cannot be ignorant of the most familiar forms of speech. Orif this plea is found not to hold water, then our scholastic bungler issaid to be above this vulgar trial of skill, 'something must be excusedto want of practice--but did you not observe the elegance of theLatinity, how well that period would become a classical and studieddress?' Thus defects are 'monster'd' into excellences, and they screentheir idol, and require you, at your peril, to pay prescriptive homageto false concords and inconsequential criticisms, because the writer ofthem has the character of the first or second Greek or Latin scholarin the kingdom. If you do not swear to the truth of these spuriouscredentials, you are ignorant and malicious, a quack and ascribbler--_flagranti delicto!_ Thus the man who can merely read andconstrue some old author is of a class superior to any living one, and, by parity of reasoning, to those old authors themselves: the poet orprose-writer of true and original genius, by the courtesy of custom, 'ducks to the learned fool'; or, as the author of _Hudibras_ has so wellstated the same thing--

 He that is but able to express No sense at all in several languages, Will pass for learneder than he that's known To speak the strongest reason in his own. 

These preposterous and unfounded claims of mere scholars to precedencein the commonwealth of letters which they set up so formally themselvesand which others so readily bow to, are partly owing to traditionalprejudice: there was a time when learning was the only distinctionfrom ignorance, and when there was no such thing as popular Englishliterature. Again, there is something more palpable and positive inthis kind of acquired knowledge, like acquired wealth, which the vulgareasily recognise. That others know the meaning of signs which they areconfessedly and altogether ignorant of is to them both a matter of factand a subject of endless wonder. The languages are worn like a dress bya man, and distinguish him sooner than his natural figure; and we are, from motives of self-love, inclined to give others credit for the ideasthey have borrowed or have come into indirect possession of, rather thanfor those that originally belong to them and are exclusively their own. The merit in them and the implied inferiority in ourselves is less. Learning is a kind of external appendage or transferable property--

'Twas mine, 'tis his, and may be any man's. 

Genius and understanding are a man's self, an integrant part of hispersonal identity; and the title to these last, as it is the mostdifficult to be ascertained, is also the most grudgingly acknowledged. Few persons would pretend to deny that Porson had more Greek than they;it was a question of fact which might be put to the immediate proof, andcould not be gainsaid; but the meanest frequenter of the Cider Cellar orthe Hole in the Wall would be inclined, in his own conceit, to disputethe palm of wit or sense with him, and indemnify his self-complacencyfor the admiration paid to living learning by significant hints tofriends and casual droppers-in, that the greatest men, when you came toknow them, were not without their weak sides as well as others. Pedants, I will add here, talk to the vulgar as pedagogues talk to schoolboys, onan understood principle of condescension and superiority, and thereforemake little progress in the knowledge of men or things. While theyfancy they are accommodating themselves to, or else assuming airs ofimportance over, inferior capacities, these inferior capacities arereally laughing at them. There can be no true superiority but whatarises out of the presupposed ground of equality: there can be noimprovement but from the free communication and comparing of ideas. Kings and nobles, for this reason, receive little benefit fromsociety--where all is submission on one side, and condescension on theother. The mind strikes out truth by collision, as steel strikes firefrom the flint!

There are whole families who are born classical, and are entered inthe heralds' college of reputation by the right of consanguinity. Literature, like nobility, runs in the blood. There is the Burneyfamily. There is no end of it or its pretensions. It produces wits, scholars, novelists, musicians, artists in 'numbers numberless. ' Thename is alone a passport to the Temple of Fame. Those who bear itare free of Parnassus by birthright. The founder of it was himself anhistorian and a musician, but more of a courtier and man of the worldthan either. The secret of his success may perhaps be discovered in thefollowing passage, where, in alluding to three eminent performers ondifferent instruments, he says: 'These three illustrious personages wereintroduced at the Emperor's court, ' etc. ; speaking of them as if theywere foreign ambassadors or princes of the blood, and thus magnifyinghimself and his profession. This overshadowing manner carries nearlyeverything before it, and mystifies a great many. There is nothing likeputting the best face upon things, and leaving others to find out thedifference. He who could call three musicians 'personages' would himselfplay a personage through life, and succeed in his leading object. SirJoshua Reynolds, remarking on this passage, said: 'No one had a greaterrespect than he had for his profession, but that he should never thinkof applying to it epithets that were appropriated merely to externalrank and distinction. ' Madame d'Arblay, it must be owned, had clevernessenough to stock a whole family, and to set up her cousin-germans, maleand female, for wits and virtuosos to the third and fourth generation. The rest have done nothing, that I know of, but keep up the name. 

The most celebrated author in modern times has written without a name, and has been knighted for anonymous productions. Lord Byron complainsthat Horace Walpole was not properly appreciated, 'first, because hewas a gentleman; and secondly, because he was a nobleman. ' His Lordshipstands in one, at least, of the predicaments here mentioned, and yet hehas had justice, or somewhat more, done him. He towers above his fellowsby all the height of the peerage. If the poet lends a grace to thenobleman, the nobleman pays it back to the poet with interest. Whata fine addition is ten thousand a year and a title to the flauntingpretensions of a modern rhapsodist! His name so accompanied becomesthe mouth well: it is repeated thousands of times, instead of hundreds, because the reader in being familiar with the Poet's works seems toclaim acquaintance with the Lord. 

 Let but a lord once own the happy lines: How the wit brightens, and the style refines!

He smiles at the high-flown praise or petty cavils of little men. Doeshe make a slip in decorum, which Milton declares to be the principalthing? His proud crest and armorial bearings support him: nobend-sinister slurs his poetical escutcheon! Is he dull, or does heput of some trashy production on the public? It is not charged to hisaccount, as a deficiency which he must make good at the peril ofhis admirers. His Lordship is not answerable for the negligence orextravagances of his Muse. He 'bears a charmed reputation, which mustnot yield' like one of vulgar birth. The Noble Bard is for thisreason scarcely vulnerable to the critics. The double barrier of hispretensions baffles their puny, timid efforts. Strip off some of histarnished laurels, and the coronet appears glittering beneath: restorethem, and it still shines through with keener lustre. In fact, hisLordship's blaze of reputation culminates from his rank and place insociety. He sustains two lofty and imposing characters; and in order tosimplify the process of our admiration, and 'leave no rubs or botches inthe way, ' we equalise his pretensions, and take it for granted that hemust be as superior to other men in genius as he is in birth. Or, togive a more familiar solution of the enigma, the Poet and the Peer agreeto honour each other's acceptances on the bank of Fame, and sometimescozen the town to some tune between them. Really, however, and with allhis privileges, Lord Byron might as well not have written that strangeletter about Pope. I could not afford it, poor as I am. Why does hepronounce, _ex cathedra_ and robed, that Cowper is no poet? Cowper wasa gentleman and of noble family like his critic. He was a teacherof morality as well as a describer of nature, which is more than hisLordship is. His _John Gilpin_ will last as long as _Beppo, _ and hisverses to Mary are not less touching than the _Farewell. _ If I hadventured upon such an assertion as this, it would have been worse for methan finding out a borrowed line in the _Pleasures of Hope. _

There is not a more helpless or more despised animal than a mere author, without any extrinsic advantages of birth, breeding, or fortune to sethim off. The real ore of talents or learning must be stamped before itwill pass current. To be at all looked upon as an author, a man mustbe something more or less than an author--a rich merchant, a banker, alord, or a ploughman. He is admired for something foreign to himself, that acts as a bribe to the servility or a set-off to the envy of thecommunity. 'What should such fellows as we do, crawling betwixt heavenand earth';--'coining our hearts for drachmas'; now scorched in the sun, now shivering in the breeze, now coming out in our newest gloss and bestattire, like swallows in the spring, now 'sent back like hollowmas orshortest day'? The best wits, like the handsomest faces _upon the town, _lead a harassing, precarious life--are taken up for the bud and promiseof talent, which they no sooner fulfil than they are thrown asidelike an old fashion--are caressed without reason, and insulted withimpunity--are subject to all the caprice, the malice, and fulsomeadvances of that great keeper, the Public--and in the end come to nogood, like all those who lavish their favours on mankind at large, andlook to the gratitude of the world for their reward. Instead of this setof Grub Street authors, the mere _canaille_ of letters, this corporationof Mendicity, this ragged regiment of genius suing at the corners ofstreets in _forma pauperis, _ give me the gentleman and scholar, with agood house over his head and a handsome table 'with wine of Attic taste'to ask his friends to, and where want and sorrow never come. Fill up thesparkling bowl; heap high the dessert with roses crowned; bring out thehot-pressed poem, the vellum manuscripts, the medals, the portfolios, the intaglios--this is the true model of the life of a man of taste and_virtu_--the possessors, not the inventors of these things, are the truebenefactors of mankind and ornaments of letters. Look in, and there, amidst silver services and shining chandeliers, you will see the manof genius at his proper post, picking his teeth and mincing an opinion, sheltered by rank, bowing to wealth--a poet framed, glazed, and hungin a striking light; not a straggling weed, torn and trampled on; nota poor _Kit-run-the-street, _ but a powdered beau, a sycophant plant, anexotic reared in a glass case, hermetically sealed, Free from the Sirian star and the dread thunder-stroke

whose mealy coat no moth can corrupt nor blight can wither. The poetKeats had not this sort of protection for his person--he lay bare toweather--the serpent stung him, and the poison-tree dropped upon thislittle western flower: when the mercenary servile crew approached him, he had no pedigree to show them, no rent-roll to hold out in reversionfor their praise: he was not in any great man's train, nor the butt andpuppet of a lord--he could only offer them 'the fairest flowers of theseason, carnations and streaked gilliflowers, '--'rue for remembrance andpansies for thoughts, '--they recked not of his gift, but tore him withhideous shouts and laughter, Nor could the Muse protect her son!

Unless an author has all establishment of his own, or is entered on thatof some other person, he will hardly be allowed to write English orto spell his own name. To be well spoken of, he must enlist under somestandard; he must belong to some _coterie. _ He must get the _esprit decorps_ on his side: he must have literary bail in readiness. Thus theyprop up one another's rickety heads at Murray's shop, and a spuriousreputation, like false argument, runs in a circle. Croker affirms thatGifford is sprightly, and Gifford that Croker is genteel; Disraeli thatJacob is wise, and Jacob that Disraeli is good-natured. A Member ofParliament must be answerable that you are not dangerous or dull beforeyou can be of the _entree. _ You must commence toad-eater to have yourobservations attended to; if you are independent, unconnected, you willbe regarded as a poor creature. Your opinion is honest, you will say;then ten to one it is not profitable. It is at any rate your own. Somuch the worse; for then it is not the world's. Tom Hill is a verytolerable barometer in this respect. He knows nothing, hears everything, and repeats just what he hears; so that you may guess pretty well fromthis round-faced echo what is said by others! Almost everything goesby presumption and appearances. 'Did you not think Mr. B----'s languagevery elegant?'--I thought he bowed very low. 'Did you not think himremarkably well-behaved?'--He was unexceptionably dressed. 'But werenot Mr. C----'s manners quite insinuating?'--He said nothing. "You will at least allow his friend to be a well-informedman. "--talked upon all subjects alike. Such would be a pretty faithfulinterpretation of the tone of what is called _good society. _ Thesurface is everything; we do not pierce to the core. The setting ismore valuable than the jewel. Is it not so in other things as wellas letters? Is not an R. A. By the supposition a greater man in hisprofession than any one who is not so blazoned? Compared with thatunrivalled list, Raphael had been illegitimate, Claude not classical, and Michael Angelo admitted by special favour. What is a physicianwithout a diploma? An alderman without being knighted? An actor whosename does not appear in great letters? All others are counterfeits--men'of no mark or likelihood. ' This was what made the Jackals of the Northso eager to prove that I had been turned out of the _Edinburgh Review. _It was not the merit of the articles which excited their spleen--buttheir being there. Of the style they knew nothing; for the thought theycared nothing: all that they knew was that I wrote in that powerfuljournal, and therefore they asserted that I did not!

We find a class of persons who labour under an obvious naturalinaptitude for whatever they aspire to. Their manner of setting aboutit is a virtual disqualification. The simple affirmation, 'What thisman has said, I will do, ' is not always considered as the proper test ofcapacity. On the contrary, there are people whose bare pretensions areas good or better than the actual performance of others. What I myselfhave done, for instance, I never find admitted as proof of what I shallbe able to do: whereas I observe others who bring as proof of theircompetence to any task (and are taken at their word) what they havenever done, and who gravely assure those who are inclined to trust themthat their talents are exactly fitted for some post because they arejust the reverse of what they have ever shown them to be. One man hasthe air of an Editor as much as another has that of a butler or porterin a gentleman's family. ----- is the model of this character, witha prodigious look of business, an air of suspicion which passes forsagacity, and an air of deliberation which passes for judgment. Ifhis own talents are no ways prominent, it is inferred he will be moreimpartial and in earnest in making use of those of others. Thereis Britton, the responsible conductor of several works of taste anderudition, yet (God knows) without an idea in his head relating toany one of them. He is learned by proxy, and successful from sheerimbecility. If he were to get the smallest smattering of the departmentswhich are under his control, he would betray himself from his desire toshine; but as it is, he leaves others to do all the drudgery for him. He signs his name in the title-page or at the bottom of a vignette, andnobody suspects any mistake. This contractor for useful and ornamentalliterature once offered me two guineas for a _Life and Character ofShakespear, _ with an admission to his _converzationi. _ I wentonce. There was a collection of learned lumber, of antiquaries, lexicographers, and other 'illustrious obscure, ' and I had given up theday for lost, when in dropped Jack Taylor of the _Sun_--(who would dareto deny that he was 'the Sun of our table'?)--and I had nothing now todo but hear and laugh. Mr. Taylor knows most of the good things thathave been said in the metropolis for the last thirty years, and is inparticular an excellent retailer of the humours and extravagances of hisold friend Peter Pindar. He had recounted a series of them, each risingabove the other in a sort of magnificent burlesque and want of literalpreciseness, to a medley of laughing and sour faces, when on hisproceeding to state a joke of a practical nature by the said Peter, aMr. ----- (I forget the name) objected to the moral of the story, and tothe whole texture of Mr. Taylor's facetiae--upon which our host, who hadtill now supposed that all was going on swimmingly, thought it timeto interfere and give a turn to the conversation by saying, 'Why, yes, gentlemen, what we have hitherto heard fall from the lips of our friendhas been no doubt entertaining and highly agreeable in its way; butperhaps we have had enough of what is altogether delightful and pleasantand light and laughable in conduct. Suppose, therefore, we were to shiftthe subject, and talk of what is serious and moral and industrious andlaudable in character--Let us talk of Mr. Tomkins the Penman!'--Thisstaggered the gravest of us, broke up our dinner-party, and we wentupstairs to tea. So much for the didactic vein of one of ourprincipal guides in the embellished walks of modern taste, andmaster manufacturers of letters. He had found that gravity had beena never-failing resource when taken at a pinch--for once the jokemiscarried--and Mr. Tomkins the Penman figures to this day nowhere butin Sir Joshua's picture of him!

To complete the natural Aristocracy of Letters, we only want a RoyalSociety of Authors!

NOTES to ESSAY V

(1) Lord Holland had made a diary (in the manner of Boswell) of theconversation held at his house, and read it at the end of a week _probono publico. _ Sir James Mackintosh made a considerable figure in it, and a celebrated poet none at all, merely answering Yes and No. Withthis result he was by no means satisfied, and talked incessantly fromthat day forward. At the end of the week he asked, with some anxiety andtriumph, If his Lordship had continued his diary, expecting himselfto shine in 'the first row of the rubric. ' To which his Noble Patronanswered in the negative, with an intimation that it had not appeared tohim worth while. Our poet was thus thrown again into the background, andSir James remained master of the field!

ESSAY VI. ON CRITICISM

Criticism is an art that undergoes a great variety of changes, and aimsat different objects at different times. 

At first, it is generally satisfied to give an opinion whether a work isgood or bad, and to quote a passage or two in support of this opinion:afterwards, it is bound to assign the reasons of its decision and toanalyse supposed beauties or defects with microscopic minuteness. A critic does nothing nowadays who does not try to torture the mostobvious expression into a thousand meanings, and enter into a circuitousexplanation of all that can be urged for or against its being in thebest or worst style possible. His object indeed is not to do justice tohis author, whom he treats with very little ceremony, but to do himselfhomage, and to show his acquaintance with all the topics and resourcesof criticism. If he recurs to the stipulated subject in the end, it isnot till after he has exhausted his budget of general knowledge; and heestablishes his own claims first in an elaborate inaugural dissertation_de omni scibile et quibusdam aliis, _ before he deigns to bring forwardthe pretensions of the original candidate for praise, who is only thesecond figure in the piece. We may sometimes see articles of this sort, in which no allusion whatever is made to the work under sentence ofdeath, after the first announcement of the title-page; and I apprehendit would be a clear improvement on this species of nominal criticism togive stated periodical accounts of works that had never appeared at all, which would save the hapless author the mortification of writing, andhis reviewer the trouble of reading them. If the real author is made ofso little account by the modern critic, he is scarcely more an object ofregard to the modern reader; and it must be confessed that after a dozenclose-packed pages of subtle metaphysical distinction or solemn didacticdeclamation, in which the disembodied principles of all arts andsciences float before the imagination in undefined profusion, the eyeturns with impatience and indifference to the imperfect embryo specimensof them, and the hopeless attempts to realise this splendid jargon inone poor work by one poor author, which is given up to summary executionwith as little justice as pity. 'As when a well-graced actor leaves thestage, men's eyes are idly bent on him that enters next'--so it is here. Whether this state of the press is not a serious abuse and a violentencroachment in the republic of letters, is more than I shall pretend todetermine. The truth is, that in the quantity of works that issue fromthe press, it is utterly impossible they should all be read by allsorts of people. There must be _tasters_ for the public, who must havea discretionary power vested in them, for which it is difficult to makethem properly accountable. Authors in proportion to their numbers becomenot formidable, but despicable. They would not be heard of or severedfrom the crowd without the critic's aid, and all complaints ofill-treatment are vain. He considers them as pensioners on his bountyfor any pittance or praise, and in general sets them up as butts forhis wit and spleen, or uses them as a stalking-horse to convey his ownfavourite notions and opinions, which he can do by this means withoutthe possibility of censure or appeal. He looks upon his literary_protege_ (much as Peter Pounce looked upon Parson Adams) as a kind ofhumble companion or unnecessary interloper in the vehicle of fame, whomhe has taken up purely to oblige him, and whom he may treat with neglector insult, or set down in the common footpath, whenever it suits hishumour or convenience. He naturally grows arbitrary with the exercise ofpower. He by degrees wants to have a clear stage to himself, and wouldbe thought to have purchased a monopoly of wit, learning, and wisdom--

 Assumes the rod, affects the God, And seems to shake the spheres. 

Besides, something of this overbearing manner goes a great way with thepublic. They cannot exactly tell whether you are right or wrong; and ifyou state your difficulties or pay much deference to the sentiments ofothers, they will think you a very silly fellow or a mere pretender. Asweeping, unqualified assertion ends all controversy, and sets opinionat rest. A sharp, sententious, cavalier, dogmatical tone is thereforenecessary, even in self-defence, to the office of a reviewer. If youdo not deliver your oracles without hesitation, how are the world toreceive them on trust and without inquiry? People read to havesomething to talk about, and 'to seem to know that which they do not. 'Consequently, there cannot be too much dialectics and debatable matter, too much pomp and paradox, in a review. _To elevate and surprise_ isthe great rule for producing a dramatic or critical effect. The more youstartle the reader, the more he will be able to startle others with asuccession of smart intellectual shocks. The most admired of our Reviewsis saturated with this sort of electrical matter, which is regularlyplayed off so as to produce a good deal of astonishment and a strongsensation in the public mind. The intrinsic merits of an author area question of very subordinate consideration to the keeping up thecharacter of the work and supplying the town with a sufficient number ofgrave or brilliant topics for the consumption of the next three months!

This decided and paramount tone in criticism is the growth of thepresent century, and was not at all the fashion in that calm, peaceableperiod when the _Monthly Review_ bore 'sole sovereign sway andmasterdom' over all literary productions. Though nothing can be saidagainst the respectability or usefulness of that publication during itslong and almost exclusive enjoyment of the public favour, yet thestyle of criticism adopted in it is such as to appear slight andunsatisfactory to a modern reader. The writers, instead of 'outdoingtermagant or out-Heroding Herod, ' were somewhat precise and prudish, gentle almost to a fault, full of candour and modesty, And of their port as meek as is a maid!(1)

There was none of that Drawcansir work going on then that there isnow; no scalping of authors, no hacking and hewing of their Lives andOpinions, except that they used those of Tristram Shandy, gent. , ratherscurvily; which was to be expected. All, however, had a show of courtesyand good manners. The satire was covert and artfully insinuated; thepraise was short and sweet. We meet with no oracular theories; noprofound analysis of principles; no unsparing exposure of the leastdiscernible deviation from them. It was deemed sufficient to recommendthe work in general terms, 'This is an agreeable volume, ' or 'This is awork of great learning and research, ' to set forth the title and tableof contents, and proceed without farther preface to some appropriateextracts, for the most part concurring in opinion with the author'stext, but now and then interposing an objection to maintain appearancesand assert the jurisdiction of the court. This cursory manner of hintingapprobation or dissent would make but a lame figure at present. We musthave not only an announcement that 'This is an agreeable or able work';but we must have it explained at full length, and so as to silence allcavillers, in what the agreeableness or ability of the work consists:the author must be reduced to a class, all the living or defunctexamples of which must be characteristically and pointedly _differenced_from one another; the value of this class of writing must be developedand ascertained in comparison with others; the principles of taste, theelements of our sensations, the structure of the human faculties, allmust undergo a strict scrutiny and revision. The modern or metaphysicalsystem of criticism, in short, supposes the question, _Why?_ to berepeated at the end of every decision; and the answer gives birth tointerminable arguments and discussion. The former laconic mode was welladapted to guide those who merely wanted to be informed of the characterand subject of a work in order to read it: the present is more usefulto those whose object is less to read the work than to dispute upon itsmerits, and go into company clad in the whole defensive and offensivearmour of criticism. 

Neither are we less removed at present from the dry and meagre mode ofdissecting the skeletons of works, instead of transfusing theirliving principles, which prevailed in Dryden's Prefaces, (2) and in thecriticisms written on the model of the French school about a centuryago. A genuine criticism should, as I take it, reflect the colours, thelight and shade, the soul and body of a work: here we have nothing butits superficial plan and elevation, as if a poem were a piece of formalarchitecture. We are told something of the plot or fable, of the moral, and of the observance or violation of the three unities of time, place, and action; and perhaps a word or two is added on the dignity of thepersons or the baldness of the style; but we no more know, after readingone of these complacent _tirades, _ what the essence of the work is, whatpassion has been touched, or how skilfully, what tone and movement theauthor's mind imparts to his subject or receives from it, than if we hadbeen reading a homily or a gazette. That is, we are left quite in thedark as to the feelings of pleasure or pain to be derived from thegenius of the performance or the manner in which it appeals to theimagination: we know to a nicety how it squares with the threadbarerules of composition, not in the least how it affects the principles oftaste. We know everything about the work, and nothing of it. The critictakes good care not to baulk the reader's fancy by anticipating theeffect which the author has aimed at producing. To be sure, the worksso handled were often worthy of their commentators; they had the formof imagination without the life or power; and when any one had goneregularly through the number of acts into which they were divided, themeasure in which they were written, or the story on which they werefounded, there was little else to be said about them. It is curiousto observe the effect which the _Paradise Lost_ had on this class ofcritics, like throwing a tub to a whale: they could make nothing of it. 'It was out of all plumb--not one of the angles at the four corners wasa right angle!' They did not seek for, nor would they much relish, the marrow of poetry it contained. Like polemics in religion, they haddiscarded the essentials of fine writing for the outward form and pointsof controversy. They were at issue with Genius and Nature by what routeand in what garb they should enter the Temple of the Muses. Accordinglywe find that Dryden had no other way of satisfying himself of thepretensions of Milton in the epic style but by translating his anomalouswork into rhyme and dramatic dialogue. (3) So there are connoisseurswho give you the subject, the grouping, the perspective, and all themechanical circumstances of a picture; but they never say a word aboutthe expression. The reason is, they see the former, but not the lattetaking an inventory of works of art (they want a faculty for higherstudies), as there are works of art, so called, which seemed to havebeen composed expressly with an eye to such a class of connoisseurs. Inthem are to be found no recondite nameless beauties thrown away uponthe stupid vulgar gaze; no 'graces snatched beyond the reach of art';nothing but what the merest pretender may note down in good set termsin his common-place book, just as it is before him. Place one of thesehalf-informed, imperfectly organised spectators before a tall canvaswith groups on groups of figures, of the size of life, and engaged in acomplicated action, of which they know the name and all the particulars, and there are no bounds to their burst of involuntary enthusiasm. Theymount on the stilts of the subject and ascend the highest Heaven ofInvention, from whence they see sights and hear revelations which theycommunicate with all the fervour of plenary explanation to those who maybe disposed to attend to their raptures. They float with wings expandedin lofty circles, they stalk over the canvas at large strides, nevercondescending to pause at anything of less magnitude than a group or acolossal figure. The face forms no part of their collective inquiries;or so that it occupies only a sixth or an eighth proportion to the wholebody, all is according to the received rules of composition. Point to adivine portrait of Titian, to an angelic head of Guido, close by--theysee and heed it not. What are the 'looks commercing with the skies, ' thesoul speaking in the face, to them? It asks another and an inner senseto comprehend them; but for the trigonometry of painting, naturehas constituted them indifferently well. They take a stand onthe distinction between portrait and history, and there they arespell-bound. Tell them that there can be no fine history withoutportraiture, that the painter must proceed from that ground to the oneabove it, and that a hundred bad heads cannot make one good historicalpicture, and they will not believe you, though the thing is obvious toany gross capacity. Their ideas always fly to the circumference, andnever fix at the centre. Art must be on a grand scale; according tothem, the whole is greater than a part, and the greater necessarilyimplies the less. The outline is, in this view of the matter, the samething as the filling-up, and 'the limbs and flourishes of a discourse'the substance. Again, the same persons make an absolute distinction, without knowing why, between high and low subjects. Say that you wouldas soon have Murillo's Two Beggar Boys at the Dulwich Gallery as almostany picture in the world, that is, that it would be one you would chooseout of ten (had you the choice), and they reiterate upon you that surelya low subject cannot be of equal value with a high one. It is in vainthat you turn to the picture: they keep to the class. They have eyes, but see not; and, upon their principles of refined taste, would be justas good judges of the merit of the picture without seeing it as withthat supposed advantage. They know what the subject is _from thecatalogue!_--Yet it is not true, as Lord Byron asserts, that executionis everything, and the class or subject nothing. The highest subjects, equally well executed (which, however, rarely happens), are the best. But the power of execution, the manner of seeing nature, is one thing, and may be so superlative (if you are only able to judge of it) asto countervail every disadvantage of subject. Raphael's storks in theMiraculous Draught of Fishes, exulting in the event, are finer than thehead of Christ would have been in almost any other hands. The cantof criticism is on the other side of the question; because executiondepends on various degrees of power in the artist, and a knowledge of iton various degrees of feeling and discrimination in you; but tocommence artist or connoisseur in the grand style at once, without anydistinction of qualifications whatever, it is only necessary for thefirst to choose his subject and for the last to pin his faith on thesublimity of the performance, for both to look down with ineffablecontempt on the painters and admirers of subjects of low life. Iremember a young Scotchman once trying to prove to me that Mrs. Dickonswas a superior singer to Miss Stephens, because the former excelled insacred music and the latter did not. At that rate, that is, if it is thesinging sacred music that gives the preference, Miss Stephens would onlyhave to sing sacred music to surpass herself and vie with her pretendedrival; for this theory implies that all sacred music is equally good, and, therefore, better than any other. I grant that Madame Catalani'ssinging of sacred music is superior to Miss Stephens's ballad-strains, because her singing is better altogether, and an ocean of sound morewonderful than a simple stream of dulcet harmonies. In singing the lastverse of 'God Save the King' not long ago her voice towered above thewhole confused noise of the orchestra like an eagle piercing theclouds, and poured 'such sweet thunder' through the ear as excited equalastonishment and rapture!

Some kinds of criticism are as much too insipid as others are toopragmatical. It is not easy to combine point with solidity, spirit withmoderation and candour. Many persons see nothing but beauties in a work, others nothing but defects. Those cloy you with sweets, and are 'thevery milk of human kindness, ' flowing on in a stream of lusciouspanegyrics; these take delight in poisoning the sources of yoursatisfaction, and putting you out of conceit with nearly every authorthat comes in their way. The first are frequently actuated by personalfriendship, the last by all the virulence of party spirit. Under thelatter head would fall what may be termed _political criticism. _ Thebasis of this style of writing is a _caput mortuum_ of impotent spiteand dulness, till it is varnished over with the slime of servility, and thrown into a state of unnatural activity by the venom of the mostrancorous bigotry. The eminent professors in this grovelling departmentare at first merely out of sorts with themselves, and vent their spleenin little interjections and contortions of phrase--cry _Pish_ at a luckyhit, and _Hem_ at a fault, are smart on personal defects, and sneer at'Beauty out of favour and on crutches'--are thrown into an ague-fit byhearing the name of a rival, start back with horror at any approachto their morbid pretensions, like Justice Woodcock with his goutylimbs--rifle the flowers of the Della Cruscan school, and give youin their stead, as models of a pleasing pastoral style, Verses uponAnna--which you may see in the notes to the _Baviad_ and _Maeviad. _ Allthis is like the fable of 'The Kitten and the Leaves. ' But when they gettheir brass collar on and shake their bells of office, they set up theirbacks like the Great Cat Rodilardus, and pounce upon men and things. Woeto any little heedess reptile of an author that ventures across theirpath without a safe-conduct from the Board of Control. They snap him upat a mouthful, and sit licking their lips, stroking their whiskers, andrattling their bells over the imaginary fragments of their devotedprey, to the alarm and astonishment of the whole breed of literary, philosophical, and revolutionary vermin that were naturalised in thiscountry by a Prince of Orange and an Elector of Hanover a hundredyears ago. (4) When one of these pampered, sleek, 'demure-looking, spring-nailed, velvet-pawed, green-eyed' critics makes his King andCountry parties to this sort of sport literary, you have not much chanceof escaping out of his clutches in a whole skin. Treachery becomes aprinciple with them, and mischief a conscience, that is, a livelihood. They not only _damn_ the work in the lump, but vilify and traduce theauthor, and substitute lying abuse and sheer malignity for sense andsatire. To have written a popular work is as much as a man's characteris worth, and sometimes his life, if he does not happen to be onthe right side of the question. The way in which they set about_stultifying_ an adversary is not to accuse you of faults, or toexaggerate those which you may really have, but they deny that you haveany merits at all, least of all those that the world have given youcredit for; bless themselves from understanding a single sentence ina whole volume; and unless you are ready to subscribe to all theirarticles of peace, will not allow you to be qualified to write yourown name. It is not a question of literary discussion, but of politicalproscription. It is a mark of loyalty and patriotism to extend noquarter to those of the opposite party. Instead of replying to yourarguments, they call you names, put words and opinions into your mouthwhich you have never uttered, and consider it a species of misprisionof treason to admit that a Whig author knows anything of common senseor English. The only chance of putting a stop to this unfair mode ofdealing would perhaps be to make a few reprisals by way of example. TheCourt party boast some writers who have a reputation to lose, and whowould not like to have their names dragged through the kennel ofdirty abuse and vulgar obloquy. What silenced the masked battery of_Blackwood's Magazine_ was the implication of the name of Sir WalterScott in some remarks upon it--(an honour of which it seems thatextraordinary person was not ambitious)--to be 'pilloried on infamy'shigh stage' was a distinction and an amusement to the other gentlemenconcerned in that praiseworthy publication. I was complaining not longago of this prostitution of literary criticism as peculiar to our owntimes, when I was told that it was just as bad in the time of Pope andDryden, and indeed worse, inasmuch as we have no Popes or Drydens now onthe obnoxious side to be nicknamed, metamorphosed into scarecrows, andimpaled alive by bigots and dunces. I shall not pretend to say how farthis remark may be true. The English (it must be owned) are rather afoul-mouthed nation. 

