Winterslow: Essays and Characters Written There
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Title: Winterslow: Essays and Characters Written There
Author: William Hazlitt
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WINTERSLOW: ESSAYS AND CHARACTERS WRITTEN THERE ***
Produced by Sam W. and the Online Distributed Proofreading
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WINTERSLOW
ESSAYS AND CHARACTERS
WRITTEN THERE
BY
WILLIAM HAZLITT
[Decoration]
LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS
48 LEICESTER SQUARE
1902
The World's Classics
XXV
THE WORKS OF
WILLIAM HAZLITT--III
WINTERSLOW
ESSAYS AND CHARACTERS
WRITTEN THERE
_These Essays were first published collectively in the year
1839. In 'The World's Classics' they were first published in
1902._
Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. Constable
The World's Classics
I.
JANE EYRE. By Charlotte Bronte. [_Second Impression._
II.
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. By Charles Lamb. [_Second Impression._
III.
THE POEMS OF ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, 1830-1858. [_Second
Impression._
IV.
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. By Oliver Goldsmith.
V.
TABLE-TALK: Essays on Men and Manners. By William Hazlitt.
[_Second Impression._
VI.
ESSAYS. By Ralph Waldo Emerson. [_Second Impression._
VII.
THE POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN KEATS. [_Second Impression._
VIII.
OLIVER TWIST. By Charles Dickens.
IX.
THE INGOLDSBY LEGENDS. By Thomas Ingoldsby. [_Second
Impression._
X.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS. By Emily Bronte.
XI.
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. By Charles Darwin. [_Second
Impression._
XII.
THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. By John Bunyan.
XIII.
ENGLISH SONGS AND BALLADS. Selected by T. W. H. Crosland.
XIV.
SHIRLEY. By Charlotte Bronte.
XV.
SKETCHES AND ESSAYS. By William Hazlitt.
XVI.
THE POEMS OF ROBERT HERRICK.
XVII.
ROBINSON CRUSOE. By Daniel Defoe.
XVIII.
HOMER'S ILIAD. Translated by Alexander Pope.
XIX.
SARTOR RESARTUS. By Thomas Carlyle.
XX.
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. By Jonathan Swift.
XXI.
TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION. By Edgar Allan Poe.
XXII.
NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. By Gilbert White.
XXIII.
CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM EATER. By T. De Quincey.
XXIV.
BACON'S ESSAYS.
XXV.
WINTERSLOW. By William Hazlitt.
XXVI.
THE SCARLET LETTER. By Nathaniel Hawthorne.
XXVII.
LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME. By Lord Macaulay.
XXVIII.
HENRY ESMOND. By W. M. Thackeray.
XXIX.
IVANHOE. By Sir Walter Scott.
_Other volumes in preparation._
Pott 8vo. Cloth, 1s. net. Leather, 2s. net.
PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1850
Winterslow is a village of Wiltshire, between Salisbury and Andover,
where my father, during a considerable portion of his life, spent
several months of each year, latterly, at an ancient inn on the Great
Western Road, called Winterslow Hut. One of his chief attractions
hither were the noble woods of Tytherleigh or Tudorleigh, round Norman
Court, the seat of Mr. Baring Wall, M.P., whose proffered kindness to
my father, on a critical occasion, was thoroughly appreciated by the
very sensitiveness which declined its acceptance, and will always be
gratefully remembered by myself. Another feature was Clarendon
Wood--whence the noble family of Clarendon derived their title--famous
besides for the Constitutions signed in the palace which once rose
proudly amongst its stately trees, but of which scarce a vestige
remains. In another direction, within easy distance, gloams
Stonehenge, visited by my father, less perhaps for its historical
associations than for its appeal to the imagination, the upright
stones seeming in the dim twilight, or in the drizzling mist, almost
continuous in the locality, so many spectre-Druids, moaning over the
past, and over their brethren prostrate about them. At no great
distance, in another direction, are the fine pictures of Lord Radnor,
and somewhat further, those of Wilton House. But the chief happiness
was the thorough quiet of the place, the sole interruption of which
was the passage, to and fro, of the London mails. The Hut stands in a
valley, equidistant about a mile from two tolerably high hills, at the
summit of which, on their approach either way, the guards used to blow
forth their admonition to the hostler. The sound, coming through the
clear, pure air, was another agreeable feature in the day,
reminiscentiary of the great city that my father so loved and so
loathed. In olden times, when we lived in the village itself--a mile
up the hill opposite--behind the Hut, Salisbury Plain stretches away
mile after mile of open space--the reminiscence of the metropolis
would be, from time to time, furnished in the pleasantest of ways by
the presence of some London friends; among these, dearly loved and
honoured there, as everywhere else, Charles and Mary Lamb paid us
frequent visits, rambling about all the time, thorough Londoners in a
thoroughly country place, delighted and wondering and wondered at. For
such reasons, and for the other reason, which I mention incidentally,
that Winterslow is my own native place, I have given its name to this
collection of 'Essays and Characters written there'; as, indeed,
practically were very many of his works, for it was there that most of
his thinking was done.
William Hazlitt.
Chelsea, _Jan. 1850_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 1
II. OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN 24
III. ON PARTY SPIRIT 40
IV. ON THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH 45
V. ON PUBLIC OPINION 53
VI. ON PERSONAL IDENTITY 67
VII. MIND AND MOTIVE 82
VIII. ON MEANS AND ENDS 97
IX. MATTER AND MANNER 108
X. ON CONSISTENCY OF OPINION 115
XI. PROJECT FOR A NEW THEORY OF CIVIL AND
CRIMINAL LEGISLATION 130
XII. ON THE CHARACTER OF BURKE 155
XIII. ON THE CHARACTER OF FOX 173
XIV. ON THE CHARACTER OF MR. PITT 185
XV. ON THE CHARACTER OF LORD CHATHAM 191
XVI. BELIEF, WHETHER VOLUNTARY? 196
XVII. A FAREWELL TO ESSAY-WRITING 205
HAZLITT'S ESSAYS
ESSAY I
MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS
My father was a Dissenting Minister, at Wem, in Shropshire; and in the
year 1798 (the figures that compose the date are to me like the
'dreaded name of Demogorgon') Mr. Coleridge came to Shrewsbury, to
succeed Mr. Rowe in the spiritual charge of a Unitarian Congregation
there. He did not come till late on the Saturday afternoon before he
was to preach; and Mr. Rowe, who himself went down to the coach, in a
state of anxiety and expectation, to look for the arrival of his
successor, could find no one at all answering the description but a
round-faced man, in a short black coat (like a shooting-jacket) which
hardly seemed to have been made for him, but who seemed to be talking
at a great rate to his fellow passengers. Mr. Rowe had scarce returned
to give an account of his disappointment when the round-faced man in
black entered, and dissipated all doubts on the subject by beginning
to talk. He did not cease while he stayed; nor has he since, that I
know of. He held the good town of Shrewsbury in delightful suspense
for three weeks that he remained there, 'fluttering the _proud
Salopians_, like an eagle in a dove-cote'; and the Welch mountains
that skirt the horizon with their tempestuous confusion, agree to have
heard no such mystic sounds since the days of
'High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay.'
As we passed along between Wem and Shrewsbury, and I eyed their blue
tops seen through the wintry branches, or the red rustling leaves of
the sturdy oak-trees by the road-side, a sound was in my ears as of a
Syren's song; I was stunned, startled with it, as from deep sleep; but
I had no notion then that I should ever be able to express my
admiration to others in motley imagery or quaint allusion, till the
light of his genius shone into my soul, like the sun's rays glittering
in the puddles of the road. I was at that time dumb, inarticulate,
helpless, like a worm by the way-side, crushed, bleeding, lifeless;
but now, bursting the deadly bands that bound them,
'With Styx nine times round them,'
my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes, catch
the golden light of other years. My soul has indeed remained in its
original bondage, dark, obscure, with longings infinite and
unsatisfied; my heart, shut up in the prison-house of this rude clay,
has never found, nor will it ever find, a heart to speak to; but that
my understanding also did not remain dumb and brutish, or at length
found a language to express itself, I owe to Coleridge. But this is
not to my purpose.
My father lived ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was in the habit of
exchanging visits with Mr. Rowe, and with Mr. Jenkins of Whitchurch
(nine miles farther on), according to the custom of Dissenting
Ministers in each other's neighbourhood. A line of communication is
thus established, by which the flame of civil and religious liberty is
kept alive, and nourishes its smouldering fire unquenchable, like the
fires in the _Agamemnon_ of AEschylus, placed at different stations,
that waited for ten long years to announce with their blazing pyramids
the destruction of Troy. Coleridge had agreed to come over and see my
father, according to the courtesy of the country, as Mr. Rowe's
probable successor; but in the meantime, I had gone to hear him preach
the Sunday after his arrival. A poet and a philosopher getting up
into a Unitarian pulpit to preach the gospel, was a romance in these
degenerate days, a sort of revival of the primitive spirit of
Christianity, which was not to be resisted.
It was in January of 1798, that I rose one morning before daylight, to
walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person preach.
Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk
as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798.
_Il y a des impressions que ni le tems ni les circonstances peuvent
effacer. Dusse-je vivre des siecles entiers, le doux tems de ma
jeunesse ne peut renaitre pour moi, ni s'effacer jamais dans ma
memoire._ When I got there, the organ was playing the 100th Psalm, and
when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text, 'And he
went up into the mountain to pray, HIMSELF, ALONE.' As he gave out
this text, his voice 'rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,'
and when he came to the two last words, which he pronounced loud,
deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young, as if the
sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if that
prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the universe. The
idea of St. John came into my mind, 'of one crying in the wilderness,
who had his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts and wild
honey.' The preacher then launched into his subject, like an eagle
dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon peace and war; upon church
and state--not their alliance but their separation--on the spirit of
the world and the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as
opposed to one another. He talked of those who had 'inscribed the
cross of Christ on banners dripping with human gore.' He made a
poetical and pastoral excursion--and to show the fatal effects of war,
drew a striking contrast between the simple shepherd-boy, driving his
team afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, 'as
though he should never be old.' and the same poor country lad,
crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse,
turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with
powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the
loathsome finery of the profession of blood:
'Such were the notes our once-loved poet sung.'
And for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard
the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together.
Truth and Genius had embraced, under the eye and with the sanction of
Religion. This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well
satisfied. The sun that was still labouring pale and wan through the
sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an emblem of the _good cause_;
and the cold dank drops of dew, that hung half melted on the beard of
the thistle, had something genial and refreshing in them; for there
was a spirit of hope and youth in all nature, that turned everything
into good. The face of nature had not then the brand of JUS DIVINUM on
it:
'Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe.'
On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker came. I was called
down into the room where he was, and went half-hoping, half-afraid. He
received me very graciously, and I listened for a long time without
uttering a word. I did not suffer in his opinion by my silence. 'For
those two hours,' he afterwards was pleased to say, 'he was conversing
with William Hazlitt's forehead!' His appearance was different from
what I had anticipated from seeing him before. At a distance, and in
the dim light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wildness in his
aspect, a dusky obscurity, and I thought him pitted with the
small-pox. His complexion was at that time clear, and even bright--
'As are the children of yon azure sheen.'
His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with
large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them, like a
sea with darkened lustre. 'A certain tender bloom his face
o'erspread,' a purple tinge as we see it in the pale thoughtful
complexions of the Spanish portrait-painters, Murillo and Valasquez.
His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his chin
good-humoured and round; but his nose, the rudder of the face, the
index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing--like what he has done.
It might seem that the genius of his face as from a height surveyed
and projected him (with sufficient capacity and huge aspiration) into
the world unknown of thought and imagination, with nothing to support
or guide his veering purpose, as if Columbus had launched his
adventurous course for the New World in a scallop, without oars or
compass. So, at least, I comment on it after the event. Coleridge, in
his person, was rather above the common size, inclining to the
corpulent, or like Lord Hamlet, 'somewhat fat and pursy.' His hair
(now, alas! grey) was then black and glossy as the raven's, and fell
in smooth masses over his forehead. This long pendulous hair is
peculiar to enthusiasts, to those whose minds tend heavenward; and is
traditionally inseparable (though of a different colour) from the
pictures of Christ. It ought to belong, as a character, to all who
preach _Christ crucified_, and Coleridge was at that time one of
those!
It was curious to observe the contrast between him and my father, who
was a veteran in the cause, and then declining into the vale of years.
He had been a poor Irish lad, carefully brought up by his parents, and
sent to the University of Glasgow (where he studied under Adam Smith)
to prepare him for his future destination. It was his mother's
proudest wish to see her son a Dissenting Minister. So, if we look
back to past generations (as far as eye can reach), we see the same
hopes, fears, wishes, followed by the same disappointments, throbbing
in the human heart; and so we may see them (if we look forward) rising
up for ever, and disappearing, like vapourish bubbles, in the human
breast! After being tossed about from congregation to congregation in
the heats of the Unitarian controversy, and squabbles about the
American war, he had been relegated to an obscure village, where he
was to spend the last thirty years of his life, far from the only
converse that he loved, the talk about disputed texts of Scripture,
and the cause of civil and religious liberty. Here he passed his days,
repining, but resigned, in the study of the Bible, and the perusal of
the Commentators--huge folios, not easily got through, one of which
would outlast a winter! Why did he pore on these from morn to night
(with the exception of a walk in the fields or a turn in the garden to
gather broccoli-plants or kidney beans of his own rearing, with no
small degree of pride and pleasure)? Here were 'no figures nor no
fantasies'--neither poetry nor philosophy--nothing to dazzle, nothing
to excite modern curiosity; but to his lack-lustre eyes there appeared
within the pages of the ponderous, unwieldy, neglected tomes, the
sacred name of JEHOVAH in Hebrew capitals: pressed down by the weight
of the style, worn to the last fading thinness of the understanding,
there were glimpses, glimmering notions of the patriarchal wanderings,
with palm-trees hovering in the horizon, and processions of camels at
the distance of three thousand years; there was Moses with the Burning
Bush, the number of the Twelve Tribes, types, shadows, glosses on the
law and the prophets; there were discussions (dull enough) on the age
of Methuselah, a mighty speculation! there were outlines, rude guesses
at the shape of Noah's Ark and of the riches of Solomon's Temple;
questions as to the date of the creation, predictions of the end of
all things; the great lapses of time, the strange mutations of the
globe were unfolded with the voluminous leaf, as it turned over; and
though the soul might slumber with an hieroglyphic veil of inscrutable
mysteries drawn over it, yet it was in a slumber ill-exchanged for all
the sharpened realities of sense, wit, fancy, or reason. My father's
life was comparatively a dream; but it was a dream of infinity and
eternity, of death, the resurrection, and a judgment to come!
No two individuals were ever more unlike than were the host and his
guest. A poet was to my father a sort of nondescript; yet whatever
added grace to the Unitarian cause was to him welcome. He could hardly
have been more surprised or pleased, if our visitor had worn wings.
Indeed, his thoughts had wings: and as the silken sounds rustled round
our little wainscoted parlour, my father threw back his spectacles
over his forehead, his white hairs mixing with its sanguine hue; and a
smile of delight beamed across his rugged, cordial face, to think that
Truth had found a new ally in Fancy![1] Besides, Coleridge seemed to
take considerable notice of me, and that of itself was enough. He
talked very familiarly, but agreeably, and glanced over a variety of
subjects. At dinner-time he grew more animated, and dilated in a very
edifying manner on Mary Wolstonecraft and Mackintosh. The last, he
said, he considered (on my father's speaking of his _Vindiciae Gallicae_
as a capital performance) as a clever, scholastic man--a master of the
topics--or, as the ready warehouseman of letters, who knew exactly
where to lay his hand on what he wanted, though the goods were not his
own. He thought him no match for Burke, either in style or matter.
Burke was a metaphysician, Mackintosh a mere logician. Burke was an
orator (almost a poet) who reasoned in figures, because he had an eye
for nature: Mackintosh, on the other hand, was a rhetorician, who had
only an eye to commonplaces. On this I ventured to say that I had
always entertained a great opinion of Burke, and that (as far as I
could find) the speaking of him with contempt might be made the test
of a vulgar, democratical mind. This was the first observation I ever
made to Coleridge, and he said it was a very just and striking one. I
remember the leg of Welsh mutton and the turnips on the table that day
had the finest flavour imaginable. Coleridge added that Mackintosh and
Tom Wedgwood (of whom, however, he spoke highly) had expressed a very
indifferent opinion of his friend Mr. Wordsworth, on which he remarked
to them--'He strides on so far before you, that he dwindles in the
distance!' Godwin had once boasted to him of having carried on an
argument with Mackintosh for three hours with dubious success;
Coleridge told him--'If there had been a man of genius in the room he
would have settled the question in five minutes.' He asked me if I had
ever seen Mary Wolstonecraft, and I said, I had once for a few
moments, and that she seemed to me to turn off Godwin's objections to
something she advanced with quite a playful, easy air. He replied,
that 'this was only one instance of the ascendency which people of
imagination exercised over those of mere intellect.' He did not rate
Godwin very high[2] (this was caprice or prejudice, real or affected),
but he had a great idea of Mrs. Wolstonecraft's powers of
conversation; none at all of her talent for bookmaking. We talked a
little about Holcroft. He had been asked if he was not much struck
_with_ him, and he said, he thought himself in more danger of being
struck _by_ him. I complained that he would not let me get on at all,
for he required a definition of every the commonest word, exclaiming,
'What do you mean by a _sensation_, Sir? What do you mean by an
_idea_?' This, Coleridge said, was barricadoing the road to truth; it
was setting up a turnpike-gate at every step we took. I forget a great
number of things, many more than I remember; but the day passed off
pleasantly, and the next morning Mr. Coleridge was to return to
Shrewsbury. When I came down to breakfast, I found that he had just
received a letter from his friend, T. Wedgwood, making him an offer of
150_l._ a year if he chose to waive his present pursuit, and devote
himself entirely to the study of poetry and philosophy. Coleridge
seemed to make up his mind to close with this proposal in the act of
tying on one of his shoes. It threw an additional damp on his
departure. It took the wayward enthusiast quite from us to cast him
into Deva's winding vales, or by the shores of old romance. Instead of
living at ten miles' distance, of being the pastor of a Dissenting
congregation at Shrewsbury, he was henceforth to inhabit the Hill of
Parnassus, to be a Shepherd on the Delectable Mountains. Alas! I knew
not the way thither, and felt very little gratitude for Mr. Wedgwood's
bounty. I was presently relieved from this dilemma; for Mr. Coleridge,
asking for a pen and ink, and going to a table to write something on a
bit of card, advanced towards me with undulating step, and giving me
the precious document, said that that was his address, _Mr. Coleridge,
Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire_; and that he should be glad to see me
there in a few weeks' time, and, if I chose, would come half-way to
meet me. I was not less surprised than the shepherd-boy (this simile
is to be found in _Cassandra_), when he sees a thunderbolt fall close
at his feet. I stammered out my acknowledgments and acceptance of this
offer (I thought Mr. Wedgwood's annuity a trifle to it) as well as I
could; and this mighty business being settled, the poet preacher took
leave, and I accompanied him six miles on the road. It was a fine
morning in the middle of winter, and he talked the whole way. The
scholar in Chaucer is described as going
----'Sounding on his way.'
So Coleridge went on his. In digressing, in dilating, in passing from
subject to subject, he appeared to me to float in air, to slide on
ice. He told me in confidence (going along) that he should have
preached two sermons before he accepted the situation at Shrewsbury,
one on Infant Baptism, the other on the Lord's Supper, showing that he
could not administer either, which would have effectually disqualified
him for the object in view. I observed that he continually crossed me
on the way by shifting from one side of the footpath to the other.
This struck me as an odd movement; but I did not at that time connect
it with any instability of purpose or involuntary change of principle,
as I have done since. He seemed unable to keep on in a straight line.
