Grace Hazlitt,
Mother of William Hazlitt
(1747–1837)

From an oil painting by John Hazlitt

Rev. William Hazlitt.
(1737–1820.)

Father of William Hazlitt

From a miniature by John Hazlitt.

Of the essays in this volume some have already been published in Literary Remains, Sketches and Essays, or Winterslow (see Bibliographical Note to Vol. XI.), and the rest (with one exception) are now reprinted for the first time. The exception is ‘The Sick Chamber’ which was published by Mr. Ireland in his William Hazlitt Essayist and Critic, Selections from his Writings. Some of the essays now republished for the first time have been attributed to Hazlitt by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt (Memoirs, 1867, 1. xxii-xxxii—Chronological Catalogue), or by Mr. Ireland (List of the Writings of William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt); others have not before been identified. The Editors, however, have not included any essay as to Hazlitt’s authorship of which any reasonable doubt can exist.

Reference may here be made to a few essays which, though they may have been written by Hazlitt, have been excluded from the present volume, because the evidence of their authorship was not sufficiently strong. They are arranged in the following list under the heading of the Magazine in which they first appeared.

I.

In The New Monthly Magazine.

1.

Four papers entitled ‘The Confessional’ (1822, vol. IV. pp. 349, 450; vol. v. pp. 54, 406) which read very much as if they were written by Hazlitt during the Liber Amoris period.

2.

An essay entitled ‘Social Grievances’ (1822, vol. v. p. 412).

3.

An essay on ‘The Influence of Books on the Progress of Manners’ (May, 1828, vol. xxii. p. 409).

II.

In The Liberal.

1.

In The Liberal (vol. 11. 1823) appeared an essay entitled ‘A Sunday’s Fête at St. Cloud’ which was reprinted (without mention being made of its source) under the title ‘A Fête at St. Cloud’ and attributed to Hazlitt in a volume of miscellanies called ‘The Talisman; or Bouquet of Literature and the Fine Arts’ (1831), edited by Mrs. Alaric A. Watts. The essay shows no trace of Hazlitt’s handiwork, and seems to have been written ‘under a foreign sky,’ whereas Hazlitt did not start for his tour in France and Italy till after the publication of the essay in The Liberal. An editorial paragraph published in The London Magazine for October 1824, under the heading of ‘The Lion’s Head,’ would seem to show that the writer of the sketch had sent it to that magazine for publication. ‘The Fête of St. Cloud’ (the paragraph runs), ‘though not unamusing, would not suit our pages. French subjects, vias all Editors and Kings can testify, are lively and dangerous. They are very irregular, or very poor.’ The editor of The London Magazine, though he had at the time a grievance against Hazlitt (see Vol. XI. note to essay on ‘Peveril of the Peak’), would hardly have spoken so patronisingly of one of his most distinguished contributors.

III.

In The London Weekly Review.

1.

An essay entitled ‘Brummelliana’ (Feb. 2, 1828).

IV.

In The Atlas.

1.

‘Manners make the man’ (March 29, 1829).

2.

‘Mr. Jeffrey’s Resignation of the Editorship of the Edinburgh Review’ (June 21, 1829).

3.

‘Autographs’ (June 28, 1829).

4.

‘A Hint upon Education’ (Aug. 9, 1829).

5.

‘A Newspaper Sketch’ (Oct. 18, 1829).

The New Monthly Magazine.] [February, 1822.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.—I said so to myself, as I walked down Chancery-lane, about half-past six o’clock on Monday the 10th of December, to inquire at Jack Randall’s where the fight the next day was to be; and I found ‘the proverb’ nothing ‘musty’ in the present instance. I was determined to see this fight, come what would, and see it I did, in great style. It was my first fight, yet it more than answered my expectations. Ladies! it is to you I dedicate this description; nor let it seem out of character for the fair to notice the exploits of the brave. Courage and modesty are the old English virtues; and may they never look cold and askance on one another! Think, ye fairest of the fair, loveliest of the lovely kind, ye practisers of soft enchantment, how many more ye kill with poisoned baits than ever fell in the ring; and listen with subdued air and without shuddering, to a tale tragic only in appearance, and sacred to the Fancy!

I was going down Chancery-lane, thinking to ask at Jack Randall’s where the fight was to be, when looking through the glass-door of the Hole in the Wall, I heard a gentleman asking the same question at Mrs. Randall, as the author of Waverley would express it. Now Mrs. Randall stood answering the gentleman’s question, with the authenticity of the lady of the Champion of the Light Weights. Thinks I, I’ll wait till this person comes out, and learn from him how it is. For to say a truth, I was not fond of going into this house of call for heroes and philosophers, ever since the owner of it (for Jack is no gentleman) threatened once upon a time to kick me out of doors for wanting a mutton-chop at his hospitable board, when the conqueror in thirteen battles was more full of blue ruin than of good manners. I was the more mortified at this repulse, inasmuch as I had heard Mr. James Simpkins, hosier in the Strand, one day 2when the character of the Hole in the Wall was brought in question, observe—‘The house is a very good house, and the company quite genteel: I have been there myself!’ Remembering this unkind treatment of mine host, to which mine hostess was also a party, and not wishing to put her in unquiet thoughts at a time jubilant like the present, I waited at the door, when, who should issue forth but my friend Jo. Toms, and turning suddenly up Chancery-lane with that quick jerk and impatient stride which distinguishes a lover of the Fancy, I said, ‘I’ll be hanged if that fellow is not going to the fight, and is on his way to get me to go with him.’ So it proved in effect, and we agreed to adjourn to my lodgings to discuss measures with that cordiality which makes old friends like new, and new friends like old, on great occasions. We are cold to others only when we are dull in ourselves, and have neither thoughts nor feelings to impart to them. Give a man a topic in his head, a throb of pleasure in his heart, and he will be glad to share it with the first person he meets. Toms and I, though we seldom meet, were an alter idem on this memorable occasion, and had not an idea that we did not candidly impart; and ‘so carelessly did we fleet the time,’ that I wish no better, when there is another fight, than to have him for a companion on my journey down, and to return with my friend Jack Pigott, talking of what was to happen or of what did happen, with a noble subject always at hand, and liberty to digress to others whenever they offered. Indeed, on my repeating the lines from Spenser in an involuntary fit of enthusiasm,

my last-named ingenious friend stopped me by saying that this, translated into the vulgate, meant ‘Going to see a fight.’

Jo. Toms and I could not settle about the method of going down. He said there was a caravan, he understood, to start from Tom Belcher’s at two, which would go there right out and back again the next day. Now I never travel all night, and said I should get a cast to Newbury by one of the mails. Jo. swore the thing was impossible, and I could only answer that I had made up my mind to it. In short, he seemed to me to waver, said he only came to see if I was going, had letters to write, a cause coming on the day after, and faintly said at parting (for I was bent on setting out that moment)—‘Well, we meet at Philippi!’ I made the best of my way to Piccadilly. The mail-coach stand was bare. ‘They are all gone,’ said I—‘this is always the way with me—in the instant I lose the future—if I had not stayed to pour out that last cup of tea, I should 3have been just in time’—and cursing my folly and ill-luck together, without inquiring at the coach-office whether the mails were gone or not, I walked on in despite, and to punish my own dilatoriness and want of determination. At any rate, I would not turn back: I might get to Hounslow, or perhaps farther, to be on my road the next morning. I passed Hyde Park Corner (my Rubicon), and trusted to fortune. Suddenly I heard the clattering of a Brentford stage, and the fight rushed full upon my fancy. I argued (not unwisely) that even a Brentford coachman was better company than my own thoughts (such as they were just then), and at his invitation mounted the box with him. I immediately stated my case to him—namely, my quarrel with myself for missing the Bath or Bristol mail, and my determination to get on in consequence as well as I could, without any disparagement or insulting comparison between longer or shorter stages. It is a maxim with me that stage-coaches, and consequently stage-coachmen, are respectable in proportion to the distance they have to travel: so I said nothing on that subject to my Brentford friend. Any incipient tendency to an abstract proposition, or (as he might have construed it) to a personal reflection of this kind, was however nipped in the bud; for I had no sooner declared indignantly that I had missed the mails, than he flatly denied that they were gone along, and lo! at the instant three of them drove by in rapid, provoking, orderly succession, as if they would devour the ground before them. Here again I seemed in the contradictory situation of the man in Dryden who exclaims,

If I had stopped to inquire at the White Horse Cellar, which would not have taken me a minute, I should now have been driving down the road in all the dignified unconcern and ideal perfection of mechanical conveyance. The Bath mail I had set my mind upon, and I had missed it, as I missed every thing else, by my own absurdity, in putting the will for the deed, and aiming at ends without employing means. ‘Sir,’ said he of the Brentford, ‘the Bath mail will be up presently, my brother-in-law drives it, and I will engage to stop him if there is a place empty.’ I almost doubted my good genius; but, sure enough, up it drove like lightning, and stopped directly at the call of the Brentford Jehu. I would not have believed this possible, but the brother-in-law of a mail-coach driver is himself no mean man. I was transferred without loss of time from the top of one coach to that of the other, desired the guard to pay my fare to the Brentford coachman for me as I had no change, was accommodated with a great coat, put up my umbrella to keep off a 4drizzling mist, and we began to cut through the air like an arrow. The milestones disappeared one after another, the rain kept off; Tom Turtle, the trainer, sat before me on the coach-box, with whom I exchanged civilities as a gentleman going to the fight; the passion that had transported me an hour before was subdued to pensive regret and conjectural musing on the next day’s battle; I was promised a place inside at Reading, and upon the whole, I thought myself a lucky fellow. Such is the force of imagination! On the outside of any other coach on the 10th of December, with a Scotch mist drizzling through the cloudy moonlight air, I should have been cold, comfortless, impatient, and, no doubt, wet through; but seated on the Royal mail, I felt warm and comfortable, the air did me good, the ride did me good, I was pleased with the progress we had made, and confident that all would go well through the journey. When I got inside at Reading, I found Turtle and a stout valetudinarian, whose costume bespoke him one of the Fancy, and who had risen from a three months’ sick bed to get into the mail to see the fight. They were intimate, and we fell into a lively discourse. My friend the trainer was confined in his topics to fighting dogs and men, to bears and badgers; beyond this he was ‘quite chap-fallen,’ had not a word to throw at a dog, or indeed very wisely fell asleep, when any other game was started. The whole art of training (I, however, learnt from him,) consists in two things, exercise and abstinence, abstinence and exercise, repeated alternately and without end. A yolk of an egg with a spoonful of rum in it is the first thing in a morning, and then a walk of six miles till breakfast. This meal consists of a plentiful supply of tea and toast and beef-steaks. Then another six or seven miles till dinner-time, and another supply of solid beef or mutton with a pint of porter, and perhaps, at the utmost, a couple of glasses of sherry. Martin trains on water, but this increases his infirmity on another very dangerous side. The Gas-man takes now and then a chirping glass (under the rose) to console him, during a six weeks’ probation, for the absence of Mrs. Hickman—an agreeable woman, with (I understand) a pretty fortune of two hundred pounds. How matter presses on me! What stubborn things are facts! How inexhaustible is nature and art! ‘It is well,’ as I once heard Mr. Richmond observe, ‘to see a variety.’ He was speaking of cock-fighting as an edifying spectacle. I cannot deny but that one learns more of what is (I do not say of what ought to be) in this desultory mode of practical study, than from reading the same book twice over, even though it should be a moral treatise. Where was I? I was sitting at dinner with the candidate for the honours of the ring, ‘where good digestion 5waits on appetite, and health on both.’ Then follows an hour of social chat and native glee; and afterwards, to another breathing over heathy hill or dale. Back to supper, and then to bed, and up by six again—Our hero

to the day that brings him victory or defeat in the green fairy circle. Is not this life more sweet than mine? I was going to say; but I will not libel any life by comparing it to mine, which is (at the date of these presents) bitter as coloquintida and the dregs of aconitum!

The invalid in the Bath mail soared a pitch above the trainer, and did not sleep so sound, because he had ‘more figures and more fantasies.’ We talked the hours away merrily. He had faith in surgery, for he had had three ribs set right, that had been broken in a turn-up at Belcher’s, but thought physicians old women, for they had no antidote in their catalogue for brandy. An indigestion is an excellent common-place for two people that never met before. By way of ingratiating myself, I told him the story of my doctor, who, on my earnestly representing to him that I thought his regimen had done me harm, assured me that the whole pharmacopœia contained nothing comparable to the prescription he had given me; and, as a proof of its undoubted efficacy, said, that, ‘he had had one gentleman with my complaint under his hands for the last fifteen years.’ This anecdote made my companion shake the rough sides of his three great coats with boisterous laughter; and Turtle, starting out of his sleep, swore he knew how the fight would go, for he had had a dream about it. Sure enough the rascal told us how the three first rounds went off, but ‘his dream,’ like others, ‘denoted a foregone conclusion.’ He knew his men. The moon now rose in silver state, and I ventured, with some hesitation, to point out this object of placid beauty, with the blue serene beyond, to the man of science, to which his ear he ‘seriously inclined,’ the more as it gave promise d’un beau jour for the morrow, and showed the ring undrenched by envious showers, arrayed in sunny smiles. Just then, all going on well, I thought on my friend Toms, whom I had left behind, and said innocently, ‘There was a blockhead of a fellow I left in town, who said there was no possibility of getting down by the mail, and talked of going by a caravan from Belcher’s at two in the morning, after he had written some letters.’ ‘Why,’ said he of the lapels, ‘I should not wonder if that was the very person we saw running about like mad from one coach-door to another, and asking if any 6one had seen a friend of his, a gentlemen going to the fight, whom he had missed stupidly enough by staying to write a note.’ ‘Pray, Sir,’ said my fellow-traveller, ‘had he a plaid-cloak on?’—‘Why, no,’ said I, ‘not at the time I left him, but he very well might afterwards, for he offered to lend me one.’ The plaid-cloak and the letter decided the thing. Joe, sure enough, was in the Bristol mail, which preceded us by about fifty yards. This was droll enough. We had now but a few miles to our place of destination, and the first thing I did on alighting at Newbury, both coaches stopping at the same time, was to call out, ‘Pray, is there a gentleman in that mail of the name of Toms?’ ‘No,’ said Joe, borrowing something of the vein of Gilpin, ‘for I have just got out.’ ‘Well!’ says he, ‘this is lucky; but you don’t know how vexed I was to miss you; for,’ added he, lowering his voice, ‘do you know when I left you I went to Belcher’s to ask about the caravan, and Mrs. Belcher said very obligingly, she couldn’t tell about that, but there were two gentlemen who had taken places by the mail and were gone on in a landau, and she could frank us. It’s a pity I didn’t meet with you; we could then have got down for nothing. But mum’s the word.’ It’s the devil for any one to tell me a secret, for it’s sure to come out in print. I do not care so much to gratify a friend, but the public ear is too great a temptation to me.

Our present business was to get beds and a supper at an inn; but this was no easy task. The public-houses were full, and where you saw a light at a private house, and people poking their heads out of the casement to see what was going on, they instantly put them in and shut the window, the moment you seemed advancing with a suspicious overture for accommodation. Our guard and coachman thundered away at the outer gate of the Crown for some time without effect—such was the greater noise within;—and when the doors were unbarred, and we got admittance, we found a party assembled in the kitchen round a good hospitable fire, some sleeping, others drinking, others talking on politics and on the fight. A tall English yeoman (something like Matthews in the face, and quite as great a wag)—

was making such a prodigious noise about rent and taxes, and the price of corn now and formerly, that he had prevented us from being heard at the gate. The first thing I heard him say was to a shuffling fellow who wanted to be off a bet for a shilling glass of brandy and water—‘Confound it, man, don’t be insipid!’ Thinks I, that is a good phrase. It was a good omen. He kept it up so all night, 7nor flinched with the approach of morning. He was a fine fellow, with sense, wit, and spirit, a hearty body and a joyous mind, free-spoken, frank, convivial—one of that true English breed that went with Harry the Fifth to the siege of Harfleur—‘standing like greyhounds in the slips,’ &c. We ordered tea and eggs (beds were soon found to be out of the question) and this fellow’s conversation was sauce piquante. It did one’s heart good to see him brandish his oaken towel and to hear him talk. He made mince-meat of a drunken, stupid, red-faced, quarrelsome, frowsy farmer, whose nose ‘he moralized into a thousand similes,’ making it out a firebrand like Bardolph’s. ‘I’ll tell you what my friend,’ says he, ‘the landlady has only to keep you here to save fire and candle. If one was to touch your nose, it would go off like a piece of charcoal.’ At this the other only grinned like an idiot, the sole variety in his purple face being his little peering grey eyes and yellow teeth; called for another glass, swore he would not stand it; and after many attempts to provoke his humourous antagonist to single combat, which the other turned off (after working him up to a ludicrous pitch of choler) with great adroitness, he fell quietly asleep with a glass of liquor in his hand, which he could not lift to his head. His laughing persecutor made a speech over him, and turning to the opposite side of the room, where they were all sleeping in the midst of this ‘loud and furious fun,’ said, ‘There’s a scene, by G—d, for Hogarth to paint. I think he and Shakspeare were our two best men at copying life.’ This confirmed me in my good opinion of him. Hogarth, Shakspeare, and Nature, were just enough for him (indeed for any man) to know. I said, ‘You read Cobbett, don’t you? At least,’ says I, ‘you talk just as well as he writes.’ He seemed to doubt this. But I said, ‘We have an hour to spare: if you’ll get pen, ink, and paper, and keep on talking, I’ll write down what you say; and if it doesn’t make a capital ‘Political Register,’ I’ll forfeit my head. You have kept me alive to-night, however. I don’t know what I should have done without you.’ He did not dislike this view of the thing, nor my asking if he was not about the size of Jem Belcher; and told me soon afterwards, in the confidence of friendship, that ‘the circumstance which had given him nearly the greatest concern in his life, was Cribb’s beating Jem after he had lost his eye by racket-playing.’—The morning dawns; that dim but yet clear light appears, which weighs like solid bars of metal on the sleepless eyelids; the guests drop down from their chambers one by one—but it was too late to think of going to bed now (the clock was on the stroke of seven), we had nothing for it but to find a barber’s (the pole that glittered in the morning sun lighted us to his 8shop), and then a nine miles’ march to Hungerford. The day was fine, the sky was blue, the mists were retiring from the marshy ground, the path was tolerably dry, the sitting-up all night had not done us much harm—at least the cause was good; we talked of this and that with amicable difference, roving and sipping of many subjects, but still invariably we returned to the fight. At length, a mile to the left of Hungerford, on a gentle eminence, we saw the ring surrounded by covered carts, gigs, and carriages, of which hundreds had passed us on the road; Toms gave a youthful shout, and we hastened down a narrow lane to the scene of action.

Reader, have you ever seen a fight? If not, you have a pleasure to come, at least if it is a fight like that between the Gas-man and Bill Neate. The crowd was very great when we arrived on the spot; open carriages were coming up, with streamers flying and music playing, and the country people were pouring in over hedge and ditch in all directions, to see their hero beat or be beaten. The odds were still on Gas, but only about five to four. Gully had been down to try Neate, and had backed him considerably, which was a damper to the sanguine confidence of the adverse party. About two hundred thousand pounds were pending. The Gas says, he has lost 3000l. which were promised him by different gentlemen if he had won. He had presumed too much on himself, which had made others presume on him. This spirited and formidable young fellow seems to have taken for his motto the old maxim, that ‘there are three things necessary to success in life—Impudence! Impudence! Impudence!’ It is so in matters of opinion, but not in the Fancy, which is the most practical of all things, though even here confidence is half the battle, but only half. Our friend had vapoured and swaggered too much, as if he wanted to grin and bully his adversary out of the fight. ‘Alas! the Bristol man was not so tamed!’—‘This is the grave-digger’ (would Tom Hickman exclaim in the moments of intoxication from gin and success, shewing his tremendous right hand), ‘this will send many of them to their long homes; I haven’t done with them yet! ‘Why should he—though he had licked four of the best men within the hour, yet why should he threaten to inflict dishonourable chastisement on my old master Richmond, a veteran going off the stage, and who has borne his sable honours meekly? Magnanimity, my dear Tom, and bravery, should be inseparable. Or why should he go up to his antagonist, the first time he ever saw him at the Fives Court, and measuring him from head to foot with a glance of contempt, as Achilles surveyed Hector, say to him, ‘What, are you Bill Neate? I’ll knock more blood out of that great carcase of thine, this day fortnight, than you ever knock’d out of a bullock’s!’ It was not 9manly, ’twas not fighter-like. If he was sure of the victory (as he was not), the less said about it the better. Modesty should accompany the Fancy as its shadow. The best men were always the best behaved. Jem Belcher, the Game Chicken (before whom the Gas-man could not have lived) were civil, silent men. So is Cribb, so is Tom Belcher, the most elegant of sparrers, and not a man for every one to take by the nose. I enlarged on this topic in the mail (while Turtle was asleep), and said very wisely (as I thought) that impertinence was a part of no profession. A boxer was bound to beat his man, but not to thrust his fist, either actually or by implication, in every one’s face. Even a highwayman, in the way of trade, may blow out your brains, but if he uses foul language at the same time, I should say he was no gentleman. A boxer, I would infer, need not be a blackguard or a coxcomb, more than another. Perhaps I press this point too much on a fallen man—Mr. Thomas Hickman has by this time learnt that first of all lessons, ‘That man was made to mourn.’ He has lost nothing by the late fight but his presumption; and that every man may do as well without! By an over-display of this quality, however, the public had been prejudiced against him, and the knowing-ones were taken in. Few but those who had bet on him wished Gas to win. With my own prepossessions on the subject, the result of the 11th of December appeared to me as fine a piece of poetical justice as I had ever witnessed. The difference of weight between the two combatants (14 stone to 12) was nothing to the sporting men. Great, heavy, clumsy, long-armed Bill Neate kicked the beam in the scale of the Gas-man’s vanity. The amateurs were frightened at his big words, and thought that they would make up for the difference of six feet and five feet nine. Truly, the Fancy are not men of imagination. They judge of what has been, and cannot conceive of anything that is to be. The Gas-man had won hitherto; therefore he must beat a man half as big again as himself—and that to a certainty. Besides, there are as many feuds, factions, prejudices, pedantic notions in the Fancy as in the state or in the schools. Mr. Gully is almost the only cool, sensible man among them, who exercises an unbiassed discretion, and is not a slave to his passions in these matters. But enough of reflections, and to our tale. The day, as I have said, was fine for a December morning. The grass was wet, and the ground miry, and ploughed up with multitudinous feet, except that, within the ring itself, there was a spot of virgin-green closed in and unprofaned by vulgar tread, that shone with dazzling brightness in the mid-day sun. For it was now noon, and we had an hour to wait. This is the trying time. It is then the heart sickens, as you think what the two champions are about, and how short a time 10will determine their fate. After the first blow is struck, there is no opportunity for nervous apprehensions; you are swallowed up in the immediate interest of the scene—but

I found it so as I felt the sun’s rays clinging to my back, and saw the white wintry clouds sink below the verge of the horizon. ‘So, I thought, my fairest hopes have faded from my sight!—so will the Gas-man’s glory, or that of his adversary, vanish in an hour.’ The swells were parading in their white box-coats, the outer ring was cleared with some bruises on the heads and shins of the rustic assembly (for the cockneys had been distanced by the sixty-six miles); the time drew near, I had got a good stand; a bustle, a buzz, ran through the crowd, and from the opposite side entered Neate, between his second and bottle-holder. He rolled along, swathed in his loose great coat, his knock-knees bending under his huge bulk; and, with a modest cheerful air, threw his hat into the ring. He then just looked round, and began quietly to undress; when from the other side there was a similar rush and an opening made, and the Gas-man came forward with a conscious air of anticipated triumph, too much like the cock-of-the walk. He strutted about more than became a hero, sucked oranges with a supercilious air, and threw away the skin with a toss of his head, and went up and looked at Neate, which was an act of supererogation. The only sensible thing he did was, as he strode away from the modern Ajax, to fling out his arms, as if he wanted to try whether they would do their work that day. By this time they had stripped, and presented a strong contrast in appearance. If Neate was like Ajax, ‘with Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear’ the pugilistic reputation of all Bristol, Hickman might be compared to Diomed, light, vigorous, elastic, and his back glistened in the sun, as he moved about, like a panther’s hide. There was now a dead pause—attention was awe-struck. Who at that moment, big with a great event, did not draw his breath short—did not feel his heart throb? All was ready. They tossed up for the sun, and the Gas-man won. They were led up to the scratch—shook hands, and went at it.

In the first round every one thought it was all over. After making play a short time, the Gas-man flew at his adversary like a tiger, struck five blows in as many seconds, three first, and then following him as he staggered back, two more, right and left, and down he fell, a mighty ruin. There was a shout, and I said, ‘There 11is no standing this.’ Neate seemed like a lifeless lump of flesh and bone, round which the Gas-man’s blows played with the rapidity of electricity or lightning, and you imagined he would only be lifted up to be knocked down again. It was as if Hickman held a sword or a fire in that right hand of his, and directed it against an unarmed body. They met again, and Neate seemed, not cowed, but particularly cautious. I saw his teeth clenched together and his brows knit close against the sun. He held out both his arms at full length straight before him, like two sledge-hammers, and raised his left an inch or two higher. The Gas-man could not get over this guard—they struck mutually and fell, but without advantage on either side. It was the same in the next round; but the balance of power was thus restored—the fate of the battle was suspended. No one could tell how it would end. This was the only moment in which opinion was divided; for, in the next, the Gas-man aiming a mortal blow at his adversary’s neck, with his right hand, and failing from the length he had to reach, the other returned it with his left at full swing, planted a tremendous blow on his cheek-bone and eyebrow, and made a red ruin of that side of his face. The Gas-man went down, and there was another shout—a roar of triumph as the waves of fortune rolled tumultuously from side to side. This was a settler. Hickman got up, and ‘grinned horrible a ghastly smile,’ yet he was evidently dashed in his opinion of himself; it was the first time he had ever been so punished; all one side of his face was perfect scarlet, and his right eye was closed in dingy blackness, as he advanced to the fight, less confident, but still determined. After one or two rounds, not receiving another such remembrancer, he rallied and went at it with his former impetuosity. But in vain. His strength had been weakened,—his blows could not tell at such a distance,—he was obliged to fling himself at his adversary, and could not strike from his feet; and almost as regularly as he flew at him with his right hand, Neate warded the blow, or drew back out of its reach, and felled him with the return of his left. There was little cautious sparring—no half-hits—no tapping and trifling, none of the petit-maitreship of the art—they were almost all knock-down blows:—the fight was a good stand-up fight. The wonder was the half-minute time. If there had been a minute or more allowed between each round, it would have been intelligible how they should by degrees recover strength and resolution; but to see two men smashed to the ground, smeared with gore, stunned, senseless, the breath beaten out of their bodies; and then, before you recover from the shock, to see them rise up with new strength and courage, stand steady to inflict or receive mortal offence, and rush upon each other ‘like two clouds 12over the Caspian’—this is the most astonishing thing of all:—this is the high and heroic state of man! From this time forward the event became more certain every round; and about the twelfth it seemed as if it must have been over. Hickman generally stood with his back to me; but in the scuffle, he had changed positions, and Neate just then made a tremendous lunge at him, and hit him full in the face. It was doubtful whether he would fall backwards or forwards; he hung suspended for a second or two, and then fell back, throwing his hands in the air, and with his face lifted up to the sky. I never saw any thing more terrific than his aspect just before he fell. All traces of life, of natural expression, were gone from him. His face was like a human skull, a death’s head, spouting blood. The eyes were filled with blood, the nose streamed with blood, the mouth gaped blood. He was not like an actual man, but like a preternatural, spectral appearance, or like one of the figures in Dante’s Inferno. Yet he fought on after this for several rounds, still striking the first desperate blow, and Neate standing on the defensive, and using the same cautious guard to the last, as if he had still all his work to do; and it was not till the Gas-man was so stunned in the seventeenth or eighteenth round, that his senses forsook him, and he could not come to time, that the battle was declared over.^[3] Ye who despise the Fancy, do something to shew as much pluck, or as much self-possession as this, before you assume a superiority which you have never given a single proof of by any one action in the whole course of your lives!—When the Gas-man came to himself, the first words he uttered were, ‘Where am I? What is the matter?’ ‘Nothing is the matter, Tom,—you have lost the battle, but you are the bravest man alive.’ And Jackson whispered to him, ‘I am collecting a purse for you, Tom.’—Vain sounds, and unheard at that moment! Neate instantly went up and shook him cordially by the hand, and seeing some old acquaintance, began to flourish with his fists, calling out, ‘Ah you always said I couldn’t fight—What do you think now?’ But all in good humour, and without any appearance of arrogance; only it was evident Bill Neate was pleased that he had won the fight. When it was over, I asked Cribb if he did not think it was a good one? He said, ‘Pretty well!’ The carrier-pigeons now mounted into the air, and one of 13them flew with the news of her husband’s victory to the bosom of Mrs. Neate. Alas, for Mrs. Hickman!

Mais au revoir, as Sir Fopling Flutter says. I went down with Toms; I returned with Jack Pigott, whom I met on the ground. Toms is a rattle brain; Pigott is a sentimentalist. Now, under favour, I am a sentimentalist too—therefore I say nothing, but that the interest of the excursion did not flag as I came back. Pigott and I marched along the causeway leading from Hungerford to Newbury, now observing the effect of a brilliant sun on the tawny meads or moss-coloured cottages, now exulting in the fight, now digressing to some topic of general and elegant literature. My friend was dressed in character for the occasion, or like one of the Fancy; that is, with a double portion of great coats, clogs, and overhauls: and just as we had agreed with a couple of country lads to carry his superfluous wearing apparel to the next town, we were overtaken by a return post-chaise, into which I got, Pigott preferring a seat on the bar. There were two strangers already in the chaise, and on their observing they supposed I had been to the fight, I said I had, and concluded they had done the same. They appeared, however, a little shy and sore on the subject; and it was not till after several hints dropped, and questions put, that it turned out that they had missed it. One of these friends had undertaken to drive the other there in his gig: they had set out, to make sure work, the day before at three in the afternoon. The owner of the one-horse vehicle scorned to ask his way, and drove right on to Bagshot, instead of turning off at Hounslow: there they stopped all night, and set off the next day across the country to Reading, from whence they took coach, and got down within a mile or two of Hungerford, just half an hour after the fight was over. This might be safely set down as one of the miseries of human life. We parted with these two gentlemen who had been to see the fight, but had returned as they went, at Wolhampton, where we were promised beds (an irresistible temptation, for Pigott had passed the preceding night at Hungerford as we had done at Newbury), and we turned into an old bow-windowed parlour with a carpet and a snug fire; and after devouring a quantity of tea, toast, and eggs, sat down to consider, during an hour of philosophic leisure, what we should have for supper. In the midst of an Epicurean deliberation between a roasted fowl and mutton chops with mashed potatoes, we were interrupted by an inroad of Goths and Vandals—O procul este profani—not real flash-men, but interlopers, noisy pretenders, butchers from Tothill-fields, brokers from Whitechapel, who called immediately for pipes and tobacco, hoping it would not be disagreeable to the gentlemen, and began to 14insist that it was a cross. Pigott withdrew from the smoke and noise into another room, and left me to dispute the point with them for a couple of hours sans intermission by the dial. The next morning we rose refreshed; and on observing that Jack had a pocket volume in his hand, in which he read in the intervals of our discourse, I inquired what it was, and learned to my particular satisfaction that it was a volume of the New Eloise. Ladies, after this, will you contend that a love for the Fancy is incompatible with the cultivation of sentiment?—We jogged on as before, my friend setting me up in a genteel drab great coat and green silk handkerchief (which I must say became me exceedingly), and after stretching our legs for a few miles, and seeing Jack Randall, Ned Turner, and Scroggins, pass on the top of one of the Bath coaches, we engaged with the driver of the second to take us to London for the usual fee. I got inside, and found three other passengers. One of them was an old gentleman with an aquiline nose, powdered hair, and a pigtail, and who looked as if he had played many a rubber at the Bath rooms. I said to myself, he is very like Mr. Windham; I wish he would enter into conversation, that I might hear what fine observations would come from those finely-turned features. However, nothing passed, till, stopping to dine at Reading, some inquiry was made by the company about the fight, and I gave (as the reader may believe) an eloquent and animated description of it. When we got into the coach again, the old gentleman, after a graceful exordium, said, he had, when a boy, been to a fight between the famous Broughton and George Stevenson, who was called the Fighting Coachman, in the year 1770, with the late Mr. Windham. This beginning flattered the spirit of prophecy within me and rivetted my attention. He went on—‘George Stevenson was coachman to a friend of my father’s. He was an old man when I saw him some years afterwards. He took hold of his own arm and said, “there was muscle here once, but now it is no more than this young gentleman’s.” He added, “well, no matter; I have been here long, I am willing to go hence, and I hope I have done no more harm than another man.” Once,’ said my unknown companion, ‘I asked him if he had ever beat Broughton? He said Yes; that he had fought with him three times, and the last time he fairly beat him, though the world did not allow it. “I’ll tell you how it was, master. When the seconds lifted us up in the last round, we were so exhausted that neither of us could stand, and we fell upon one another, and as Master Broughton fell uppermost, the mob gave it in his favour, and he was said to have won the battle. But,” says he, “the fact was, that as his second (John Cuthbert) lifted him up, he said to him, ‘I’ll fight no more, I’ve had enough;’ 15which,” says Stevenson, “you know gave me the victory. And to prove to you that this was the case, when John Cuthbert was on his death-bed, and they asked him if there was any thing on his mind which he wished to confess, he answered, ‘Yes, that there was one thing he wished to set right, for that certainly Master Stevenson won that last fight with Master Broughton; for he whispered him as he lifted him up in the last round of all, that he had had enough.’”’ ‘This,’ said the Bath gentleman, ‘was a bit of human nature;’ and I have written this account of the fight on purpose that it might not be lost to the world. He also stated as a proof of the candour of mind in this class of men, that Stevenson acknowledged that Broughton could have beat him in his best day; but that he (Broughton) was getting old in their last rencounter. When we stopped in Piccadilly, I wanted to ask the gentleman some questions about the late Mr. Windham, but had not courage. I got out, resigned my coat and green silk handkerchief to Pigott (loth to part with these ornaments of life), and walked home in high spirits.

P.S. Toms called upon me the next day, to ask me if I did not think the fight was a complete thing? I said I thought it was. I hope he will relish my account of it.

The New Monthly Magazine.] [December, 1825.