Besides temporary or accidental biases of this kind, there seem to besects and parties in taste and criticism (with a set of appropriatewatchwords) coeval with the arts of composition, and that will lastas long as the difference with which men's minds are originallyconstituted. There are some who are all for the elegance of an author'sstyle, and some who are equally delighted with simplicity. The lastrefer you to Swift as a model of English prose, thinking all otherwriters sophisticated and naught; the former prefer the more ornamentedand sparkling periods of Junius or Gibbon. It is to no purpose to thinkof bringing about an understanding between these opposite factions. Itis a natural difference of temperament and constitution of mind. The onewill never relish the antithetical point and perpetual glitter of theartificial prose style; as the plain, unperverted English idiom willalways appear trite and insipid to the others. A toleration, not anuniformity of opinion, is as much as can be expected in this case;and both sides may acknowledge, without imputation on their taste orconsistency, that these different writers excelled each in their way. Imight remark here that the epithet _elegant_ is very sparingly usedin modern criticism. It has probably gone out of fashion with theappearance of the _Lake School, _ who, I apprehend, have no such phrasein their vocabulary. Mr. Rogers was, I think, almost the last poet towhom it was applied as a characteristic compliment. At present it wouldbe considered as a sort of diminutive of the title of poet, like theterms _pretty_ or _fanciful_, and is banished from the _haut ton_ ofletters. It may perhaps come into request at some future period. Again, the dispute between the admirers of Homer and Virgil has never beensettled and never will, for there will always be minds to whom theexcellences of Virgil will be more congenial, and therefore more objectsof admiration and delight than those of Homer, and _vice versa. _Both are right in preferring what suits them best, the delicacy andselectness of the one, or the fulness and majestic flow of the other. There is the same difference in their tastes that there was in thegenius of their two favourites. Neither can the disagreement between theFrench and English school of tragedy ever be reconciled till the Frenchbecome English or the English French. (5) Both are right in what theyadmire, both are wrong in condemning the others for what they admire. Wesee the defects of Racine, they see the faults of Shakespear probably inan exaggerated point of view. But we may be sure of this, that when wesee nothing but grossness and barbarism, or insipidity and verbiage, ina writer that is the god of a nation's idolatry, it is we and not theywho want true taste and feeling. The controversy about Pope and theopposite school in our own poetry comes to much the same thing. Pope'scorrectness, smoothness, etc. , are very good things and much to becommended in him. But it is not to be expected or even desired thatothers should have these qualities in the same paramount degree, to theexclusion of everything else. If you like correctness and smoothnessof all things in the world, there they are for you in Pope. If you likeother things better, such as strength and sublimity, you know where togo for them. Why trouble Pope or any other author for what they havenot, and do not profess to give? Those who seem to imply that Popepossessed, besides his own peculiar, exquisite merits, all that is tobe found in Shakespear or Milton, are, I should hardly think, in goodearnest. But I do not therefore see that, because this was not the case, Pope was no poet. We cannot by a little verbal sophistry confound thequalities of different minds, nor force opposite excellences into aunion by all the intolerance in the world. We may pull Pope in pieces aslong as we please for not being Shakespear or Milton, as we may carpat them for not being Pope, but this will not make a poet equal to allthree. If we have a taste for some one precise style or manner, we maykeep it to ourselves and let others have theirs. If we are more cathoand beauty, it is spread abroad for us to profusion in the varietyof books and in the several growth of men's minds, fettered by nocapricious or arbitrary rules. Those who would proscribe whatever fallsshort of a given standard of imaginary perfection do so, not from ahigher capacity of taste or range of intellect than others, but todestroy, to 'crib and cabin in' all enjoyments and opinions but theirown. 

We find people of a decided and original, and others of a more generaland versatile taste. I have sometimes thought that the most acute andoriginal-minded men made bad critics. They see everything too muchthrough a particular medium. What does not fall in with their own biasand mode of composition strikes them as common-place and factitious. What does not come into the direct line of their vision, they regardidly, with vacant, 'lack-lustre eye. ' The extreme force of theiroriginal impressions, compared with the feebleness of those they receiveat second-hand from others, oversets the balance and just proportionof their minds. Men who have fewer native resources, and are obliged toapply oftener to the general stock, acquire by habit a greater aptitudein appreciating what they owe to others. Their taste is not made asacrifice to their egotism and vanity, and they enrich the soil of theirminds with continual accessions of borrowed strength and beauty. I mighttake this opportunity of observing, that the person of the most refinedand least contracted taste I ever knew was the late Joseph Fawcett, thefriend of my youth. He was almost the first literary acquaintance I evermade, and I think the most candid and unsophisticated. He had a masterlyperception of all styles and of every kind and degree of excellence, sublime or beautiful, from Milton's _Paradise Lost_ to Shenstone's_Pastoral Ballad, _ from Butler's _Analogy_ down to _Humphrey Clinker. _If you had a favourite author, he had read him too, and knew all thebest morsels, the subtle traits, the capital touches. 'Do you likeSterne?' 'Yes, to be sure, ' he would say; 'I should deserve to be hangedif I didn't!' His repeating some parts of _Comus_ with his fine, deep, mellow-toned voice, particularly the lines, 'I have heard my motherCirce with the Sirens three, ' etc. , and the enthusiastic comments hemade afterwards, were a feast to the ear and to the soul. He read thepoetry of Milton with the same fervour and spirit of devotion that Ihave since heard others read their own. 'That is the most deliciousfeeling of all, ' I have heard him explain, 'to like what is excellent, no matter whose it is. ' In this respect he practised what he preached. He was incapable of harbouring a sinister motive, and judged only fromwhat he felt. There was no flaw or mist in the clear mirror of his mind. He was as open to impressions as he was strenuous in maintaining them. He did not care a rush whether a writer was old or new, in prose or inverse--'What he wanted, ' he said, 'was something to make him think. 'Most men's minds are to me like musical instruments out of tune. Touch aparticular key, and it jars and makes harsh discord with your own. Theylike _Gil Blas, _ but can see nothing to laugh at in _Don Quixote:_ theyadore Richardson, but are disgusted with Fielding. Fawcett had a tasteaccommodated to all these. He was not exceptious. He gave a cordialwelcome to all sort, provided they were the best in their kind. He wasnot fond of counterfeits or duplicates. His own style was laboured andartificial to a fault, while his character was frank and ingenuousin the extreme. He was not the only individual whom I have known tocounteract their natural disposition in coming before the public, andby avoiding what they perhaps thought an inherent infirmity, debarthemselves of their real strength and advantages. A heartier friend orhonester critic I never coped withal. He has made me feel (by contrast)the want of genuine sincerity and generous sentiment in some that I havelistened to since, and convinced me (if practical proof were wanting) ofthe truth of that text of Scripture--'That had I all knowledge and couldspeak with the tongues of angels, yet without charity I were nothing!' Iwould rather be a man of disinterested taste and liberal feeling, tosee and acknowledge truth and beauty wherever I found it, than a man ofgreater and more original genius, to hate, envy, and deny all excellencebut my own--but that poor scanty pittance of it (compared with thewhole) which I had myself produced!

There is another race of critics who might be designated as the _OccultSchool_--_vere adepti. _ They discern no beauties but what are concealedfrom superficial eyes, and overlook all that are obvious to the vulgarpart of mankind. Their art is the transmutation of styles. By happyalchemy of mind they convert dross into gold--and gold into tinsel. Theysee farther into a millstone than most others. If an author is utterlyunreadable, they can read him for ever: his intricacies are theirdelight, his mysteries are their study. They prefer Sir Thomas Browneto the _Rambler_ by Dr. Johnson, and Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_to all the writers of the Georgian Age. They judge of works of genius asmisers do of hid treasure--it is of no value unless they have it allto themselves. They will no more share a book than a mistress with afriend. If they suspected their favourite volumes of delighting any eyesbut their own, they would immediately discard them from the list. Theirsare superannuated beauties that every one else has left off intriguingwith, bedridden hags, a 'stud of nightmares. ' This is not envy oraffectation, but a natural proneness to singularity, a love of whatis odd and out of the way. They must come at their pleasures withdifficulty, and support admiration by an uneasy sense of ridicule andopposition. They despise those qualities in a work which are cheapand obvious. They like a monopoly of taste and are shocked at theprostitution of intellect implied in popular productions. In likemanner, they would choose a friend or recommend a mistress for grossdefects; and tolerate the sweetness of an actress's voice only for theugliness of her face. Pure pleasures are in their judgment cloying andinsipid--

 An ounce of sour is worth a pound of sweet!

Nothing goes down with them but what is _caviare_ to the multitude. They are eaters of olives and readers of black-letter. Yet they smack ofgenius, and would be worth any money, were it only for the rarity of thething!

The last sort I shall mention are _verbal critics_--mere word-catchers, fellows that pick out a word in a sentence and a sentence in a volume, and tell you it is wrong. (6) These erudite persons constantly find outby anticipation that you are deficient in the smallest things--thatyou cannot spell certain words or join the nominative case and the verbtogether, because to do this is the height of their own ambition, andof course they must set you down lower than their opinion of themselves. They degrade by reducing you to their own standard of merit; for thequalifications they deny you, or the faults they object, are so veryinsignificant, that to prove yourself possessed of the one or free fromthe other is to make yourself doubly ridiculous. Littleness is theirelement, and they give a character of meanness to whatever they touch. They creep, buzz, and fly-blow. It is much easier to crush than tocatch these troublesome insects; and when they are in your power yourself-respect spares them. The race is almost extinct:--one or twoof them are sometimes seen crawling over the pages of the _QuarterlyReview!_

NOTES to ESSAY VI

(1) A Mr. Rose and the Rev. Dr. Kippis were for many years its principalsupport. Mrs. Rose (I have heard my father say) contributed the MonthlyCatalogue. There is sometimes a certain tartness and the woman's tonguein it. It is said of Gray's _Elegy_, 'This little poem, however humbleits pretensions, is not without elegance or merit. ' The characters ofprophet and critic are not always united. 

(2) There are some splendid exceptions to this censure. His comparisonbetween Ovid and Virgil and his character of Shakespear are masterpiecesof their kind. 

(3) We have critics In the present day (1821) who cannot tell what tomake of the tragic writers of Queen Elizabeth's age (except Shakespear, who passes by prescriptive right), and are extremely puzzled to reducethe efforts of their 'great and irregular' power to the standard oftheir own slight and showy common-places. The truth is, they had bettergive up the attempt to reconcile such contradictions as an artificialtaste and natural genius; and repose on the admiration of verses whichderive their odour from the scent of rose leaves inserted between thepages, and their polish from the smoothness of the paper on which theyare printed. They, and such writers as Decker, and Webster, Beaumontand Fletcher, Ford and Marlowe, move in different orbits of the humanintellect, and need never jostle. 

(4) The intelligent reader will be pleased to understand that there ishere a tacit allusion to Squire Western's significant phrase of _HanoverRats. _

(5) Of the two the latter alternative is more likely to happen. We abuseand imitate them. They laugh at, but do not imitate us. 

(6) The title of _Ultra-Crepidarian critics_ has been given to a varietyof this species. 

ESSAY VII. ON GREAT AND LITTLE THINGS

 These little things are great to little man. --Goldsmith. 

The great and the little have, no doubt, a real existence in the natureof things; but they both find pretty much the same level in the mind ofman. It is a common measure, which does not always accommodate itself tothe size and importance of the objects it represents. It has a certaininterest to spare for certain things (and no more) according to itshumour and capacity; and neither likes to be stinted in its allowance, nor to muster up an unusual share of sympathy, just as the occasion mayrequire. Perhaps, if we could recollect distinctly, we should discoverthat the two things that have affected us most in the course of ourlives have been, one of them of the greatest, and the other ofthe smallest possible consequence. To let that pass as too fine aspeculation, we know well enough that very trifling circumstances dogive us great and daily annoyance, and as often prove too much for ourphilosophy and forbearance, as matters of the highest moment. A lump ofsoot spoiling a man's dinner, a plate of toast falling in the ashes, thebeing disappointed of a ribbon to a cap or a ticket for a ball, have ledto serious and almost tragical consequences. Friends not unfrequentlyfall out and never meet again for some idle misunderstanding, 'sometrick not worth an egg, ' who have stood the shock of serious differencesof opinion and clashing interests in life; and there is an excellentpaper in the _Tatler, _ to prove that if a married couple do not quarrelabout some point in the first instance not worth contesting, they willseldom find an opportunity afterwards to quarrel about a question ofreal importance. Grave divines, great statesmen, and deep philosophersare put out of their way by very little things: nay, discreet, worthypeople, without any pretensions but to good-nature and common sense, readily surrender the happiness of their whole lives sooner than giveup an opinion to which they have committed themselves, though in alllikelihood it was the mere turn of a feather which side they should takein the argument. It is the being baulked or thwarted in anything thatconstitutes the grievance, the unpardonable affront, not the valueof the thing to which we had made up our minds. Is it that we despiselittle things; that we are not prepared for them; that they take usin our careless, unguarded moments, and tease us out of our ordinarypatience by their petty, incessant, insect warfare, buzzing about us andstinging us like gnats, so that we can neither get rid of nor grapplewith them; whereas we collect all our fortitude and resolution to meetevils of greater magnitude? Or is it that there is a certain stream ofirritability that is continually fretting upon the wheels of life, whichfinds sufficient food to play with in straws and feathers, while greatobjects are too much for it, either choke it up, or divert its courseinto serious and thoughtful interest? Some attempt might be made toexplain this in the following manner. 

One is always more vexed at losing a game of any sort by a single holeor ace than if one has never had a chance of winning it. This is nodoubt in part or chiefly because the prospect of success irritates thesubsequent disappointment. But people have been known to pine and fallsick from holding the next number to the twenty thousand pound prize inthe lottery. Now this could only arise from their being so near winningin fancy, from there seeming to be so thin a partition between them andsuccess. When they were within one of the right number, why could theynot have taken the next--it was so easy: this haunts their minds andwill not let them rest, notwithstanding the absurdity of the reasoning. It is that the will here has a slight imaginary obstacle to surmountto attain its end; it should appear it had only an exceedingly triflingeffort to make for this purpose, that it was absolutely in its power(had it known) to seize the envied prize, and it is continuallyharassing itself by making the obvious transition from one number to theother, when it is too late. That is to say, the will acts in proportionto its fancied power, to its superiority over immediate obstacles. Nowin little or indifferent matters there seems no reason why it should nothave its own way, and therefore a disappointment vexes it the more. Itgrows angry according to the insignificance of the occasion, and fretsitself to death about an object, merely because from its very futilitythere can be supposed to be no real difficulty in the way of itsattainment, nor anything more required for this purpose than adetermination of the will. The being baulked of this throws the mind offits balance, or puts it into what is called _a passion;_ and as nothingbut an act of voluntary power still seems necessary to get rid of everyimpediment, we indulge our violence more and more, and heighten ourimpatience by degrees into a sort of frenzy. The object is the sameas it was, but we are no longer as we were. The blood is heated, themuscles are strained. The feelings are wound up to a pitch of agony withthe vain strife. The temper is tried to the utmost it will bear. Themore contemptible the object or the obstructions in the way to it, the more are we provoked at being hindered by them. It looks likewitchcraft. We fancy there is a spell upon us, so that we are hamperedby straws and entangled in cobwebs. We believe that there is a fatalityabout our affairs. It is evidently done on purpose to plague us. A demonis at our elbow to torment and defeat us in everything, even in thesmallest things. We see him sitting and mocking us, and we rave andgnash our teeth at him in return, It is particularly hard that we cannotsucceed in any one point, however trifling, that we set our hearts on. We are the sport of imbecility and mischance. We make another desperateeffort, and fly out into all the extravagance of impotent rage oncemore. Our anger runs away with our reason, because, as there is littleto give it birth, there is nothing to cheek it or recall us to oursenses in the prospect of consequences. We take up and rend in piecesthe mere toys of humour, as the gusts of wind take up and whirl aboutchaff and stubble. Passion plays the tyrant, in a grand tragi-comicstyle, over the Lilliputian difficulties and petty disappointments ithas to encounter, gives way to all the fretfulness of grief and all theturbulence of resentment, makes a fuss about nothing because thereis nothing to make a fuss about--when an impending calamity, anirretrievable loss, would instantly bring it to its recollection, andtame it in its preposterous career. A man may be in a great passion andgive himself strange airs at so simple a thing as a game at ball, forinstance; may rage like a wild beast, and be ready to dash his headagainst the wall about nothing, or about that which he will laugh at thenext minute, and think no more of ten minutes after, at the same timethat a good smart blow from the ball, the effects of which he might feelas a serious inconvenience for a month, would calm him directly--

 Anon as patient as the female dove, His silence will sit drooping. 

The truth is, we pamper little griefs into great ones, and bear greatones as well as we can. We can afford to dally and play tricks withthe one, but the others we have enough to do with, without any of thewantonness and bombast of passion--without the swaggering of Pistolor the insolence of King Cambyses' vein. To great evils we submit; weresent little provocations. I have before now been disappointed of ahundred pound job and lost half a crown at rackets on the same day, andbeen more mortified at the latter than the former. That which is lastingwe share with the future, we defer the consideration of till to-morrow:that which belongs to the moment we drink up in all its bitterness, before the spirit evaporates. We probe minute mischiefs to the quick;we lacerate, tear, and mangle our bosoms with misfortune's finest, brittlest point, and wreak our vengeance on ourselves and it for goodand all. Small pains are more manageable, ore within our reach; we canfret and worry ourselves about them, can turn them into any shape, cantwist and torture them how we please:--a grain of sand in the eye, athorn in the flesh, only irritates the part, and leaves us strengthenough to quarrel and get out of all patience with it: a heavy blowstuns and takes away all power of sense as well as of resistance. Thegreat and mighty reverses of fortune, like the revolutions of nature, may be said to carry their own weight and reason along with them: theyseem unavoidable and remediless, and we submit to them without murmuringas to a fatal necessity. The magnitude of the events in which we mayhappen to be concerned fills the mind, and carries it out of itself, asit were, into the page of history. Our thoughts are expanded with thescene on which we have to act, and lend us strength to disregard our ownpersonal share in it. Some men are indifferent to the stroke of fate, as before and after earthquakes there is a calm in the air. From thecommanding situation whence they have been accustomed to view things, they look down at themselves as only a part of the whole, and canabstract their minds from the pressure of misfortune, by the aid of itsvery violence. They are projected, in the explosion of events, intoa different sphere, far from their former thoughts, purposes, andpassions. The greatness of the change anticipates the slow effectsof time and reflection:--they at once contemplate themselves from animmense distance, and look up with speculative wonder at the height onwhich they stood. Had the downfall been less complete, it would havebeen more galling and borne with less resignation, because theremight still be a chance of remedying it by farther efforts and fartherendurance--but past cure, past hope. It is chiefly this cause (togetherwith something of constitutional character) which has enabled thegreatest man in modern history to bear his reverses of fortune with gaymagnanimity, and to submit to the loss of the empire of the world withas little discomposure as if he had been playing a game at chess. (1)This does not prove by our theory that he did not use to fly intoviolent passions with Talleyrand for plaguing him with bad news whenthings went wrong. He was mad at uncertain forebodings of disaster, butresigned to its consummation. A man may dislike impertinence, yet haveno quarrel with necessity!

There is another consideration that may take off our wonder at thefirmness with which the principals in great vicissitudes of fortune beartheir fate, which is, that they are in the secret of its operations, and know that what to others appears chance-medley was unavoidable. The clearness of their perception of all the circumstances convertsthe uneasiness of doubt into certainty: they have not the qualms ofconscience which their admirers have, who cannot tell how much of theevent is to be attributed to the leaders, and how much to unforeseenaccidents: they are aware either that the result was not to be helped, or that they did all they could to prevent it. 

 Si Pergarna dextra Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent. 

It is the mist and obscurity through which we view objects that makesus fancy they might have been or might still be otherwise, The preciseknowledge of antecedents and consequents makes men practical as well asphilosophical Necessarians. --It is the want of this knowledge whichis the principle and soul of gambling, and of all games of chance orpartial skill. The supposition is, that the issue is uncertain, and thatthere is no positive means of ascertaining it. It is dependent on theturn of a die, on the tossing up of a halfpenny: to be fair it must bea lottery; there is no knowing but by the event; and it is this whichkeeps the interest alive, and works up the passion little short ofmadness. There is all the agitation of suspense, all the alternationof hope and fear, of good and bad success, all the eagerness of desire, without the possibility of reducing this to calculation, that is, of subjecting the increased action of the will to a known rule, orrestraining the excesses of passion within the bounds of reason. Wesee no cause beforehand why the run of the cards should not be in ourfavour: we will hear of none afterwards why it should not have been so. As in the absence of all data to judge by, we wantonly fill up theblank with the most extravagant expectations, so, when all is over, weobstinately recur to the chance we had previously. There is nothing totame us down to the event, nothing to reconcile us to our hard luck, forso we think it. We see no reason why we failed (and there was none, anymore than why we should succeed)--we think that, reason apart, our willis the next best thing; we still try to have it our own way, and fret, torment, and harrow ourselves up with vain imaginations to effectimpossibilities. (2) We play the game over again: we wonder how itwas possible for us to fail. We turn our brain with straining atcontradictions, and striving to make things what they are not, or, inother words, to subject the course of nature to our fastastical wishes. _'If it had been so--if we had done such and such a thing'_--we try itin a thousand different ways, and are just as far off the mark asever. We appealed to chance in the first instance, and yet, when it hasdecided against us, we will not give in, and sit down contented with ourloss, but refuse to submit to anything but reason, which has nothing todo with the matter. In drawing two straws, for example, to see whichis the longest, there was no apparent necessity we should fix upon thewrong one, it was so easy to have fixed upon the other, nay, at one timewe were going to do it--if we had, --the mind thus runs back to what wasso possible and feasible at one time, while the thing was pending, andwould fain give a bias to causes so slender and insignificant, as theskittle-player bends his body to give a bias to the bowl he has alreadydelivered from his hand, not considering that what is once determined, be the causes ever so trivial or evanescent, is in the individualinstance unalterable. Indeed, to be a great philosopher, in thepractical and most important sense of the term, little more seemsnecessary than to be convinced of the truth of the maxim which the wiseman repeated to the daughter of King Cophetua, _That if a thing is, itis, _ and there is an end of it!

We often make life unhappy in wishing things to have turned outotherwise than they did, merely because that is possible to theimagination, which is impossible in fact. I remember, when Lamb's farcewas damned (for damned it was, that's certain), I used to dream everynight for a month after (and then I vowed I would plague myself no moreabout it) that it was revived at one of the minor or provincial theatreswith great success, that such and such retrenchments and alterationshad been made in it, and that it was thought _it might do at the otherHouse. _ I had heard indeed (this was told in confidence to Lamb) that_Gentleman_ Lewis was present on the night of its performance, andsaid that if he had had it he would have made it, by a few judiciouscurtailments, 'the most popular little thing that had been brought outfor some time. ' How often did I conjure up in recollection the fulldiapason of applause at the end of the _Prologue, _ and hear my ingeniousfriend in the first row of the pit roar with laughter at his own wit!Then I dwelt with forced complacency on some part in which it had beendoing well: then we would consider (in concert) whether the long tediousopera of the _Travellers, _ which preceded it, had not tired peoplebeforehand, so that they had not spirits left for the quaint andsparkling 'wit skirmishes' of the dialogue; and we all agreed it mighthave gone down after a tragedy, except Lamb himself, who swore he hadno hopes of it from the beginning, and that he knew the name of the herowhen it came to be discovered could not be got over. Mr. _H----, _ thouwert damned! Bright shone the morning on the play-bills that announcedthy appearance, and the streets were filled with the buzz of personsasking one another if they would go to see _Mr. H----, _ and answeringthat they would certainly; but before night the gaiety, not of theauthor, but of his friends and the town was eclipsed, for thou weredamned! Hadst thou been anonymous thou haply mightst have lived. Butthou didst come to an untimely end for thy tricks, and for want of abetter name to pass them off!

In this manner we go back to the critical minutes on which the turn ofour fate, or that of any one else in whom we are interested; depended;try them over again with new knowledge and sharpened sensibility; andthus think to alter what is irrevocable, and ease for a moment the pangof lasting regret. So in a game at rackets(3) (to compare small thingswith great), I think if at such a point I had followed up my success, if I had not been too secure or over-anxious in another part, if I hadplayed for such an opening--in short, if I had done anything but what Idid and what has proved unfortunate in the result, the chances were allin my favour. But it is merely because I do not know what would havehappened in the other case that I interpret it so readily to my ownadvantage. I have sometimes lain awake a whole night, trying to serveout the last ball of an interesting game in a particular corner ofthe court, which I had missed from a nervous feeling. Rackets (I mightobserve, for the sake of the uninformed reader) is, like any otherathletic game, very much a thing of skill and practice; but it is alsoa thing of opinion, 'subject to all the skyey influences. ' If you thinkyou can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory. If you hesitatein striking at the ball, it is ten to one but you miss it. If you areapprehensive of committing some particular error (such as striking theball _foul_) you will be nearly sure to do it. While thinking of thatwhich you are so earnestly bent upon avoiding, your hand mechanicallyfollows the strongest idea, and obeys the imagination rather than theintention of the striker. A run of luck is a forerunner of success, and courage is as much wanted as skill. No one is, however, free fromnervous sensations at times. A good player may not be able to strike asingle stroke if another comes into the court that he has a particulardread of; and it frequently so happens that a player cannot beatanother, even though he can give half the game to an equal player, because he has some associations of jealousy or personal pique againstthe first which he has not towards the last. _Sed haec hactenus. _ Chessis a game I do not understand, and have not comprehension enough toplay at. But I believe, though it is so much less a thing of chancethan science or skill, eager players pass whole nights in marchingand countermarching their men and checkmating a successful adversary, supposing that at a certain point of the game they had determined uponmaking a particular move instead of the one which they actually didmake. I have heard a story of two persons playing at backgammon, oneof whom was so enraged at losing his match at a particular point of thegame that he took the board and threw it out of the window. It fell uponthe head of one of the passengers in the street, who came up to demandinstant satisfaction for the affront and injury he had sustained. The losing gamester only asked him if he understood backgammon, andfinding that he did, said, that if upon seeing the state of the game hedid not excuse the extravagance of his conduct, he would give him anyother satisfaction he wished for. The tables were accordingly brought, and the situation of the two contending parties being explained, thegentleman put up his sword and went away perfectly satisfied. To returnfrom this, which to some will seem a digression, and to others willserve as a confirmation of the doctrine I am insisting on. 

It is not, then, the value of the object, but the time and painsbestowed upon it, that determines the sense and degree of our loss. Manymen set their minds only on trifles, and have not a compass of soul totake an interest in anything truly great and important beyond formsand minutiae. Such persons are really men of little minds, or may becomplimented with the title of great children, Pleased with a feather, tickled with a straw. 

Larger objects elude their grasp, while they fasten eagerly on thelight and insignificant. They fidget themselves and others to deathwith incessant anxiety about nothing. A part of their dress that is awrykeeps them in a fever of restlessness and impatience; they sit pickingtheir teeth, or paring their nails, or stirring the fire, or brushinga speck of dirt off their coats, while the house or the world tumblingabout their ears would not rouse them from their morbid insensibility. They cannot sit still on their chairs for their lives, though if therewere anything for them to do they would become immovable. Their nervesare as irritable as their imaginations are callous and inert. They areaddicted to an inveterate habit of littleness and perversity, whichrejects every other motive to action or object of contemplation but thedaily, teasing, contemptible, familiar, favourite sources of uneasinessand dissatisfaction. When they are of a sanguine instead of a morbidtemperament, they become _quid-nuncs_ and virtuosos--collectors ofcaterpillars and odd volumes, makers of fishing-rods and curious inwatch-chains. Will Wimble dabbled in this way, to his immortal honour. But many others have been less successful. There are those who buildtheir fame on epigrams or epitaphs, and others who devote their lives towriting the Lord's Prayer in little. Some poets compose and sing theirown verses. Which character would they have us think most highly of--thepoet or the musician? The Great is One. Some there are who feel morepride in sealing a letter with a head of Homer than ever that oldblind bard did in reciting his _Iliad. _ These raise a huge opinion ofthemselves out of nothing, as there are those who shrink from their ownmerits into the shade of unconquerable humility. I know one person atleast, who would rather be the author of an unsuccessful farce than ofa successful tragedy. Repeated mortification has produced an invertedambition in his mind, and made failure the bitter test of desert. Hecannot lift his drooping head to gaze on the gaudy crown of popularityplaced within his reach, but casts a pensive, riveted look downwards tothe modest flowers which the multitude trample under their feet. If hehad a piece likely to succeed, coming out under all advantages, hewould damn it by some ill-timed, wilful jest, and lose the favour of thepublic, to preserve the sense of his personal identity. 'Misfortune, 'Shakespear says, 'brings a man acquainted with strange bedfellows';and it makes our thoughts traitors to ourselves. --It is a maxim withmany--_'Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care ofthemselves. '_ Those only put it in practice successfully who think moreof the pence than of the pounds. To such, a large sum is less than asmall one. Great speculations, great returns are to them extravagantor imaginary: a few hundreds a year are something snug and comfortable. Persons who have been used to a petty, huckstering way of life cannotenlarge their apprehensions to a notion of anything better. Insteadof launching out into greater expense and liberality with the tide offortune, they draw back with the fear of consequences, and think tosucceed on a broader scale by dint of meanness and parsimony. My uncleToby frequently caught Trim standing up behind his chair, when he hadtold him to be seated. What the corporal did out of respect, otherswould do out of servility. The menial character does not wear outin three or four generations. You cannot keep some people out of thekitchen, merely because their grandfathers or grandmothers came outof it. A poor man and his wife walking along in the neighbourhood ofPortland Place, he said to her peevishly, 'What is the use of walkingalong these fine streets and squares? Let us turn down some alley!' Hefelt he should be more at home there. Lamb said of an old acquaintanceof his, that when he was young he wanted to be a tailor, but had notspirit! This is the misery of unequal matches. The woman cannot easilyforget, or think that others forget, her origin; and, with perhapssuperior sense and beauty, keeps painfully in the background. It isworse when she braves this conscious feeling, and displays all theinsolence of the upstart and affected fine lady. But shouldst thou ever, my Infelice, grace my home with thy loved presence, as thou hastcheered my hopes with thy smile, thou wilt conquer all hearts with thyprevailing gentleness, and I will show the world what Shakespear's womenwere!--Some gallants set their hearts on princesses; others descend inimagination to women of quality; others are mad after opera-singers. Formy part, I am shy even of actresses, and should not think of leaving mycard with Madame Vestris. I am for none of these _bonnes fortunes;_ butfor a list of humble beauties, servant-maids and shepherd-girls, withtheir red elbows, hard hands, black stockings and mob-caps, I couldfurnish out a gallery equal to Cowley's, and paint them half as well. Oh! might I but attempt a description of some of them in poetic prose, Don Juan would forget his Julia, and Mr. Davison might both printand publish this volume. I agree so far with Horace, and differ withMontaigne. I admire the Clementinas and Clarissas at a distance: thePamelas and Fannys of Richardson and Fielding make my blood tingle. Ihave written love-letters to such in my time, _d'un pathetique a fairefendre les rochers, _ and with about as much effect as if they had beenaddressed to stone. The simpletons only laughed, and said that 'thosewere not the sort of things to gain the affections. ' I wish I had keptcopies in my own justification. What is worse, I have an utter aversionto blue-stockings. I do not care a fig for any woman that knows evenwhat an author means. If I know that she has read anything I havewritten, I cut her acquaintance immediately. This sort of literaryintercourse with me passes for nothing. Her critical and scientificacquirements are _carrying coals to Newcastle. _ I do not want to be toldthat I have published such or such a work. I knew all this before. Itmakes no addition to my sense of power. I do not wish the affair to bebrought about in that way. I would have her read my soul: she shouldunderstand the language of the heart: she should know what I am, asif she were another self! She should love me for myself alone. I likemyself without any reason: I would have her do so too. This is notvery reasonable. I abstract from my temptations to admire all thecircumstances of dress, birth, breeding, fortune; and I would notwillingly put forward my own pretensions, whatever they may be. Theimage of some fair creature is engraven on my inmost soul; it is on thatI build my claim to her regard, and expect her to see into my heart, asI see her form always before me. Wherever she treads, pale primroses, like her face, vernal hyacinths, like her brow, spring up beneath herfeet, and music hangs on every bough; but all is cold, barren, anddesolate without her. Thus I feel, and thus I think. But have I overtold her so? No. Or if I did, would she understand it? No. I 'hunt thewind, I worship a statue, cry aloud to the desert. ' To see beauty is notto be beautiful, to pine in love is not to be loved again--I alwayswas inclined to raise and magnify the power of Love. I thought that hissweet power should only be exerted to join together the loveliestforms and fondest hearts; that none but those in whom his godhead shoneoutwardly, and was inly felt, should ever partake of his triumphs; andI stood and gazed at a distance, as unworthy to mingle in so bright athrong, and did not (even for a moment) wish to tarnish the glory of sofair a vision by being myself admitted into it. I say this was my notiononce, but God knows it was one of the errors of my youth. For comingnearer to look, I saw the maimed, the blind, and the halt enter in, the crooked and the dwarf, the ugly, the old and impotent, the man ofpleasure and the man of the world, the dapper and the pert, the vain andshallow boaster, the fool and the pedant, the ignorant and brutal, andall that is farthest removed from earth's fairest-born, and the pride ofhuman life. Seeing all these enter the courts of Love, and thinking thatI also might venture in under favour of the crowd, but finding myselfrejected, I fancied (I might be wrong) that it was not so much becauseI was below, as above the common standard. I did feel, but I was ashamedto feel, mortified at my repulse, when I saw the meanest of mankind, thevery scum and refuse, all creeping things and every obscene creature, enter in before me. I seemed a species by myself, I took a pride evenin my disgrace; and concluded I had elsewhere my inheritance! Theonly thing I ever piqued myself upon was the writing the _Essay on thePrinciples of Human Action_--a work that no woman ever read, or wouldever comprehend the meaning of. But if I do not build my claim to regardon the pretensions I have, how can I build it on those I am totallywithout? Or why do I complain and expect to gather grapes of thorns, orfigs of thistles? Thought has in me cancelled pleasure; and this darkforehead, bent upon truth, is the rock on which all affection has split. And thus I waste my life in one long sigh; nor ever (till too late)beheld a gentle face turned gently upon mine!. .. But no! not too late, if that face, pure, modest, downcast, tender, with angel sweetness, notonly gladdens the prospect of the future, but sheds its radiance on thepast, smiling in tears. A purple light hovers round my head. The air oflove is in the room. As I look at my long-neglected copy of the Deathof Clorinda, golden gleams play upon the canvas, as they used when Ipainted it. The flowers of Hope and Joy springing up in my mind, recallthe time when they first bloomed there. The years that are fled knock atthe door and enter. I am in the Louvre once more. The sun of Austerlitzhas not set. It still shines here--in my heart; and he, the son ofglory, is not dead, nor ever shall, to me. I am as when my life began. The rainbow is in the sky again. I see the skirts of the departed years. All that I have thought and felt has not been in vain. I am not utterlyworthless, unregarded; nor shall I die and wither of pure scorn. Nowcould I sit on the tomb of Liberty, and write a Hymn to Love. Oh! ifI am deceived, let me be deceived still. Let me live in the Elysium ofthose soft looks; poison me with kisses, kill me with smiles; but stillmock me with thy love!(4)

Poets choose mistresses who have the fewest charms, that they may makesomething out of nothing. They succeed best in fiction, and they applythis rule to love. They make a goddess of any dowdy. As Don Quixotesaid, in answer to the matter-of-fact remonstrances of Sancho, thatDulcinea del Toboso answered the purpose of signalising his valour justas well as the 'fairest princess under sky, ' so any of the fair sexwill serve them to write about just as well as another. They take someawkward thing and dress her up in fine words, as children dress up awooden doll in fine clothes. Perhaps a fine head of hair, a taper waist, or some other circumstance strikes them, and they make the rest outaccording to their fancies. They have a wonderful knack of supplyingdeficiencies in the subjects of their idolatry out of the storehouseof their imaginations. They presently translate their favourites to theskies, where they figure with Berenice's locks and Ariadne's crown. Thispredilection for the unprepossessing and insignificant, I take to arisenot merely from a desire in poets to have some subject to exercise theirinventive talents upon, but from their jealousy of any pretensions(even those of beauty in the other sex) that might interfere with thecontinual incense offered to their personal vanity. 