He spoke slightingly of Hume (whose _Essay on Miracles_ he said was
stolen from an objection started in one of South's sermons--_Credat
Judaeus Appella!_) I was not very much pleased at this account of Hume,
for I had just been reading, with infinite relish, that completest of
all metaphysical _chokepears_, his _Treatise on Human Nature_, to
which the _Essays_ in point of scholastic subtility and close
reasoning, are mere elegant trifling, light summer reading. Coleridge
even denied the excellence of Hume's general style, which I think
betrayed a want of taste or candour. He however made me amends by the
manner in which he spoke of Berkeley. He dwelt particularly on his
_Essay on Vision_ as a masterpiece of analytical reasoning. So it
undoubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry with Dr. Johnson for striking
the stone with his foot, in allusion to this author's _Theory of
Matter and Spirit_, and saying, 'Thus I confute him, Sir.' Coleridge
drew a parallel (I don't know how he brought about the connection)
between Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine. He said the one was an instance
of a subtle, the other of an acute mind, than which no two things
could be more distinct. The one was a shop-boy's quality, the other
the characteristic of a philosopher. He considered Bishop Butler as a
true philosopher, a profound and conscientious thinker, a genuine
reader of nature and his own mind. He did not speak of his _Analogy_,
but of his _Sermons at the Rolls' Chapel_, of which I had never heard.
Coleridge somehow always contrived to prefer the _unknown_ to the
_known_. In this instance he was right. The _Analogy_ is a tissue of
sophistry, of wire-drawn, theological special-pleading; the _Sermons_
(with the preface to them) are in a fine vein of deep, matured
reflection, a candid appeal to our observation of human nature,
without pedantry and without bias. I told Coleridge I had written a
few remarks, and was sometimes foolish enough to believe that I had
made a discovery on the same subject (the _Natural disinterestedness
of the Human Mind_)--and I tried to explain my view of it to
Coleridge, who listened with great willingness, but I did not succeed
in making myself understood. I sat down to the task shortly afterwards
for the twentieth time, got new pens and paper, determined to make
clear work of it, wrote a few meagre sentences in the skeleton style
of a mathematical demonstration, stopped half-way down the second
page; and, after trying in vain to pump up any words, images, notions,
apprehensions, facts, or observations, from that gulf of abstraction
in which I had plunged myself for four or five years preceding, gave
up the attempt as labour in vain, and shed tears of helpless
despondency on the blank, unfinished paper. I can write fast enough
now. Am I better than I was then? Oh no! One truth discovered, one
pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the
fluency and flippancy in the world. Would that I could go back to what
I then was! Why can we not revive past times as we can revisit old
places? If I had the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I
would write a _Sonnet to the Road between Wem and Shrewsbury_, and
immortalise every step of it by some fond enigmatical conceit. I would
swear that the very milestones had ears, and that Harmer hill stooped
with all its pines, to listen to a poet, as he passed! I remember but
one other topic of discourse in this walk. He mentioned Paley,
praised the naturalness and clearness of his style, but condemned his
sentiments, thought him a mere time-serving casuist, and said that
'the fact of his work on Moral and Political Philosophy being made a
text-book in our Universities was a disgrace to the national
character.' We parted at the six-mile stone; and I returned homeward,
pensive, but much pleased. I had met with unexpected notice from a
person whom I believed to have been prejudiced against me. 'Kind and
affable to me had been his condescension, and should be honoured ever
with suitable regard.' He was the first poet I had known, and he
certainly answered to that inspired name. I had heard a great deal of
his powers of conversation and was not disappointed. In fact, I never
met with anything at all like them, either before or since. I could
easily credit the accounts which were circulated of his holding forth
to a large party of ladies and gentlemen, an evening or two before, on
the Berkeleian Theory, when he made the whole material universe look
like a transparency of fine words; and another story (which I believe
he has somewhere told himself) of his being asked to a party at
Birmingham, of his smoking tobacco and going to sleep after dinner on
a sofa, where the company found him, to their no small surprise, which
was increased to wonder when he started up of a sudden, and rubbing
his eyes, looked about him, and launched into a three hours'
description of the third heaven, of which he had had a dream, very
different from Mr. Southey's _Vision of Judgment_, and also from that
other _Vision of Judgment_, which Mr. Murray, the Secretary of the
Bridge-street Junta, took into his especial keeping.
On my way back I had a sound in my ears--it was the voice of Fancy; I
had a light before me--it was the face of Poetry. The one still
lingers there, the other has not quitted my side! Coleridge, in truth,
met me half-way on the ground of philosophy, or I should not have been
won over to his imaginative creed. I had an uneasy, pleasurable
sensation all the time, till I was to visit him. During those months
the chill breath of winter gave me a welcoming; the vernal air was
balm and inspiration to me. The golden sunsets, the silver star of
evening, lighted me on my way to new hopes and prospects. _I was to
visit Coleridge in the spring._ This circumstance was never absent
from my thoughts, and mingled with all my feelings. I wrote to him at
the time proposed, and received an answer postponing my intended visit
for a week or two, but very cordially urging me to complete my promise
then. This delay did not damp, but rather increased my ardour. In the
meantime, I went to Llangollen Vale, by way of initiating myself in
the mysteries of natural scenery; and I must say I was enchanted with
it. I had been reading Coleridge's description of England in his fine
_Ode on the Departing Year_, and I applied it, _con amore_, to the
objects before me. That valley was to me (in a manner) the cradle of a
new existence: in the river that winds through it, my spirit was
baptized in the waters of Helicon!
I returned home, and soon after set out on my journey with unworn
heart, and untired feet. My way lay through Worcester and Gloucester,
and by Upton, where I thought of Tom Jones and the adventure of the
muff. I remember getting completely wet through one day, and stopping
at an inn (I think it was at Tewkesbury) where I sat up all night to
read _Paul and Virginia_. Sweet were the showers in early youth that
drenched my body, and sweet the drops of pity that fell upon the books
I read! I recollect a remark of Coleridge's upon this very book that
nothing could show the gross indelicacy of French manners and the
entire corruption of their imagination more strongly than the
behaviour of the heroine in the last fatal scene, who turns away from
a person on board the sinking vessel, that offers to save her life,
because he has thrown off his clothes to assist him in swimming. Was
this a time to think of such a circumstance? I once hinted to
Wordsworth, as we were sailing in his boat on Grasmere lake, that I
thought he had borrowed the idea of his _Poems on the Naming of
Places_ from the local inscriptions of the same kind in _Paul and
Virginia_. He did not own the obligation, and stated some distinction
without a difference in defence of his claim to originality. Any, the
slightest variation, would be sufficient for this purpose in his mind;
for whatever _he_ added or altered would inevitably be worth all that
any one else had done, and contain the marrow of the sentiment. I was
still two days before the time fixed for my arrival, for I had taken
care to set out early enough. I stopped these two days at Bridgewater;
and when I was tired of sauntering on the banks of its muddy river,
returned to the inn and read _Camilla_. So have I loitered my life
away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing,
thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one
thing to make me happy; but wanting that have wanted everything!
I arrived, and was well received. The country about Nether Stowey is
beautiful, green and hilly, and near the sea-shore. I saw it but the
other day, after an interval of twenty years, from a hill near
Taunton. How was the map of my life spread out before me, as the map
of the country lay at my feet! In the afternoon, Coleridge took me
over to All-Foxden, a romantic old family mansion of the St. Aubins,
where Wordsworth lived. It was then in the possession of a friend of
the poet's, who gave him the free use of it. Somehow, that period (the
time just after the French Revolution) was not a time when _nothing
was given for nothing_. The mind opened and a softness might be
perceived coming over the heart of individuals, beneath 'the scales
that fence' our self-interest. Wordsworth himself was from home, but
his sister kept house, and set before us a frugal repast; and we had
free access to her brother's poems, the _Lyrical Ballads_, which were
still in manuscript, or in the form of _Sybilline Leaves_. I dipped
into a few of these with great satisfaction, and with the faith of a
novice. I slept that night in an old room with blue hangings, and
covered with the round-faced family portraits of the age of George I.
and II., and from the wooded declivity of the adjoining park that
overlooked my window, at the dawn of day, could
----'hear the loud stag speak.'
In the outset of life (and particularly at this time I felt it so) our
imagination has a body to it. We are in a state between sleeping and
waking, and have indistinct but glorious glimpses of strange shapes,
and there is always something to come better than what we see. As in
our dreams the fulness of the blood gives warmth and reality to the
coinage of the brain, so in youth our ideas are clothed, and fed, and
pampered with our good spirits; we breathe thick with thoughtless
happiness, the weight of future years presses on the strong pulses of
the heart, and we repose with undisturbed faith in truth and good. As
we advance, we exhaust our fund of enjoyment and of hope. We are no
longer wrapped in _lamb's-wool_, lulled in Elysium. As we taste the
pleasures of life, their spirit evaporates, the sense palls; and
nothing is left but the phantoms, the lifeless shadows of what _has
been_!
That morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we strolled out into the
park, and seating ourselves on the trunk of an old ash-tree that
stretched along the ground, Coleridge read aloud with a sonorous and
musical voice, the ballad of _Betty Foy_. I was not critically or
sceptically inclined. I saw touches of truth and nature, and took the
rest for granted. But in the _Thorn_, the _Mad Mother_, and the
_Complaint of a Poor Indian Woman_, I felt that deeper power and
pathos which have been since acknowledged,
'In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,'
as the characteristics of this author; and the sense of a new style
and a new spirit in poetry came over me. It had to me something of the
effect that arises from the turning up of the fresh soil, or of the
first welcome breath of Spring:
'While yet the trembling year is unconfirmed.'
Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening, and his voice
sounded high
'Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,'
as we passed through echoing grove, by fairy stream or waterfall,
gleaming in the summer moonlight! He lamented that Wordsworth was not
prone enough to believe in the traditional superstitions of the place,
and that there was a something corporeal, a _matter-of-fact-ness_, a
clinging to the palpable, or often to the petty, in his poetry, in
consequence. His genius was not a spirit that descended to him through
the air; it sprung out of the ground like a flower, or unfolded itself
from a green spray, on which the goldfinch sang. He said, however (if
I remember right), that this objection must be confined to his
descriptive pieces, that his philosophic poetry had a grand and
comprehensive spirit in it, so that his soul seemed to inhabit the
universe like a palace, and to discover truth by intuition, rather
than by deduction. The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at
Coleridge's cottage. I think I see him now. He answered in some degree
to his friend's description of him, but was more gaunt and Don
Quixote-like. He was quaintly dressed (according to the _costume_ of
that unconstrained period) in a brown fustian jacket and striped
pantaloons. There was something of a roll, a lounge in his gait, not
unlike his own _Peter Bell_. There was a severe, worn pressure of
thought about his temples, a fire in his eye (as if he saw something
in objects more than the outward appearance), an intense, high,
narrow forehead, a Roman nose, cheeks furrowed by strong purpose and
feeling, and a convulsive inclination to laughter about the mouth, a
good deal at variance with the solemn, stately expression of the rest
of his face. Chantrey's bust wants the marking traits; but he was
teased into making it regular and heavy: Haydon's head of him,
introduced into the _Entrance of Christ into Jerusalem_, is the most
like his drooping weight of thought and expression. He sat down and
talked very naturally and freely, with a mixture of clear, gushing
accents in his voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a strong
tincture of the northern _burr_, like the crust on wine. He instantly
began to make havoc of the half of a Cheshire cheese on the table, and
said, triumphantly, that 'his marriage with experience had not been so
productive as Mr. Southey's in teaching him a knowledge of the good
things of this life.' He had been to see the _Castle Spectre_ by Monk
Lewis, while at Bristol, and described it very well. He said 'it
fitted the taste of the audience like a glove.' This _ad captandum_
merit was however by no means a recommendation of it, according to the
severe principles of the new school, which reject rather than court
popular effect. Wordsworth, looking out of the low, latticed window,
said, 'How beautifully the sun sets on that yellow bank!' I thought
within myself, 'With what eyes these poets see nature!' and ever
after, when I saw the sun-set stream upon the objects facing it,
conceived I had made a discovery, or thanked Mr. Wordsworth for having
made one for me! We went over to All-Foxden again the day following,
and Wordsworth read us the story of _Peter Bell_ in the open air; and
the comment upon it by his face and voice was very different from that
of some later critics! Whatever might be thought of the poem, 'his
face was as a book where men might read strange matters,' and he
announced the fate of his hero in prophetic tones. There is a _chaunt_
in the recitation both of Coleridge and Wordsworth, which acts as a
spell upon the hearer, and disarms the judgment. Perhaps they have
deceived themselves by making habitual use of this ambiguous
accompaniment. Coleridge's manner is more full, animated, and varied;
Wordsworth's more equable, sustained, and internal. The one might be
termed more _dramatic_, the other more _lyrical_. Coleridge has told
me that he himself liked to compose in walking over uneven ground, or
breaking through the straggling branches of a copse-wood; whereas
Wordsworth always wrote (if he could) walking up and down a straight
gravel walk, or in some spot where the continuity of his verse met
with no collateral interruption. Returning that same evening, I got
into a metaphysical argument with Wordsworth, while Coleridge was
explaining the different notes of the nightingale to his sister, in
which we neither of us succeeded in making ourselves perfectly clear
and intelligible. Thus I passed three weeks at Nether Stowey and in
the neighbourhood, generally devoting the afternoons to a delightful
chat in an arbour made of bark by the poet's friend Tom Poole, sitting
under two fine elm-trees, and listening to the bees humming round us,
while we quaffed our _flip_. It was agreed, among other things, that
we should make a jaunt down the Bristol Channel, as far as Linton. We
set off together on foot, Coleridge, John Chester, and I. This Chester
was a native of Nether Stowey, one of those who were attracted to
Coleridge's discourse as flies are to honey, or bees in swarming-time
to the sound of a brass pan. He 'followed in the chase like a dog who
hunts, not like one that made up the cry.' He had on a brown cloth
coat, boots, and corduroy breeches, was low in stature, bow-legged,
had a drag in his walk like a drover, which he assisted by a hazel
switch, and kept on a sort of trot by the side of Coleridge, like a
running footman by a state coach, that he might not lose a syllable or
sound that fell from Coleridge's lips. He told me his private
opinion, that Coleridge was a wonderful man. He scarcely opened his
lips, much less offered an opinion the whole way: yet of the three,
had I to choose during that journey, I would be John Chester. He
afterwards followed Coleridge into Germany, where the Kantean
philosophers were puzzled how to bring him under any of their
categories. When he sat down at table with his idol, John's felicity
was complete; Sir Walter Scott's, or Mr. Blackwood's, when they sat
down at the same table with the King, was not more so. We passed
Dunster on our right, a small town between the brow of a hill and the
sea. I remember eyeing it wistfully as it lay below us: contrasted
with the woody scene around, it looked as clear, as pure, as
_embrowned_ and ideal as any landscape I have seen since, of Gaspar
Poussin's or Domenichino's. We had a long day's march (our feet kept
time to the echoes of Coleridge's tongue) through Minehead and by the
Blue Anchor, and on to Linton, which we did not reach till near
midnight, and where we had some difficulty in making a lodgment. We,
however, knocked the people of the house up at last, and we were
repaid for our apprehensions and fatigue by some excellent rashers of
fried bacon and eggs. The view in coming along had been splendid. We
walked for miles and miles on dark brown heaths overlooking the
Channel, with the Welsh hills beyond, and at times descended into
little sheltered valleys close by the sea-side, with a smuggler's face
scowling by us, and then had to ascend conical hills with a path
winding up through a coppice to a barren top, like a monk's shaven
crown, from one of which I pointed out to Coleridge's notice the bare
masts of a vessel on the very edge of the horizon, and within the
red-orbed disk of the setting sun, like his own spectre-ship in the
_Ancient Mariner_. At Linton the character of the sea-coast becomes
more marked and rugged. There is a place called the _Valley of Rocks_
(I suspect this was only the poetical name for it), bedded among
precipices overhanging the sea, with rocky caverns beneath, into
which the waves dash, and where the sea-gull for ever wheels its
screaming flight. On the tops of these are huge stones thrown
transverse, as if an earthquake had tossed them there, and behind
these is a fretwork of perpendicular rocks, something like the
_Giant's Causeway_. A thunder-storm came on while we were at the inn,
and Coleridge was running out bare-headed to enjoy the commotion of
the elements in the _Valley of Rocks_, but as if in spite, the clouds
only muttered a few angry sounds, and let fall a few refreshing drops.
Coleridge told me that he and Wordsworth were to have made this place
the scene of a prose-tale, which was to have been in the manner of,
but far superior to, the _Death of Abel_, but they had relinquished
the design. In the morning of the second day, we breakfasted
luxuriously in an old-fashioned parlour on tea, toast, eggs, and
honey, in the very sight of the bee-hives from which it had been
taken, and a garden full of thyme and wild flowers that had produced
it. On this occasion Coleridge spoke of Virgil's _Georgics_, but not
well. I do not think he had much feeling for the classical or
elegant.[3] It was in this room that we found a little worn-out copy
of the _Seasons_, lying in a window-seat, on which Coleridge
exclaimed, '_That_ is true fame!' He said Thomson was a great poet,
rather than a good one; his style was as meretricious as his thoughts
were natural. He spoke of Cowper as the best modern poet. He said the
_Lyrical Ballads_ were an experiment about to be tried by him and
Wordsworth, to see how far the public taste would endure poetry
written in a more natural and simple style than had hitherto been
attempted; totally discarding the artifices of poetical diction, and
making use only of such words as had probably been common in the most
ordinary language since the days of Henry II. Some comparison was
introduced between Shakspeare and Milton. He said 'he hardly knew
which to prefer. Shakspeare appeared to him a mere stripling in the
art; he was as tall and as strong, with infinitely more activity than
Milton, but he never appeared to have come to man's estate; or if he
had, he would not have been a man, but a monster.' He spoke with
contempt of Gray, and with intolerance of Pope. He did not like the
versification of the latter. He observed that 'the ears of these
couplet-writers might be charged with having short memories, that
could not retain the harmony of whole passages.' He thought little of
Junius as a writer; he had a dislike of Dr. Johnson; and a much higher
opinion of Burke as an orator and politician, than of Fox or Pitt. He,
however, thought him very inferior in richness of style and imagery to
some of our elder prose-writers, particularly Jeremy Taylor. He liked
Richardson, but not Fielding; nor could I get him to enter into the
merits of _Caleb Williams_. In short, he was profound and
discriminating with respect to those authors whom he liked, and where
he gave his judgment fair play; capricious, perverse, and prejudiced
in his antipathies and distastes. We loitered on the 'ribbed
sea-sands,' in such talk as this a whole morning, and, I recollect,
met with a curious seaweed, of which John Chester told us the country
name! A fisherman gave Coleridge an account of a boy that had been
drowned the day before, and that they had tried to save him at the
risk of their own lives. He said 'he did not know how it was that they
ventured, but, Sir, we have a _nature_ towards one another.' This
expression, Coleridge remarked to me, was a fine illustration of that
theory of disinterestedness which I (in common with Butler) had
adopted. I broached to him an argument of mine to prove that
_likeness_ was not mere association of ideas. I said that the mark in
the sand put one in mind of a man's foot, not because it was part of a
former impression of a man's foot (for it was quite new), but because
it was like the shape of a man's foot. He assented to the justness of
this distinction (which I have explained at length elsewhere, for the
benefit of the curious) and John Chester listened; not from any
interest in the subject, but because he was astonished that I should
be able to suggest anything to Coleridge that he did not already know.
We returned on the third morning, and Coleridge remarked the silent
cottage-smoke curling up the valleys where, a few evenings before, we
had seen the lights gleaming through the dark.
In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey, we set out, I on my return
home, and he for Germany. It was a Sunday morning, and he was to
preach that day for Dr. Toulmin of Taunton. I asked him if he had
prepared anything for the occasion? He said he had not even thought of
the text, but should as soon as we parted. I did not go to hear
him--this was a fault--but we met in the evening at Bridgewater. The
next day we had a long day's walk to Bristol, and sat down, I
recollect, by a well-side on the road, to cool ourselves and satisfy
our thirst, when Coleridge repeated to me some descriptive lines of
his tragedy of _Remorse_; which I must say became his mouth and that
occasion better than they, some years after, did Mr. Elliston's and
the Drury-lane boards--
'Oh memory! shield me from the world's poor strife,
And give those scenes thine everlasting life.'
I saw no more of him for a year or two, during which period he had
been wandering in the Hartz Forest, in Germany; and his return was
cometary, meteorous, unlike his setting out. It was not till some time
after that I knew his friends Lamb and Southey. The last always
appears to me (as I first saw him) with a commonplace book under his
arm, and the first with a _bon-mot_ in his mouth. It was at Godwin's
that I met him with Holcroft and Coleridge, where they were disputing
fiercely which was the best--_Man as he was, or man as he is to be_.