This old-fashioned epithet might be supposed to have been bestowed ironically, or on the old principle—Ut lucus a non lucendo. Yet there is something in the sound that hits the fancy, and a sort of truth beyond appearances. To be sure, it is from a dull, homely ground that the gleams of mirth and jollity break out; but the streaks of light that tinge the evening sky are not the less striking on that account. The beams of the morning sun shining on the lonely glades, or through the idle branches of the tangled forest, the leisure, the freedom, ‘the pleasure of going and coming without knowing where,’ the troops of wild deer, the sports of the chase, and other rustic gambols, were sufficient to justify the well-known appellation of ‘Merry Sherwood,’ and in like manner, we may apply the phrase to Merry England. The smile is not the less sincere because it does not always play upon the cheek; and the jest is not the less welcome, nor the laugh less hearty, because they happen to be a relief from care or leaden-eyed melancholy. The instances are the more precious as they are rare; 16and we look forward to them with the greater good will, or back upon them with the greater gratitude, as we drain the last drop in the cup with particular relish. If not always gay or in good spirits, we are glad when any occasion draws us out of our natural gloom, and disposed to make the most of it. We may say with Silence in the play, ‘I have been merry once ere now,’—and this once was to serve him all his life; for he was a person of wonderful silence and gravity, though ‘he chirped over his cups,’ and announced with characteristic glee that ‘there were pippins and cheese to come.’ Silence was in this sense a merry man, that is, he would be merry if he could, and a very great economy of wit, like very slender fare, was a banquet to him, from the simplicity of his taste and habits. ‘Continents,’ says Hobbes, ‘have most of what they contain’—and in this view it may be contended that the English are the merriest people in the world, since they only show it on high-days and holidays. They are then like a schoolboy let loose from school, or like a dog that has slipped his collar. They are not gay like the French, who are one eternal smile of self-complacency, tortured into affectation, or spun into languid indifference, nor are they voluptuous and immersed in sensual indolence, like the Italians; but they have that sort of intermittent, fitful, irregular gaiety, which is neither worn out by habit, nor deadened by passion, but is sought with avidity as it takes the mind by surprise, is startled by a sense of oddity and incongruity, indulges its wayward humours or lively impulses, with perfect freedom and lightness of heart, and seizes occasion by the forelock, that it may return to serious business with more cheerfulness, and have something to beguile the hours of thought or sadness. I do not see how there can be high spirits without low ones; and every thing has its price according to circumstances. Perhaps we have to pay a heavier tax on pleasure, than some others: what skills it, so long as our good spirits and good hearts enable us to bear it?

‘They’ (the English), says Froissart, ‘amused themselves sadly after the fashion of their country’—ils se réjouissent tristement selon la coutume de leur pays. They have indeed a way of their own. Their mirth is a relaxation from gravity, a challenge to dull care to be gone; and one is not always clear at first, whether the appeal is successful. The cloud may still hang on the brow; the ice may not thaw at once. To help them out in their new character is an act of charity. Any thing short of hanging or drowning is something to begin with. They do not enter into their amusements the less doggedly because they may plague others. They like a thing the better for hitting them a rap on the knuckles, for making their blood tingle. They do not dance or sing, but they make good cheer—‘eat, 17drink, and are merry.’ No people are fonder of field-sports, Christmas gambols, or practical jests. Blindman’s-buff, hunt-the-slipper, hot-cockles, and snap-dragon, are all approved English games, full of laughable surprises and ‘hairbreadth ‘scapes,’ and serve to amuse the winter fire-side after the roast-beef and plum-pudding, the spiced ale and roasted crab, thrown (hissing-hot) into the foaming tankard. Punch (not the liquor, but the puppet) is not, I fear, of English origin; but there is no place, I take it, where he finds himself more at home or meets a more joyous welcome, where he collects greater crowds at the corners of streets, where he opens the eyes or distends the cheeks wider, or where the bangs and blows, the uncouth gestures, ridiculous anger and screaming voice of the chief performer excite more boundless merriment or louder bursts of laughter among all ranks and sorts of people. An English theatre is the very throne of pantomime; nor do I believe that the gallery and boxes of Drury Lane or Covent Garden filled on the proper occasions with holiday folks (big or little) yield the palm for undisguised, tumultuous, inextinguishable laughter to any spot in Europe. I do not speak of the refinement of the mirth (this is no fastidious speculation) but of its cordiality, on the return of these long looked-for and licensed periods; and I may add here, by way of illustration, that the English common people are a sort of grown children, spoiled and sulky perhaps, but full of glee and merriment, when their attention is drawn off by some sudden and striking object. The May-pole is almost gone out of fashion among us: but May-day, besides its flowering hawthorns and its pearly dews, has still its boasted exhibition of painted chimney-sweepers and their Jack-o’-the-Green, whose tawdry finery, bedizened faces, unwonted gestures, and short-lived pleasures call forth good-humoured smiles and looks of sympathy in the spectators. There is no place where trap-ball, fives, prison-base, foot-ball, quoits, bowls are better understood or more successfully practised; and the very names of a cricket bat and ball make English fingers tingle. What happy days must ‘Long Robinson’ have passed in getting ready his wickets and mending his bats, who when two of the fingers of his right hand were struck off by the violence of a ball, had a screw fastened to it to hold the bat, and with the other hand still sent the ball thundering against the boards that bounded Old Lord’s cricket-ground! What delightful hours must have been his in looking forward to the matches that were to come, in recounting the feats he had performed in those that were past! I have myself whiled away whole mornings in seeing him strike the ball (like a countryman mowing with a scythe) to the farthest extremity of the smooth, level, sun-burnt ground, and with long, awkward strides count the notches that made victory sure! 18Then again, cudgel-playing, quarter-staff, bull and badger-baiting, cock-fighting are almost the peculiar diversions of this island, and often objected to us as barbarous and cruel; horse-racing is the delight and the ruin of numbers; and the noble science of boxing is all our own. Foreigners can scarcely understand how we can squeeze pleasure out of this pastime; the luxury of hard blows given or received; the joy of the ring; nor the perseverance of the combatants.^[4] The English also excel, or are not excelled in wiring a hare, in stalking a deer, in shooting, fishing, and hunting. England to this day boasts her Robin Hood and his merry men, that stout archer and outlaw, and patron saint of the sporting-calendar. What a cheerful sound is that of the hunters, issuing from the autumnal wood and sweeping over hill and dale!

What sparkling richness in the scarlet coats of the riders, what a glittering confusion in the pack, what spirit in the horses, what eagerness in the followers on foot, as they disperse over the plain, or force their way over hedge and ditch! Surely, the coloured prints and pictures of these, hung up in gentlemen’s halls and village alehouses, however humble as works of art, have more life and health and spirit in them, and mark the pith and nerve of the national character more creditably than the mawkish, sentimental, affected designs of Theseus 19and Pirithous, and Æneas and Dido, pasted on foreign salons à manger, and the interior of country-houses. If our tastes are not epic, nor our pretensions lofty, they are simple and our own; and we may possibly enjoy our native rural sports, and the rude remembrances of them, with the truer relish on this account, that they are suited to us and we to them. The English nation, too, are naturally ‘brothers of the angle.’ This pursuit implies just that mixture of patience and pastime, of vacancy and thoughtfulness, of idleness and business, of pleasure and of pain, which is suited to the genius of an Englishman, and as I suspect, of no one else in the same degree. He is eminently gifted to stand in the situation assigned by Dr. Johnson to the angler, ‘at one end of a rod with a worm at the other.’ I should suppose no language can show such a book as an often-mentioned one, ‘Walton’s Complete Angler,’—so full of naïveté, of unaffected sprightliness, of busy trifling, of dainty songs, of refreshing brooks, of shady arbours, of happy thoughts and of the herb called Heart’s Ease! Some persons can see neither the wit nor wisdom of this genuine volume, as if a book as well as a man might not have a personal character belonging to it, amiable, venerable from the spirit of joy and thorough goodness it manifests, independently of acute remarks or scientific discoveries: others object to the cruelty of Walton’s theory and practice of trout-fishing—for my part, I should as soon charge an infant with cruelty for killing a fly, and I feel the same sort of pleasure in reading his book as I should have done in the company of this happy, child-like old man, watching his ruddy cheek, his laughing eye, the kindness of his heart, and the dexterity of his hand in seizing his finny prey! It must be confessed, there is often an odd sort of materiality in English sports and recreations. I have known several persons, whose existence consisted wholly in manual exercises, and all whose enjoyments lay at their finger-ends. Their greatest happiness was in cutting a stick, in mending a cabbage-net, in digging a hole in the ground, in hitting a mark, turning a lathe, or in something else of the same kind, at which they had a certain knack. Well is it when we can amuse ourselves with such trifles and without injury to others! This class of character, which the Spectator has immortalised in the person of Will Wimble, is still common among younger brothers and gentlemen of retired incomes in town or country. The Cockney character is of our English growth, as this intimates a feverish fidgety delight in rural sights and sounds, and a longing wish, after the turmoil and confinement of a city-life, to transport one’s-self to the freedom and breathing sweetness of a country retreat. London is half suburbs. The suburbs of Paris are a desert; and you see nothing but crazy wind-mills, stone-walls, and a few straggling visitants in 20spots where in England you would find a thousand villas, a thousand terraces crowned with their own delights, or be stunned with the noise of bowling-greens and tea-gardens, or stifled with the fumes of tobacco mingling with fragrant shrubs, or the clouds of dust raised by half the population of the metropolis panting and toiling in search of a mouthful of fresh air. The Parisian is, perhaps, as well (or better) contented with himself wherever he is, stewed in his shop or his garret; the Londoner is miserable in these circumstances, and glad to escape from them.^[5] Let no one object to the gloomy appearance of a London Sunday, compared with a Parisian one. It is a part of our politics and our religion: we would not have James the First’s ‘Book of Sports’ thrust down our throats: and besides, it is a part of our character to do one thing at a time, and not to be dancing a jig and on our knees in the same breath. It is true the Englishman spends his Sunday evening at the alehouse—

but he only unbends and waxes mellow by degrees, and sits soaking till he can neither sit, stand, nor go: it is his vice, and a beastly one it is, but not a proof of any inherent distaste to mirth or good-fellowship. Neither can foreigners throw the carnival in our teeth with any effect: those who have seen it (at Florence, for example), will say that it is duller than any thing in England. Our Bartholomew-Fair is Queen Mab herself to it! What can be duller than a parcel of masks moving about the streets and looking as grave and monotonous as possible from day to day, and with the same lifeless formality in their limbs and gestures as in their features? One might as well expect variety and spirit in a procession of wax-work. We must be hard run indeed, when we have recourse to a pasteboard proxy to set off our mirth: a mask may be a very good cover for licentiousness (though of that I saw no signs), but it is a very bad exponent of wit and humour. I should suppose there is more drollery and unction in the caricatures in Gilray’s shop-window, than in all the masks in Italy, without exception.^[6]

The humour of English writing and description has often been wondered at; and it flows from the same source as the merry 21traits of our character. A degree of barbarism and rusticity seems necessary to the perfection of humour. The droll and laughable depend on peculiarity and incongruity of character. But with the progress of refinement, the peculiarities of individuals and of classes wear out or lose their sharp, abrupt edges; nay, a certain slowness and dulness of understanding is required to be struck with odd and unaccountable appearances, for which a greater facility of apprehension can sooner assign an explanation that breaks the force of the seeming absurdity, and to which a wider scope of imagination is more easily reconciled. Clowns and country people are more amused, are more disposed to laugh and make sport of the dress of strangers, because from their ignorance the surprise is greater, and they cannot conceive any thing to be natural or proper to which they are unused. Without a given portion of hardness and repulsiveness of feeling the ludicrous cannot well exist. Wonder, and curiosity, the attributes of inexperience, enter greatly into its composition. Now it appears to me that the English are (or were) just at that mean point between intelligence and obtuseness, which must produce the most abundant and happiest crop of humour. Absurdity and singularity glide over the French mind without jarring or jostling with it; or they evaporate in levity:—with the Italians they are lost in indolence or pleasure. The ludicrous takes hold of the English imagination, and clings to it with all its ramifications. We resent any difference or peculiarity of appearance at first, and yet, having not much malice at our hearts, we are glad to turn it into a jest—we are liable to be offended, and as willing to be pleased—struck with oddity from not knowing what to make of it, we wonder and burst out a laughing at the eccentricity of others, while we follow our own bent from wilfulness or simplicity, and thus afford them, in our turn, matter for the indulgence of the comic vein. It is possible that a greater refinement of manners may give birth to finer distinctions of satire and a nicer tact for the ridiculous: but our insular situation and character are, I should say, most likely to foster, as they have in fact fostered, the greatest quantity of natural and striking humour, in spite of our plodding tenaciousness, and want both of gaiety and quickness of perception. A set of raw recruits with their awkward movements and unbending joints are laughable enough: but they cease to be so, when they have once been drilled into discipline and uniformity. So it is with nations that lose their angular points and grotesque qualities with education and intercourse: but it is in a mixed state of manners that comic humour chiefly flourishes, for, in order that the drollery may not be lost, we must have spectators of the passing scene who are able to appreciate and embody its most remarkable 22features,—wits as well as butts for ridicule. I shall mention two names in this department, which may serve to redeem the national character from absolute dulness and solemn pretence,—Fielding and Hogarth. These were thorough specimens of true English humour; yet both were grave men. In reality, too high a pitch of animal spirits runs away with the imagination, instead of helping it to reach the goal; is inclined to take the jest for granted when it ought to work it out with patient and marked touches, and it ends in vapid flippancy and impertinence. Among our neighbours on the Continent, Moliere and Rabelais carried the freedom of wit and humour to an almost incredible height; but they rather belonged to the old French school, and even approach and exceed the English licence and extravagance of conception. I do not consider Congreve’s wit (though it belongs to us) as coming under the article here spoken of; for his genius is any thing but merry. Lord Byron was in the habit of railing at the spirit of our good old comedy, and of abusing Shakspeare’s Clowns and Fools, which he said the refinement of the French and Italian stage would not endure, and which only our grossness and puerile taste could tolerate. In this I agree with him; and it is pat to my purpose. I flatter myself that we are almost the only people left who understand and relish nonsense. We are not ‘merry and wise,’ but indulge our mirth to excess and folly. When we trifle, we trifle in good earnest; and having once relaxed our hold of the helm, drift idly down the stream, and delighted with the change are tossed about ‘by every little breath’ of whim or caprice,

All we then want is to proclaim a truce with reason, and to be pleased with as little expense of thought or pretension to wisdom as possible. This licensed fooling is carried to its very utmost length in Shakspeare, and in some other of our elder dramatists, without, perhaps, sufficient warrant or the same excuse. Nothing can justify this extreme relaxation but extreme tension. Shakspeare’s trifling does indeed tread upon the very borders of vacancy: his meaning often hangs by the very slenderest threads. For this he might be blamed if it did not take away our breath to follow his eagle flights, or if he did not at other times make the cordage of our hearts crack. After our heads ache with thinking, it is fair to play the fool. The clowns were as proper an appendage to the gravity of our antique literature, as fools and dwarfs were to the stately dignity of courts and noble houses in former days. Of all people, they have the best right to claim a total exemption from rules and rigid formality, who, when they have any thing of importance to do, set about it with the 23greatest earnestness and perseverance, and are generally grave and sober to a proverb.^[7] Poor Swift, who wrote more idle or nonsense verses than any man, was the severest of moralists; and his feelings and observations morbidly acute. Did not Lord Byron himself follow up his Childe Harold with his Don Juan?—not that I insist on what he did as an illustration of the English character. He was one of the English Nobility, not one of the English People; and his occasional ease and familiarity were in my mind equally constrained and affected, whether in relation to the pretensions of his rank or the efforts of his genius.

They ask you in France, how you pass your time in England without amusements; and can with difficulty believe that there are theatres in London, still less that they are larger and handsomer than those in Paris. That we should have comic actors, ‘they own, surprises them.’ They judge of the English character in the lump as one great jolter-head, containing all the stupidity of the country, as the large ball at the top of the Dispensary in Warwick-lane, from its resemblance to a gilded pill, has been made to represent the whole pharmacopœia and professional quackery of the kingdom. They have no more notion, for instance, how we should have such an actor as Liston on our stage, than if we were to tell them we have parts performed by a sea-otter; nor if they were to see him, would they be much the wiser, or know what to think of his unaccountable twitches of countenance or nondescript gestures, of his teeth chattering in his head, his eyes that seem dropping from their sockets, his nose that is tickled by a jest as by a feather and shining with self-complacency as if oiled, his ignorant conceit, his gaping stupor, his lumpish vivacity in Lubin Log or Tony Lumpkin; for as our rivals do not wind up the machine to such a determined intensity of purpose, neither have they any idea of its running down to such degrees of imbecility and folly, or coming to an absolute stand still and lack of meaning, nor can they enter into or be amused with the contrast. No people ever laugh heartily who can give a reason for their doing so: and I believe the English in general are not yet in this predicament. They are not metaphysical, but very much in a state of nature; and this is one main ground why I give them credit for being merry, notwithstanding appearances. Their mirth is not the mirth of vice or desperation, but of innocence and a native wildness. They do not cavil or boggle at niceties, and not merely come to the edge of a joke, but break their necks over it with a wanton ‘Here goes,’ where others make a pirouette and stand upon decorum. The 24French cannot, however, be persuaded of the excellence of our comic stage, nor of the store we set by it. When they ask what amusements we have, it is plain they can never have heard of Mrs. Jordan, nor King, nor Bannister, nor Suett, nor Munden, nor Lewis, nor little Simmons, nor Dodd, and Parsons, and Emery, and Miss Pope, and Miss Farren, and all those who even in my time have gladdened a nation and ‘made life’s business like a summer’s dream.’ Can I think of them, and of their names that glittered in the playbills when I was young, exciting all the flutter of hope and expectation of seeing them in their favourite parts of Nell, or Little Pickle, or Touchstone, or Sir Peter Teazle, or Lenitive in the Prize, or Lingo, or Crabtree, or Nipperkin, or old Dornton, or Ranger, or the Copper Captain, or Lord Sands, or Filch, or Moses, or Sir Andrew Aguecheek, or Acres, or Elbow, or Hodge, or Flora, or the Duenna, or Lady Teazle, or Lady Grace, or of the gaiety that sparkled in all eyes, and the delight that overflowed all hearts, as they glanced before us in these parts,

and not feel my heart yearn within me, or couple the thoughts of England and the spleen together? Our cloud has at least its rainbow tints; ours is not one long polar night of cold and dulness, but we have the gleaming lights of fancy to amuse us, the household fires of truth and genius to warm us. We can go to a play and see Liston; or stay at home and read Roderick Random; or have Hogarth’s prints of Marriage à la Mode hanging round our room. ‘Tut! there’s livers even in England,’ as well as ‘out of it.’ We are not quite the forlorn hope of humanity, the last of nations. The French look at us across the Channel, and seeing nothing but water and a cloudy mist, think that this is England.

If they have any farther idea of us, it is of George III. and our Jack tars, the House of Lords and House of Commons, and this is no great addition to us. To go beyond this, to talk of arts and elegances as having taken up their abode here, or to say that Mrs. Abington was equal to Mademoiselle Mars, and that we at one time got up the ‘School for Scandal,’ as they do the ‘Misanthrope,’ is to persuade them that Iceland is a pleasant summer-retreat, or to recommend the whale-fishery as a classical amusement. The French are the cockneys of Europe, and have no idea how any one can exist out of Paris, or be alive without incessant grimace and jabber. Yet what 25imports it? What! though the joyous train I have just enumerated were, perhaps, never heard of in the precincts of the Palais-Royal, is it not enough that they gave pleasure where they were, to those who saw and heard them? Must our laugh, to be sincere, have its echo on the other side of the water? Had not the French their favourites and their enjoyments at the time, that we knew nothing of? Why then should we not have ours (and boast of them too) without their leave? A monopoly of self-conceit is not a monopoly of all other advantages. The English, when they go abroad, do not take away the prejudice against them by their looks. We seem duller and sadder than we are. As I write this, I am sitting in the open air in a beautiful valley, near Vevey: Clarens is on my left, the Dent de Jamant is behind me, the rocks of Meillerie opposite: under my feet is a green bank, enamelled with white and purple flowers, in which a dew-drop here and there still glitters with pearly light—

Intent upon the scene and upon the thoughts that stir within me, I conjure up the cheerful passages of my life, and a crowd of happy images appear before me. No one would see it in my looks—my eyes grow dull and fixed, and I seem rooted to the spot, as all this phantasmagoria passes in review before me, glancing a reflex lustre on the face of the world and nature. But the traces of pleasure, in my case, sink into an absorbent ground of thoughtful melancholy, and require to be brought out by time and circumstances, or (as the critics tell you) by the varnish of style!

The comfort, on which the English lay so much stress, is of the same character, and arises from the same source as their mirth. Both exist by contrast and a sort of contradiction. The English are certainly the most uncomfortable of all people in themselves, and therefore it is that they stand in need of every kind of comfort and accommodation. The least thing puts them out of their way, and therefore every thing must be in its place. They are mightily offended at disagreeable tastes and smells, and therefore they exact the utmost neatness and nicety. They are sensible of heat and cold, and therefore they cannot exist, unless every thing is snug and warm, or else open and airy, where they are. They must have ‘all appliances and means to boot.’ They are afraid of interruption and intrusion, and therefore they shut themselves up in in-door enjoyments and by their own firesides. It is not that they require luxuries (for that implies a high degree of epicurean indulgence and gratification), but they cannot do without their comforts; that is, whatever tends to supply their physical wants, and ward off physical pain and annoyance. 26As they have not a fund of animal spirits and enjoyments in themselves, they cling to external objects for support, and derive solid satisfaction from the ideas of order, cleanliness, plenty, property, and domestic quiet, as they seek for diversion from odd accidents and grotesque surprises, and have the highest possible relish not of voluptuous softness, but of hard knocks and dry blows, as one means of ascertaining their personal identity.

The New Monthly Magazine.] [January, 1826.

B—— 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—

Compared with him I shall, I fear, make but a common-place 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, A—— 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 A——, as usual, reckoned without his host. Every one burst out a laughing at the expression of B——’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 A——, looking wise and foolish at the same time, afraid his triumph might be premature. ‘That is,’ rejoined B——, ‘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 27see 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 A——, ‘there it is; then I suppose you would prefer seeing him and Milton instead?’—‘No,’ said B——, ‘neither. I have seen so much of Shakspeare on the stage and on book-stalls, in frontispieces and on mantle-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 A——. ‘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?’ B—— then named Sir Thomas Brown 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 A—— laughed outright, and conceived B—— 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. B—— 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 28be 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 A——, ‘that if the mystery were once cleared up, the merit might be lost;‘—and turning to me, whispered a friendly apprehension, that while B—— 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, A—— got hold of the poetry, and exclaiming ‘What have we here?’ read the following:—

There was no resisting this, till B——, 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.

Some one then inquired of B—— 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 A——, 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 every thing 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 30by 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 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.’ B—— 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 our apprehensions) 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—

Captain C. muttered something about Columbus, and M. C. hinted 31at the Wandering Jew; but the last was set aside as spurious, and the first made over to the New World.

‘I should like,’ said Miss D——, ‘to have seen Pope talking with Patty Blount; and I have seen Goldsmith.’ Every one turned round to look at Miss D——, as if by so doing they too could get a sight of Goldsmith.

‘Where,’ asked a harsh croaking voice, ‘was Dr. Johnson in the years 1745–6? He did not write any thing 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 A——, turning short round upon B——, ‘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 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 B——, ‘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:

‘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—

‘And with what a fine turn of indignant flattery he addresses Lord Bolingbroke—

32‘Or turn,’ continued B——, with a slight hectic on his cheek and his eye glistening, ‘to his list of early friends:

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-house, so as in some measure to vulgarize 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 realized 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 Miss D——, ‘I would rather have seen him talking with Patty Blount, or riding by in a coronet-coach with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu!’

E——, who was deep in a game of piquet at the other end of the room, whispered to M. C. to ask if Junius would not be a fit person to invoke from the dead. ‘Yes,’ said B——, ‘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 33through 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), but not to let him come behind his counter lest he should want you to turn customer, nor 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 J. F——. 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 æstus, 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 34at 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. B—— 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 hair-brained enthusiast Kit Marlowe; to the sexton of St. Ann’s, Webster, with his melancholy yew-trees and death’s-heads; to Deckar, 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 Brook, 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 B——, 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 G—— can match him.’ At length, his romantic visit to Drummond of Hawthornden was mentioned, and turned the scale in his favour.

B—— inquired if there was any one that was hanged that I would choose to mention? And I answered, Eugene Aram.^[8] The name of the ‘Admirable Crichton’ 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 Crichton! H—— laughed or rather roared as heartily at this as I should think he has done for many years.

35The last-named Mitre-courtier^[9] 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 Massachusets man.^[10] As to the French, who talked fluently of having created this science, there was not a title 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 their present spiritual and disembodied state, and who, even while on this living stage, were nearly divested of common flesh and blood. As A—— with an uneasy fidgetty face was about to put some question about Mr. Locke and Dugald Stewart, he was prevented by M. C. who observed, ‘If J—— was here, he would undoubtedly be for having up those profound and redoubted scholiasts, 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 irritabile 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 36rowed 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; Corregio had an angel at his side; Titian was seated with his Mistress between himself and Giorgioni; 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 furs, 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 bonâ-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—

Finding them gone, they had no ambition to be seen after them, and mournfully withdrew. ‘Egad!’ said B——, ‘those 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 H—— 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 37lady of his choice expired in a pensive whiff of his pipe; and B—— 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, Rochefoucault, St. Evremont, &c.

‘There is one person,’ said a shrill, querulous voice, ‘I would rather see than all these—Don Quixote!’

‘Come, come!’ said H——; ‘I thought we should have no heroes, real or fabulous. What say you, Mr. B——? Are you for eking out your shadowy list with such names as Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Tamerlane, or Ghengis Khan?’—‘Excuse me,’ said B——, ‘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 Faux and Judas Iscariot?’ H—— 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 A—— thought that B—— had now fairly entangled himself. ‘Why, I cannot but think,’ retorted he of the wistful countenance, ‘that Guy Faux, that poor fluttering annual scare-crow 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 G—— 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. B——, to justify your choice.’

‘Oh! ever right, Menenius,—ever right!’

‘There is only one other person I can ever think of after this,’ 38continued H——; 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.

The New Monthly Magazine.] [April, 1826.

The conversation of Lords is very different from that of authors. Mounted on horseback, they stick at nothing in the chace, and clear every obstacle with flying leaps, while we poor devils have no chance of keeping up with them with our clouten shoes and long hunting-poles. They have all the benefit of education, society, confidence, they read books, purchase pictures, breed horses, learn to ride, dance, and fence, look after their estates, travel abroad:—authors have none of these advantages, or inlets of knowledge, to assist them, except one, reading; and this is still more impoverished and clouded by the painful exercise of their own thoughts. The knowledge of the Great has a character of wealth and property in it, like the stores of the rich merchant or manufacturer, who lays his hands on all within his reach: the understanding of the student is like the workshop of the mechanic, who has nothing but what he himself creates. How difficult is the production, how small the display in the one case compared to the other! Most of Correggio’s designs are contained in one small room at Parma: how different from the extent and variety of some hereditary and princely collections!

The human mind has a trick (probably a very natural and consoling one) of striking a balance between the favours of wisdom and of fortune, and of making one thing a gratuitous and convenient foil to another. Whether this is owing to envy or to a love of justice, I 39will not say: but whichever it is owing to, I must own I do not think it well founded. A scholar is without money: therefore (to make the odds even) we argue (not very wisely) that a rich man must be without ideas. This does not follow. ‘The wish is father to that thought;’ and the thought is a spurious one. We might as well pretend, that because a man has the advantage of us in height, he is not strong or in good health; or because a woman is handsome, she is not at the same time young, accomplished and well-bred. Our fastidious self-love or our rustic prejudices may revolt at the accumulation of advantages in others; but we must learn to submit to the mortifying truth, which every day’s experience points out, with what grace we may. There were those who grudged to Lord Byron the name of a poet because he was of noble birth; as he himself could not endure the praises bestowed upon Wordsworth, whom he considered as a clown. He carried this weakness so far, that he even seemed to regard it as a piece of presumption in Shakspeare to be preferred before him as a dramatic author, and contended that Milton’s writing an epic poem and the ‘Answer to Salmasius’ was entirely owing to vanity—so little did he relish the superiority of the old blind schoolmaster. So it is that one party would arrogate every advantage to themselves, while those on the other side would detract from all in their rivals that they do not themselves possess. Some will not have the statue painted: others can see no beauty in the clay-model!

The man of rank and fortune, besides his chance for the common or (now and then) an uncommon share of wit and understanding, has it in his power to avail himself of every thing that is to be taught of art and science; he has tutors and valets at his beck; he may master the dead languages, he must acquire the modern ones; he moves in the highest circles, and may descend to the lowest; the paths of pleasure, of ambition, of knowledge, are open to him; he may devote himself to a particular study, or skim the cream of all; he may read books or men or things, as he finds most convenient or agreeable; he is not forced to confine his attention to some one dry uninteresting pursuit; he has a single hobby, or half a dozen; he is not distracted by care, by poverty and want of leisure; he has every opportunity and facility afforded him for acquiring various accomplishments of body or mind, and every encouragement, from confidence and success, for making an imposing display of them; he may laugh with the gay, jest with the witty, argue with the wise; he has been in courts, in colleges, and camps, is familiar with playhouses and taverns, with the riding-house and the dissecting-room, has been present at or taken part in the debates of both Houses of Parliament, was in the O. P. 40row, and is deep in the Fancy, understands the broadsword exercise, is a connoisseur in regimentals, plays the whole game at whist, is a tolerable proficient at backgammon, drives four in hand, skates, rows, swims, shoots; knows the different sorts of game and modes of agriculture in the different counties of England, the manufactures and commerce of the different towns, the politics of Europe, the campaigns in Spain, has the Gazette, the newspapers, and reviews at his fingers’ ends, has visited the finest scenes of Nature and beheld the choicest works of Art, and is in society where he is continually hearing or talking of all these things; and yet we are surprised to find that a person so circumstanced and qualified has any ideas to communicate or words to express himself, and is not, as by patent and prescription he was bound to be, a mere well-dressed fop of fashion or a booby lord! It would be less remarkable if a poor author, who has none of this giddy range and scope of information, who pores over the page till it fades from his sight, and refines upon his style till the words stick in his throat, should be dull as a beetle and mute as a fish, instead of spontaneously pouring out a volume of wit and wisdom on every subject that can be started.

An author lives out of the world, or mixes chiefly with those of his own class; which renders him pedantic and pragmatical, or gives him a reserved, hesitating, and interdicted manner. A lord or gentleman-commoner goes into the world, and this imparts that fluency, spirit, and freshness to his conversation, which arises from the circulation of ideas and from the greater animation and excitement of unrestrained intercourse. An author’s tongue is tied for want of somebody to speak to: his ideas rust and become obscured, from not being brought out in company and exposed to the gaze of instant admiration. A lord has always some one at hand on whom he can ‘bestow his tediousness,’ and grows voluble, copious, inexhaustible in consequence: his wit is polished, and the flowers of his oratory expanded by his smiling commerce with the world, like the figures in tapestry, that after being thrust into a corner and folded up in closets, are displayed on festival and gala-days. Again, the man of fashion and fortune reduces many of those arts and mysteries to practice, of which the scholar gains all his knowledge from books and vague description. Will not the rules of architecture find a readier reception and sink deeper into the mind of the proprietor of a noble mansion, or of him who means to build one, than of the half-starved occupier of a garret? Will not the political economist’s insight into Mr. Ricardo’s doctrine of Rent, or Mr. Malthus’s theory of Population, be vastly quickened by the circumstance of his possessing a large landed estate and having to pay enormous poor-rates? 41And in general is it not self-evident that a man’s knowledge of the true interests of the country will be enlarged just in proportion to the stake he has in it? A person may have read accounts of different cities and the customs of different nations: but will this give him the same accurate idea of the situation of celebrated places, of the aspect and manners of the inhabitants, or the same lively impulse and ardour and fund of striking particulars in expatiating upon them, as if he had run over half the countries of Europe, for no other purpose than to satisfy his own curiosity, and excite that of others on his return? I many years ago looked into the Duke of Newcastle’s ‘Treatise on Horsemanship’; all I remember of it is some quaint cuts of the Duke and his riding-master introduced to illustrate the lessons. Had I myself possessed a stud of Arabian coursers, with grooms and a master of the horse to assist me in reducing these precepts to practice, they would have made a stronger impression on my mind; and what interested myself from vanity or habit, I could have made interesting to others. I am sure I could have learnt to ride the Great Horse, and do twenty other things, in the time I have employed in endeavouring to make something out of nothing, or in conning the same problem fifty times over, as monks count over their beads! I have occasionally in my life bought a few prints, and hung them up in my room with great satisfaction; but is it to be supposed possible, from this casual circumstance, that I should compete in taste or in the knowledge of virtù with a peer of the realm, who has in his possession the costly designs, or a wealthy commoner, who has spent half his fortune in learning to distinguish copies from originals? ‘A question not to be asked!’ Nor is it likely that the having dipped into the Memoirs of Count Grammont, or of Lady Vane in Peregrine Pickle, should enable any one to sustain a conversation on subjects of love and gallantry with the same ease, grace, brilliancy, and spirit as the having been engaged in a hundred adventures of one’s own, or heard the scandal and tittle-tattle of fashionable life for the last thirty years canvassed a hundred times. Books may be manufactured from other books by some dull, mechanical process: it is conversation and the access to the best society that alone fit us for society; or ‘the act and practic part of life must be the mistress to our theorique,’ before we can hope to shine in mixed company, or bend our previous knowledge to ordinary and familiar uses out of that plaster-cast mould which is as brittle as it is formal!

There is another thing which tends to produce the same effect, viz. that lords and gentlemen seldom trouble themselves about the knotty and uninviting parts of a subject: they leave it to ‘the dregs 42of earth’ to drain the cup or find the bottom. They are attracted by the frothy and sparkling. If a question puzzles them, or is not likely to amuse others, they leave it to its fate, or to those whose business it is to contend with difficulty, and to pursue truth for its own sake. They string together as many available, off-hand topics as they can procure for love or money; and aided by a good person or address, sport them with very considerable effect at the next rout or party they go to. They do not bore you with pedantry, or tease you with sophistry. Their conversation is not made up of moot-points or choke-pears. They do not willingly forego ‘the feast of reason or the flow of soul’ to grub up some solitary truth or dig for hid treasure. They are amateurs, not professors; the patrons, not the drudges of knowledge. An author loses half his life, and stultifies his faculties, in hopes to find out something which perhaps neither he nor any one else can ever find out. For this he neglects half a hundred acquirements, half a hundred accomplishments. Aut Cæsar aut nihil. He is proud of the discovery or of the fond pursuit of one truth—a lord is vain of a thousand ostentatious common-places. If the latter ever devotes himself to some crabbed study, or sets about finding out the longitude, he is then to be looked upon as a humorist if he fails—a genius if he succeeds—and no longer belongs to the class I have been speaking of.