Cardinal Mazarine never thought anything of Cardinal de Retz after hetold him that he had written for the last thirty years of his life withthe same pen. Some Italian poet going to present a copy of verses to thePope, and finding, as he was looking them over in the coach as hewent, a mistake of a single letter in the printing, broke his heartof vexation and chagrin. A still more remarkable case of literarydisappointment occurs in the history of a countryman of his, which Icannot refrain from giving here, as I find it related. 'Anthony CodrusUrceus, a most learned and unfortunate Italian, born near Modena, 1446, was a striking instance, ' says his biographer, 'of the miseries menbring upon themselves by setting their affections unreasonably ontrifles. This learned man lived at Forli, and had an apartment in thepalace. His room was so very dark that he was forced to use a candlein the daytime; and one day, going abroad without putting it out, hislibrary was set on fire, and some papers which he had prepared for thepress were burned. The instant he was informed of this ill news he wasaffected even to madness. He ran furiously to the palace, and stoppingat the door of his apartment, he cried aloud, "Christ Jesus! what mightycrime have I committed! whom of your followers have I ever injured, thatyou thus rage with inexpiable hatred against me?" Then turning himselfto an image of the Virgin Mary near at hand, "Virgin (says he), hearwhat I have to say, for I speak in earnest, and with a composed spirit:if I shall happen to address you in my dying moments, I humbly entreatyou not to hear me, nor receive me into Heaven, for I am determinedto spend all eternity in Hell!" Those who heard these blasphemousexpressions endeavoured to comfort him; but all to no purpose: for, thesociety of mankind being no longer supportable to him, he left the city, and retired, like savage, to the deep solitude of a wood. Some say thathe was murdered there by ruffians: others, that he died at Bologna in1500, after much contrition and penitence. '

Perhaps the censure passed at the outset of the anecdote on thisunfortunate person is unfounded and severe, when it is said thathe brought his miseries on himself 'by having set his affectionsunreasonably on trifles. ' To others it might appear so; but to himselfthe labour of a whole life was hardly a trifle. His passion was not acauseless one, though carried to such frantic excess. The story of SirIsaac Newton presents a strong contrast to the last-mentioned one, who, on going into his study and finding that his dog Tray had thrown downa candle on the table, and burnt some papers of great value, contentedhimself with exclaiming, 'Ah! Tray, you don't know the mischief you havedone!' Many persons would not forgive the overturning a cup of chocolateso soon. 

I remember hearing an instance some years ago of a man of character andproperty, who through unexpected losses had been condemned to a long andheartbreaking imprisonment, which he bore with exemplary fortitude. At the end of four years, by the interest and exertions of friends, he obtained his discharge, with every prospect of beginning the worldafresh, and had made his arrangements for leaving his irksome abode, and meeting his wife and family at a distance of two hundred miles bya certain day. Owing to the miscarriage of a letter, some signaturenecessary to the completion of the business did not arrive in time, andon account of the informality which had thus arisen, he could not setout home till the return of the post, which was four days longer. Hisspirit could not brook the delay. He had wound himself up to the lastpitch of expectation; he had, as it were, calculated his patience tohold out to a certain point, and then to throw down his load for ever, and he could not find resolution to resume it for a few hoursbeyond this. He put an end to the intolerable conflict of hope anddisappointment in a fit of excruciating anguish. Woes that we have timeto foresee and leisure to contemplate break their force by being spreadover a larger surface and borne at intervals; but those that comeupon us suddenly, for however short a time, seem to insult us by theirunnecessary and uncalled-for intrusion; and the very prospect of relief, when held out and then withdrawn from us, to however small a distance, only frets impatience into agony by tantalising our hopes and wishes;and to rend asunder the thin partition that separates us from ourfavourite object, we are ready to burst even the fetters of life itself!

I am not aware that any one has demonstrated how it is that a strongercapacity is required for the conduct of great affairs than of smallones. The organs of the mind, like the pupil of the eye, may becontracted or dilated to view a broader or a narrower surface, and yetfind sufficient variety to occupy its attention in each. The materialuniverse is infinitely divisible, and so is the texture of humanaffairs. We take things in the gross or in the detail, according to theoccasion. I think I could as soon get up the budget of Ways and Meansfor the current year, as be sure of making both ends meet, and paying myrent at quarter-day in a paltry huckster's shop. Great objects moveon by their own weight and impulse; great power turns asidepetty obstacles; and he who wields it is often but the puppet ofcircumstances, like the fly on the wheel that said, 'What a dust weraise!' It is easier to ruin a kingdom and aggrandise one's own prideand prejudices than to set up a greengrocer's stall. An idiot or amadman may do this at any time, whose word is law, and whose nod isfate. Nay, he whose look is obedience, and who understands the silentwishes of the great, may easily trample on the necks and tread out theliberties of a mighty nation, deriding their strength, and hating it themore from a consciousness of his own meanness. Power is not wisdom, itis true; but it equally ensures its own objects. It does not exact, butdispenses with talent. When a man creates this power, or new-moulds thestate by sage counsels and bold enterprises, it is a different thingfrom overturning it with the levers that are put into his baby hands. In general, however, it may be argued that great transactions andcomplicated concerns ask more genius to conduct them than smaller ones, for this reason, viz. That the mind must be able either to embrace agreater variety of details in a more extensive range of objects, or musthave a greater faculty of generalising, or a greater depth of insightinto ruling principles, and so come at true results in that way. Buonaparte knew everything, even to the names of our cadets in the EastIndia service; but he failed in this, that he did not calculate theresistance which barbarism makes to refinement. He thought that theRussians could not burn Moscow, because the Parisians could not burnParis. The French think everything must be French. The Cossacks, alas!do not conform to etiquette: the rudeness of the seasons knows no rulesof politeness! Some artists think it a test of genius to paint a largepicture; and I grant the truth of this position, if the large picturecontains more than a small one. It is not the size of the canvas, butthe quantity of truth and nature put into it, that settles the point. Itis a mistake, common enough on this subject, to suppose that a miniatureis more finished than an oil-picture. The miniature is inferior to theoil-picture only because it is less finished, because it cannot follownature into so many individual and exact particulars. The proof of whichis, that the copy of a good portrait will always make a highly finishedminiature (see for example Mr. Bone's enamels), whereas the copy of agood miniature, if enlarged to the size of life, will make but a verysorry portrait. Several of our best artists, who are fond of paintinglarge figures, invert this reasoning. They make the whole figuregigantic, not that they may have room for nature, but for the motion oftheir brush (as if they were painting the side of a house), regardingthe extent of canvas they have to cover as an excuse for their slovenlyand hasty manner of getting over it; and thus, in fact, leave theirpictures nothing at last but overgrown miniatures, but huge caricatures. It is not necessary in any case (either in a larger or a smallercompass) to go into the details, so as to lose sight of the effect, anddecompound the face into porous and transparent molecules, in the mannerof Denner, who painted what he saw through a magnifying-glass. Thepainter's eye need not be a microscope, but I contend that it should bea looking-glass, bright, clear, lucid. The _little_ in art begins withinsignificant parts, with what does not tell in connection with otherparts. The true artist will paint not material points, but _moralqualities. _ In a word, wherever there is feeling or expression in amuscle or a vein, there is grandeur and refinement too. --I will concludethese remarks with an account of the manner in which the ancientsculptors combined great and little things in such matters. 'That thename of Phidias, ' says Pliny, 'is illustrious among all the nations thathave heard of the fame of the Olympian Jupiter, no one doubts; but inorder that those may know that he is deservedly praised who have noteven seen his works, we shall offer a few arguments, and those of hisgenius only: nor to this purpose shall we insist on the beauty of theOlympian Jupiter, nor on the magnitude of the Minerva at Athens, thoughit is twenty-six cubits in height (about thirty-five feet), and is madeof ivory and gold; but we shall refer to the shield, on which the battleof the Amazons is carved on the outer side; on the inside of the same isthe fight of the Gods and Giants; and on the sandals, that between theCentaurs and Lapithae; so well did every part of that work display thepowers of the art. Again, the sculptures on the pedestal he called thebirth of Pandora: there are to be seen in number thirty gods, the figureof Victory being particularly admirable: the learned also admire thefigures of the serpent and the brazen sphinx, writhing under the spear. These things are mentioned, in passing, of an artist never enough to becommended, that it may be seen that he showed the same magnificence evenin small things. (5)

NOTES to ESSAY VII

(1) This Essay was written in January 1821. 

(2) Losing gamesters thus become desperate, because the continued andviolent irritation of the will against a run of ill luck drives itto extremity, and makes it bid defiance to common sense and everyconsideration of prudence or self-interest. 

(3) Some of the poets in the beginning of the last century would oftenset out on a simile by observing, 'So in Arabia have I seen a Phoenix!'I confess my illustrations are of a more homely and humble nature. 

(4) I beg the reader to consider this passage merely as a specimen ofthe mock-heroic style, and as having nothing to do with any real factsor feelings. 

(5) Pliny's _Natural History, _ Book 36. 

ESSAY VIII. ON FAMILIAR STYLE

It is not easy to write a familiar style. Many people mistake a familiarfor a vulgar style, and suppose that to write without affectation is towrite at random. On the contrary, there is nothing that requires moreprecision, and, if I may so say, purity of expression, than the style Iam speaking of. It utterly rejects not only all unmeaning pomp, but alllow, cant phrases, and loose, unconnected, _slipshod_ allusions. It isnot to take the first word that offers, but the best word in common use;it is not to throw words together in any combinations we please, but tofollow and avail ourselves of the true idiom of the language. To writea genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as any one wouldspeak in common conversation who had a thorough command and choice ofwords, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, settingaside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes. Or, to give anotherillustration, to write naturally is the same thing in regard to commonconversation as to read naturally is in regard to common speech. Itdoes not follow that it is an easy thing to give the true accent andinflection to the words you utter, because you do not attempt to riseabove the level of ordinary life and colloquial speaking. You donot assume, indeed, the solemnity of the pulpit, or the tone ofstage-declamation; neither are you at liberty to gabble on at a venture, without emphasis or discretion, or to resort to vulgar dialect orclownish pronunciation. You must steer a middle course. You are tieddown to a given and appropriate articulation, which is determined by thehabitual associations between sense and sound, and which you can onlyhit by entering into the author's meaning, as you must find the properwords and style to express yourself by fixing your thoughts on thesubject you have to write about. Any one may mouth out a passage witha theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but towrite or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big asthe thing you want to express: it is not so easy to pitch upon the veryword that exactly fits it. Out of eight or ten words equally common, equally intelligible, with nearly equal pretensions, it is a matterof some nicety and discrimination to pick out the very one thepreferableness of which is scarcely perceptible, but decisive. The reason why I object to Dr. Johnson's style is that there is nodiscrimination, no selection, no variety in it. He uses none but 'tall, opaque words, ' taken from the 'first row of the rubric'--words withthe greatest number of syllables, or Latin phrases with merely Englishterminations. If a fine style depended on this sort of arbitrarypretension, it would be fair to judge of an author's elegance by themeasurement of his words and the substitution of foreign circumlocutions(with no precise associations) for the mother-tongue. (1) How simple isit to be dignified without case, to be pompous without meaning! Surelyit is but a mechanical rule for avoiding what is low, to be alwayspedantic and affected. It is clear you cannot use a vulgar English wordif you never use a common English word at all. A fine tact is shown inadhering to those which are perfectly common, and yet never falling intoany expressions which are debased by disgusting circumstances, orwhich owe their signification and point to technical or professionalallusions. A truly natural or familiar style can never be quaintor vulgar, for this reason, that it is of universal force andapplicability, and that quaintness and vulgarity arise out of theimmediate connection of certain words with coarse and disagreeableor with confined ideas. The last form what we understand by _cant_ or_slang_ phrases. --To give an example of what is not very clear in thegeneral statement, I should say that the phrase _To cut with a knife, _or _To cut a piece of wood, _ is perfectly free from vulgarity, becauseit is perfectly common; but _to cut an acquaintance_ is not quiteunexceptionable, because it is not perfectly common or intelligible, andhas hardly yet escaped out of the limits of slang phraseology. I shouldhardly, therefore, use the word in this sense without putting it initalics as a license of expression, to be received _cum granosalis. _ All provincial or bye-phrases come under the same mark ofreprobation--all such as the writer transfers to the page from hisfireside or a particular _coterie, _ or that he invents for his own soleuse and convenience. I conceive that words are like money, not the worsefor being common, but that it is the stamp of custom alone that givesthem circulation or value. I am fastidious in this respect, and wouldalmost as soon coin the currency of the realm as counterfeit the King'sEnglish. I never invented or gave a new and unauthorised meaning to anyword but one single one (the term _impersonal_ applied to feelings), and that was in an abstruse metaphysical discussion to express a verydifficult distinction. I have been (I know) loudly accused of revellingin vulgarisms and broken English. I cannot speak to that point; butso far I plead guilty to the determined use of acknowledged idioms andcommon elliptical expressions. I am not sure that the critics inquestion know the one from the other, that is, can distinguish anymedium between formal pedantry and the most barbarous solecism. As anauthor I endeavour to employ plain words and popular modes ofconstruction, as, were I a chapman and dealer, I should common weightsand measures. 

The proper force of words lies not in the words themselves, but in theirapplication. A word may be a fine-sounding word, of an unusual length, and very imposing from its learning and novelty, and yet in theconnection in which it is introduced may be quite pointless andirrelevant. It is not pomp or pretension, but the adaptation of theexpression to the idea, that clenches a writer's meaning:--as it is notthe size or glossiness of the materials, but their being fitted each toits place, that gives strength to the arch; or as the pegs and nails areas necessary to the support of the building as the larger timbers, andmore so than the mere showy, unsubstantial ornaments. I hate anythingthat occupies more space than it is worth. I hate to see a load ofbandboxes go along the street, and I hate to see a parcel of big wordswithout anything in them. A person who does not deliberately dispose ofall his thoughts alike in cumbrous draperies and flimsy disguises maystrike out twenty varieties of familiar everyday language, each comingsomewhat nearer to the feeling he wants to convey, and at last not hitupon that particular and only one which may be said to be identicalwith the exact impression in his mind. This would seem to show that Mr. Cobbett is hardly right in saying that the first word that occurs isalways the best. It may be a very good one; and yet a better may presentitself on reflection or from time to time. It should be suggestednaturally, however, and spontaneously, from a fresh and livelyconception of the subject. We seldom succeed by trying at improvement, or by merely substituting one word for another that we are not satisfiedwith, as we cannot recollect the name of a place or person by merelyplaguing ourselves about it. We wander farther from the point bypersisting in a wrong scent; but it starts up accidentally in thememory when we least expected it, by touching some link in the chain ofprevious association. 

There are those who hoard up and make a cautious display of nothing butrich and rare phraseology--ancient medals, obscure coins, and Spanishpieces of eight. They are very curious to inspect, but I myself wouldneither offer nor take them in the course of exchange. A sprinkling ofarchaisms is not amiss, but a tissue of obsolete expressions is more fit_for keep than wear. _ I do not say I would not use any phrase thathad been brought into fashion before the middle or the end of the lastcentury, but I should be shy of using any that had not been employed byany approved author during the whole of that time. Words, like clothes, get old-fashioned, or mean and ridiculous, when they have been for sometime laid aside. Mr. Lamb is the only imitator of old English style Ican read with pleasure; and he is so thoroughly imbued with the spiritof his authors that the idea of imitation is almost done away. There isan inward unction, a marrowy vein, both in the thought and feeling, an intuition, deep and lively, of his subject, that carries off anyquaintness or awkwardness arising from an antiquated style and dress. The matter is completely his own, though the manner is assumed. Perhapshis ideas are altogether so marked and individual as to require theirpoint and pungency to be neutralised by the affectation of a singularbut traditional form of conveyance. Tricked out in the prevailingcostume, they would probably seem more startling and out of the way. Theold English authors, Burton, Fuller, Coryate, Sir Thomas Browne, area kind of mediators between us and the more eccentric and whimsicalmodern, reconciling us to his peculiarities. I do not, however, know howfar this is the case or not, till he condescends to write like oneof us. I must confess that what I like best of his papers under thesignature of Elia (still I do not presume, amidst such excellence, todecide what is most excellent) is the account of 'Mrs. Battle's Opinionson Whist, ' which is also the most free from obsolete allusions and turnsof expression--

 A well of native English undefiled. 

To those acquainted with his admired prototypes, these _Essays_ ofthe ingenious and highly gifted author have the same sort of charm andrelish that Erasmus's _Colloquies_ or a fine piece of modern Latin haveto the classical scholar. Certainly, I do not know any borrowed pencilthat has more power or felicity of execution than the one of which Ihave here been speaking. 

It is as easy to write a gaudy style without ideas as it is to spread apallet of showy colours or to smear in a flaunting transparency. 'What do you read?' 'Words, words, words. '--'What is the matter?''_Nothing_, ' it might be answered. The florid style is the reverse of thefamiliar. The last is employed as an unvarnished medium to convey ideas;the first is resorted to as a spangled veil to conceal the want of them. When there is nothing to be set down but words, it costs little to havethem fine. Look through the dictionary, and cull out a _florilegium_, rival the _tulippomania_. _Rouge_ high enough, and never mind thenatural complexion. The vulgar, who are not in the secret, will admirethe look of preternatural health and vigour; and the fashionable, whoregard only appearances, will be delighted with the imposition. Keep toyour sounding generalities, your tinkling phrases, and all will be well. Swell out an unmeaning truism to a perfect tympany of style. A thought, a distinction is the rock on which all this brittle cargo of verbiagesplits at once. Such writers have merely _verbal_ imaginations, thatretain nothing but words. Or their puny thoughts have dragon-wings, allgreen and gold. They soar far above the vulgar failing of the _Sermohumi obrepens_--their most ordinary speech is never short of anhyperbole, splendid, imposing, vague, incomprehensible, magniloquent, acento of sounding common-places. If some of us, whose 'ambition is morelowly, ' pry a little too narrowly into nooks and corners to pick up anumber of 'unconsidered trifles, ' they never once direct their eyesor lift their hands to seize on any but the most gorgeous, tarnished, threadbare, patchwork set of phrases, the left-off finery of poeticextravagance, transmitted down through successive generations ofbarren pretenders. If they criticise actors and actresses, a huddledphantasmagoria of feathers, spangles, floods of light, and oceans ofsound float before their morbid sense, which they paint in the style ofAncient Pistol. Not a glimpse can you get of the merits or defects ofthe performers: they are hidden in a profusion of barbarous epithets andwilful rhodomontade. Our hypercritics are not thinking of these littlefantoccini beings--

 That strut and fret their hour upon the stage--

but of tall phantoms of words, abstractions, _genera_ and _species_, sweeping clauses, periods that unite the Poles, forced alliterations, astounding antitheses--

 And on their pens _Fustian_ sits plumed. 

If they describe kings and queens, it is an Eastern pageant. TheCoronation at either House is nothing to it. We get at four repeatedimages--a curtain, a throne, a sceptre, and a footstool. These are withthem the wardrobe of a lofty imagination; and they turn their servilestrains to servile uses. Do we read a description of pictures? It isnot a reflection of tones and hues which 'nature's own sweet and cunninghand laid on, ' but piles of precious stones, rubies, pearls, emeralds, Golconda's mines, and all the blazonry of art. Such persons are in factbesotted with words, and their brains are turned with the glittering butempty and sterile phantoms of things. Personifications, capital letters, seas of sunbeams, visions of glory, shining inscriptions, the figures ofa transparency, Britannia with her shield, or Hope leaning on an anchor, make up their stock-in-trade. They may be considered as _hieroglyphical_writers. Images stand out in their minds isolated and important merelyin themselves, without any groundwork of feeling--there is no contextin their imaginations. Words affect them in the same way, by the meresound, that is, by their possible, not by their actual application tothe subject in hand. They are fascinated by first appearances, and haveno sense of consequences. Nothing more is meant by them than meets theear: they understand or feel nothing more than meets their eye. The weband texture of the universe, and of the heart of man, is a mystery tothem: they have no faculty that strikes a chord in unison with it. They cannot get beyond the daubings of fancy, the varnish of sentiment. Objects are not linked to feelings, words to things, but images revolvein splendid mockery, words represent themselves in their strangerhapsodies. The categories of such a mind are pride and ignorance--pridein outside show, to which they sacrifice everything, and ignorance ofthe true worth and hidden structure both of words and things. With asovereign contempt for what is familiar and natural, they are the slavesof vulgar affectation--of a routine of high-flown phrases. Scorning toimitate realities, they are unable to invent anything, to strike out oneoriginal idea. They are not copyists of nature, it is true; but theyare the poorest of all plagiarists, the plagiarists of words. All isfar-fetched, dear bought, artificial, oriental in subject and allusion;all is mechanical, conventional, vapid, formal, pedantic in style andexecution. They startle and confound the understanding of the reader bythe remoteness and obscurity of their illustrations; they soothe the earby the monotony of the same everlasting round of circuitous metaphors. They are the mock-school in poetry and prose. They flounder aboutbetween fustian in expression and bathos in sentiment. They tantalisethe fancy, but never reach the head nor touch the heart. Their Templeof Fame is like a shadowy structure raised by Dulness to Vanity, orlike Cowper's description of the Empress of Russia's palace of ice, 'asworthless as in show 'twas glittering'--

 It smiled, and it was cold!

NOTES to ESSAY VIII

(1) I have heard of such a thing as an author who makes it a rulenever to admit a monosyllable into his vapid verse. Yet the charm andsweetness of Marlowe's lines depended often on their being made upalmost entirely of monosyllables. 

ESSAY IX. ON EFFEMINACY OF CHARACTER

Effeminacy of character arises from a prevalence of the sensibilityover the will; or it consists in a want of fortitude to bear pain or toundergo fatigue, however urgent the occasion. We meet with instances ofpeople who cannot lift up a little finger to save themselves from ruin, nor give up the smallest indulgence for the sake of any other person. They cannot put themselves out of their way on any account. No one makesa greater outcry when the day of reckoning comes, or affects greatercompassion for the mischiefs they have occasioned; but till the timecomes, they feel nothing, they care for nothing. They live in thepresent moment, are the creatures of the present impulse (whatever itmay be)--and beyond that, the universe is nothing to them. The slightesttoy countervails the empire of the world; they will not forego thesmallest inclination they feel, for any object that can be proposed tothem, or any reasons that can be urged for it. You might as well ask ofthe gossamer not to wanton in the idle summer air, or of the moth not toplay with the flame that scorches it, as ask of these persons to putoff any enjoyment for a single instant, or to gird themselves up toany enterprise of pith or moment. They have been so used to a studiedsuccession of agreeable sensations that the shortest pause is aprivation which they can by no means endure--it is like tearingthem from their very existence--they have been so inured to ease andindolence, that the most trifling effort is like one of the tasks ofHercules, a thing of impossibility, at which they shudder. They lie onbeds of roses, and spread their gauze wings to the sun and summer gale, and cannot bear to put their tender feet to the ground, much less toencounter the thorns and briars of the world. Life for them

 Rolls o'er Elysian flowers its amber stream, and they have no fancy for fishing in troubled waters. The ordinarystate of existence they regard as something importunate and vain, and out of nature. What must they think of its trials and sharpvicissitudes? Instead of voluntarily embracing pain, or labour, ordanger, or death, every sensation must be wound up to the highest pitchof voluptuous refinement, every motion must be grace and elegance; theylive in a luxurious, endless dream, or

 Die of a rose in aromatic pain!

Siren sounds must float around them; smiling forms must everywheremeet their sight; they must tread a soft measure on painted carpets orsmooth-shaven lawns; books, arts, jests, laughter occupy every thoughtand hour--what have they to do with the drudgery, the struggles, thepoverty, the disease or anguish which are the common lot of humanity?These things are intolerable to them, even in imagination. They disturbthe enchantment in which they are lapt. They cause a wrinkle in theclear and polished surface of their existence. They exclaim withimpatience and in agony, 'Oh, leave me to my repose!' How 'they shalldiscourse the freezing hours away, when wind and rain beat dark Decemberdown, ' or 'bide the pelting of the pitiless storm, ' gives them noconcern, it never once enters their heads. They close the shutters, drawthe curtains, and enjoy or shut out the whistling of the approachingtempest 'They take no thought for the morrow, ' not they. They do notanticipate evils. Let them come when they will come, they will not runto meet them. Nay more, they will not move one step to prevent them, nor let any one else. The mention of such things is shocking; the verysupposition is a nuisance that must not be tolerated. The idea of theobviate disagreeable consequences oppresses them to death, is anexertion too great for their enervated imaginations. They are not likeMaster Barnardine in _Measure for Measure_, who would not 'get up tobe hanged'--they would not get up to avoid being hanged. They arecompletely wrapped up in themselves; but then all their self-love isconcentrated in the present minute. They have worked up their effeminateand fastidious appetite of enjoyment to such a pitch that the whole oftheir existence, every moment of it, must be made up of these exquisiteindulgences; or they will fling it all away, with indifference andscorn. They stake their entire welfare on the gratification of thepassing instant. Their senses, their vanity, their thoughtless gaietyhave been pampered till they ache at the smallest suspension oftheir perpetual dose of excitement, and they will purchase the hollowhappiness of the next five minutes by a mortgage on the independence andcomfort of years. They must have their will in everything, or they growsullen and peevish like spoiled children. Whatever they set their eyeson, or make up their minds to, they must have that instant. They may payfor it hereafter. But that is no matter. They snatch a joy beyondthe reach of fate, and consider the present time sacred, inviolable, unaccountable to that hard, churlish, niggard, inexorable taskmaster, the future. _Now or never_ is their motto. They are madly devoted to theplaything, the ruling passion of the moment. What is to happen to thema week hence is as if it were to happen to them a thousand years hence. They put off the consideration for another day, and their heedlessunconcern laughs at it as a fable. Their life is 'a cell of ignorance, travelling a-bed'; their existence is ephemeral; their thoughts areinsect-winged; their identity expires with the whim, the folly, thepassion of the hour. 

Nothing but a miracle can rouse such people from their lethargy. It isnot to be expected, nor is it even possible in the natural course ofthings. Pope's striking exclamation, Oh! blindness to the future kindly given, That each may fill the circuit mark'd by Heaven!

hardly applies here; namely, to evils that stare us in the face, andthat might be averted with the least prudence or resolution. But nothingcan be done. How should it? A slight evil, a distant danger, will notmove them; and a more imminent one only makes them turn away from it ingreater precipitation and alarm. The more desperate their affairs grow, the more averse they are to look into them; and the greater the effortrequired to retrieve them, the more incapable they are of it. At first, they will not do anything; and afterwards, it is too late. The verymotives that imperiously urge them to self-reflection and amendment, combine with their natural disposition to prevent it. This amountspretty nearly to a mathematical demonstration. Ease, vanity, pleasure are the ruling passions in such cases. How willyou conquer these, or wean their infatuated votaries from them? By thedread of hardship, disgrace, pain? They turn from them, and you whopoint them out as the alternative, with sickly disgust; and instead of astronger effort of courage or self-denial to avert the crisis, hastenit by a wilful determination to pamper the disease in every way, and armthemselves, not with fortitude to bear or to repel the consequences, butwith judicial blindness to their approach. Will you rouse the indolentprocrastinator to an irksome but necessary effort, by showing himhow much he has to do? He will only draw back the more for all yourentreaties and representations. If of a sanguine turn, he will makea slight attempt at a new plan of life, be satisfied with the firstappearance of reform, and relapse into indolence again. If timid andundecided, the hopelessness of the undertaking will put him out of heartwith it, and he will stand still in despair. Will you save a vain manfrom ruin, by pointing out the obloquy and ridicule that await him inhis present career? He smiles at your forebodings as fantastical; or themore they are realised around him, the more he is impelled to keep outthe galling conviction, and the more fondly he clings to flattery anddeath. He will not make a bold and resolute attempt to recover hisreputation, because that would imply that it was capable of being soiledor injured; or he no sooner meditates some desultory project, than hetakes credit to himself for the execution, and is delighted to wearhis unearned laurels while the thing is barely talked of. The chance ofsuccess relieves the uneasiness of his apprehensions; so that he makesuse of the interval only to flatter his favourite infirmity again. Wouldyou wean a man from sensual excesses by the inevitable consequences towhich they lead?--What holds more antipathy to pleasure than pain? Themind given up to self-indulgence revolts at suffering, and throws itfrom it as an unaccountable anomaly, as a piece of injustice when itcomes. Much less will it acknowledge any affinity with or subjection toit as a mere threat. If the prediction does not immediately come true, we laugh at the prophet of ill: if it is verified, we hate our adviserproportionably, hug our vices the closer, and hold them dearer andmore precious the more they cost us. We resent wholesome counsel as animpertinence, and consider those who warn us of impending mischief asif they had brought it on our heads. We cry out with the poeticalenthusiast--

 And let us nurse the fond deceit; And what if we must die in sorrow? Who would not cherish dreams so sweet, Though grief and pain should come to-morrow?