'Give me,' says Lamb, 'man as he is _not_ to be.' This saying was the
beginning of a friendship between us, which I believe still continues.
Enough of this for the present.
'But there is matter for another rhyme,
And I to this may add a second tale.'
FOOTNOTES:
[1] My father was one of those who mistook his talent, after all. He
used to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred his _Letters_ to
his _Sermons_. The last were forced and dry; the first came naturally
from him. For ease, half-plays on words, and a supine, monkish,
indolent pleasantry, I have never seen them equalled.
[2] He complained in particular of the presumption of his attempting
to establish the future immortality of man, 'without' (as he said)
'knowing what Death was or what Life was'--and the tone in which he
pronounced these two words seemed to convey a complete image of both.
[3] He had no idea of pictures, of Claude or Raphael, and at this time
I had as little as he. He sometimes gives a striking account at
present of the Cartoons at Pisa by Buffamalco and others; of one in
particular, where Death is seen in the air brandishing his scythe, and
the great and mighty of the earth shudder at his approach, while the
beggars and the wretched kneel to him as their deliverer. He would, of
course, understand so broad and fine a moral as this at any time.
ESSAY II
OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN
'Come like shadows--so depart.'
Lamb it was, I think, who suggested this subject, as well as the
defence of Guy Faux, which I urged him to execute. As, however, he
would undertake neither, I suppose I must do both, a task for which he
would have been much fitter, no less from the temerity than the
felicity of his pen--
'Never so sure our rapture to create
As when it touch'd the brink of all we hate.'
Compared with him, I shall, I fear, make but a commonplace piece of
business of it; but I should be loth the idea was entirely lost, and
besides I may avail myself of some hints of his in the progress of it.
I am sometimes, I suspect, a better reporter of the ideas of other
people than expounder of my own. I pursue the one too far into paradox
or mysticism; the others I am not bound to follow farther than I like,
or than seems fair and reasonable.
On the question being started, Ayrton said, 'I suppose the two first
persons you would choose to see would be the two greatest names in
English literature, Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. Locke?' In this Ayrton,
as usual, reckoned without his host. Every one burst out a laughing at
the expression of Lamb's face, in which impatience was restrained by
courtesy. 'Yes, the greatest names,' he stammered out hastily, 'but
they were not persons--not persons.'--'Not persons?' said Ayrton,
looking wise and foolish at the same time, afraid his triumph might be
premature. 'That is,' rejoined Lamb, 'not characters, you know. By Mr.
Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, you mean the _Essay on the Human
Understanding_, and the _Principia_, which we have to this day. Beyond
their contents there is nothing personally interesting in the men. But
what we want to see any one _bodily_ for, is when there is something
peculiar, striking in the individuals, more than we can learn from
their writings, and yet are curious to know. I dare say Locke and
Newton were very like Kneller's portraits of them. But who could paint
Shakspeare?'--'Ay,' retorted Ayrton, 'there it is; then I suppose you
would prefer seeing him and Milton instead?'--'No,' said Lamb,
'neither. I have seen so much of Shakspeare on the stage and on
bookstalls, in frontispieces and on mantel-pieces, that I am quite
tired of the everlasting repetition: and as to Milton's face, the
impressions that have come down to us of it I do not like; it is too
starched and puritanical; and I should be afraid of losing some of the
manna of his poetry in the leaven of his countenance and the
precisian's band and gown.'--'I shall guess no more,' said Ayrton.
'Who is it, then, you would like to see "in his habit as he lived," if
you had your choice of the whole range of English literature?' Lamb
then named Sir Thomas Browne and Fulke Greville, the friend of Sir
Philip Sidney, as the two worthies whom he should feel the greatest
pleasure to encounter on the floor of his apartment in their nightgown
and slippers, and to exchange friendly greeting with them. At this
Ayrton laughed outright, and conceived Lamb was jesting with him; but
as no one followed his example, he thought there might be something in
it, and waited for an explanation in a state of whimsical suspense.
Lamb then (as well as I can remember a conversation that passed twenty
years ago--how time slips!) went on as follows. 'The reason why I
pitch upon these two authors is, that their writings are riddles, and
they themselves the most mysterious of personages. They resemble the
soothsayers of old, who dealt in dark hints and doubtful oracles; and
I should like to ask them the meaning of what no mortal but
themselves, I should suppose, can fathom. There is Dr. Johnson: I have
no curiosity, no strange uncertainty about him; he and Boswell
together have pretty well let me into the secret of what passed
through his mind. He and other writers like him are sufficiently
explicit: my friends whose repose I should be tempted to disturb (were
it in my power), are implicit, inextricable, inscrutable.
'When I look at that obscure but gorgeous prose composition the
_Urn-burial_, I seem to myself to look into a deep abyss, at the
bottom of which are hid pearls and rich treasure; or it is like a
stately labyrinth of doubt and withering speculation, and I would
invoke the spirit of the author to lead me through it. Besides, who
would not be curious to see the lineaments of a man who, having
himself been twice married, wished that mankind were propagated like
trees! As to Fulke Greville, he is like nothing but one of his own
"Prologues spoken by the ghost of an old king of Ormus," a truly
formidable and inviting personage: his style is apocalyptical,
cabalistical, a knot worthy of such an apparition to untie; and for
the unravelling a passage or two, I would stand the brunt of an
encounter with so portentous a commentator!'--'I am afraid, in that
case,' said Ayrton, 'that if the mystery were once cleared up, the
merit might be lost'; and turning to me, whispered a friendly
apprehension, that while Lamb continued to admire these old crabbed
authors, he would never become a popular writer. Dr. Donne was
mentioned as a writer of the same period, with a very interesting
countenance, whose history was singular, and whose meaning was often
quite as _uncomeatable_, without a personal citation from the dead, as
that of any of his contemporaries. The volume was produced; and while
some one was expatiating on the exquisite simplicity and beauty of the
portrait prefixed to the old edition, Ayrton got hold of the poetry,
and exclaiming 'What have we here?' read the following:
'Here lies a She-Sun and a He-Moon there--
She gives the best light to his sphear,
Or each is both, and all, and so
They unto one another nothing owe.'
There was no resisting this, till Lamb, seizing the volume, turned to
the beautiful _Lines to his Mistress_, dissuading her from
accompanying him abroad, and read them with suffused features and a
faltering tongue:
'By our first strange and fatal interview,
By all desires which thereof did ensue,
By our long starving hopes, by that remorse
Which my words' masculine perswasive force
Begot in thee, and by the memory
Of hurts, which spies and rivals threatned me,
I calmely beg. But by thy father's wrath,
By all paines which want and divorcement hath,
I conjure thee; and all the oathes which I
And thou have sworne to seale joynt constancy
Here I unsweare, and overswear them thus--
Thou shalt not love by wayes so dangerous.
Temper, O fair love! love's impetuous rage,
Be my true mistris still, not my faign'd Page;
I'll goe, and, by thy kinde leave, leave behinde
Thee! onely worthy to nurse in my minde.
Thirst to come backe; O, if thou die before,
My soule, from other lands to thee shall soare.
Thy (else almighty) beauty cannot move
Rage from the seas, nor thy love teach them love.
Nor tame wild Boreas' harshnesse; thou hast reade
How roughly hee in pieces shivered
Fair Orithea, whom he swore he lov'd.
Fall ill or good, 'tis madnesse to have prov'd
Dangers unurg'd: Feed on this flattery,
That absent lovers one in th' other be.
Dissemble nothing, not a boy; nor change
Thy bodie's habite, nor minde; be not strange
To thyeselfe onely. All will spie in thy face
A blushing, womanly, discovering grace.
Richly-cloath'd apes are call'd apes, and as soone
Eclips'd as bright, we call the moone the moon.
Men of France, changeable camelions,
Spittles of diseases, shops of fashions,
Love's fuellers, and the rightest company
Of players, which upon the world's stage be,
Will quickly know thee ...
O stay here! for for thee
England is onely a worthy gallerie,
To walke in expectation; till from thence
Our greatest King call thee to his presence.
When I am gone, dreame me some happinesse,
Nor let thy lookes our long-hid love confesse,
Nor praise, nor dispraise me; nor blesse, nor curse
Openly love's force, nor in bed fright thy nurse
With midnight's startings, crying out, Oh, oh,
Nurse, oh, my love is slaine, I saw him goe
O'er the white Alpes alone; I saw him, I,
Assail'd, fight, taken, stabb'd, bleed, fall, and die.
Augure me better chance, except dread Jove
Thinke it enough for me to have had thy love.'
Some one then inquired of Lamb if we could not see from the window the
Temple walk in which Chaucer used to take his exercise; and on his
name being put to the vote, I was pleased to find that there was a
general sensation in his favour in all but Ayrton, who said something
about the ruggedness of the metre, and even objected to the quaintness
of the orthography. I was vexed at this superficial gloss,
pertinaciously reducing everything to its own trite level, and asked
'if he did not think it would be worth while to scan the eye that had
first greeted the Muse in that dim twilight and early dawn of English
literature; to see the head round which the visions of fancy must have
played like gleams of inspiration or a sudden glory; to watch those
lips that "lisped in numbers, for the numbers came"--as by a miracle,
or as if the dumb should speak? Nor was it alone that he had been the
first to tune his native tongue (however imperfectly to modern ears);
but he was himself a noble, manly character, standing before his age
and striving to advance it; a pleasant humourist withal, who has not
only handed down to us the living manners of his time, but had, no
doubt, store of curious and quaint devices, and would make as hearty a
companion as mine Host of the Tabard. His interview with Petrarch is
fraught with interest. Yet I would rather have seen Chaucer in company
with the author of the _Decameron_, and have heard them exchange their
best stories together--the _Squire's Tale_ against the Story of the
_Falcon_, the _Wife of Bath's Prologue_ against the _Adventures of
Friar Albert_. How fine to see the high mysterious brow which learning
then wore, relieved by the gay, familiar tone of men of the world, and
by the courtesies of genius! Surely, the thoughts and feelings which
passed through the minds of these great revivers of learning, these
Cadmuses who sowed the teeth of letters, must have stamped an
expression on their features as different from the moderns as their
books, and well worth the perusal. Dante,' I continued, 'is as
interesting a person as his own Ugolino, one whose lineaments
curiosity would as eagerly devour in order to penetrate his spirit,
and the only one of the Italian poets I should care much to see. There
is a fine portrait of Ariosto by no less a hand than Titian's; light,
Moorish, spirited, but not answering our idea. The same artist's large
colossal profile of Peter Aretine is the only likeness of the kind
that has the effect of conversing with "the mighty dead"; and this is
truly spectral, ghastly, necromantic.' Lamb put it to me if I should
like to see Spenser as well as Chaucer; and I answered, without
hesitation, 'No; for that his beauties were ideal, visionary, not
palpable or personal, and therefore connected with less curiosity
about the man. His poetry was the essence of romance, a very halo
round the bright orb of fancy; and the bringing in the individual
might dissolve the charm. No tones of voice could come up to the
mellifluous cadence of his verse; no form but of a winged angel could
vie with the airy shapes he has described. He was (to my apprehension)
rather a "creature of the element, that lived in the rainbow and
played in the plighted clouds," than an ordinary mortal. Or if he did
appear, I should wish it to be as a mere vision, like one of his own
pageants, and that he should pass by unquestioned like a dream or
sound--
----"_That_ was Arion crown'd:
So went he playing on the wat'ry plain."'
Captain Burney muttered something about Columbus, and Martin Burney
hinted at the Wandering Jew; but the last was set aside as spurious,
and the first made over to the New World.
'I should like,' said Mrs. Reynolds, 'to have seen Pope talk with
Patty Blount; and I _have_ seen Goldsmith.' Every one turned round to
look at Mrs. Reynolds, as if by so doing they could get a sight at
Goldsmith.
'Where,' asked a harsh, croaking voice, 'was Dr. Johnson in the years
1745-6? He did not write anything that we know of, nor is there any
account of him in Boswell during those two years. Was he in Scotland
with the Pretender? He seems to have passed through the scenes in the
Highlands in company with Boswell, many years after, "with lack-lustre
eye," yet as if they were familiar to him, or associated in his mind
with interests that he durst not explain. If so, it would be an
additional reason for my liking him; and I would give something to
have seen him seated in the tent with the youthful Majesty of Britain,
and penning the Proclamation to all true subjects and adherents of the
legitimate Government.'
'I thought,' said Ayrton, turning short round upon Lamb, 'that you of
the Lake School did not like Pope?'--'Not like Pope! My dear sir, you
must be under a mistake--I can read him over and over for
ever!'--'Why, certainly, the _Essay on Man_ must be allowed to be a
masterpiece.'--'It may be so, but I seldom look into it.'--'Oh! then
it's his Satires you admire?'--'No, not his Satires, but his friendly
Epistles and his compliments.'--'Compliments! I did not know he ever
made any.'--'The finest,' said Lamb, 'that were ever paid by the wit
of man. Each of them is worth an estate for life--nay, is an
immortality. There is that superb one to Lord Cornbury:
"Despise low joys, low gains;
Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains;
Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains."
Was there ever more artful insinuation of idolatrous praise? And then
that noble apotheosis of his friend Lord Mansfield (however little
deserved), when, speaking of the House of Lords, he adds:
"Conspicuous scene! another yet is nigh,
(More silent far) where kings and poets lie;
Where Murray (long enough his country's pride)
Shall be no more than Tully or than Hyde."
And with what a fine turn of indignant flattery he addresses Lord
Bolingbroke:
"Why rail they then, if but one wreath of mine,
Oh! all accomplish'd St. John, deck thy shrine?"
Or turn,' continued Lamb, with a slight hectic on his cheek and his
eye glistening, 'to his list of early friends:
"But why then publish? Granville the polite,
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write;
Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise,
And Congreve loved, and Swift endured my lays;
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read,
Ev'n mitred Rochester would nod the head;
And St. John's self (great Dryden's friend before)
Received with open arms one poet more.
Happy my studies, if by these approved!
Happier their author, if by these beloved!
From these the world will judge of men and books,
Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks."'
Here his voice totally failed him, and throwing down the book, he
said, 'Do you think I would not wish to have been friends with such a
man as this?'
'What say you to Dryden?'--'He rather made a show of himself, and
courted popularity in that lowest temple of fame, a coffee-shop, so as
in some measure to vulgarise one's idea of him. Pope, on the
contrary, reached the very _beau ideal_ of what a poet's life should
be; and his fame while living seemed to be an emanation from that
which was to circle his name after death. He was so far enviable (and
one would feel proud to have witnessed the rare spectacle in him) that
he was almost the only poet and man of genius who met with his reward
on this side of the tomb, who realised in friends, fortune, the esteem
of the world, the most sanguine hopes of a youthful ambition, and who
found that sort of patronage from the great during his lifetime which
they would be thought anxious to bestow upon him after his death. Read
Gay's verses to him on his supposed return from Greece, after his
translation of Homer was finished, and say if you would not gladly
join the bright procession that welcomed him home, or see it once more
land at Whitehall stairs.'--'Still,' said Mrs. Reynolds, 'I would
rather have seen him talking with Patty Blount, or riding by in a
coronet-coach with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu!'
Erasmus Phillips, who was deep in a game of piquet at the other end of
the room, whispered to Martin Burney to ask if Junius would not be a
fit person to invoke from the dead. 'Yes,' said Lamb, 'provided he
would agree to lay aside his mask.'
We were now at a stand for a short time, when Fielding was mentioned
as a candidate; only one, however, seconded the proposition.
'Richardson?'--'By all means, but only to look at him through the
glass door of his back shop, hard at work upon one of his novels (the
most extraordinary contrast that ever was presented between an author
and his works); not to let him come behind his counter, lest he should
want you to turn customer, or to go upstairs with him, lest he should
offer to read the first manuscript of Sir Charles Grandison, which was
originally written in eight-and-twenty volumes octavo, or get out the
letters of his female correspondents, to prove that Joseph Andrews was
low.'
There was but one statesman in the whole of English history that any
one expressed the least desire to see--Oliver Cromwell, with his fine,
frank, rough, pimply face, and wily policy; and one enthusiast, John
Bunyan, the immortal author of the _Pilgrim's Progress_. It seemed
that if he came into the room, dreams would follow him, and that each
person would nod under his golden cloud, 'nigh-sphered in heaven,' a
canopy as strange and stately as any in Homer.
Of all persons near our own time, Garrick's name was received with the
greatest enthusiasm, who was proposed by Barron Field. He presently
superseded both Hogarth and Handel, who had been talked of, but then
it was on condition that he should act in tragedy and comedy, in the
play and the farce, _Lear_ and _Wildair_ and _Abel Drugger_. What a
_sight for sore eyes_ that would be! Who would not part with a year's
income at least, almost with a year of his natural life, to be present
at it? Besides, as he could not act alone, and recitations are
unsatisfactory things, what a troop he must bring with him--the
silver-tongued Barry, and Quin, and Shuter and Weston, and Mrs. Clive
and Mrs. Pritchard, of whom I have heard my father speak as so great a
favourite when he was young. This would indeed be a revival of the
dead, the restoring of art; and so much the more desirable, as such is
the lurking scepticism mingled with our overstrained admiration of
past excellence, that though we have the speeches of Burke, the
portraits of Reynolds, the writings of Goldsmith, and the conversation
of Johnson, to show what people could do at that period, and to
confirm the universal testimony to the merits of Garrick; yet, as it
was before our time, we have our misgivings, as if he was probably,
after all, little better than a Bartlemy-fair actor, dressed out to
play _Macbeth_ in a scarlet coat and laced cocked-hat. For one, I
should like to have seen and heard with my own eyes and ears.
Certainly, by all accounts, if any one was ever moved by the true
histrionic _aestus_, it was Garrick. When he followed the Ghost in
_Hamlet_, he did not drop the sword, as most actors do, behind the
scenes, but kept the point raised the whole way round, so fully was he
possessed with the idea, or so anxious not to lose sight of his part
for a moment. Once at a splendid dinner-party at Lord ----'s, they
suddenly missed Garrick, and could not imagine what was become of him,
till they were drawn to the window by the convulsive screams and peals
of laughter of a young negro boy, who was rolling on the ground in an
ecstasy of delight to see Garrick mimicking a turkey-cock in the
court-yard, with his coat-tail stuck out behind, and in a seeming
flutter of feathered rage and pride. Of our party only two persons
present had seen the British Roscius; and they seemed as willing as
the rest to renew their acquaintance with their old favourite.
We were interrupted in the hey-day and mid-career of this fanciful
speculation, by a grumbler in a corner, who declared it was a shame to
make all this rout about a mere player and farce-writer, to the
neglect and exclusion of the fine old dramatists, the contemporaries
and rivals of Shakspeare. Lamb said he had anticipated this objection
when he had named the author of _Mustapha_ and _Alaham_; and, out of
caprice, insisted upon keeping him to represent the set, in preference
to the wild, hare-brained enthusiast, Kit Marlowe; to the sexton of
St. Ann's, Webster, with his melancholy yew-trees and death's-heads;
to Decker, who was but a garrulous proser; to the voluminous Heywood;
and even to Beaumont and Fletcher, whom we might offend by
complimenting the wrong author on their joint productions. Lord
Brooke, on the contrary, stood quite by himself, or, in Cowley's
words, was 'a vast species alone.' Some one hinted at the circumstance
of his being a lord, which rather startled Lamb, but he said a _ghost_
would perhaps dispense with strict etiquette, on being regularly
addressed by his title. Ben Jonson divided our suffrages pretty
equally. Some were afraid he would begin to traduce Shakspeare, who
was not present to defend himself. 'If he grows disagreeable,' it was
whispered aloud, 'there is Godwin can match him.' At length, his
romantic visit to Drummond of Hawthornden was mentioned, and turned
the scale in his favour.
Lamb inquired if there was any one that was hanged that I would choose
to mention? And I answered, Eugene Aram. The name of the 'Admirable
Chrichton' was suddenly started as a splendid example of _waste_
talents, so different from the generality of his countrymen. This
choice was mightily approved by a North-Briton present, who declared
himself descended from that prodigy of learning and accomplishment,
and said he had family plate in his possession as vouchers for the
fact, with the initials A. C.--_Admirable Chrichton!_ Hunt laughed, or
rather roared, as heartily at this as I should think he has done for
many years.