Perhaps a multiplicity of attainments and pursuits is not very favourable to their selectness; as a local and personal acquaintance with objects of imagination takes away from, instead of adding to, their romantic interest. Familiarity is said to breed contempt; or at any rate, the being brought into contact with places, persons, or things that we have hitherto only heard or read of, removes a certain aerial delicious veil of refinement from them, and strikes at that ideal abstraction, which is the charm and boast of a life conversant chiefly among books. The huddling a number of tastes and studies together tends to degrade and vulgarise each, and to give a crude, unconcocted, dissipated turn to the mind. Instead of stuffing it full of gross, palpable, immediate objects of excitement, a wiser plan would be to leave something in reserve, something hovering in airy space to draw our attention out of ourselves, to excite hope, curiosity, wonder, and never to satisfy it. The great art is not to throw a glare of light upon all objects, or to lay the whole extended landscape bare at one view; but so to manage as to see the more amiable side of things, and through the narrow vistas and loop-holes of retreat,

I hate to annihilate air and distance by the perpetual use of an 43opera-glass, to run every thing into foreground, and to interpose no medium between the thought and the object. The breath of words stirs and plays idly with the gossamer web of fancy: the touch of things destroys it. I have seen a good deal of authors: and I believe that they (as well as I) would quite as lieve that I had not. Places I have seen too, that did not answer my expectation. Pictures (that is, some few of them) are the only things that are the better for our having studied them ‘face to face, not in a glass darkly,’ and that in themselves surpass any description we can give, or any notion we can form of them. But I do not think seriously, after all, that those who possess are the best judges of them. They become furniture, property in their hands. The purchasers look to the price they will fetch, or turn to that which they have cost. They consider not beauty or expression, but the workmanship, the date, the pedigree, the school—something that will figure in the description in a catalogue or in a puff in a newspaper. They are blinded by silly admiration of whatever belongs to themselves, and warped so as to eye ‘with jealous leer malign’ all that is not theirs. Taste is melted down in the crucible of avarice and vanity, and leaves a wretched caput mortuum of pedantry and conceit. As to books, they ‘best can feel them who have read them most,’ and who rely on them for their only support and their only chance of distinction. They most keenly relish the graces of style who have in vain tried to make them their own: they alone understand the value of a thought who have gone through the trouble of thinking. The privation of other advantages is not a clear loss, if it is counterbalanced by a proportionable concentration and unity of interest in what is left. The love of letters is the forlorn hope of the man of letters. His ruling passion is the love of fame. A member of the Roxburgh Club has a certain work (let it be the Decameron of Boccaccio) splendidly bound, and in the old quarto edition, we will say. In this not only his literary taste is gratified, but the pride of property, the love of external elegance and decoration. The poor student has only a paltry and somewhat worn copy of the same work (or perhaps only a translation) which he picked up at a stall, standing out of a shower of rain. What then! has not the Noble Virtuoso doubly the advantage, and a much higher pleasure in the perusal of the work? No; for these are vulgar and mechanical helps to the true enjoyment of letters. From all this mock-display and idle parade of binding and arms and dates, his unthought-of rival is precluded, and sees only the talismanic words, feels only the spirit of the author, and in that author reads ‘with sparkling eyes’

44Oh! divine air of learning, fanned by the undying breath of genius, still let me taste thee, free from all adventitious admixtures,

We are far at present from the style of Swift’s ‘Polite Conversation.’ The fashionable tone has quite changed in this respect, and almost gone into the opposite extreme. At that period, the polite world seems to have been nearly at a stand, in a state of intellectual abeyance; or in the interval between the disuse of chivalrous exercises and the introduction of modern philosophy, not to have known how to pass its time and to have sunk into the most common-place formality and unmeaning apathy. But lo! at a signal given, or rather prompted by that most powerful of all calls, the want of something to do, all rush into the lists, having armed themselves anew with the shining panoply of science and of letters, with an eagerness, a perseverance, a dexterity, and a success that are truly astonishing. The higher classes have of late taken the lead almost as much in arts as they formerly did in arms, when the last was the only prescribed mode of distinguishing themselves from the rabble whom they treated as serfs and churls. The prevailing cue at present is to regard mere authors (who are not also of gentle blood) as dull, illiterate, poor creatures, a sort of pretenders to taste and elegance, and adventurers in intellect. The true adepts in black-letter are knights of the shire: the sworn patentees of Parnassus are Peers of the Realm. Not to pass for a literary quack, you must procure a diploma from the College of Heralds. A dandy conceals a bibliomanist: our belles are bluestockings. The Press is so entirely monopolised by beauty, birth, or importance in the State, that an author by profession resigns the field to the crowd of well-dressed competitors, out of modesty or pride, is fain to keep out of sight—

Lord Byron used to boast that he could bring forward a dozen young men of fashion who could beat all the regular authors at their several weapons of wit or argument; and though I demur to the truth of the assertion, yet there is no saying till the thing is tried. Young gentlemen make very pretty sparrers, but are not the ‘ugliest customers’ when they take off the gloves. Lord Byron himself was in his capacity of author an out-and-outer; but then it was at the expense of other things, for he could not talk except in short sentences and sarcastic allusions, he had no ready resources; all his ideas moulded themselves into stanzas, and all his ardour was carried off in rhyme. 45The channel of his pen was worn deep by habit and power; the current of his thoughts flowed strong in it, and nothing remained to supply the neighbouring flats and shallows of miscellaneous conversation, but a few sprinklings of wit or gushes of spleen. An intense purpose concentrated and gave a determined direction to his energies, that ‘held on their way, unslacked of motion.’ The track of his genius was like a volcanic eruption, a torrent of burning lava, full of heat and splendour and headlong fury, that left all dry, cold, hard, and barren behind it! To say nothing of a host of female authors, a bright galaxy above our heads, there is no young lady of fashion in the present day, scarce a boarding-school girl, that is not mistress of as many branches of knowledge as would set up half-a-dozen literary hacks. In lieu of the sampler and the plain-stitch of our grandmothers, they have so many hours for French, so many for Italian, so many for English grammar and composition, so many for geography and the use of the globes, so many for history, so many for botany, so many for painting, music, dancing, riding, &c. One almost wonders how so many studies are crammed into the twenty-four hours; or how such fair and delicate creatures can master them without spoiling the smoothness of their brows, the sweetness of their tempers, or the graceful simplicity of their manners. A girl learns French (not only to read, but to speak it) in a few months, while a boy is as many years in learning to construe Latin. Why so? Chiefly because the one is treated as a bagatelle or agreeable relaxation; the other as a serious task or necessary evil. Education, a very few years back, was looked upon as a hardship, and enforced by menaces and blows, instead of being carried on (as now) as an amusement and under the garb of pleasure, and with the allurements of self-love. It is found that the products of the mind flourish better and shoot up more quickly in the sunshine of good-humour and in the air of freedom, than under the frowns of sullenness, or the shackles of authority. ‘The labour we delight in physics pain.’ The idlest people are not those who have most leisure-time to dispose of as they choose: take away the feeling of compulsion, and you supply a motive for application, by converting a toil into a pleasure. This makes nearly all the difference between the hardest drudgery and the most delightful exercise—not the degree of exertion, but the motive and the accompanying sensation. Learning does not gain proselytes by the austerity or awfulness of its looks. By representing things as so difficult, and as exacting such dreadful sacrifices, and to be acquired under such severe penalties, we not only deter the student from the attempt, but lay a dead-weight upon the imagination, and destroy that cheerfulness and alacrity of spirit which is the spring of thought and 46action. But to return.—An author by profession reads a few works that he intends to criticise and cut up ‘for a consideration,’—a bluestocking by profession reads all that comes out to pass the time or satisfy her curiosity. The author has something to say about Fielding, Richardson, or even the Scotch novels: but he is soon distanced by the fair critic or overwhelmed with the contents of whole Circulating Libraries poured out upon his head without stint or intermission. He reads for an object and to live; she for the sake of reading or to talk. Be this as it may, the idle reader at present reads twenty times as many books as the learned one. The former skims the surface of knowledge, and carries away the striking points and a variety of amusing details, while the latter reserves himself for great occasions, or perhaps does nothing under the pretence of having so much to do.

The literati of Europe threaten at present to become the Monks of letters, and from having taken up learning as a profession, to live on the reputation of it. As gentlemen have turned authors, authors seem inclined to turn gentlemen; and enjoying the otium cum dignitate, to be much too refined and abstracted to condescend to the subordinate or mechanical parts of knowledge. They are too wise in general to be acquainted with anything in particular; and remain in a proud and listless ignorance of all that is within the reach of the vulgar. They are not, as of old, walking libraries or Encyclopædias, but rather certain faculties of the mind personified. They scorn the material and instrumental branches of inquiry, the husk and bran, and affect only the fine flour of literature—they are only to be called in to give the last polish to style, the last refinement to thought. They leave it to their drudges, the Reading Public, to accumulate the facts, to arrange the evidence, to make out the data, and like great painters whose pupils have got in the ground-work and the established proportions of a picture, come forward to go over the last thin glazing of the colours, or throw in the finer touches of expression. On my excusing myself to N—— for some blunder in history, by saying, ‘I really had not time to read,’—he said, ‘No, but you have time to write!’ And once a celebrated critic taking me to task as to the subject of my pursuits, and receiving regularly the same answer to his queries, that I knew nothing of chemistry, nothing of astronomy, of botany, of law, of politics, &c. at last exclaimed somewhat impatiently—‘What the devil is it, then, you do know?’ I laughed, and was not very much disconcerted at the reproof, as it was just.

Modern men of letters may be divided into three classes; the 47mere scholar or book-worm, all whose knowledge is taken from books, and who may be passed by as an obsolete character, little inquired after—the literary hack or coffee-house politician, who gets his information mostly from hearsay, and who makes some noise indeed, but the echo of it does not reach beyond his own club or circle—and the man of real or of pretended genius, who aims to draw upon his own resources of thought or feeling, and to throw a new light upon nature and books. This last personage (if he acts up to his supposed character) has too much to do to lend himself to a variety of pursuits, or to lay himself out to please in all companies. He has a task in hand, a vow to perform; and he cannot be diverted from it by incidental or collateral objects. All the time that he does not devote to this paramount duty, he should have to himself, to repose, to lie fallow, to gather strength and recruit himself. A boxer is led into the lists that he may not waste a particle of vigour needlessly; and a leader in Parliament, on the day that he is expected to get up a grand attack or defence, is not to be pestered with the ordinary news of the day. So an author (who is, or would be thought original) has no time for spare accomplishments or ornamental studies. All that he intermeddles with must be marshalled to bear upon his purpose. He must be acquainted with books and the thoughts of others, but only so far as to assist him on his way, and ‘to take progression from them.’ He starts from the point where they left off. All that does not aid him in his new career goes for nothing, is thrown out of the account; or is a useless and splendid incumbrance. Most of his time he passes in brooding over some wayward hint or suggestion of a thought, nor is he bound to give any explanation of what he does with the rest. He tries to melt down truth into essences—to express some fine train of feeling, to solve some difficult problem, to start what is new, or to perfect what is old; in a word, not to do what others can do (which in the division of mental labour he holds to be unnecessary), but to do what they all with their joint efforts cannot do. For this he is in no hurry, and must have the disposal of his leisure and the choice of his subject. The public can wait. He deems with a living poet, who is an example of his own doctrine—

Or I have sometimes thought that the dalliance of the mind with Fancy or with Truth might be described almost in the words of Andrew Marvell’s address ‘To his Coy Mistress:‘—

The aspiring poet or prose-writer undertakes to do a certain thing; and if he succeeds, it is enough. While he is intent upon that or asleep, others may amuse themselves how they can with any topic that happens to be afloat and all the eloquence they are masters of, so that they do not disturb the champion of truth, or the proclaimer of beauty to the world. The Conversation of Lords, on the contrary, is to this like a newspaper to a book—the latter treats well or ill of one subject, and leads to a conclusion on one point; the other is made up of all sorts of things jumbled together, debates in parliament, law-reports, plays, operas, concerts, routs, levees, fashions, auctions, the last fight, foreign news, deaths, marriages, and crim-cons, bankruptcies, and quack medicines; and a large allowance is frequently to be made, besides the natural confusion of the subjects, for cross-readings in the speaker’s mind!^[11] Or, to take another illustration, fashionable conversation has something theatrical or melo-dramatic in it; it is got up for immediate effect, it is calculated to make a great display, there is a profusion of paint, scenery, and dresses, the music 49is loud, there are banquets and processions, you have the dancers from the Opera, the horses from Astley’s, and the elephant from Exeter ‘Change, the stage is all life, bustle, noise and glare, the audience brilliant and delighted, and the whole goes off in a blaze of phosphorus; but the dialogue is poor, the story improbable, the critics shake their heads in the pit, and the next day the piece is damned!

In short, a man of rank and fortune takes the adventitious and ornamental part of letters, the obvious, popular, fashionable, that serves to amuse at the time, or minister to the cravings of vanity, without laying a very heavy tax on his own understanding, or the patience of his hearers. He furnishes his mind as he does his house, with what is showy, striking, and of the newest pattern: he mounts his hobby as he does his horse, which is brought to his door for an airing, and which (should it prove restive or sluggish) he turns away for another; or like a child at a fair, gets into a round-about of knowledge, till his head becomes giddy, runs from sight to sight, from booth to booth, and like the child, goes home loaded with trinkets, gewgaws, and rattles. He does not pore and pine over an idea (like some poor hypochondriac) till it becomes impracticable, unsociable, incommunicable, absorbed in mysticism, and lost in minuteness: he is not upon oath never to utter anything but oracles, but rattles away in a fine careless hair-brained dashing manner, hit or miss, and succeeds the better for it. Nor does he prose over the same stale round of politics and the state of the nation (with the coffee-house politician), but launches out with freedom and gaiety into whatever has attraction and interest in it, ‘runs the great circle, and is still at home.’ He is inquisitive, garrulous, credulous, sanguine, florid,—neither pedantic nor vulgar. Neither is he intolerant, exclusive, bigoted to one set of opinions or one class of individuals. He clothes an abstract theory with illustrations from his own experience and observation, hates what is dry and dull, and throws in an air of high health, buoyant spirits, fortune and splendid connections to give animation and vividness to what perhaps might otherwise want it. He selects what is palpable without being gross or trivial, lends it colour from the flush of success, and elevation from the distinctions of rank. He runs on and never stops for an answer, rather dictating to others than endeavouring to ascertain their opinions, solving his own questions, improving 50upon their hints, and bearing down or precluding opposition by a good-natured loquacity or stately dogmatism. All this is perhaps more edifying as a subject of speculation than delightful in itself. Shakspeare somewhere says—‘A man’s mind is parcel of his fortunes,’—and I think the inference will be borne out in the present case. I should guess that in the prevailing tone of fashionable society or aristocratic literature would be found all that variety, splendour, facility, and startling effect which corresponds with external wealth, magnificence of appearance, and a command of opportunity; while there would be wanting whatever depends chiefly on intensity of pursuit, on depth of feeling, and on simplicity and independence of mind joined with straitened fortune. Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it. Accordingly, we find but one really great name (Lord Bacon) in this rank of English society, where superiority is taken for granted, and reflected from outward circumstances. The rest are in the second class. Lord Bolingbroke, whom Pope idolized (and it pains me that all his idols are not mine) was a boastful empty mouther! I never knew till the other day, that Lord Bolingbroke was the model on which Mr. Pitt formed himself. He was his Magnus Apollo; and no wonder. The late Minister used to lament it as the great desideratum of English literature, that there was no record anywhere existing of his speeches as they were spoken, and declared that he would give any price for one of them reported as speeches were reported in the newspapers in our time. Being asked which he thought the best of his written productions, he would answer, raising his eyebrows and deepening the tones of his voice to a sonorous bass—‘Why, undoubtedly, Sir, the Letter to Sir William Wyndham is the most masterly of all his writings, and the first composition for wit and eloquence in the English language;‘—and then he would give his reasons at great length and con amore, and say that Junius had formed himself entirely upon it. Lord Bolingbroke had, it seems, a house next-door to one belonging to Lord Chatham at Walham-Green; and as the gardens joined, they could hear Lord Bolingbroke walking out with the company that came to see him in his retirement, and elaborately declaiming politics to the old lords and statesmen that were with him, and philosophy to the younger ones. Pitt learned this story from his father when a boy. This account, interesting in itself, was to me the more interesting and extraordinary, as it had always appeared to me that Mr. Pitt was quite an original, sui generis,

51that so far from having a model or idol that he looked up to and grounded himself upon, he had neither admiration nor consciousness of any thing existing out of himself, and that he lived solely in the sound of his own voice and revolved in the circle of his own hollow and artificial periods. I have it from the same authority that he thought Cobbett the best writer and Horne Tooke the cleverest man of the day. His hatred of Wyndham was excessive and mutual.—Perhaps it may be said that Lord Chatham was a first-rate man in his way, and I incline to think it; but he was a self-made man, bred in a camp, not in a court, and his rank was owing to his talents.^[12]

The New Monthly Magazine.] [October, 1827.

Horas non numero nisi serenas—is the motto of a sun-dial near Venice. There is a softness and a harmony in the words and in the thought unparalleled. Of all conceits it is surely the most classical. ‘I count only the hours that are serene.’ What a bland and care-dispelling feeling! How the shadows seem to fade on the dial-plate as the sky lours, and time presents only a blank unless as its progress is marked by what is joyous, and all that is not happy sinks into oblivion! What a fine lesson is conveyed to the mind—to take no note of time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always to the sunny side of things, and letting the rest slip from our imaginations, unheeded or forgotten! How different from the common art of self-tormenting! For myself, as I rode along the Brenta, while the sun shone hot upon its sluggish, slimy waves, my sensations were far from comfortable; but the reading this inscription on the side of a glaring wall in an instant restored me to myself; and still, whenever I think of or repeat it, it has the power of wafting me into the region of pure and blissful abstraction. I 52cannot help fancying it to be a legend of Popish superstition. Some monk of the dark ages must have invented and bequeathed it to us, who, loitering in trim gardens and watching the silent march of time, as his fruits ripened in the sun or his flowers scented the balmy air, felt a mild languor pervade his senses, and having little to do or to care for, determined (in imitation of his sun-dial) to efface that little from his thoughts or draw a veil over it, making of his life one long dream of quiet! Horas non numero nisi serenas—he might repeat, when the heavens were overcast and the gathering storm scattered the falling leaves, and turn to his books and wrap himself in his golden studies! Out of some such mood of mind, indolent, elegant, thoughtful, this exquisite device (speaking volumes) must have originated.

Of the several modes of counting time, that by the sun-dial is perhaps the most apposite and striking, if not the most convenient or comprehensive. It does not obtrude its observations, though it ‘morals on the time,’ and, by its stationary character, forms a contrast to the most fleeting of all essences. It stands sub dio—under the marble air, and there is some connexion between the image of infinity and eternity. I should also like to have a sunflower growing near it with bees fluttering round.^[13] It should be of iron to denote duration, and have a dull, leaden look. I hate a sun-dial made of wood, which is rather calculated to show the variations of the seasons, than the progress of time, slow, silent, imperceptible, chequered with light and shade. If our hours were all serene, we might probably take almost as little note of them, as the dial does of those that are clouded. It is the shadow thrown across, that gives us warning of their flight. Otherwise, our impressions would take the same undistinguishable hue; we should scarce be conscious of our existence. Those who have had none of the cares of this life to harass and disturb them, have been obliged to have recourse to the hopes and fears of the next to enliven the prospect before them. Most of the methods for measuring the lapse of time have, I believe, been the contrivance of monks and religious recluses, who, finding time hang heavy on their hands, were at some pains to see how they got rid of it. The hour-glass is, I suspect, an older invention; and it is certainly the most defective of all. Its creeping sands are not indeed an unapt emblem of the minute, countless portions of our existence; and the manner in which they gradually slide through the hollow glass and diminish in number till not a single one is left, also 53illustrates the way in which our years slip from us by stealth: but as a mechanical invention, it is rather a hindrance than a help, for it requires to have the time, of which it pretends to count the precious moments, taken up in attention to itself, and in seeing that when one end of the glass is empty, we turn it round, in order that it may go on again, or else all our labour is lost, and we must wait for some other mode of ascertaining the time before we can recover our reckoning and proceed as before. The philosopher in his cell, the cottager at her spinning-wheel must, however, find an invaluable acquisition in this ‘companion of the lonely hour,’ as it has been called,^[14] which not only serves to tell how the time goes, but to fill up its vacancies. What a treasure must not the little box seem to hold, as if it were a sacred deposit of the very grains and fleeting sands of life! What a business, in lieu of other more important avocations, to see it out to the last sand, and then to renew the process again on the instant, that there may not be the least flaw or error in the account! What a strong sense must be brought home to the mind of the value and irrecoverable nature of the time that is fled; what a thrilling, incessant consciousness of the slippery tenure by which we hold what remains of it! Our very existence must seem crumbling to atoms, and running down (without a miraculous reprieve) to the last fragment. ‘Dust to dust and ashes to ashes’ is a text that might be fairly inscribed on an hour-glass: it is ordinarily associated with the scythe of Time and a Death’s head, as a Memento mori; and has, no doubt, furnished many a tacit hint to the apprehensive and visionary enthusiast in favour of a resurrection to another life!

The French give a different turn to things, less sombre and less edifying. A common and also a very pleasing ornament to a clock, in Paris, is a figure of Time seated in a boat which Cupid is rowing along, with the motto, L’Amour fait passer le Tems—which the wits again have travestied into Le Tems fait passer L’Amour. All this is ingenious and well; but it wants sentiment. I like a people who have something that they love and something that they hate, and with whom every thing is not alike a matter of indifference or pour passer le tems. The French attach no importance to any thing, except for the moment; they are only thinking how they shall get rid of one sensation for another; all their ideas are in transitu. Every thing is detached, nothing is accumulated. It would be a million of years before a Frenchman would think of the Horas non numero nisi serenas. Its impassioned repose and ideal voluptuousness are as far from their 54breasts as the poetry of that line in Shakspeare—‘How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon that bank!’ They never arrive at the classical—or the romantic. They blow the bubbles of vanity, fashion, and pleasure; but they do not expand their perceptions into refinement, or strengthen them into solidity. Where there is nothing fine in the ground-work of the imagination, nothing fine in the superstructure can be produced. They are light, airy, fanciful (to give them their due)—but when they attempt to be serious (beyond mere good sense) they are either dull or extravagant. When the volatile salt has flown off, nothing but a caput mortuum remains. They have infinite crotchets and caprices with their clocks and watches, which seem made for any thing but to tell the hour—gold-repeaters, watches with metal covers, clocks with hands to count the seconds. There is no escaping from quackery and impertinence, even in our attempts to calculate the waste of time. The years gallop fast enough for me, without remarking every moment as it flies; and farther, I must say I dislike a watch (whether of French or English manufacture) that comes to me like a footpad with its face muffled, and does not present its clear, open aspect like a friend, and point with its finger to the time of day. All this opening and shutting of dull, heavy cases (under pretence that the glass-lid is liable to be broken, or lets in the dust or air and obstructs the movement of the watch), is not to husband time, but to give trouble. It is mere pomposity and self-importance, like consulting a mysterious oracle that one carries about with one in one’s pocket, instead of asking a common question of an acquaintance or companion. There are two clocks which strike the hour in the room where I am. This I do not like. In the first place, I do not want to be reminded twice how the time goes (it is like the second tap of a saucy servant at your door when perhaps you have no wish to get up): in the next place, it is starting a difference of opinion on the subject, and I am averse to every appearance of wrangling and disputation. Time moves on the same, whatever disparity there may be in our mode of keeping count of it, like true fame in spite of the cavils and contradictions of the critics. I am no friend to repeating watches. The only pleasant association I have with them is the account given by Rousseau of some French lady, who sat up reading the New Heloise when it first came out, and ordering her maid to sound the repeater, found it was too late to go to bed, and continued reading on till morning. Yet how different is the interest excited by this story from the account which Rousseau somewhere else gives of his sitting up with his father reading romances, when a boy, till they were startled by the swallows twittering in their nests at day-break, and the father cried out, half angry and ashamed—‘Allons, 55mon fils; je suis plus enfant que toi!’ In general, I have heard repeating watches sounded in stage-coaches at night, when some fellow-traveller suddenly awaking and wondering what was the hour, another has very deliberately taken out his watch, and pressing the spring, it has counted out the time; each petty stroke acting like a sharp puncture on the ear, and informing me of the dreary hours I had already passed, and of the more dreary ones I had to wait till morning.

The great advantage, it is true, which clocks have over watches and other dumb reckoners of time is, that for the most part they strike the hour—that they are as it were the mouth-pieces of time; that they not only point it to the eye, but impress it on the ear; that they ‘lend it both an understanding and a tongue.’ Time thus speaks to us in an audible and warning voice. Objects of sight are easily distinguished by the sense, and suggest useful reflections to the mind; sounds, from their intermittent nature, and perhaps other causes, appeal more to the imagination, and strike upon the heart. But to do this, they must be unexpected and involuntary—there must be no trick in the case—they should not be squeezed out with a finger and a thumb; there should be nothing optional, personal in their occurrence; they should be like stern, inflexible monitors, that nothing can prevent from discharging their duty. Surely, if there is any thing with which we should not mix up our vanity and self-consequence, it is with Time, the most independent of all things. All the sublimity, all the superstition that hang upon this palpable mode of announcing its flight, are chiefly attached to this circumstance. Time would lose its abstracted character, if we kept it like a curiosity or a jack-in-a-box: its prophetic warnings would have no effect, if it obviously spoke only at our prompting, like a paltry ventriloquism. The clock that tells the coming, dreaded hour—the castle bell, that ‘with its brazen throat and iron tongue, sounds one unto the drowsy ear of night’—the curfew, ‘swinging slow with sullen roar’ o’er wizard stream or fountain, are like a voice from other worlds, big with unknown events. The last sound, which is still kept up as an old custom in many parts of England, is a great favourite with me. I used to hear it when a boy. It tells a tale of other times. The days that are past, the generations that are gone, the tangled forest glades and hamlets brown of my native country, the woodsman’s art, the Norman warrior armed for the battle or in his festive hall, the conqueror’s iron rule and peasant’s lamp extinguished, all start up at the clamorous peal, and fill my mind with fear and wonder. I confess, nothing at present interests me but what has been—the recollection of the impressions of my early life, or events long past, 56of which only the dim traces remain in a smouldering ruin or half-obsolete custom. That things should be that are now no more, creates in my mind the most unfeigned astonishment. I cannot solve the mystery of the past, nor exhaust my pleasure in it. The years, the generations to come, are nothing to me. We care no more about the world in the year 2300 than we do about one of the planets. Even George IV. is better than the Earl of Windsor. We might as well make a voyage to the moon as think of stealing a march upon Time with impunity. De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio. Those who are to come after us and push us from the stage seem like upstarts and pretenders, that may be said to exist in vacuo, we know not upon what, except as they are blown up with vain and self-conceit by their patrons among the moderns. But the ancients are true and bonâ-fide people, to whom we are bound by aggregate knowledge and filial ties, and in whom seen by the mellow light of history we feel our own existence doubled and our pride consoled, as we ruminate on the vestiges of the past. The public in general, however, do not carry this speculative indifference about the future to what is to happen to themselves, or to the part they are to act in the busy scene. For my own part, I do; and the only wish I can form, or that ever prompts the passing sigh, would be to live some of my years over again—they would be those in which I enjoyed and suffered most!

The ticking of a clock in the night has nothing very interesting nor very alarming in it, though superstition has magnified it into an omen. In a state of vigilance or debility, it preys upon the spirits like the persecution of a teazing pertinacious insect; and haunting the imagination after it has ceased in reality, is converted into the death-watch. Time is rendered vast by contemplating its minute portions thus repeatedly and painfully urged upon its attention, as the ocean in its immensity is composed of water-drops. A clock striking with a clear and silver sound is a great relief in such circumstances, breaks the spell, and resembles a sylph-like and friendly spirit in the room. Foreigners, with all their tricks and contrivances upon clocks and time-pieces, are strangers to the sound of village bells, though perhaps a people that can dance may dispense with them. They impart a pensive, wayward pleasure to the mind, and are a kind of chronology of happy events, often serious in the retrospect—births, marriages, and so forth. Coleridge calls them ‘the poor man’s only music.’ A village-spire in England peeping from its cluster of trees is always associated in imagination with this cheerful accompaniment, and may be expected to pour its joyous tidings on the gale. In Catholic countries, you are stunned with the everlasting tolling of 57bells to prayers or for the dead. In the Apennines, and other wild and mountainous districts of Italy, the little chapel-bell with its simple tinkling sound has a romantic and charming effect. The Monks in former times appear to have taken a pride in the construction of bells as well as churches; and some of those of the great cathedrals abroad (as at Cologne and Rouen) may be fairly said to be hoarse with counting the flight of ages. The chimes in Holland are a nuisance. They dance in the hours and the quarters. They leave no respite to the imagination. Before one set has done ringing in your ears, another begins. You do not know whether the hours move or stand still, go backwards or forwards, so fantastical and perplexing are their accompaniments. Time is a more staid personage, and not so full of gambols. It puts you in mind of a tune with variations, or of an embroidered dress. Surely, nothing is more simple than time. His march is straightforward; but we should have leisure allowed us to look back upon the distance we have come, and not be counting his steps every moment. Time in Holland is a foolish old fellow with all the antics of a youth, who ‘goes to church in a coranto, and lights his pipe in a cinque-pace.’ The chimes with us, on the contrary, as they come in every three or four hours, are like stages in the journey of the day. They give a fillip to the lazy, creeping hours, and relieve the lassitude of country places. At noon, their desultory, trivial song is diffused through the hamlet with the odour of rashers of bacon; at the close of day they send the toil-worn sleepers to their beds. Their discontinuance would be a great loss to the thinking or unthinking public. Mr. Wordsworth has painted their effect on the mind when he makes his friend Matthew, in a fit of inspired dotage,

The tolling of the bell for deaths and executions is a fearful summons, though, as it announces, not the advance of time but the approach of fate, it happily makes no part of our subject. Otherwise, the ‘sound of the bell’ for Macheath’s execution in the ‘Beggar’s Opera,’ or for that of the Conspirators in ‘Venice Preserved,’ with the roll of the drum at a soldier’s funeral, and a digression to that of my Uncle Toby, as it is so finely described by Sterne, would furnish ample topics to descant upon. If I were a moralist, I might disapprove the ringing in the new and ringing out the old year.

58St Paul’s bell tolls only for the death of our English kings, or a distinguished personage or two, with long intervals between.^[15]

Those who have no artificial means of ascertaining the progress of time, are in general the most acute in discerning its immediate signs, and are most retentive of individual dates. The mechanical aids to knowledge are not sharpeners of the wits. The understanding of a savage is a kind of natural almanac, and more true in its prognostication of the future. In his mind’s eye he sees what has happened or what is likely to happen to him, ‘as in a map the voyager his course.’ Those who read the times and seasons in the aspect of the heavens and the configurations of the stars, who count by moons and know when the sun rises and sets, are by no means ignorant of their own affairs or of the common concatenation of events. People in such situations have not their faculties distracted by any multiplicity of inquiries beyond what befalls themselves, and the outward appearances that mark the change. There is, therefore, a simplicity and clearness in the knowledge they possess, which often puzzles the more learned. I am sometimes surprised at a shepherd-boy by the road-side, who sees nothing but the earth and sky, asking me the time of day—he ought to know so much better than any one how far the sun is above the horizon. I suppose he wants to ask a question of a passenger, or to see if he has a watch. Robinson Crusoe lost his reckoning in the monotony of his life and that bewildering dream of solitude, and was fain to have recourse to the notches in a piece of wood. What a diary was his! And how time must have spread its circuit round him, vast and pathless as the ocean!

For myself, I have never had a watch nor any other mode of keeping time in my possession, nor ever wish to learn how time goes. It is a sign I have had little to do, few avocations, few engagements. When I am in a town, I can hear the clock; and when I am in the country, I can listen to the silence. What I like best is to lie whole mornings on a sunny bank on Salisbury Plain, without any object before me, neither knowing nor caring how time passes, and thus ‘with light-winged toys of feathered Idleness’ to melt down hours to moments. Perhaps some such thoughts as I have here set down float before me like motes before my half-shut eyes, or some vivid image of the past by forcible contrast rushes by me—‘Diana and her fawn, and all the glories of the antique world;’ then I start away to prevent the iron from entering my soul, and let fall some tears into that stream of time which separates me farther and farther from all I 59once loved! At length I rouse myself from my reverie, and home to dinner, proud of killing time with thought, nay even without thinking. Somewhat of this idle humour I inherit from my father, though he had not the same freedom from ennui, for he was not a metaphysician; and there were stops and vacant intervals in his being which he did not know how to fill up. He used in these cases, and as an obvious resource, carefully to wind up his watch at night, and ‘with lack-lustre eye’ more than once in the course of the day look to see what o’clock it was. Yet he had nothing else in his character in common with the elder Mr. Shandy. Were I to attempt a sketch of him, for my own or the reader’s satisfaction, it would be after the following manner:——but now I recollect, I have done something of the kind once before, and were I to resume the subject here, some bat or owl of a critic, with spectacled gravity, might swear I had stolen the whole of this Essay from myself—or (what is worse) from him! So I had better let it go as it is.

The New Monthly Magazine.] [November, 1827.

Because it is taken for granted that they must be amiable and interesting, in the first instance, and like other things that are taken for granted, is but indifferently, or indeed cannot be made out at all in the sequel. To put it to the proof, to give illustrations of it, would be to throw a doubt upon the question. They have only to show themselves to ensure conquest. Indeed, the reputation of their victories goes before them, and is a pledge of their success before they even appear. They are, or are supposed to be, so amiable, so handsome, so accomplished, so captivating, that all hearts bow before them, and all the women are in love with them without knowing why or wherefore, except that it is understood that they are to be so. All obstacles vanish without a finger lifted or a word spoken, and the effect is produced without a blow being struck. When there is this imaginary charm at work, every thing they could do or say must weaken the impression, like arguments brought in favour of a self-evident truth: they very wisely say or do little or nothing, rely on their names and the author’s good word, look, smile, and are adored; but to all but the heroines of romance and their confidantes, are exceedingly uninteresting and common-place personages, either great coxcombs or wonderfully insipid. When a lover is able to look unutterable things which produce the desired effect, what occasion 60for him to exert his eloquence or make an impassioned speech in order to bring about a revolution in his favour, which is already accomplished by other less doubtful means? When the impression at first sight is complete and irresistible, why throw away any farther thoughts or words to make it more so? This were ‘to gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to smooth the ice, to throw a perfume on the violet, or add another hue unto the rainbow, or seek with taper-light the beauteous eye of Heaven to garnish,’ which has been pronounced to be ‘wasteful and superfluous excess.’ Authors and novel-writers therefore reserve for their second-rate and less prominent characters, the artillery of words, the arts of persuasion, and all the unavailing battery of hopeless attentions and fine sentiment, which are of no use to the more accomplished gallant, who makes his triumphant approaches by stolen glances and breathing sighs, and whose appearance alone supersedes the disclosure of all his other implied perfections and an importunate display of a long list of titles to the favour of the fair, which, as they are not insisted on, it would be vain and unbecoming to produce to the gaze of the world, or for the edification of the curious reader. It is quite enough if the lady is satisfied with her choice, and if (as generally happens both as a cause and consequence in such cases) the gentleman is satisfied with himself. If he indeed seemed to entertain a doubt upon the subject, the spell of his fascination would be broken, and the author would be obliged to derogate from the beau-ideal of his character, and make him do something to deserve the good opinion that might be entertained of him, and to which he himself had not led the way by boundless self-complacency and the conscious assurance of infallible success.