But oh thou! who didst lend me speech when I was dumb, to whom I oweit that I have not crept on my belly all the days of my life like theserpent, but sometimes lift my forked crest or tread the empyrean, wakethou out of thy mid-day slumbers! Shake off the heavy honeydew of thysoul, no longer lulled with that Circean cup, drinking thy own thoughtswith thy own ears, but start up in thy promised likeness, and shake thepillared rottenness of the world! Leave not thy sounding words in air, write them in marble, and teach the coming age heroic truths! Up, andwake the echoes of Time! Rich in deepest lore, die not the bed-rid churlof knowledge, leaving the survivors unblest! Set, set as thou didst risein pomp and gladness! Dart like the sunflower one broad, golden flash oflight; and ere thou ascendest thy native sky, show us the steps by whichthou didst scale the Heaven of philosophy, with Truth and Fancy for thyequal guides, that we may catch thy mantle, rainbow-dipped, and stillread thy words dear to Memory, dearer to Fame!

There is another branch of this character, which is the trifling ordilatory character. Such persons are always creating difficulties, andunable or unwilling to remove them. They cannot brush aside a cobweb, and are stopped by an insect's wing. Their character is imbecility, rather than effeminacy. The want of energy and resolution in the personslast described arises from the habitual and inveterate predominance ofother feelings and motives; in these it is a mere want of energy andresolution, that is, an inherent natural defect of vigour of nerve andvoluntary power. There is a specific levity about such persons, so thatyou cannot propel them to any object, or give them a decided _momentum_in any direction or pursuit. They turn back, as it were, on the occasionthat should project them forward with manly force and vehemence. Theyshrink from intrepidity of purpose, and are alarmed at the idea ofattaining their end too soon. They will not act with steadiness orspirit, either for themselves or you. If you chalk out a line of conductfor them, or commission them to execute a certain task, they are sureto conjure up some insignificant objection or fanciful impediment in theway, and are withheld from striking an effectual blow by mere feeblenessof character. They may be officious, good-natured, friendly, generous indisposition, but they are of no use to any one. They will put themselvesto twice the trouble you desire, not to carry your point, but to defeatit; and in obviating needless objections, neglect the main business. Ifthey do what you want, it is neither at the time nor in the manner thatyou wish. This timidity amounts to treachery; for by always anticipatingsome misfortune or disgrace, they realise their unmeaning apprehensions. The little bears sway in their minds over the great: a smallinconvenience outweighs a solid and indispensable advantage; and theirstrongest bias is uniformly derived from the weakest motive. Theyhesitate about the best way of beginning a thing till the opportunityfor action is lost, and are less anxious about its being done than theprecise manner of doing it. They will destroy a passage sooner than letan objectionable word pass; and are much less concerned about the truthor the beauty of an image than about the reception it will meet withfrom the critics. They alter what they write, not because it is, butbecause it may possibly be wrong; and in their tremulous solicitude toavoid imaginary blunders, run into real ones. What is curious enough is, that with all this caution and delicacy, they are continually liableto extraordinary oversights. They are, in fact, so full of all sorts ofidle apprehensions, that they do not know how to distinguish realfrom imaginary grounds of apprehension; and they often give someunaccountable offence, either from assuming a sudden boldness half insport, or while they are secretly pluming themselves on their dexterityin avoiding everything exceptionable; and the same distraction of motiveand shortsightedness which gets them into scrapes hinders them fromseeing their way out of them. Such persons (often of ingenious andsusceptible minds) are constantly at cross-purposes with themselves andothers; will neither do things nor let others do them; and whether theysucceed or fail, never feel confident or at their case. They spoil thefreshness and originality of their own thoughts by asking contradictoryadvice; and in befriending others, while they are _about it and aboutit, _ you might have done the thing yourself a dozen times over. 

There is nothing more to be esteemed than a manly firmness and decisionof character. I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it;who sees at once what is to be done in given circumstances and does it. He does not beat about the bush for difficulties or excuses, but goesthe shortest and most effectual way to work to attain his own ends orto accomplish a useful object. If he can serve you, he will do so; ifhe cannot, he will say so without keeping you in needless suspense, or laying you under pretended obligations. The applying to him in anylaudable undertaking is not like stirring 'a dish of skimmed milk. 'There is stuff in him, and it is of the right practicable sort. He isnot all his life at hawk-and-buzzard whether he shall be a Whig or aTory, a friend or a foe, a knave or a fool; but thinks that life isshort, and that there is no time to play fantastic tricks in it, totamper with principles, or trifle with individual feelings. If he givesyou a character, he does not add a damning clause to it: he does notpick holes in you lest others should, or anticipate objections lest heshould be thought to be blinded by a childish partiality. His object isto serve you; and not to play the game into your enemies' hands. 

 A generous friendship no cold medium knows, Burns with one love, with one resentment glows. 

I should be sorry for any one to say what he did not think of me; but Ishould not be pleased to see him slink out of his acknowledged opinion, lest it should not be confirmed by malice or stupidity. He who is wellacquainted and well inclined to you ought to give the tone, not toreceive it from others, and may set it to what key he pleases in certaincases. 

There are those of whom it has been said, that to them an obligation isa reason for not doing anything, and there are others who are invariablyled to do the reverse of what they should. The last are perverse, thefirst impracticable people. Opposed to the effeminate in dispositionand manners are the coarse and brutal. As those were all softness andsmoothness, these affect or are naturally attracted to whatever isvulgar and violent, harsh and repulsive in tone, in modes of speech, informs of address, in gesture and behaviour. Thus there are some who apethe lisping of the fine lady, the drawling of the fine gentleman, andothers who all their life delight in and catch the uncouth dialect, themanners and expressions of clowns and hoydens. The last are governed byan instinct of the disagreeable, by an appetite and headlong rage forviolating decorum and hurting other people's feelings, their own beingexcited and enlivened by the shock. They deal in home truths, unpleasantreflections, and unwelcome matters of fact; as the others are allcompliment and complaisance, insincerity and insipidity. 

We may observe an effeminacy of style, in some degree corresponding toeffeminacy of character. Writers of this stamp are great interlinersof what they indite, alterers of indifferent phrases, and the plague ofprinters' devils. By an effeminate style I would be understood to meanone that is all florid, all fine; that cloys by its sweetness, and tiresby its sameness. Such are what Dryden calls 'calm, peaceable writers. 'They only aim to please, and never offend by truth or disturb bysingularity. Every thought must be beautiful _per se_, every expressionequally fine. They do not delight in vulgarisms, but in common-places, and dress out unmeaning forms in all the colours of the rainbow. Theydo not go out of their way to think--that would startle the indolenceof the reader: they cannot express a trite thought in common words--thatwould be a sacrifice of their own vanity. They are not sparing oftinsel, for it costs nothing. Their works should be printed, as theygenerally are, on hot-pressed paper, with vignette margins. The DellaCruscan school comes under this description, which is now nearlyexploded. Lord Byron is a pampered and aristocratic writer, but he isnot effeminate, or we should not have his works with only the printer'sname to them! I cannot help thinking that the fault of Mr. Keats'spoems was a deficiency in masculine energy of style. He had beauty, tenderness, delicacy, in an uncommon degree, but there was a want ofstrength and substance. His _Endymion_ is a very delightful descriptionof the illusions of a youthful imagination given up to airy dreams--wehave flowers, clouds, rainbows, moonlight, all sweet sounds and smells, and Oreads and Dryads flitting by--but there is nothing tangible in it, nothing marked or palpable--we have none of the hardy spirit or rigidforms of antiquity. He painted his own thoughts and character, and didnot transport himself into the fabulous and heroic ages. There is awant of action, of character, and so far of imagination, but there isexquisite fancy. All is soft and fleshy, without bone or muscle. Wesee in him the youth without the manhood of poetry. His genius breathed'vernal delight and joy. ' 'Like Maia's son he stood and shook hisplumes, ' with fragrance filled. His mind was redolent of spring. He hadnot the fierceness of summer, nor the richness of autumn, and winter heseemed not to have known till he felt the icy hand of death!

NOTES to ESSAY IX

No notes for this essay. 

ESSAY X. WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE

Distant objects please, because, in the first place, they imply an ideaof space and magnitude, and because, not being obtruded too close uponthe eye, we clothe them with the indistinct and airy colours of fancy. In looking at the misty mountain-tops that bound the horizon, the mindis as it were conscious of all the conceivable objects and intereststhat lie between; we imagine all sorts of adventures in the interim;strain our hopes and wishes to reach the air-drawn circle, or to'descry new lands, rivers, and mountains, ' stretching far beyond it:our feelings, carried out of themselves, lose their grossness and theirhusk, are rarefied, expanded, melt into softness and brighten intobeauty, turning to ethereal mould, sky-tinctured. We drink the airbefore us, and borrow a more refined existence from objects that hoveron the brink of nothing. Where the landscape fades from the dull sight, we fill the thin, viewless space with shapes of unknown good, and tingethe hazy prospect with hopes and wishes and more charming fears. 

 But thou, oh Hope! with eyes so fair, What was thy delighted measure? Still it whisper'd promised pleasure, And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail!

Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and knowledge, whatever isimperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its leisure; and all butthe present moment, but the present spot, passion claims for its own, and brooding over it with wings outspread, stamps it with an image ofitself. Passion is lord of infinite space, and distant objects pleasebecause they border on its confines and are moulded by its touch. WhenI was a boy, I lived within sight of a range of lofty hills, whose bluetops blending with the setting sun had often tempted my longing eyes andwandering feet. At last I put my project in execution, and on a nearerapproach, instead of glimmering air woven into fantastic shapes, foundthem huge lumpish heaps of discoloured earth. I learnt from this (inpart) to leave 'Yarrow unvisited, ' and not idly to disturb a dream ofgood!

Distance of time has much the same effect as distance of place. Itis not surprising that fancy colours the prospect of the future as itthinks good, when it even effaces the forms of memory. Time takes outthe sting of pain; our sorrows after a certain period have been so oftensteeped in a medium of thought and passion that they 'unmould theiressence'; and all that remains of our original impressions is what wewould wish them to have been. Not only the untried steep ascent beforeus, but the rude, unsightly masses of our past experience presentlyresume their power of deception over the eye: the golden cloud soonrests upon their heads, and the purple light of fancy clothes theirbarren sides! Thus we pass on, while both ends of our existence touchupon Heaven! There is (so to speak) 'a mighty stream of tendency'to good in the human mind, upon which all objects float and areimperceptibly borne along; and though in the voyage of life we meet withstrong rebuffs, with rocks and quicksands, yet there is 'a tide in theaffairs of men, ' a heaving and a restless aspiration of the soul, bymeans of which, 'with sails and tackle torn, ' the wreck and scatteredfragments of our entire being drift into the port and haven of ourdesires! In all that relates to the affections, we put the will for thedeed; so that the instant the pressure of unwelcome circumstances isremoved, the mind recoils from their hold, recovers its elasticity, and reunites itself to that image of good which is but a reflectionand configuration of its own nature. Seen in the distance, in thelong perspective of waning years, the meanest incidents, enlargedand enriched by countless recollections, become interesting; the mostpainful, broken and softened by time, soothe. How any object thatunexpectedly brings back to us old scenes and associations startles themind! What a yearning it creates within us; what a longing to leapthe intermediate space! How fondly we cling to, and try to revive theimpression of all that we then were!

 Such tricks hath strong imagination!

In truth we impose upon ourselves, and know not what we wish. It is acunning artifice, a quaint delusion, by which, in pretending to be whatwe were at a particular moment of time, we would fain be all that wehave since been, and have our lives to come over again. It is not thelittle, glimmering, almost annihilated speck in the distance that rivetsour attention and 'hangs upon the beatings of our hearts': it is theinterval that separates us from it, and of which it is the tremblingboundary, that excites all this coil and mighty pudder in the breast. Into that great gap in our being 'come thronging soft desires' andinfinite regrets. It is the contrast, the change from what we then were, that arms the half-extinguished recollection with its giant strength, and lifts the fabric of the affections from its shadowy base. Incontemplating its utmost verge, we overlook the map of our existence, and re-tread, in apprehension, the journey of life. So it is that inearly youth we strain our eager sight after the pursuits of manhood;and, as we are sliding off the stage, strive to gather up the toys andflowers that pleased our thoughtless childhood. 

When I was quite a boy my father used to take me to the Montpelier TeaGardens at Walworth. Do I go there now? No; the place is deserted, andits borders and its beds o'erturned. Is there, then, nothing that can

 Bring back the hour Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower?

Oh! yes. I unlock the casket of memory, and draw back the warders of thebrain; and there this scene of my infant wanderings still lives unfaded, or with fresher dyes. A new sense comes upon me, as in a dream; a richerperfume, brighter colours start out; my eyes dazzle; my heart heaveswith its new load of bliss, and I am a child again. My sensations areall glossy, spruce, voluptuous, and fine: they wear a candied coat, andare in holiday trim. I see the beds of larkspur with purple eyes; tallhollyhocks, red or yellow; the broad sunflowers, caked in gold, withbees buzzing round them; wildernesses of pinks, and hot glowing peonies;poppies run to seed; the sugared lily, and faint mignonette, all rangedin order, and as thick as they can grow; the box-tree borders, thegravel-walks, the painted alcove, the confectionery, the clottedcream:--I think I see them now with sparkling looks; or have theyvanished while I have been writing this description of them? No matter;they will return again when I least think of them. All that I haveobserved since, of flowers and plants, and grass-plots, and ofsuburb delights, seems to me borrowed from 'that first garden of myinnocence'--to be slips and scions stolen from that bed of memory. Inthis manner the darlings of our childhood burnish out in the eye ofafter years, and derive their sweetest perfume from the first heartfeltsigh of pleasure breathed upon them, Like the sweet south, That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour!

If I have pleasure in a flower-garden, I have in a kitchen-garden too, and for the same reason. If I see a row of cabbage-plants, or of peas orbeans coming up, I immediately think of those which I used so carefullyto water of an evening at Wem, when my day's tasks were done, and ofthe pain with which I saw them droop and hang down their leaves in themorning's sun. Again, I never see a child's kite in the air but it seemsto pull at my heart. It is to me 'a thing of life. ' I feel the twinge atmy elbow, the flutter and palpitation, with which I used to let go thestring of my own, as it rose in the air, and towered among the clouds. My little cargo of hopes and fears ascended with it; and as it made apart of my own consciousness then, it does so still, and appears 'likesome gay creature of the element, ' my playmate when life was young, and twin-born with my earliest recollections. I could enlarge on thissubject of childish amusements, but Mr. Leigh Hunt has treated it sowell, in a paper in the _Indicator, _ on the productions of the toy-shopsof the metropolis, that if I were to insist more on it I should onlypass for an imitator of that ingenious and agreeable writer, _and for anindifferent one into the bargain. _

Sounds, smells, and sometimes tastes, are remembered longer thanvisible objects, and serve, perhaps, better for links in the chainof association. The reason seems to be this: they are in their natureintermittent, and comparatively rare; whereas objects of sight arealways before us, and, by their continuous succession, drive one anotherout. The eye is always open; and between any given impression and itsrecurrence a second time, fifty thousand other impressions have, inall likelihood, been stamped upon the sense and on the brain. The othersenses are not so active or vigilant. They are but seldom called intoplay. The ear, for example, is oftener courted by silence than noise;and the sounds that break that silence sink deeper and more durablyinto the mind. I have a more present and lively recollection of certainscents, tastes, and sounds, for this reason, than I have of mere visibleimages, because they are more original, and less worn by frequentrepetition. Where there is nothing interposed between any twoimpressions, whatever the distance of time that parts them, theynaturally seem to touch; and the renewed impression recalls the formerone in full force, without distraction or competitor. The taste ofbarberries, which have hung out in the snow during the severity of aNorth American winter, I have in my mouth still, after an interval ofthirty years; for I have met with no other taste in all that time atall like it. It remains by itself, almost like the impression of a sixthsense. But the colour is mixed up indiscriminately with the colours ofmany other berries, nor should I be able to distinguish it among them. The smell of a brick-kiln carries the evidence of its own identity withit: neither is it to me (from peculiar associations) unpleasant. The colour of brickdust, on the contrary, is more common, and easilyconfounded with other colours. Raphael did not keep it quite distinctfrom his flesh colour. I will not say that we have a more perfectrecollection of the human voice than of that complex picture the humanface, but I think the sudden hearing of a well-known voice has somethingin it more affecting and striking than the sudden meeting with the face:perhaps, indeed, this may be because we have a more familiar remembranceof the one than the other, and the voice takes us more by surprise onthat account. I am by no means certain (generally speaking) that we havethe ideas of the other senses so accurate and well made out as those ofvisible form: what I chiefly mean is, that the feelings belonging tothe sensations of our other organs, when accidentally recalled, are keptmore separate and pure. Musical sounds, probably, owe a good deal oftheir interest and romantic effect to the principle here spoken of. Were they constant, they would become indifferent, as we may find withrespect to disagreeable noises, which we do not hear after a time. Iknow no situation more pitiable than that of a blind fiddler who has butone sense left (if we except the sense of snuff-taking(1)) and who hasthat stunned or deafened by his own villainous noises. Shakespear says. 

 How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night!

It has been observed in explanation of this passage, that it is becausein the day-time lovers are occupied with one another's faces, but thatat night they can only distinguish the sound of each other's voices. Iknow not how this may be; but I have, ere now, heard a voice break soupon the silence, To angels' 'twas most like, and charm the moonlight air with its balmy essence, that the buddingleaves trembled to its accents. Would I might have heard it once morewhisper peace and hope (as erst when it was mingled with the breath ofspring), and with its soft pulsations lift winged fancy to heaven. Butit has ceased, or turned where I no more shall hear it!--Hence, also, wesee what is the charm of the shepherd's pastoral reed; and why we hearhim, as it were, piping to his flock, even in a picture. Our ears arefancy stung! I remember once strolling along the margin of a stream, skirted with willows and plashy sedges, in one of those low shelteredvalleys on Salisbury Plain, where the monks of former ages had plantedchapels and built hermits' cells. There was a little parish church near, but tall elms and quivering alders hid it from my sight, when, all ofa sudden, I was startled by the sound of the full organ pealing on theear, accompanied by rustic voices and the willing choir of village maidsand children. It rose, indeed, 'like an exhalation of rich distilledperfumes. ' The dew from a thousand pastures was gathered in itssoftness; the silence of a thousand years spoke in it. It came upon theheart like the calm beauty of death; fancy caught the sound, and faithmounted on it to the skies. It filled the valley like a mist, and stillpoured out its endless chant, and still it swells upon the ear, andwraps me in a golden trance, drowning the noisy tumult of the world!

There is a curious and interesting discussion on the comparativedistinctness of our visual and other external impressions, in Mr. Fearn's _Essay on Consciousness_, with which I shall try to descend fromthis rhapsody to the ground of common sense and plain reasoning again. After observing, a little before, that 'nothing is more untrue than thatsensations of vision do necessarily leave more vivid and durableideas than those of grosser senses, ' he proceeds to give a number ofillustrations in support of this position. 'Notwithstanding, ' he says, 'the advantages here enumerated in favour of sight, I think there isno doubt that a man will come to forget acquaintance, and many othervisible objects, noticed in mature age, before he will in the leastforget taste and smells, of only moderate interest, encountered eitherin his childhood or at any time since. 

'In the course of voyaging to various distant regions, it has severaltimes happened that I have eaten once or twice of different things thatnever came in my way before nor since. Some of these have been pleasant, and some scarce better than insipid; but I have no reason to think Ihave forgot, or much altered the ideas left by those single impulses oftaste; though here the memory of them certainly has not been preservedby repetition. It is clear I must have seen as well as tasted thosethings; and I am decided that I remember the tastes with more precisionthan I do the visual sensations. 

'I remember having once, and only once, eat Kangaroo in New Holland; andhaving once smelled a baker's shop having a peculiar odour in the cityof Bassorah. Now both these gross ideas remain with me quite as vivid asany visual ideas of those places; and this could not be from repetition, but really from interest in the sensation. 

'Twenty-eight years ago, in the island of Jamaica, I partook (perhapstwice) of a certain fruit, of the taste of which I have now a very freshidea; and I could add other instances of that period. 

'I have had repeated proofs of having lost retention of visual objects, at various distances of time, though they had once been familiar. Ihave not, during thirty years, forgot the delicate, and in itself mosttrifling sensation that the palm of my hand used to convey, when I was aboy, trying the different effects of what boys call _light_ and _heavy_tops; but I cannot remember within several shades of the brown coatwhich I left off a week ago. If any man thinks he can do better, let himtake an ideal survey of his wardrobe, and then actually refer to it forproof. 

'After retention of such ideas, it certainly would be very difficult topersuade me that feeling, taste, and smell can scarce be said to leaveideas, unless indistinct and obscure ones. .. . 

'Show a Londoner correct models of twenty London churches, and, atthe same time, a model of each, which differs, in several considerablefeatures, from the truth, and I venture to say he shall not tell you, inany instance, which is the correct one, except by mere chance. 

'If he is an architect he may be much more correct than any ordinaryperson: and this obviously is because he has felt an interest in viewingthese structures, which an ordinary person does not feel: and hereinterest is the sole reason of his remembering more correctly than hisneighbour. 

'I once heard a person quaintly ask another, How many trees there arein St. Paul's churchyard? The question itself indicates that many cannotanswer it; and this is found to be the case with those who have passedthe church a hundred times: whilst the cause is, that every individualin the busy stream which glides past St. Paul's is engrossed in variousother interests. 

'How often does it happen that we enter a well-known apartment, or meeta well-known friend, and receive some vague idea of visible difference, but cannot possibly find out _what_ it is; until at length we come toperceive (or perhaps must be told) that some ornament or furniture isremoved, altered, or added in the apartment; or that our friend hascut his hair, taken a wig, or has made any of twenty considerablealterations in his appearance. At other times we have no perception ofalteration whatever, though the like has taken place. 

'It is, however, certain that sight, apposited with interest, can retaintolerably exact copies of sensations, especially if not too complex, such as of the human countenance and figure: yet the voice will convinceus when the countenance will not; and he is reckoned an excellentpainter, and no ordinary genius, who can make a tolerable likeness frommemory. Nay, more, it is a conspicuous proof of the inaccuracy of visualideas, that it is an effort of consummate art, attained by many years'practice, to take a strict likeness of the human countenance, even whenthe object is present; and among those cases where the wilful cheat offlattery has been avoided, we still find in how very few instances thebest painters produce a likeness up to the life, though practice andinterest join in the attempt. 

'I imagine an ordinary person would find it very difficult, supposing hehad some knowledge of drawing, to afford from memory a tolerablesketch of such a familiar object as his curtain, his carpet, or hisdressing-gown, if the pattern of either be at all various or irregular;yet he will instantly tell, with precision, either if his snuff or hiswine has not the same character it had yesterday, though both these arecompounds. 

'Beyond all this I may observe, that a draper who is in the daily habitof such comparisons cannot carry in his mind the particular shade ofa colour during a second of time; and has no certainty of tolerablymatching two simple colours, except by placing the patterns incontact. '(2)

I will conclude the subject of this Essay with observing that (as itappears to me) a nearer and more familiar acquaintance with persons hasa different and more favourable effect than that with places or things. The latter improve (as an almost universal rule) by being removed to adistance: the former, generally at least, gain by being brought nearerand more home to us. Report or imagination seldom raises any individualso high in our estimation as to disappoint us greatly when we areintroduced to him: prejudice and malice constantly exaggerate defectsbeyond the reality. Ignorance alone makes monsters or bugbears: ouractual acquaintances are all very commonplace people. The thing is, thatas a matter of hearsay or conjecture, we make abstractions of particularvices, and irritate ourselves against some particular quality or actionof the person we dislike: whereas individuals are concrete existences, not arbitrary denominations or nicknames; and have innumerable otherqualities, good, bad, and indifferent, besides the damning feature withwhich we fill up the portrait or caricature in our previous fancies. Wecan scarcely hate any one that we know. An acute observer complained, that if there was any one to whom he had a particular spite, and a wishto let him see it, the moment he came to sit down with him his enmitywas disarmed by some unforeseen circumstance. If it was a QuarterlyReviewer, he was in other respects like any other man. Suppose, again, your adversary turns out a very ugly man, or wants an eye, you arebaulked in that way: he is not what you expected, the object of yourabstract hatred and implacable disgust. He may be a very disagreeableperson, but he is no longer the same. If you come into a room where aman is, you find, in general, that he has a nose upon his face. 'There'ssympathy!' This alone is a diversion to your unqualified contempt. He isstupid, and says nothing, but he seems to have something in him when helaughs. You had conceived of him as a rank Whig or Tory--yet he talksupon other subjects. You knew that he was a virulent party-writer; butyou find that the man himself is a tame sort of animal enough. He doesnot bite. That's something. In short, you can make nothing of it. Evenopposite vices balance one another. A man may be pert in company, but heis also dull; so that you cannot, though you try, hate him cordially, merely for the wish to be offensive. He i did not know before--that heis a fool as well; so you forgive him. On the other hand, he may be aprofligate public character, and may make no secret of it; but he givesyou a hearty shake by the hand, speaks kindly to servants, and supportsan aged father and mother. Politics apart, he is a very honest fellow. You are told that a person has carbuncles on his face; but you haveocular proofs that he is sallow, and pale as a ghost. This does not muchmend the matter; but it blunts the edge of the ridicule, and turns yourindignation against the inventor of the lie; but he is -----, the editorof a Scotch magazine; so you are just where you were. I am not very fondof anonymous criticism; I want to know who the author can be: but themoment I learn this, I am satisfied. Even ----- would do well to comeout of his disguise. It is the mask only that we dread and hate: theman may have something human about hi from partial representations, orfrom guess-work, are simple uncompounded ideas, which answer to nothingin reality: those which we derive from experience are mixed modes, theonly true, and, in general, the most favourable ones. Instead of nakeddeformity, or abstract perfection--

 Those faultless monsters which the world ne'er saw--

'the web of our lives is of mingled yarn, good and ill together: ourvirtues would be proud, if our faults whipt them not; and our viceswould despair, if they were not encouraged by our virtues. ' This wastruly and finely said long ago, by one who knew the strong and weakpoints of human nature; but it is what sects, and parties, and thosephilosophers whose pride and boast it is to classify by nicknames, haveyet to know the meaning of!

NOTES to ESSAY X

(1) See Wilkie's Blind Fiddler. 

(2) _Essay on Consciousness_, p. 303. 

ESSAY XI. ON CORPORATE BODIES

 Corporate bodies have no soul. 

Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable todisgrace or punishment. They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, norgoodwill. The principle of private or natural conscience is extinguishedin each individual (we have no moral sense in the breasts of others), and nothing is considered but how the united efforts of the whole(released from idle scruples) may be best directed to the obtaining ofpolitical advantages and privileges to be shared as common spoil. Eachmember reaps the benefit, and lays the blame, if there is any, uponthe rest. The _esprit de corps_ becomes the ruling passion of everycorporate body, compared with which the motives of delicacy or decorumtowards others are looked upon as being both impertinent and improper. If any person sets up a plea of this sort in opposition to the rest, heis overruled, he gets ill-blood, and does no good: he is regarded asan interloper, a _black sheep_ in the flock, and is either _sent toCoventry_ or obliged to acquiesce in the notions and wishes of thosehe associates and is expected to co-operate with. The refinements ofprivate judgment are referred to and negatived in a committee of thewhole body, while the projects and interests of the Corporation meetwith a secret but powerful support in the self-love of the differentmembers. Remonstrance, opposition, is fruitless, troublesome, invidious;it answers no one end; and a conformity to the sense of the company isfound to be no less necessary to a reputation for good-fellowship thanto a quiet life. Self-love and social here look like the same; and inconsulting the interests of a particular class, which are also yourown, there is even a show of public virtue. He who is a captious, impracticable, dissatisfied member of his little club or _coterie_ isimmediately set down as a bad member of the community in general, as nofriend to regularity and order, as 'a pestilent fellow, ' and one whois incapable of sympathy, attachment, or cordial co-operation in anydepartment or undertaking. Thus the most refractory novice in suchmatters becomes weaned from his obligations to the larger society, whichonly breed him inconvenience without any adequate recompense, and weddedto a nearer and dearer one, where he finds every kind of comfort andconsolation. He contracts the vague and unmeaning character of Maninto the more emphatic title of Freeman and Alderman. The claims of anundefined humanity sit looser and looser upon him, at the same time thathe draws the bands of his new engagements closer and tighter about him. He loses sight, by degrees, of all common sense and feeling in the pettysquabbles, intrigues, feuds, and airs of affected importance to which hehas made himself an accessory. He is quite an altered man. 'Reallythe society were under considerable obligations to him in that lastbusiness'; that is to say, in some paltry job or underhand attemptto encroach upon the rights or dictate to the understandings of theneighbourhood. In the meantime they eat, drink, and carouse together. They wash down all minor animosities and unavoidable differences ofopinion in pint bumpers; and the complaints of the multitude are lostin the clatter of plates and the roaring of loyal catches at everyquarter's meeting or mayor's feast. The town-hall reels with an unwieldysense of self-importance; 'the very stones prate' of processions; thecommon pump creaks in concert with the uncorking of bottles and tappingof beer-barrels: the market-cross looks big with authority. Everythinghas an ambiguous, upstart, repulsive air. Circle within circle isformed, an _imperium in imperio_: and the business is to exclude fromthe first circle all the notions, opinions, ideas, interests, andpretensions of the second. Hence there arises not only an antipathyto common sense and decency in those things where there is a realopposition of interest or clashing of prejudice, but it becomes a habitand a favourite amusement in those who are 'dressed in a little briefauthority, ' to thwart, annoy, insult, and harass others on all occasionswhere the least opportunity or pretext for it occurs. Spite, bickerings, back-biting, insinuations, lies, jealousies, nicknames are the order ofthe day, and nobody knows what it's all about. One would think that themayor, aldermen, and liverymen were a higher and more select species ofanimals than their townsmen; though there is no difference whatever butin their gowns and staff of office! This is the essence of the _espritde corps_. It is certainly not a very delectable source of contemplationor subject to treat of. 

Public bodies are so far worse than the individuals composing them, because the _official_ takes place of the _moral sense. _ The nerves thatin themselves were soft and pliable enough, and responded naturallyto the touch of pity, when fastened into a machine of that sort becomecallous and rigid, and throw off every extraneous application that canbe made to them with perfect apathy. An appeal is made to the ties ofindividual friendship: the body in general know nothing of them. A casehas occurred which strongly called forth the compassion of the personwho was witness of it; but the body (or any special deputation ofthem) were not present when it happened. These little weaknesses and'compunctious visitings of nature' are effectually guarded against, indeed, by the very rules and regulations of the society, as well as byits spirit. The individual is the creature of his feelings of all sorts, the sport of his vices and his virtues--like the fool in Shakespear, 'motley's his proper wear':--corporate bodies are dressed in a moraluniform; mixed motives do not operate there, frailty is made into asystem, 'diseases are turned into commodities. ' Only so much of anyone's natural or genuine impulses can influence him in his artificialcapacity as formally comes home to the aggregate conscience of thosewith whom he acts, or bears upon the interests (real or pretended), theimportance, respectability, and professed objects of the society. Beyondthat point the nerve is bound up, the conscience is seared, and thetorpedo-touch of so much inert matter operates to deaden the bestfeelings and harden the heart. Laughter and tears are said to be thecharacteristic signs of humanity. Laughter is common enough in suchplaces as a set-off to the mock-gravity; but who ever saw a public bodyin tears? Nothing but a job or some knavery can keep them serious forten minutes together. (1)

Such are the qualifications and the apprenticeship necessary to make aman tolerated, to enable him to pass as a cypher, or be admitted as amere numerical unit, in any corporate body: to be a leader and dictatorhe must be diplomatic in impertinence, and officious in every dirtywork. He must not merely conform to established prejudices; he mustflatter them. He must not merely be insensible to the demands ofmoderation and equity; he must be loud against them. He must not simplyfall in with all sorts of contemptible cabals and intrigues; he must beindefatigable in fomenting them, and setting everybody together by theears. He must not only repeat, but invent lies. He must make speechesand write handbills; he must be devoted to the wishes and objects ofthe society, its creature, its jackal, its busybody, its mouthpiece, its prompter; he must deal in law cases, in demurrers, in charters, intraditions, in common-places, in logic and rhetoric--in everything butcommon sense and honesty. He must (in Mr. Burke's phrase) 'disembowelhimself of his natural entrails, and be stuffed with paltry, blurredsheets of parchment about the rights' of the privileged few. He mustbe a concentrated essence, a varnished, powdered representative of thevices, absurdities, hypocrisy, jealousy, pride, and pragmaticalness ofhis party. Such a one, by bustle and self-importance and puffing, byflattering one to his face and abusing another behind his back, bylending himself to the weaknesses of some, and pampering the mischievouspropensities of others, will pass for a great man in a little society. 