The last named Mitre-courtier[4] then wished to know whether there
were any metaphysicians to whom one might be tempted to apply the
wizard spell? I replied, there were only six in modern times deserving
the name--Hobbes, Berkeley, Butler, Hartley, Hume, Leibnitz; and
perhaps Jonathan Edwards, a Massachusetts man.[5] As to the French,
who talked fluently of having _created_ this science, there was not a
tittle in any of their writings that was not to be found literally in
the authors I had mentioned. [Horne Tooke, who might have a claim to
come in under the head of Grammar, was still living.] None of these
names seemed to excite much interest, and I did not plead for the
re-appearance of those who might be thought best fitted by the
abstracted nature of their studies for the present spiritual and
disembodied state, and who, even while on this living stage, were
nearly divested of common flesh and blood. As Ayrton, with an uneasy,
fidgety face, was about to put some question about Mr. Locke and
Dugald Stewart, he was prevented by Martin Burney, who observed, 'If
J---- was here, he would undoubtedly be for having up those profound
and redoubted socialists, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.' I said this
might be fair enough in him who had read, or fancied he had read, the
original works, but I did not see how we could have any right to call
up these authors to give an account of themselves in person, till we
had looked into their writings.
By this time it should seem that some rumour of our whimsical
deliberation had got wind, and had disturbed the _irritable genus_, in
their shadowy abodes, for we received messages from several candidates
that we had just been thinking of. Gray declined our invitation,
though he had not yet been asked: Gay offered to come, and bring in
his hand the Duchess of Bolton, the original Polly: Steele and Addison
left their cards as Captain Sentry and Sir Roger de Coverley: Swift
came in and sat down without speaking a word, and quitted the room as
abruptly: Otway and Chatterton were seen lingering on the opposite
side of the Styx, but could not muster enough between them to pay
Charon his fare: Thomson fell asleep in the boat, and was rowed back
again; and Burns sent a low fellow, one John Barleycorn, an old
companion of his, who had conducted him to the other world, to say
that he had during his lifetime been drawn out of his retirement as a
show, only to be made an exciseman of, and that he would rather
remain where he was. He desired, however, to shake hands by his
representative--the hand, thus held out, was in a burning fever, and
shook prodigiously.
The room was hung round with several portraits of eminent painters.
While we were debating whether we should demand speech with these
masters of mute eloquence, whose features were so familiar to us, it
seemed that all at once they glided from their frames, and seated
themselves at some little distance from us. There was Leonardo, with
his majestic beard and watchful eye, having a bust of Archimedes
before him; next him was Raphael's graceful head turned round to the
Fornarina; and on his other side was Lucretia Borgia, with calm,
golden locks; Michael Angelo had placed the model of St. Peter's on
the table before him; Correggio had an angel at his side; Titian was
seated with his mistress between himself and Giorgione; Guido was
accompanied by his own Aurora, who took a dice-box from him; Claude
held a mirror in his hand; Rubens patted a beautiful panther (led in
by a satyr) on the head; Vandyke appeared as his own Paris, and
Rembrandt was hid under firs, gold chains, and jewels, which Sir
Joshua eyed closely, holding his hand so as to shade his forehead. Not
a word was spoken; and as we rose to do them homage, they still
presented the same surface to the view. Not being _bona-fide_
representations of living people, we got rid of the splendid
apparitions by signs and dumb show. As soon as they had melted into
thin air, there was a loud noise at the outer door, and we found it
was Giotto, Cimabue, and Ghirlandaio, who had been raised from the
dead by their earnest desire to see their illustrious successors--
'Whose names on earth
In Fame's eternal records live for aye!'
Finding them gone, they had no ambition to be seen after them, and
mournfully withdrew. 'Egad!' said Lamb, 'these are the very fellows I
should like to have had some talk with, to know how they could see to
paint when all was dark around them.'
'But shall we have nothing to say,' interrogated G. J----, 'to the
_Legend of Good Women_?'--'Name, name, Mr. J----,' cried Hunt in a
boisterous tone of friendly exultation, 'name as many as you please,
without reserve or fear of molestation!' J---- was perplexed between
so many amiable recollections, that the name of the lady of his choice
expired in a pensive whiff of his pipe; and Lamb impatiently declared
for the Duchess of Newcastle. Mrs. Hutchinson was no sooner mentioned,
than she carried the day from the Duchess. We were the less solicitous
on this subject of filling up the posthumous lists of Good Women, as
there was already one in the room as good, as sensible, and in all
respects as exemplary, as the best of them could be for their lives!
'I should like vastly to have seen Ninon de l'Enclos,' said that
incomparable person; and this immediately put us in mind that we had
neglected to pay honour due to our friends on the other side of the
Channel: Voltaire, the patriarch of levity, and Rousseau, the father
of sentiment; Montaigne and Rabelais (great in wisdom and in wit);
Moliere and that illustrious group that are collected round him (in
the print of that subject) to hear him read his comedy of the
_Tartuffe_ at the house of Ninon; Racine, La Fontaine, Rochefoucalt,
St. Evremont, etc.
'There is one person,' said a shrill, querulous voice, 'I would rather
see than all these--Don Quixote!'
'Come, come!' said Hunt; 'I thought we should have no heroes, real or
fabulous. What say you, Mr. Lamb? Are you for eking out your shadowy
list with such names as Alexander, Julius Caesar, Tamerlane, or Ghengis
Khan?'--'Excuse me,' said Lamb; 'on the subject of characters in
active life, plotters and disturbers of the world, I have a crotchet
of my own, which I beg leave to reserve.'--'No, no! come, out with
your worthies!'--'What do you think of Guy Fawkes and Judas
Iscariot?' Hunt turned an eye upon him like a wild Indian, but cordial
and full of smothered glee. 'Your most exquisite reason!' was echoed
on all sides; and Ayrton thought that Lamb had now fairly entangled
himself. 'Why I cannot but think,' retorted he of the wistful
countenance, 'that Guy Fawkes, that poor, fluttering annual scarecrow
of straw and rags, is an ill-used gentleman. I would give something to
see him sitting pale and emaciated, surrounded by his matches and his
barrels of gunpowder, and expecting the moment that was to transport
him to Paradise for his heroic self-devotion; but if I say any more,
there is that fellow Godwin will make something of it. And as to Judas
Iscariot, my reason is different. I would fain see the face of him
who, having dipped his hand in the same dish with the Son of Man,
could afterwards betray him. I have no conception of such a thing; nor
have I ever seen any picture (not even Leonardo's very fine one) that
gave me the least idea of it.'--'You have said enough, Mr. Lamb, to
justify your choice.'
'Oh! ever right, Menenius--ever right!'
'There is only one other person I can ever think of after this,'
continued Lamb; but without mentioning a name that once put on a
semblance of mortality. 'If Shakspeare was to come into the room, we
should all rise up to meet him; but if that person was to come into
it, we should all fall down and try to kiss the hem of his garment!'
As a lady present seemed now to get uneasy at the turn the
conversation had taken, we rose up to go. The morning broke with that
dim, dubious light by which Giotto, Cimabue, and Ghirlandaio must have
seen to paint their earliest works; and we parted to meet again and
renew similar topics at night, the next night, and the night after
that, till that night overspread Europe which saw no dawn. The same
event, in truth, broke up our little Congress that broke up the great
one. But that was to meet again: our deliberations have never been
resumed.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Lamb at this time occupied chambers in Mitre-court, Temple.
[5] Bacon is not included in this list, nor do I know where he should
come in. It is not easy to make room for him and his reputation
together. This great and celebrated man in some of his works
recommends it to pour a bottle of claret into the ground of a morning,
and to stand over it, inhaling the perfumes. So he sometimes enriched
the dry and barren soil of speculation with the fine aromatic spirit
of his genius. His _Essays_ and his _Advancement of Learning_ are
works of vast depth and scope of observation. The last, though it
contains no positive discoveries, is a noble chart of the human
intellect, and a guide to all future inquirers.
ESSAY III
ON PARTY SPIRIT
Party spirit is one of the _profoundnesses of Satan_, or, in modern
language, one of the dexterous _equivoques_ and contrivances of our
self-love, to prove that we, and those who agree with us, combine all
that is excellent and praiseworthy in our own persons (as in a
ring-fence), and that all the vices and deformity of human nature take
refuge with those who differ from us. It is extending and fortifying
the principle of the _amour-propre_, by calling to its aid the _esprit
de corps_, and screening and surrounding our favourite propensities
and obstinate caprices in the hollow squares or dense phalanxes of
sects and parties. This is a happy mode of pampering our
self-complacency, and persuading ourselves that we, and those that
side with us, are 'the salt of the earth'; of giving vent to the
morbid humours of our pride, envy, hatred, malice, and all
uncharitableness, those natural secretions of the human heart, under
the pretext of self-defence, the public safety, or a voice from
heaven, as it may happen; and of heaping every excellence into one
scale, and throwing all the obloquy and contempt into the other, in
virtue of a nickname, a watchword of party, a badge, the colour of a
ribbon, the cut of a dress. We thus desolate the globe, or tear a
country in pieces, to show that we are the only people fit to live in
it; and fancy ourselves angels, while we are playing the devil. In
this manner the Huron devours the Iroquois, because he is an Iroquois;
and the Iroquois the Huron, for a similar reason: neither suspects
that he does it because he himself is a savage, and no better than a
wild beast; and is convinced in his own breast that the difference of
man and tribe makes a total difference in the case. The Papist
persecutes the Protestant, the Protestant persecutes the Papist in his
turn; and each fancies that he has a plenary right to do so, while he
keeps in view only the offensive epithet which 'cuts the common link
of brotherhood between them.' The Church of England ill-treated the
Dissenters, and the Dissenters, when they had the opportunity, did not
spare the Church of England. The Whig calls the Tory a knave, the Tory
compliments the Whig with the same title, and each thinks the abuse
sticks to the party-name, and has nothing to do with himself or the
generic name of _man_. On the contrary, it cuts both ways; but while
the Whigs say 'The Tory is a knave, because he is a Tory,' this is as
much as to say, 'I cannot be a knave, because I am a Whig'; and by
exaggerating the profligacy of his opponent, he imagines he is laying
the sure foundation, and raising the lofty superstructure, of his own
praises. But if he says, which is the truth, 'The Tory is not a
rascal, because he is a Tory, but because human nature in power, and
with the temptation, is a rascal,' then this would imply that the
seeds of depravity are sown in his own bosom, and might shoot out into
full growth and luxuriance if he got into place, and this he does not
wish to develop till he _does_ get into place.
We may be intolerant even in advocating the cause of toleration, and
so bent on making proselytes to freethinking as to allow no one to
think freely but ourselves. The most boundless liberality in
appearance may amount in reality to the most monstrous ostracism of
opinion--not condemning this or that tenet, or standing up for this or
that sect or party, but in a supercilious superiority to all sects and
parties alike, and proscribing in one sweeping clause, all arts,
sciences, opinions, and pursuits but our own. Till the time of Locke
and Toland a general toleration was never dreamt of: it was thought
right on all hands to punish and discountenance heretics and
schismatics, but each party alternately claimed to be true Christians
and Orthodox believers. Daniel De Foe, who spent his whole life, and
wasted his strength, in asserting the right of the Dissenters to a
Toleration (and got nothing for his pains but the pillory), was
scandalised at the proposal of the general principle, and was equally
strenuous in excluding Quakers, Anabaptists, Socinians, Sceptics, and
all who did not agree in the _essentials_ of Christianity--that is,
who did not agree with him--from the benefit of such an indulgence to
tender consciences. We wonder at the cruelties formerly practised upon
the Jews: is there anything wonderful in it? They were at that time
the only people to make a butt and a bugbear of, to set up as a mark
of indignity, and as a foil to our self-love, for the _ferae naturae_
principle that is within us, and always craving its prey to run down,
to worry and make sport of at discretion, and without mercy--the
unvarying uniformity and implicit faith of the Catholic Church had
imposed silence, and put a curb on our jarring dissensions,
heartburnings, and ill-blood, so that we had no pretence for
quarrelling among ourselves for the glory of God or the salvation of
men:--a JORDANUS BRUNO, an Atheist or sorcerer, once in a way, would
hardly suffice to stay the stomach of our theological rancour; we
therefore fell with might and main upon the Jews as a _forlorn hope_
in this dearth of objects of spite or zeal; or when the whole of
Europe was reconciled to the bosom of holy Mother Church, went to the
Holy Land in search of a difference of opinion, and a ground of mortal
offence: but no sooner was there a division of the Christian World,
than Papist fell on Protestants or Schismatics, and Schismatics upon
one another, with the same loving fury as they had before fallen upon
Turks and Jews. The disposition is always there, like a muzzled
mastiff; the pretext only is wanting; and this is furnished by a name,
which, as soon as it is affixed to different sects or parties, gives
us a licence, we think, to let loose upon them all our malevolence,
domineering humour, love of power, and wanton mischief, as if they
were of different species. The sentiment of the pious English Bishop
was good, who, on seeing a criminal led to execution, exclaimed,
'There goes my wicked self!'
If we look at common patriotism, it will furnish an illustration of
party spirit. One would think by an Englishman's hatred of the French,
and his readiness to die fighting with and for his countrymen, that
all the nation were united as one man, in heart and hand--and so they
are in war-time and as an exercise of their loyalty and courage: but
let the crisis be over, and they cool wonderfully; begin to feel the
distinctions of English, Irish, and Scotch; fall out among themselves
upon some minor distinction; the same hand that was eager to shed the
blood of a Frenchman, will not give a crust of bread or a cup of cold
water to a fellow countryman in distress; and the heroes who defended
the 'wooden walls of old England' are left to expose their wounds and
crippled limbs to gain a pittance from the passengers, or to perish of
hunger, cold, and neglect, in our highways. Such is the effect of our
boasted nationality: it is active, fierce in doing mischief; dormantly
lukewarm in doing good. We may also see why the greatest stress is
laid on trifles in religion, and why the most violent animosities
arise out of the smallest differences, either in this or in politics.
In the first place, it would never do to establish our superiority
over others by the acquisition of greater virtues, or by discarding
our vices; but it is charming to do this by merely repeating a
different formula of prayer, turning to the east instead of the west.
He should fight boldly for such a distinction, who is persuaded it
will furnish him a passport to the other world, and entitle him to
look down on the rest of his fellows as _given over to perdition_.
Secondly, we often hate those most with whom we have only a slight
shade of difference, whether in politics or religion; because as the
whole is a contest for precedence and infallibility, we find it more
difficult to draw the line of distinction where so many points are
conceded, and are staggered in our conviction by the arguments of
those whom we cannot despise as totally and incorrigibly in the wrong.
The High Church party in Queen Anne's time were disposed to sacrifice
the Low Church and Dissenters to the Papists, because they were more
galled by their arguments and disconcerted with their pretensions. In
private life the reverse of the foregoing holds good: that is, trades
and professions present a direct contrast to sects and parties. A
conformity in sentiment strengthens our party and opinion, but those
who have a similarity of pursuit, are rivals in interest; and hence
the old maxim, that _two of a trade can never agree_.
1830.
ESSAY IV
ON THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH
No young man believes he shall ever die. It was a saying of my
brother's, and a fine one. There is a feeling of Eternity in youth
which makes us amends for everything. To be young is to be as one of
the Immortals. One half of time indeed is spent--the other half
remains in store for us with all its countless treasures, for there is
no line drawn, and we see no limit to our hopes and wishes. We make
the coming age our own--
'The vast, the unbounded prospect lies before us.'
Death, old age, are words without a meaning, a dream, a fiction, with
which we have nothing to do. Others may have undergone, or may still
undergo them--we 'bear a charmed life,' which laughs to scorn all such
idle fancies. As, in setting out on a delightful journey, we strain
our eager sight forward,
'Bidding the lovely scenes at distance hail,'
and see no end to prospect after prospect, new objects presenting
themselves as we advance, so in the outset of life we see no end to
our desires nor to the opportunities of gratifying them. We have as
yet found no obstacle, no disposition to flag, and it seems that we
can go on so for ever. We look round in a new world, full of life and
motion, and ceaseless progress, and feel in ourselves all the vigour
and spirit to keep pace with it, and do not foresee from any present
signs how we shall be left behind in the race, decline into old age,
and drop into the grave. It is the simplicity and, as it were,
abstractedness of our feelings in youth that (so to speak) identifies
us with nature and (our experience being weak and our passions strong)
makes us fancy ourselves immortal like it. Our short-lived connection
with being, we fondly flatter ourselves, is an indissoluble and
lasting union. As infants smile and sleep, we are rocked in the cradle
of our desires, and hushed into fancied security by the roar of the
universe around us--we quaff the cup of life with eager thirst without
draining it, and joy and hope seem ever mantling to the brim--objects
press around us, filling the mind with their magnitude and with the
throng of desires that wait upon them, so that there is no room for
the thoughts of death. We are too much dazzled by the gorgeousness and
novelty of the bright waking dream about us to discern the dim shadow
lingering for us in the distance. Nor would the hold that life has
taken of us permit us to detach our thoughts that way, even if we
could. We are too much absorbed in present objects and pursuits. While
the spirit of youth remains unimpaired, ere 'the wine of life is
drunk,' we are like people intoxicated or in a fever, who are hurried
away by the violence of their own sensations: it is only as present
objects begin to pall upon the sense, as we have been disappointed in
our favourite pursuits, cut off from our closest ties, that we by
degrees become weaned from the world, that passion loosens its hold
upon futurity, and that we begin to contemplate as in a glass darkly
the possibility of parting with it for good. Till then, the example of
others has no effect upon us. Casualties we avoid; the slow approaches
of age we play at _hide and seek_ with. Like the foolish fat scullion
in Sterne, who hears that Master Bobby is dead, our only reflection
is, 'So am not I!' The idea of death, instead of staggering our
confidence, only seems to strengthen and enhance our sense of the
possession and enjoyment of life. Others may fall around us like
leaves, or be mowed down by the scythe of Time like grass: these are
but metaphors to the unreflecting, buoyant ears and overweening
presumption of youth. It is not till we see the flowers of Love, Hope,
and Joy withering around us, that we give up the flattering delusions
that before led us on, and that the emptiness and dreariness of the
prospect before us reconciles us hypothetically to the silence of the
grave.
Life is indeed a strange gift, and its privileges are most mysterious.
No wonder when it is first granted to us, that our gratitude, our
admiration, and our delight should prevent us from reflecting on our
own nothingness, or from thinking it will ever be recalled. Our first
and strongest impressions are borrowed from the mighty scene that is
opened to us, and we unconsciously transfer its durability as well as
its splendour to ourselves. So newly found, we cannot think of parting
with it yet, or at least put off that consideration _sine die_. Like a
rustic at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have no
thought of going home, or that it will soon be night. We know our
existence only by ourselves, and confound our knowledge with the
objects of it. We and Nature are therefore one. Otherwise the
illusion, the 'feast of reason and the flow of soul,' to which we are
invited, is a mockery and a cruel insult. We do not go from a play
till the last act is ended, and the lights are about to be
extinguished. But the fairy face of Nature still shines on: shall we
be called away before the curtain falls, or ere we have scarce had a
glimpse of what is going on? Like children, our step-mother Nature
holds us up to see the raree-show of the universe, and then, as if we
were a burden to her to support, lets us fall down again. Yet what
brave sublunary things does not this pageant present, like a ball or
_fete_ of the universe!