Another circumstance that keeps our novel-heroes in the back-ground is, that if there was any doubt of their success, or they were obliged to employ the ordinary and vulgar means to establish their superiority over every one else, they would be no longer those ‘faultless monsters’ which it is understood that they must be to fill their part in the drama. The discarded or despairing, not the favoured lovers, are unavoidably the most interesting persons in the story. In fact, the principals are already disposed of in the first page; they are destined for each other by an unaccountable and uncontrollable sympathy: the ceremony is in a manner over, and they are already married people, with all the lawful attributes and indifference belonging to the character. To produce an interest, there must be mixed motives, alternate hope and fear, difficulties to struggle with, sacrifices to make; but the true hero of romance is too fine a gentleman to be subjected to this rude ordeal, or mortifying exposure, which devolves upon some much more unworthy and unpretending personage. The beauty of the outline 61must not be disturbed by the painful conflicts of passion or the strong contrast of light and shade. The taste of the heroic cannot swerve for a moment from the object of its previous choice, who must never be placed in disadvantageous circumstances. The top characters occupy a certain prescriptive rank in the world of romance, by the rules of etiquette and laws of this sort of fictitious composition, reign like princes, and have only to do nothing to forfeit their privileges or compromise their supposed dignity.

The heroes of the old romances, the Grand Cyruses, the Artamenes, and Oroondates, are in this respect better than the moderns. They had their steel helmet and plume of feathers, the glittering spear and shield, the barbed steed, and the spread banner, and had knightly service to perform in joust and tournament, in the field of battle or the deep forest, besides the duty which they owed to their ‘mistress’ eyebrow,’ and the favours they received at her hands. They were comparatively picturesque and adventurous personages, and men of action in the tented field, and lost all title to the smile of beauty if they did not deserve it by feats of prowess, and by the valour of their arms. However insipid they might be as accepted lovers, in their set speeches and improgressive languishments by which they paid their court to their hearts’ idols, the ‘fairest of the fair,’ yet in their character of warriors and heroes, they were men of mettle, and had something in them. They did not merely sigh and smile and kneel in the presence of their mistresses—they had to unhorse their adversaries in combat, to storm castles, to vanquish giants, and lead armies. So far, so well. In the good old times of chivalry and romance, favour was won and maintained by the bold achievements and fair fame of the chosen knight, which keeps up a show of suspense and dramatic interest, instead of depending, as in more effeminate times, on taste, sympathy, and a refinement of sentiment and manners, of the delicacy of which it is impossible to convey any idea by words or actions. Even in the pompous and affected courtship of the romances of the seventeenth century (now, alas! exploded) the interviews between the lovers are so rare and guarded, their union, though agreed upon and inevitable, is so remote, the smile with which the lady regards her sworn champion, though as steady as that of one of the fixed stars, is like them so cold, as to give a tone of passion and interest to their enamoured flights, as though they were affected by the chances and changes of sublunary affairs. I confess I have read some of these fabulous folios formerly with no small degree of delight and breathless anxiety, particularly that of ‘Cassandra’; and would willingly indeed go over it again to catch even a faint, a momentary glimpse of the pleasure with which I used at one period to peruse its prolix descriptions 62and high-flown sentiments. Not only the Palmerins of England and Amadises of Gaul, who made their way to their mistresses’ hearts by slaying giants and taming dragons, but the heroes of the French romances of intrigue and gallantry which succeeded those of necromancy and chivalry, and where the adventurers for the prize have to break through the fences of morality and scruples of conscience instead of stone-walls and enchantments dire, are to be excepted from the censure of downright insipidity which attaches to those ordinary drawing-room heroes, who are installed in the good graces of their Divinities by a look, and keep their places there by the force of still-life! It is Gray who cries out, ‘Be mine to read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon!’ I could say the same of those of Madame La Fayette and the Duke de la Rochefoucault. ‘The Princess of Cleves’ is a most charming work of this kind; and the Duke de Nemours is a great favourite with me. He is perhaps the most brilliant personage that ever entered upon the tapis of a drawing-room, or trifled at a lady’s toilette.

I prefer him, I own, vastly to Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison, whom I look upon as the prince of coxcombs; and so much the more impertinent as he is a moral one. His character appears to me ‘ugly all over with affectation.’ There is not a single thing that Sir Charles Grandison does or says all through the book from liking to any person or object but himself, and with a view to answer to a certain standard of perfection for which he pragmatically sets up. He is always thinking of himself, and trying to show that he is the wisest, happiest, and most virtuous person in the whole world. He is (or would be thought) a code of Christian ethics; a compilation and abstract of all gentlemanly accomplishments. There is nothing, I conceive, that excites so little sympathy as this inordinate egotism; or so much disgust as this everlasting self-complacency. Yet this self-admiration, brought forward on every occasion as the incentive to every action and reflected from all around him, is the burden and pivot of the story. ‘Is not the man Sir Charles Grandison?’—is what he and all the other persons concerned are continually repeating to themselves. His preference of the little, insignificant, selfish, affected, puritanical Miss Byron, who is remarkable for nothing but her conceit of herself and her lover, to the noble Clementina, must for ever stamp him for the poltroon and blockhead that he was. What a contrast between these two females—the one, the favourite heroine, settling her idle punctilios and the choice of her ribbons for the wedding-day with equal interest, the other, self-devoted, broken-hearted, generous, disinterested, pouring out her whole soul in the fervent expressions and dying struggles of an unfortunate and hopeless affection! It was impossible indeed for the 63genius of the author (strive all he could) to put the prettinesses and coquettish scruples of the bride-elect upon a par with the eloquent despair and impassioned sentiments of her majestic but unsuccessful rival. Nothing can show more clearly that the height of good fortune and of that conventional faultlessness which is supposed to secure it, is incompatible with any great degree of interest. Lady Clementina should have been married to Sir Charles to surfeit her of a coxcomb—Miss Byron to Lovelace to plague her with a rake! Have we not sometimes seen such matches? A slashing critic of my acquaintance once observed, that ‘Richardson would be surprised in the next world to find Lovelace in Heaven and Grandison in Hell!’ Without going this orthodox length, I must say there is something in Lovelace’s vices more attractive than in the other’s best virtues. Clarissa’s attachment seems as natural as Clementina’s is romantic. There is a regality about Lovelace’s manner, and he appears clothed in a panoply of wit, gaiety, spirit, and enterprise, that is criticism-proof. If he had not possessed these dazzling qualities, nothing could have made us forgive for an instant his treatment of the spotless Clarissa; but indeed they might be said to be mutually attracted to and extinguished in each other’s dazzling lustre! When we think of Lovelace and his luckless exploits, we can hardly be persuaded at this time of day that he wore a wig. Yet that he did so is evident; for Miss Howe when she gave him that spirited box on the ear, struck the powder out of it! Mr. B. in ‘Pamela’ has all the insipidity, that arises from patronising beauty and condescending to virtue. Pamela herself is delightfully made out; but she labours under considerable disadvantages, and is far from a regular heroine.

Sterne (thank God!) has neither hero nor heroine, and he does very well without them.

Many people find fault with Fielding’s Tom Jones as gross and immoral. For my part, I have doubts of his being so very handsome from the author’s always talking about his beauty, and I suspect he was a clown, from being constantly assured he was so very genteel. Otherwise, I think Jones acquits himself very well both in his actions and speeches, as a lover and as a trencher-man whenever he is called upon. Some persons, from their antipathy to that headlong impulse, of which Jones was the slave, and to that morality of good-nature which in him is made a foil to principle, have gone so far as to prefer Blifil as the prettier fellow of the two. I certainly cannot subscribe to this opinion, which perhaps was never meant to have followers, and has nothing but its singularity to recommend it. Joseph Andrews is a hero of the shoulder-knot: it would be hard to canvass his pretensions too severely, especially considering what a patron he has in 64Parson Adams. That one character would cut up into a hundred fine gentlemen and novel-heroes! Booth is another of the good-natured tribe, a fine man, a very fine man! But there is a want of spirit to animate the well-meaning mass. He hardly deserved to have the hashed mutton kept waiting for him. The author has redeemed himself in Amelia; but a heroine with a broken nose and who was a married woman besides, must be rendered truly interesting and amiable to make up for superficial objections. The character of the Noble Peer in this novel is not insipid. If Fielding could have made virtue as admirable as he could make vice detestable, he would have been a greater master even than he was. I do not understand what those critics mean who say he got all his characters out of alehouses. It is true he did some of them.

Smollett’s heroes are neither one thing nor the other: neither very refined nor very insipid. Wilson in Humphrey Clinker comes the nearest to the beau-ideal of this character, the favourite of the novel-reading and boarding-school girl. Narcissa and Emilia Gauntlet are very charming girls; and Monimia in Count Fathom is a fine monumental beauty. But perhaps he must be allowed to be most at home in Winifred Jenkins!

The women have taken this matter up in our own time: let us see what they have made of it. Mrs. Radcliffe’s heroes and lovers are perfect in their kind; nobody can find any fault with them, for nobody knows any thing about them. They are described as very handsome, and quite unmeaning and inoffensive.

Theodore, Valancourt,—what delightful names! and there is nothing else to distinguish them by. Perhaps, however, this indefiniteness is an advantage. We add expression to the inanimate outline, and fill up the blank with all that is amiable, interesting, and romantic. A long ride without a word spoken, a meeting that comes to nothing, a parting look, a moonlight scene, or evening skies that paint their sentiments for them better than the lovers can do for themselves, farewells too full of anguish, deliverances too big with joy to admit of words, suppressed sighs, faint smiles, the freshness of the morning, pale melancholy, the clash of swords, the clank of chains that make the fair one’s heart sink within her, these are the chief means by which the admired authoress of ‘The Romance of the Forest’ and ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’ keeps alive an ambiguous interest in the bosom of her fastidious readers, and elevates the lover into the hero of the fable. Unintelligible distinctions, impossible attempts, a 65delicacy that shrinks from the most trifling objection, and an enthusiasm that rushes on its fate, such are the charming and teazing contradictions that form the flimsy texture of a modern romance! If the lover in such critical cases was any thing but a lover, he would cease to be the most amiable of all characters in the abstract and by way of excellence, and would be a traitor to the cause; to give reasons or to descend to particulars, is to doubt the omnipotence of love and shake the empire of credulous fancy; a sounding name, a graceful form, are all that is necessary to suspend the whole train of tears, sighs, and the softest emotions upon; the ethereal nature of the passion requires ethereal food to sustain it; and our youthful hero, in order to be perfectly interesting, must be drawn as perfectly insipid!

I cannot, however, apply this charge to Mrs. Inchbald’s heroes or heroines. However finely drawn, they are an essence of sentiment. Their words are composed of the warmest breath, their tears scald, their sighs stifle. Her characters seem moulded of a softer clay, the work of fairest hands. Miss Milner is enchanting. Doriforth indeed is severe, and has a very stately opinion of himself, but he has spirit and passion. Lord Norwynne is the most unpleasant and obdurate. He seduces by his situation and kills by indifference, as is natural in such cases. But still through all these the fascination of the writer’s personal feelings never quits you. On the other hand, Miss Burney’s (Madame D’Arblay’s) forte is ridicule, or an exquisite tact for minute absurdities, and when she aims at being fine she only becomes affected. No one had ever much less of the romantic. Lord Orville is a condescending suit of clothes; yet certainly the sense which Evelina has of the honour done her is very prettily managed. Sir Clement Willoughby is a much gayer and more animated person, though his wit outruns his discretion. Young Delville is the hero of punctilio—a perfect diplomatist in the art of love-making—and draws his parallels and sits down as deliberately before the citadel of his mistress’s heart, as a cautious general lays siege to an impregnable fortress. Cecilia is not behind-hand with him in the game of studied cross-purposes and affected delays, and is almost the veriest and most provoking trifler on record. Miss Edgeworth, I believe, has no heroes. Her trenchant pen cuts away all extravagance and idle pretence, and leaves nothing but common sense, prudence, and propriety behind it, wherever it comes.

I do not apprehend that the heroes of the Author of Waverley form any very striking exception to the common rule. They conform to their designation and follow the general law of their being. They are for the most part very equivocal and undecided personages, who receive their governing impulse from accident, or are puppets in the 66hands of their mistresses, such as Waverley, Ivanhoe, Frank Osbaldistone, Henry Morton, &c. I do not say that any of these are absolutely insipid, but they have in themselves no leading or master-traits, and they are worked out of very listless and inert materials into a degree of force and prominence solely by the genius of the author. Instead of acting, they are acted upon, and keep in the back-ground and in a neutral posture, till they are absolutely forced to come forward, and it is then with a very amiable reservation of modest scruples. Does it not seem almost, or generally speaking, as if a character to be put in this responsible situation of candidate for the highest favour of the public at large, or of the fair in particular, who is to conciliate all suffrages and concentrate all interests, must really have nothing in him to please or give offence, that he must be left a negative, feeble character without untractable or uncompromising points, and with a few slight recommendations and obvious good qualities which every one may be supposed to improve upon and fill up according to his or her inclination or fancy and the model of perfection previously existing in the mind? It is a privilege claimed, no doubt, by the fair reader to make out the object of her admiration and interest according to her own choice; and the same privilege, if not openly claimed, may be covertly exercised by others. We are all fond of our own creations, and if the author does little to his chief character and allows us to have a considerable hand in it, it may not suffer in our opinion from this circumstance. In fact, the hero of the work is not so properly the chief object in it, as a sort of blank left open to the imagination, or a lay-figure on which the reader disposes whatever drapery he pleases! Of all Sir Walter’s characters the most dashing and spirited is the Sultan Saladin. But he is not meant for a hero, nor fated to be a lover. He is a collateral and incidental performer in the scene. His movements therefore remain free, and he is master of his own resplendent energies, which produce so much the more daring and felicitous an effect. So far from being intended to please all tastes or the most squeamish, he is not meant for any taste. He has no pretensions, and stands upon the sole ground of his own heroic acts and sayings. The author has none of the timidity or mawkishness arising from a fear of not coming up to his own professions, or to the expectations excited in the reader’s mind. Any striking trait, any interesting exploit is more than was bargained for—is heaped measure, running over. There is no idle, nervous apprehension of falling short of perfection, arresting the hand or diverting the mind from truth and nature. If the Pagan is not represented as a monster and barbarian, all the rest is a god-send. Accordingly all is spontaneous, bold, and original in this beautiful 67and glowing design, which is as magnificent as it is magnanimous.—Lest I should forget it, I will mention while I am on the subject of Scotch novels, that Mackenzie’s ‘Man of Feeling’ is not without interest, but it is an interest brought out in a very singular and unprecedented way. He not merely says or does nothing to deserve the approbation of the goddess of his idolatry, but from extreme shyness and sensitiveness, instead of presuming on his merits, gets out of her way, and only declares his passion on his death-bed. Poor Harley!—Mr. Godwin’s Falkland is a very high and heroic character: he, however, is not a love-hero; and the only part in which an episode of this kind is introduced, is of the most trite and mawkish description. The case is different in St. Leon. The author’s resuscitated hero there quaffs joy, love, and immortality with a considerable gusto, and with appropriate manifestations of triumph.

As to the heroes of the philosophical school of romance, such as Goethe’s Werther, &c., they are evidently out of the pale of this reasoning. Instead of being common-place and insipid, they are one violent and startling paradox from beginning to end. Instead of being cast in stiff unmeaning mould, they ‘all germins spill at once’ that make mere mortal men. They run a-tilt at all established usages and prejudices, and overset all the existing order of society. There is plenty of interest here; and instead of complaining of a calm, we are borne along by a hurricane of passion and eloquence, certainly without any thing of ‘temperance that may give it smoothness.’ Schiller’s Moor, Kotzebue’s heroes, and all the other German prodigies are of this stamp.

Shakspeare’s lovers and Boccaccio’s I like much: they seem to me full of tenderness and manly spirit, and free from insipidity and cant. Otway’s Jaffier is, however, the true woman’s man—full of passion and effeminacy, a mixture of strength and weakness. Perhaps what I have said above may suggest the true reason and apology for Milton’s having unwittingly made Satan the hero of ‘Paradise Lost.’ He suffers infinite losses, and makes the most desperate efforts to recover or avenge them; and it is the struggle with fate and the privation of happiness that sharpens our desires, or enhances our sympathy with good or evil. We have little interest in unalterable felicity, nor can we join with heart and soul in the endless symphonies and exulting hallelujahs of the spirits of the blest. The remorse of a fallen spirit or ‘tears such as angels shed’ touch us more nearly.

The New Monthly Magazine.] [December, 1827.

Scholars lead a contemplative and retired life, both which circumstances must be supposed to contribute to the effect in question. A life of study is also conversant with high and ideal models, which gives an ambitious turn to the mind; and pride is nearly akin to delicacy of feeling.

That a life of privacy and obscurity should render its votaries bashful and awkward, or unfit them for the routine of society, from the want both of a habit of going into company and from ignorance of its usages, is obvious to remark. No one can be expected to do that well or without a certain degree of hesitation and restraint, which he is not accustomed to do except on particular occasions, and at rare intervals. You might as rationally set a scholar or a clown on a tight-rope and expect them to dance gracefully and with every appearance of ease, as introduce either into the gay, laughing circle, and suppose that he will acquit himself handsomely and come off with applause in the retailing of anecdote or the interchange of repartee. ‘If you have not seen the Court, your manners must be naught; and if your manners are naught, you must be damned,’ according to Touchstone’s reasoning. The other cause lies rather deeper, and is so far better worth considering, perhaps. A student, then, that is, a man who condemns himself to toil for a length of time and through a number of volumes in order to arrive at a conclusion, naturally loses that smartness and ease which distinguish the gay and thoughtless rattler. There is a certain elasticity of movement and hey-day of the animal spirits seldom to be met with but in those who have never cared for any thing beyond the moment, or looked lower than the surface. The scholar having to encounter doubts and difficulties on all hands, and indeed to apply by way of preference to those subjects which are most beset with mystery, becomes hesitating, sceptical, irresolute, absent, dull. All the processes of his mind are slow, cautious, circuitous, instead of being prompt, heedless, straightforward. Finding the intricacies of the path increase upon him in every direction, this can hardly be supposed to add to the lightness of his step, the confidence of his brow as he advances. He does not skim the surface, but dives under it like the mole to make his way darkling, by imperceptible degrees, and throwing up heaps of dirt and rubbish over his head to track his progress. He is therefore startled at 69any sudden light, puzzled by any casual question, taken unawares and at a disadvantage in every critical emergency. He must have time given him to collect his thoughts, to consider objections, to make farther inquiries, and come to no conclusion at last. This is very different from the dashing, off-hand manner of the mere man of business or fashion; and he who is repeatedly found in situations to which he is unequal (particularly if he is of a reflecting and candid temper) will be apt to look foolish, and to lose both his countenance and his confidence in himself—at least as to the opinion others entertain of him, and the figure he is likely on any occasion to make in the eyes of the world. The course of his studies has not made him wise, but has taught him the uncertainty of wisdom; and has supplied him with excellent reasons for suspending his judgment, when another would throw the casting-weight of his own presumption or interest into the scale.

The inquirer after truth learns to take nothing for granted; least of all, to make an assumption of his own superior merits. He would have nothing proceed without proper proofs and an exact scrutiny; and would neither be imposed upon himself, nor impose upon others by shallow and hasty appearances. It takes years of patient toil and devoted enthusiasm to master any art or science; and after all, the success is doubtful. He infers that other triumphs must be prepared in like manner at an humble distance: he cannot bring himself to imagine that any object worth seizing on or deserving of regard, can be carried by a coup de main. So far from being proud or puffed up by them, he would be ashamed and degraded in his own opinion by any advantages that were to be obtained by such cheap and vulgar means as putting a good face on the matter, as strutting and vapouring about his own pretensions. He would not place himself on a level with bullies or coxcombs; nor believe that those whose favour he covets, can be the dupes of either. Whatever is excellent in his fanciful creed is hard of attainment; and he would (perhaps absurdly enough) have the means in all cases answerable to the end. He knows that there are difficulties in his favourite pursuits to puzzle the will, to tire the patience, to unbrace the strongest nerves, and make the stoutest courage quail; and he would fain think that if there is any object more worthy than another to call forth the earnest solicitude, the hopes and fears of a wise man, and to make his heart yearn within him at the most distant prospect of success, this precious prize in the grand lottery of life is not to be had for the asking for, or from the mere easy indifference or overbearing effrontery with which you put in your claim. He is aware that it will be long enough before any one paints a fine picture by walking 70up and down and admiring himself in the glass; or writes a fine poem by being delighted with the sound of his own voice; or solves a single problem in philosophy by swaggering and haughty airs. He conceives that it is the same with the way of the world—woos the fair as he woos the Muse; in conversation never puts in a word till he has something better to say than any one else in the room; in business never strikes while the iron is hot, and flings away all his advantages by endeavouring to prove to his own and the satisfaction of others, that he is clearly entitled to them. It never once enters into his head (till it is too late) that impudence is the current coin in the affairs of life; that he who doubts his own merit, never has credit given him by others; that Fortune does not stay to have her overtures canvassed; that he who neglects opportunity, can seldom command it a second time; that the world judge by appearances, not by realities; and that they sympathise more readily with those who are prompt to do themselves justice, and to show off their various qualifications or enforce their pretensions to the utmost, than with those who wait for others to award their claims, and carry their fastidious refinement into helplessness and imbecility. Thus ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread;’ and modest merit finds to its cost, that the bold hand and dauntless brow succeed where timidity and bashfulness are pushed aside; that the gay, laughing eye is preferred to dejection and gloom, health and animal spirits to the shattered, sickly frame and trembling nerves; and that to succeed in life, a man should carry about with him the outward and incontrovertible signs of success, and of his satisfaction with himself and his prospects, instead of plaguing every body near him with fantastical scruples and his ridiculous anxiety to realise an unattainable standard of perfection. From holding back himself, the speculative enthusiast is thrust back by others: his pretensions are insulted and trampled on; and the repeated and pointed repulses he meets with, make him still more unwilling to encounter, and more unable to contend with those that await him in the prosecution of his career. He therefore retires from the contest altogether, or remains in the back-ground, a passive but uneasy spectator of a scene, in which he finds from experience, that confidence, alertness, and superficial acquirements are of more avail than all the refinement and delicacy in the world. Action, in truth, is referable chiefly to quickness and strength of resolution, rather than to depth of reasoning or scrupulous nicety: again, it is to be presumed that those who show a proper reliance on themselves, will not betray the trust we place in them through pusillanimity or want of spirit: in what relates to the opinion of others, which is often formed hastily and on slight acquaintance, 71much must be allowed to what strikes the senses, to what excites the imagination; and in all popular worldly schemes, popular and worldly means must be resorted to, instead of depending wholly on the hidden and intrinsic merits of the case.

This advice (sensible as it is) is abhorrent to the nature of a man who is accustomed to place all his hopes of victory in reasoning and reflection only. The noisy, rude, gratuitous success of those who have taken so much less pains to deserve it, disgusts and disheartens him—he loses his self-possession and self-esteem, has no standard left by which to measure himself or others, and as he cannot be brought to admire them, persuades himself at last that the blame rests with himself; and instead of bespeaking a fashionable dress, learning to bow, or taking a few lessons in boxing or fencing to brace his nerves and raise his spirits, aggravates all his former faults by way of repairing them, grows more jealous of the propriety of every word and look, lowers his voice into a whisper, gives his style the last polish, reconsiders his arguments, refines his sentiments till they evaporate in a sigh, and thus satisfies himself that he can hardly fail, that men judge impartially in the end, that the public will sooner or later do him justice, Fortune smile, and the Fair no longer be averse! Oh malore! He is just where he was, or ten times worse off than ever.

There is another circumstance that tends not a little to perplex the judgment, and add to the difficulties of the retired student, when he comes out into the world. He is like one dropped from the clouds. He has hitherto conversed chiefly with historic personages and abstract propositions, and has no just notion of actual men and things. He does not well know how to reconcile the sweeping conclusions he has been taught to indulge in to the cautious and pliant maxims of the world, nor how to compare himself, an inhabitant 72of Utopia, with sublunary mortals. He has been habituated all his life to look up to a few great names handed down by virtue or science as the ‘Gods of his idolatry,’ as the fixed stars in the firmament of reputation, and to have some respect for himself and other learned men as votaries at the shrine and as appreciating the merits of their idol; but all the rest of the world, who are neither the objects of this sort of homage, nor concerned as a sort of priesthood in collecting and paying it, he looks upon as actually nobody, or as worms crawling upon the face of the earth without intellectual value or pretensions. He is, therefore, a little surprised and shocked to find, when he deigns to mingle with his fellows, those every-day mortals, on ordinary terms, that they are of a height nearly equal to himself, that they have words, ideas, feelings in common with the best, and are not the mere cyphers he had been led to consider them. From having under-rated, he comes to over-rate them. Having dreamt of no such thing, he is more struck with what he finds than perhaps it deserves; magnifies the least glimpse of sense or humour into sterling wit or wisdom; is startled by any objection from so unexpected a quarter; thinks his own advantages of no avail, because they are not the only ones, and shrinks from an encounter with weapons he has not been used to, and from a struggle by which he feels himself degraded. The Knight of La Mancha when soundly beaten by the packstaves of the Yanguesian carriers, laid all the blame on his having condescended to fight with plebeians. The pride of learning comes in to aid the awkwardness and bashfulness of the inexperienced novice, converting his want of success into the shame and mortification of defeat in what he habitually considers as a contest with inferiors. Indeed, those will always be found to submit with the worst grace to any check or reverse of this kind in common conversation or reasoning, who have been taught to set the most exclusive and disproportioned value on letters: and the most enlightened and accomplished scholars will be less likely to be humbled or put to the blush by the display of common sense or native talent, than the more ignorant, self-sufficient, and pedantic among the learned; for that ignorance, self-sufficiency, and pedantry, are sometimes to be reckoned among the attributes of learning, cannot be disputed. These qualities are not very reconcilable with modest merit; but they are quite consistent with a great deal of blundering, confusion, and want of tact in the commerce of the world. The genuine scholar retires from an unequal conflict into silence and obscurity: the pedant swells into self-importance, and renders himself conspicuous by pompous arrogance and absurdity!

It is hard upon those who have ever taken pains or done any thing 73to distinguish themselves, that they are seldom the trumpeters of their own achievements; and I believe it may be laid down as a rule, that we receive just as much homage from others as we exact from them by our own declarations, looks, and manner. But no one who has performed any thing great looks big upon it: those who have any thing to boast of are generally silent on that head, and altogether shy of the subject. With Coriolanus, they ‘will not have their nothings monster’d.’ From familiarity, his own acquirements do not appear so extraordinary to the individual as to others; and there is a natural want of sympathy in this respect. No one who is really capable of great things is proud or vain of his success; for he thinks more of what he had hoped or has failed to do, than of what he has done. A habit of extreme exertion, or of anxious suspense, is not one of buoyant, overweening self-complacency: those who have all their lives tasked their faculties to the utmost, may be supposed to have quite enough to do without having much disposition left to anticipate their success with confidence, or to glory in it afterwards. The labours of the mind, like the drudgery of the body, depress and take away the usual alacrity of the spirits. Nor can such persons be lifted up with the event; for the impression of the consequences to result from any arduous undertaking must be light and vain, compared with the toil and anxiety accompanying it. It is only those who have done nothing, who fancy they can do every thing; or who have leisure and inclination to admire themselves. To sit before a glass and smile delighted at our own image, is merely a tax on our egotism and self-conceit; and these are resources not easily exhausted in some persons; or if they are, the deficiency is supplied by flatterers who surround the vain, like a natural atmosphere. Fools who take all their opinions at second-hand cannot resist the coxcomb’s delight in himself; or it might be said that folly is the natural mirror of vanity. The greatest heroes, it has often been observed, do not show it in their faces; nor do philosophers affect to be thought wise. Little minds triumph on small occasions, or over puny competitors: the loftiest wish for higher opportunities of signalising themselves, or compare themselves with those models that leave them no room for flippant exultation. Either great things are accomplished with labour and pains, which stamp their impression on the general character and tone of feeling; or if this should not be the case (as sometimes happens), and they are the effect of genius and a happiness of nature, then they cost too little to be much thought of, and we rather wonder at others for admiring them, than at ourselves for having performed them. ‘Vix ea nostra voco’—is the motto of spontaneous talent; and in neither 74case is conceit the exuberant growth of great original power or of great attainments.

In one particular, the uneducated man carries it hollow against the man of thought and refinement: the first can shoot in the long bow, which the last cannot for the life of him. He who has spent the best part of his time and wasted his best powers in endeavouring to answer the question—‘What is truth?’—scorns a lie, and every thing making the smallest approach to one. His mind by habit has become tenacious of, devoted to the truth. The grossness and vulgarity of falsehood shock the delicacy of his perceptions, as much as it would shock the finest artist to be obliged to daub in a signpost, or scrawl a caricature. He cannot make up his mind to derive any benefit from so pitiful and disgusting a source. Tell me that a man is a metaphysician, and at the same time that he is given to shallow and sordid boasting, and I will not believe you. After striving to raise himself to an equality with truth and nature by patient investigation and refined distinctions (which few can make)—whether he succeed or fail, he cannot stoop to acquire a spurious reputation, or to advance himself or lessen others by paltry artifice and idle rhodomontade, which are in every one’s power who has never known the value or undergone the labour of discovering a single truth. Gross personal and local interests bear the principal sway with the ignorant or mere man of the world, who considers not what things are in themselves, but what they are to him: the man of science attaches a higher importance to, because he finds a more constant pleasure in the contemplation and pursuit of general and abstracted truths. Philosophy also teaches self-knowledge; and self-knowledge strikes equally at the root of any inordinate opinion of ourselves, or wish to impress others with idle admiration. Mathematicians have been remarked for persons of strict probity and a conscientious and somewhat literal turn of mind.^[16] But are poets and romance-writers equally scrupulous and severe judges of themselves, and martyrs to right principle? I cannot acquit them of the charge of vanity, and a wish to aggrandise themselves in the eyes of the world, at the expense of a little false complaisance (what wonder when the world are so prone to admire, and they are so spoiled by indulgence in self-pleasing fancies?)—but in general they are too much taken up with their ideal creations, which have also a truth and keeping of their own, to misrepresent or exaggerate matters of fact, or to trouble their heads about them. The poet’s 75waking thoughts are dreams: the liar has all his wits and senses about him, and thinks only of astonishing his hearers by some worthless assertion, a mixture of impudence and cunning. But what shall we say of the clergy and the priests of all countries? Are they not men of learning? And are they not, with few exceptions, noted for imposture and time-serving, much more than for a love of truth and candour? They are good subjects, it is true; bound to keep the peace, and hired to maintain certain opinions, not to inquire into them. So this is an exception to the rule, such as might be expected. I speak of the natural tendencies of things, and not of the false bias that may be given to them by their forced combination with other principles.

The worst effect of this depression of spirits, or of the ‘scholar’s melancholy,’ here spoken of, is when it leads a man, from a distrust of himself, to seek for low company, or to forget it by matching below himself. Gray is to be pitied, whose extreme diffidence or fastidiousness was such as to prevent his associating with his fellow collegians, or mingling with the herd, till at length, like the owl, shutting himself up from society and daylight, he was hunted and hooted at like the owl whenever he chanced to appear, and was even assailed and disturbed in the haunts in which ‘he held his solitary reign.’ He was driven from college to college, and subjected to a persecution the more harassing to a person of his indolent and retired habits. But he only shrunk the more within himself in consequence—read over his favourite authors—corresponded with his distant friends—was terrified out of his wits at the bare idea of having his portrait prefixed to his works; and probably died from nervous agitation at the publicity into which his name had been forced by his learning, taste, and genius. This monastic seclusion and reserve is, however, better than a career such as Porson’s; who from not liking the restraints, or not possessing the exterior recommendations of good society, addicted himself to the lowest indulgences, spent his days and nights in cider-cellars and pot-houses, cared not with whom or where he was, so that he had somebody to talk to and something to drink, ‘from humble porter to imperial tokay’ (a liquid, according to his own pun), and fell a martyr, in all likelihood, to what in the first instance was pure mauvaise honte. Nothing could overcome this propensity to low society and sotting, but the having something to do, which required his whole attention and faculties; and then he shut himself up for weeks together in his chambers, or at the University, to collate old manuscripts, or edite a Greek tragedy, or expose a grave pedant, without seeing a single boon-companion, or touching a glass of wine. I saw him once at the 76London Institution with a large patch of coarse brown paper on his nose, the skirts of his rusty black coat hung with cobwebs, and talking in a tone of suavity approaching to condescension to one of the Managers. It is a pity that men should so lose themselves from a certain awkwardness and rusticity at the outset. But did not Sheridan make the same melancholy ending, and run the same fatal career, though in a higher and more brilliant circle? He did; and though not from exactly the same cause (for no one could accuse Sheridan’s purple nose and flashing eye of a bashfulness—‘modest as morning when she coldly eyes the youthful Phœbus!’)—yet it was perhaps from one nearly allied to it, namely, the want of that noble independence and confidence in its own resources which should distinguish genius, and the dangerous ambition to get sponsors and vouchers for it in persons of rank and fashion. The affectation of the society of lords is as mean and low-minded as the love of that of coblers and tapsters. It is that coblers and tapsters may admire, that we wish to be seen in the company of their betters. The tone of literary patronage is better than it was a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago. What dramatic author would think now of getting a lady of quality to take a box at the first night of a play to prevent its being damned by the pit? Do we not read the account of Parson Adams taking his ale in Squire Booby’s kitchen with mingled incredulity and shame? At present literature has, to a considerable degree, found its level, and is hardly in danger, ‘deprived of its natural patrons and protectors, the great and noble, of being trodden in the mire, and trampled under the hoofs of a swinish multitude’—though it can never again hope, to be what learning once was in the persons of the priesthood, the lord and sovereign of principalities and powers. Fool that it was ever to forego its privileges, and loosen the strong hold it had on opinion in bigotry and superstition!