Age does not improve the morality of public bodies. They grow more andmore tenacious of their idle privileges and senseless self-consequence. They get weak and obstinate at the same time. Those who belong to themhave all the upstart pride and pettifogging spirit of their presentcharacter ingrafted on the venerableness and superstitious sanctityof ancient institutions. They are naturally at issue, first with theirneighbours, and next with their contemporaries, on all matters of commonpropriety and judgment. They become more attached to forms, the moreobsolete they are; and the defence of every absurd and invidiousdistinction is a debt which (by implication) they owe to the dead aswell as the living. What might once have been of serious practicalutility they turn to farce, by retaining the letter when the spirit isgone: and they do this the more, the more glaring the inconsistency andwant of sound reasoning; for they think they thus give proof oftheir zeal and attachment to the abstract principle on which oldestablishments exist, the ground of prescription and authority. _Thegreater the wrong, the greater the right, _ in all such cases. The_esprit de corps_ does not take much merit to itself for upholding whatis justifiable in any system, or the proceedings of any party, but foradhering to what is palpably injurious. You may exact the first from anenemy: the last is the province of a friend. It has been made a subjectof complaint, that the champions of the Church, for example, who areadvanced to dignities and honours, are hardly ever those who defend thecommon principles of Christianity, but those who volunteer to man theout-works, and set up ingenious excuses for the questionable points, theticklish places in the established form of worship, that is, for thosewhich are attacked from without, and are supposed in danger of beingundermined by stratagem, or carried by assault!

The great resorts and seats of learning often outlive in this way theintention of the founders as the world outgrows them. They may be saidto resemble antiquated coquettes of the last age, who think everythingridiculous and intolerable but what was in fashion when they were young, and yet are standing proofs of the progress of taste and the vanityof human pretensions. Our universities are, in a great measure, becomecisterns to hold, not conduits to disperse knowledge. The age has thestart of them; that is, other sources of knowledge have been openedsince their formation, to which the world have had access, and havedrunk plentifully at those living fountains, but from which they aredebarred by the tenor of their charter, and as a matter of dignityand privilege. They have grown poor, like the old grandees in somecountries, by subsisting on the inheritance of learning, while thepeople have grown rich by trade. They are too much in the nature of_fixtures_ in intellect: they stop the way in the road to truth; orat any rate (for they do not themselves advance) they can only beof service as a check-weight on the too hasty and rapid career ofinnovation. All that has been invented or thought in the last twohundred years they take no cognizance of, or as little as possible; theyare above it; they stand upon the ancient landmarks, and will not budge;whatever was not known when they were first endowed, they are still inprofound and lofty ignorance of. Yet in that period how much has beendone in literature, arts, and science, of which (with the exceptionof mathematical knowledge, the hardest to gainsay or subject to thetrammels of prejudice and barbarous _ipse dixits_) scarce any trace isto be found in the authentic modes of study and legitimate inquirywhich prevail at either of our Universities! The unavoidable aim ofall corporate bodies of learning is not to grow wise, or teach otherswisdom, but to prevent any one else from being or seeming wiser thanthemselves; in other words, their infallible tendency is in the end tosuppress inquiry and darken knowledge, by setting limits to the mind ofman, and saying to his proud spirit, _Hitherto shalt thou come, and nofarther!_ It would not be an unedifying experiment to make a collectionof the titles of works published in the course of the year by Membersof the Universities. If any attempt is to be made to patch up an idlesystem in policy or legislation, or church government, it is by a memberof the University: if any hashed-up speculation on an old explodedargument is to be brought forward 'in spite of _shame, _ in erringreason's spite, ' it is by a Member of the University: if a paltryproject is ushered into the world for combining ancient prejudices withmodern time-serving, it is by a Member of the University. Thus we get ata stated supply of the annual Defences of the Sinking Fund, Thoughts onthe Evils of Education, Treatises on Predestination, and Eulogies on Mr. Malthus, all from the same source, and through the same vent. If theycame from any other quarter nobody would look at them; but they havean _Imprimatur_ from dulness and authority: we know that there is nooffence in them; and they are stuck in the shop windows, and read (inthe intervals of Lord Byron's works, or the Scotch novels) in cathedraltowns and close boroughs!

It is, I understand and believe, pretty much the same in more moderninstitutions for the encouragement of the Fine Arts. The end is lost inthe means: rules take place of nature and genius; cabal and bustle, andstruggle for rank and precedence, supersede the study and the loveof art. A Royal Academy is a kind of hospital and infirmary for theobliquities of taste and ingenuity--a receptacle where enthusiasm andoriginality stop and stagnate, and spread their influence no farther, instead of being a school founded for genius, or a temple built to fame. The generality of those who wriggle, or fawn, or beg their way to aseat there, live on their certificate of merit to a good old age, andare seldom heard of afterwards. If a man of sterling capacity gets amongthem, and minds his own business he is nobody; he makes no figure incouncil, in voting, in resolutions or speeches. If he comes forward withplans and views for the good of the Academy and the advancement ofart, he is immediately set upon as a visionary, a fanatic, with notionshostile to the interest and credit of the existing members of thesociety. If he directs the ambition of the scholars to the study ofHistory, this strikes at once at the emoluments of the profession, whoare most of them (by God's will) portrait painters. If he eulogisesthe Antique, and speaks highly of the Old Masters, he is supposed tobe actuated by envy to living painters and native talent. If, again, heinsists on a knowledge of anatomy as essential to correct drawing, thiswould seem to imply a want of it in our most eminent designers. Everyplan, suggestion, argument, that has the general purposes and principlesof art for its object, is thwarted, scouted, ridiculed, slandered, ashaving a malignant aspect towards the profits and pretensions of thegreat mass of flourishing and respectable artists in the country. Thisleads to irritation and ill-will on all sides. The obstinacy of theconstituted authorities keeps pace with the violence and extravaganceopposed to it; and they lay all the blame on the folly and mistakes theyhave themselves occasioned or increased. It is considered as a personalquarrel, not a public question; by which means the dignity of the bodyis implicated in resenting the slips and inadvertencies of its members, not in promoting their common and declared objects. In this sort ofwretched _tracasserie_ the Barrys and H----s stand no chance with theCatons, the Tubbs, and F----s. Sir Joshua even was obliged to holdhimself aloof from them, and Fuseli passes as a kind of nondescript, orone of his own grotesques. The air of an academy, in short, is notthe air of genius and immortality; it is too close and heated, andimpregnated with the notions of the common sort. A man steeped in acorrupt atmosphere of this description is no longer open to the genialimpulses of nature and truth, nor sees visions of ideal beauty, nordreams of antique grace and grandeur, nor has the finest works of artcontinually hovering and floating through his uplifted fancy; but theimages that haunt it are rules of the academy, charters, inauguralspeeches, resolutions passed or rescinded, cards of invitation to acouncil-meeting, or the annual dinner, prize medals, and the king'sdiploma, constituting him a gentleman and esquire. He 'wipes out alltrivial, fond records'; all romantic aspirations; 'the Raphael grace, the Guido air'; and the commands of the academy alone 'must live withinthe book and volume of his brain, unmixed with baser matter. ' It may bedoubted whether any work of lasting reputation and universal interestcan spring up in this soil, or ever has done in that of any academy. Thelast question is a matter of fact and history, not of mere opinion orprejudice; and may be ascertained as such accordingly. The mighty namesof former times rose before the existence of academies; and thethree greatest painters, undoubtedly, that this country has produced, Reynolds, Wilson, and Hogarth, were not 'dandled and swaddled' intoartists in any institution for the fine arts. I do not apprehend thatthe names of Chantrey or Wilkie (great as one, and considerable as theother of them is) can be made use of in any way to impugn the jet ofthis argument. We may find a considerable improvement in some of ourartists, when they get out of the vortex for a time. Sir Thomas Lawrenceis all the better for having been abstracted for a year or two fromSomerset House; and Mr. Dawe, they say, has been doing wonders in theNorth. When will he return, and once more 'bid Britannia rival Greece'?

Mr. Canning somewhere lays it down as a rule, that corporate bodies arenecessarily correct and pure in their conduct, from the knowledge whichthe individuals composing them have of one another, and the jealousvigilance they exercise over each other's motives and characters;whereas people collected into mobs are disorderly and unprincipled frombeing utterly unknown and unaccountable to each other. This is a curious_pass_ of wit. I differ with him in both parts of the dilemma. To beginwith the first, and to handle it somewhat cavalierly, according to themodel before us; we know, for instance, there is said to be honour amongthieves, but very little honesty towards others. Their honour consistsin the division of the booty, not in the mode of acquiring it: theydo not (often) betray one another, but they will waylay a stranger, orknock out a traveller's brains: they may be depended on in giving thealarm when any of their posts are in danger of being surprised; and theywill stand together for their ill-gotten gains to the last drop of theirblood. Yet they form a distinct society, and are strictly responsiblefor their behaviour to one another and to their leader. They are not amob, but a _gang, _ completely in one another's power and secrets. Theirfamiliarity, however, with the proceedings of the _corps_ does notlead them to expect or to exact from it a very high standard of moralhonesty; that is out of the question; but they are sure to gain the goodopinion of their fellows by committing all sorts of depredations, fraud, and violence against the community at large. So (not to speak itprofanely) some of Mr. Croker's friends may be very respectable peoplein their way--'all honourable men'--but their respectability is confinedwithin party limits; every one does not sympathise in the integrity oftheir views; the understanding between them and the public is notwell defined or reciprocal. Or, suppose a gang of pickpockets hustlea passenger in the street, and the mob set upon them, and proceed toexecute summary justice upon such as they can lay hands on, am I toconclude that the rogues are in the right, because theirs is a systemof well-organised knavery, which they settled in the morning, with theireyes one upon the other, and which they regularly review at night, witha due estimate of each other's motives, character, and conduct in thebusiness; and that the honest men are in the wrong, because they are acasual collection of unprejudiced, disinterested individuals, taken ata venture from the mass of the people, acting without concert orresponsibility, on the spur of the occasion, and giving way to theirinstantaneous impulses and honest anger? Mobs, in fact, then, are almostalways right in their feelings, and often in their judgments, on thisvery account--that being utterly unknown to and disconnected with eachother, they have no point of union or principle of co-operation betweenthem, but the natural sense of justice recognised by all persons incommon. They appeal, at the first meeting, not to certain symbols andwatchwords privately agreed upon, like Freemasons, but to the maxims andinstincts proper to all the world. They have no other clue to guide themto their object but either the dictates of the heart or the universallyunderstood sentiments of society, neither of which are likely to be inthe wrong. The flame which bursts out and blazes from popular sympathyis made of honest but homely materials. It is not kindled by sparks ofwit or sophistry, nor damped by the cold calculations of self-interest. The multitude may be wantonly set on by others, as is too often thecase, or be carried too far in the impulse of rage and disappointment;but their resentment, when they are left to themselves, is almostuniformly, in the first instance, excited by some evident abuse andwrong; and the excesses into which they run arise from that very wantof foresight and regular system which is a pledge of the uprightness andheartiness of their intentions. In short, the only class of persons tosinister and corrupt motives is not applicable is that body ofindividuals which usually goes by the name of the _People!_

NOTES to ESSAY XI

(1) We sometimes see a whole playhouse in tears. But the audience at atheatre, though a public assembly, are not a public body. They are notIncorporated into a framework of exclusive, narrow-minded interestsof their own. Each individual looks out of his own insignificance ata scene, _ideal_ perhaps, and foreign to himself, but true to nature;friends, strangers, meet on the common ground of humanity, and thetears that spring from their breasts are those which 'sacred pity hasengendered. ' They are a mixed multitude melted Into sympathy by remote, imaginary events, not a combination cemented by petty views, and sordid, selfish prejudices. 

ESSAY XII. WHETHER ACTORS OUGHT TO SIT IN THE BOXES?

I think not; and that for the following reasons, as well as I can givethem:--

Actors belong to the public: their persons are not their own property. They exhibit themselves on the stage: that is enough, without displayingthemselves in the boxes of the theatre. I conceive that an actor, onaccount of the very circumstances of his profession, ought to keephimself as much incognito as possible. He plays a number of partsdisguised, transformed into them as much as he can 'by his so potentart, ' and he should not disturb this borrowed impression by unmaskingbefore company more than he can help. Let him go into the pit, if hepleases, to see--not into the first circle, to be seen. He is seenenough without that: he is the centre of an illusion that he is boundto support, both, as it appears to me, by a certain self-respect whichshould repel idle curiosity, and by a certain deference to the public, in whom he has inspired certain prejudices which he is covenanted notto break. He represents the majesty of successive kings; he takes theresponsibility of heroes and lovers on himself; the mantle of geniusand nature falls on his shoulders; we 'pile millions' of associationson him, under which he should be 'buried quick, ' and not perk out aninauspicious face upon us, with a plain-cut coat, to say, 'What foolsyou all were!--I am not Hamlet the Dane!'

It is very well and in strict propriety for Mr. Mathews, in his AT HOME, after he has been imitating his inimitable Scotchwoman, to slip out asquick as lightning, and appear in the side-box shaking hands with ourold friend Jack Bannister. It adds to our surprise at the versatilityof his changes of place and appearance, and he had been before us inhis own person during a great part of the evening. There was noharm done--no imaginary spell broken--no discontinuity of thought orsentiment. Mr. Mathews is himself (without offence be it spoken) botha cleverer and more respectable man than many of the characters herepresents. Not so when

 O'er the stage the Ghost of Hamlet stalks, Othello rages, Desdemona mourns, And poor Monimia pours her soul in love. 

A different feeling then prevails:--close, close the scene upon them, and never break that fine phantasmagoria of the brain. Or if it must bedone at all, let us choose some other time and place for it: let no onewantonly dash the Cirecan cup from our lips, or dissolve the spirit ofenchantment in the very palace of enchantment. Go, Mr. -----, and sitsomewhere else! What a thing it is, for instance, for any part of anactor's dress to come off unexpectedly while he is playing! What a _cut_it is upon himself and the audience! What an effort he has to recoverhimself, and struggle through this exposure of the naked truth! It hasbeen considered as one of the triumphs of Garrick's tragic power, thatonce, when he was playing Lear, his crown of straw came off, and nobodylaughed or took the least notice, so much had he identified himselfwith the character. Was he, after this, to pay so little respect to thefeelings he had inspired, as to tear off his tattered robes, and takethe old crazed king with him to play the fool in the boxes?

 No; let him pass. Vex not his parting spirit, Nor on the rack of this rough world Stretch him out farther!

Some lady is said to have fallen in love with Garrick from being presentwhen he played the part of Romeo, on which he observed, that he wouldundertake to cure her of her folly if she would only come and see him inAbel Drugger. So the modern tragedian and fine gentleman, by appearingto advantage, and conspicuously, _in propria persona, _ may easily cureus of our predilection for all the principal characters he shines in. 'Sir! do you think Alexander looked o' this fashion in his lifetime, orwas perfumed so? Had Julius Caesar such a nose? or wore his frill as youdo? You have slain I don't know how many heroes "with a bare bodkin, "the gold pin in your shirt, and spoiled all the fine love speeches youwill ever make by picking your teeth with that inimitable air!'

An actor, after having performed his part well, instead of courtingfarther distinction, should affect obscurity, and 'steal mostguilty-like away, ' conscious of admiration that he can support nowherebut in his proper sphere, and jealous of his own and others' goodopinion of him, in proportion as he is a darling in the public eye. Hecannot avoid attracting disproportionate attention: why should he wishto fix it on himself in a perfectly flat and insignificant part, viz. His own character? It was a bad custom to bring authors on the stage tocrown them. _Omne Ignotum pro magnifico est. _ Even professed critics, I think, should be shy of putting themselves forward to applaud loudly:any one in a crowd has 'a voice potential' as the press: it is eithercommitting their pretensions a little indiscreetly, or confirming theirown judgment by a clapping of hands. If you only go and give the cuelustily, the house seems in wonderful accord with your opinions. Anactor, like a king, should only appear on state occasions. He losespopularity by too much publicity; or, according to the proverb, _familiarity breeds contempt. _ Both characters personate a certainabstract idea, are seen in a fictitious costume, and when they have'shuffled off this more than mortal coil, ' they had better keep outof the way--the acts and sentiments emanating from themselves will notcarry on the illusion of our prepossessions. Ordinary transactions donot give scope to grace and dignity like romantic situations or preparedpageants, and the _little_ is apt to prevail over the _great, _ if wecome to count the instances. 

The motto of a great actor should be _aut Caesar aut nihil. _ I do notsee how with his crown, or plume of feathers, he can get throughthose little box-doors without stooping and squeezing his artificialimportance to tatters. The entrance of the stage is arched so high 'that_players_ may get through, and keep their gorgeous turbans on, withoutgood-morrow to the gods!'

The top-tragedian of the day has too large and splendid a trainfollowing him to have room for them in one of the dress-boxes. When heappears there, it should be enlarged expressly for the occasion; for athis heels march the figures, in full costume, of Cato, and Brutus, andCassius, and of him with the falcon eye, and Othello, and Lear, andcrook-backed Richard, and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, and numbers more, and demand entrance along with him, shadows to which he alone lendsbodily substance! 'The graves yawn and render up their dead to push usfrom our stools. ' There is a mighty bustle at the door, a gibbering andsqueaking in the lobbies. An actor's retinue is imperial, it pressesupon the imagination too much, and he should therefore slide unnoticedinto the pit. Authors, who are in a manner his makers and masters, sitthere contented--why should not he? 'He is used to show himself. ' That, then, is the very reason he should conceal his person at other times. Ahabit of ostentation should not be reduced to a principle. If I hadseen the late Gentleman Lewis fluttering in a prominent situation in theboxes, I should have been puzzled whether to think of him as the CopperCaptain, or as Bobadil, or Ranger, or Young Rapid, or Lord Foppington, or fifty other whimsical characters; then I should have got Munden andQuick and a parcel more of them in my head, till 'my brain would havebeen like a smoke-jack': I should not have known what to make of it;but if I had seen him in the pit, I should merely have eyed him withrespectful curiosity, and have told every one that that was GentlemanLewis. We should have concluded from the circumstance that he was amodest, sensible man: we all knew beforehand that he could show offwhenever he pleased!

There is one class of performers that I think is quite exempt from theforegoing reasoning, I mean _retired actors. _ Come when they will andwhere they will, they are welcome to their old friends. They have asgood a right to sit in the boxes as children at the holidays. But theydo not, somehow, come often. It is but a melancholy recollection withthem:--

 Then sweet, Now sad to think on!

Mrs. Garrick still goes often, and hears the applause of her husbandover again in the shouts of the pit. Had Mrs. Pritchard or Mrs. Clivebeen living, I am afraid we should have seen little of them-it wouldhave been too _home_ a feeling with them. Mrs. Siddons seldom if evergoes, and yet she is almost the only thing left worth seeing there. Sheneed not stay away on account of any theory that I can form. She is outof the pale of all theories, and annihilates all rules. Wherever shesits there is grace and grandeur, there is tragedy personified. Herseat is the undivided throne of the Tragic Muse. She had no need of therobes, the sweeping train, the ornaments of the stage; in herself she isas great as any being she ever represented in the ripeness and plenitudeof her power! I should not, I confess, have had the same paramountabstracted feeling at seeing John Kemble there, whom I venerate at adistance, and should not have known whether he was playing off the greatman or the great actor:--

 A little more than kin, and less than kind. 

I know it may be said in answer to all this pretext of keeping thecharacter of the player inviolate, 'What is there more common, in fact, than for the hero of a tragedy to speak the prologue, or than for theheroine, who has been stabbed or poisoned, to revive, and come forwardlaughing in the epilogue?' As to the epilogue, it is spoken to get ridof the idea of the tragedy altogether, and to ward off the fury of thepit, who may be bent on its damnation. The greatest incongruity you canhit upon is, therefore, the most proper for this purpose. But I denythat the hero of a tragedy, or the principal character in it, is everpitched upon to deliver the prologue. It is always, by prescription, some walking shadow, some poor player, who cannot even spoil a partof any consequence. Is there not Mr. Claremont always at hand forthis purpose, whom the late king pronounced three times to be 'a badactor'?(1) What is there in common between that accustomed wave of thehand and the cocked hat under the arm, and any passion or person thatcan be brought forward on the stage? It is not that we can be said toacquire a prejudice against so harmless an actor as Mr. Claremont:we are born with a prejudice against a speaker of prologues. It is aninnate idea: a natural instinct: there is a particular organ in thebrain provided for it. Do we not all hate a manager? It is not becausehe is insolent or impertinent, or fond of making ridiculous speeches, ora notorious puffer, or ignorant, or mean, or vain, but it is because wesee him in a coat, waistcoat, and breeches. The stage is the world offantasy: it is Queen Mab that has invited us to her revels there, andall that have to do with it should wear motley!

Lastly, there are some actors by profession whose faces we like to seein the boxes or anywhere else; but it is because they are no actors, butrather gentlemen and scholars, and in their proper places in the boxes, or wherever they are. Does not an actor himself, I would ask, feelconscious and awkward in the boxes if he thinks that he is known? Anddoes he not sit there in spite of this uneasy feeling, and run thegauntlet of impertinent looks and whispers, only to get a littleby-admiration, as he thinks? It is hardly to be supposed that he comesto see the play--the show. He must have enough of plays and finery. Buthe wants to see a favourite (perhaps a rival) actor in a striking part. Then the place for him to do this is the pit. Painters, I know, alwaysget as close up to a picture they want to copy as they can; and I shouldimagine actors would want to do the same, in order to look into thetexture and mechanism of their art. Even theatrical critics can makenothing of a part that they see from the boxes. If you sit in thestage-box, your attention is drawn off by the company and othercircumstances. If you get to a distance (so as to be out of the reach ofnotice) you can neither hear nor see well. For myself, I would as soontake a seat on the top of the Monument to give an account of a firstappearance, as go into the second or third tier of boxes to do it. I went, but the other day, with a box-ticket to see Miss Fanny Bruntoncome out in Juliet, and Mr. Macready make a first appearance in Romeo;and though I was told (by a tolerable judge) that the new Juliet wasthe most elegant figure on the stage, and that Mr. Macready's Romeo wasquite beautiful, I vow to God I knew nothing of it. So little couldI tell of the matter that at one time I mistook Mr. Horrebow for Mr. Abbott. I have seen Mr. Kean play Sir Giles Overreach one night from thefront of the pit, and a few nights after from the front boxes facing thestage. It was another thing altogether. That which had been so latelynothing but flesh and blood, a living fibre, 'instinct with fire' andspirit, was no better than a little fantoccini figure, darting backwardsand forwards on the stage, starting, screaming, and playing a numberof fantastic tricks before the audience. I could account, in the latterinstance, for the little approbation of the performance manifestedaround me, and also for the general scepticism with respect to Mr. Kean's acting, which has been said to prevail among those whocannot condescend to go into the pit, and have not interest in theorchestra--to see him act. They may, then, stay away altogether. Hisface is the running comment on his acting, which reconciles the audienceto it. Without that index to his mind, you are not prepared for thevehemence and suddenness of his gestures; his pauses are long, abrupt, and unaccountable, if not filled up by the expression; it is in theworking of his face that you see the writhing and coiling up of thepassions before they make their serpent-spring; the lightning of his eyeprecedes the hoarse burst of thunder from his voice. 

One may go into the boxes, indeed, and criticise acting and actors withSterne's stop-watch, but not otherwise--'"And between the nominativecase and the verb (which, as your lordship knows, should agree togetherin number, person, etc. ) there was a full pause of a second andtwo-thirds. "--"But was the eye silent--did the look say nothing?" "Ilooked only at the stop-watch, my lord. "--"Excellent critic!"'--If anyother actor, indeed, goes to see Mr. Kean act, with a view _to avoidimitation, _ this may be the place, or rather it is the way to run intoit, for you see only his extravagances and defects, which are the mosteasily carried away. Mr. Mathews may translate him into an AT HOME evenfrom the _slips!_--Distinguished actors, then, ought, I conceive, to setthe example of going into the pit, were it only for their own sakes. Iremember a trifling circumstance, which I worked up at the time intoa confirmation of this theory of mine, engrafted on old prejudice andtradition. (2) I had got into the middle of the pit, at considerablerisk of broken bones, to see Mr. Kean in one of his early parts, when Iperceived two young men seated a little behind me, with a certain spaceleft round them. They were dressed in the height of the fashion, inlight drab-coloured greatcoats, and with their shirt-sleeves drawn downover their hands, at a time when this was not so common as it has sincebecome. I took them for younger sons of some old family at least. One ofthem, that was very good-looking, I thought might be Lord Byron, andhis companion might be Mr. Hobhouse. They seemed to have wandered fromanother sphere of this our planet to witness a masterly performance tothe utmost advantage. This stamped the thing. They were, undoubtedly, young men of rank and fashion; but their taste was greater than theirregard for appearances. The pit was, after all, the true resort ofthoroughbred critics and amateurs. When there was anything worth seeing, this was the place; and I began to feel a sort of reflected importancein the consciousness that I also was a critic. Nobody sat near them--itwould have seemed like an intrusion. Not a syllable was uttered. --Theywere two clerks in the Victualling Office!

What I would insist on, then, is this--that for Mr. Kean, or Mr. Young, or Mr. Macready, or any of those that are 'cried out upon in the top ofthe compass' to obtrude themselves voluntarily or ostentatiouslyupon our notice, when they are out of character, is a solecism intheatricals. For them to thrust themselves forward before the scenes, isto drag us behind them against our will, than which nothing can be morefatal to a true passion for the stage, and which is a privilege thatshould be kept sacred for impertinent curiosity. Oh! while I live, letme not be admitted (under special favour) to an actor's dressing-room. Let me not see how Cato painted, or how Caesar combed! Let me not meetthe prompt-boys in the passage, nor see the half-lighted candles stuckagainst the bare walls, nor hear the creaking of machines, or thefiddlers laughing; nor see a Columbine practising a pirouette in sobersadness, nor Mr. Grimaldi's face drop from mirth to sudden melancholyas he passes the side-scene, as if a shadow crossed it, nor witness thelong-chinned generation of the pantomime sit twirling their thumbs, nor overlook the fellow who holds the candle for the moon in the scenebetween Lorenzo and Jessica! Spare me this insight into secrets I am notbound to know. The stage is not a mistress that we are sworn to undress. Why should we look behind the glass of fashion? Why should we prick thebubble that reflects the world, and turn it to a little soap and water?Trust a little to first appearances--leave something to fancy. I observethat the great puppets of the real stage, who themselves play a grandpart, like to get into the boxes over the stage; where they see nothingfrom the proper point of view, but peep and pry into what is going onlike a magpie looking into a marrow-bone. This is just like them. Sothey look down upon human life, of which they are ignorant. They see theexits and entrances of the players, something that they suspect ismeant to be kept from them (for they think they are always liable to beimposed upon): the petty pageant of an hour ends with each scene longbefore the catastrophe, and the tragedy of life is turned to farce undertheir eyes. These people laugh loud at a pantomime, and are delightedwith clowns and pantaloons. They pay no attention to anything else. Thestage-boxes exist in contempt of the stage and common sense. The privateboxes, on the contrary, should be reserved as the receptacle for theofficers of state and great diplomatic characters, who wish to avoid, rather than court popular notice!

NOTES to ESSAY XII

(1) Mr. Munden and Mr. Claremont went one Sunday to Windsor to see theking. They passed with other spectators once or twice: at last, his latemajesty distinguished Munden in the crowd and called him to him. Aftertreating him with much cordial familiarity, the king said, 'And, pray, who is that with you?' Munden, with many congees, and contortionsof face, replied, 'An please your majesty, it's Mr. Claremont of theTheatre Royal Drury Lane. ' 'Oh! yes, ' said the king, 'I know him well--abad actor, a bad actor, a bad actor!' Why kings should repeat what theysay three times is odd: their saying it once is quite enough. I havealways liked Mr. Claremont's face since I heard this anecdote, andperhaps the telling it may have the same effect on other people. 

(2) The trunk-maker, I grant, in the _Spectator's_ time, sat in thetwo-shilling gallery. But that was in the _Spectator's_ time, and not inthe days of Mr. Smirke and Mr. Wyatt. 

ESSAY XIII. ON THE DISADVANTAGES OF INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY

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 thereach of the common-place reader. A person speaking once in a slightingmanner of a very original-minded man, received for answer, "He strideson so far before you that he dwindles in the distance!"

Petrarch complains that 'Nature had made him different from otherpeople'--_singular' d' altri genti. _ The great happiness of life is, tobe neither better nor worse than the general run of those you meet with, you soon find a mortifying level in their difference to what youparticularly pique yourself upon. What is the use of being moral in anight-cellar, or wise in Bedlam? 'To be honest, as this world goes, isto be one man picked out of ten thousand. ' So says Shakespear; and thecommentators have not added that, under these circumstances, a man ismore likely to become the butt of slander than the mark of admirationfor being so. 'How now, thou particular fellow?'(1) is the common answerto all such out-of-the-way pretensions. By not doing as those at Romedo, we cut ourselves off from good-fellowship and society. We speakanother language, have notions of our own, and are treated as of adifferent species. Nothing can be more awkward than to intrude with anysuch 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 fearproduces hatred: hence the suspicion and rancour entertained againstall those who set up for greater refinement and wisdom than theirneighbours. It is in vain to think of softening down this spirit ofhostility by simplicity of manners, or by condescending to persons oflow estate. The more you condescend, the more they will presume uponit; they will fear you less, but hate you more; and will be the moredetermined to take their revenge on you for a superiority as to whichthey are entirely in the dark, and of which you yourself seem toentertain considerable doubt. All the humility in the world will onlypass for weakness and folly. They have no notion of such a thing. Theyalways put their best foot forward; and argue that you would do the sameif 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 outwardrespect 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, andfind I only get the more ill-will by it. They conceive I do not thinkthem capable of anything better; that I do not think it worth while, asthe vulgar saying is, to _throw a word to a dog. _ I once complained ofthis to Coleridge, thinking it hard I should be sent to Coventry fornot making a prodigious display. He said: 'As you assume a certaincharacter, you ought to produce your credentials. It is a tax uponpeople's good-nature to admit superiority of any kind, even where thereis the most evident proof of it; but it is too hard a task for theimagination 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 amongpeople without pretensions. There are no people who have no pretensions;or the fewer their pretensions, the less they can afford to acknowledgeyours without some sort of value received. The more informationindividuals possess, or the more they have refined upon any subject, themore readily can they conceive and admit the same kind of superiorityto themselves that they feel over others. But from the low, dull, levelsink of ignorance and vulgarity, no idea or love of excellence canarise. You think you are doing mighty well with them; that you arelaying aside the buckram of pedantry and pretence, and getting thecharacter of a plain, unassuming, good sort of fellow. It will not do. All the while that you are making these familiar advances, and wantingto be at your ease, they are trying to recover the wind of you. Youmay forget that you are an author, an artist, or what not--they do notforget that they are nothing, nor bate one jot of their desire to proveyou in the same predicament. They take hold of some circumstance in yourdress; your manner of entering a room is different from that of otherpeople; you do not eat vegetables--that's odd; you have a particularphrase, which they repeat, and this becomes a sort of standing joke; youlook grave, or ill; you talk, or are more silent than usual; you arein or out of pocket: all these petty, inconsiderable circumstances, inwhich you resemble, or are unlike other people, form so many counts inthe indictment which is going on in their imaginations against you, andare so many contradictions in your character. In any one else they wouldpass unnoticed, but in a person of whom they had heard so much theycannot make them out at all. Meanwhile, those things in which you mayreally excel go for nothing, because they cannot judge of them. Theyspeak highly of some book which you do not like, and therefore you makeno answer. You recommend them to go and see some Picture in which theydo not find much to admire. How are you to convince them that you areright? Can you make them perceive that the fault is in them, and notin the picture, unless you could give them your knowledge? They hardlydistinguish the difference between a Correggio and a common daub. Doesthis bring you any nearer to an understanding? The more you know of thedifference, the more deeply you feel it, or the more earnestly youwish to convey it, the farther do you find yourself removed to animmeasurable distance from the possibility of making them enter intoviews and feelings of which they have not even the first rudiments. Youcannot make them see with your eyes, and they must judge for themselves. 