To see the golden sun, the azure sky, the outstretched ocean; to walk
upon the green earth, and be lord of a thousand creatures; to look
down yawning precipices or over distant sunny vales; to see the world
spread out under one's feet on a map; to bring the stars near; to view
the smallest insects through a microscope; to read history, and
consider the revolutions of empire and the successions of generations;
to hear of the glory of Tyre, of Sidon, of Babylon, and of Susa, and
to say all these were before me and are now nothing; to say I exist in
such a point of time, and in such a point of space; to be a spectator
and a part of its ever-moving scene; to witness the change of season,
of spring and autumn, of winter and summer; to feel hot and cold,
pleasure and pain, beauty and deformity, right and wrong; to be
sensible to the accidents of nature; to consider the mighty world of
eye and ear; to listen to the stock-dove's notes amid the forest deep;
to journey over moor and mountain; to hear the midnight sainted choir;
to visit lighted halls, or the cathedral's gloom, or sit in crowded
theatres and see life itself mocked; to study the works of art and
refine the sense of beauty to agony; to worship fame, and to dream of
immortality; to look upon the Vatican, and to read Shakspeare; to
gather up the wisdom of the ancients, and to pry into the future; to
listen to the trump of war, the shout of victory; to question history
as to the movements of the human heart; to seek for truth; to plead
the cause of humanity; to overlook the world as if time and nature
poured their treasures at our feet--to be and to do all this, and then
in a moment to be nothing--to have it all snatched from us as by a
juggler's trick, or a phantasmagoria! There is something in this
transition from all to nothing that shocks us and damps the enthusiasm
of youth new flushed with hope and pleasure, and we cast the
comfortless thought as far from us as we can. In the first enjoyment
of the state of life we discard the fear of debts and duns, and never
think of the final payment of our great debt to Nature. Art we know is
long; life, we flatter ourselves, should be so too. We see no end of
the difficulties and delays we have to encounter: perfection is slow
of attainment, and we must have time to accomplish it in. The fame of
the great names we look up to is immortal: and shall not we who
contemplate it imbibe a portion of ethereal fire, the _divinae
particula aurae_, which nothing can extinguish? A wrinkle in Rembrandt
or in Nature takes whole days to resolve itself into its component
parts, its softenings and its sharpnesses; we refine upon our
perfections, and unfold the intricacies of nature. What a prospect for
the future! What a task have we not begun! And shall we be arrested in
the middle of it? We do not count our time thus employed lost, or our
pains thrown away; we do not flag or grow tired, but gain new vigour
at our endless task. Shall Time, then, grudge us to finish what we
have begun, and have formed a compact with Nature to do? Why not fill
up the blank that is left us in this manner? I have looked for hours
at a Rembrandt without being conscious of the flight of time, but with
ever new wonder and delight, have thought that not only my own but
another existence I could pass in the same manner. This rarefied,
refined existence seemed to have no end, nor stint, nor principle of
decay in it. The print would remain long after I who looked on it had
become the prey of worms. The thing seems in itself out of all reason:
health, strength, appetite are opposed to the idea of death, and we
are not ready to credit it till we have found our illusions vanished,
and our hopes grown cold. Objects in youth, from novelty, etc., are
stamped upon the brain with such force and integrity that one thinks
nothing can remove or obliterate them. They are riveted there, and
appear to us as an element of our nature. It must be a mere violence
that destroys them, not a natural decay. In the very strength of this
persuasion we seem to enjoy an age by anticipation. We melt down years
into a single moment of intense sympathy, and by anticipating the
fruits defy the ravages of time. If, then, a single moment of our
lives is worth years, shall we set any limits to its total value and
extent? Again, does it not happen that so secure do we think
ourselves of an indefinite period of existence, that at times, when
left to ourselves, and impatient of novelty, we feel annoyed at what
seems to us the slow and creeping progress of time, and argue that if
it always moves at this tedious snail's pace it will never come to an
end? How ready are we to sacrifice any space of time which separates
us from a favourite object, little thinking that before long we shall
find it move too fast.
For my part, I started in life with the French Revolution, and I have
lived, alas! to see the end of it. But I did not foresee this result.
My sun arose with the first dawn of liberty, and I did not think how
soon both must set. The new impulse to ardour given to men's minds
imparted a congenial warmth and glow to mine; we were strong to run a
race together, and I little dreamed that long before mine was set, the
sun of liberty would turn to blood, or set once more in the night of
despotism. Since then, I confess, I have no longer felt myself young,
for with that my hopes fell.
I have since turned my thoughts to gathering up some of the fragments
of my early recollections, and putting them into a form to which I
might occasionally revert. The future was barred to my progress, and I
turned for consolation and encouragement to the past. It is thus that,
while we find our personal and substantial identity vanishing from us,
we strive to gain a reflected and vicarious one in our thoughts: we do
not like to perish wholly, and wish to bequeath our names, at least,
to posterity. As long as we can make our cherished thoughts and
nearest interests live in the minds of others, we do not appear to
have retired altogether from the stage. We still occupy the breasts of
others, and exert an influence and power over them, and it is only our
bodies that are reduced to dust and powder. Our favourite speculations
still find encouragement, and we make as great a figure in the eye of
the world, or perhaps a greater, than in our lifetime. The demands of
our self-love are thus satisfied, and these are the most imperious and
unremitting. Besides, if by our intellectual superiority we survive
ourselves in this world, by our virtues and faith we may attain an
interest in another, and a higher state of being, and may thus be
recipients at the same time of men and of angels.
'E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.'
As we grow old, our sense of the value of time becomes vivid. Nothing
else, indeed, seems of any consequence. We can never cease wondering
that that which has ever been should cease to be. We find many things
remain the same: why then should there be change in us. This adds a
convulsive grasp of whatever is, a sense of a fallacious hollowness in
all we see. Instead of the full, pulpy feeling of youth tasting
existence and every object in it, all is flat and vapid,--a whited
sepulchre, fair without but full of ravening and all uncleanness
within. The world is a witch that puts us off with false shows and
appearances. The simplicity of youth, the confiding expectation, the
boundless raptures, are gone: we only think of getting out of it as
well as we can, and without any great mischance or annoyance. The
flush of illusion, even the complacent retrospect of past joys and
hopes, is over: if we can slip out of life without indignity, can
escape with little bodily infirmity, and frame our minds to the calm
and respectable composure of _still-life_ before we return to physical
nothingness, it is as much as we can expect. We do not die wholly at
our deaths: we have mouldered away gradually long before. Faculty
after faculty, interest after interest, attachment after attachment
disappear: we are torn from ourselves while living, year after year
sees us no longer the same, and death only consigns the last fragment
of what we were to the grave. That we should wear out by slow stages,
and dwindle at last into nothing, is not wonderful, when even in our
prime our strongest impressions leave little trace but for the moment,
and we are the creatures of petty circumstance. How little effect is
made on us in our best days by the books we have read, the scenes we
have witnessed, the sensations we have gone through! Think only of the
feelings we experience in reading a fine romance (one of Sir Walter's,
for instance); what beauty, what sublimity, what interest, what
heart-rending emotions! You would suppose the feelings you then
experienced would last for ever, or subdue the mind to their own
harmony and tone: while we are reading it seems as if nothing could
ever put us out of our way, or trouble us:--the first splash of mud
that we get on entering the street, the first twopence we are cheated
out of, the feeling vanishes clean out of our minds, and we become the
prey of petty and annoying circumstance. The mind soars to the lofty:
it is at home in the grovelling, the disagreeable, and the little. And
yet we wonder that age should be feeble and querulous,--that the
freshness of youth should fade away. Both worlds would hardly satisfy
the extravagance of our desires and of our presumption.
ESSAY V
ON PUBLIC OPINION
'Scared at the sound itself has made.'
Once asking a friend why he did not bring forward an explanation of a
circumstance, in which his conduct had been called in question, he
said, 'His friends were satisfied on the subject, and he cared very
little about the opinion of the world.' I made answer that I did not
consider this a good ground to rest his defence upon, for that a man's
friends seldom thought better of him than the world did. I see no
reason to alter this opinion. Our friends, indeed, are more apt than a
mere stranger to join in with, or be silent under any imputation
thrown out against us, because they are apprehensive they may be
indirectly implicated in it, and they are bound to betray us to save
their own credit. To judge of our jealousy, our sensibility, our high
notions of responsibility, on this score, only consider if a single
individual lets fall a solitary remark implying a doubt of the wit,
the sense, the courage of a friend--how it staggers us--how it makes
us shake with fear--how it makes us call up all our eloquence and airs
of self-consequence in his defence, lest our partiality should be
supposed to have blinded our perceptions, and we should be regarded as
the dupes of a mistaken admiration. We already begin to meditate an
escape from a losing cause, and try to find out some other fault in
the character under discussion, to show that we are not behind-hand
(if the truth must be spoken) in sagacity, and a sense of the
ridiculous. If, then, this is the case with the first flaw, the first
doubt, the first speck that dims the sun of friendship, so that we are
ready to turn our backs on our sworn attachments and well-known
professions the instant we have not all the world with us, what must
it be when we have all the world against us; when our friend, instead
of a single stain, is covered with mud from head to foot; how shall we
expect our feeble voices not to be drowned in the general clamour? how
shall we dare to oppose our partial and mis-timed suffrages to the
just indignation of the public? Or if it should not amount to this,
how shall we answer the silence and contempt with which his name is
received. How shall we animate the great mass of indifference or
distrust with our private enthusiasm? how defeat the involuntary
smile, or the suppressed sneer, with the burst of generous feeling and
the glow of honest conviction? It is a thing not to be thought of,
unless we would enter into a crusade against prejudice and malignity,
devote ourselves as martyrs to friendship, raise a controversy in
every company we go into, quarrel with every person we meet, and after
making ourselves and every one else uncomfortable, leave off, not by
clearing our friend's reputation, but by involving our own pretensions
to decency and common sense. People will not fail to observe that a
man may have his reasons for his faults or vices; but that for another
to volunteer a defence of them, is without excuse. It is, in fact, an
attempt to deprive them of the great and only benefit they derive from
the supposed errors of their neighbours and contemporaries--the
pleasure of backbiting and railing at them, which they call _seeing
justice done_. It is not a single breath of rumour or opinion; but the
whole atmosphere is infected with a sort of aguish taint of anger and
suspicion, that relaxes the nerves of fidelity, and makes our most
sanguine resolutions sicken and turn pale; and he who is proof against
it, must either be armed with a love of truth, or a contempt for
mankind, which places him out of the reach of ordinary rules and
calculations. For myself, I do not shrink from defending a cause or a
friend _under a cloud_; though in neither case will cheap or common
efforts suffice. But, in the first, you merely stand up for your own
judgment and principles against fashion and prejudice, and thus assume
a sort of manly and heroic attitude of defiance: in the last (which
makes it a matter of greater nicety and nervous sensibility), you
sneak behind another to throw your gauntlet at the whole world, and it
requires a double stock of stoical firmness not to be laughed out of
your boasted zeal and independence as a romantic and _amiable
weakness_.[6]
There is nothing in which all the world agree but in running down some
obnoxious individual. It may be supposed that this is not for nothing,
and that they have good reasons for what they do. On the contrary, I
will undertake to say, that so far from there being invariably just
grounds for such an universal outcry, the universality of the outcry
is often the only ground of the opinion; and that it is purposely
raised upon this principle, that all other proof or evidence against
the person meant to be run down is wanting. Nay, further, it may
happen, that while the clamour is at the loudest; while you hear it
from all quarters; while it blows a perfect hurricane; while 'the
world rings with the vain stir'--not one of those who are most eager
in hearing and echoing knows what it is about, or is not fully
persuaded that the charge is equally false, malicious, and absurd. It
is like the wind, that 'no man knoweth whence it cometh, or whither it
goeth.' It is _vox et praeterea nihil_. What, then, is it that gives it
its confident circulation and its irresistible force. It is the
loudness of the organ with which it is pronounced, the stentorian
lungs of the multitude; the number of voices that take it up and
repeat it, because others have done so; the rapid flight and the
impalpable nature of common fame, that makes it a desperate
undertaking for any individual to inquire into or arrest the mischief
that, in the deafening buzz or loosened roar of laughter or
indignation, renders it impossible for the still small voice of reason
to be heard, and leaves no other course to honesty or prudence than to
fall flat on the face before it, as before the pestilential blast of
the desert, and wait till it has passed over. Thus every one joins in
asserting, propagating, and in outwardly approving what every one, in
his private and unbiassed judgment, believes and knows to be
scandalous and untrue. For every one in such circumstances keeps his
own opinion to himself, and only attends to or acts upon that which he
conceives to be the opinion of every one but himself. So that public
opinion is not seldom a farce, equal to any acted upon the stage. Not
only is it spurious and hollow in the way that Mr. Locke points out,
by one man's taking up at second hand the opinion of another, but
worse than this, one man takes up what he believes another _will_
think, and which the latter professes only because he believes it held
by the first! All, therefore, that is necessary to control public
opinion, is to gain possession of some organ loud and lofty enough to
make yourself heard, that has power and interest on its side; and
then, no sooner do you blow a blast in this trump of _ill-fame_, like
the horn hung up on an old castle-wall, than you are answered, echoed,
and accredited on all sides: the gates are thrown open to receive you,
and you are admitted into the very heart of the fortress of public
opinion, and can assail from the ramparts with every engine of abuse,
and with privileged impunity, all those who may come forward to
vindicate the truth, or to rescue their good name from the
unprincipled keeping of authority, servility, sophistry, and venal
falsehood! The only thing wanted is to give an alarm--to excite a
panic in the public mind of being left _in the lurch_, and the rabble
(whether in the ranks of literature or war) will throw away their
arms, and surrender at discretion to any bully or impostor who, for a
_consideration_, shall choose to try the experiment upon them!
What I have here described is the effect even upon the candid and
well-disposed: what must it be to the malicious and idle, who are
eager to believe all the ill they can hear of every one; or to the
prejudiced and interested, who are determined to credit all the ill
they hear against those who are not of their own side? To these last
it is only requisite to be understood that the butt of ridicule or
slander is of an opposite party, and they presently give you _carte
blanche_ to say what you please of him. Do they know that it is true?
No; but they believe what all the world says, till they have evidence
to the contrary. Do you prove that it is false? They dare say, that if
not that something worse remains behind; and they retain the same
opinion as before, for the honour of their party. They hire some one
to pelt you with mud, and then affect to avoid you in the street as a
dirty fellow. They are told that you have a hump on your back, and
then wonder at your assurance or want of complaisance in walking into
a room where they are, without it. Instead of apologising for the
mistake, and, from finding one aspersion false, doubting all the rest,
they are only the more confirmed in the remainder from being deprived
of one handle against you, and resent their disappointment, instead of
being ashamed of their credulity. People talk of the bigotry of the
Catholics, and treat with contempt the absurd claim of the Popes to
infallibility--I think with little right to do so. Walk into a church
in Paris, you are struck with a number of idle forms and ceremonies,
the chanting of the service in Latin, the shifting of the surplices,
the sprinkling of holy water, the painted windows 'casting a dim
religious light,' the wax tapers, the pealing organ: the common people
seem attentive and devout, and to put entire faith in all this--Why?
Because they imagine others to do so; they see and hear certain signs
and supposed evidences of it, and it amuses and fills up the void of
the mind, the love of the mysterious and wonderful, to lend their
assent to it. They have assuredly, in general, no better reason--all
our Protestant divines will tell you so. Well, step out of the church
of St. Roche, and drop into an English reading-room hard by: what are
you the better? You see a dozen or score of your countrymen with their
faces fixed, and their eyes glued to a newspaper, a magazine, a
review--reading, swallowing, profoundly ruminating on the lie, the
cant, the sophism of the day! Why? It saves them the trouble of
thinking; it gratifies their ill-humour, and keeps off _ennui_! Does a
gleam of doubt, an air of ridicule, or a glance of impatience pass
across their features at the shallow and monstrous things they find?
No, it is all passive faith and dull security; they cannot take their
eyes from the page, they cannot live without it. They believe in their
adopted oracle (you see it in their faces) as implicitly as in Sir
John Barleycorn, as in a sirloin of beef, as in quarter-day--as they
hope to receive their rents, or to see Old England again! Are not the
Popes, the Fathers, the Councils, as good as their oracles and
champions? They know the paper before them to be a hoax, but do they
believe in the ribaldry, the calumny, the less on that account? They
believe the more in it, because it is got up solely and expressly to
serve a cause that needs such support--and they swear by whatever is
devoted to this object.
The greater the profligacy, the effrontery, the servility, the greater
the faith. Strange! That the British public, whether at home or
abroad, should shake their heads at the Lady of Loretto, and repose
deliciously on Mr. Theodore Hook. It may well be thought that the
enlightened part of the British public, persons of family and
fortunes, who have had a college education, and received the benefit
of foreign travel, see through the quackery, which they encourage for
a political purpose, without being themselves the dupes of it. This
scarcely mends the matter. Suppose an individual, of whom it has been
repeatedly asserted that he has warts on his nose, were to enter the
reading-room aforesaid, is there a single red-faced country squire who
would not be surprised at not finding this story true, would not
persuade himself five minutes after that he could not have seen
correctly, or that some art had been used to conceal the defects, or
would be led to doubt, from this instance, the general candour and
veracity of his oracle? He would disbelieve his own senses rather.
Seeing is believing, it is said: lying is believing, I say. We do not
even see with our own eyes, but must 'wink and shut our apprehension
up,' that we may be able to agree to the report of others, as a piece
of good manners and a point of established etiquette. Besides, the
supposed deformity answered his wishes, the abuse fed fat the ancient
grudge he owed some presumptuous scribbler, for not agreeing in a
number of points with his betters; it gave him a personal advantage
over a man he did not like--and who will give up what tends to
strengthen his aversion for another? To Tory prejudice, dire as it
is--to English imagination, morbid as it is, a nickname, a ludicrous
epithet, a malignant falsehood, when it has been once propagated and
taken to the bosom as a welcome consolation, becomes a precious
property, a vested right; and people would as soon give up a sinecure,
or a share in a close borough, as this sort of plenary indulgence to
speak and think with contempt of those who would abolish the one, or
throw open the other. Party-spirit is the best reason in the world for
personal antipathy and vulgar abuse.
'But, do you not think, Sir' (some dialectician may ask), 'that belief
is involuntary, and that we judge in all cases according to the
precise degree of evidence and the positive facts before us?'
No, Sir.
'You believe, then, in the doctrine of philosophical free-will?'
Indeed, Sir, I do not.
'How then, Sir, am I to understand so unaccountable a diversity of
opinion from the most approved writers on the philosophy of the human
mind?'
May I ask, my dear Sir, did you ever read Mr. Wordsworth's poem of
_Michael_?
'I cannot charge my memory with the fact.'
Well, Sir, this Michael is an old shepherd, who has a son who goes to
sea, and who turns out a great reprobate, by all the accounts received
of him. Before he went, however, the father took the boy with him into
a mountain-glen, and made him lay the first stone of a sheep-fold,
which was to be a covenant and a remembrance between them if anything
ill happened. For years after, the old man used to go and work at the
sheep-fold--
'Among the rocks
He went, and still look'd up upon the sun,
And listen'd to the wind,'
and sat by the half-finished work, expecting the lad's return, or
hoping to hear some better tidings of him. Was this hope founded on
reason--or was it not owing to the strength of affection, which in
spite of everything could not relinquish its hold of a favourite
object, indeed the only one that bound it to existence?
Not being able to make my dialectician answer kindly to
interrogatories, I must get on without him. In matters of absolute
demonstration and speculative indifferences, I grant, that belief is
involuntary, and the proof not to be resisted; but then, in such
matters, there is no difference of opinion, or the difference is
adjusted amicably and rationally. Hobbes is of opinion, that if their
passions or interests could be implicated in the question, men would
deny stoutly that the three angles of a right-angled triangle are
equal to two right ones: and the disputes in religion look something
like it. I only contend, however, that in all cases not of this
peremptory and determinate cast, and where disputes commonly arise,
inclination, habit, and example have a powerful share in throwing in
the casting-weight to our opinions, and that he who is only tolerably
free from these, and not their regular dupe or slave, is indeed 'a man
of ten thousand.' Take, for instance, the example of a Catholic
clergyman in a Popish country: it will generally be found that he
lives and dies in the faith in which he was brought up, as the
Protestant clergyman does in his--shall we say that the necessity of
gaining a livelihood, or the prospect of preferment, that the early
bias given to his mind by education and study, the pride of victory,
the shame of defeat, the example and encouragement of all about him,
the respect and love of his flock, the flattering notice of the great,
have no effect in giving consistency to his opinions and carrying them
through to the last? Yet, who will suppose that in either case this
apparent uniformity is mere hypocrisy, or that the intellects of the
two classes of divines are naturally adapted to the arguments in
favour of the two religions they have occasion to profess? No; but the
understanding takes a tincture from outward impulses and
circumstances, and is led to dwell on those suggestions which favour,
and to blind itself to the objections which impugn, the side to which
it previously and morally inclines. Again, even in those who oppose
established opinions, and form the little, firm, formidable phalanx of
dissent, have not early instruction, spiritual pride, the love of
contradiction, a resistance to usurped authority, as much to do with
keeping up the war of sects and schisms as the abstract love of truth
or conviction of the understanding? Does not persecution fan the flame
in such fiery tempers, and does it not expire, or grow lukewarm, with
indulgence and neglect? I have a sneaking kindness for a Popish
priest in this country; and to a Catholic peer I would willingly bow
in passing. What are national antipathies, individual attachments, but
so many expressions of the _moral_ principle in forming our opinions?