I remember hearing a lady of great sense and acuteness speak of it as a painful consequence of the natural shyness of scholars, that from the want of a certain address, or an acquaintance with the common forms of society, they despair of making themselves agreeable to women of education and a certain rank in life, and throw away their fine sentiments and romantic tenderness on chambermaids and mantua-makers. Not daring to hope for success where it would be most desirable, yet anxious to realise in some way the dream of books and of their youth, they are willing to accept a return of affection which they count upon as a tribute of gratitude in those of lower circumstances, (as if gratitude were ever bought by interest), and take up with the first Dulcinea del Toboso that they meet with, when, would they only try the experiment, they might do much 77better. Perhaps so: but there is here also a mixture of pride as well as modesty. The scholar is not only apprehensive of not meeting with a return of fondness where it might be most advantageous to him; but he is afraid of subjecting his self-love to the mortification of a repulse, and to the reproach of aiming at a prize far beyond his deserts. Besides, living (as he does) in an ideal world, he has it in his option to clothe his Goddess (be she who or what she may) with all the perfections his heart doats on; and he works up a dowdy of this ambiguous description à son gré, as an artist does a piece of dull clay, or the poet the sketch of some unrivalled heroine. The contrast is also the greater (and not the less gratifying as being his own discovery,) between his favourite figure and the back-ground of her original circumstances; and he likes her the better, inasmuch as, like himself, she owes all to her own merit—and his notice!

Possibly, the best cure for this false modesty, and for the uneasiness and extravagances it occasions, would be, for the retired and abstracted student to consider that he properly belongs to another sphere of action, remote from the scenes of ordinary life, and may plead the excuse of ignorance, and the privilege granted to strangers and to those who do not speak the same language. If any one is travelling in a foreign Diligence, he is not expected to shine nor to put himself forward, nor need he be out of countenance because he cannot: he has only to conform as well as he can to his new and temporary situation, and to study common propriety and simplicity of manners. Every thing has its own limits, a little centre of its own, round which it moves; so that our true wisdom lies in keeping to our own walk in life, however humble or obscure, and being satisfied if we can succeed in it. The best of us can do no more, and we shall only become ridiculous or unhappy by attempting it. We are ashamed, because we are at a loss in things to which we have no pretensions, and try to remedy our mistakes by committing greater. An overweening vanity or self-opinion is, in truth, often at the bottom of this weakness; and we shall be most likely to conquer the one by eradicating the other, or restricting it within due and moderate bounds.

The New Monthly Magazine.] [February, 1828.

I am one of those who do not think that mankind are exactly governed by reason or a cool calculation of consequences. I rather believe that habit, imagination, sense, passion, prejudice, words make a strong and frequent diversion from the right line of prudence and wisdom. I have been told, however, that these are merely the irregularities and exceptions, and that reason forms the rule or basis; that the understanding, instead of being the sport of the capricious and arbitrary decisions of the will, generally dictates the line of conduct it is to pursue, and that self-interest, or the main-chance, is the unvarying load-star of our affections, or the chief ingredient in all our motives, that, thrown in as ballast, gives steadiness and direction to our voyage through life. I will not take upon me to give a verdict in this cause as judge; but I will try to plead one side of it as an advocate, perhaps a biassed and feeble one.

As the passions are said to be subject to the control of reason, and as reason is resolved (in the present case) into an attention to our own interest, or a practical sense of the value of money, it will not be amiss to inquire how much of this principle itself is founded in a rational estimate of things, or is calculated for the end it proposes, or how much of it will turn out (when analysed) to be mere madness and folly or a mixture, like all the rest, of obstinacy, whim, fancy, vanity, ill-nature, and so forth, or a nominal pursuit of good. This passion, or an inordinate love of wealth, shows itself, when it is strong, equally in two opposite ways, in saving or in spending—in avarice (or stinginess) and in extravagance. To examine each of their order. That lowest and most familiar form of covetousness, commonly called stinginess, is at present (it must be owned) greatly on the wane in civilised society; it has been driven out of fashion either by ridicule and good sense, or by the spread of luxury, or by supplying the mind with other sources of interest, besides those which related to the bare means of subsistence, so that it may almost be considered as a vice, 79or absurdity, struck off the list, as a set-off to some that, in the change of manners and the progress of dissipation have been brought upon the stage. It is not, however, so entirely banished from the world, but that examples of it may be found to our purpose. It seems to have taken refuge in the petty provincial towns, or in old baronial castles in the North of Scotland, where it is still triumphant. To go into this subject somewhat in detail, as a study of the surviving manners of the last age.—Nothing is more common in these half-starved, barren regions, than to stint the servants in their wages, to allowance them in the merest necessaries, never to indulge them with a morsel of savoury food, and to lock up every thing from them as if they were thieves, or common vagabonds, broke into the house. The natural consequence is, that the mistresses live in continual hot water with their servants, keep watch and ward over them—the pantry is in a state of siege—grudge them every mouthful, every appearance of comfort, or moment of leisure, and torment their own souls every minute of their lives about what, if left wholly to itself, would not make a difference of five shillings at the year’s end. There are families so notorious for this kind of surveillance and meanness, that no servant will go to live with them; for, to clench the matter, they are obliged to stay if they do; as, under these amiable establishments, and to provide against an evasion of their signal advantages, domestics are never hired but by the half-year. Instances have been known where servants have taken a pleasant revenge on their masters and mistresses without intending it; but where the example of sordid saving and meanness set to them, having taken possession of those even who were victims to it, they have conscientiously applied it to the benefit of all parties, and scarcely suffered a thing to enter the house for the whole six months they stayed in it. To pass over, however, those cases which may plead poverty as their excuse, what shall we say to a lady of fortune (the sister of one of their old-fashioned lairds) allowing the fruit to rot in the gardens and hot-houses of a fine old mansion in large quantities, sooner than let any of it be given away in presents to the neighbours; and, when peremptorily ordered by the master of the house to send a basket-full every morning to a sick friend, purchasing a small pottle for the purpose, and satisfying her mind (an intelligent and well-informed one) with this miserable subterfuge? Nay, farther, the same person, whenever they had green-peas, or other rarities, served up at table, could hardly be prevailed on to help the guests to them, but, if possible, sent them away, though no other use could now be made of them, and she would never see them again! Is there common sense in this; or is it not more like madness? But is it not, at the same time, human 80nature? Let us stop to explain a little. In my view, the real motive of action in this and other similar cases of grasping penuriousness has no more reference to self-love (properly so called) than artificial fruit and flowers have to natural ones. A certain form or outside appearance of utility may deceive the mind, but the natural, pulpy, wholesome, nutritious substance, the principle of vitality is gone. To this callous, frigid habit of mind, the real uses of things harden and crystallise; the pith and marrow are extracted out of them, and leave nothing but the husk or shell. By a regular process, the idea of property is gradually abstracted from the advantage it may be of even to ourselves; and to a well-drilled, thorough-bred, Northern housekeeper (such as I have supposed), the fruits, or other produce of her garden, would come at last to be things no more to be eaten or enjoyed, than her jewels or trinkets of any description, which are, professedly, of no use but to be kept as symbols of wealth, to be occasionally looked at, and carefully guarded from the approach of any unhallowed touch. The calculation of consequences, or of benefit to accrue to any living person, is so far from being the mainspring in this mechanical operation that it is never once thought of, or regarded with peevishness and impatience as an unwelcome intruder, because it must naturally divert the mind from the warped and false bias it has taken. The feeling of property is here, then, removed from the sphere of practice to a chimerical and fictitious one. In the case of not sending the fruit out of the house, there might be some lurking idea of its being possibly wanted at home, that it might be sent to some one else, or made up into conserves: but when different articles of food are actually placed on the table, to hang back from using or offering them to others, is a deliberate infatuation. They must be destroyed, they could not appear again; and yet this person’s heart failed her, and shrank back from the only opportunity of making the proper use of them with a petty, sensitive apprehension, as if it were a kind of sacrilege done to a cherished and favourite object. The impulse to save was become, by indulgence, a sort of desperate propensity and forlorn hope, no longer the understood means, but the mistaken end: habit had completely superseded the exercise and control of reason, and the rage of making the most of every thing by making no use of it at all, resisted to the last moment the shocking project of feasting on a helpless dish of green-peas (that would fetch so much in the market) as an outrage against the Goddess of stinginess, and torture to the soul of thrift! The principle of economy is inverted; and in order to avoid the possibility of wasting any thing, the way with such philosophers and housewives is to abstain from touching it altogether. Is not this a common error? 81Or are we conscious of our motives in such cases? [Or do we not flatter ourselves by imputing every such act of idle folly to the necessity of adopting some sure and judicious plan to shun ruin, beggary, and the most profligate abuse of wealth? An old maid in the same northern school of humanity calling upon some young ladies, her neighbours, was so alarmed and scandalized at finding the safe open in their absence, that she engaged herself to drink tea the same afternoon, for the express purpose of reading them a lecture on the unheard-of imprudence and impropriety of such an example, and was mobbed on her way home by the poor servant-girl (who had been made the subject of her declamation) in return for her uncalled-for interference. She had nothing to fear, nothing to lose: her safe was carefully locked up. Why then all this flutter, fidgetty anxiety, and itch of meddling? Out of pure romantic generosity—because the idea of any thing like comfort or liberality to a servant shocked her economical and screwed-up prejudices as much as the impugning any article of her religious or moral creed could have done. The very truisms and literal refinements of this passion are then sheer impertinence. The housekeeper came into the parlour of a ‘big ha’ house,’ in the same land of cakes and hospitality, to say that the workmen had refused to eat their dinner.—‘Why so?’—Because there was nothing but sowins and sour milk.—‘Then they must go without a dinner,’ said the young mistress delighted; ‘there is nothing else in the house for them.’ Yet the larder at that time groaned with cold rounds of beef, hams, pasties, and the other plentiful remains of a huge entertainment the day before. This was flippancy and ill-nature, as well as a wrong notion of self-interest. Is it at all wonderful that a decent servant-girl, when applied to to go to this place, laughed at the idea of a service where there was nothing to eat? Yet this attention to the main-chance on her part, had it come to the lady’s knowledge, would have been treated as a great piece of insolence. So little conception have such people of their own obligations on the claims of others! The clergyman of the parish (prolific in this sort of anecdote), a hearty, good sort of man enough, but irritable withal, took it into his head to fly into a violent passion if ever he found the glasses or spoons left out in the kitchen, and he always went into the kitchen to look after this sort of excitement. He pretended to be mightily afraid that the one would be broken (to his irreparable loss) and the other stolen, though there was no danger of either: he wanted an excuse to fret and fume about something. On the death of his wife he sent for her most intimate friend to condole and consult with, and having made some necessary arrangements, begged as a peculiar favour that she would look into the kitchen to see if the 82glasses and silver spoons were in their places. She repressed a smile at such a moment out of regard to his feelings, which were serious and acute; but burst into a fit of unrestrained laughter as soon as she got home. So ridiculous a thing is human nature, even to ourselves! Either our actions are absurd, or we are absurd in our constant censure and exposure of others. I would not from choice go into these details, but I might be required to fill up a vague outline; and the examples of folly, spite, and meanness are unfortunately ‘sown like a thick scurf o’er life!’]

Let us turn the tables and look at the other side of this sober, solid, ingrossing passion for property and its appendages. A man lays out a thousand, nay, sometimes many thousand pounds in purchasing a fine picture. This is thought, by the vulgar, a very fantastical folly, and unaccountable waste of money. Why so? No one would give such a sum for a picture, unless there were others ready to offer nearly the same sum, and who are likely to appreciate its value, and envy him the distinction. It is then a sign of taste, a proof of wealth to possess it, it is an ornament and a luxury. If the same person lays out the same sum of money in building or purchasing a fine house, or enriching it with costly furniture, no notice is taken—this is supposed to be perfectly natural and in order. Yet both are equally gratuitous pieces of extravagance, and the value of the objects is, in either case, equally ideal. It will be asked, ‘But what is the use of the picture?’ And what, pray, is the use of the fine house or costly furniture, unless to be looked at, to be admired, and to display the taste and magnificence of the owner? Are not pictures and statues as much furniture as gold plate or jasper tables; or does the circumstance of the former having a meaning in them, and appealing to the imagination as well as to the senses, neutralize their virtue, and render it entirely chimerical and visionary? It is true, every one must have a house of some kind, furnished somehow, and the superfluity so far grows imperceptibly out of the necessary. But a fine house, fine furniture, is necessary to no man, nor of more value than the plainest, except as a matter of taste, of fancy, of luxury and ostentation. Again, no doubt, if a person is in the habit of keeping a number of servants, and entertaining a succession of fashionable guests, he must have more room than he wants for himself, apartments suitably decorated to receive them, and offices and stables for their horses and retinue. But is all this unavoidably dictated as a consequence of his attention to the main-chance, or is it not sacrificing the latter, and making it a stalking-horse to his vanity, dissipation, or love of society and hospitality? We are at least as fond of spending money as of making it. If a man runs through a fortune in the way 83here spoken of, is it out of love to himself? Yet who scruples to run through a fortune in this way, or accuses himself of any extraordinary disinterestedness or love of others? One bed is as much as any one can sleep in, one room is as much as he can dine in, and he may have another for study or to retire to after dinner—but he can only want more than this for the accommodation of his friends, or the admiration of strangers. At Fonthill Abbey (to take an extreme illustration), there was not a single room fit to sit, lie, or stand in: the whole was cut up into pigeon holes, or spread out into long endless galleries. The building this huge, ill-assorted pile cost, I believe, nearly a million of money; and if the circumstance was mentioned, it occasioned an expression of surprise at the amount of the wealth that had been thus squandered—but if it was said that a hundred pounds had been laid out on a highly-finished picture, there was the same astonishment expressed at its misdirection. The sympathetic auditor makes up his mind to the first and greatest loss, by reflecting that in case of the worst the building materials alone will fetch something considerable; or, in the very idea of stone-walls and mortar there is something solid and tangible, that repels the charge of frivolous levity or fine sentiment. This quaint excrescence in architecture, preposterous and ill-contrived as it was, occasioned, I suspect, many a heart-ache and bitter comparison to the throng of fashionable visitants; and I conceive it was the very want of comfort and convenience that enhanced this feeling, by magnifying, as it were from contrast, the expense that had been incurred in realising an idle whim. When we judge thus perversely and invidiously of the employment of wealth by others, I cannot think that we are guided in our own choice of means to ends by a simple calculation of downright use and personal accommodation. The gentleman who purchased Fonthill, and was supposed to be possessed of wealth enough to purchase half a dozen more Fonthills, lived there himself for some time in a state of the greatest retirement, rose at six and read till four, rode out for an hour for the benefit of the air, and dined abstemiously for the sake of his health. I could do all this myself. What then became of the rest of his fortune? It was lying in the funds, or embarked in business to make it yet greater, that he might still rise at six and read till four, &c.—it was of no other earthly use to him; for he did not wish to make a figure in the world, or to throw it away on studs of horses, on equipages, entertainments, gaming, electioneering, subscriptions to charitable institutions, [mistresses,] or any of the usual fashionable modes of squandering wealth for the amusement and wonder of others and our own fancied enjoyment. Mr. F. did not probably lay out five hundred a-year on 84himself: it cost Mr. Beckford, who led a life of perfect seclusion, twenty thousand a-year to defray the expenses of his table and of his household establishment. When I find that such and so various are the tastes of men, I am a little puzzled to know what is meant by self-interest, of which some persons talk so fluently, as if it was a Jack-in-a-Box which they could take out and show you, and which they tell you is the object that all men equally aim at. If money, is it for its own sake or the sake of other things? Is it to hoard it or to spend it, on ourselves or others? In all these points, we find the utmost diversity and contradiction both of feeling and practice. Certainly, he who puts his money into a strong-box, and he who puts it into a dice-box must be allowed to have a very different idea of the main-chance. If by this phrase be understood a principle of self-preservation, I grant that while we live, we must not starve, and that necessity has no law. Beyond this point, all seems nearly left to chance or whim; and so far are all the world from being agreed in their definition of this redoubtable term, that one half of them may be said to think and act in diametrical opposition to the other.

Avarice is the miser’s dream, as fame is the poet’s. A calculation of physical profit or loss is almost as much out of the question in the one case as in the other. The one has set his mind on gold, the other on praise, as the summum bonum or object of his bigoted idolatry and darling contemplation, not for any private and sinister ends. It is the immediate pursuit, not the remote or reflex consequence that gives wings to the passion. There is, indeed, a reference to self in either case that fixes and concentrates it, but not a gross or sordid one. Is not the desire to accumulate and leave a vast estate behind us equally romantic with the desire to leave a posthumous name behind us? Is not the desire of distinction, of something to be known and remembered by, the paramount consideration? And are not the privations we undergo, the sacrifices and exertions we make for either object, nearly akin? A child makes a huge snow-ball to show his skill and perseverance and as something to wonder at, not that he can swallow it as an ice, or warm his hands at it, and though the next day’s sun will dissolve it; and the man accumulates a pile of wealth for the same reason principally, or to find employment for his time, his imagination, and his will. I deny that it can be of any other use to him to watch and superintend the returns of millions, than to watch the returns of the heavenly bodies, or to calculate their distances, or to contemplate eternity, or infinity, or the sea, or the dome of St. Peter’s, or any other object that excites curiosity and interest from its magnitude and importance. Do we not look at the most barren 85mountain with thrilling awe and wonder? And is it strange that we should gaze at a mountain of gold with satisfaction, when we can besides say, ‘This is ours, with all the power that belongs to it?’ Every passion, however plodding and prosaic, has its poetical side to it. A miser is the true alchemist, or, like the magician in his cell, who overlooks a mighty experiment, who sees dazzling visions, and who wields the will of others at his nod; but to whom all other hopes and pleasures are dead, and who is cut off from all connexion with his kind. He lives in a splendid hallucination, a waking trance, and so far it is well: but if he thinks he has any other need or use for all this endless store (any more than to swill the ocean) he deceives himself, and is no conjuror after all. He goes on, however, mechanically adding to his stock, and fancying that great riches is great gain, that every particle that swells the heap is something in reserve against the evil day, and a defence against that poverty which he dreads more, the farther he is removed from it; as the more giddy the height to which we have attained, the more frightful does the gulph yawn below—so easily does habit get the mastery of reason, and so nearly is passion allied to madness! ‘But he is laying up for his heirs and successors.’ In toiling for them, and sacrificing himself, is he properly attending to the main-chance?

This is the turn the love of money takes in cautious, dry, recluse, and speculative minds. If it were the pure and abstract love of money, it could take no other turn but this. But in a different class of characters, the sociable, the vain, and imaginative, it takes just the contrary one, viz. to expense, extravagance, and ostentation. It then loves to display itself in every fantastic shape and with every reflected lustre, in houses, in equipage, in dress, in a retinue of friends and dependants, in horses, in hounds—to glitter in the eye of fashion, to be echoed by the roar of folly, and buoyed up for a while like a bubble on the surface of vanity, to sink all at once and irrecoverably into an abyss of ruin and bankruptcy. Does it foresee this result? Does it care for it? What then becomes of the calculating principle that can neither be hoodwinked nor bribed from its duty? Does it do nothing for us in this critical emergency? It is blind, deaf, and insensible to all but the noise, confusion, and glare of objects by which it is fascinated and lulled into a fatal repose! One man ruins himself by the vanity of associating with lords, another by his love of low company, one by his fondness for building, another by his rage for keeping open house and private theatricals, one by philosophical experiments, another by embarking in every ticklish and fantastic speculation that is proposed to him, one throws away an 86estate on a law-suit, another on a die, a third on a horse-race, a fourth on virtù, a fifth on a drab, a sixth on a contested election, &c. There is no dearth of instances to fill the page, or complete the group of profound calculators and inflexible martyrs to the main-chance. Let any of these discreet and well-advised persons have the veil torn from their darling follies by experience, and be gifted with a double share of wisdom and a second fortune to dispose of, and each of them, so far from being warned by experience or disaster, will only be the more resolutely bent to assert the independence of his choice, and throw it away the self-same road it went before, on his vanity in associating with lords, on his love of low company, on his fondness for building, on his rage for keeping open house or private theatricals, on philosophical experiments, on fantastic speculations, on a law-suit, on a dice-box, on a favourite horse, on a picture, on a mistress, or election contest, and so on, through the whole of the chapter of accidents and cross-purposes. There is an admirable description of this sort of infatuation with folly and ruin in Madame D’Arblay’s account of Harrel in ‘Cecilia;’ and though the picture is highly wrought and carried to the utmost length, yet I maintain that the principle is common. I myself have known more than one individual in the same predicament; and therefore cannot think that the deviations from the line of strict prudence and wisdom are so rare or trifling as the theory I am opposing represents them, or I must have been singularly unfortunate in my acquaintance. Out of a score of persons of this class I could mention several that have ruined their fortunes out of mere freak, others that are in a state of dotage and imbecility for fear of being robbed of all they are worth. The rest care nothing about the matter. So that this boasted and unfailing attention to the main-chance resolves itself, when strong, into mad profusion or griping penury, or if weak, is null and yields to other motives. Such is the conclusion, to which my observation of life has led me: if I am quite wrong, it is hard that in a world abounding in such characters I should not have met with a single practical philosopher.^[17]

A girl in a country-town resolves never to marry any one under a duke or a lord. Good. This may be very well as an ebullition 87of spleen or vanity; but is there much common sense or regard to her own satisfaction in it? Were there any likelihood of her succeeding in her resolution, she would not make it: for it is the very distinction to be attained that piques her ambition, and leads her to gratify her conceit of herself by affecting to look down on any lower matches. Let her suffer ever so much mortification or chagrin in the prosecution of her scheme, it only confirms her the more in it: the spirit of contradiction, and the shame of owning herself defeated, increase with every new disappointment and year of painful probation. At least this is the case while there is any chance left. But what, after all, is this haughty and ridiculous pretension founded on? Is it owing to a more commanding view and a firmer grasp of consequences, or of her own interest? No such thing: she is as much captivated by the fancied sound of ‘my lady,’ and dazzled by the image of a coronet-coach, as the girl who marries a footman is smit with his broad shoulders, laced coat, and rosy cheeks. ‘But why must I be always in extremes? Few misses make vows of celibacy or marry their footmen.’ Take then the broad question:—Do they generally marry from the convictions of the understanding, or make the choice that is most likely to ensure their future happiness, or that they themselves approve afterwards? I think the answer must be in the negative; and yet love and marriage are among the weightiest and most serious concerns of life. Mutual regard, good temper, good sense, good character, or a conformity of tastes and dispositions, have notoriously and lamentably little to say in it. On the contrary, it is most frequently those things that pique and provoke opposition, instead of those which promise concord and sympathy, that decide the choice and inflame the will by the love of conquest or of overcoming difficulty. Or it is a complexion, or a fine set of teeth, or air, or dress, or a fine person, or false calves, or affected consequence, or a reputation for gallantry, or a flow of spirits, or a flow of words, or forward coquetry, or assumed indifference, something that appeals to the senses, the fancy, or to our pride, and determines us to throw away our happiness for life. Neither in this case, on which so much depends, are the main-chance and our real interest by any means the same thing.

Or take the passion of love where it has other objects and consequences in view. Is reason any match for the poison of this passion, where it has been once imbibed? I might just as well be told that reason is a cure for madness or the bite of a venomous serpent. Are not health, fortune, friends, character, peace of mind, every thing sacrificed to its idlest impulse? Are the instances rare, or are they not common and tragical? The main-chance does not serve the turn here. Does the prospect of certain ruin break the fascination to its frail victim, or does it not rather enhance and precipitate the result? Or does it not render the conquest more easy and secure that the seducer has already triumphed over and deserted a hundred other victims? A man à bonnes fortunes is the most irresistible personage in the lists of gallantry. Take drunkenness again, that vice which till within these few years (and even still) was fatal to the health, the constitution, the fortunes of so many individuals, and the peace of so many families in Great Britain. I would ask what remonstrance of friends, what lessons of experience, what resolutions of amendment, what certainty of remorse and suffering, however exquisite, would deter the confirmed sot (where the passion for this kind of excitement had once become habitual and the immediate want of it was felt) from indulging his propensity and taking his full swing, notwithstanding the severe and imminent punishment to follow upon his incorrigible excess? The consequence of not abstaining from his favourite beverage is not doubtful and distant (a thing in the clouds) but close at his side, staring him in the face, and felt perhaps in all its aggravations the very morning, yet the recollection of this and of the next day’s dawn is of no avail against the momentary craving and headlong impulse given by the first application of the glass to his lips. The present temptation is indeed heightened by the threatened alternative. I know this as a rule, that the stronger the repentance, the surer the relapse and the more hopeless the cure! The being engrossed by the present moment, by the present feeling, whatever it be, whether of pleasure or pain, is the 89evident cause of both. Few instances have been heard of, of a final reformation on this head. Yet it is a clear case; and reason, if it were that Giant that it is represented in any thing but ledgers and books of accounts, would put down the abuse in an instant. It is true, this infirmity is more particularly chargeable to the English and to other Northern nations, and there has been a considerable improvement among us of late years; but I suspect it is owing to a change of manners, and to the opening of new sources of amusement (without the aid of ardent spirits flung in to relieve the depression of our animal spirits,) more than to the excellent treatises which have been written against the ‘Use of Fermented Liquors,’ or to an increasing, tender regard to our own comfort, health, and happiness in the breast of individuals. We still find plenty of ways of tormenting ourselves and sporting with the feelings of others! I will say nothing of a passion for gaming here, as too obvious an illustration of what I mean. It is more rare, and hardly to be looked on as epidemic with us. But few that have dabbled in this vice have not become deeply involved, and few (or none) that have done so have ever retraced their steps or returned to sober calculations of the main-chance. The majority, it is true, are not gamesters; but where the passion does exist, it completely tyrannizes over and stifles the voice of common sense, reason, and humanity. How many victims has the point of honour! I will not pretend that, as matters stand, it may not be necessary to fight a duel, under certain circumstances and on certain provocations, even in a prudential point of view, (though this again proves how little the maxims and practices of the world are regulated by a mere consideration of personal safety and welfare)—but I do say that the rashness with which this responsibility is often incurred, and the even seeking for trifling causes of quarrel, shows any thing but a consistent regard to self-interest as a general principle of action, or rather betrays a total recklessness of consequences, when opposed to pique, petulance, or passion.

Before I proceed to answer a principal objection (and indeed a staggering one at first sight) I will mention here that I think it strongly confirms my view of human nature, that men form their opinions much more from prejudice than reason. The proof that they do so is that they form such opposite ones, when the abstract premises and independent evidence are the same. How few Calvinists become Lutherans! How few Papists Protestants! How few Tories Whigs!^[19] Each shuts his eyes equally to facts or arguments, and persists in the view of the subject that custom, pride, and 90obstinacy dictate. Interest is no more regarded than reason; for it is often at the risk both of life and fortune that these opinions have been maintained, and it is uniformly when parties have run highest and the strife has been deadliest that people have been most forward to stake their existence and every thing belonging to them, on some unintelligible dogma or article of an old-fashioned creed. Half the wars and fightings, martyrdoms, persecutions, feuds, antipathies, heart-burnings in the world have been about some distinction, ‘some trick not worth an egg’—so ready are mankind to sacrifice their all to a mere name! It may be urged, that the good of our souls or our welfare in a future state of being is a rational and well-grounded motive for these religious extravagances. And this is true, so far as religious zeal falls in with men’s passions or the spirit of the times. A bigot was formerly ready to cut his neighbour’s throat to go to Heaven, but not so ready to reform his own life, or give up a single vice or gratification for all the pains and penalties denounced upon it, and of which his faith in Holy Church did not suffer him to doubt a moment!

But it is contended here, that in matters not of doctrinal speculation but of private life and domestic policy, every one consults and understands his own interest; that whatever other hobbies he may have, he minds this as the main object, and contrives to make both ends meet, in spite of seeming inattention and real difficulties. ‘If we look around us’ (says a shrewd, hard-headed Scotchman) ‘and take examples from the neighbourhood in which we live, we shall find that allowing for occasional exceptions, diversities and singularities, the main-chance is still stuck to with rigid and unabated pertinacity—the accounts are wound up and every thing is right at the year’s end, whatever freaks or fancies may have intervened in the course of it. The business of life goes on (which is the principal thing) and every man’s house stands on its own bottom. This is the case in Nicholson-street, in the next street to it, and in the next street to that, and in the whole of Edinburgh, Scotland, and England to boot.’ This, I allow, is a home-thrust, and I must parry it, how I can. It is a kind of heavy, broad-wheeled waggon of an objection that makes a formidable, awkward appearance, and takes up so much of the road, that I shall have a lucky escape if I can dash by it in my light travelling gig without being upset or crushed to atoms. The persons who in the present instance have the charge of it, in its progress through the streets of Edinburgh, are a constitutional lawyer, a political economist, an opposition editor, and an ex-officio surveyor of the Customs—fearful odds against one poor metaphysician! Their machine of human life, I confess, puts me a little in mind of those square-looking 91caravans one sometimes meets on the road in which they transport wild beasts from place to place; and dull, heavy, safe, and flat as they look, the inmates continue their old habits, the monkeys play their tricks, and the panthers lick their jaws for human blood, though cramped and confined in their excursions. So the vices and follies, when they cannot break loose, do their worst inside this formal conveyance, the main-chance. As this ovation is to pass up High-street, for the honour of the Scottish capital, I should wish it to stop at the shop-door of Mr. Bartholine Saddletree, to see if he is at home or in the courts. Also, to inquire whether the suit of Peter Peebles is yet ended; and to take the opinion of counsel, how many of the Highland lairds or Scottish noblemen and gentlemen that were out in the fifteen and the forty-five, perilled their lives and fortunes in the good cause from an eye to the main-chance? The Baron of Bradwardine would have scorned such a suggestion; nay, it would have been below Balmawhapple or even Killancureit. But ‘the age of chivalry is gone, and that of sophists, economists, and calculators has succeeded.’ I should say that the risk, the secrecy, the possibility of the leaders having their heads stuck on Temple-Bar, and their estates confiscated, were among the foremost causes that inflamed their zeal and stirred their blood to the enterprise. Hardship, danger, exile, death,—these words ‘smack of honour,’ more than the main-chance. The modern Scotch may be loyal on this thriving principle: their ancestors found their loyalty a very losing concern. Yet they persevered in it till and long after it became a desperate cause. But patriotism and loyalty (true or false) are important and powerful principles in human affairs, though not always selfish and calculating. Honour is one great standard-bearer and puissant leader in the struggle of human life; and less than honour (a nickname or a bugbear) is enough to set the multitude together by the ears, whether in civil, religious, or private brawls. [But to return to our Edinburgh shop-keepers, those practical models of wisdom, and authentic epitomes of human nature. Say that by their ‘canny ways and pawky looks’ they keep their names out of the ‘Gazette,’ yet still care (not the less perhaps) mounts behind their counters, and sits in their back-shops. A tradesman is not a bankrupt at the year’s end. But what does it signify, if he is hen-pecked in the mean time, or quarrels with his wife, or beats his apprentices, or has married a woman twice as old as himself for her money, or has been jilted by his maid, or fuddles himself every night, or is laying in an apoplexy by overeating himself, or is believed by nobody, or is a furious Whig or Tory, or a knave, or a fool, or one envious of the success of his neighbours, or dissatisfied with his own, or surly, or eaten up with 92indolence and procrastination, never easy but bashful and awkward in company (though with a vast desire to shine) or has some personal defect or weak side on which the Devil is sure to assail him, and the venting his spleen and irritability on which, through some loop-hole or other, makes the real business and torment of his life—that of his shop may go on as it pleases. Such is the perfection of reason and the triumph of the sovereign good, where there are no strong passions to disturb, or no great vices to sully it! The humours collect, the will will have head, the petty passions ferment, and we start some grievance or other, and hunt it down every hour in the day, or the machine of still-life could not go on even in North Britain. But were I to grant the full force and extent of the objection, I should still say that it does not bear upon my view of the subject or general assertion, that reason is an unequal match for passion. Business is a kind of gaoler or task-master, that keeps its vassals in good order while they are under its eye, as the slave or culprit performs his task with the whip hanging over him, and punishment immediately to follow neglect; but the question is, what he would do with his recovered freedom, or what course the mind will for the most part pursue, when in the range of its general conduct it has its choice to make between a distant, doubtful, sober, rational good (or average state of being), and some one object of comparatively little value, that strikes the senses, flatters our pride, gives scope to the imagination, and has all the strength of passion and inclination on its side. The main-chance then is a considerable exception, but not a fair one or a case in point, since it falls under a different head and line of argument.] The fault of reason in general, (which takes in the whole instead of parts,) is that objects, though of the utmost extent and importance, are not defined and tangible. This fault cannot be found with the pursuit of trade and commerce. It is not a mere dry, abstract, undefined, speculative, however steady and well-founded conviction of the understanding. It has other levers and pulleys to enforce it, besides those of reason and reflection. As follows:—

1. The value of money is positive or specific. The interest in it is a sort of mathematical interest, reducible to number and quantity. Ten is always more than one; a part is never greater than the whole; the good we seek or attain in this way has a technical denomination, and I do not deny that in matters of strict calculation, the principle of calculation will naturally bear great sway. The returns of profit and loss are regular and mechanical, and the operations of business, or the main-chance, are so too. But, commonly speaking, we judge by the degree of excitement, not by the ultimate quantity. Thus we 93prefer a draught of nectar to the recovery of our health, [and are on most occasions ready to exclaim,—

Yet there is a point at which self-will and humour stop. A man will take brandy, which is a kind of slow poison, but he will not take actual poison, knowing it to be such, however slow the operation or bewitching the taste; because here the effect is absolutely fixed and certain, not variable, nor in the power of the imagination to elude or trifle with it. I see no courage in battle, but in going on what is called the forlorn hope.

2. Business is also an affair of habit: it calls for incessant and daily application; and what was at first a matter of necessity to supply our wants, becomes often a matter of necessity to employ our time. The man of business wants work for his head; the labourer and mechanic for his hands; so that the love of action, of difficulty and competition, the stimulus of success or failure, is perhaps as strong an ingredient in men’s ordinary pursuits as the love of gain. We find persons pursuing science, or any hobby-horsical whim or handicraft that they have taken a fancy to, or persevering in a losing concern, with just the same ardour and obstinacy. As to the choice of a pursuit in life, a man may not be forward to engage in business, but being once in, does not like to turn back amidst the pity of friends and the derision of enemies. How difficult is it to prevent those who have a turn for any art or science from going into these unprofitable pursuits! Nay, how difficult is it often to prevent those who have no turn that way, but prefer starving to a certain income! If there is one in a family brighter than the rest, he is immediately designed for one of the learned professions. Really, the dull and plodding people of the world have not much reason to boast of their superior wisdom or numbers: they are in an involuntary majority!

3. The value of money is an exchangeable value: that is, this pursuit is available towards and convertible into a great many others. A person is in want of money, and mortgages an estate, to throw it away upon a round of entertainments and company. The passion or motive here is not a hankering after money, but society, and the individual will ruin himself for this object. Another, who has the same passion for show and a certain style of living, tries to gain a fortune in trade to indulge it, and only goes to work in a more round-about way. I remember a story of a common mechanic at Manchester, who laid out the hard-earned savings of the week in hiring a horse and livery-servant to ride behind him to Stockport every Sunday, and to dine there at an ordinary like a gentleman. The 94pains bestowed upon the main-chance here was only a cover for another object, which exercised a ridiculous predominance over his mind. Money will purchase a horse, a house, a picture, leisure, dissipation, or whatever the individual has a fancy for that is to be purchased; but it does not follow that he is fond of all these, or of whatever will promote his real interest, because he is fond of money, but that he has a passion for some one of these objects, to which he would probably sacrifice all the rest, and his own peace and happiness into the bargain.