Intellectual is not like bodily strength. You have no hold of theunderstanding of others but by their sympathy. Your knowing, in fact, so much more about a subject does not give you a superiority, that is, apower over them, but only renders it the more impossible for you to makethe least impression on them. Is it, then, an advantage to you? It maybe, as it relates to your own private satisfaction, but it places agreater gulf between you and society. It throws stumbling-blocks in yourway at every turn. All that you take most pride and pleasure in islost upon the vulgar eye. What they are pleased with is a matter ofindifference or of distaste to you. In seeing a number of persons turnover a portfolio of prints from different masters, what a trial it is tothe patience, how it jars the nerves to hear them fall into raptures atsome common-place flimsy thing, and pass over some divine expressionof countenance without notice, or with a remark that it is verysingular-looking? How useless it is in such cases to fret or argue, or remonstrate? Is it not quite as well to be without all thishypercritical, fastidious knowledge, and to be pleased or displeased asit happens, or struck with the first fault or beauty that is pointedout by others? I would be glad almost to change my acquaintance withpictures, with books, and, certainly, what I know of mankind, foranybody's ignorance of them!

It is recorded in the life of some worthy (whose name I forget) that hewas one of those 'who loved hospitality and respect': and I professto belong to the same classification of mankind. Civility is with me ajewel. 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 withliterary cabals, questions, critics, actors, essay-writing, withouttaking them out with me for recreation, and into all companies. I wishat these times to pass for a good-humoured fellow; and good-will isall I ask in return to make good company. I do not desire to bealways posing myself or others with the questions of fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute, etc. I must unbend sometimes. I mustoccasionally lie fallow. The kind of conversation that I affect most iswhat sort of a day it is, and whether it is likely to rain or holdup fine for to-morrow. This I consider as enjoying the _otium cumdignitate, _ as the end and privilege of a life of study. I would resignmyself to this state of easy indifference, but I find I cannot. I mustmaintain a certain pretension, which is far enough from my wish. I musthe put on my defence, I must take up the gauntlet continually, or I findI lose ground. 'I am nothing, if not critical. ' While I am thinking whato'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 notreally as dull a fellow as I am sometimes said to be. If a drizzlingshower patters against the windows, it puts me in mind of a mild springrain, from which I retired twenty years ago, into a little public-housenear Wem in Shropshire, and while I saw the plants and shrubs beforethe door imbibe the dewy moisture, quaffed a glass of sparkling ale, andwalked home in the dusk of evening, brighter to me than noonday sunsat present are! Would I indulge this feeling? In vain. They ask me whatnews there is, and stare if I say I don't know. If a new actress hascome out, why must I have seen her? If a new novel has appeared, whymust I have read it? I, at one time, used to go and take a hand atcribbage 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 thelittle that I did set up was taken from me. As I said nothing on thatsubject myself, it was continually thrown in my teeth that I was anauthor. From having me at this disadvantage, my friend wanted to peg ona hole or two in the game, and was displeased if I would not let him. IfI won off him, it was hard he should be beat by an author. If he won, itwould be strange if he did not understand the game better than I did. IfI 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 askedwhy 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 suppressedsmile. If I told a humorous story, it was difficult to say whether thelaugh 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 aparagraph appeared against anything I had written, I found it was readythere before me, and I was to undergo a regular _roasting. _ I submittedto all this till I was tired, and then I gave it up. 

One of the miseries of intellectual pretensions is, that nine-tenths ofthose you come in contact with do not know whether you are an impostoror not. I dread that certain anonymous criticisms should get into thehands of servants where I go, or that my hatter or shoemaker shouldhappen to read them, who cannot possibly tell whether they are well orill founded. The ignorance of the world leaves one at the mercy ofits 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 illreport (which you have no means of rectifying) what you cannot gain by agood one. After a _diatribe_ in the _Quarterly_ (which is taken in bya gentleman who occupies my old apartments on the first floor), mylandlord brings me up his bill (of some standing), and on my offeringto give him so much in money and a note of hand for the rest, shakes hishead, and says he is afraid he could make no use of it. Soon after, thedaughter comes in, and, on my mentioning the circumstance carelessly toher, replies gravely, 'that indeed her father has been almost ruinedby bills. ' _This is the unkindest cut of all. _ It is in vain for me toendeavour to explain that the publication in which I am abused is a meregovernment engine--an organ of a political faction. They know nothingabout that. They only know such and such imputations are thrown out; andthe more I try to remove them, the more they think there is some truthin them. Perhaps the people of the house are strong Tories--governmentagents of some sort. Is it for me to enlighten their ignorance? IfI 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 madeto 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 peremptoryinstructions to retaliate, they cannot conceive what connection therecan be between me and such distinguished characters. I can get nofarther. 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 thedemonstrations of contempt. I have known a person whom I had neverseen before besiege me all dinner-time with asking what articles I hadwritten in the _Edinburgh Review?_ I was at last ashamed to answer to mysplendid sins in that way. Others will pick out something not yours, andsay they are sure no one else could write it. By the first sentence theycan always tell your style. Now I hate my style to be known, as I hateall _idiosyncrasy. _ These obsequious flatterers could not pay me a worsecompliment. Then there are those who make a point of reading everythingyou write (which is fulsome); while others, more provoking, regularlylend your works to a friend as soon as they receive them. They prettywell know your notions on the different subjects, from having heard youtalk about them. Besides, they have a greater value for your personalcharacter than they have for your writings. You explain things better ina common way, when you are not aiming at effect. Others tell you of thefaults they have heard found with your last book, and that they defendyour style in general from a charge of obscurity. A friend once told meof a quarrel he had had with a near relation, who denied that I knewhow to spell the commonest words. These are comfortable confidentialcommunications to which authors who have their friends and excusers aresubject. A gentleman told me that a lady had objected to my use of theword _learneder_ as bad grammar. He said he thought it a pity that Idid not take more care, but that the lady was perhaps prejudiced, as herhusband held a government office. I looked for the word, and found itin a motto from Butler. I was piqued, and desired him to tell the faircritic 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, somewill pick out the flattest thing of yours they can find to load it withpanegyrics; and others tell you (by way of letting you see how high theyrank your capacity) that your best passages are failures. Lamb has aknack of tasting (or as he would say, _palating_) the insipid. LeighHunt has a trick of turning away from the relishing morsels you put onhis plate. There is no getting the start of some people. Do what youwill, they can do it better; meet with what success you may, their owngood opinion stands them in better stead, and runs before the applauseof the world. I once showed a person of this overweening turn (with nosmall triumph, I confess) a letter of a very flattering description Ihad received from the celebrated Count Stendhal, dated Rome. He returnedit with a smile of indifference, and said, he had had a letter fromRome himself the day before, from his friend S----! I did not think this'germane to the matter. ' Godwin pretends I never wrote anything wortha farthing but my 'Answers to Vetus, ' and that I fail altogether when Iattempt to write an essay, or anything in a short compass. 

What can one do in such cases? Shall I confess a weakness? The onlyset-off I know to these rebuffs and mortifications is sometimes in anaccidental notice or involuntary mark of distinction from a stranger. Ifeel the force of Horace's _digito monstrari_--I like to be pointed outin the street, or to hear people ask in Mr. Powell's court, _Whichis Mr. Hazlitt?_ This is to me a pleasing extension of one's personalidentity. Your name so repeated leaves an echo like music on the ear: itstirs the blood like the sound of a trumpet. It shows that other peopleare curious to see you; that they think of you, and feel an interest inyou without your knowing it. This is a bolster to lean upon; a lining toyour poor, shivering, threadbare opinion of yourself. You want some suchcordial to exhausted spirits, and relief to the dreariness of abstractspeculation. You are something; and, from occupying a place in thethoughts of others, think less contemptuously of yourself. You are thebetter able to run the gauntlet of prejudice and vulgar abuse. It ispleasant in this way to have your opinion quoted against yourself, andyour own sayings repeated to you as good things. I was once talking toan intelligent man in the pit, and criticising Mr. Knight's performanceof Filch. 'Ah!' he said, 'little Simmons was the fellow to play thatcharacter. ' He added, 'There was a most excellent remark made upon hisacting it in the _Examiner_ (I think it was)--_That he looked as ifhe had the gallows in one eye and a pretty girl in the other. _' I saidnothing, but was in remarkably good humour the rest of the evening. Ihave seldom been in a company where fives-playing has been talked of butsome one has asked in the course of it, 'Pray, did any one ever seean account of one Cavanagh that appeared some time back in most of thepapers? Is it known who wrote it?' These are trying moments. I had atriumph over a person, whose name I will not mention, on the followingoccasion. I happened to be saying something about Burke, and wasexpressing my opinion of his talents in no measured terms, when thisgentleman interrupted me by saying he thought, for his part, that Burkehad 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 afterwardsashamed of my momentary petulance. Yet no one that I find ever sparesme. 

Some persons seek out and obtrude themselves on public characters inorder, as it might seem, to pick out their failings, and afterwardsbetray them. Appearances are for it, but truth and a better knowledgeof nature are against this interpretation of the matter. Sycophants andflatterers are undesignedly treacherous and fickle. They are prone toadmire inordinately at first, and not finding a constant supply of foodfor this kind of sickly appetite, take a distaste to the object of theiridolatry. To be even with themselves for their credulity, they sharpentheir wits to spy out faults, and are delighted to find that thisanswers better than their first employment. It is a course of study, 'lively, audible, and full of vent. ' They have the organ of wonder andthe organ of fear in a prominent degree. The first requires new objectsof admiration to satisfy its uneasy cravings: the second makes themcrouch to power wherever its shifting standard appears, and willingto curry favour with all parties, and ready to betray any out of sheerweakness and servility. I do not think they mean any harm: at least, Ican 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 uponothers, where I have been better able to judge of the extent of themischief, and the heartlessness and idiot folly it discovered. 

I do not think great intellectual attainments are any recommendation tothe women. They puzzle them, and are a diversion to the main question. If scholars talk to ladies of what they understand, their hearers arenone the wiser: if they talk of other things, they prove themselvesfools. The conversation between Angelica and Foresight in _Love forLove_ is a receipt in full for all such overstrained nonsense: while heis wandering among the signs of the zodiac, she is standing a-tiptoe onthe earth. It has been remarked that poets do not choose mistresses verywisely. I believe it is not choice, but necessity. If they could throwthe handkerchief like the Grand Turk, I imagine we should see scarcemortals, but rather goddesses, surrounding their steps, and eachexclaiming, 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 etherealmould, and thenceforth the poet from whose mind the ideas of love andbeauty are inseparable as dreams from sleep, goes on the forlorn hope ofthe passion, and dresses up the first Dulcinea that will take compassionon him in all the colours of fancy. What boots it to complain if thedelusion lasts for life, and the rainbow still paints its form in thecloud?

There is one mistake I would wish, if possible, to correct. Men ofletters, artists, and others not succeeding with women in a certain rankof life, think the objection is to their want of fortune, and that theyshall stand a better chance by descending lower, where only theirgood qualities or talents will be thought of. Oh! worse and worse. Theobjection 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 clueto their character, but to all others they are thick darkness. If themistress smiles at their ideal advances, the maid will laugh outright;she will throw water over you, get her sister to listen, send hersweetheart to ask you what you mean, will set the village or the houseupon your back; it will be a farce, a comedy, a standing jest fora year, and then the murder will out. Scholars should be swornat Highgate. They are no match for chambermaids, or wenches atlodging-houses. They had better try their hands on heiresses or ladiesof quality. These last have high notions of themselves that may fit someof your epithets! They are above mortality; so are your thoughts!But with low life, trick, ignorance, and cunning, you have nothingin common. Whoever you are, that think you can make a compromise ora conquest there by good nature or good sense, be warned b a friendlyvoice, and retreat in time from the unequal contest. 

If, as I have said above, scholars are no match for chambermaids, onthe other hand gentlemen are no match for blackguards. The former areon their honour, act on the square; the latter take all advantages, andhave no idea of any other principle. It is astonishing how soon a fellowwithout education will learn to cheat. He is impervious to any ray ofliberal knowledge; his understanding is

Not pierceable by power of any star--

but it is porous to all sorts of tricks, chicanery, stratagems, andknavery, by which anything is to be got. Mrs. Peachum, indeed, says, that to succeed at the gaming-table, the candidate should have theeducation of a nobleman. I do not know how far this example contradictsmy theory. I think it is a rule that men in business should not betaught other things. Any one will be almost sure to make money who hasno other idea in his head. A college education, or intense study ofabstract truth, will not enable a man to drive a bargain, to overreachanother, or even to guard himself from being overreached. As Shakespearsays, that 'to have a good face is the effect of study, but reading andwriting come by nature'; so it might be argued, that to be a knave isthe gift of fortune, but to play the fool to advantage it is necessaryto be a learned man. The best politicians are not those who are deeplygrounded in mathematical or in ethical science. Rules stand in the wayof expediency. Many a man has been hindered from pushing his fortune inthe world by an early cultivation of his moral sense, and has repentedof it at leisure during the rest of his life. A shrewd man said of myfather, that he would not send a son of his to school to him on anyaccount, for that by teaching him to speak the truth he would disqualifyhim from getting his living in the world!

It is hardly necessary to add any illustration to prove that the mostoriginal and profound thinkers are not always the most successful orpopular writers. This is not merely a temporary disadvantage; but manygreat philosophers have not only been scouted while they were living, but forgotten as soon as they were dead. The name of Hobbes is perhapssufficient to explain this assertion. But I do not wish to go fartherinto this part of the subject, which is obvious in itself. I have said, I believe, enough to take off the air of paradox which hangs over thetitle of this Essay. 

NOTES to ESSAY XIII

(1) Jack Cade's salutation to one who tries to recommend himself bysaying he can write and read--see _Henry VI. _ Part Second. 

ESSAY XIV. ON PATRONAGE AND PUFFING

 A gentle usher, Vanity by name. --Spenser. 

A lady was complaining to a friend of mine of the credulity of people inattending to quack advertisements, and wondering who could be taken inby them--"for that she had never bought but one half-guinea bottle ofDr. -----'s Elixir of Life, and it had done her no sort of good!" Thisanecdote seemed to explain pretty well what made it worth the doctor'swhile to advertise his wares in every newspaper in the kingdom. Hewould no doubt be satisfied if every delicate, sceptical invalid inhis majesty's dominions gave his Elixir one trial, merely to show theabsurdity of the thing. We affect to laugh at the folly of those who putfaith in nostrums, but are willing to see ourselves whether there is anytruth in them. 

There is a strong tendency in the human mind to flatter itself withsecret hopes, with some lucky reservation in our own favour, thoughreason may point out the grossness of the trick in general; and, besides, there is a wonderful power in words, formed into regularpropositions, and printed in capital letters, to draw the assent afterthem, till we have proof of their fallacy. The ignorant and idle believewhat they read, as Scotch philosophers demonstrate the existence of amaterial world, and other learned propositions, from the evidence oftheir senses. The ocular proof is all that is wanting in either case. As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the artof lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth. We canhardly _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, claimssome sort of attention and respect for the merits that it discloses, though we think the candidate for public favour and support has hitupon (perhaps) an injudicious way of laying them before the world. Stillthere may be something in them; and even the outrageous improbabilityand extravagance of the statement on the very face of it stagger us, and leave a hankering to inquire farther into it, because we think theadvertiser would hardly have the impudence to hazard such barefacedabsurdities without some foundation. Such is the strength of theassociation between words and things in the mind--so much oftener mustour credulity have been justified by the event than imposed upon. If every second story we heard was an invention, we should lose ourmechanical disposition to trust to the meaning of sounds, just as whenwe have met with a number of counterfeit pieces of coin, we suspect goodones; but our implicit assent to what we hear is a proof how much moresincerity and good faith there is in the sum total of our dealings withone 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 bysurprise before it can recover breath, as it were; so that by havingbeen caught in the trap, it is unwilling to retract entirely--has asecret desire to find itself in the right, and a determination to seewhether it is or not. Describe a picture as _lofty, _ _imposing, _ and_grand, _ these words excite certain ideas in the mind like the soundof a trumpet, which are not to be quelled, except by seeing the pictureitself, 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 tobe supposed that _he_ would say such things of his picture unless theywere allowed by all the world; and he repeats them, on this gentleunderstanding, till all the world allows them. (1) So Reputation runs ina vicious circle, and Merit limps behind it, mortified and abashedat its own insignificance. It has been said that the test of fame orpopularity is to consider the number of times your name is repeated byothers, or is brought to their recollection in the course of a year. Atthis rate, a man has his reputation in his own hands, and, by the helpof puffing and the press, may forestall the voice of posterity, andstun the 'groundling' ear of his contemporaries. A name let off in yourhearing continually, with some bouncing epithet affixed to it, startlesyou like the report of a pistol close at your car: you cannot helpthe effect upon the imagination, though you know it is perfectlyharmless--_vox et praeterea nihil. _ So, if you see the same name staringyou in the face in great letters at the corner of every street, youinvoluntarily think the owner of it must be a great man to occupy solarge a space in the eye of the town. The appeal is made, in the firstinstance, to the senses, but it sinks below the surface into the mind. There are some, indeed, who publish their own disgrace, and make theirnames a common by-word and nuisance, notoriety being all that they wathough you may laugh in his face, it pays expenses. Parolles and hisdrum typify many a modern adventurer and court-candidate for unearnedlaurels and unblushing honours. Of all puffs, lottery puffs are the mostingenious and most innocent. A collection of them would make an amusing_Vade mecum. _ They are still various and the same, with that infiniteruse with which they lull the reader at the outset out of all suspicion. The insinuating turn in the middle, the home-thrust at the rulingpassion at last, by which your spare cash is conjured clean out ofthe pocket in spite of resolution, by the same stale, well-known, thousandth-time repeated artifice of _All prizes_ and _No blanks_--aself-evident imposition! Nothing, however, can be a stronger proof ofthe power of fascinating the public judgment through the eye alone. Iknow a gentleman who amassed a considerable fortune (so as to be ableto keep his carriage) by printing nothing but lottery placards andhandbills of a colossal size. Another friend of mine (of no meantalents) was applied to (as a snug thing in the way of business) towrite regular lottery puffs for a large house in the city, and on havinga parcel of samples returned on his hands as done in too severe andterse a style, complained quaintly enough, _'That modest merit nevercould succeed!'_ Even Lord Byron, as he tells us, has been accused ofwriting lottery-puffs. There are various ways of playing one's-self offbefore the public, and keeping one's name alive. The newspapers, thelamp-posts, the walls of empty houses, the shutters of windows, theblank covers of magazines and reviews, are open to every one. I haveheard of a man of literary celebrity sitting in his study writingletters of remonstrance to himself, on the gross defects of a planof education he had just published, and which remained unsold on thebookseller's counter. Another feigned himself dead in order to see whatwould be said of him in the newspapers, and to excite a sensationin this way. A flashy pamphlet has been run to a five-and-thirtiethedition, and thus ensured the writer a 'deathless date' among politicalcharlatans, by regularly striking off a new title-page to every fiftyor a hundred copies that were sold. This is a vile practice. It isan erroneous idea got abroad (and which I will contradict here) thatparagraphs are paid for in the leading journals. It is quite out of thequestion. A favourable notice of an author, an actress, etc. , may beinserted through interest, or to oblige a friend, but it must invariablybe done for _love, _ not _money!_

When I formerly had to do with these sort of critical verdicts, I wasgenerally sent out of the way when any _debutant_ had a friend atcourt, and was to be tenderly handled. For the rest, or those of robustconstitutions, I had _carte blanche_ given me. Sometimes I ran out ofthe course, to be sure. Poor Perry! what bitter complaints he used tomake, that by _running-a-muck_ at lords and Scotchmen I should not leavehim 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 trulypitiable. What squabbles we used to have about Kean and Miss Stephens, the only theatrical favourites I ever had! Mrs. Billington had got somenotion that Miss Stephens would never make a singer, and it was thetorment of Perry's life (as he told me in confidence) that he could notget any two people to be of the same opinion on any one point. I shallappearance in the _Beggar's Opera. _ I have reason to remember thatarticle: it was almost the last I ever wrote with any pleasure tomyself. I had been down on a visit to my friends near Chertsey, and onmy return had stopped at an inn near Kingston-upon-Thames, where I hadgot the _Beggar's Opera_, and had read it over-night. The next day Iwalked cheerfully to town. It was a fine sunny morning, in the end ofautumn, and as I repeated the beautiful song, 'Life knows no returnof Spring, ' I meditated my next day's criticism, trying to do all thejustice I could to so inviting a subject. I was not a little proud of itby anticipation. I had just then begun to stammer out my sentiments onpaper, and was in a kind of honeymoon of authorship. But soon after, myfinal hopes of happiness and of human liberty were blighted nearly atthe 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 fastthose years run that hurry us away from our last fond dream of bliss!)when I loitered along thy green retreats, O Twickenham! and connedover (with enthusiastic delight) the chequered view which one of thyfavourites drew of human life! I deposited my account of the play at theMorning Chronicle office in the afternoon, and went to see Miss Stephensas Polly. Those were happy times, in which she first came out in thischaracter, in Mandane, where she sang the delicious air, 'If o'er thecruel tyrant, Love' (so as it can never be sung again), in _Love in aVillage_, where the scene opened with her and Miss Matthews in a paintedgarden of roses and honeysuckles, and 'Hope, thou nurse of young Desire'thrilled from two sweet voices in turn. Oh! may my ears sometimes stilldrink the same sweet sounds, embalmed with the spirit of youth, ofhealth, and joy, but in the thoughts of an instant, but in a dream offancy, and I shall hardly need to complain! When I got back, after theplay, Perry called out, with his cordial, grating voice, 'Well, how didshe do?' and on my speaking in high terms, answered, that 'he had beento dine with his friend the Duke, that some conversation had passed onthe subject, he was afraid it was not the thing, it was not the true_sostenuto_ style; but as I had written the article' (holding myperoration on the _Beggar's Opera_ carelessly in his hand), 'it mightpass!' I could perceive that the rogue licked his lips at it, and hadalready in imagination 'bought golden opinions of all sorts of people'by this very criticism, and I had the satisfaction the next day to meetMiss Stephens coming out of the editor's room, who had been to thank himfor 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 masterlyand spirited delivery of the first striking speech, 'On such a day youcalled me a dog, ' etc. , I perceived it was a hollow thing. So it wasgiven out in the _Chronicle_; but Perry was continually at me as otherpeople were at him, and was afraid it would not last. It was to nopurpose I said _it would last:_ yet I am in the right hitherto. Ithas been said, ridiculously, that Mr. Kean was written up in the_Chronicle. _ I beg leave to state my opinion that no actor can bewritten up or down by a paper. An author may be puffed into notice, ordamned by criticism, because his book may not have been read. An artistmay be overrated, or undeservedly decried, because the public is notmuch accustomed to see or judge of pictures. But an actor is judgedby his peers, the play-going public, and must stand or fall by his ownmerits or defects. The critic may give the tone or have a castingvoice where popular opinion is divided; but he can no more _force_that opinion either way, or wrest it from its base in common sense andfeeling, than he can move Stonehenge. Mr. Kean had, however, physicaldisadvantages and strong prejudices to encounter, and so far the_liberal_ and _independent_ part of the press might have been of servicein helping him to his seat in the public favour. May he long keep itwith dignity and firmness!(2)

It was pretended by the Covent Garden people, and some others at thetime, that Mr. Kean's popularity was a mere effect of love of novelty, anine days' wonder, like the rage after Master Betty's acting, and wouldbe as soon over. The comparison did not hold. Master Betty's actingwas 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 ruleor precedent established in the ordinary course of nature why someother man should not appear in tragedy as great as John Kemble. Farther, Master Betty's acting was a singular phenomenon, but it was also asbeautiful as it was singular. I saw him in the part of Douglas, andhe seemed almost like 'some gay creature of the element, ' moving aboutgracefully, with all the flexibility of youth, and murmuring AEoliansounds with plaintive tenderness. I shall never forget the way in whichhe repeated the line in which young Norval says, speaking of the fate oftwo brothers:

 And in my mind happy was he that died!

The tones fell and seemed to linger prophetic on my ear. Perhaps thewonder was made greater than it was. Boys at that age can often readremarkably well, and certainly are not without natural grace andsweetness of voice. The Westminster schoolboys are a better company ofcomedians than we find at most of our theatres. As to the understandinga part like Douglas, at least, I see no difficulty on that score. I myself used to recite the speech in Enfield's _Speaker_ with goodemphasis and discretion when at school, and entered, about the same age, into the wild sweetness of the sentiments in Mrs. Radcliffe's _Romanceof the Forest_, I am sure, quite as much as I should do now; yet thesame experiment has been often tried since and has uniformly failed. (3)

It was soon after this that Coleridge returned from Italy, and he gotone day into a long tirade to explain what a ridiculous farce the wholewas, and how all the people abroad wore shocked at the _gullibility_ ofthe English nation, who on this and every other occasion were open tothe artifices of all sorts of quacks, wondering how any persons with thesmallest pretensions to common sense could for a moment suppose thata boy could act the characters of men without any of their knowledge, their experience, or their passions. We made some faint resistance, butin vain. The discourse then took a turn, and Coleridge began a labouredeulogy on some promising youth, the son of an English artist, whom hehad 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 whoseearly 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 aboutyoung Betty, because you have a theory against premature talents, andnow you start a boy phenomenon that nobody knows anything about butyourself--a young artist that, you tell us, is to rival Raphael!' Thetruth is, we like to have something to admire ourselves, as well as tomake other people gape and stare at; but then it must be a discovery ofour own, an idol of our own making and setting up:--if others stumble onthe discovery before us, or join in crying it up to the skies, wethen set to work to prove that this is a vulgar delusion, and show oursagacity and freedom from prejudice by pulling it in pieces with allthe coolness imaginable. Whether we blow the bubble or crush it in ourhands, vanity and the desire of empty distinction are equally at thebottom of our sanguine credulity or fastidious scepticism. There aresome who always fall in with the fashionable prejudice as others affectsingularity of opinion on all such points, according as they think theyhave more or less wit to judge for themselves. 

If a little varnishing and daubing, a little puffing and quacking, andgiving yourself a good name, and getting a friend to speak a wordfor you, is excusable in any profession, it is, I think, in thatof painting. Painting is an occult science, and requires a littleostentation and mock-gravity in the professor. A man may here rivalKatterfelto, 'with his hair on end at his own wonders, wondering forhis bread'; for, if he does not, he may in the end go without it. He mayride on a high-trotting horse, in green spectacles, and attract noticeto 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 foolsstare, but give others something worth looking at. Good Mr. Carver andGilder, good Mr. Printer's Devil, good Mr. Billsticker, 'do me youroffices' unmolested! Painting is a plain ground, and requires a greatmany heraldic quarterings and facings to set it off. Lay on, and do notspare. No man's merit can be fairly judged of if he is not known; andhow can he be known if he keeps entirely in the background?(4) A greatname in art goes but a little way, is chilled as it creeps along thesurface of the world without something to revive and make it blaze upwith fresh splendour. Fame is here almost obscurity. It is longbefore your name affixed to a sterling design will be spelt out by anundiscerning regardless public. Have it proclaimed, therefore, as anecessary 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 yourback. Otherwise, the world will never trouble themselves about you, orwill very soon forget you. A celebrated artist of the present day, whosename is engraved at the bottom of some of the most touching specimensof English art, once had a frame-maker call on him, who, on entering hisroom, exclaimed with some surprise, 'What, are you a painter, sir?' Theother made answer, a little startled in his turn, 'Why, didn't you knowthat? Did you never see my name at the bottom of prints?' He couldnot recollect that he had. 'And yet you sell picture-frames andprints?'--'Yes. '--'What painter's names, then, did he recollect: didhe 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!' Itwas plain from this conversation that Mr. Northcote had not kept companyenough with picture-dealers and newspaper critics. On another occasion, a country gentleman, who was sitting to him for his portrait, asked himif he had any pictures in the Exhibition at Somerset House, and onhis replying in the affirmative, desired to know what they were. Hementioned, among others, The Marriage of Two Children; on which thegentleman expressed great surprise, and said that was the very picturehis wife was always teasing him to go and have another look at, thoughhe had never noticed the painter's name. When the public are so eagerto be amused, and care so little who it is that amuses them, it is notamiss to remind them of it now and then; or even to have a starlingtaught to repeat the name, to which they owe such misprised obligations, in their drowsy ears. On any other principle I cannot conceive howpainters (not without genius or industry) can fling themselves atthe head of the public in the manner they do, having lives written ofthemselves, busts made of themselves, prints stuck in the shop-windowsof themselves, and their names placed in 'the first row of therubric, ' with those of Rubens, Raphael, and Michael Angelo, swearing bythemselves or their proxies that these glorified spirits would do wellto leave the abodes of the blest in order to stand in mute wonder andwith uplifted hands before some production of theirs which is yet hardlydry! Oh! whatever you do, leave that string untouched. It will jar therash and unhallowed hand that meddles with it. Profane not the mightydead by mixing them up with the uncanonised living. Leave yourself areversion in immortality, beyond the noisy clamour of the day. Do notquite lose your respect for public opinion by making it in all cases apalpable cheat, the echo of your own lungs that are hoarse with callingon the world to admire. Do not think to bully posterity, or to cozenyour contemporaries. Be not always anticipating the effect of yourpicture on the town--think more about deserving success than commandingit. In issuing so many promissory notes upon the bank of fame, do notforget you have to pay in sterling gold. Believe that there is somethingin the pursuit of high art, beyond the manufacture of a paragraph orthe collection of receipts at the door of an exhibition. Venerate art asart. Study the works of others, and inquire into those of nature. Gaze at beauty. Become great by great efforts, and not by pompouspretensions. Do not think the world was blind to merit before your time, nor make the reputation of great geniuses the stalking-horse to yourvanity. You have done enough to insure yourself attention: you have nowonly to do something to deserve it, and to make good all that you haveaspired to do. 

There is a silent and systematic assumption of superiority which is asbarefaced and unprincipled an imposture as the most impudent puffing. You may, by a tacit or avowed censure on all other arts, on all works ofart, on all other pretensions, tastes, talents, but your own, producea complete ostracism in the world of intellect, and leave yourself andyour own performances alone standing, a mighty monument in an universalwaste and wreck of genius. By cutting away the rude block and removingthe rubbish from around it, the idol may be effectually exposed to view, placed on its pedestal of pride, without any other assistance. Thismethod is more inexcusable than the other. For there is no egotismor vanity so hateful as that which strikes at our satisfaction ineverything else, and derives its nourishment from preying, like thevampire, on the carcase of others' reputation. I would rather, in aword, that a man should talk for ever of himself with vapid, senselessassurance, than preserve a malignant, heartless silence when the meritof a rival is mentioned. I have seen instances of both, and can judgepretty well between them. 

There is no great harm in putting forward one's own pretensions (ofwhatever kind) if this does not bear a sour, malignant aspect towardsothers. Every one sets himself off to the best advantage he can, andtries to steal a march upon public opinion. In this sense, too, 'all theworld's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. ' Life itselfis a piece of harmless quackery. A great house over your head is ofno use but to announce the great man within. Dress, equipage, title, livery-servants are only so many quack advertisements and assumptionsof the question of merit. The star that glitters at the breast wouldbe worth nothing but as a badge of personal distinction; and the crownitself is but a symbol of the virtues which the possessor inherits froma long line of illustrious ancestors! How much honour and honesty havebeen forfeited to be graced with a title or a ribbon; how much geniusand worth have sunk to the grave without an escutcheon and without anepitaph!

As men of rank and fortune keep lackeys to reinforce their claims toself-respect, so men of genius sometimes surround themselves with acoterie of admirers to increase their reputation with the public. These_proneurs, _ or satellites, repeat all their good things, laugh loud atall their jokes, and remember all their oracular decrees. They are theirshadows and echoes. They talk of them in all companies, and bring backword of all that has been said about them. They hawk the good qualitiesof their patrons as shopmen and _barkers_ tease you to buy goods. I haveno notion of this vanity at second-hand; nor can I see how this serviletestimony from inferiors ('some followers of mine own') can be a proofof merit. It may soothe the ear, but that it should impose on theunderstanding, I own, surprises me; yet there are persons who cannotexist without a _cortege_ of this kind about them, in which they smilingread the opinion of the world, in the midst of all sorts of rancorousabuse and hostility, as Otho called for his mirror in the Illyrianfield. 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 moreeligible situation, carrying away with them all the tattle they can pickup, and some left-off suit of finery. The same proneness to adulationwhich made them lick the dust before one idol makes them bow as low tothe rising Sun; they are as lavish of detraction as they were prurientwith 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 littleconsequence whose livery he wears!