All our opinions become grounds on which we act, and build our
expectations of good or ill; and this good or ill mixed up with them
is soon changed into the ruling principle which modifies or violently
supersedes the original cool determination of the reason and senses.
The will, when it once gets a footing, turns the sober judgment out of
doors. If we form an attachment to any one, are we not slow in giving
it up? Or, if our suspicions are once excited, are we not equally rash
and violent in believing the worst? Othello characterises himself as
one
----'That loved not wisely, but too well;
Of one not easily jealous--but, being wrought,
Perplex'd in the extreme.'
And this answers to the movements and irregularities of passion and
opinion which take place in human nature. If we wish a thing we are
disposed to believe it: if we have been accustomed to believe it, we
are the more obstinate in defending it on that account: if all the
world differ from us in any question of moment, we are ashamed to own
it; or are hurried by peevishness and irritation into extravagance and
paradox. The weight of example presses upon us (whether we feel it or
not) like the law of gravitation. He who sustains his opinion by the
strength of conviction and evidence alone, unmoved by ridicule,
neglect, obloquy, or privation, shows no less resolution than the
Hindoo who makes and keeps a vow to hold his right arm in the air till
it grows rigid and callous.
To have all the world against us is trying to a man's temper and
philosophy. It unhinges even our opinion of our own motives and
intentions. It is like striking the actual world from under our feet:
the void that is left, the death-like pause, the chilling suspense, is
fearful. The growth of an opinion is like the growth of a limb; it
receives its actual support and nourishment from the general body of
the opinions, feelings, and practice of the world; without that, it
soon withers, festers, and becomes useless. To what purpose write a
good book, if it is sure to be pronounced a bad one, even before it is
read? If our thoughts are to be blown stifling back upon ourselves,
why utter them at all? It is only exposing what we love most to
contumely and insult, and thus depriving ourselves of our own relish
and satisfaction in them. Language is only made to communicate our
sentiments, and if we can find no one to receive them, we are reduced
to the silence of dumbness, we live but in the solitude of a dungeon.
If we do not vindicate our opinions, we seem poor creatures who have
no right to them; if we speak out, we are involved in continual brawls
and controversy. If we contemn what others admire, we make ourselves
odious; if we admire what they despise, we are equally ridiculous. We
have not the applause of the world nor the support of a party; we can
neither enjoy the freedom of social intercourse, nor the calm of
privacy. With our respect for others, we lose confidence in ourselves:
everything seems to be a subject of litigation--to want proof or
confirmation; we doubt, by degrees, whether we stand on our head or
our heels--whether we know our right hand from our left. If I am
assured that I never wrote a sentence of common English in my life,
how can I know that this is not the case? If I am told at one time
that my writings are as heavy as lead, and at another, that they are
more light and flimsy than the gossamer--what resource have I but to
choose between the two? I could say, if this were the place, what
those writings are.--'Make it the place, and never stand upon
punctilio!'
They are not, then, so properly the works of an author by profession,
as the thoughts of a metaphysician expressed by a painter. They are
subtle and difficult problems translated into hieroglyphics. I
thought for several years on the hardest subjects, on Fate, Free-will,
Foreknowledge absolute, without ever making use of words or images at
all, and that has made them come in such throngs and confused heaps
when I burst from that void of abstraction. In proportion to the
tenuity to which my ideas had been drawn, and my abstinence from
ornament and sensible objects, was the tenaciousness with which actual
circumstances and picturesque imagery laid hold of my mind, when I
turned my attention to them, or had to look round for illustrations.
Till I began to paint, or till I became acquainted with the author of
_The Ancient Mariner_, I could neither write nor speak. He encouraged
me to write a book, which I did according to the original bent of my
mind, making it as dry and meagre as I could, so that it fell
still-born from the press, and none of those who abuse me for a
shallow _catch-penny_ writer have so much as heard of it. Yet, let me
say, that work contains an important metaphysical discovery, supported
by a continuous and severe train of reasoning, nearly as subtle and
original as anything in Hume or Berkeley. I am not accustomed to speak
of myself in this manner, but impudence may provoke modesty to justify
itself. Finding this method did not answer, I despaired for a time;
but some trifle I wrote in the _Morning Chronicle_, meeting the
approbation of the editor and the town, I resolved to turn over a new
leaf--to take the public at its word, to muster all the tropes and
figures I could lay hands on, and, though I am a plain man, never to
appear abroad but in an embroidered dress. Still, old habits will
prevail; and I hardly ever set about a paragraph or a criticism, but
there was an undercurrent of thought, or some generic distinction on
which the whole turned. Having got my clue, I had no difficulty in
stringing pearls upon it; and the more recondite the point, the more I
laboured to bring it out and set it off by a variety of ornaments and
allusions. This puzzled the scribes whose business it was to crush me.
They could not see the meaning: they would not see the colouring, for
it hurt their eyes. One cried out, it was dull; another, that it was
too fine by half: my friends took up this last alternative as the most
favourable; and since then it has been agreed that I am a florid
writer, somewhat flighty and paradoxical. Yet, when I wished to
unburthen my mind in the _Edinburgh_ by an article on English
metaphysics, the editor, who echoes this _florid_ charge, said he
preferred what I wrote for effect, and was afraid of its being thought
heavy! I have accounted for the flowers; the paradoxes may be
accounted for in the same way. All abstract reasoning is in extremes,
or only takes up one view of a question, or what is called the
principle of the thing; and if you want to give this popularity and
effect, you are in danger of running into extravagance and hyperbole.
I have had to bring out some obscure distinction, or to combat some
strong prejudice, and in doing this with all my might, may have often
overshot the mark. It was easy to correct the excess of truth
afterwards. I have been accused of inconsistency, for writing an
essay, for instance, on the _Advantages of Pedantry_, and another on
the _Ignorance of the Learned_, as if ignorance had not its comforts
as well as knowledge. The personalities I have fallen into have never
been gratuitous. If I have sacrificed my friends, it has always been
to a theory. I have been found fault with for repeating myself, and
for a narrow range of ideas. To a want of general reading, I plead
guilty, and am sorry for it; but perhaps if I had read more, I might
have thought less. As to my barrenness of invention, I have at least
glanced over a number of subjects--painting, poetry, prose, plays,
politics, parliamentary speakers, metaphysical lore, books, men, and
things. There is some point, some fancy, some feeling, some taste,
shown in treating of these. Which of my conclusions has been reversed?
Is it what I said ten years ago of the Bourbons which raised the
war-whoop against me? Surely all the world are of that opinion now. I
have, then, given proofs of some talent, and of more honesty: if
there is haste or want of method, there is no commonplace, nor a line
that licks the dust; and if I do not appear to more advantage, I at
least appear such as I am. If the Editor of the _Atlas_ will do me the
favour to look over my _Essay on the Principles of Human Action_, will
dip into any essay I ever wrote, and will take a sponge and clear the
dust from the face of my _Old Woman_, I hope he will, upon second
thoughts, acquit me of an absolute dearth of resources and want of
versatility in the direction of my studies.
1828.
FOOTNOTE:
[6] The only friends whom we defend with zeal and obstinacy are our
relations. They seem part of ourselves. For our other friends we are
only answerable, so long as we countenance them; and therefore cut the
connection as soon as possible. But who ever willingly gave up the
good dispositions of a child or the honour of a parent?
ESSAY VI
ON PERSONAL IDENTITY
'Ha! here's three of us are sophisticated.'--Lear.
'If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes!' said the Macedonian
hero; and the cynic might have retorted the compliment upon the prince
by saying, that, 'were he not Diogenes, he would be Alexander!' This
is the universal exception, the invariable reservation that our
self-love makes, the utmost point at which our admiration or envy ever
arrives--to wish, if we were not ourselves, to be some other
individual. No one ever wishes to be another, _instead_ of himself. We
may feel a desire to change places with others--to have one man's
fortune--another's health or strength--his wit or learning, or
accomplishments of various kinds--
'Wishing to be like one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope';
but we would still be ourselves, to possess and enjoy all these, or we
would not give a doit for them. But, on this supposition, what in
truth should we be the better for them? It is not we, but another,
that would reap the benefit; and what do we care about that other? In
that case, the present owner might as well continue to enjoy them.
_We_ should not be gainers by the change. If the meanest beggar who
crouches at a palace gate, and looks up with awe and suppliant fear to
the proud inmate as he passes, could be put in possession of all the
finery, the pomp, the luxury, and wealth that he sees and envies, on
the sole condition of getting rid, together with his rags and misery,
of all recollection that there ever was such a wretch as himself, he
would reject the proffered boon with scorn. He might be glad to change
situations; but he would insist on keeping his own thoughts, to
_compare notes_, and point the transition by the force of contrast. He
would not, on any account, forego his self-congratulation on the
unexpected accession of good fortune, and his escape from past
suffering. All that excites his cupidity, his envy, his repining or
despair, is the alternative of some great good to himself; and if, in
order to attain that object, he is to part with his own existence to
take that of another, he can feel no farther interest in it. This is
the language both of passion and reason.
Here lies 'the rub that makes calamity of so long life': for it is not
barely the apprehension of the ills that 'in that sleep of death may
come,' but also our ignorance and indifference to the promised good,
that produces our repugnance and backwardness to quit the present
scene. No man, if he had his choice, would be the angel Gabriel
to-morrow! What is the angel Gabriel to him but a splendid vision? He
might as well have an ambition to be turned into a bright cloud, or a
particular star. The interpretation of which is, he can have no
sympathy with the angel Gabriel. Before he can be transformed into so
bright and ethereal an essence, he must necessarily 'put off this
mortal coil'--be divested of all his old habits, passions, thoughts,
and feelings--to be endowed with other attributes, lofty and beatific,
of which he has no notion; and, therefore, he would rather remain a
little longer in this mansion of clay, which, with all its flaws,
inconveniences, and perplexities, contains all that he has any real
knowledge of, or any affection for. When, indeed, he is about to quit
it in spite of himself and has no other chance left to escape the
darkness of the tomb he may then have no objection (making a virtue of
necessity) to put on angel's wings, to have radiant locks, to wear a
wreath of amaranth, and thus to masquerade it in the skies.
It is an instance of the truthful beauty of the ancient mythology,
that the various transmutations it recounts are never voluntary, or of
favourable omen, but are interposed as a timely release to those who,
driven on by fate, and urged to the last extremity of fear or anguish,
are turned into a flower, a plant, an animal, a star, a precious
stone, or into some object that may inspire pity or mitigate our
regret for their misfortunes. Narcissus was transformed into a flower;
Daphne into a laurel; Arethusa into a fountain (by the favour of the
gods)--but not till no other remedy was left for their despair. It is
a sort of smiling cheat upon death, and graceful compromise with
annihilation. It is better to exist by proxy, in some softened type
and soothing allegory, than not at all--to breathe in a flower or
shine in a constellation, than to be utterly forgot; but no one would
change his natural condition (if he could help it) for that of a bird,
an insect, a beast, or a fish, however delightful their mode of
existence, or however enviable he might deem their lot compared to his
own. Their thoughts are not our thoughts--their happiness is not our
happiness; nor can we enter into it, except with a passing smile of
approbation, or as a refinement of fancy. As the poet sings:
'What more felicity can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with liberty,
And to be lord of all the works of nature?
To reign in the air from earth to highest sky;
To feed on flowers and weeds of glorious feature;
To taste whatever thing doth please the eye?--
Who rests not pleased with such happiness,
Well worthy he to taste of wretchedness!'
This is gorgeous description and fine declamation: yet who would be
found to act upon it, even in the forming of a wish; or would not
rather be the thrall of wretchedness, than launch out (by the aid of
some magic spell) into all the delights of such a butterfly state of
existence? The French (if any people can) may be said to enjoy this
airy, heedless gaiety and unalloyed exuberance of satisfaction: yet
what Englishman would deliberately change with them? We would sooner
be miserable after our own fashion than happy after theirs. It is not
happiness, then, in the abstract, which we seek, that can be addressed
as
'That something still that prompts th' eternal sigh,
For which we wish to live or dare to die,'
but a happiness suited to our tastes and faculties--that has become a
part of ourselves, by habit and enjoyment--that is endeared to us by a
thousand recollections, privations, and sufferings. No one, then,
would willingly change his country or his kind for the most plausible
pretences held out to him. The most humiliating punishment inflicted
in ancient fable is the change of sex: not that it was any degradation
in itself--but that it must occasion a total derangement of the moral
economy and confusion of the sense of personal propriety. The thing is
said to have happened _au sens contraire_, in our time. The story is
to be met with in 'very choice Italian'; and Lord D---- tells it in
very plain English!
We may often find ourselves envying the possessions of others, and
sometimes inadvertently indulging a wish to change places with them
altogether; but our self-love soon discovers some excuse to be off the
bargain we were ready to strike, and retracts 'vows made in haste, as
violent and void.' We might make up our minds to the alteration in
every other particular; but, when it comes to the point, there is sure
to be some trait or feature of character in the object of our
admiration to which we cannot reconcile ourselves--some favourite
quality or darling foible of our own, with which we can by no means
resolve to part. The more enviable the situation of another, the more
entirely to our taste, the more reluctant we are to leave any part of
ourselves behind that would be so fully capable of appreciating all
the exquisiteness of its new situation, or not to enter into the
possession of such an imaginary reversion of good fortune with all our
previous inclinations and sentiments. The outward circumstances were
fine: they only wanted a _soul_ to enjoy them, and that soul is ours
(as the costly ring wants the peerless jewel to perfect and set it
off). The humble prayer and petition to sneak into visionary felicity
by personal adoption, or the surrender of our own personal
pretentions, always ends in a daring project of usurpation, and a
determination to expel the actual proprietor, and supply his place so
much more worthily with our own identity--not bating a single jot of
it. Thus, in passing through a fine collection of pictures, who has
not envied the privilege of visiting it every day, and wished to be
the owner? But the rising sigh is soon checked, and 'the native hue of
emulation is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,' when we
come to ask ourselves, not merely whether the owner has any taste at
all for these splendid works, and does not look upon them as so much
expensive furniture, like his chairs and tables--but whether he has
the same precise (and only true) taste that we have--whether he has
the very same favourites that we have--whether he may not be so blind
as to prefer a Vandyke to a Titian, a Ruysdael to a Claude; nay,
whether he may not have other pursuits and avocations that draw off
his attention from the sole objects of our idolatry, and which seem to
us mere impertinences and waste of time? In that case, we at once lose
all patience, and exclaim indignantly, 'Give us back our taste, and
keep your pictures!' It is not we who should envy them the possession
of the treasure, but they who should envy us the true and exclusive
enjoyment of it. A similar train of feeling seems to have dictated
Warton's spirited _Sonnet on visiting Wilton House_:
'From Pembroke's princely dome, where mimic art
Decks with a magic hand the dazzling bowers,
Its living hues where the warm pencil pours,
And breathing forms from the rude marble start,
How to life's humbler scene can I depart?
My breast all glowing from those gorgeous towers,
In my low cell how cheat the sullen hours?
Vain the complaint! For fancy can impart
(To fate superior and to fortune's power)
Whate'er adorns the stately storied-hall:
She, 'mid the dungeon's solitary gloom,
Can dress the Graces in their attic-pall;
Did the green landscape's vernal beauty bloom;
And in bright trophies clothe the twilight wall.'
One sometimes passes by a gentleman's park, an old family-seat, with
its moss-grown, ruinous paling, its 'glades mild-opening to the genial
day,' or embrowned with forest-trees. Here one would be glad to spend
one's life, 'shut up in measureless content,' and to grow old beneath
ancestral oaks, instead of gaining a precarious, irksome, and despised
livelihood, by indulging romantic sentiments, and writing disjointed
descriptions of them. The thought has scarcely risen to the lips, when
we learn that the owner of so blissful a seclusion is a thoroughbred
fox-hunter, a preserver of the game, a brawling electioneerer, a Tory
member of parliament, a 'No-Popery' man!--'I'd sooner be a dog, and
bay the moon!' Who would be Sir Thomas Lethbridge for his title and
estate? asks one man. But would not almost any one wish to be Sir
Francis Burdett, the man of the people, the idol of the electors of
Westminster? says another. I can only answer for myself. Respectable
and honest as he is, there is something in his white boots, and white
breeches, and white coat, and white hair, and white hat, and red face,
that I cannot, by any effort of candour, confound my personal identity
with! If Mr. ---- can prevail on Sir Francis to exchange, let him do
so by all means. Perhaps they might contrive to _club_ a soul between
them! Could I have had my will, I should have been born a lord: but
one would not be a booby lord neither. I am haunted by an odd fancy of
driving down the Great North Road in a chaise and four, about fifty
years ago, and coming to the inn at Ferry-bridge with outriders,
white favours, and a coronet on the panels; and then, too, I choose
my companion in the coach. Really there is a witchcraft in all this
that makes it necessary to turn away from it, lest, in the conflict
between imagination and impossibility, I should grow feverish and
light-headed! But, on the other hand, if one was a born lord, should
one have the same idea (that every one else has) of _a peeress in her
own right_? Is not distance, giddy elevation, mysterious awe, an
impassable gulf, necessary to form this idea in the mind, that fine
ligament of 'ethereal braid, sky-woven,' that lets down heaven upon
earth, fair as enchantment, soft as Berenice's hair, bright and
garlanded like Ariadne's crown; and is it not better to have had this
idea all through life--to have caught but glimpses of it, to have
known it but in a dream--than to have been born a lord ten times over,
with twenty pampered menials at one's beck, and twenty descents to
boast of? It is the envy of certain privileges, the sharp privations
we have undergone, the cutting neglect we have met with from the want
of birth or title that gives its zest to the distinction: the thing
itself may be indifferent or contemptible enough. It is the _becoming_
a lord that is to be desired; but he who becomes a lord in reality may
be an upstart--a mere pretender, without the sterling essence; so that
all that is of any worth in this supposed transition is purely
imaginary and impossible.[7] Kings are so accustomed to look down on
all the rest of the world, that they consider the condition of
mortality as vile and intolerable, if stripped of royal state, and cry
out in the bitterness of their despair, 'Give me a crown, or a tomb!'
It should seem from this as if all mankind would change with the
first crowned head that could propose the alternative, or that it
would be only the presumption of the supposition, or a sense of their
own unworthiness, that would deter them. Perhaps there is not a single
throne that, if it was to be filled by this sort of voluntary
metempsychosis, would not remain empty. Many would, no doubt, be glad
to 'monarchise, be feared, and kill with looks' in their own persons
and after their own fashion: but who would be the _double_ of those
shadows of a shade--those 'tenth transmitters of a foolish
face'--Charles X. and Ferdinand VII.? If monarchs have little sympathy
with mankind, mankind have even less with monarchs. They are merely to
us a sort of state-puppets, or royal wax-work, which we may gaze at
with superstitious wonder, but have no wish to become; and he who
should meditate such a change must not only feel by anticipation an
utter contempt for the _slough_ of humanity which he is prepared to
cast, but must feel an absolute void and want of attraction in those
lofty and incomprehensible sentiments which are to supply its place.
With respect to actual royalty, the spell is in a great measure
broken. But, among ancient monarchs, there is no one, I think, who
envies Darius or Xerxes. One has a different feeling with respect to
Alexander or Pyrrhus; but this is because they were great men as well
as great kings, and the soul is up in arms at the mention of their
names as at the sound of a trumpet. But as to all the rest--those 'in
the catalogue who go for kings'--the praying, eating, drinking,
dressing monarchs of the earth, in time past or present--one would as
soon think of wishing to personate the Golden Calf, or to turn out
with Nebuchadnezzar to graze, as to be transformed into one of that
'swinish multitude.' There is no point of affinity. The extrinsic
circumstances are imposing; but, within, there is nothing but morbid
humours and proud flesh! Some persons might vote for Charlemagne; and
there are others who would have no objection to be the modern
Charlemagne, with all he inflicted and suffered, even after the
necromantic field of Waterloo, and the bloody wreath on the vacant
brow of the conqueror, and that fell jailer, set over him by a craven
foe, that 'glared round his soul, and mocked his closing eyelids!'