4. The main-chance is an instrument of various passions, but is directly opposed to none of them, with the single exception of indolence or the vis inertiæ, which of itself is seldom strong enough to master it, without the aid of some other incitement. A barrister sticks to his duty as long as he has only his love of ease to prevent; but he flings up his briefs, or neglects them, if he thinks he can make a figure in Parliament. [A servant-girl stays in her place and does her work, though perhaps lazy and slatternly, because no immediate temptation occurs strong enough to interfere with the necessity of gaining her bread, but she goes away with a bastard-child, because here passion and desire come into play, though the consequence is that she loses not only her place, but her character and every prospect in life.] No one flings away the main-chance without a motive, any more than he voluntarily walks into the fire or breaks his neck out of window. A man must live; the first step is a point of necessity: every man would live well; the second is a point of luxury. The having, or even acquiring wealth does not prevent our enjoying it in various ways. A man may give his mornings to business, and his evenings to pleasure. There is no contradiction; nor does he sacrifice his ruling passion by this, any more than the man of letters by study, or the soldier by an attention to discipline. Reason and passion are opposed, not passion and business. The sot, the glutton, the debauchee, the gamester, must all have money, to make their own use of it, and they may indulge all these passions and their avarice at the same time. It is only when the last becomes the ruling passion that it puts a prohibition on the others. In that case, every thing else is lost sight of; but it is seldom carried to this length, or when it is, it is far from being another name, either in its means or ends, for reason, sense, or happiness, as I have already shown.

I have taken no notice hitherto of ambition or virtue, or scarcely of the pursuits of fame or intellect. Yet all these are important and respectable divisions of the map of human life. Who ever charged Mr. Pitt with a want of common sense, because he did not die worth a plum? Had it been proposed to Lord Byron to forfeit every penny 95of his estate, or every particle of his reputation, would he have hesitated to part with the former? Is there not a loss of character, a stain upon honour, that is felt as a severer blow than any reverse of fortune? Do not the richest heiresses in the city marry for a title, and think themselves well off? Are there not patriots who think or dream all their lives about their country’s good; philanthropists who rave about liberty and humanity at a certain yearly loss? Are there not studious men, who never once thought of bettering their circumstances? Are not the liberal professions held more respectable than business, though less lucrative? Might not most people do better than they do, but that they postpone their interest to their indolence, their taste for reading, their love of pleasure, or other pursuits? And is it not generally understood that all men can make a fortune or succeed in the main-chance, who have but that one idea in their heads?^[20] Lastly, are there not those who pursue or husband wealth for their own good, for the benefit of their friends or the relief of the distressed? But as the examples are rare, and might be supposed to make against myself, I shall not insist upon them. I think I have said enough to vindicate or apologize for my first position—

or if not to make good my ground, to march out with flying colours and beat of drum!

The New Monthly Magazine.] [October and December, 1828.

A. For my part, I think Helvetius has made it clear that self-love is at the bottom of all our actions, even of those which are apparently the most generous and disinterested.

B. I do not know what you mean by saying that Helvetius has made this clear, nor what you mean by self-love.

A. Why, was not he the first who explained to the world that in gratifying others, we gratify ourselves; that though the result may be different, the motive is really the same, and a selfish one; and that if we had not more pleasure in performing what are called friendly or virtuous actions than the contrary, they would never enter our thoughts?

96B. Certainly he is no more entitled to this discovery (if it be one) than you are. Hobbes and Mandeville long before him asserted the same thing in the most explicit and unequivocal manner;^[21] and Butler, in the Notes and Preface to his Sermons, had also long before answered it in the most satisfactory way.

A. Ay, indeed! pray how so?

B. By giving the common sense answer to the question which I have just asked of you.

A. And what is that? I do not exactly comprehend.

B. Why, that self-love means, both in common and philosophical speech, the love of self.

A. To be sure, there needs no ghost to tell us that.

B. And yet, simple as it is, both you and many great philosophers seem to have overlooked it.

A. You are pleased to be obscure—unriddle for the sake of the vulgar.

B. Well then, Bishop Butler’s statement in the volume I have mentioned——

A. May I ask, is it the author of the Analogy you speak of?

B. The same, but an entirely different and much more valuable work. His position is, that the arguments of the opposite party go to prove that in all our motives and actions it is the individual indeed who loves or is interested in something, but not in the smallest degree (which yet seems necessary to make out the full import of the compound ‘sound significant,’ self-love) that that something is himself. By self-love is surely implied not only that it is I who feel a certain passion, desire, good-will, and so forth, but that I feel this good-will towards myself—in other words, that I am both the person feeling the attachment, and the object of it. In short, the controversy between self-love and benevolence relates not to the person who loves, but to the person beloved—otherwise, it is flat and puerile nonsense. There must always be some one to feel the love, that’s certain, or else there could be no love of one thing or another—so far there can be no question that it is a given individual who feels, thinks, and acts in all possible cases of feeling, thinking, and acting—‘there needs,’ according to your own allusion, ‘no ghost come 97from the grave to tell us that’—but whether the said individual in so doing always thinks of, feels for, and acts with a view to himself, that is a very important question, and the only real one at issue; and the very statement of which, in a distinct and intelligible form, gives at once the proper and inevitable answer to it. Self-love, to mean any thing, must have a double meaning, that is, must not merely signify love, but love defined and directed in a particular manner, having self for its object, reflecting and reacting upon self; but it is downright and intolerable trifling to persist that the love or concern which we feel for another still has self for its object, because it is we who feel it. The same sort of quibbling would lead to the conclusion that when I am thinking of any other person, I am notwithstanding thinking of myself, because it is I who have his image in my mind.

A. I cannot, I confess, see the connection.

B. I wish you would point out the distinction. Or let me ask you—Suppose you were to observe me looking frequently and earnestly at myself in the glass, would you not be inclined to laugh, and say that this was vanity?

A. I might be half-tempted to do so.

B. Well; and if you were to find me admiring a fine picture, or speaking in terms of high praise of the person or qualities of another, would you not set it down equally to an excess of coxcombry and self-conceit?

A. How, in the name of common sense, should I do so?

B. Nay, how should you do otherwise upon your own principles? For if sympathy with another is to be construed into self-love because it is I who feel it, surely, by the same rule, my admiration and praise of another must be resolved into self-praise and self-admiration, and I am the whole time delighted with myself, to wit, with my own thoughts and feelings, while I pretend to be delighted with another. Another’s limbs are as much mine, who contemplate them, as his feelings.

A. Now, my good friend, you go too far: I can’t think you serious.

B. Do I not tell you that I have a most grave Bishop (equal to a whole Bench) on my side?

A. What! is this illustration of the looking-glass and picture his? I thought it was in your own far-fetched manner.

B. And why far-fetched?

A. Because nobody can think of calling the praise of another self-conceit—the words have a different meaning in the language.

B. Nobody has thought of confounding them hitherto, and yet they sound to me as like as selfishness and generosity. If our vanity 98can be brought to admire others disinterestedly, I do not see but our good-nature may be taught to serve them as disinterestedly. Grant me but this, that self-love signifies not simply, ‘I love,’ but requires to have this further addition, ‘I love myself.’ understood in order to make sense or grammar of it, and I defy you to make one or the other of Helvetius’s theory, if you will needs have it to be his. If, as Fielding says, all our passions are selfish merely because they are ours, then in hating another we must be said to hate ourselves, just as wisely as in loving another, we are said to be actuated by self-love. I have no patience with such foolery. I respect that fine old sturdy fellow Hobbes, or even the acute pertinacious sophistry of Mandeville; but I do not like the flimsy, self-satisfied repetition of an absurdity, which with its originality has lost all its piquancy.

A. You have, I know, very little patience with others who differ from you, nor are you a very literal reporter of the arguments of those who happen to be on your side of the question. You were about to tell me the substance of Butler’s answer to Helvetius’s theory, if we can let the anachronism pass; and I have as yet only heard certain quaint and verbal distinctions of your own. I must still think that the most disinterested actions proceed from a selfish motive. A man feels distress at the sight of a beggar, and he parts with his money to remove this uneasiness. If he did not feel this distress in his own mind, he would take no steps to relieve the other’s wants.

B. And pray, does he feel this distress in his own mind out of love to himself, or solely that he may have the pleasure of getting rid of it? The first move in the game of mutual obligation is evidently a social, not a selfish impulse, and I might rest the dispute here and insist upon going no farther till this step is got over, but it is not necessary. I have already told you the substance of Butler’s answer to this common-place and plausible objection. He says, in his fine broad manly and yet unpretending mode of stating a question, that a living being may be supposed to be actuated either by mere sensations, having no reference to any one else, or else that having an idea and foresight of the consequences to others, he is influenced by and interested in those consequences only in so far as they have a distinct connexion with his own ultimate good, in both which cases, seeing that the motives and actions have both their origin and end in self, they may and must be properly denominated selfish. But where the motive is neither physically nor morally selfish, that is, where the impulse to act is neither excited by a physical sensation nor by a reflection on the consequence to accrue to the individual, it must be hard to say in what sense it can be called so, except in that sense 99already exploded, namely, that which would infer that an impulse of any kind is selfish merely because it acts upon some one, or that before we can entertain disinterested sympathy with another, we must feel no sympathy at all. Benevolence, generosity, compassion, friendship, &c. imply, says the Bishop, that we take an immediate and unfeigned interest in the welfare of others; that their pleasures give us pleasure; that their pains give us pain, barely to know of them, and from no thought about ourselves. But no! retort the advocates of self-love, this is not enough: before any person can pretend to the title of benevolent, generous, and so on, he must prove, that so far from taking the deepest and most heartfelt interest in the happiness of others, he has no feeling on the subject, that he is perfectly indifferent to their weal or woe; and then taking infinite pains and making unaccountable sacrifices for their good without caring one farthing about them, he might pass for heroic and disinterested. But if he lets it appear he has the smallest good-will towards them and acts upon it, he then becomes a merely selfish agent; so that to establish a character for generosity, compassion, humanity, &c. in any of his actions, he must first plainly prove that he never felt the slightest twinge of any of these passions thrilling in his bosom. This, according to my author, is requiring men to act not from charitable motives, but from no motives at all. Such reasoning has not an appearance of philosophy, but rather of drivelling weakness or of tacit irony. For my part, I can conceive of no higher strain of generosity than that which justly and truly says, Nihil humani â me alienum puto—but, according to your modern French friends and my old English ones, there is no difference between this and the most sordid selfishness; for the instant a man takes an interest in another’s welfare, he makes it his own, and all the merit and disinterestedness is gone. ‘Greater love than this hath no man, that he should give his life for his friend.’ It must be rather a fanciful sort of self-love that at any time sacrifices its own acknowledged and obvious interests for the sake of another.

A. Not in the least. The expression you have just used explains the whole mystery, and I think you must allow this yourself. The moment I sympathise with another, I do in strictness make his interest my own. The two things on this supposition become inseparable, and my gratification is identified with his advantage. Every one, in short, consults his particular taste and inclination, whatever may be its bias, or acts from the strongest motive. Regulus, as Helvetius has so ably demonstrated, would not have returned to Carthage, but that the idea of dishonour gave him more uneasiness than the apprehension of a violent death.

B. That is, had he not preferred the honour of his country to his 100own interest. Surely, when self-love by all accounts takes so very wide a range and embraces entirely new objects of a character so utterly opposed to its general circumscribed and paltry routine of action, it would be as well to designate it by some new and appropriate appellation, unless it were meant, by the intervention of the old and ambiguous term, to confound the important practical distinction which subsists between the puny circle of a man’s physical sensations and private interests and the whole world of virtue and honour, and thus to bring back the last gradually and disingenuously within the verge of the former. Things without names are unapt to take root in the human mind: we are prone to reduce nature to the dimensions of language. If a feeling of a refined and romantic character is expressed by a gross and vulgar name, our habitual associations will be sure to degrade the first to the level of the last, instead of conforming to a forced and technical definition. But I beg to deny, not only that the objects in this case are the same, but that the principle is similar.

A. Do you then seriously pretend that the end of sympathy is not to get rid of the momentary uneasiness occasioned by the distress of another?

B. And has that uneasiness, I again ask, its source in self-love? If self-love were the only principle of action, we ought to receive no uneasiness from the pains of others, we ought to be wholly exempt from any such weakness: or the least that can be required to give the smallest shadow of excuse to this exclusive theory is, that the instant the pain was communicated by our foolish, indiscreet sympathy, we should think of nothing but getting rid of it as fast as possible, by fair means or foul, as a mechanical instinct. If the pain of sympathy, as soon as it arose, was decompounded from the objects which gave it birth, and acted upon the brain or nerves solely as a detached, desultory feeling, or abstracted sense of uneasiness, from which the mind shrunk with its natural aversion to pain, then I would allow that the impulse in this case, having no reference to the good of another, and seeking only to remove a present inconvenience from the individual, would still be properly self-love: but no such process of abstraction takes place. The feeling of compassion, as it first enters the mind, so it continues to act upon it in conjunction with the idea of what another suffers; refers every wish it forms or every effort it makes, to the removal of pain from a fellow-creature, and is only satisfied when it believes this end to be accomplished. It is not a blind, physical repugnance to pain, as affecting ourselves, but rational or intelligible conception of it as existing out of ourselves, that prompts and sustains our exertions in behalf of humanity. Nor 101can it be otherwise, while man is the creature of imagination and reason, and has faculties that implicate him (whether he will or not) in the pleasures and pains of others, and bind up his fate with theirs. Why, then, when an action or feeling is neither in its commencement nor progress, nor ultimate objects, dictated by or subject to the control of self-love, bestow the name where every thing but the name is wanting?

A. I must give you fair warning, that in this last tirade you have more than once gone beyond my comprehension. Your distinctions are too fine-drawn, and there is a want of relief in the expression. Are you not getting back to what you describe as your first manner? Your present style is more amusing. See if you cannot throw a few high lights into that last argument!

B. Un peu plus à l’Anglaise—any thing to oblige! I say, then, it appears to me strange that self-love should be asserted by any impartial reasoner, (not the dupe of a play upon words), to be absolute and undisputed master of the human mind, when compassion or uneasiness on account of others enters it without leave and in spite of this principle. What! to be instantly expelled by it without mercy, so that it may still assert its pre-eminence? No; but to linger there, to hold consultation with another principle, Imagination, which owes no allegiance to self-interest, and to march out only under condition and guarantee that the welfare of another is first provided for without any special clause in its own favour. This is much as if you were to say and swear, that though the bailiff and his man have taken possession of your house, you are still the rightful owner of it.

A. And so I am.

B. Why, then, not turn out such unwelcome intruders without standing upon ceremony?

A. You were too vague and abstracted before: now you are growing too figurative. Always in extremes.

B. Give me leave for a moment, as you will not let me spin mere metaphysical cobwebs.

A. I am patient.

B. Suppose that by sudden transformation your body were so contrived that it could feel the actual sensations of another body, as if your nerves had an immediate and physical communication; that you were assailed by a number of objects you saw and knew nothing of before, and felt desires and appetites springing up in your bosom for which you could not at all account—would you not say that this addition of another body made a material alteration in your former situation; that it called for a new set of precautions and instincts to provide for its wants and wishes? or would you persist in it that you 102were just where you were, that no change had taken place in your being and interests, and that your new body was in fact your old one, for no other reason than because it was yours? To my thinking, the case would be quite altered by the supererogation of such a new sympathetic body, and I should be for dividing my care and time pretty equally between them.

Captain C. You mean that in that case you would have taken in partners to the concern, as well as No. I.?

B. Yes; and my concern for No. II. would be something very distinct from, and quite independent of, my original and hitherto exclusive concern for No. I.

A. How very gross and vulgar! (whispering to D——, and then turning to me, added,)—but why suppose an impossibility? I hate all such incongruous and far-fetched illustrations.

B. And yet this very miracle takes place every day in the human mind and heart, and you and your sophists would persuade us that it is nothing, and would slur over its existence by a shallow misnomer. Do I not by imaginary sympathy acquire a new interest (out of myself) in others as much as I should on the former supposition by physical contact or animal magnetism? and am I not compelled by this new law of my nature (neither included in physical sensation nor a deliberate regard to my own individual welfare) to consult the feelings and wishes of the new social body of which I am become a member, often to the prejudice of my own? The parallel seems to me exact, and I think the inference from it unavoidable. I do not postpone a benevolent or friendly purpose to my own personal convenience, or make it bend to it—

The will is amenable not to our immediate sensibility but to reason and imagination, which point out and enforce a line of duty very different from that prescribed by self-love. The operation of sympathy or social feeling, though it has its seat certainly in the mind of the individual, is neither for his immediate behalf nor to his remote benefit, but is constantly a diversion from both, and therefore, I contend, is not in any sense selfish. The movements in my breast as much originate in, and are regulated by, the idea of what another feels, as if they were governed by a chord placed there vibrating to another’s pain. If these movements were mechanical, they would be considered as directed to the good of another: it is odd, that because my bosom takes part and beats in unison with them, they should become of a less generous character. In the passions of hatred, 103resentment, sullenness, or even in low spirits, we voluntarily go through a great deal of pain, because such is our pleasure; or strictly, because certain objects have taken hold of our imagination, and we cannot, or will not, get rid of the impression: why should good-nature and generosity be the only feelings in which we will not allow a little forgetfulness of ourselves? Once more. If self-love, or each individual’s sensibility, sympathy, what you will, were like an animalcule, sensitive, quick, shrinking instantly from whatever gave it pain, seeking instinctively whatever gave it pleasure, and having no other obligation or law of its existence, then I should be most ready to acknowledge that this principle was in its nature, end, and origin, selfish, slippery, treacherous, inert, inoperative but as an instrument of some immediate stimulus, incapable of generous sacrifice or painful exertion, and deserving a name and title accordingly, leading one to bestow upon it its proper attributes. But the very reverse of all this happens. The mind is tenacious of remote purposes, indifferent to immediate feelings, which cannot consist with the nature of a rational and voluntary agent. Instead of the animalcule swimming in pleasure and gliding from pain, the principle of self-love is incessantly to the imagination or sense of duty what the fly is to the spider—that fixes its stings into it, involves it in its web, sucks its blood, and preys upon its vitals! Does the spider do all this to please the fly? Just as much as Regulus returned to Carthage and was rolled down a hill in a barrel with iron spikes in it to please himself! The imagination or understanding is no less the enemy of our pleasure than of our interest. It will not let us be at ease till we have accomplished certain objects with which we have ourselves no concern but as melancholy truths.

A. But the spider you have so quaintly conjured up is a different animal from the fly. The imagination on which you lay so much stress is a part of one’s-self.

B. I grant it: and for that very reason, self-love, or a principle tending exclusively to our own immediate gratification or future advantage, neither is nor can be the sole spring of action in the human mind.

A. I cannot see that at all.

D. Nay, I think he has made it out better than usual.

B. Imagination is another name for an interest in things out of ourselves, which must naturally run counter to our own. Self-love, for so fine and smooth-spoken a gentleman, leads his friends into odd scrapes. The situation of Regulus in a barrel with iron spikes in it was not a very easy one: but, say the advocates of refined self-love, their points were a succession of agreeable punctures in his sides, 104compared with the stings of dishonour. But what bound him to this dreadful alternative? Not self-love. When the pursuit of honour becomes troublesome, ‘throw honour to the dogs—I’ll none of it!’ This seems the true Epicurean solution. Philosophical self-love seems neither a voluptuary nor an effeminate coward, but a cynic, and even a martyr, so that I am afraid he will hardly dare show his face at Very’s, and that, with this knowledge of his character, even the countenance of the Count de Stutt-Tracy will not procure his admission to the saloons.

A. The Count de Stutt-Tracy, did you say? Who is he? I never heard of him.

B. He is the author of the celebrated ‘Idéologie,’ which Bonaparte denounced to the Chamber of Peers as the cause of his disasters in Russia. He is equally hated by the Bourbons; and what is more extraordinary still, he is patronised by Ferdinand VII. who settled a pension of two hundred crowns a year on the translator of his works. He speaks of Condillac as having ‘created the science of Ideology,’ and holds Helvetius for a true philosopher.

A. Which you do not! I think it a pity you should affect singularity of opinion in such matters, when you have all the most sensible and best-informed judges against you,

B. I am sorry for it too; but I am afraid I can hardly expect you with me, till I have all Europe on my side, of which I see no chance while the Englishman with his notions of solid beef and pudding holds fast by his substantial identity, and the Frenchman with his lighter food and air mistakes every shadowy impulse for himself.

The New Monthly Magazine.] [December, 1828.

D. You deny, I think, that personal identity, in the qualified way in which you think proper to admit it, is any ground for the doctrine of self-interest?

B. Yes, in an exclusive and absolute sense I do undoubtedly, that is, in the sense in which it is affirmed by metaphysicians, and ordinarily believed in.

D. Could you not go over the ground briefly, without entering into technicalities?

B. Not easily: but stop me when I entangle myself in difficulties. A person fancies, or feels habitually, that he has a positive, substantial 105interest in his own welfare, (generally speaking) just as much as he has in any actual sensation that he feels, because he is always and necessarily the same self. What is his interest at one time is therefore equally his interest at all other times. This is taken for granted as a self-evident proposition. Say he does not feel a particular benefit or injury at this present moment, yet it is he who is to feel it, which comes to the same thing. Where there is this continued identity of person, there must also be a correspondent identity of interest. I have an abstract, unavoidable interest in whatever can befall myself, which I can have or feel in no other person living, because I am always under every possible circumstance the self-same individual, and not any other individual whatsoever. In short, this word self (so closely do a number of associations cling round it and cement it together) is supposed to represent as it were a given concrete substance, as much one thing as any thing in nature can possibly be, and the centre or substratum in which the different impressions and ramifications of my being meet and are indissolubly knit together.

A. And you propose then seriously to take ‘this one entire and perfect chrysolite,’ this self, this ‘precious jewel of the soul,’ this rock on which mankind have built their faith for ages, and at one blow shatter it to pieces with the sledge-hammer, or displace it from its hold in the imagination with the wrenching-irons of metaphysics?

B. I am willing to use my best endeavours for that purpose.

D. You really ought: for you have the prejudices of the whole world against you.

B. I grant the prejudices are formidable; and I should despair, did I not think the reasons even stronger. Besides, without altering the opinions of the whole world, I might be contented with the suffrages of one or two intelligent people.

D. Nay, you will prevail by flattery, if not by argument.

A. That is something newer than all the rest.

B. ‘Plain truth,’ dear A——, ‘needs no flowers of speech.’

D. Let me rightly understand you. Do you mean to say that I am not C. D. and that you are not W. B. or that we shall not both of us remain so to the end of the chapter, without a possibility of ever changing places with each other?

B. I am afraid, if you go to that, there is very little chance that

But with all this precise individuality and inviolable identity that you speak of, let me ask, Are you not a little changed (less so, it is true, than most people) from what you were twenty years ago? Or do 106you expect to appear the same that you are now twenty years hence?

D. ‘No more of that if thou lovest me.’ We know what we are, but we know not what we shall be.

B. A truce then; but be assured that whenever you happen to fling up your part, there will be no other person found to attempt it after you.

D. Pray, favour us with your paradox without farther preface.

B. I will then try to match my paradox against your prejudice, which as it is armed all in proof, to make any impression on it, I must, I suppose, take aim at the rivets; and if I can hit them, if I do not (round and smooth as it is) cut it into three pieces, and show that two parts in three are substance and the third and principal part shadow, never believe me again. Your real self ends exactly where your pretended self-interest begins; and in calculating upon this principle as a solid, permanent, absolute, self-evident truth, you are mocked with a name.

D. How so? I hear, but do not see.

B. You must allow that this identical, indivisible, ostensible self is at any rate distinguishable into three parts,—the past, the present, and future?

D. I see no particular harm in that.

B. It is nearly all I ask. Well then, I admit that you have a peculiar, emphatic, incommunicable and exclusive interest or fellow-feeling in the two first of these selves; but I deny resolutely and unequivocally that you have any such natural, absolute, unavoidable, and mechanical interest in the last self, or in your future being, the interest you take in it being necessarily the offspring of understanding and imagination (aided by habit and circumstances), like that which you take in the welfare of others, and yet this last interest is the only one that is ever the object of rational and voluntary pursuit, or that ever comes into competition with the interests of others.

D. I am still to seek for the connecting clue.

B. I am almost ashamed to ask for your attention to a statement so very plain that it seems to border on a truism. I have an interest of a peculiar and limited nature in my present self, inasmuch as I feel my actual sensations not simply in a degree, but in a way and by means of faculties which afford me not the smallest intimation of the sensations of others. I cannot possibly feel the sensations of any one else, nor consequently take the slightest interest in them as such. I have no nerves communicating with another’s brain, and transmitting to me either the glow of pleasure or the agony of pain which he may feel at the present moment by means of his senses. So far, therefore, 107namely, so far as my present self or immediate sensations are concerned, I am cut off from all sympathy with others. I stand alone in the world, a perfectly insulated individual, necessarily and in the most unqualified sense indifferent to all that passes around me, and that does not in the first instance affect myself, for otherwise I neither have nor can have the remotest consciousness of it as a matter of organic sensation, any more than the mole has of light or the deaf adder of sounds.

D. Spoken like an oracle.

B. Again, I have a similar peculiar, mechanical, and untransferable interest in my past self, because I remember and can dwell upon my past sensations (even after the objects are removed) also in a way and by means of faculties which do not give me the smallest insight into or sympathy with the past feelings of others. I may conjecture and fancy what those feelings have been; and so I do. But I have no memory or continued consciousness of what either of good or evil may have found a place in their bosoms, no secret spring that touched vibrates to the hopes and wishes that are no more, unlocks the chambers of the past with the same assurance of reality, or identifies my feelings with theirs in the same intimate manner as with those which I have already felt in my own person. Here again, then, there is a real, undoubted, original and positive foundation for the notion of self to rest upon; for in relation to my former self and past feelings, I do possess a faculty which serves to unite me more especially to my own being, and at the same time draws a distinct and impassable line around that being, separating it from every other. A door of communication stands always open between my present consciousness and my past feelings, which is locked and barred by the hand of Nature and the constitution of the human understanding against the intrusion of any straggling impressions from the minds of others. I can only see into their real history darkly and by reflection. To sympathise with their joys or sorrows, and place myself in their situation either now or formerly, I must proceed by guess-work, and borrow the use of the common faculty of imagination. I am ready to acknowledge, then, that in what regards the past as well as the present, there is a strict metaphysical distinction between myself and others, and that my personal identity so far, or in the close, continued, inseparable connection between my past and present impressions, is firmly and irrevocably established.

D. You go on swimmingly. So far all is sufficiently clear.

B. But now comes the rub: for beyond that point I deny that the doctrine of personal identity or self-interest (as a consequence from it) has any foundation to rest upon but a confusion of names and 108ideas. It has none in the nature of things or of the human mind. For I have no faculty by which I can project myself into the future, or hold the same sort of palpable, tangible, immediate, and exclusive communication with my future feelings, in the same manner as I am made to feel the present moment by means of the senses, or the past moment by means of memory. If I have any such faculty, expressly set apart for the purpose, name it. If I have no such faculty, I can have no such interest. In order that I may possess a proper personal identity so as to live, breathe, and feel along the whole line of my existence in the same intense and intimate mode, it is absolutely necessary to have some general medium or faculty by which my successive impressions are blended and amalgamated together, and to maintain and support this extraordinary interest. But so far from there being any foundation for this merging and incorporating of my future in my present self, there is no link of connection, no sympathy, no reaction, no mutual consciousness between them, nor even a possibility of any thing of the kind, in a mechanical and personal sense. Up to the present point, the spot on which we stand, the doctrine of personal identity holds good; hitherto the proud and exclusive pretensions of self ‘come, but no farther.’ The rest is air, is nothing, is a name, or but the common ground of reason and humanity. If I wish to pass beyond this point and look into my own future lot, or anticipate my future weal or woe before it has had an existence, I can do so by means of the same faculties by which I enter into and identify myself with the welfare, the being, and interests of others, but only by these. As I have already said, I have no particular organ or faculty of self-interest, in that case made and provided. I have no sensation of what is to happen to myself in future, no presentiment of it, no instinctive sympathy with it, nor consequently any abstract and unavoidable self-interest in it. Now mark. It is only in regard to my past and present being, that a broad and insurmountable barrier is placed between myself and others: as to future objects, there is no absolute and fundamental distinction whatever. But it is only these last that are the objects of any rational or practical interest. The idea of self properly attaches to objects of sense or memory, but these can never be the objects of action or of voluntary pursuit, which must, by the supposition, have an eye to future events. But with respect to these the chain of self-interest is dissolved and falls in pieces by the very necessity of our nature, and our obligations to self as a blind, mechanical, unsociable principle are lost in the general law which binds us to the pursuit of good as it comes within our reach and knowledge.

A. A most lame and impotent conclusion, I must say. Do you 109mean to affirm that you have really the same interest in another’s welfare that you have in your own?

B. I do not wish to assert any thing without proof. Will you tell me if you have this particular interest in yourself what faculty is it that gives it you—to what conjuration and what mighty magic it is owing—or whether it is merely the name of self that is to be considered as a proof of all the absurdities and impossibilities that can be drawn from it?

A. I do not see that you have hitherto pointed out any.

B. What! not the impossibility that you should be another being, with whom you have not a particle of fellow-feeling?

A. Another being! Yes, I know it is always impossible for me to be another being.

B. Ay, or yourself either, without such a fellow-feeling, for it is that which constitutes self. If not, explain to me what you mean by self. But it is more convenient for you to let that magical sound lie involved in the obscurity of prejudice and language. You will please to take notice that it is not I who commence these hairbreadth distinctions and special-pleading. I take the old ground of common sense and natural feeling, and maintain that though in a popular, practical sense mankind are strongly swayed by self-interest, yet in the same ordinary sense they are also governed by motives of good-nature, compassion, friendship, virtue, honour, &c. Now all this is denied by your modern metaphysicians, who would reduce every thing to abstract self-interest, and exclude every other mixed motive or social tie in a strict, philosophical sense. They would drive me from my ground by scholastic subtleties and newfangled phrases; am I to blame then if I take them at their word, and try to foil them at their own weapons? Either stick to the unpretending jog-trot notions on the subject, or if you are determined to refine in analysing words and arguments, do not be angry if I follow the example set me, or even go a little farther to arrive at the truth. Shall we proceed on this understanding?

A. As you please.

B. We have got so far then (if I mistake not, and if there is not some flaw in the argument which I am unable to detect) that the past and present (which alone can appeal to our selfish faculties) are not the objects of action, and that the future (which can alone be the object of practical pursuit) has no particular claim or hold upon self. All action, all passion, all morality and self-interest, is prospective.

A. You have not made that point quite clear. What then is meant by a present interest, by the gratification of the present moment, as opposed to a future one?

110B. Nothing, in a strict sense; or rather in common speech, you mean a near one, the interest of the next moment, the next hour, the next day, the next year, as it happens.

A. What! would you have me believe that I snatch my hand out of the flame of a candle from a calculation of future consequences?

D. (laughing.) A. had better not meddle with that question. B. is in his element there. It is his old and favourite illustration.

B. Do you not snatch your hand out of the fire to procure ease from pain?

A. No doubt, I do.

B. And is not this case subsequent to the act, and the act itself to the feeling of pain, which caused it?

A. It may be so; but the interval is so slight that we are not sensible of it.

B. Nature is nicer in her distinctions than we. Thus you could not lift the food to your mouth, but upon the same principle. The viands are indeed tempting, but if it were the sight or smell of these alone that attracted you, you would remain satisfied with them. But you use means to ends, neither of which exist till you employ or produce them, and which would never exist if the understanding which foresees them did not run on before the actual objects and purvey to appetite. If you say it is habit, it is partly so; but that habit would never have been formed, were it not for the connection between cause and effect, which always takes place in the order of time, or of what Hume calls antecedents and consequents.

A. I confess I think this a mighty microscopic way of looking at the subject.

B. Yet you object equally to more vague and sweeping generalities. Let me, however, endeavour to draw the knot a little tighter, as it has a considerable weight to bear—no less, in my opinion, than the whole world of moral sentiments. All voluntary action must relate to the future: but the future can only exist or influence the mind as an object of imagination and forethought; therefore the motive to voluntary action, to all that we seek or shun, must be in all cases ideal and problematical. The thing itself which is an object of pursuit can never co-exist with the motives which make it an object of pursuit. No one will say that the past can be an object either of prevention or pursuit. It may be a subject of involuntary regrets, or may give rise to the starts and flaws of passion; but we cannot set about seriously recalling or altering it. Neither can that which at present exists, or is an object of sensation, be at the same time an object of action or of volition, since if it is, no volition or exertion of mine can for the instant make it to be other than it is. I can make 111it cease to be indeed, but this relates to the future, to the supposed non-existence of the object, and not to its actual impression on me. For a thing to be willed, it must necessarily not be. Over my past and present impressions my will has no control: they are placed, according to the poet, beyond the reach of fate, much more of human means. In order that I may take an effectual and consistent interest in any thing, that it may be an object of hope or fear, of desire or dread, it must be a thing still to come, a thing still in doubt, depending on circumstances and the means used to bring about or avert it. It is my will that determines its existence or the contrary (otherwise there would be no use in troubling oneself about it); it does not itself lay its peremptory, inexorable mandates on my will. For it is as yet (and must be in order to be the rational object of a moment’s deliberation) a nonentity, a possibility merely and it is plain that nothing can be the cause of nothing. That which is not, cannot act, much less can it act mechanically, physically, all-powerfully. So far is it from being true that a real and practical interest in any thing are convertible terms, that a practical interest can never by any possible chance be a real one, that is, excited by the presence of a real object or by mechanical sympathy. I cannot assuredly be induced by a present object to take means to make it exist—it can be no more than present to me—or if it is past, it is too late to think of recovering the occasion or preventing it now. But the future, the future is all our own; or rather it belongs equally to others. The world of action then, of business or pleasure, of self-love or benevolence, is not made up of solid materials, moved by downright, solid springs; it is essentially a void, an unreal mockery, both in regard to ourselves and others, except as it is filled up, animated, and set in motion by human thoughts and purposes. The ingredients of passion, action, and properly of interest are never positive, palpable matters-of-fact, concrete existences, but symbolical representations of events lodged in the bosom of futurity, and teaching us, by timely anticipation and watchful zeal, to build up the fabric of our own or others’ future weal.