I would advise those who volunteer the office of puffing to go the wholelength 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 bein vain for you to think of stopping. You must drive to the devil atonce. 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 tohis genius. Never fear but he will drive this wedge. If you are oncescrewed into such a machine, you must extricate yourself by main force. No hyperboles are too much: any drawback, any admiration on this sideidolatry, is high treason. It is an unpardonable offence to say that thelast production of your patron is not so good as the one before it, orthat a performer shines more in one character than another. I rememberonce hearing a player declare that he never looked into any newspapersor magazines on account of the abuse that was always levelled at himselfin them, though there were not less than three persons in company whomade it their business through these conduit pipes of fame to 'cry himup to the top of the compass. ' This sort of expectation is a little_exigeante!_

One fashionable mode of acquiring reputation is by patronising it. Thismay be from various motives--real good nature, good taste, vanity, orpride. I shall only speak of the spurious ones in this place. The quackand the _would-be_ patron are well met. The house of the latter is asort of curiosity shop or _menagerie, _ where all sorts of intellectualpretenders 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 companyfor nothing. The folding doors are thrown open, and display a collectionthat the world cannot parallel again. There may be a few persons ofcommon 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 outinto the highways for the halt, the lame, and the blind, for all whopretend to distinction, defects, and obliquities, for all the disposablevanity or affectation floating on the town, in hopes that, among so manyoddities, chance may bring some jewel or treasure to his door, which hemay 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 risinggenius--to bring forward doubtful and unnoticed merit. You thus get aset of novices and raw pretenders about you, whose actual productions donot interfere with your self-love, and whose future efforts may reflectcredit on your singular sagacity and faculty for finding out talentin the germ; and in the next place, by having them completely in yourpower, you are at liberty to dismiss them whenever you will, and tosupply the deficiency by a new set of wondering, unwashed faces in arapid succession; an 'aiery of children, ' embryo actors, artists, poets, or philosophers. Like unfledged birds, they are hatched, nursed, and fedby hand: this gives room for a vast deal of management, meddling, care, and condescending solicitude; but the instant the callow brood arefledged, they are driven from the nest, and forced to shift forthemselves in the wide world. One sterling production decides thequestion between them and their patrons, and from that time they becomethe property of the public. Thus a succession of importunate, hungry, idle, overweening candidates for fame are encouraged by these ficklekeepers, only to be betrayed, and left to starve or beg, or pine inobscurity, while the man of merit and respectability is neglected, discountenanced, and stigmatised, because he will not lend himself asa tool to this system of splendid imposition, or pamper the luxury andweaknesses of the Vulgar Great. When a young artist is too independentto subscribe to the dogmas of his superiors, or fulfils theirpredictions and prognostics of wonderful contingent talent too soon, soas to get out of leading-strings, and lean on public opinion for partialsupport, exceptions are taken to his dress, dialect, or manners, and heis expelled the circle with a character for ingratitude and treachery. None can procure toleration long but those who do not contradict theopinions or excite the jealousy of their betters. One independent stepis an appeal from them to the public, their natural and hated rivals, and annuls the contract between them, which implies ostentatiouscountenance on the one part and servile submission on the other. Butenough of this. 

The patronage of men of talent, even when it proceeds from vanity, isoften carried on with a spirit of generosity and magnificence, as longas these are in difficulties and a state of dependence; but as theprinciple of action in this case is a love of power, the complacency inthe object of friendly regard ceases with the opportunity or necessityfor the same manifest display of power; and when the unfortunate_protege_ is just coming to land, and expects a last helping hand, heis, to his surprise, pushed back, in order that he may be saved fromdrowning once more. You are not hailed ashore, as you had supposed, bythese kind friends, as a mutual triumph after all your struggles andtheir exertions in your behalf. It is a piece of presumption in you tobe seen walking on _terra firma_: you are required, at the risk of theirfriendship, to be always swimming in troubled waters, that they mayhave 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 yourdependence on them: if you are under a cloud, they do all they can tokeep you there by their goodwill: they are so sensible of your gratitudethat they wish your obligations never to cease, and take care you shallowe no one else a good turn; and provided you are compelled or contentedto remain always in poverty, obscurity, and disgrace, they will continueyour very good friends and humble servants to command, to the end ofthe chapter. The tenure of these indentures is hard. Such personswill wilfully forfeit the gratitude created by years of friendship, byrefusing to perform the last act of kindness that is likely ever to bedemanded of them: will lend you money, if you have no chance of repayingthem: will give you their good word, if nobody will believe it; and theonly thing they do not forgive is an attempt or probability on yourpart of being able to repay your obligations. There is somethingdisinterested in all this: at least, it does not show a cowardlyor mercenary disposition, but it savours too much of arrogance andarbitrary pretension. It throws a damning light on this question, toconsider who are mostly the subjects of the patronage of the great, andin the habit of receiving cards of invitation to splendid dinners. Iconfess, 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 hesaid, 'Because great lords and ladies do not like to have their mouthsstopped. ' Garrick was not in this predicament: he could amuse thecompany in the drawing-room by imitating the great moralist andlexicographer, and make the negro-boy in the courtyard die with laughingto see him take off the swelling airs and strut of the turkey-cock. Thiswas clever and amusing, but it did not involve an opinion, it did notlead to a difference of sentiment, in which the owner of the house mightbe found in the wrong. Players, singers, dancers, are hand and glovewith the great. They embellish, and have an _eclat_ in their names, but do not come into collision. Eminent portrait-painters, again, aretolerated, because they come into personal contact with the great; andsculptors hold equality with lords when they have a certain quantityof solid marble in their workshops to answer for the solidity of theirpretensions. People of fashion and property must have something to showfor their patronage, something visible or tangible. A sentiment is avisionary 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 whofind 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 onby servility or buffoonery, by letting themselves down in some way. SirJoshua 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 bytaking too great freedoms. (5) West ingratiated himself in the samequarter by means of practices as little creditable to himself as hisaugust employer, namely, by playing the hypocrite, and professingsentiments the reverse of those he naturally felt. Kings (I know not howjustly) 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 isso, the reason is as follows. From the elevation of their rank, aided bypride and flattery, they look down on the rest of mankind, and wouldnot be thought to have all their advantages for nothing. They wish tomaintain the same precedence in private life that belongs to them as amatter of outward ceremony. This pretension they cannot keep up by fairmeans; for in wit or argument they are not superior to the common run ofmen. They therefore answer a repartee by a practical joke, which turnsthe laugh against others, and cannot be retaliated with safety. Thatis, they avail themselves of the privilege of their situation to takeliberties, and degrade those about them, as they can only keep up theidea of their own dignity by proportionably lowering their company. 

NOTES to ESSAY XIV

(1) It is calculated that West cleared some hundred pounds by thecatalogues that were sold of his great picture of Death riding on thePale Horse. 

(2) I cannot say how in this respect it might have fared if a Mr. Mudford, a fat gentleman, who might not have 'liked yon lean and hungryRoscius, ' had continued in the theatrical department of Mr. Perry'spaper at the time of this actor's first appearance; but I had been putupon this duty just before, and afterwards Mr. Mudford's _spare_ talentswere not in much request. This, I believe, is the reason why he takespains every now and then to inform the readers of the _Courier_ that itis impossible for any one to understand a word that I write. 

(3) I (not very long ago) had the pleasure of spending an evening withMr. Betty, when we had some 'good talk' about the good old times ofacting. I wanted to insinuate that I had been a sneaking admirer, butcould not bring it in. As, however, we were putting on our greatcoatsdownstairs I ventured to break the ice by saying, 'There is one actor ofthat period of whom we have not made honourable mention, I mean MasterBetty. ' 'Oh!' he said, 'I have forgot all that. ' I replied, that hemight, but that I could not forget the pleasure I had had in seeing him. On which he turned off, and, shaking his sides heartily, and with nomeasured demand upon his lungs, called out, 'Oh, memory! memory!' ina way that showed he felt the full force of the allusion. I foundafterwards that the subject did not offend, and we were to have drunksome Burton ale together the following evening, but were prevented. Ihope he will consider that the engagement still stands good. 

(4) Sir Joshua, who was not a vain man, purchased a tawdry sheriff'scarriage, soon after he took his house in Leicester Fields, and desiredhis sister to ride about in it, in order that people might ask, 'Whoseit was?' and the answer would be, 'It belongs to the great painter!'

(5) Sharp became a great favourite of the king on the followingoccasion. It was the custom, when the king went through the lobbies ofthe palace, for those who preceded him to cry out, 'Sharp, sharp, looksharp!' in order to clear the way. Mr. Sharp, who was waiting in a roomjust by (preparing some colours), hearing his name repeated so urgently, ran out in great haste, and came up with all his force against the king, who was passing the door at the time. The young artist was knocked downin the encounter, and the attendants were in the greatest consternation;but the king laughed heartily at the adventure, and took great notice ofthe unfortunate subject of it from that time forward. 

ESSAY XV. ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER

It is astonishing, with all our opportunities and practice, how littlewe know of this subject. For myself, I feel that the more I learn, theless I understand it. 

I remember, several years ago, a conversation in the diligence comingfrom Paris, in which, on its being mentioned that a man had marriedhis wife after thirteen years' courtship, a fellow-countryman ofmine observed, that 'then, at least, he would be acquainted with hercharacter'; when a Monsieur P----, inventor and proprietor of the_Invisible Girl, _ made answer, 'No, not at all; for that the very nextday she might turn out the very reverse of the character that she hadappeared in during all the preceding time. '(1) I could not help admiringthe superior sagacity of the French juggler, and it struck me then thatwe 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, isperhaps the safest, and least liable to deceive: nay, it is that whichmankind, in spite of their pretending to the contrary, most generally goby. Professions pass for nothing, and actions may be counterfeited; buta man cannot help his looks. 'Speech, ' said a celebrated wit, 'was givento man to conceal his thoughts. ' Yet I do not know that the greatesthypocrites are the least silent. The mouth of Cromwell is pursed up inthe 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 ofthe person we are conversing with, to look in his face, for he can moreeasily command his words than his features. A man's whole life may bepicture painted of him by a great artist would probably stamp histrue character on the canvas, and betray the secret to posterity. Men's opinions were divided, in their lifetimes, about such prominentpersonages as Charles V. And Ignatius Loyola, partly, no doubt, frompassion and interest, but partly from contradictory evidence in theirostensible conduct: the spectator, who has ever seen their pictures byTitian, judges of them at once, and truly. I had rather leave a goodportrait of myself behind me than have a fine epitaph. The face, for themost part, tells what we have thought and felt--the rest is nothing. Iprefixed to his poems than from anything he ever wrote. Caesar's_Commentaries_ would not have redeemed him in my opinion, if the bust ofhim had resembled the Duke of Wellington. My old friend Fawcett usedto say, that if Sir Isaac Newton himself had lisped, he could not havethought anything of him. So I cannot persuade myself that any one is agreat man who looks like a fool. In this I may be wrong. 

First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not unfrequently) toour cost when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professionsor actions. A man's look is the work of years, it is stamped on hiscountenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand ofnature, and it is not to be got rid of easily. There is, as it has beenremarked repeatedly, something in a person's appearance at first sightwhich we do not like, and that gives us an odd twinge, but which isoverlooked in a multiplicity of other circumstances, till the mask istaken off, and we see this lurking character verified in the plainestmanner in the sequel. We are struck at first, and by chance, with whatis peculiar and characteristic; also with permanent _traits_ and generaleffect: this afterwards goes off in a set of unmeaning, common-placedetails. This sort of _prima facie_ evidence, then, shows what a man isbetter 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 generalrule. No one, for instance, would take such a person for a very cleverman without knowing who he was. Then, ten to one, he is not: he may havegot the reputation, but it is a mistake. You say, there is Mr. -----, undoubtedly a person of great genius; yet, except when excited bysomething extraordinary, he seems half dead. He has wit at will, yetwants life and spirit. He is capable of the most generous acts, yet meanness seems to cling to every motion. He looks like a poorcreature--and in truth he is one! The first impression he gives you ofhim answers nearly to the feeling he has of his personal identity;and this image of himself, rising from his thoughts, and shrouding hisfaculties, is that which sits with him in the house, walks out with himinto the street, and haunts his bedside. The best part of his existenceis dull, cloudy, leaden: the flashes of light that proceed from it, orstreak it here and there, may dazzle others, but do not deceive himsedeficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justlyundervalued by others. Whatever good properties he may possess are, in fact, neutralised by a 'cold rheum' running through his veins, andtaking away the zest of his pretensions, the pith and marrow of hisperformances. What is it to me that I can write these TABLE-TALKS? Itis true I can, by a reluctant effort, rake up a parcel of half-forgottenobservations, but they do not float on the surface of my mind, norstir it with any sense of pleasure, nor even of pride. Others have moreproperty in them than I have: they may reap the benefit, I have only hadthe pain. Otherwise, they are to me as if they had never existed; norshould I know that I had ever thought at all, but that I am reminded ofit by the strangeness of my appearance, and my unfitness for everythingelse. Look in Coleridge's face while he is talking. His words are suchas 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 movemechanically!

There are people that we do not like, though we may have known themlong, and have no fault to find with them, 'their appearance, as wesay, 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 trueto itself. They may be very good sort of people too, in their way, butstill something is the matter. There is a coldness, a selfishness, alevity, an insincerity, which we cannot fix upon any particular phraseor action, but we see it in their whole persons and deportment. Onereason that we do not see it in any other way may be, that they are allthe time trying to conceal this defect by every means in their power. There is, luckily, a sort of _second sight_ in morals: we discernthe lurking indications of temper and habit a long while before theirpalpable effects appear. I once used to meet with a person at anordinary, a very civil, good-looking man in other respects, but withan odd look about his eyes, which I could not explain, as if he saw youunder their fringed lids, and you could not see him again: this manwas a common sharper. The greatest hypocrite I ever knew was a little, demure, pretty, modest-looking girl, with eyes timidly cast upon theground, and an air soft as enchantment; the only circumstance that couldlead to a suspicion of her true character was a cold, sullen, watery, glazed look about the eyes, which she bent on vacancy, as if determinedto avoid all explanation with yours. I might have spied in theirglittering, motionless surface the rocks and quicksands that awaitedme below! We do not feel quite at ease in the company or friendshipof those who have any natural obliquity or imperfection of person. The reason is, they are not on the best terms with themselves, and aresometimes apt to play off on others the tricks that nature has playedthem. This, however, is a remark that, perhaps, ought not to have beenmade. I know a person to whom it has been objected as a disqualificationfor friendship, that he never shakes you cordially by the hand. I ownthis is a damper to sanguine and florid temperaments, who abound inthese practical demonstrations and 'compliments extern. ' The same personwho testifies the least pleasure at meeting you, is the last to quithis seat in your company, grapples with a subject in conversation rightearnestly, 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 kingof _good haters, _ and a no less zealous partisan. The most phlegmaticconstitutions often contain the most inflammable spirits--a fire isstruck from the hardest flints. 

And this is another reason that makes it difficult to judge ofcharacter. Extremes meet; and qualities display themselves by the mostcontradictory appearances. Any inclination, in consequence ofbeing generally suppressed, vents itself the more violently whenan opportunity presents itself: the greatest grossness sometimesaccompanies the greatest refinement, as a natural relief, one to theother; and we find the most reserved and indifferent tempers at thebeginning of an entertainment, or an acquaintance, turn out the mostcommunicative and cordial at the end of it. Some spirits exhaustthemselves at first: others gain strength by progression. Some mindshave a greater facility of throwing off impressions--are, as it were, more transparent or porous than others. Thus the French present a markedcontrast to the English in this respect. A Frenchman addresses you atonce with a sort of lively indifference: an Englishman is more on hisguard, feels his way, and is either exceedingly reserved, or lets youinto his whole confidence, which he cannot so well impart to an entirestranger. Again, a Frenchman is naturally humane: an Englishman is, Ishould say, only friendly by habit. His virtues and his vices cost himmore than they do his more gay and volatile neighbours. An Englishman issaid to speak his mind more plainly than others, --yes, if it will giveyou 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 areaccused of promising more than they perform. That may be, and yet theymay perform as many good-natured acts as the English, if the latter areas averse to perform as they are to promise. Even the professions of theFrench may be sincere at the time, or arise out of the impulse of themoment; though their desire to serve you may be neither very violent norvery lasting. I cannot think, notwithstanding, that the French are not aserious people; nay, that they are not a more reflecting people thanthe common run of the English. Let those who think them merely light andmercurial explain that enigma, their everlasting prosing tragedy. TheEnglish are considered as comparatively a slow, plodding people. If theFrench are quicker, they are also more plodding. See, for example, howhighly finished and elaborate their works of art are! How systematic andcorrect 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 aretoo grave. ' With wit, sense, cheerfulness, patience, good-nature, andrefinement of manners, all they want is imagination and sturdiness ofmoral principle! Such are some of the contradictions in the characterof the two nations, and so little does the character of either appear tohave been understood! Nothing can be more ridiculous indeed than theway 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, andof partiality on the other. Travellers who set out to carry back atrue report of the case appear to lose not only the use of theirunderstandings, but of their senses, the instant they set foot in aforeign land. The commonest facts and appearances are distorted anddiscoloured. They go abroad with certain preconceived notions on thesubject, and they make everything answer, in reason's spite, to theirfavourite theory. In addition to the difficulty of explaining customsand manners foreign to our own, there are all the obstacles of wilfulprepossession thrown in the way. It is not, therefore, much to bewondered at that nations have arrived at so little knowledge of oneanother's characters; and that, where the object has been to widen thebreach between them, any slight differences that occur are easilyblown into a blaze of fury by repeated misrepresentations, and all theexaggerations that malice or folly can invent!

This ignorance of character is not confined to foreign nations: we areignorant of that of our own countrymen in a class a little below orabove ourselves. We shall hardly pretend to pronounce magisterially onthe good or bad qualities of strangers; and, at the same time, we areignorant of those of our friends, of our kindred, and of our own. We arein all these cases either too near or too far off the object to judge ofit properly. 

Persons, for instance, in a higher or middle rank of life know littleor nothing of the characters of those below them, as servants, countrypeople, etc. I would lay it down in the first place as a general ruleon this subject, that all uneducated people are hypocrites. Their solebusiness is to deceive. They conceive themselves in a state of hostilitywith others, and stratagems are fair in war. The inmates of the kitchenand the parlour are always (as far as respects their feelings andintentions towards each other) in Hobbes's; 'state of nature. ' Servantsand others in that line of life have nothing to exercise their sparetalents for invention upon but those about them. Their superfluouselectrical particles of wit and fancy are not carried off by thoseestablished and fashionable conductors, novels and romances. Theirfaculties are not buried in books, but all alive and stirring, erectand bristling like a cat's back. Their coarse conversation sparkles with'wild wit, invention ever new. ' Their betters try all they can to setthemselves up above them, and they try all they can to pull them down totheir 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 familyfailings, of which there is in general a pretty plentiful supply, ormake up the deficiency of materials out of their own heads. They turnthe qualities of their masters and mistresses inside out, and any realkindness or condescension only sets them the more against you. They arenot to be taken in that way--they will not be baulked in the spite theyhave to you. They only set to work with redoubled alacrity, to lessenthe favour or to blacken your character. They feel themselves like adegraded _caste, _ and cannot understand how the obligations can be allon one side, and the advantages all on the other. You cannot come toequal terms with them--they reject all such overtures as insidious andhollow--nor can you ever calculate upon their gratitude or goodwill, anymore than if they were so many strolling Gipsies or wild Indians. Theyhave no fellow-feeling, they keep no faith with the more privilegedclasses. They are in your power, and they endeavour to be even with youby trick and cunning, by lying and chicanery. In this they have nothingto restrain them. Their whole life is a succession of shifts, excuses, and expedients. The love of truth is a principle with those only whohave made it their study, who have applied themselves to the pursuit ofsome art or science, where the intellect is severely tasked, and learnsby habit to take a pride in, and to set a just value on, the correctnessof its conclusions. To have a disinterested regard to truth, the mindmust have contemplated it in abstract and remote questions; whereas theignorant and vulgar are only conversant with those things in which theirown interest is concerned. All their notions are local, personal, andconsequently gross and selfish. They say whatever comes uppermost--turnwhatever happens to their own account--and invent any story, or give anyanswer that suits their purposes. Instead of being bigoted to generalprinciples, 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 aboutthe matter; and if you find them out in any of their manoeuvres, are notashamed of themselves, but angry with you. If you remonstrate withthem, they laugh in your face. The only hold you have of them is theirinterest--you can but dismiss them from your employment; and _service isno inheritance. _ If they effect anything like decent remorse, and hopeyou will pass it over, all the while they are probably trying to recoverthe wind of you. Persons of liberal knowledge or sentiments have no kindof chance in this sort of mixed intercourse with these barbarians incivilised life. You cannot tell, by any signs or principles, what ispassing 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 expressyourself. Your interests, your feelings are quite distinct. You takecertain things for granted as rules of action: they take nothing forgranted but their own ends, pick up all their knowledge out of their ownoccasions, 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 affecttheir livelihood or advancement, none as it is connected with a senseof propriety; and this sets their mother-wit and native talents at workupon a double file of expedients, to bilk their consciences, and salvetheir reputation. In short, you never know where to have them, any morethan if they were of a different species of animals; and in trusting tothem, you are sure to be betrayed and overreached. You have otherthings to mind; they are thinking only of you, and how to turn you toadvantage. _Give and take_ is no maxim here. You can build nothingon your own moderation or on their false delicacy. After a familiarconversation with a waiter at a tavern, you overhear him calling you bysome provoking nickname. If you make a present to the daughter of thehouse where you lodge, the mother is sure to recollect some addition toher bill. It is a running fight. In fact, there is a principle inhuman nature not willingly to endure the idea of a superior, a sour, jacobinical disposition to wipe out the score of obligation, or effacethe tinsel of external advantages--and where others have the opportunityof coming in contact with us, they generally find the means to establisha sufficiently marked degree of degrading equality. No man is a heroto his valet-de-chambre, is an old maxim. A new illustration of thisprinciple occurred the other day. While Mrs. Siddons was giving herreadings of Shakespear to a brilliant and admiring drawing-room, one ofthe servants in the hall below was saying, 'What, I find the old lady ismaking as much noise as ever!' So little is there in common between thedifferent classes of society, and so impossible is it ever to unite thediversities of custom and knowledge which separate them. 

Women, according to Mrs. Peachum, are 'bitter bad judges' of thecharacters of men; and men are not much better of theirs, if we can formany guess from their choice in marriage. Love is proverbially blind. Thewhole is an affair of whim and fancy. Certain it is that the greatestfavourites with the other sex are not those who are most liked orrespected among their own. I never knew but one clever man who waswhat is called a _lady's man;_ and he (unfortunately for the argument)happened to be a considerable coxcomb. It was by this irresistiblequality, and not by the force of his genius, that he vanquished. Womenseem to doubt their own judgments in love, and to take the opinion whicha man entertains of his own prowess and accomplishments for granted. Thewives of poets are (for the most part) mere pieces of furniture in theroom. If you speak to them of their husbands' talents or reputation inthe 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 orconversation arises, in which men are interested, or try one another'sstrength, the women leave the room, or attend to something else. Thequalities, then, in which men are ambitious to excel, and which ensurethe applause of the world, --eloquence, genius, learning, integrity, --arenot 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 thesole 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 wefind that the same men are universal favourites with women, as othersare uniformly disliked by them. Is not the loadstone that attracts sopowerfully, and in all circumstances, a strong and undisguised biastowards them, a marked attention, a conscious preference of them toevery other passing object or topic? I am not sure, but I inclineto think so. The successful lover is the _cavalier servente_ of allnations. The man of gallantry behaves as if he had made an assignationwith every woman he addresses. An argument immediately draws off myattention from the prettiest woman in the room. I accordingly succeedbetter 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 sometimesimagined to be. We generally make up our minds beforehand to the sort ofperson we should like, --grave or gay, black, brown, or fair; with goldentresses or with raven locks;--and when we meet with a complete exampleof the qualities we admire, the bargain is soon struck. We have neverseen anything to come up to our newly-discovered goddess before, but sheis what we have been all our lives looking for. The idol we fall downand worship is an image familiar to our minds. It has been present toour waking thoughts, it has haunted us in our dreams, like some fairyvision. Oh! thou who, the first time I over beheld thee, didst draw mysoul into the circle of thy heavenly looks, and wave enchantmentround me, do not think thy conquest less complete because it wasinstantaneous; for in that gentle form (as if another Imogen hadentered) I saw all that I had ever loved of female grace, modesty, andsweetness!

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 wesee only as much as we please of one another's characters afterwards. Intimate friends are not fair witnesses to character, any more thanprofessed enemies. They cool, indeed, in time, part, and retain only arankling grudge of past errors and oversights. Their testimony in thelatter case is not quite free from suspicion. 

One would think that near relations, who live constantly together, andalways have done so, must be pretty well acquainted with one another'scharacters. They are nearly in the dark about it. Familiarity confoundsall traits of distinction: interest and prejudice take away the powerof judging. We have no opinion on the subject, any more than of oneanother's faces. The Penates, the household gods, are veiled. We do notsee the features of those we love, nor do we clearly distinguish theirvirtues or their vices. We take them as they are found in the lump, --byweight, and not by measure. We know all about the individuals, theirsentiments, history, manners, words, actions, everything; but we knowall these too much as facts, as inveterate, habitual impressions, as clothed with too many associations, as sanctified with too manyaffections, as woven too much into the web of our hearts, to be able topick out the different threads, to cast up the items of the debtor andcreditor account, or to refer them to any general standard of right andwrong. Our impressions with respect to them are too strong, too real, too much _sui generis, _ to be capable of a comparison with anythingbut themselves. We hardly inquire whether those for whom we are thusinterested, and to whom we are thus knit, are _better_ or _worse_ thanothers--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 arerooted and grow in us, and we cannot eradicate them by voluntary means. Besides, our judgments are bespoke, our interests take part with ourblood. If any doubt arises, if the veil of our implicit confidence isdrawn aside by any accident for a moment, the shock is too great, likethat of a dislocated limb, and we recoil on our habitual impressionsagain. Let not that veil ever be rent entirely asunder, so that thoseimages may be left bare of reverential awe, and lose their religion; fornothing can ever support the desolation of the heart afterwards. 

The greatest misfortune that can happen among relations is a differentway of bringing up, so as to set one another's opinions and charactersin an entirely new point of view. This often lets in an unwelcomedaylight on the subject, and breeds schisms, coldness, and incurableheart-burnings in families. I have sometimes thought whether theprogress of society and march of knowledge does not do more harm in thisrespect, by loosening the ties of domestic attachment, and preventingthose who are most interested in and anxious to think well of oneanother from feeling a cordial sympathy and approbation of eachother's sentiments, manners, views, etc. , than it does good by any realadvantage to the community at large. The son, for instance, is broughtup to the Church, and nothing can exceed the pride and pleasure thefather takes in him while all goes on well in this favourite direction. His notions change, and he imbibes a taste for the Fine Arts. Fromthis moment there is an end of anything like the same unreservedcommunication between them. The young man may talk with enthusiasmof his 'Rembrandts, Correggios, and stuff': it is all _Hebrew_ to theelder; and whatever satisfaction he may feel in the hearing of his son'sprogress, or good wishes for his success, he is never reconciled to thenew pursuit, he still hankers after the first object that he had sethis mind upon. Again, the grandfather is a Calvinist, who never gets thebetter of his disappointment at his son's going over to the Unitarianside of the question. The matter rests here till the grandson, someyears after, in the fashion of the day and 'infinite agitation of men'swit, ' comes to doubt certain points in the creed in which he hasbeen brought up, and the affair is all abroad again. Here are threegenerations made uncomfortable and in a manner set at variance by aveering point of theology, and the officious, meddling biblical critics!Nothing, on the other hand, can be more wretched or common than thatupstart pride and insolent good fortune which is ashamed of its origin;nor are there many things more awkward than the situation of rich andpoor relations. Happy, much happier, are those tribes and people whoare confined to the same _caste_ and way of life from sire to son, whereprejudices are transmitted like instincts, and where the same unvaryingstandard of opinion and refinement blends countless generations in itsimprogressive, everlasting mould!

Not only is there a wilful and habitual blindness in near kindred toeach other's defects, but an incapacity to judge from the quantity ofmaterials, from the contradictoriness of the evidence. The chain ofparticulars is too long and massy for us to lift it or put it into themost approved ethical scales. The concrete result does not answer to anyabstract theory, to any logical definition. There is black, and white, and grey, square and round--there are too many anomalies, too manyredeeming points, in poor human nature, such as it actually is, for usto arrive at a smart, summary decision on it. We know too much to cometo any hasty or partial conclusion. We do not pronounce upon the presentact, because a hundred others rise up to contradict it. We suspend ourjudgments altogether, because in effect one thing unconsciously balancesanother; and perhaps this obstinate, pertinacious indecision would bethe truest philosophy in other cases, where we dispose of the questionof character easily, because we have only the smallest part of theevidence to decide upon. Real character is not one thing, but a thousandthings; actual qualities do not conform to any factitious standard inthe mind, but rest upon their own truth and nature. The dull stuporunder which we labour in respect of those whom we have the greatestopportunities of inspecting nearly, we should do well to imitate beforewe give extreme and uncharitable verdicts against those whom we onlysee in passing or at a distance. If we knew them better, we should bedisposed to say less about them. 

In the truth of things, there are none utterly worthless, none withoutsome drawback on their pretensions or some alloy of imperfection. It hasbeen observed that a familiarity with the worst characters lessens ourabhorrence of them; and a wonder is often expressed that the greatestcriminals look like other men. The reason is that _they are like othermen in many respects. _ If a particular individual was merely the wretchwe read of, or conceive in the abstract, that is, if he was the merepersonified idea of the criminal brought to the bar, he would notdisappoint the spectator, but would look like what he would be--amonster! But he has other qualities, ideas, feelings, nay, probablyvirtues, mixed up with the most profligate habits or desperate acts. This need not lessen our abhorrence of the crime, though it does ofthe criminal; for it has the latter effect only by showing him to us indifferent points of view, in which he appears a common mortal, and notthe 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 itis a charitable view of the subject. In my opinion, no man ever answeredin his own mind (except in the agonies of conscience or of repentance, in which latter case he throws the imputation from himself in anotherway) to the abstract idea of a _murderer. _ He may have killed a manin self-defence, or 'in the trade of war, ' or to save himself fromstarving, or in revenge for an injury, but always 'so as with adifference, ' or from mixed and questionable motives. The individual, inreckoning with himself, always takes into the account the considerationsof time, place, and circumstance, and never makes out a case ofunmitigated, unprovoked villainy, of 'pure defecated evil' againsthimself. There are degrees in real crimes: we reason and moralise onlyby names and in classes. I should be loth, indeed, to say that 'whateveris, is right'; but almost every actual choice inclines to it, with somesort of imperfect, unconscious bias. This is the reason, besides theends of secrecy, of the invention of _slang_ terms for different actsof profligacy committed by thieves, pickpockets, etc. The common namessuggest associations of disgust in the minds of others, which those wholive by them do not willingly recognise, and which they wish to sink ina technical phraseology. So there is a story of a fellow who, as he waswriting down his confession of a murder, stopped to ask how the word_murder_ was spelt; this, if true, was partly because his imaginationwas staggered by the recollection of the thing, and partly because heshrunk 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 fromhimself the _nominal_ crime imputed to him: he might, indeed, havestaggered an old man with a blow, and buried his body in a cave, andlived ever since upon the money he found upon him, but there was 'nomalice in the case, none at all, ' as Peachum says. The very coolness, subtlety, and circumspection of his defence (as masterly a legaldocument 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) Inthe same spirit, and I conceive with great metaphysical truth, Mr. Coleridge, in his tragedy of _Remorse, _ makes Ordonio (his chiefcharacter) wave the acknowledgment of his meditated guilt to his ownmind, 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 ofspeculation from him; but I should not think the worse of it on thataccount. That gentleman, I recollect, once asked me whether I thoughtthat the different members of a family really liked one another so well, or had so much attachment, as was generally supposed; and I said thatI conceived the regard they had towards each other was expressed by theword _interest_ rather than by any other, which he said was the trueanswer. I do not know that I could mend it now. Natural affection isnot pleasure in one another's company, nor admiration of one another'squalities; but it is an intimate and deep knowledge of the things thataffect those to whom we are bound by the nearest ties, with pleasureor pain; it is an anxious, uneasy fellow-feeling with them, a jealouswatchfulness over their good name, a tender and unconquerable yearningfor their good. The love, in short, we bear them is the nearest to thatwe bear ourselves. _Home, _ according to the old saying, _is home, be itnever so homely. _ We love ourselves, not according to our deserts, butour cravings after good: so we love our immediate relations in the nextdegree (if not, even sometimes a higher one), because we know bestwhat they have suffered and what sits nearest to their hearts. We areimplicated, in fact, in their welfare by habit and sympathy, as we arein our own. 