It has been remarked, that could we at pleasure change our situation
in life, more persons would be found anxious to descend than to ascend
in the scale of society. One reason may be, that we have it more in
our power to do so; and this encourages the thought, and makes it
familiar to us. A second is, that we naturally wish to throw off the
cares of state, of fortune or business, that oppress us, and to seek
repose before we find it in the grave. A third reason is, that, as we
descend to common life, the pleasures are simple, natural, such as all
can enter into, and therefore excite a general interest, and combine
all suffrages. Of the different occupations of life, none is beheld
with a more pleasing emotion, or less aversion to a change for our
own, than that of a shepherd tending his flock: the pastoral ages have
been the envy and the theme of all succeeding ones; and a beggar with
his crutch is more closely allied than the monarch and his crown to
the associations of mirth and heart's-ease. On the other hand, it must
be admitted that our pride is too apt to prefer grandeur to happiness;
and that our passions make us envy great vices oftener than great
virtues.
The world show their sense in nothing more than in a distrust and
aversion to those changes of situation which only tend to make the
successful candidates ridiculous, and which do not carry along with
them a mind adequate to the circumstances. The common people, in this
respect, are more shrewd and judicious than their superiors, from
feeling their own awkwardness and incapacity, and often decline, with
an instinctive modesty, the troublesome honours intended for them.
They do not overlook their original defects so readily as others
overlook their acquired advantages. It is not wonderful, therefore,
that opera-singers and dancers refuse or only _condescend_ as it
were, to accept lords, though the latter are too often fascinated by
them. The fair performer knows (better than her unsuspecting admirer)
how little connection there is between the dazzling figure she makes
on the stage and that which she may make in private life, and is in no
hurry to convert 'the drawing-room into a Green-room.' The nobleman
(supposing him not to be very wise) is astonished at the miraculous
powers of art in
'The fair, the chaste, the inexpressive _she_';
and thinks such a paragon must easily conform to the routine of
manners and society which every trifling woman of quality of his
acquaintance, from sixteen to sixty, goes through without effort. This
is a hasty or a wilful conclusion. Things of habit only come by habit,
and inspiration here avails nothing. A man of fortune who marries an
actress for her fine performance of tragedy, has been well compared to
the person who bought Punch. The lady is not unfrequently aware of the
inconsequentiality, and unwilling to be put on the shelf, and hid in
the nursery of some musty country mansion. Servant girls, of any sense
and spirit, treat their masters (who make serious love to them) with
suitable contempt. What is it but a proposal to drag an unmeaning
trollop at his heels through life, to her own annoyance and the
ridicule of all his friends? No woman, I suspect, ever forgave a man
who raised her from a low condition in life (it is a perpetual
obligation and reproach); though I believe, men often feel the most
disinterested regard for women under such circumstances. Sancho Panza
discovered no less folly in his eagerness to enter upon his new
government, than wisdom in quitting it as fast as possible. Why will
Mr. Cobbett persist in getting into Parliament? He would find himself
no longer the same man. What member of Parliament, I should like to
know, could write his _Register_? As a popular partisan, he may (for
aught I can say) be a match for the whole Honourable House; but, by
obtaining a seat in St. Stephen's Chapel, he would only be equal to a
576th part of it. It was surely a puerile ambition in Mr. Addington to
succeed Mr. Pitt as prime minister. The situation was only a foil to
his imbecility. Gipsies have a fine faculty of evasion; catch them who
can in the same place or story twice! Take them; teach them the
comforts of civilisation; confine them in warm rooms, with thick
carpets and down beds; and they will fly out of the window--like the
bird, described by Chaucer, out of its golden cage. I maintain that
there is no common language or medium of understanding between people
of education and without it--between those who judge of things from
books or from their senses. Ignorance has so far the advantage over
learning; for it can make an appeal to you from what you know; but you
cannot react upon it through that which it is a perfect stranger to.
Ignorance is, therefore, power. This is what foiled Buonaparte in
Spain and Russia. The people can only be gained over by informing
them, though they may be enslaved by fraud or force. 'What is it,
then, he does like?'--'Good victuals and drink!' As if you had these
not too; but because he has them not, he thinks of nothing else, and
laughs at you and your refinements, supposing you live upon air. To
those who are deprived of every other advantage, even nature is a
_book sealed_. I have made this capital mistake all my life, in
imagining that those objects which lay open to all, and excited an
interest merely from the _idea_ of them, spoke a common language to
all; and that nature was a kind of universal home, where ages, sexes,
classes meet. Not so. The vital air, the sky, the woods, the
streams--all these go for nothing, except with a favoured few. The
poor are taken up with their bodily wants--the rich, with external
acquisitions: the one, with the sense of property--the other, of its
privation. Both have the same distaste for _sentiment_. The _genteel_
are the slaves of appearances--the vulgar, of necessity; and neither
has the smallest regard to worth, refinement, generosity. All savages
are irreclaimable. I can understand the Irish character better than
the Scotch. I hate the formal crust of circumstances and the mechanism
of society. I have been recommended, indeed, to settle down into some
respectable profession for life:
'Ah! why so soon the blossom tear?'
I am 'in no haste to be venerable!'
In thinking of those one might wish to have been, many people will
exclaim, 'Surely, you would like to have been Shakspeare?' Would
Garrick have consented to the change? No, nor should he; for the
applause which he received, and on which he lived, was more adapted to
his genius and taste. If Garrick had agreed to be Shakspeare, he would
have made it a previous condition that he was to be a better player.
He would have insisted on taking some higher part than _Polonius_ or
the _Gravedigger_. Ben Jonson and his companions at the Mermaid would
not have known their old friend Will in his new disguise. The modern
Roscius would have scouted the halting player. He would have shrunk
from the parts of the inspired poet. If others are unlike us, we feel
it as a presumption and an impertinence to usurp their place; if they
are like us, it seems a work of supererogation. We are not to be
cozened out of our existence for nothing. It has been ingeniously
urged, as an objection to having been Milton, that 'then we should not
have had the pleasure of reading _Paradise Lost_.' Perhaps I should
incline to draw lots with Pope, but that he was deformed, and did not
sufficiently relish Milton and Shakspeare. As it is, we can enjoy his
verses and theirs too. Why, having these, need we ever be dissatisfied
with ourselves? Goldsmith is a person whom I considerably affect
notwithstanding his blunders and his misfortunes. The author of the
_Vicar of Wakefield_, and of _Retaliation_, is one whose temper must
have had something eminently amiable, delightful, gay, and happy in
it.
'A certain tender bloom his fame o'erspreads.'
But then I could never make up my mind to his preferring Rowe and
Dryden to the worthies of the Elizabethan age; nor could I, in like
manner, forgive Sir Joshua--whom I number among those whose existence
was marked with a _white stone_, and on whose tomb might be inscribed
'Thrice Fortunate!'--his treating Nicholas Poussin with contempt.
Differences in matters of taste and opinion are points of
honour--'stuff o' the conscience'--stumbling-blocks not to be got
over. Others, we easily grant, may have more wit, learning,
imagination, riches, strength, beauty, which we should be glad to
borrow of them; but that they have sounder or better views of things,
or that we should act wisely in changing in this respect, is what we
can by no means persuade ourselves. We may not be the lucky possessors
of what is best or most desirable; but our notion of what is best and
most desirable we will give up to no man by choice or compulsion; and
unless others (the greatest wits or brightest geniuses) can come into
our way of thinking, we must humbly beg leave to remain as we are. A
Calvinistic preacher would not relinquish a single point of faith to
be the Pope of Rome; nor would a strict Unitarian acknowledge the
mystery of the Holy Trinity to have painted Raphael's _Assembly of the
Just_. In the range of _ideal_ excellence, we are distracted by
variety and repelled by differences: the imagination is fickle and
fastidious, and requires a combination of all possible qualifications,
which never met. Habit alone is blind and tenacious of the most homely
advantages; and after running the tempting round of nature, fame and
fortune, we wrap ourselves up in our familiar recollections and humble
pretensions--as the lark, after long fluttering on sunny wing, sinks
into its lowly bed!
We can have no very importunate craving, nor very great confidence,
in wishing to change characters, except with those with whom we are
intimately acquainted by their works; and having these by us (which is
all we know or covet in them), what would we have more? We can have
_no more of a cat than her skin_; nor of an author than his brains. By
becoming Shakspeare in reality we cut ourselves out of reading Milton,
Pope, Dryden, and a thousand more--all of whom we have in our
possession, enjoy, and _are_, by turns, in the best part of them,
their thoughts, without any metamorphosis or miracle at all. What a
microcosm is ours! What a Proteus is the human mind! All that we know,
think of, or can admire, in a manner becomes ourselves. We are not
(the meanest of us) a volume, but a whole library! In this calculation
of problematical contingencies, the lapse of time makes no difference.
One would as soon have been Raphael as any modern artist. Twenty,
thirty, or forty years of elegant enjoyment and lofty feeling were as
great a luxury in the fifteenth as in the nineteenth century. But
Raphael did not live to see Claude, nor Titian Rembrandt. Those who
found arts and sciences are not witnesses of their accumulated results
and benefits; nor, in general, do they reap the meed of praise which
is their due. We who come after in some 'laggard age' have more
enjoyment of their fame than they had. Who would have missed the sight
of the Louvre in all its glory to have been one of those whose works
enriched it? Would it not have been giving a certain good for an
uncertain advantage? No: I am as sure (if it is not presumption to say
so) of what passed through Raphael's mind as of what passes through my
own; and I know the difference between seeing (though even that is a
rare privilege) and producing such perfection. At one time I was so
devoted to Rembrandt, that I think if the Prince of Darkness had made
me the offer in some rash mood, I should have been tempted to close
with it, and should have become (in happy hour, and in downright
earnest) the great master of light and shade!
I have run myself out of my materials for this Essay, and want a
well-turned sentence or two to conclude with; like Benvenuto Cellini,
who complains that, with all the brass, tin, iron, and lead he could
muster in the house, his statue of Perseus was left imperfect, with a
dent in the heel of it. Once more, then--I believe there is one
character that all the world would like to change with--which is that
of a favoured rival. Even hatred gives way to envy. We would be
anything--a toad in a dungeon--to live upon her smile, which is our
all of earthly hope and happiness; nor can we, in our infatuation,
conceive that there is any difference of feeling on the subject, or
that the pressure of her hand is not in itself divine, making those to
whom such bliss is deigned like the Immortal Gods!
1828.
FOOTNOTE:
[7] When Lord Byron was cut by the great, on account of his quarrel
with his wife, he stood leaning on a marble slab at the entrance of a
room, while troops of duchesses and countesses passed out. One little,
pert, red-haired girl staid a few paces behind the rest; and, as she
passed him, said with a nod, 'Aye, you should have married me, and
then all this wouldn't have happened to you!'
ESSAY VII
MIND AND MOTIVE
'The web of our lives is of a mingled yarn.'
'Anthony Codrus Urceus, a most learned and unfortunate Italian, born
1446, was a striking instance' (says his biographer) 'of the miseries
men bring upon themselves by setting their affections unreasonably on
trifles. This learned man lived at Forli, and had an apartment in the
palace. His room was so very dark, that he was forced to use a candle
in the day time; and one day, going abroad without putting it out, his
library was set on fire, and some papers which he had prepared for the
press were burned. The instant he was informed of this ill news, he
was affected even to madness. He ran furiously to the palace, and,
stopping at the door of his apartment, he cried aloud, "Christ Jesus!
what mighty crime have I committed? whom of your followers have I ever
injured, that you thus rage with inexpiable hatred against me?" Then
turning himself to an image of the Virgin Mary near at hand, "Virgin"
(says he) "hear what 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 entreat you not to hear me, nor receive me into heaven, for I
am determined to spend all eternity in hell." Those who heard these
blasphemous expressions endeavoured to comfort him, but all to no
purpose; for the society of mankind being no longer supportable to
him, he left the city, and retired, like a savage, to the deep
solitude of a wood. Some say that he was murdered there by ruffians;
others that he died at Bologna, in 1500, after much contrition and
penitence.'
Almost every one may here read the history of his own life. There is
scarcely a moment in which we are not in some degree guilty of the
same kind of absurdity, which was here carried to such a singular
excess. We waste our regrets on what cannot be recalled, or fix our
desires on what we know cannot be attained. Every hour is the slave of
the last; and we are seldom masters either of our thoughts or of our
actions. We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will,
more than of reason or self-interest. Rousseau, in his _Emilius_,
proposed to educate a perfectly reasonable man, who was to have
passions and affections like other men, but with an absolute control
over them. He was to love and to be wise. This is a contradiction in
terms. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life,
we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling
of a tea-cup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that
commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives.
'Friends now fast sworn,
On a dissension of a doit, break out
To bitterest enmity. So fellest foes,
Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep,
To take the one the other, by some chance,
Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends,
And interjoin their issues.'
We are little better than humoured children to the last, and play a
mischievous game at cross purposes with our own happiness and that of
others.
We have given the above story as a striking contradiction to the
prevailing doctrine of modern systems of morals and metaphysics, that
man is purely a sensual and selfish animal, governed solely by a
regard either to his immediate gratification or future interest. This
doctrine we mean to oppose with all our might, whenever we meet with
it. We are, however, less disposed to quarrel with it, as it is
opposed to reason and philosophy, than as it interferes with common
sense and observation. If the absurdity in question had been confined
to the schools, we should not have gone out of our way to meddle with
it: but it has gone abroad in the world, has crept into ladies'
boudoirs, is entered in the commonplace book of beaux, is in the mouth
of the learned and ignorant, and forms a part of popular opinion. It
is perpetually applied as a false measure to the characters and
conduct of men in the common affairs of the world, and it is therefore
our business to rectify it, if we can. In fact, whoever sets out on
the idea of reducing all our motives and actions to a simple
principle, must either take a very narrow and superficial view of
human nature, or make a very perverse use of his understanding in
reasoning on what he sees. The frame of our minds, like that of his
body, is exceedingly complicated. Besides mere sensibility to pleasure
and pain, there are other original independent principles, necessarily
interwoven with the nature of man as an active and intelligent being,
and which, blended together in different proportions, give their form
and colour to our lives. Without some other essential faculties, such
as will, imagination, etc., to give effect and direction to our
physical sensibility, this faculty could be of no possible use or
influence; and with those other faculties joined to it, this pretended
instinct of self-love will be subject to be everlastingly modified and
controlled by those faculties, both in what regards our own good and
that of others; that is, must itself become in a great measure
dependent on the very instruments it uses. The two most predominant
principles in the mind, besides sensibility and self-interest, are
imagination and self-will, or (in general) the love of strong
excitement, both in thought and action. To these sources may be traced
the various passions, pursuits, habits, affections, follies and
caprices, virtues and vices of mankind. We shall confine ourselves,
in the present article, to give some account of the influence
exercised by the imagination over the feelings. To an intellectual
being, it cannot be altogether arbitrary what ideas it shall have,
whether pleasurable or painful. Our ideas do not originate in our love
of pleasure, and they cannot, therefore, depend absolutely upon it.
They have another principle. If the imagination were 'the servile
slave' of our self-love, if our ideas were emanations of our sensitive
nature, encouraged if agreeable, and excluded the instant they became
otherwise, or encroached on the former principle, then there might be
a tolerable pretence for the epicurean philosophy which is here spoken
of. But for any such entire and mechanical subserviency of the
operations of the one principle to the dictates of the other, there is
not the slightest foundation in reality. The attention which the mind
gives to its ideas is not always owing to the gratification derived
from them, but to the strength and truth of the impressions
themselves, _i.e._ to their involuntary power over the mind. This
observation will account for a very general principle in the mind,
which cannot, we conceive, be satisfactorily explained in any other
way, we mean _the power of fascination_. Every one has heard the story
of the girl who, being left alone by her companions, in order to
frighten her, in a room with a dead body, at first attempted to get
out, and shrieked violently for assistance, but finding herself shut
in, ran and embraced the corpse, and was found senseless in its arms.
It is said that in such cases there is a desperate effort made to get
rid of the dread by converting it into the reality. There may be some
truth in this account, but we do not think it contains the whole
truth. The event produced in the present instance does not bear out
the conclusion. The progress of the passion does not seem to have been
that of diminishing or removing the terror by coming in contact with
the object, but of carrying this terror to its height from an intense
and irresistible impulse overcoming every other feeling.
It is a well-known fact that few persons can stand safely on the edge
of a precipice, or walk along the parapet wall of a house, without
being in danger of throwing themselves down; not, we presume, from a
principle of self-preservation; but in consequence of a strong idea
having taken possession of the mind from which it cannot well escape,
which absorbs every other consideration, and confounds and overrules
all self-regards. The impulse cannot in this case be resolved into a
desire to remove the uneasiness of fear, for the only danger arises
from the fear. We have been told by a person not at all given to
exaggeration, that he once felt a strong propensity to throw himself
into a cauldron of boiling lead, into which he was looking. These are
what Shakspeare calls 'the toys of desperation.' People sometimes
marry, and even fall in love on this principle--that is, through mere
apprehension, or what is called a fatality. In like manner, we find
instances of persons who are, as it were, naturally delighted with
whatever is disagreeable--who catch all sorts of unbecoming tones and
gestures--who always say what they should not, and what they do not
mean to say--in whom intemperance of imagination and incontinence of
tongue are a disease, and who are governed by an almost infallible
instinct of absurdity.
The love of imitation has the same general source. We dispute for ever
about Hogarth, and the question can never be decided according to the
common ideas on the subject of taste. His pictures appeal to the love
of truth, not to the sense of beauty: but the one is as much an
essential principle of our nature as the other. They fill up the void
of the mind; they present an everlasting succession and variety of
ideas. There is a fine observation somewhere made by Aristotle, that
the mind has a natural appetite of curiosity or desire to know; and
most of that knowledge which comes in by the eye, for this presents
us with the greatest variety of differences. Hogarth is relished only
by persons of a certain strength of mind and penetration into
character; for the subjects in themselves are not pleasing, and this
objection is only redeemed by the exercise and activity which they
give to the understanding. The great difference between what is meant
by a severe and an effeminate taste or style, depends on the
distinction here made.
Our teasing ourselves to recollect the names of places or persons we
have forgotten, the love of riddles and of abstruse philosophy, are
all illustrations of the same general principle of curiosity, or the
love of intellectual excitement. Again, our impatience to be delivered
of a secret that we know; the necessity which lovers have for
confidants, auricular confession, and the declarations so commonly
made by criminals of their guilt, are effects of the involuntary power
exerted by the imagination over the feelings. Nothing can be more
untrue, than that the whole course of our ideas, passions, and
pursuits, is regulated by a regard to self-interest. Our attachment to
certain objects is much oftener in proportion to the strength of the
impression they make on us, to their power of riveting and fixing the
attention, than to the gratification we derive from them. We are,
perhaps, more apt to dwell upon circumstances that excite disgust and
shock our feelings, than on those of an agreeable nature. This, at
least, is the case where this disposition is particularly strong, as
in people of nervous feelings and morbid habits of thinking. Thus the
mind is often haunted with painful images and recollections, from the
hold they have taken of the imagination. We cannot shake them off,
though we strive to do it: nay, we even court their company; we will
not part with them out of our presence; we strain our aching sight
after them; we anxiously recall every feature, and contemplate them in
all their aggravated colours. There are a thousand passions and
fancies that thwart our purposes, and disturb our repose. Grief and
fear are almost as welcome inmates of the breast as hope or joy, and
more obstinately cherished. We return to the objects which have
excited them, we brood over them, they become almost inseparable from
the mind, necessary to it; they assimilate all objects to the gloom of
our own thoughts, and make the will a party against itself. This is
one chief source of most of the passions that prey like vultures on
the heart, and embitter human life. We hear moralists and divines
perpetually exclaiming, with mingled indignation and surprise, at the
folly of mankind in obstinately persisting in these tormenting and
violent passions, such as envy, revenge, sullenness, despair, etc.