A. Do we not sometimes plot their woe with at least equal good-will?

B. Not much oftener than we are accessory to our own.

A. I must say that savours more to me of an antithesis than of an answer.

B. For once, be it so.

A. But surely there is a difference between a real and an imaginary interest? A history is not a romance.

B. Yes; but in this sense the feelings and interests of others are 112in the end as real, as much matters of fact as mine or yours can be. The history of the world is not a romance, though you and I have had only a small share in it. You would turn every thing into autobiography. The interests of others are no more chimerical, visionary, fantastic than my own, being founded in truth, and both are brought home to my bosom in the same way by the force of imagination and sympathy.

D. But in addition to all this sympathy that you make such a rout about, it is I who am to feel a real, downright interest in my own future good, and I shall feel no such interest in another person’s. Does not this make a wide, nay a total difference in the case? Am I to have no more affection for my own flesh and blood than for another’s?

B. This would indeed make an entire difference in the case, if your interest in your own good were founded in your affection for yourself, and not your affection for yourself in your attachment to your own good. If you were attached to your own good merely because it was yours, I do not see why you should not be equally attached to your own ill—both are equally yours! Your own person or that of others would, I take it, be alike indifferent to you, but for the degree of sympathy you have with the feelings of either. Take away the sense or apprehension of pleasure and pain, and you would care no more about yourself than you do about the hair of your head or the paring of your nails, the parting with which gives you no sensible uneasiness at the time or on after-reflection.

D. But up to the present moment you allow that I have a particular interest in my proper self. Where then am I to stop, or how draw the line between my real and my imaginary identity?

B. The line is drawn for you by the nature of things. Or if the difference between reality and imagination is so small that you cannot perceive it, it only shows the strength of the latter. Certain it is that we can no more anticipate our future being than we change places with another individual, except in an ideal and figurative sense. But it is just as impossible that I should have an actual sensation of and interest in my future feelings as that I should have an actual sensation of and interest in what another feels at the present instant. An essential and irreconcileable difference in our primary faculties forbids it. The future, were it the next moment, were it an object nearest and dearest to our hearts, is a dull blank, opaque, impervious to sense as an object close to the eye of the blind, did not the ray of reason and reflection enlighten it. We can never say to its fleeting, painted essence, ‘Come, let me clutch thee!’ it is a thing of air, a phantom that flies before us, and we follow it, and with respect to all but our past and present sensations, which are no longer any thing to 113action, we totter on the brink of nothing. That self which we project before us into it, that we make our proxy or representative, and empower to embody, and transmit back to us all our real, substantial interests before they have had an existence, except in our imaginations, is but a shadow of ourselves, a bundle of habits, passions, and prejudices, a body that falls in pieces at the touch of reason or the approach of inquiry. It is true, we do build up such an imaginary self, and a proportionable interest in it; we clothe it with the associations of the past and present, we disguise it in the drapery of language, we add to it the strength of passion and the warmth of affection, till we at length come to class our whole existence under one head, and fancy our future history a solid, permanent, and actual continuation of our immediate being, but all this only proves the force of imagination and habit to build up such a structure on a merely partial foundation, and does not alter the true nature and distinction of things. On the same foundation are built up nearly as high natural affection, friendship, the love of country, of religion, &c. But of this presently. What shows that the doctrine of self-interest, however high it may rear its head, or however impregnable it may seem to attack, is a mere ‘contradiction,’

is this single consideration, that we never know what is to happen to us beforehand, no, not even for a moment, and that we cannot so much as tell whether we shall be alive a year, a month, or a day hence. We have no presentiment of what awaits us, making us feel the future in the instant. Indeed such an insight into futurity would be inconsistent with itself, or we must become mere passive instruments in the hands of fate. A house may fall on my head as I go from this, I may be crushed to pieces by a carriage running over me, or I may receive a piece of news that is death to my hopes before another four-and-twenty hours are passed over, and yet I feel nothing of the blow that is thus to stagger and stun me. I laugh and am well. I have no warning given me either of the course or the consequence (in truth if I had, I should, if possible, avoid it). This continued self-interest that watches over all my concerns alike, past, present, and future, and concentrates them all in one powerful and invariable principle of action, is useless here, leaves me at a loss at my greatest need, is torpid, silent, dead, and I have no more consciousness of what so nearly affects me, and no more care about it, (till I find out my danger by other and natural means,) than if no such thing were ever to happen, or were to happen to the Man in the Moon.

114This beautiful line is not verified in the ordinary prose of life. That it is not, is a staggering consideration for your fine, practical, instinctive, abstracted, comprehensive, uniform principle of self-interest. Don’t you think so, D——?

D. I shall not answer you. Am I to give up my existence for an idle sophism? You heap riddle upon riddle; but I am mystery-proof. I still feel my personal identity as I do the chair I sit on, though I am enveloped in a cloud of smoke and words. Let me have your answer to a plain question.—Suppose I were actually to see a coach coming along and I was in danger of being run over, what I want to know is, should I not try to save myself sooner than any other person?

B. No, you would first try to save a sister, if she were with you.

A. Surely that would be a very rare instance of self, though I do not deny it.

B. I do not think so. I believe there is hardly any one who does not prefer some one to themselves. For example, let us look into Waverley.

A. Ay, that is the way that you take your ideas of philosophy, from novels and romances, as if they were sound evidence.

B. If my conclusions are as true to nature as my premises, I shall be satisfied. Here is the passage I was going to quote: ‘I was only ganging to say, my lord,’ said Evan, in what he meant to be an insinuating manner, ‘that if your excellent honour and the honourable court would let Vich Ian Vohr go free just this once and let him gae back to France and not trouble King George’s government again, that any six o’ the very best of his clan will be willing to be justified in his stead; and if you’ll just let me gae down to Glennaquoich, I’ll fetch them up to ye myself to head or hang, and you may begin with me the very first man.’^[22]

A. But such instances as this are the effect of habit and strong prejudice. We can hardly argue from so barbarous a state of society.

B. Excuse me there. I contend that our preference of ourselves is just as much the effect of habit, and very frequently a more unaccountable and unreasonable one than any other.

A. I should like to hear how you can possibly make that out.

B. If you will not condemn me before you hear what I have to say, I will try. You allow that D——, in the case we have been talking of, would perhaps run a little risk for you or me; but if it were a perfect stranger, he would get out of the way as fast as his legs would carry him, and leave the stranger to shift for himself.

A. Yes; and does not that overturn your whole theory?

115B. It would if my theory were as devoid of common sense as you are pleased to suppose; that is, if because I deny an original and absolute distinction in nature (where there is no such thing,) it followed that I must deny that circumstances, intimacy, habit, knowledge, or a variety of incidental causes could have any influence on our affections and actions. My inference is just the contrary. For would you not say that D—— cared little about the stranger for this plain reason, that he knew nothing about him?

A. No doubt.

B. And he would care rather more about you and me, because he knows more about us?

A. Why yes, it would seem so.

B. And he would care still more about a sister, (according to the same supposition) because he would be still better acquainted with her, and had been more constantly with her?

A. I will not deny it.

B. And it is on the same principle (generally speaking) that a man cares most of all about himself, because he knows more about himself than about any body else, that he is more in the secret of his own most intimate thoughts and feelings, and more in the habit of providing for his own wants and wishes, which he can anticipate with greater liveliness and certainty than those of others, from being more nearly ‘made and moulded of things past.’ The poetical fiction is rendered easier and assisted by my acquaintance with myself, just as it is by the ties of kindred or habits of friendly intercourse. There is no farther approach made to the doctrines of self-love and personal identity.

D. E., here is B. trying to persuade me I am not myself.

E. Sometimes you are not.

D. But he says that I never am.—Or is it only that I am not to be so?

B. Nay, I hope ‘thou art to continue, thou naughty varlet’—

You have been yourself (nobody like you) for the last forty years of your life: you would not prematurely stuff the next twenty into the account, till you have had them fairly out?

D. Not for the world, I have too great an affection for them.

B. Yet I think you would have less if you did not look forward to pass them among old books, old friends, old haunts. If you were cut off from all these, you would be less anxious about what was left of yourself.

D. I would rather be the Wandering Jew than not be at all.

116B. Or you would not be the person I always took you for.

D. Does not this willingness to be the Wandering Jew rather than nobody, seem to indicate that there is an abstract attachment to self, to the bare idea of existence, independently of circumstances or habit?

B. It must be a very loose and straggling one. You mix up some of your old recollections and favourite notions with your self elect, and indulge them in your new character, or you would trouble yourself very little about it. If you do not come in in some shape or other, it is merely saying that you would be sorry if the Wandering Jew were to disappear from the earth, however strictly he may have hitherto maintained his incognito.

D. There is something in that; and as well as I remember there is a curious but exceedingly mystical illustration of this point in an original Essay of yours which I have read and spoken to you about.

B. I believe there is; but A—— is tired of making objections, and I of answering them to no purpose.

D. I have the book in the closet, and if you like, we will turn to the place. It is after that burst of enthusiastic recollection (the only one in the book) that Southey said at the time was something between the manner of Milton’s prose-works and Jeremy Taylor.

B. Ah! I as little thought then that I should ever be set down as a florid prose-writer as that he would become poet-laureat!

J. D. here took the volume from his brother, and read the following passage from it.

‘I do not think I should illustrate the foregoing reasoning so well by any thing I could add on the subject, as by relating the manner in which it first struck me. There are moments in the life of a solitary thinker which are to him what the evening of some great victory is to the conqueror and hero—milder triumphs long remembered with truer and deeper delight. And though the shouts of multitudes do not hail his success—though gay trophies, though the sounds of music, the glittering of armour, and the neighing of steeds do not mingle with his joy, yet shall he not want monuments and witnesses of his glory—the deep forest, the willowy brook, the gathering clouds of winter, or the silent gloom of his own chamber, “faithful remembrancers of his high endeavour, and his glad success,” that, as time passes by him with unreturning wing, still awaken the consciousness of a spirit patient, indefatigable in the search of truth, and the hope of surviving in the thoughts and minds of other men. I remember I had been reading a speech which Mirabaud (the author of the “System of Nature”) has put into the mouth of a supposed Atheist at the last judgment; and was afterwards led on, by some means or other to consider the question, whether it could properly be 117said to be an act of virtue in any one to sacrifice his own final happiness to that of any other person or number of persons, if it were possible for the one ever to be made the price of the other? Suppose it were my own case—that it were in my power to save twenty other persons by voluntarily consenting to suffer for them: Why should I not do a generous thing, and never trouble myself about what might be the consequence to myself the Lord knows when?

‘The reason why a man should prefer his own future welfare to that of others is, that he has a necessary, absolute interest in the one, which he cannot have in the other—and this, again, is a consequence of his being always the same individual, of his continued identity with himself. The difference, I thought, was this, that however insensible I may be to my own interest at any future period, yet when the time comes I shall feel differently about it. I shall then judge of it from the actual impression of the object, that is, truly and certainly; and as I shall still be conscious of my past feelings, and shall bitterly regret my own folly and insensibility, I ought, as a rational agent, to be determined now by what I shall then wish I had done, when I shall feel the consequences of my actions most deeply and sensibly. It is this continued consciousness of my own feelings which gives me an immediate interest in whatever relates to my future welfare, and makes me at all times accountable to myself for my own conduct. As, therefore, this consciousness will be renewed in me after death, if I exist again at all—But stop—as I must be conscious of my past feelings to be myself, and as this conscious being will be myself, how if that consciousness should be transferred to some other being? How am I to know that I am not imposed upon by a false claim of identity? But that is ridiculous, because you will have no other self than that which arises from this very consciousness. Why, then, this self may be multiplied in as many different beings as the Deity may think proper to endue with the same consciousness; which, if it can be renewed at will in any one instance, may clearly be so in a hundred others. Am I to regard all these as equally myself? Am I equally interested in the fate of all? Or if I must fix upon some one of them in particular as my representative and other self, how am I to be determined in my choice? Here, then, I saw an end put to my speculations about absolute self-interest and personal identity. I saw plainly that the consciousness of my own feelings, which is made the foundation of my continued interest in them, could not extend to what had never been, and might never be; that my identity with myself must be confined to the connection between my past and present being; that with respect to my future feelings or interests, 118they could have no communication with, or influence over, my present feelings and interests, merely because they were future; that I shall be hereafter affected by the recollection of my past feelings and actions; and my remorse be equally heightened by reflecting on my past folly and late-earned wisdom, whether I am really the same being, or have only the same consciousness renewed in me; but that to suppose that this remorse can re-act in the reverse order on my present feelings, or give me an immediate interest in my future feelings, before they exist, is an express contradiction in terms. It can only affect me as an imaginary idea, or an idea of truth. But so may the interests of others; and the question proposed was, whether I have not some real, necessary, absolute interest in whatever relates to my future being, in consequence of my immediate connection with myself—independently of the general impression which all positive ideas have on my mind. How, then, can this pretended unity of consciousness which is only reflected from the past—which makes me so little acquainted with the future that I cannot even tell for a moment how long it will be continued, whether it will be entirely interrupted by or renewed in me after death, and which might be multiplied in I don’t know how many different beings, and prolonged by complicated sufferings, without my being any the wiser for it,—how, I say, can a principle of this sort identify my present with my future interests, and make me as much a participator in what does not at all affect me as if it were actually impressed on my senses? It is plain, as this conscious being may be decompounded, entirely destroyed, renewed again, or multiplied in a great number of beings, and as, whichever of these takes place, it cannot produce the least alteration in my present being—that what I am does not depend on what I am to be, and that there is no communication between my future interests, and the motives by which my present conduct must be governed. This can no more be influenced by what may be my future feelings with respect to it, than it will then be possible for me to alter my past conduct by wishing that I had acted differently. I cannot, therefore, have a principle of active self-interest arising out of the immediate connection between my present and future self, for no such connection exists, or is possible. I am what I am in spite of the future. My feelings, actions, and interests, must be determined by causes already existing and acting, and are absolutely independent of the future. Where there is not an intercommunity of feelings, there can be no identity of interests. My personal interest in any thing must refer either to the interest excited by the actual impression of the object, which cannot be felt before it exists, and can last no longer than while the impression lasts; or it may refer to the particular 119manner in which I am mechanically affected by the idea of my own impressions in the absence of the object. I can, therefore, have no proper personal interest in my future impressions, since neither my ideas of future objects, nor my feelings with respect to them, can be excited either directly or indirectly by the impressions themselves, or by any ideas or feelings accompanying them, without a complete transposition of the order in which causes and effects follow one another in nature. The only reason for my preferring my future interest to that of others, must arise from my anticipating it with greater warmth of present imagination. It is this greater liveliness and force with which I can enter into my future feelings, that in a manner identifies them with my present being; and this notion of identity being once formed, the mind makes use of it to strengthen its habitual propensity, by giving to personal motives a reality and absolute truth which they can never have. Hence it has been inferred that my real, substantial interest in any thing, must be derived in some indirect manner from the impression of the object itself, as if that could have any sort of communication with my present feelings, or excite any interest in my mind but by means of the imagination, which is naturally affected in a certain manner by the prospect of future good or evil.’

J. D. ‘This is the strangest tale that e’er I heard,

C. D. ‘It is the strangest fellow, brother John!’

The New Monthly Magazine.] [July, 1830.

A free Admission is the lotos of the mind: the leaf in which your name is inscribed as having the privileges of the entrée for the season is of an oblivious quality—an antidote for half the ills of life. I speak here not of a purchased but of a gift-ticket, an emanation of the generosity of the Managers, a token of conscious desert. With the first you can hardly bring yourself to go to the theatre; with the last, you cannot keep away. If you have paid five guineas for a free admission for the season, this free admission turns to a mere slavery. You seem to have done a foolish thing, and to have committed an extravagance under the plea of economy. You are struck with remorse. You are impressed with a conviction that pleasure is not to be bought. You have paid for your privilege in the lump, and you receive the benefit in driblets. The five pounds you are out of pocket does not meet with an adequate compensation the first night, or on any single occasion—you must come again, and use double diligence 120to strike a balance to make up your large arrears; instead of an obvious saving, it hangs as a dead-weight on your satisfaction all the year; and the improvident price you have paid for them kills every ephemeral enjoyment, and poisons the flattering illusions of the scene. You have incurred a debt, and must go every night to redeem it; and as you do not like being tied to the oar, or making a toil of a pleasure, you stay away altogether; give up the promised luxury as a bad speculation; sit sullenly at home, or bend your loitering feet in any other direction; and putting up with the first loss, resolve never to be guilty of the like folly again. But it is not thus with the possessor of a Free Admission, truly so called. His is a pure pleasure, a clear gain. He feels none of these irksome qualms and misgivings. He marches to the theatre like a favoured lover; if he is compelled to absent himself, he feels all the impatience and compunction of a prisoner. The portal of the Temple of the Muses stands wide open to him, closing the vista of the day—when he turns his back upon it at night with steps gradual and slow, mingled with the common crowd, but conscious of a virtue which they have not, he says, ‘I shall come again to-morrow!’ In passing through the streets, he casts a sidelong, careless glance at the playbills: he reads the papers chiefly with a view to see what is the play for the following day, or the ensuing week. If it is something new, he is glad; if it is old, he is resigned—but he goes in either case. His steps bend mechanically that way—pleasure becomes a habit, and habit a duty—he fulfils his destiny—he walks deliberately along Long-acre (you may tell a man going to the play, and whether he pays or has a free admission)—quickens his pace as he turns the corner of Bow-street, and arrives breathless and in haste at the welcome spot, where on presenting himself, he receives a passport that is a release from care, thought, toil, for the evening, and wafts him into the regions of the blest! What is it to him how the world turns round if the play goes on; whether empires rise or fall, so that Covent Garden stands its ground? Shall he plunge into the void of politics, that volcano burnt-out with the cold, sterile, sightless lava, hardening all around? or con over the registers of births, deaths, and marriages, when he may be present at Juliet’s wedding, and gaze on Juliet’s tomb? or shall he wonder at the throng of coaches in Regent-street, when he can feast his eyes with the coach (the fairy-vision of his childhood) in which Cinderella rides to the ball? Here (by the help of that Open Sessame! a Free Admission), ensconced in his favourite niche, looking from the ‘loop-holes of retreat’ in the second circle, he views the pageant of the world played before him; melts down years to moments; sees human life, like a gaudy shadow, glance across the stage; and here tastes of all earth’s bliss, the sweet 121without the bitter, the honey without the sting, and plucks ambrosial fruits and amaranthine flowers (placed by the enchantress Fancy within his reach,) without having to pay a tax for it at the time, or repenting of it afterwards. ‘He is all ear and eye, and drinks in sounds or sights that might create a soul under the ribs of death.’ ‘The fly,’ says Gay, ‘that sips treacle, is lost in the sweets’: so he that has a free admission forgets every thing else. Why not? It is the chief and enviable transfer of his being from the real to the unreal world, and the changing half of his life into a dream. ‘Oh! leave me to my repose,’ in my beloved corner at Covent Garden Theatre! This (and not ‘the arm-chair at an inn,’ though that too, at other times, and under different circumstances, is not without its charms,) is to me ‘the throne of felicity.’ If I have business that would detain me from this, I put it off till the morrow; if I have friends that call in just at the moment, let them go away under pain of bearing my maledictions with them. What is there in their conversation to atone to me for the loss of one quarter of an hour at the ‘witching time of night?’ If it is on indifferent subjects, it is flat and insipid; if it grows animated and interesting, it requires a painful effort, and begets a feverish excitement. But let me once reach, and fairly establish myself in this favourite seat, and I can bid a gay defiance to mischance, and leave debts and duns, friends and foes, objections and arguments, far behind me. I would, if I could, have it surrounded with a balustrade of gold, for it has been to me a palace of delight. There golden thoughts unbidden betide me, and golden visions come to me. There the dance, the laugh, the song, the scenic deception greet me; there are wafted Shakspear’s winged words, or Otway’s plaintive lines; and there how often have I heard young Kemble’s voice, trembling at its own beauty, and prolonging its liquid tones, like the murmur of the billowy surge on sounding shores! There I no longer torture a sentence or strain a paradox: the mind is full without an effort, pleased without asking why. It inhales an atmosphere of joy, and is steeped in all the luxury of woe. To show how much sympathy has to do with the effect, let us suppose any one to have a free admission to the rehearsals of a morning, what mortal would make use of it? One might as well be at the bottom of a well, or at the top of St. Paul’s for any pleasure we should derive from the finest tragedy or comedy. No, a play is nothing without an audience, it is a satisfaction too great and too general not to be shared with others. But reverse this cold and comfortless picture—let the eager crowd beset the theatre-doors ‘like bees in spring-time, when the sun with Taurus rides’—let the boxes be filled with innocence and beauty like beds of lilies on the first night of Isabella 122or Belvidera, see the flutter, the uneasy delight of expectation, see the big tear roll down the cheek of sensibility as the story proceeds—let us listen to the deep thunder of the pit, or catch the gallery’s shout at some true master-stroke of passion; and we feel that a thousand hearts are beating in our bosoms, and hail the sparkling illusion reflected in a thousand eyes. The stage has, therefore, been justly styled ‘a discipline of humanity’; for there is no place where the social principle is called forth with such strength and harmony, by a powerful interest in a common object. A crowd is everywhere else oppressive; but the fuller the play-house, the more intimately and cordially do we sympathise with every individual in it. Empty benches have as bad an effect on the spectator as on the players. This is one reason why so many mistakes are made with respect to plays and players, ere they come before the public. The taste is crude and uninformed till it is ripened by the blaze of lighted lamps and the sunshine of happy faces: the cold, critical faculty, the judgment of Managers and Committees asks the glow of sympathy and the buzz of approbation to prompt and guide it. We judge in a crowd with the sense and feelings of others; and from the very strength of the impression, fancy we should have come to the same unavoidable conclusion had we been left entirely to ourselves. Let any one try the experiment by reading a manuscript play, or seeing it acted—or by hearing a candidate for the stage rehearse behind the scenes, or top his part after the orchestra have performed their fatal prelude. Nor is the air of a play-house favourable only to social feeling—it aids the indulgence of solitary musing. The brimming cup of joy or sorrow is full; but it runs over to other thoughts and subjects. We can there (nowhere better) ‘retire, the world shut out, our thoughts call home.’ We hear the revelry and the shout, but ‘the still, small voice’ of other years and cherished recollections is not wanting. It is pleasant to hear Miss Ford repeat Love’s Catechism, or Mrs. Humby^[23] sing ‘I cannot marry Crout’: but the ear is not therefore deaf to Mrs. Jordan’s laugh in Nell; Mrs. Goodall’s Rosalind still haunts the glades of Arden, and the echo of Amiens’ song, ‘Blow, blow, thou winter’s wind,’ lingers through a lapse of thirty years. A pantomime (the Little Red Riding-Hood) recalls the innocence of our childish thoughts: a dance (the Minuet de la Cour) throws us back to the gorgeous days of Louis XIV. and tells us that the age of chivalry is gone for ever. Who will be the Mrs. Siddons of a distant age? What future Kean shall ‘strut and fret his hour upon the stage,’ full of genius and free from errors? What favourite actor or actress will be taking their farewell benefit a hundred years hence? 123What plays and what players will then amuse the town? Oh, many-coloured scenes of human life! where are ye more truly represented than in the mirror of the stage? or where is that eternal principle of vicissitude which rules over ye, the painted pageant and the sudden gloom, more strikingly exemplified than here? At the entrance to our great theatres, in large capitals over the front of the stage, might be written Mutability! Does not the curtain that falls each night on the pomps and vanities it was withdrawn awhile to reveal (and the next moment all is dark) afford a fine moral lesson? Here, in small room, is crowded the map of human life; the lengthened, varied scroll is unfolded like rich tapestry with its quaint and flaunting devices spread out; whatever can be saved from the giddy whirl of ever-rolling time and of this round orb, which moves on and never stops,^[24] all that can strike the sense, can touch the heart, can stir up laughter or call tears from their secret source, is here treasured up and displayed ostentatiously—here is Fancy’s motley wardrobe, the masks of all the characters that were ever played—here is a glass set up clear and large enough to show us our own features and those of all mankind—here, in this enchanted mirror, are represented, not darkly, but in vivid hues and bold relief, the struggle of Life and Death, the momentary pause between the cradle and the grave, with charming hopes and fears, terror and pity in a thousand modes, strange and ghastly apparitions, the events of history, the fictions of poetry (warm from the heart); all these, and more than can be numbered in my feeble page, fill that airy space where the green curtain rises, and haunt it with evanescent shapes and indescribable yearnings.

Who can collect into one audible pulsation the thoughts and feelings that in the course of his life all these together have occasioned; or what heart, if it could recall them at once, and in their undiminished power and plenitude, would not burst with the load? Let not the style be deemed exaggerated, but tame and creeping, that attempts to do justice to this high and pregnant theme, and let tears blot out the unequal lines that the pen traces! Quaffing these delights, inhaling this atmosphere, brooding over these visions, this long trail of glory, is the possessor of a Free Admission to be blamed if ‘he takes his ease’ at the play; and turning theatrical recluse, and forgetful of himself and his friends, devotes himself to the study of the drama, and to dreams of the past? By constant habit (having nothing to do, 124little else to think of), he becomes a tippler of the dews of Castaly—a dram-drinker on Mount Parnassus. He tastes the present moment, while a rich sea of pleasure presses to his lip and engulfs him round. The noise, the glare, the warmth, the company, produce a sort of listless intoxication, and clothe the pathos and the wit with a bodily sense. There is a weight, a closeness even, in the air, that makes it difficult to breathe out of it. The custom of going to the play night after night becomes a relief, a craving, a necessity—one cannot do without it. To sit alone is intolerable, to be in company is worse; we are attracted with pleasing force to the spot where ‘all that mighty heart is beating still.’ It is not that perhaps there is any thing new or fine to see—if there is, we attend to it—but at any time, it kills time and saves the trouble of thinking. O, Covent Garden! ‘thy freedom hath made me effeminate!’ It has hardly left me power to write this description of it. I am become its slave, I have no other sense or interest left. There I sit and lose the hours I live beneath the sky, without the power to stir, without any determination to stay. ‘Teddy the Tiler’ is become familiar to me, and, as it were, a part of my existence: ‘Robert the Devil’ has cast his spell over me. I have seen both thirty times at least, (no offence to the Management!) and could sit them out thirty times more. I am bed-rid in the lap of luxury; am grown callous and inert with perpetual excitement.

I have my favourite box too, as Beau Brummell had his favourite leg; one must decide on something, not to be always deciding. Perhaps I may have my reasons too—perhaps into the box next to mine a Grace enters; perhaps from thence an air divine breathes a glance (of heaven’s own brightness), kindles contagious fire;—but let us turn all such thoughts into the lobbies. These may be considered as an Arabesque border round the inclosed tablet of human life. If the Muses reign within, Venus sports heedless, but not unheeded without. Here a bevy of fair damsels, richly clad, knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, lead on ‘the frozen winter and the pleasant spring!’ Would I were allowed to attempt a list of some of them, and Cowley’s Gallery would blush at mine! But this is a licence which only poetry, and not even a Free Admission can give. I can now understand the attachment to a player’s life, and how impossible it is for those who are once engaged in it ever to wean themselves from it. If the merely witnessing the bustle and the splendour of the scene as an idle spectator creates such a fascination, and flings such a charm over it, how much more must this be the case 125with those who have given all their time and attention to it—who regard it as the sole means of distinction—with whom even the monotony and mortifications must please—and who, instead of being passive, casual votaries, are the dispensers of the bounty of the gods, and the high-priests at the altar?

The New Monthly Magazine.] [August, 1830.

What a difference between this subject and my last—a ‘Free Admission!’ Yet from the crowded theatre to the sick chamber, from the noise, the glare, the keen delight, to the loneliness, the darkness, the dulness, and the pain, there is but one step. A breath of air, an overhanging cloud effects it; and though the transition is made in an instant, it seems as if it would last for ever. A sudden illness not only puts a stop to the career of our triumphs and agreeable sensations, but blots out and cancels all recollection of and desire for them. We lose the relish of enjoyment; we are effectually cured of our romance. Our bodies are confined to our beds; nor can our thoughts wantonly detach themselves and take the road to pleasure, but turn back with doubt and loathing at the faint, evanescent phantom which has usurped its place. If the folding-doors of the imagination were thrown open or left a-jar, so that from the disordered couch where we lay, we could still hail the vista of the past or future, and see the gay and gorgeous visions floating at a distance, however denied to our embrace, the contrast, though mortifying, might have something soothing in it, the mock-splendour might be the greater for the actual gloom: but the misery is that we cannot conceive any thing beyond or better than the present evil; we are shut up and spell-bound in that, the curtains of the mind are drawn close, we cannot escape from ‘the body of this death,’ our souls are conquered, dismayed, ‘cooped and cabined in,’ and thrown with the lumber of our corporeal frames in one corner of a neglected and solitary room. We hate ourselves and everything else; nor does one ray of comfort ‘peep through the blanket of the dark’ to give us hope. How should we entertain the image of grace and beauty, when our bodies writhe with pain? To what purpose invoke the echo of some rich strain of music, when we ourselves can scarcely breathe? The very attempt is an impossibility. We give up the vain task of linking delight to agony, of urging torpor into ecstasy, which makes the very heart sick. We feel the present pain, and an impatient longing to get rid of it. This were indeed ‘a consummation 126devoutly to be wished’: on this we are intent, in earnest, inexorable: all else is impertinence and folly; and could we but obtain ease (that Goddess of the infirm and suffering) at any price, we think we could forswear all other joy and all other sorrows. Hoc erat in votis. All other things but our disorder and its cure seem less than nothing and vanity. It assumes a palpable form; it becomes a demon, a spectre, an incubus hovering over and oppressing us: we grapple with it: it strikes its fangs into us, spreads its arms round us, infects us with its breath, glares upon us with its hideous aspect; we feel it take possession of every fibre and of every faculty; and we are at length so absorbed and fascinated by it, that we cannot divert our reflections from it for an instant, for all other things but pain (and that which we suffer most acutely,) appear to have lost their pith and power to interest. They are turned to dust and stubble. This is the reason of the fine resolutions we sometimes form in such cases, and of the vast superiority of a sick bed to the pomps and thrones of the world. We easily renounce wine when we have nothing but the taste of physic in our mouths: the rich banquet tempts us not, when ‘our very gorge rises’ within us: Love and Beauty fly from a bed twisted into a thousand folds by restless lassitude and tormenting cares: the nerve of pleasure is killed by the pains that shoot through the head or rack the limbs: an indigestion seizes you with its leaden grasp and giant force (down, Ambition!)—you shiver and tremble like a leaf in a fit of the ague (Avarice, let go your palsied hold!). We then are in the mood, without ghostly advice, to betake ourselves to the life of ‘hermit poor,

and should be glad to prevent the return of a fever raging in the blood by feeding on pulse, and slaking our thirst at the limpid brook. These sudden resolutions, however, or ‘vows made in pain as violent and void,’ are generally of short duration; the excess and the sorrow for it are alike selfish; and those repentances which are the most loud and passionate are the surest to end speedily in a relapse; for both originate in the same cause, the being engrossed by the prevailing feeling (whatever it may be), and an utter incapacity to look beyond it.

It is amazing how little effect physical suffering or local circumstances have upon the mind, except while we are subject to their immediate influence. While the impression lasts, they are every thing: when it is gone, they are nothing. We toss and tumble about in a 127sick bed; we lie on our right side, we then change to the left; we stretch ourselves on our backs, we turn on our faces; we wrap ourselves up under the clothes to exclude the cold, we throw them off to escape the heat and suffocation; we grasp the pillow in agony, we fling ourselves out of bed, we walk up and down the room with hasty or feeble steps; we return into bed; we are worn out with fatigue and pain, yet can get no repose for the one, or intermission for the other; we summon all our patience, or give vent to passion and petty rage: nothing avails; we seem wedded to our disease, ‘like life and death in disproportion met;’ we make new efforts, try new expedients, but nothing appears to shake it off, or promise relief from our grim foe: it infixes its sharp sting into us, or overpowers us by its sickly and stunning weight: every moment is as much as we can bear, and yet there seems no end of our lengthening tortures; we are ready to faint with exhaustion, or work ourselves up to frenzy: we ‘trouble deaf Heaven with our bootless prayers:’ we think our last hour is come, or peevishly wish it were, to put an end to the scene; we ask questions as to the origin of evil and the necessity of pain; we ‘moralise our complaints into a thousand similes’; we deny the use of medicine in toto, we have a full persuasion that all doctors are mad or knaves, that our object is to gain relief, and theirs (out of the perversity of human nature, or to seem wiser than we) to prevent it; we catechise the apothecary, rail at the nurse, and cannot so much as conceive the possibility that this state of things should not last for ever; we are even angry at those who would give us encouragement, as if they would make dupes or children of us; we might seek a release by poison, a halter, or the sword, but we have not strength of mind enough—our nerves are too shaken—to attempt even this poor revenge—when lo! a change comes, the spell falls off, and the next moment we forget all that has happened to us. No sooner does our disorder turn its back upon us than we laugh at it. The state we have been in, sounds like a dream, a fable; health is the order of the day, strength is ours de jure and de facto; and we discard all uncalled-for evidence to the contrary with a smile of contemptuous incredulity, just as we throw our physic-bottles out of the window! I see (as I awake from a short, uneasy doze) a golden light shine through my white window-curtains on the opposite wall:—is it the dawn of a new day, or the departing light of evening? I do not well know, for the opium ‘they have drugged my posset with’ has made strange havoc with my brain, and I am uncertain whether time has stood still, or advanced, or gone backward. By ‘puzzling o’er the doubt,’ my attention is drawn a little out of myself to external objects; and I consider whether it would not administer some relief to my monotonous 128languour, if I could call up a vivid picture of an evening sky I witnessed a short while before, the white fleecy clouds, the azure vault, the verdant fields and balmy air. In vain! The wings of fancy refuse to mount from my bed-side. The air without has nothing in common with the closeness within: the clouds disappear, the sky is instantly overcast and black. I walk out in this scene soon after I recover; and with those favourite and well-known objects interposed, can no longer recall the tumbled pillow, the juleps or the labels, or the unwholesome dungeon in which I was before immured. What is contrary to our present sensations or settled habits, amalgamates indifferently with our belief: the imagination rules over imaginary themes, the senses and custom have a narrower sway, and admit but one guest at a time. It is hardly to be wondered at that we dread physical calamities so little beforehand: we think no more of them the moment after they have happened. Out of sight, out of mind. This will perhaps explain why all actual punishment has so little effect; it is a state contrary to nature, alien to the will. If it does not touch honour and conscience (and where these are not, how can it touch them?) it goes for nothing: and where these are, it rather sears and hardens them. The gyves, the cell, the meagre fare, the hard labour are abhorrent to the mind of the culprit on whom they are imposed, who carries the love of liberty or indulgence to licentiousness; and who throws the thought of them behind him (the moment he can evade the penalty,) with scorn and laughter,

So, in travelling, we often meet with great fatigue and inconvenience from heat or cold, or rather accidents, and resolve never to go a journey again; but we are ready to set off on a new excursion to-morrow. We remember the landscape, the change of scene, the romantic expectation, and think no more of the heat, the noise, and dust. The body forgets its grievances, till they recur; but imagination, passion, pride, have a longer memory and quicker apprehensions. To the first the pleasure or the pain is nothing when once over; to the last it is only then that they begin to exist. The line in Metastasio,

129is true only when applied to this latter sort.—It is curious that, on coming out of a sick room, where one has been pent some time, and grown weak and nervous, and looking at Nature for the first time, the objects that present themselves have a very questionable and spectral appearance, the people in the street resemble flies crawling about, and seem scarce half-alive. It is we who are just risen from a torpid and unwholesome state, and who impart our imperfect feelings of existence, health, and motion to others. Or it may be that the violence and exertion of the pain we have gone through make common every-day objects seem unreal and unsubstantial. It is not till we have established ourselves in form in the sitting-room, wheeled round the arm-chair to the fire (for this makes part of our re-introduction to the ordinary modes of being in all seasons,) felt our appetite return, and taken up a book, that we can be considered as at all restored to ourselves. And even then our first sensations are rather empirical than positive; as after sleep we stretch out our hands to know whether we are awake. This is the time for reading. Books are then indeed ‘a world, both pure and good,’ into which we enter with all our hearts, after our revival from illness and respite from the tomb, as with the freshness and novelty of youth. They are not merely acceptable as without too much exertion they pass the time and relieve ennui; but from a certain suspension and deadening of the passions, and abstraction from worldly pursuits, they may be said to bring back and be friendly to the guileless and enthusiastic tone of feeling with which we formerly read them. Sickness has weaned us pro tempore from contest and cabal; and we are fain to be docile and children again. All strong changes in our present pursuits throw us back upon the past. This is the shortest and most complete emancipation from our late discomfiture. We wonder that any one who has read The History of a Foundling should labour under an indigestion; nor do we comprehend how a perusal of the Faery Queen should not ensure the true believer an uninterrupted succession of halcyon days. Present objects bear a retrospective meaning, and point to ‘a foregone conclusion.’ Returning back to life with half-strung nerves and shattered strength, we seem as when we first entered it with uncertain purposes and faltering aims. The machine has received a shock, and it moves on more tremulously than before, and not all at once in the beaten track. Startled at the approach of death, we are willing to get as far from it as we can by making a proxy of our former selves; and finding the precarious tenure by which we hold existence, and its last sands running out, we gather up and make the most of the fragments that memory has stored up for us. Every thing is seen through a medium of reflection and contrast. 130We hear the sound of merry voices in the street; and this carries us back to the recollections of some country-town or village-group—

A cricket chirps on the hearth, and we are reminded of Christmas gambols long ago. The very cries in the street seem to be of a former date; and the dry toast eats very much as it did—twenty years ago. A rose smells doubly sweet, after being stifled with tinctures and essences; and we enjoy the idea of a journey and an inn the more for having been bed-rid. But a book is the secret and sure charm to bring all these implied associations to a focus. I should prefer an old one, Mr. Lamb’s favourite, the Journey to Lisbon; or the Decameron, if I could get it; but if a new one, let it be Paul Clifford. That book has the singular advantage of being written by a gentleman, and not about his own class. The characters he commemorates are every moment at fault between life and death, hunger and a forced loan on the public; and therefore the interest they take in themselves, and which we take in them, has no cant or affectation in it, but is ‘lively, audible, and full of vent.’ A set of well-dressed gentlemen picking their teeth with a graceful air after dinner, endeavouring to keep their cravats from the slightest discomposure, and saying the most insipid things in the most insipid manner, do not make a scene. Well, then, I have got the new paraphrase on the Beggar’s Opera, am fairly embarked on it; and at the end of the first volume, where I am galloping across the heath with the three highwaymen, while the moon is shining full upon them, feel my nerves so braced, and my spirits so exhilarated, that, to say truth, I am scarce sorry for the occasion that has thrown me upon the work and the author—have quite forgot my Sick Room, and am more than half ready to recant the doctrine that a Free Admission to the theatre is

for I feel as I read that if the stage shows us the masks of men and the pageant of the world, books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own. They are the first and last, the most home-felt, the most heartfelt of all our enjoyments.