If our devotion to our own interests is much the same as to theirs, weare ignorant of our own characters for the same reason. We are partiestoo much concerned to return a fair verdict, and are too much inthe secret of our own motives or situation not to be able to give afavourable turn to our actions. We exercise a liberal criticism uponourselves, and put off the final decision to a late day. The field islarge and open. Hamlet exclaims, with a noble magnanimity, 'I countmyself 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 muchdifference in his opinion, his self-love is stronger than his love ofvirtue. Hypocrisy is generally used as a mask to deceive the world, notto impose on ourselves: for once detect the delinquent in his knavery, and he laughs in your face or glories in his iniquity. This at leasthappens except where there is a contradiction in the character, and ourvices are involuntary and at variance with our convictions. Onegreat difficulty is to distinguish ostensible motives, or such as weacknowledge to ourselves, from tacit or secret springs of action. A manchanges his opinion readily, he thinks it candour: it is levity of min We are callous by custom to our defects or excellences, unless wherevanity steps in to exaggerate or extenuate them. I cannot conceive howit is that people are in love with their own persons, or astonished attheir own performances, which are but a nine days' wonder to every oneelse. In general it may be laid down that we are liable to this twofoldmistake in judging of our own talents: we, in the first place, nurse therickety bantling, we think much of that which has cost us much painsand labour, and comes against the grain; and we also set little store bywhat we do with most ease to ourselves, and therefore best. The works ofthe greatest genius are produced almost unconsciously, with an ignoranceon the part of the persons themselves that they have done anythingextraordinary. Nature has done it for them. How little Shakespear seemsto have thought of himself or of his fame! Yet, if 'to know anotherwell were to know one's self, ' he must have been acquainted with hisown pretensions and character, 'who knew all qualities with a learnedspirit. ' His eye seems never to have been bent upon himself, butoutwards upon nature. A man who thinks highly of himself may almost setit down that it is without reason. Milton, notwithstanding, appears tohave had a high opinion of himself, and to have made it good. He wasconscious of his powers, and great by design. Perhaps his tenaciousness, on the score of his own merit, might arise from an early habit ofpolemical writing, in which his pretensions were continually called tothe bar of prejudice and party-spirit, and he had to plead not guilty tothe indictment. Some men have died unconscious of immortality, as othershave almost exhausted the sense of it in their lifetimes. Correggiomight be mentioned as an instance of the one, Voltaire of the other. 

There is nothing that helps a man in his conduct through life morethan a knowledge of his own characteristic weaknesses (which, guardedagainst, become his strength), as there is nothing that tends moreto the success of a man's talents than his knowing the limits of hisfaculties, which are thus concentrated on some practicable object. Oneman can do but one thing. Universal pretensions end in nothing. Or, asButler 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 findmany who succeed in certain departments, and are yet melancholy anddissatisfied, because they failed in the one to which they firstdevoted themselves, like discarded lovers who pine after their scornfulmistress. I will conclude with observing that authors in generaloverrate the extent and value of posthumous fame: for what (as it hasbeen asked) is the amount even of Shakespear's fame? That in that verycountry which boasts his genius and his birth, perhaps, scarce oneperson in ten has ever heard of his name or read a syllable of hiswritings!

NOTES to ESSAY XV

(1) 'It is not a year or two shows us a man. '--AEmilia, in _Othello. _

(2) The bones of the murdered man were dug up in an old hermitage. Onthis, as one instance of the acuteness which he displayed all throughthe occasion, Aram remarks, 'Where would you expect to find the bones ofa man sooner than in a hermit's cell, except you were to look for themin a cemetery?'--See _Newgate Calendar_ for the year 1758 or 1759. 

ESSAY XVI. ON THE PICTURESQUE AND IDEAL

(A Fragment)

The natural in visible objects is whatever is ordinarily presented tothe senses: the picturesque is that which stands out and catches theattention by some striking peculiarity: the _ideal_ is that whichanswers to the preconceived imagination and appetite in the mind forlove and beauty. The picturesque depends chiefly on the principle ofdiscrimination or contrast; the _ideal_ on harmony and continuity ofeffect: the one surprises, the other satisfies the mind; the onestarts off from a given point, the other reposes on itself; the oneis determined by an excess of form, the other by a concentration offeeling. 

The picturesque may be considered as something like an excrescenceon the face of nature. It runs imperceptibly into the fantastical andgrotesque. Fairies and satyrs are picturesque; but they are scarcely_ideal. _ They are an extreme and unique conception of a certain thing, but not of what the mind delights in or broods fondly over. The imagecreated by the artist's hand is not moulded and fashioned by the love ofgood and yearning after grace and beauty, but rather the contrary: thatis they are ideal deformity, not ideal beauty. Rubens was perhaps themost picturesque of painters; but he was almost the least _ideal. _ SoRembrandt was (out of sight) the most picturesque of colourists; asCorreggio was the most _ideal. _ In other words, his composition of lightand shade is more a whole, more in unison, more blended into the sameharmonious feeling than Rembrandt's, who staggers by contrast, but doesnot soothe by gradation. Correggio's forms, indeed, had a picturesqueair; for they often incline (even when most beautiful) to the quaintnessof caricature. Vandyke, I think, was at once the least picturesque andleast _ideal_ of all the great painters. He was purely natural, andneither selected from outward forms nor added anything from his ownmind. He owes everything to perfect truth, clearness, and transparency;and though his productions certainly arrest the eye, and strike in aroom full of pictures, it is from the contrast they present to otherpictures, and from being stripped quite naked of all artificialadvantages. They strike almost as a piece of white paper would, hung upin the same situation--I began with saying that whatever stands out froma given line, and as it were projects upon the eye, is picturesque; andthis holds true (comparatively) in form and colour. A rough terrier dog, with the hair bristled and matted together, is picturesque. As we say, there is a decided character in it, a marked determination to anextreme point. A shock-dog is odd and disagreeable, but there is nothingpicturesque in its appearance; it is a mere mass of flimsy confusion. Agoat with projecting horns and pendent beard is a picturesque animal; asheep is not. A horse is only picturesque from opposition of colour;as in Mr. Northcote's study of Gadshill, where the white horse's headcoming against the dark, scowling face of the man makes as fine acontrast as can be imagined. An old stump of a tree with rugged bark, and one or two straggling branches, a little stunted hedge-row line, marking the boundary of the horizon, a stubble-field, a winding path, a rock seen against the sky, are picturesque, because they have all ofthem prominence and a distinctive character of their own. They are notobjects (to borrow Shakespear's phrase) 'of no mark or likelihood. 'A country may be beautiful, romantic, or sublime, without beingpicturesque. The Lakes in the North of England are not picturesque, though certainly the most interesting sight in this country. To be asubject for painting, a prospect must present sharp, striking points ofview or singular forms, or one object must relieve and set off another. There must be distinct stages and salient points for the eye to restupon or start from in its progress over the expanse before it. Thedistance of a landscape will oftentimes look flat or heavy, that thetrunk of a tree or a ruin in the foreground would immediately throwinto perspective and turn to air. Rembrandt's landscapes are the leastpicturesque in the world, except from the straight lines and sharpangles, the deep incision and dragging of his pencil, like a harrowover the ground, and the broad contrast of earth and sky. Earth, in hiscopies, is rough and hairy; and Pan has struck his hoof against it!--Acamel is a picturesque ornament in a landscape or history-piece. This isnot merely from its romantic and oriental character; for an elephant hasnot the same effect, and if introduced as a necessary appendage, is alsoan unwieldy incumbrance. A negro's head in a group is picturesque fromcontrast; so are the spots on a panther's hide. This was the principlethat Paul Veronese went upon, who said the rule for composition was_black upon white, and while upon black. _ He was a pretty good judge. His celebrated picture of the Marriage of Cana is in all likelihood thecompletest piece of workmanship extant in the art. When I saw it, itnearly covered one side of a large room in the Louvre (being itselfforty feet by twenty)--and it seemed as if that side of the apartmentwas thrown open, and you looked out at the open sky, at buildings, marble pillars, galleries with people in them, emperors, female slaves, Turks, negroes, musicians, all the famous painters of the time, thetables loaded with viands, goblets, and dogs under them--a sparkling, overwhelming confusion, a bright, unexpected reality--the only faultyou could find was that no miracle was going on in the faces of thespectators: the only miracle there was the picture itself! A Frenchgentleman, who showed me this 'triumph of painting' (as it has beencalled), perceiving I was struck with it, observed, 'My wife admiresit exceedingly for the facility of the execution. ' I took this proof ofsympathy for a compliment. It is said that when Humboldt, the celebratedtraveller and naturalist, was introduced to Buonaparte, the Emperoraddressed him in these words--_'Vous aimez la botanique, Monsieur'_;and on the other's replying in the affirmative, added, _'Et ma femmeaussi!'_ This has been found fault with as a piece of brutality andinsolence in the great man by bigoted critics, who do not know what athing it is to get a Frenchwoman to agree with them in any point. For mypart, I took the observation as it was meant, and it did not put me outof conceit with myself or the picture that Madame M----liked it as wellas _Monsieur l'Anglois. _ Certainly, there could be no harm in that. Bythe side of it happened to be hung two allegorical pictures of Rubens(and in such matters he too was 'no baby'(1))--I don't remember what thefigures were, but the texture seemed of wool or cotton. The textureof the Paul Veronese was not wool or cotton, but stuff, jewels, flesh, marble, air, whatever composed the essence of the varied subjects, inendless relief and truth of handling. If the Fleming had seen his twoallegories hanging where they did, he would, without a question, havewished them far enough. 

I imagine that Rubens's landscapes are picturesque: Claude's are_ideal. _ Rubens is always in extremes; Claude in the middle. Rubenscarries some one peculiar quality or feature of nature to the utmostverge of probability: Claude balances and harmonises different forms andmasses with laboured delicacy, so that nothing falls short, no onething overpowers another. Rainbows, showers, partial gleams of sunshine, moonlight, are the means with which Rubens produces his most gorgeousand enchanting effects: there are neither rainbows, nor showers, norsudden bursts of sunshine, nor glittering moonbeams in Claude. He is allsoftness and proportion: the other is all spirit and brilliant excess. The two sides (for example) of one of Claude's landscapes balance oneanother, as in a scale of beauty: in Rubens the several objects aregrouped and thrown together with capricious wantonness. Claude has morerepose: Rubens more gaiety and extravagance. And here it might be asked, Is a rainbow a picturesque or an _ideal_ object? It seems to me to beboth. It is an accident in nature; but it is an inmate of the fancy. Itstartles and surprises the sense, but it soothes and tranquillises thespirit. It makes the eye glisten to behold it, but the mind turns toit long after it has faded from its place in the sky. It has bothproperties, then, of giving an extraordinary impulse to the mind by thesingularity of its appearance, and of riveting the imagination by itsintense beauty. I may just notice here in passing, that I think theeffect of moonlight is treated in an _ideal_ manner in the well-knownline in Shakespear--

 See how the moonlight _sleeps_ upon yon bank. 

The image is heightened by the exquisiteness of the expression beyondits natural beauty, and it seems as if there could be no end to thedelight taken in it. --A number of sheep coming to a pool of waterto drink, with shady trees in the background, the rest of the flockfollowing them, and the shepherd and his dog left carelessly behind, is surely the _ideal_ in landscape-composition, if the _ideal_ has itssource in the interest excited by a subject, in its power of drawing theaffections after it linked in a golden chain, and in the desire of themind to dwell on it for ever. The _ideal_, in a word, is the height ofthe pleasing, that which satisfies and accords with the inmost longingof the soul: the picturesque is merely a sharper and bolder impressionof reality. A morning mist drawing a slender veil over all objects isat once picturesque and _ideal_; for it in the first place excitesimmediate surprise and admiration, and in the next a wish for it tocontinue, and a fear lest it should be too soon dissipated. Is the Cupidriding on a lion in the ceiling at Whitehall, and urging him witha spear over a precipice, with only clouds and sky beyond, mostpicturesque or _ideal?_ It has every effect of startling contrast andsituation, and yet inspires breathless expectation and wonder for theevent. Rembrandt's Jacob's Dream, again, is both fearful to the eye, butrealising that loftiest vision of the soul. Take two faces in Leonardoda Vinci's Last Supper, the Judas and the St John: the one is allstrength, repulsive character; the other is all divine grace and mildsensibility. The individual, the characteristic in painting, is that_which is_ in a marked manner--the _ideal_ is that which we wishanything to be, and to contemplate without measure and without end. The first is truth, the last is good. The one appeals to the senseand understanding, the other to the will and the affections. The trulybeautiful and grand attracts the mind to it by instinctive harmony, isabsorbed in it, and nothing can ever part them afterwards. Look ata Madonna of Raphael's: what gives the _ideal_ character to theexpression, --the insatiable purpose of the soul, or its measurelesscontent in the object of its contemplation? A portrait of Vandyke's ismere indifference and still-life in the comparison: it has not in it theprinciple of growing and still unsatisfied desire. In the _ideal_ thereis no fixed stint or limit but the limit of possibility: it is theinfinite with respect to human capacities and wishes. Love is for thisreason an _ideal_ passion. We give to it our all of hope, of fear, ofpresent enjoyment, and stake our last chance of happiness wilfully anddesperately upon it. A good authority puts into the mouth of one of hisheroines--

 My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep!

How many fair catechumens will there be found in all ages to repeat asmuch after Shakespear's Juliet!

NOTES to ESSAY XVI

(1) And surely Mandricardo was no baby. --HARRINGTON's _Ariosto. _

ESSAY XVII. ON THE FEAR OF DEATH

 And our little life is rounded with a sleep. 

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life hasa beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: thisgives us no concern--why, then, should it trouble us that a time willcome when we shall cease to be? I have no wish to have been alive ahundred years ago, or in the reign of Queen Anne: why should I regretand lay it so much to heart that I shall not be alive a hundred yearshence, in the reign of I cannot tell whom?

When Bickerstaff wrote his Essays I knew nothing of the subjectsof them; nay, much later, and but the other day, as it were, in thebeginning of the reign of George III. , when Goldsmith, Johnson, Burke, used to meet at the Globe, when Garrick was in his glory, and Reynoldswas over head and ears with his portraits, and Sterne brought out thevolumes of _Tristram Shandy_ year by year, it was without consulting me:I had not the slightest intimation of what was going on: the debatesin the House of Commons on the American War, or the firing at Bunker'sHill, disturbed not me: yet I thought this no evil--I neither ate, drank, nor was merry, yet I did not complain: I had not then looked outinto this breathing world, yet I was well; and the world did quite aswell without me as I did without it! Why, then, should I make all thisoutcry about parting with it, and being no worse off than I was before?There is nothing in the recollection that at a certain time we were notcome into the world that 'the gorge rises at'--why should we revolt atthe idea that we must one day go out of it? To die is only to be as wewere before we were born; yet no one feels any remorse, or regret, orrepugnance, in contemplating this last idea. It is rather a relief anddisburthening of the mind: it seems to have been holiday-time with usthen: we were not called to appear upon the stage of life, to wearrobes or tatters, to laugh or cry, be hooted or applauded; we had lain_perdus_ all this while, snug, out of harm's way; and had slept out ourthousands of centuries without wanting to be waked up; at peace and freefrom care, in a long nonage, in a sleep deeper and calmer than that ofinfancy, wrapped in the softest and finest dust. And the worst that wedread is, after a short, fretful, feverish being, after vain hopes andidle fears, to sink to final repose again, and forget the troubled dreamof life!. .. Ye armed men, knights templars, that sleep in the stoneaisles of that old Temple church, where all is silent above, and wherea deeper silence reigns below (not broken by the pealing organ), are yenot contented where ye lie? Or would you come out of your long homes togo to the Holy War? Or do ye complain that pain no longer visits you, that sickness has done its worst, that you have paid the last debt tonature, that you hear no more of the thickening phalanx of the foe, oryour lady's waning love; and that while this ball of earth rolls itseternal round, no sound shall ever pierce through to disturb yourlasting repose, fixed as the marble over your tombs, breathless as thegrave that holds you! And thou, oh! thou, to whom my heart turns, andwill turn while it has feeling left, who didst love in vain, and whosefirst was thy last sigh, wilt not thou too rest in peace (or wilt thoucry to me complaining from thy clay-cold bed) when that sad heart is nolonger sad, and that sorrow is dead which thou wert only called into theworld to feel!

It is certain that there is nothing in the idea of a pre-existent statethat excites our longing like the prospect of a posthumous existence. We are satisfied to have begun life when we did; we have no ambitionto have set out on our journey sooner; and feel that we have had quiteenough to do to battle our way through since. We cannot say, The wars we well remember of King Nine, Of old Assaracus and Inachus divine. 

Neither have we any wish: we are contented to read of them in story, andto stand and gaze at the vast sea of time that separates us from them. It was early days then: the world was not _well-aired_ enough for us: wehave no inclination to have been up and stirring. We do not consider thesix thousand years of the world before we were born as so much time lostto us: we are perfectly indifferent about the matter. We do not grieveand lament that we did not happen to be in time to see the grand maskand pageant of human life going on in all that period; though we aremortified at being obliged to quit our stand before the rest of theprocession passes. 

It may be suggested in explanation of this difference, that we know fromvarious records and traditions what happened in the time of Queen Anne, or even in the reigns of the Assyrian monarchs, but that we have nomeans of ascertaining what is to happen hereafter but by awaiting theevent, and that our eagerness and curiosity are sharpened in proportionas we are in the dark about it. This is not at all the case; for at thatrate we should be constantly wishing to make a voyage of discovery toGreenland or to the Moon, neither of which we have, in general, theleast desire to do. Neither, in truth, have we any particular solicitudeto pry into the secrets of futurity, but as a pretext for prolonging ourown existence. It is not so much that we care to be alive a hundred ora thousand years hence, any more than to have been alive a hundred ora thousand years ago: but the thing lies here, that we would all of uswish the present moment to last for ever. We would be as we are, andwould have the world remain just as it is, to please us. 

 The present eye catches the present object--

to have and to hold while it may; and abhors, on any terms, to have ittorn from us, and nothing left in its room. It is the pang of parting, the unloosing our grasp, the breaking asunder some strong tie, theleaving some cherished purpose unfulfilled, that creates the repugnanceto go, and 'makes calamity of so long life, ' as it often is. 

 O! thou strong heart! There's such a covenant 'twixt the world and thee They're loth to break!

The love of life, then, is an habitual attachment, not an abstractprinciple. Simply _to be_ does not 'content man's natural desire': welong to be in a certain time, place, and circumstance. We would muchrather be now, 'on this bank and shoal of time, ' than have our choice ofany future period, than take a slice of fifty or sixty years out of theMillennium, for instance. This shows that our attachment is not confinedeither to _being_ or to _well-being_; but that we have an inveterateprejudice in favour of our immediate existence, such as it is. Themountaineer will not leave his rock, nor the savage his hut; neither arewe willing to give up our present mode of life, with all its advantagesand disadvantages, for any other that could be substituted for it. Noman would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, howeverfortunate. We had as lief _not be_, as _not be ourselves_. There aresome persons of that reach of soul that they would like to live twohundred and fifty years hence, to see to what height of empire Americawill have grown up in that period, or whether the English constitutionwill last so long. These are points beyond me. But I confess I shouldlike to live to see the downfall of the Bourbons. That is a vitalquestion with me; and I shall like it the better, the sooner it happens!

No young man ever thinks he shall die. He may believe that others will, or assent to the doctrine that 'all men are mortal' as an abstractproposition, but he is far enough from bringing it home to himselfindividually. (1) Youth, buoyant activity, and animal spirits, holdabsolute antipathy with old age as well as with death; nor have we, inthe hey-day of life, any more than in the thoughtlessness of childhood, the remotest conception how

 This sensible warm motion can become A kneaded clod--

nor how sanguine, florid health and vigour, shall 'turn to withered, weak, and grey. ' Or if in a moment of idle speculation we indulge inthis notion of the close of life as a theory, it is amazing at what adistance it seems; what a long, leisurely interval there is between;what a contrast its slow and solemn approach affords to our present gaydreams of existence! We eye the farthest verge of the horizon, andthink what a way we shall have to look back upon, ere we arrive at ourjourney's end; and without our in the least suspecting it, the mists areat our feet, and the shadows of age encompass us. The two divisions ofour lives have melted into each other: the extreme points close and meetwith none of that romantic interval stretching out between them thatwe had reckoned upon; and for the rich, melancholy, solemn hues ofage, 'the sear, the yellow leaf, ' the deepening shadows of an autumnalevening, we only feel a dank, cold mist, encircling all objects, afterthe spirit of youth is fled. There is no inducement to look forward;and what is worse, little interest in looking back to what has becomeso trite and common. The pleasures of our existence have wornthemselves out, are 'gone into the wastes of time, ' or have turned theirindifferent side to us: the pains by their repeated blows have worn usout, and have left us neither spirit nor inclination to encounter themagain in retrospect. We do not want to rip up old grievances, nor torenew our youth like the phoenix, nor to live our lives twice over. Onceis enough. As the tree falls, so let it lie. Shut up the book and closethe account once for all!

It has been thought by some that life is like the exploring of apassage that grows narrower and darker the farther we advance, withouta possibility of ever turning back, and where we are stifled for want ofbreath at last. For myself, I do not complain of the greater thicknessof the atmosphere as I approach the narrow house. I felt it moreformerly, (2) when the idea alone seemed to suppress a thousand risinghopes, and weighed upon the pulses of the blood. At present I ratherfeel a thinness and want of support, I stretch out my hand to someobject and find none, I am too much in a world of abstraction; the nakedmap of life is spread out before me, and in the emptiness and desolationI see Death coming to meet me. In my youth I could not behold him forthe crowd of objects and feelings, and Hope stood always between us, saying, 'Never mind that old fellow!' If I had lived indeed, I shouldnot care to die. But I do not like a contract of pleasure broken offunfulfilled, a marriage with joy unconsummated, a promise of happinessrescinded. My public and private hopes have been left a ruin, or remainonly to mock me. I would wish them to be re-edified. I should like tosee some prospect of good to mankind, such as my life began with. Ishould like to leave some sterling work behind me. I should like to havesome friendly hand to consign me to the grave. On these conditions Iam ready, if not willing, to depart. I shall then write on mytomb--GRATEFUL AND CONTENTED! But I have thought and suffered too muchto be willing to have thought and suffered in vain. --In looking back, itsometimes appears to me as if I had in a manner slept out my life in adream or shadow on the side of the hill of knowledge, where I have fedon books, on thoughts, on pictures, and only heard in half-murmurs thetrampling of busy feet, or the noises of the throng below. Waked outof this dim, twilight existence, and startled with the passing scene, Ihave felt a wish to descend to the world of realities, and join in thechase. But I fear too late, and that I had better return to my bookishchimeras and indolence once more! _Zanetto, lascia le donne, et studiala matematica. _ I will think of it. 

It is not wonderful that the contemplation and fear of death become morefamiliar to us as we approach nearer to it: that life seems to ebb withthe decay of blood and youthful spirits; and that as we find everythingabout us subject to chance and change, as our strength and beauty die, as our hopes and passions, our friends and our affections leave us, webegin by degrees to feel ourselves mortal!

I have never seen death but once, and that was in an infant. It is yearsago. The look was calm and placid, and the face was fair and firm. Itwas as if a waxen image had been laid out in the coffin, and strewedwith innocent flowers. It was not like death, but more like an imageof life! No breath moved the lips, no pulse stirred, no sight or soundwould enter those eyes or ears more. While I looked at it, I saw no painwas there; it seemed to smile at the short pang of life which was over:but I could not bear the coffin-lid to be closed--it seemed to stifleme; and still as the nettles wave in a corner of the churchyard overhis little grave, the welcome breeze helps to refresh me, and ease thetightness at my breast!

An ivory or marble image, like Chantry's monument of the two children, is contemplated with pure delight. Why do we not grieve and fret thatthe marble is not alive, or fancy that it has a shortness of breath? Itnever was alive; and it is the difficulty of making the transition fromlife to death, the struggle between the two in our imagination, thatconfounds their properties painfully together, and makes us conceivethat the infant that is but just dead, still wants to breathe, to enjoy, and look about it, and is prevented by the icy hand of death, locking upits faculties and benumbing its senses; so that, if it could, itwould complain of its own hard state. Perhaps religious considerationsreconcile the mind to this change sooner than any others, byrepresenting the spirit as fled to another sphere, and leaving the bodybehind it. So in reflecting on death generally, we mix up the idea oflife with it, and thus make it the ghastly monster it is. We think, howwe should feel, not how the dead feel. 

 Still from the tomb the voice of nature cries; Even in our ashes live their wonted fires!

There is an admirable passage on this subject in Tucker's _Lightof Nature Pursued_, which I shall transcribe, as by much the bestillustration I can offer of it. 

'The melancholy appearance of a lifeless body, the mansion providedfor it to inhabit, dark, cold, close and solitary, are shocking to theimagination; but it is to the imagination only, not the understanding;for whoever consults this faculty will see at first glance, that thereis nothing dismal in all these circumstances: if the corpse were keptwrapped up in a warm bed, with a roasting fire in the chamber, it wouldfeel no comfortable warmth therefrom; were store of tapers lighted up assoon as day shuts in, it would see no objects to divert it; were it leftat large it would have no liberty, nor if surrounded with company wouldbe cheered thereby; neither are the distorted features expressions ofpain, uneasiness, or distress. This every one knows, and will readilyallow upon being suggested, yet still cannot behold, nor even cast athought upon those objects without shuddering; for knowing that aliving person must suffer grievously under such appearances, they becomehabitually formidable to the mind, and strike a mechanical horror, whichis increased by the customs of the world around us. '

There is usually one pang added voluntarily and unnecessarily to thefear of death, by our affecting to compassionate the loss which otherswill have in us. If that were all, we might reasonably set our minds atrest. The pathetic exhortation on country tombstones, 'Grieve not forme, my wife and children dear, ' etc. , is for the most part speedilyfollowed to the letter. We do not leave so great a void in society aswe are inclined to imagine, partly to magnify our own importance, andpartly to console ourselves by sympathy. Even in the same family the gapis not so great; the wound closes up sooner than we should expect. Nay, _our room_ is not unfrequently thought better than _our company. _ Peoplewalk along the streets the day after our deaths just as they did before, and the crowd is not diminished. While we were living, the world seemedin a manner to exist only for us, for our delight and amusement, becauseit contributed to them. But our hearts cease to beat, and it goes onas usual, and thinks no more about us than it did in our lifetime. Themillion are devoid of sentiment, and care as little for you or me as ifwe belonged to the moon. We live the week over in the Sunday's paper, or are decently interred in some obituary at the month's end! It isnot surprising that we are forgotten so soon after we quit this mortalstage; we are scarcely noticed while we are on it. It is not merely thatour names are not known in China--they have hardly been heard of inthe next street. We are hand and glove with the universe, and think theobligation is mutual. This is an evident fallacy. If this, however, doesnot trouble us now, it will not hereafter. A handful of dust can haveno quarrel to pick with its neighbours, or complaint to make againstProvidence, and might well exclaim, if it had but an understanding anda tongue, 'Go thy ways, old world, swing round in blue ether, voluble toevery age, you and I shall no more jostle!'

It is amazing how soon the rich and titled, and even some of those whohave wielded great political power, are forgotten. 

 A little rule, a little sway, Is all the great and mighty have Betwixt the cradle and the grave--

and, after its short date, they hardly leave a name behind them. 'Agreat man's memory may, at the common rate, survive him half a year. 'His heirs and successors take his titles, his power, and his wealth--allthat made him considerable or courted by others; and he has left nothingelse behind him either to delight or benefit the world. Posterity arenot by any means so disinterested as they are supposed to be. They givetheir gratitude and admiration only in return for benefits conferred. They cherish the memory of those to whom they are indebted forinstruction and delight; and they cherish it just in proportion to theinstruction and delight they are conscious they receive. The sentimentof admiration springs immediately from this ground, and cannot beotherwise than well founded. (3)

The effeminate clinging to life as such, as a general or abstract idea, is the effect of a highly civilised and artificial state of society. Menformerly plunged into all the vicissitudes and dangers of war, or stakedtheir all upon a single die, or some one passion, which if they couldnot have gratified, life became a burden to them--now our strongestpassion is to think, our chief amusement is to read new plays, newpoems, new novels, and this we may do at our leisure, in perfectsecurity, _ad infinitum_. If we look into the old histories andromances, before the _belles-lettres_ neutralised human affairs andreduced passion to a state of mental equivocation, we find the heroesand heroines not setting their lives 'at a pin's fee, ' but rathercourting opportunities of throwing them away in very wantonness ofspirit. They raise their fondness for some favourite pursuit to itsheight, to a pitch of madness, and think no price too dear to pay forits full gratification. Everything else is dross. They go to death as toa bridal bed, and sacrifice themselves or others without remorse at theshrine of love, of honour, of religion, or any other prevailing feeling. Romeo runs his 'sea-sick, weary bark upon the rocks' of death theinstant he finds himself deprived of his Juliet; and she clasps hisneck in their last agonies, and follows him to the same fatal shore. Onestrong idea takes possession of the mind and overrules every other;and even life itself, joyless without that, becomes an object ofindifference or loathing. There is at least more of imagination in sucha state of things, more vigour of feeling and promptitude to act, thanin our lingering, languid, protracted attachment to life for its ownpoor sake. It is, perhaps, also better, as well as more heroical, tostrike at some daring or darling object, and if we fail in that, totake the consequences manfully, than to renew the lease of a tedious, spiritless, charmless existence, merely (as Pierre says) 'to lose itafterwards in some vile brawl' for some worthless object. Was therenot a spirit of martyrdom as well as a spice of the reckless energy ofbarbarism in this bold defiance of death? Had not religion something todo with it: the implicit belief in a future life, which rendered this ofless value, and embodied something beyond it to the imagination; sothat the rough soldier, the infatuated lover, the valorous knight, etc. , could afford to throw away the present venture, and take a leap into thearms of futurity, which the modern sceptic shrinks back from, with allhis boasted reason and vain philosophy, weaker than a woman! I cannothelp thinking so myself; but I have endeavoured to explain this pointbefore, and will not enlarge farther on it here. 

A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not onlygives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every step theprecarious tenure on which we hold our present being. Sedentary andstudious men are the most apprehensive on this score. Dr. Johnson wasan instance in point. A few years seemed to him soon over, compared withthose sweeping contemplations on time and infinity with which he hadbeen used to pose himself. In the _still-life_ of a man of letters therewas no obvious reason for a change. He might sit in an arm-chair andpour out cups of tea to all eternity. Would it had been possible for himto do so! The most rational cure after all for the inordinate fear ofdeath is to set a just value on life. If we merely wish to continue onthe scene to indulge our headstrong humours and tormenting passions, we had better begone at once; and if we only cherish a fondness forexistence according to the good we derive from it, the pang we feel atparting with it will not be very severe!

NOTES to ESSAY XVII

(1) All men think all men mortal but themselves. --YOUNG. 

(2) I remember once, In particular, having this feeling in readingSchiller's _Don Carlos_, where there is a description of death, in adegree that almost stifled me. 

(3) It has been usual to raise a very unjust clamour against theenormous salaries of public singers, actors, and so on. This matterseems reducible to a moral equation. They are paid out of money raisedby voluntary contributions in the strictest sense; and if they did notbring certain sums into the treasury, the managers would not engagethem. These sums are exactly in proportion to the number of Individualsto whom their performance gives an extraordinary degree of pleasure. Thetalents of a singer, actor, etc. , are therefore worth just as much asthey will fetch.