This is to them a mystery; and it will always remain an inexplicable
one, while the love of happiness is considered as the only spring of
human conduct and desires.[8]
The love of power or action is another independent principle of the
human mind, in the different degrees in which it exists, and which are
not by any means in exact proportion to its physical sensibility. It
seems evidently absurd to suppose that sensibility to pleasure or pain
is the only principle of action. It is almost too obvious to remark,
that sensibility alone, without an active principle in the mind, could
never produce action. The soul might lie dissolved in pleasure, or be
agonised with woe; but the impulses of feeling, in order to excite
passion, desire, or will, must be first communicated to some other
faculty. There must be a principle, a fund of activity somewhere, by
and through which our sensibility operates; and that this active
principle owes all its force, its precise degree of direction, to the
sensitive faculty, is neither self-evident nor true. Strength of will
is not always nor generally in proportion to strength of feeling.
There are different degrees of activity, as of sensibility, in the
mind; and our passions, characters, and pursuits, often depend no less
upon the one than on the other. We continually make a distinction in
common discourse between sensibility and irritability, between passion
and feeling, between the nerves and muscles; and we find that the most
voluptuous people are in general the most indolent. Every one who has
looked closely into human nature must have observed persons who are
naturally and habitually restless in the extreme, but without any
extraordinary susceptibility to pleasure or pain, always making or
finding excuses to do something--whose actions constantly outrun the
occasion, and who are eager in the pursuit of the greatest
trifles--whose impatience of the smallest repose keeps them always
employed about nothing--and whose whole lives are a continued work of
supererogation. There are others, again, who seem born to act from a
spirit of contradiction only, that is, who are ready to act not only
without a reason, but against it--who are ever at cross-purposes with
themselves and others--who are not satisfied unless they are doing two
opposite things at a time--who contradict what you say, and if you
assent to them, contradict what they have said--who regularly leave
the pursuit in which they are successful to engage in some other in
which they have no chance of success--who make a point of encountering
difficulties and aiming at impossibilities, that there may be no end
of their exhaustless task: while there is a third class whose _vis
inertiae_ scarcely any motives can overcome--who are devoured by their
feelings, and the slaves of their passions, but who can take no pains
and use no means to gratify them--who, if roused to action by any
unforeseen accident, require a continued stimulus to urge them on--who
fluctuate between desire and want of resolution--whose brightest
projects burst like a bubble as soon as formed--who yield to every
obstacle--who almost sink under the weight of the atmosphere--who
cannot brush aside a cobweb in their path, and are stopped by an
insect's wing. Indolence is want of will--the absence or defect of the
active principle--a repugnance to motion; and whoever has been much
tormented with this passion, must, we are sure, have felt that the
inclination to indulge it is something very distinct from the love of
pleasure or actual enjoyment. Ambition is the reverse of indolence,
and is the love of power or action in great things. Avarice, also, as
it relates to the acquisition of riches, is, in a great measure, an
active and enterprising feeling; nor does the hoarding of wealth,
after it is acquired, seem to have much connection with the love of
pleasure. What is called niggardliness, very often, we are convinced
from particular instances that we have known, arises less from a
selfish principle than from a love of contrivance--from the study of
economy as an art, for want of a better--from a pride in making the
most of a little, and in not exceeding a certain expense previously
determined upon; all which is wilfulness, and is perfectly consistent,
as it is frequently found united, with the utmost lavish expenditure
and the utmost disregard for money on other occasions. A miser may, in
general, be looked upon as a particular species of _virtuoso_. The
constant desire in the rich to leave wealth in large masses, by
aggrandising some branch of their families, or sometimes in such a
manner as to accumulate for centuries, shows that the imagination has
a considerable share in this passion. Intemperance, debauchery,
gluttony, and other vices of that kind, may be attributed to an excess
of sensuality or gross sensibility; though, even here, we think it
evident that habits of intoxication are produced quite as much by the
strength as by the agreeableness of the excitement; and with respect
to some other vicious habits, curiosity makes many more votaries than
inclination. The love of truth, when it predominates, produces
inquisitive characters, the whole tribe of gossips, tale-bearers,
harmless busybodies, your blunt honest creatures, who never conceal
what they think, and who are the more sure to tell it you the less you
want to hear it--and now and then a philosopher.
Our passions in general are to be traced more immediately to the
active part of our nature, to the love of power, or to strength of
will. Such are all those which arise out of the difficulty of
accomplishment, which become more intense from the efforts made to
attain the object, and which derive their strength from opposition.
Mr. Hobbes says well on this subject:
'But for an utmost end, in which the ancient philosophers placed
felicity, and disputed much concerning the way thereto, there is no
such thing in this world, nor way to it, more than to Utopia; for
while we live, we have desires, and desire presupposeth a further end.
Seeing all delight is appetite, and desire of something further, there
can be no contentment but in proceeding, and therefore we are not to
marvel, when we see that as men attain to more riches, honour, or
other power, so their appetite continually groweth more and more; and
when they are come to the utmost degree of some kind of power they
pursue some other, as long as in any kind they think themselves behind
any other. Of those, therefore, that have attained the highest degree
of honour and riches, some have affected mastery, in some art, as Nero
in music and poetry, Commodus in the art of a gladiator; and such as
affect not some such thing, must find diversion and recreation of
their thoughts in the contention either of play or business, and men
justly complain as of a great grief that they know not what to do.
Felicity, therefore, by which we mean continual delight, consists not
in having prospered, but in prospering.'
This account of human nature, true as it is, would be a mere romance,
if physical sensibility were the only faculty essential to man, that
is, if we were the slaves of voluptuous indolence. But our desires are
kindled by their own heat, the will is urged on by a restless impulse,
and without action, enjoyment becomes insipid. The passions of men are
not in proportion only to their sensibility, or to the desirableness
of the object, but to the violence and irritability of their tempers,
and the obstacles to their success. Thus an object to which we were
almost indifferent while we thought it in our power, often excites the
most ardent pursuit or the most painful regret, as soon as it is
placed out of our reach. How eloquently is the contradiction between
our desires and our success described in _Don Quixote_, where it is
said of the lover, that 'he courted a statue, hunted the wind, cried
aloud to the desert!'
The necessity of action to the mind, and the keen edge it gives to our
desires, is shown in the different value we set on past and future
objects. It is commonly, and we might almost say universally,
supposed, that there is an essential difference in the two cases. In
this instance, however, the strength of our passions has converted an
evident absurdity into one of the most inveterate prejudices of the
human mind. That the future is really or in itself of more consequence
than the past, is what we can neither assent to nor even conceive. It
is true, the past has ceased to be, and is no longer anything, except
to the mind; but the future is still to come, and has an existence in
the mind only. The one is at an end, the other has not even had a
beginning; both are purely ideal: so that this argument would prove
that the present only is of any real value, and that both past and
future objects are equally indifferent, alike nothing. Indeed, the
future is, if possible, more imaginary than the past; for the past may
in some sense be said to exist in its consequences; it acts still; it
is present to us in its effects; the mouldering ruins and broken
fragments still remain; but of the future there is no trace. What a
blank does the history of the world for the next six thousand years
present to the mind, compared with that of the last? All that strikes
the imagination, or excites any interest in the mighty scene is _what
has been_. Neither in reality, then, nor as a subject of general
contemplation, has the future any advantage over the past; but with
respect to our own passions and pursuits it has. We regret the
pleasures we have enjoyed, and eagerly anticipate those which are to
come; we dwell with satisfaction on the evils from which we have
escaped, and dread future pain. The good that is past is like money
that is spent, which is of no use, and about which we give no further
concern. The good we expect is like a store yet untouched, in the
enjoyment of which we promise ourselves infinite gratification. What
has happened to us we think of no consequence--what is to happen to
us, of the greatest. Why so? Because the one is in our power, and the
other not; because the efforts of the will to bring an object to pass
or to avert it, strengthen our attachment to or our aversion from that
object; because the habitual pursuit of any purpose redoubles the
ardour of our pursuit, and converts the speculative and indolent
interest we should otherwise take in it into real passion. Our
regrets, anxiety, and wishes, are thrown away upon the past, but we
encourage our disposition to exaggerate the importance of the future,
as of the utmost use in aiding our resolutions and stimulating our
exertions.
It in some measure confirms this theory, that men attach more or less
importance to past and future events, according as they are more or
else engaged in action and the busy scenes of life. Those who have a
fortune to make, or are in pursuit of rank and power, are regardless
of the past, for it does not contribute to their views: those who have
nothing to do but to think, take nearly the same interest in the past
as in the future. The contemplation of the one is as delightful and
real as of the other. The season of hope comes to an end, but the
remembrance of it is left. The past still lives in the memory of
those who have leisure to look back upon the way that they have trod,
and can from it 'catch glimpses that may make them less forlorn.' The
turbulence of action and uneasiness of desire _must_ dwell upon the
future; it is only amidst the innocence of shepherds, in the
simplicity of the pastoral ages, that a tomb was found with this
inscription--'I ALSO WAS AN ARCADIAN!'
We feel that some apology is necessary for having thus plunged our
readers all at once into the middle of metaphysics. If it should be
asked what use such studies are of, we might answer with Hume,
_perhaps of none, except that there are certain persons who find more
entertainment in them than in any other_. An account of this matter,
with which we were amused ourselves, and which may therefore amuse
others, we met with some time ago in a metaphysical allegory, which
begins in this manner:
'In the depth of a forest, in the kingdom of Indostan, lived a monkey,
who, before his last step of transmigration, had occupied a human
tenement. He had been a Bramin, skilful in theology, and in all
abstruse learning. He was wont to hold in admiration the ways of
nature, and delighted to penetrate the mysteries in which she was
enrobed; but in pursuing the footsteps of philosophy, he wandered too
far from the abode of the social Virtues. In order to pursue his
studies, he had retired to a cave on the banks of the Jumna. There he
forgot society, and neglected ablution; and therefore his soul was
degraded to a condition below humanity. So inveterate were the habits
which he had contracted in his human state, that his spirit was still
influenced by his passion for abstruse study. He sojourned in this
wood from youth to age, regardless of everything, _save cocoa-nuts and
metaphysics_.' For our own part, we should be content to pass our time
much in the same manner as this learned savage, if we could only find
a substitute for his cocoa-nuts! We do not, however, wish to recommend
the same pursuit to others, nor to dissuade them from it. It has its
pleasures and its pains--its successes and its disappointments. It is
neither quite so sublime nor quite so uninteresting as it is sometimes
represented. The worst is, that much thought on difficult subjects
tends, after a certain time, to destroy the natural gaiety and dancing
of the spirits; it deadens the elastic force of the mind, weighs upon
the heart, and makes us insensible to the common enjoyments and
pursuits of life.
'Sithence no fairy lights, no quick'ning ray,
Nor stir of pulse, nor objects to entice
Abroad the spirits; but the cloyster'd heart
Sits squat at home, like pagod in a niche
Obscure.'
Metaphysical reasoning is also one branch of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil. The study of man, however, does, perhaps, less harm
than a knowledge of the world, though it must be owned that the
practical knowledge of vice and misery makes a stronger impression on
the mind, when it has imbibed a habit of abstract reasoning. Evil thus
becomes embodied in a general principle, and shows its harpy form in
all things. It is a fatal, inevitable necessity hanging over us. It
follows us wherever we go: if we fly into the uttermost parts of the
earth, it is there: whether we turn to the right or the left, we
cannot escape from it. This, it is true, is the disease of philosophy;
but it is one to which it is liable in minds of a certain cast, after
the first ardour of expectation has been disabused by experience, and
the finer feelings have received an irrecoverable shock from the
jarring of the world.
Happy are they who live in the dream of their own existence, and see
all things in the light of their own minds; who walk by faith and
hope; to whom the guiding star of their youth still shines from afar,
and into whom the spirit of the world has not entered! They have not
been 'hurt by the archers,' nor has the iron entered their souls. They
live in the midst of arrows and of death, unconscious of harm. The
evil things come not nigh them. The shafts of ridicule pass unheeded
by, and malice loses its sting. The example of vice does not rankle in
their breasts, like the poisoned shirt of Nessus. Evil impressions
fall off from them like drops of water. The yoke of life is to them
light and supportable. The world has no hold on them. They are in it,
not of it; and a dream and a glory is ever around them!
1815.
FOOTNOTE:
[8] As a contrast to the story at the beginning of this article, it
will be not amiss to mention that of Sir Isaac Newton, on a somewhat
similar occasion. He had prepared some papers for the press with great
care and study, but happening to leave a lighted candle on the table
with them, his dog Diamond overturned the candle, and the labour of
several years was destroyed. This great man, on seeing what was done,
only shook his head, and said with a smile, 'Ah, Diamond, you don't
know what mischief you have done!'
ESSAY VIII
ON MEANS AND ENDS
It is impossible to have things done without doing them. This seems a
truism; and yet what is more common than to suppose that we shall find
things done, merely by wishing it? To put the will for the deed is as
usual in practice as it is contrary to common sense. There is, in
fact, no absurdity, no contradiction, of which the will is not
capable. This is, I think, more remarkable in the English than in any
other people, in whom (to judge by what I discover in myself) the will
bears great and disproportioned sway. We will a thing: we contemplate
the end intensely, and think it done, neglecting the necessary means
to accomplish it. The strong tendency of the mind towards it, the
internal effort it makes to give being to the object of its idolatry,
seems an adequate cause to produce the effect, and in a manner
identified with it. This is more particularly the case in what relates
to the _fine arts_, and will account for some phenomena of the
national character. The English school is distinguished by what are
called _ebauches_, rude, violent attempts at effect, and a total
inattention to the details or delicacy of finishing. Now this, I
think, proceeds, not exactly from grossness of perception, but from
the wilfulness of our character; our desire to have things our own
way, without any trouble or distraction of purpose. An object strikes
us: we see and feel the whole effect. We wish to produce a likeness of
it; but we want to transfer this impression to the canvas as it is
conveyed to us, simultaneously and intuitively, that is, to stamp it
there at a blow, or otherwise we turn away with impatience and
disgust, as if the means were an obstacle to the end, and every
attention to the mechanical part of art were a deviation from our
original purpose. We thus degenerate, after repeated failures, into a
slovenly style of art; and that which was at first an undisciplined
and irregular impulse becomes a habit, and then a theory. It seems
strange that the love of the end should produce aversion to the
means--but so it is; neither is it altogether unnatural. That which we
are struck with, which we are enamoured of, is the general appearance
and result; and it would certainly be most desirable to produce the
effect in the same manner by a mere word or wish, if it were possible,
without entering into any mechanical drudgery or minuteness of detail
or dexterity of execution, which though they are essential and
component parts of the work do not enter into our thoughts, and form
no part of our contemplation. We may find it necessary, on a cool
calculation to go through and learn these, but in so doing we only
submit to necessity, and they are still a diversion to and a
suspension of our purpose for the time, at least, unless practice
gives that facility which almost identifies the two together, or makes
the process an unconscious one. The end thus devours up the means, or
our eagerness for the one, where it is strong and unchecked, is in
proportion to our impatience of the other. We view an object at a
distance that excites an inclination to visit it, which we do after
many tedious steps and intricate ways; but if we could fly, we should
never walk. The mind, however, has wings, though the body has not, and
it is this that produces the contradiction in question. The first and
strongest impulse of the mind is to produce any work at once and by
the most energetic means; but as this cannot always be done, we should
not neglect other more mechanical ones, but that delusions of passion
overrule the convictions of the understanding, and what we strongly
wish we fancy to be possible and true. We are full of the effect we
intend to produce, and imagine we have produced it, in spite of the
evidence of our senses, and the suggestions of our friends. In fact,
after a number of fruitless efforts and violent throes to produce an
effect which we passionately long for, it seems all injustice not to
have produced it; if we have not commanded success, we have done more,
we have deserved it; we have copied nature or Titian in the spirit in
which they ought to be copied, and we see them before us in our mind's
eye; there is the look, the expression, the something or other which
we chiefly aim at, and thus we persist and make fifty excuses to
deceive ourselves and confirm our errors; or if the light breaks upon
us through all the disguises of sophistry and self-love, it is so
painful that we shut our eyes to it; the greater the mortification the
more violent the effort to throw it off; and thus we stick to our
determination, and end where we began. What makes me think that this
is the process of our minds, and not merely rusticity or want of
apprehension, is, that you will see an English artist admiring and
thrown into raptures by the tucker of Titian's mistress, made up of an
infinite number of little folds, but if he attempts to copy it, he
proceeds to omit all these details, and dash it off by a single smear
of his brush. This is not ignorance, or even laziness, but what is
called jumping at a conclusion. It is, in a word, all overweening
purpose. He sees the details, the varieties, and their effects, and he
admires them; but he sees them with a glance of his eye, and as a
wilful man must have his way, he would reproduce them by a single dash
of the pencil. The mixing his colours, the putting in and out, the
giving his attention to a minute break, or softening in the particular
lights and shades, is a mechanical and everlasting operation, very
different from the delight he feels in contemplating the effect of all
this when properly and finely done. Such details are foreign to his
refined taste, and some doubts arise in his mind in the midst of his
gratitude and his raptures, as to how Titian could resolve upon the
drudgery of going through them, and whether it was not done by extreme
facility of hand, and a sort of trick, abridging the mechanical
labour. No one wrote or talked more enthusiastically about Titian's
harmony of colouring than the late Mr. Barry, yet his own colouring
was dead and dry; and if he had copied a Titian, he would have made it
a mere splash, leaving out all that caused his wonder or admiration,
after his English, or rather Irish fashion. We not only grudge the
labour of beginning, but we give up, for the same reason, when we are
near touching the goal of success; and to save a few last touches,
leave a work unfinished, and an object unattained. The immediate
process, the daily gradual improvement, the completion of parts giving
us no pleasure, we strain at the whole result; we wish to have it
done, and in our anxiety to have it off our hands, say it will do, and
lose the benefit of all our labour by grudging a little pains, and not
commanding a little patience. In a day or two, suppose a copy of a
fine Titian would be as complete as we could make it: the prospect of
this so enchants us that we skip the intermediate days, see no great
use in going on with it, fancy that we may spoil it, and in order to
have the job done, take it home with us, when we immediately see our
error, and spend the rest of our lives in repenting that we did not
finish it properly at the time. We see the whole nature of a picture
at once; we only do a part: _Hinc illae lachrymae_. A French artist, on
the contrary, has none of this uneasy, anxious feeling; of this desire
to grasp the whole of his subject, and anticipate his good fortune at
a blow; of this massing and concentrating principle. He takes the
thing more easily and rationally. Suppose he undertakes to copy a
picture, he looks at it and copies it bit by bit. He does not set off
headlong without knowing where he is going, or plunge into all sorts
of difficulties and absurdities, from impatience to begin and
thinking that 'no sooner said than done'; but takes time to consider,
lays his plans, gets in his outline and his distances, and lays a
foundation before he attempts a superstructure which he may have to
pull to pieces again. He looks before he leaps, which is contrary to
the true blindfold English principle; and I should think that we had
invented this proverb from seeing so many fatal examples of the
neglect of it. He does not make the picture all black or all white,
because one part of it is so, and because he cannot alter an idea he
has once got into his head, and must always run into extremes, but
varies from green to red, from orange tawney to yellow, from grey to
brown, according as they vary in the original: he sees no
inconsistency or forfeiture of a principle in this, but a great deal
of right reason, and indeed an absolute necessity, if he wishes to
succeed in what he is about. This is the last thing an Englishman
thinks of: he only wants to have his own way, though it ends in defeat
and ruin: he sets about a thing which he had little prospect of
accomplishing, and if he finds he can do it, gives it over and leaves
the matter short of success, which is too agreeable an idea for him to
indulge in. The French artist proceeds bit by bit. He takes one part,
a hand, a piece of drapery, a part of the background, and finishes it
carefully; then another, and so on to the end. He does not, from a
childish impatience, when he is near the conclusion, destroy the
effect of the whole by leaving some one part eminently defective, nor
fly from what he is about to something else that catches his eye,
neglecting the one and spoiling the other. He is constrained by
mastery, by the mastery of common sense and pleasurable feeling. He is
in no h
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