The New Monthly Magazine.] [September, 1830.

Footmen are no part of Christianity; but they are a very necessary appendage to our happy Constitution in Church and State. What would the bishop’s mitre be without these grave supporters to his dignity? Even the plain presbyter does not dispense with his decent serving-man to stand behind his chair and load his duly emptied plate with beef and pudding, at which the genius of Ude turns pale. What would become of the coronet-coach filled with elegant and languid forms, if it were not for the triple row of powdered, laced, and liveried footmen, clustering, fluttering, and lounging behind it? What an idea do we not conceive of the fashionable belle who is making the most of her time and tumbling over silks and satins within at Sewell and Cross’s, or at the Bazaar in Soho-square, from the tall lacquey in blue and silver with gold-headed cane, cocked-hat, white thread stockings and large calves to his legs, who stands as her representative without! The sleek shopman appears at the door, at an understood signal the livery-servant starts from his position, the coach-door flies open, the steps are let down, the young lady enters the carriage as young ladies are taught to step into carriages, the footman closes the door, mounts behind, and the glossy vehicle rolls off, bearing its lovely burden and her gaudy attendant from the gaze of the gaping crowd! Is there not a spell in beauty, a charm in rank and fashion, that one would almost wish to be this fellow—to obey its nod, to watch its looks, to breathe but by its permission, and to live but for its use, its scorn, or pride?

Footmen are in general looked upon as a sort of supernumeraries in society—they have no place assigned them in any Scotch Encyclopædia—they do not come under any of the heads in Mr. Mill’s Elements, or Mr. Maculloch’s Principles of Political Economy; and they nowhere have had impartial justice done them, except in Lady Booby’s love for one of that order. But if not ‘the Corinthian capitals of polished society,’ they are ‘a graceful ornament to the civil order.’ Lords and ladies could not do without them. Nothing exists in this world but by contrast. A foil is necessary to make the plainest truths self-evident. It is the very insignificance, the nonentity as it were of the gentlemen of the cloth, that constitutes their importance, and makes them an indispensable feature in the social system, by setting off the pretensions of their superiors to the best advantage. What would be the good of having a will of our own, if we had not others about us who are deprived of all will of their own, and who wear a 132badge to say ‘I serve?’ How can we show that we are the lords of the creation but by reducing others to the condition of machines, who never move but at the beck of our caprices? Is not the plain suit of the master wonderfully relieved by the borrowed trappings and mock-finery of his servant? You see that man on horseback who keeps at some distance behind another, who follows him as his shadow, turns as he turns, and as he passes or speaks to him, lifts his hand to his hat and observes the most profound attention—what is the difference between these two men? The one is as well mounted, as well fed, is younger and seemingly in better health than the other; but between these two there are perhaps seven or eight classes of society, each of whom is dependent on and trembles at the frown of the other—it is a nobleman and his lacquey. Let any one take a stroll towards the West-end of the town, South Audley or Upper Grosvenor-street; it is then he will feel himself first entering into the beau-ideal of civilized life, a society composed entirely of lords and footmen! Deliver me from the filth and cellars of St. Giles’s, from the shops of Holborn and the Strand, from all that appertains to middle and to low life; and commend me to the streets with the straw at the doors and hatchments overhead to tell us of those who are just born or who are just dead, and with groups of footmen lounging on the steps and insulting the passengers—it is then I feel the true dignity and imaginary pretensions of human nature realised! There is here none of the squalidness of poverty, none of the hardships of daily labour, none of the anxiety and petty artifice of trade; life’s business is changed into a romance, a summer’s dream, and nothing painful, disgusting, or vulgar intrudes. All is on a liberal and handsome scale. The true ends and benefits of society are here enjoyed and bountifully lavished, and all the trouble and misery banished, and not even allowed so much as to exist in thought. Those who would find the real Utopia, should look for it somewhere about Park-lane or May Fair. It is there only any feasible approach to equality is made—for it is like master like man. Here, as I look down Curzon Street, or catch a glimpse of the taper spire of South Audley Chapel, or the family-arms on the gate of Chesterfield-House, the vista of years opens to me, and I recall the period of the triumph of Mr. Burke’s ‘Reflections on the French Revolution,’ and the overthrow of ‘The Rights of Man!’ You do not indeed penetrate to the interior of the mansion where sits the stately possessor, luxurious and refined; but you draw your inference from the lazy, pampered, motley crew poured forth from his portals. This mealy-coated, moth-like, butterfly-generation, seem to have no earthly business but to enjoy themselves. Their green liveries accord with the budding leaves and spreading branches of the trees in Hyde Park—they 133seem ‘like brothers of the groves’—their red faces and powdered heads harmonise with the blossoms of the neighbouring almond-trees, that shoot their sprays over old-fashioned brick-walls. They come forth like grasshoppers in June, as numerous and as noisy. They bask in the sun and laugh in your face. Not only does the master enjoy an uninterrupted leisure and tranquillity—those in his employment have nothing to do. He wants drones, not drudges, about him, to share his superfluity, and give a haughty pledge of his exemption from care. They grow sleek and wanton, saucy and supple. From being independent of the world, they acquire the look of gentlemen’s gentlemen. There is a cast of the aristocracy, with a slight shade of distinction. The saying, ‘Tell me your company, and I’ll tell you your manners,’ may be applied cum grano salis to the servants in great families. Mr. N—— knew an old butler who had lived with a nobleman so long, and had learned to imitate his walk, look, and way of speaking, so exactly that it was next to impossible to tell them apart. See the porter in the great leather-chair in the hall—how big, and burly, and self-important he looks; while my Lord’s gentleman (the politician of the family) is reading the second edition of ‘The Courier’ (once more in request) at the side window, and the footman is romping, or taking tea with the maids in the kitchen below. A match-girl meanwhile plies her shrill trade at the railing; or a gipsey-woman passes with her rustic wares through the street, avoiding the closer haunts of the city. What a pleasant farce is that of ‘High Life Below Stairs!’ What a careless life do the domestics of the Great lead! For, not to speak of the reflected self-importance of their masters and mistresses, and the contempt with which they look down on the herd of mankind, they have only to eat and drink their fill, talk the scandal of the neighbourhood, laugh at the follies, or assist the intrigues of their betters, till they themselves fall in love, marry, set up a public house, (the only thing they are fit for,) and without habits of industry, resources in themselves, or self-respect, and drawing fruitless comparisons with the past, are, of all people, the most miserable! Service is no inheritance; and when it fails, there is not a more helpless, or more worthless set of devils in the world. Mr. C—— used to say he should like to be a footman to some elderly lady of quality, to carry her prayer-book to church, and place her cassock right for her. There can be no doubt that this would have been better, and quite as useful as the life he has led, dancing attendance on Prejudice, but flirting with Paradox in such a way as to cut himself out of the old lady’s will. For my part, if I had to choose, I should prefer the service of a young mistress, and might share the fate of the footman recorded in heroic verse by 134Lady Wortley Montagu. Certainly it can be no hard duty, though a sort of forlorn hope, to have to follow three sisters, or youthful friends, (resembling the three Graces,) at a slow pace, and with grave demeanour, from Cumberland Gate to Kensington Gardens—to be there shut out, a privation enhancing the privilege, and making the sense of distant, respectful, idolatrous admiration more intense—and then, after a brief interval lost in idle chat, or idler reverie, to have to follow them back again, observing, not observed, to keep within call, to watch every gesture, to see the breeze play with the light tresses or lift the morning robe aside, to catch the half-suppressed laugh, and hear the low murmur of indistinct words and wishes, like the music of the spheres. An amateur footman would seem a more rational occupation than that of an amateur author, or an amateur artist. An insurmountable barrier, if it excludes passion, does not banish sentiment, but draws an atmosphere of superstitious, trembling apprehension round the object of so much attention and respect; nothing makes women seem so much like angels as always to see, never to converse with them; and those whom we have to dangle a cane after must, to a lacquey of any spirit, appear worthy to wield sceptres.

But of all situations of this kind, the most enviable is that of a lady’s maid in a family travelling abroad. In the obtuseness of foreigners to the nice gradations of English refinement and manners, the maid has not seldom a chance of being taken for the mistress—a circumstance never to be forgot! See our Abigail mounted in the dicky with my Lord, or John, snug and comfortable—setting out on the grand tour as fast as four horses can carry her, whirled over the ‘vine-covered hills and gay regions of France,’ crossing the Alps and Apennines in breathless terror and wonder—frightened at a precipice, laughing at her escape—coming to the inn, going into the kitchen to see what is to be had—not speaking a word of the language, except what she picks up, ‘as pigeons pick up peas:‘—the bill paid, the passport visé, the horses put to, and au route again—seeing every thing, and understanding nothing, in a full tide of health, fresh air, and animal spirits, and without one qualm of taste or sentiment, and arriving at Florence, the city of palaces, with its amphitheatre of hills and olives, without suspecting that such a person as Boccacio, Dante, or Galileo, had ever lived there, while her young mistress is puzzled with the varieties of the Tuscan dialect, is disappointed in the Arno, and cannot tell what to make of the statue of David by Michael Angelo, in the Great Square. The difference is, that the young lady, on her return, has something to think of; but the maid absolutely forgets every thing, and is only giddy and out of breath, as if she had been up in a balloon.

English servants abroad, notwithstanding the comforts they enjoy, and although travelling as it were en famille, must be struck with the ease and familiar footing on which foreigners live with their domestics, compared with the distance and reserve with which they are treated. The housemaid (la bonne) sits down in the room, or walks abreast with you in the street; and the valet who waits behind his master’s chair at table, gives Monsieur his advice or opinion without being asked for it. We need not wonder at this familiarity and freedom, when we consider that those who allowed it could (formerly at least, when the custom began) send those who transgressed but in the smallest degree to the Bastille or the galleys at their pleasure. The licence was attended with perfect impunity. With us the law leaves less to discretion; and by interposing a real independence (and plea of right) between the servant and master, does away with the appearance of it on the surface of manners. The insolence and tyranny of the Aristocracy fell more on the tradespeople and mechanics than on their domestics, who were attached to them by a semblance of feudal ties. Thus an upstart lady of quality (an imitator of the old school) would not deign to speak to a milliner while fitting on her dress, but gave her orders to her waiting-women to tell her what to do. Can we wonder at twenty reigns of terror to efface such a feeling?

I have alluded to the inclination in servants in great houses to ape the manners of their superiors, and to their sometimes succeeding. What facilitates the metamorphosis is, that the Great, in their character of courtiers, are a sort of footmen in their turn. There is the same crouching to interest and authority in either case, with the same surrender or absence of personal dignity—the same submission to the trammels of outward form, with the same suppression of inward impulses—the same degrading finery, the same pretended deference in the eye of the world, and the same lurking contempt from being admitted behind the scenes, the same heartlessness, and the same eye-service—in a word, they are alike puppets governed by motives not their own, machines made of coarser or finer materials. It is not, therefore, surprising, if the most finished courtier of the day cannot, by a vulgar eye, be distinguished from a gentleman’s servant. M. de Bausset, in his amusing and excellent Memoirs, makes it an argument of the legitimacy of Napoleon’s authority, that from denying it, it would follow that his lords of the bed-chamber were valets, and he himself (as prefect of the palace) no better than head-cook. 136The inference is logical enough. According to the author’s view, there was no other difference between the retainers of the court and the kitchen than the rank of the master!

I remember hearing it said that ‘all men were equal but footmen.’ But of all footmen the lowest class is literary footmen. These consist of persons who, without a single grain of knowledge, taste, or feeling, put on the livery of learning, mimic its phrases by rote, and are retained in its service by dint of quackery and assurance alone. As they have none of the essence, they have all the externals of men of gravity and wisdom. They wear green spectacles, walk with a peculiar strut, thrust themselves into the acquaintance of persons they hear talked of, get introduced into the clubs, are seen reading books they do not understand at the Museum and public libraries, dine (if they can) with lords or officers of the Guards, abuse any party as low to show what fine gentlemen they are, and the next week join the same party to raise their own credit and gain a little consequence, give themselves out as wits, critics, and philosophers (and as they have never done any thing, no man can contradict them), and have a great knack of turning editors, and not paying their contributors. If you get five pounds from one of them, he never forgives it. With the proceeds thus appropriated, the book-worm graduates a dandy, hires expensive apartments, sports a tandem, and it is inferred that he must be a great author who can support such an appearance with his pen, and a great genius who can conduct so many learned works while his time is devoted to the gay, the fair, and the rich. This introduces him to new editorships, to new and more select friendships, and to more frequent and importunate demands from debts and duns. At length the bubble bursts and disappears, and you hear no more of our classical adventurer, except from the invectives and self-reproaches of those who took him for a great scholar from his wearing green spectacles and Wellington-boots. Such a candidate for literary honours bears the same relation to the man of letters, that the valet with his second-hand finery and servile airs does to his master.

The Monthly Magazine.] [January, 1827.

It is hard to be without money. To get on without it is like travelling in a foreign country without a passport—you are stopped, suspected, and made ridiculous at every turn, besides being subjected to the most serious inconveniences. The want of money I here allude to is not altogether that which arises from absolute poverty—where 137there is a downright absence of the common necessaries of life, this must be remedied by incessant hard labour, and the least we can receive in return is a supply of our daily wants—but that uncertain, casual, precarious mode of existence, in which the temptation to spend remains after the means are exhausted, the want of money joined with the hope and possibility of getting it, the intermediate state of difficulty and suspense between the last guinea or shilling and the next that we may have the good luck to encounter. This gap, this unwelcome interval constantly recurring, however shabbily got over, is really full of many anxieties, misgivings, mortifications, meannesses, and deplorable embarrassments of every description. I may attempt (this essay is not a fanciful speculation) to enlarge upon a few of them.

It is hard to go without one’s dinner through sheer distress, but harder still to go without one’s breakfast. Upon the strength of that first and aboriginal meal, one may muster courage to face the difficulties before one, and to dare the worst: but to be roused out of one’s warm bed, and perhaps a profound oblivion of care, with golden dreams (for poverty does not prevent golden dreams), and told there is nothing for breakfast, is cold comfort for which one’s half-strung nerves are not prepared, and throws a damp upon the prospects of the day. It is a bad beginning. A man without a breakfast is a poor creature, unfit to go in search of one, to meet the frown of the world, or to borrow a shilling of a friend. He may beg at the corner of a street—nothing is too mean for the tone of his feelings—robbing on the highway is out of the question, as requiring too much courage, and some opinion of a man’s self. It is, indeed, as old Fuller, or some worthy of that age, expresses it, ‘the heaviest stone which melancholy can throw at a man,’ to learn, the first thing after he rises in the morning, or even to be dunned with it in bed, that there is no loaf, tea, or butter in the house, and that the baker, the grocer, and butterman have refused to give any farther credit. This is taking one sadly at a disadvantage. It is striking at one’s spirit and resolution in their very source,—the stomach—it is attacking one on the side of hunger and mortification at once; it is casting one into the very mire of humility and Slough of Despond. The worst is, to know what face to put upon the matter, what excuse to make to the servants, what answer to send to the tradespeople; whether to laugh it off, or be grave, or angry, or indifferent; in short, to know how to parry off an evil which you cannot help. What a luxury, what a God’s-send in such a dilemma, to find a half-crown which had slipped through a hole in the lining of your waistcoat, a crumpled bank-note in your breeches-pocket, or a guinea clinking in the bottom of your trunk, which had 138been thoughtlessly left there out of a former heap! Vain hope! Unfounded illusion! The experienced in such matters know better, and laugh in their sleeves at so improbable a suggestion. Not a corner, not a cranny, not a pocket, not a drawer has been left unrummaged, or has not been subjected over and over again to more than the strictness of a custom-house scrutiny. Not the slightest rustle of a piece of bank-paper, not the gentlest pressure of a piece of hard metal, but would have given notice of its hiding-place with electrical rapidity, long before, in such circumstances. All the variety of pecuniary resources which form a legal tender on the current coin of the realm, are assuredly drained, exhausted to the last farthing before this time. But is there nothing in the house that one can turn to account! Is there not an old family-watch, or piece of plate, or a ring, or some worthless trinket that one could part with? nothing belonging to one’s-self or a friend, that one could raise the wind upon, till something better turns up? At this moment an old clothes-man passes, and his deep, harsh tones sound like an intended insult on one’s distress, and banish the thought of applying for his assistance, as one’s eye glanced furtively at an old hat or a great coat, hung up behind a closet-door. Humiliating contemplations! Miserable uncertainty! One hesitates, and the opportunity is gone by; for without one’s breakfast, one has not the resolution to do any thing!—The late Mr. Sheridan was often reduced to this unpleasant predicament. Possibly he had little appetite for breakfast himself; but the servants complained bitterly on this head, and said that Mrs. Sheridan was sometimes kept waiting for a couple of hours, while they had to hunt through the neighbourhood, and beat up for coffee, eggs, and French rolls. The same perplexity in this instance appears to have extended to the providing for the dinner; for so sharp-set were they, that to cut short a debate with a butcher’s apprentice about leaving a leg of mutton without the money, the cook clapped it into the pot: the butcher’s boy, probably used to such encounters, with equal coolness took it out again, and marched off with it in his tray in triumph. It required a man to be the author of The School for Scandal, to run the gauntlet of such disagreeable occurrences every hour of the day. There was one comfort, however, that poor Sheridan had: he did not foresee that Mr. Moore would write his Life!^[26]

139The going without a dinner is another of the miseries of wanting money, though one can bear up against this calamity better than the 140former, which really ‘blights the tender blossom and promise of the day.’ With one good meal, one may hold a parley with hunger and moralize upon temperance. One has time to turn one’s-self and look about one—to ‘screw one’s courage to the sticking-place,’ to graduate the scale of disappointment, and stave off appetite till supper-time. You gain time, and time in this weather-cock world is everything. You may dine at two, or at six, or seven—as most convenient. You may in the meanwhile receive an invitation to dinner, or some one (not knowing how you are circumstanced) may send you a present of a haunch of venison or a brace of pheasants from the country, or a distant relation may die and leave you a legacy, or a patron may call and overwhelm you with his smiles and bounty,

or there is no saying what may happen. One may wait for dinner—breakfast admits of no delay, of no interval interposed between that and our first waking thoughts.^[27] Besides, there are shifts and devices, shabby and mortifying enough, but still available in case of need. 141How many expedients are there in this great city (London), time out of mind and times without number, resorted to by the dilapidated and thrifty speculator, to get through this grand difficulty without utter failure! One may dive into a cellar, and dine on boiled beef and carrots for tenpence, with the knives and forks chained to the table, and jostled by greasy elbows that seem to make such a precaution not unnecessary (hunger is proof against indignity!)—or one may contrive to part with a superfluous article of wearing apparel, and carry home a mutton-chop and cook it in a garret; or one may drop in at a friend’s at the dinner-hour, and be asked to stay or not; or one may walk out and take a turn in the Park, about the time, and return home to tea, so as at least to avoid the sting of the evil—the appearance of not having dined. You then have the laugh on your side, having deceived the gossips, and can submit to the want of a sumptuous repast without murmuring, having saved your pride, and made a virtue of necessity. I say all this may be done by a man without a family (for what business has a man without money with one?—See English Malthus and Scotch Macculloch)—and it is only my intention here to bring forward such instances of the want of money as are tolerable both in theory and practice. I once lived on coffee (as an experiment) for a fortnight together, while I was finishing the copy of a half-length portrait of a Manchester manufacturer, who had died worth a plum. I rather slurred over the coat, which was a reddish brown, ‘of formal cut,’ to receive my five guineas, with which I went to market myself, and dined on sausages and mashed potatoes, and while they were getting ready, and I could hear them hissing in the pan, read a volume of Gil Blas, containing the account of the fair Aurora. This was in the days of my youth. Gentle reader, do not smile! Neither Monsieur de Very, nor Louis XVIII., over an oyster-pâté, nor Apicius himself, ever understood the meaning of the word luxury, better than I did at that moment! If the want of money has its drawbacks and disadvantages, it is not without its contrasts and counterbalancing effects, for which I fear nothing else can make us amends. Amelia’s hashed mutton is immortal; and there is something amusing, though carried to excess and caricature (which is very unusual with the author) in the contrivances of old Caleb, in ‘The Bride of Lammermuir,’ for raising the wind at breakfast, dinner, and supper-time. I recollect a ludicrous instance of a disappointment in a dinner which happened to a person of my acquaintance some years ago. He was not only poor but a very poor creature, as will be imagined. His wife had laid by fourpence (their whole remaining stock) to pay for the baking of a shoulder of mutton and potatoes, which they had in the house, and on her return home 142from some errand, she found he had expended it in purchasing a new string for a guitar. On this occasion a witty friend quoted the lines from Milton:

Defoe, in his Life of Colonel Jack, gives a striking picture of his young beggarly hero sitting with his companion for the first time in his life at a three-penny ordinary, and the delight with which he relished the hot smoking soup, and the airs with which he called about him—‘and every time,’ he says, ‘we called for bread, or beer, or whatever it might be, the waiter answered, “coming, gentlemen, coming;” and this delighted me more than all the rest!’ It was about this time, as the same pithy author expresses it, ‘the Colonel took upon him to wear a shirt!’ Nothing can be finer than the whole of the feeling conveyed in the commencement of this novel, about wealth and finery from the immediate contrast of privation and poverty. One would think it a labour, like the Tower of Babel, to build up a beau and a fine gentleman about town. The little vagabond’s admiration of the old man at the banking-house, who sits surrounded by heaps of gold as if it were a dream or poetic vision, and his own eager anxious visits, day by day, to the hoard he had deposited in the hollow tree, are in the very foremost style of truth and nature. See the same intense feeling expressed in Luke’s address to his riches in the City Madam, and in the extraordinary raptures of the ‘Spanish Rogue’ in contemplating and hugging his ingots of pure gold and Spanish pieces of eight: to which Mr. Lamb has referred in excuse for the rhapsodies of some of our elder poets on this subject, which to our present more refined and tamer apprehensions sound like blasphemy.^[28] In earlier times, before the diffusion of luxury, of knowledge, and other sources of enjoyment had become common, and acted as a diversion to the cravings of avarice, the passionate admiration, the idolatry, the hunger and thirst of wealth and all its precious symbols, was a kind of madness or hallucination, and Mammon was truly worshipped as a god!

It is among the miseries of the want of money, not to be able to pay your reckoning at an inn—or, if you have just enough to do that, to have nothing left for the waiter;—to be stopped at a turnpike gate, and forced to turn back;—not to venture to call a hackney-coach in a shower of rain—(when you have only one shilling left yourself, it is a bore to have it taken out of your pocket by a friend, 143who comes into your house eating peaches in a hot summer’s day, and desiring you to pay for the coach in which he visits you);—not to be able to purchase a lottery-ticket, by which you might make your fortune, and get out of all your difficulties;—or to find a letter lying for you at a country post-office, and not to have money in your pocket to free it, and be obliged to return for it the next day. The letter so unseasonably withheld may be supposed to contain money, and in this case there is a foretaste, a sort of actual possession taken through the thin folds of the paper and the wax, which in some measure indemnifies us for the delay: the bank-note, the post-bill seems to smile upon us, and shake hands through its prison bars;—or it may be a love-letter, and then the tantalization is at its height: to be deprived in this manner of the only consolation that can make us amends for the want of money, by this very want—to fancy you can see the name—to try to get a peep at the hand-writing—to touch the seal, and yet not dare to break it open—is provoking indeed—the climax of amorous and gentlemanly distress. Players are sometimes reduced to great extremity, by the seizure of their scenes and dresses, or (what is called) the property of the theatre, which hinders them from acting; as authors are prevented from finishing a work, for want of money to buy the books necessary to be consulted on some material point or circumstance, in the progress of it. There is a set of poor devils, who live upon a printed prospectus of a work that never will be written, for which they solicit your name and half-a-crown. Decayed actresses take an annual benefit at one of the theatres; there are patriots who live upon periodical subscriptions, and critics who go about the country lecturing on poetry. I confess I envy none of these; but there are persons who, provided they can live, care not how they live—who are fond of display, even when it implies exposure; who court notoriety under every shape, and embrace the public with demonstrations of wantonness. There are genteel beggars, who send up a well-penned epistle requesting the loan of a shilling. Your snug bachelors and retired old maids pretend they can distinguish the knock of one of these at their door. I scarce know which I dislike the most—the patronage that affects to bring premature genius into notice, or that extends its piecemeal, formal charity towards it in its decline. I hate your Literary Funds, and Funds for Decayed Artists—they are corporations for the encouragement of meanness, pretence, and insolence. Of all people, I cannot tell how it is, but players appear to me the best able to do without money. They are a privileged class. If not exempt from the common calls of necessity and business, they are enabled ‘by their so potent art’ to soar above them. As they make imaginary ills their own, real ones become 144imaginary, sit light upon them, and are thrown off with comparatively little trouble. Their life is theatrical—its various accidents are the shifting scenes of a play—rags and finery, tears and laughter, a mock-dinner or a real one, a crown of jewels or of straw, are to them nearly the same. I am sorry I cannot carry on this reasoning to actors who are past their prime. The gilding of their profession is then worn off, and shews the false metal beneath; vanity and hope (the props of their existence) have had their day; their former gaiety and carelessness serve as a foil to their present discouragements; and want and infirmities press upon them at once. ‘We know what we are,’ as Ophelia says, ‘but we know not what we shall be.’ A workhouse seems the last resort of poverty and distress—a parish-pauper is another name for all that is mean and to be deprecated in human existence. But that name is but an abstraction, an average term—‘within that lowest deep, a lower deep may open to receive us.’ I heard not long ago of a poor man, who had been for many years a respectable tradesman in London, and who was compelled to take shelter in one of those receptacles of age and wretchedness, and who said he could be contented with it—he had his regular meals, a nook in the chimney, and a coat to his back—but he was forced to lie three in a bed, and one of the three was out of his mind and crazy, and his great delight was, when the others fell asleep, to tweak their noses, and flourish his night-cap over their heads, so that they were obliged to lie awake, and hold him down between them. One should be quite mad to bear this. To what a point of insignificance may not human life dwindle! To what fine, agonizing threads will it not cling! Yet this man had been a lover in his youth, in a humble way, and still begins his letters to an old maid (his former flame), who sometimes comforts him by listening to his complaints, and treating him to a dish of weak tea, ‘My dear Miss Nancy!’

Another of the greatest miseries of a want of money, is the tap of a dun at your door, or the previous silence when you expect it—the uneasy sense of shame at the approach of your tormentor; the wish to meet, and yet to shun the encounter; the disposition to bully; the fear of irritating; the real and the sham excuses; the submission to impertinence; the assurances of a speedy supply; the disingenuousness you practise on him and on yourself; the degradation in the eyes of others and your own. Oh! it is wretched to have to confront a just and oft-repeated demand, and to be without the means to satisfy it; to deceive the confidence that has been placed in you; to forfeit your credit; to be placed at the power of another, to be indebted to his lenity; to stand convicted of having played the knave or the fool; and to have no way left to escape contempt, but by incurring pity. 145The suddenly meeting a creditor on turning the corner of a street, whom you have been trying to avoid for months, and had persuaded you were several hundred miles off, discomposes the features and shatters the nerves for some time. It is also a serious annoyance to be unable to repay a loan to a friend, who is in want of it—nor is it very pleasant to be so hard run, as to be induced to request the repayment. It is difficult to decide the preference between debts of honour and legal demands; both are bad enough, and almost a fair excuse for driving any one into the hands of money-lenders—to whom an application, if successful, is accompanied with a sense of being in the vulture’s gripe—a reflection akin to that of those who formerly sold themselves to the devil—or, if unsuccessful, is rendered doubly galling by the smooth, civil leer of cool contempt with which you are dismissed, as if they had escaped from your clutches—not you from their’s. If any thing can be added to the mortification and distress arising from straitened circumstances, it is when vanity comes in to barb the dart of poverty—when you have a picture on which you had calculated, rejected from an Exhibition, or a manuscript returned on your hands, or a tragedy damned, at the very instant when your cash and credit are at the lowest ebb. This forlorn and helpless feeling has reached its acme in the prison-scene in Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress, where his unfortunate hero has just dropped the Manager’s letter from his hands, with the laconic answer written in it:—‘Your play has been read, and won’t do.’^[29] To feel poverty is bad; but to feel it with the additional sense of our incapacity to shake it off, and that we have not merit enough to retrieve our circumstances—and, instead of being held up to admiration, are exposed to persecution and insult—is the last stage of human infirmity. My friend, Mr. Leigh Hunt (no one is better qualified than he to judge) thinks, that the most pathetic story in the world is that of Smollett’s fine gentleman and lady in gaol, who have been roughly handled by the mob for some paltry attempt at raising the wind, and she exclaims in extenuation of the pitiful figure he cuts, ‘Ah! he was a fine fellow once!’

It is justly remarked by the poet, that poverty has no greater inconvenience attached to it than that of making men ridiculous. It not only has this disadvantage with respect to ourselves, but it often shews us others in a very contemptible point of view. People are not soured by misfortune, but by the reception they meet with in it. When we do not want assistance, every one is ready to obtrude it on us, as if it were advice. If we do, they shun us instantly. They 146anticipate the increased demand on their sympathy or bounty, and escape from it as from a falling house. It is a mistake, however, that we court the society of the rich and prosperous, merely with a view to what we can get from them. We do so, because there is something in external rank and splendour that gratifies and imposes on the imagination; just as we prefer the company of those who are in good health and spirits to that of the sickly and hypochondriacal, or as we would rather converse with a beautiful woman than with an ugly one. I never knew but one man who would lend his money freely and fearlessly in spite of circumstances (if you were likely to pay him, he grew peevish, and would pick a quarrel with you). I can only account for this from a certain sanguine buoyancy and magnificence of spirit, not deterred by distant consequences, or damped by untoward appearances. I have been told by those, who shared of the same bounty, that it was not owing to generosity, but ostentation—if so, he kept his ostentation a secret from me, for I never received a hint or a look from which I could infer that I was not the lender, and he the person obliged. Neither was I expected to keep in the back-ground or play an under-part. On the contrary, I was encouraged to do my best; my dormant faculties roused, the ease of my circumstances was on condition of the freedom and independence of my mind, my lucky hits were applauded, and I was paid to shine. I am not ashamed of such patronage as this, nor do I regret any circumstance relating to it but its termination. People endure existence even in Paris: the rows of chairs on the Boulevards are gay with smiles and dress: the saloons, they say, are brilliant; at the theatre there is Mademoiselle Mars—what is all this to me? After a certain period, we live only in the past. Give me back one single evening at Boxhill, after a stroll in the deep-empurpled woods, before Buonaparte was yet beaten, ‘with wine of attic taste,’ when wit, beauty, friendship presided at the board! Oh no! Neither the time nor friends that are fled, can be recalled!—Poverty is the test of sincerity, the touchstone of civility. Even abroad, they treat you scurvily if your remittances do not arrive regularly, and though you have hitherto lived like a Milord Anglais. The want of money loses us friends not worth the keeping, mistresses who are naturally jilts or coquets; it cuts us out of society, to which dress and equipage are the only introduction; and deprives us of a number of luxuries and advantages of which the only good is, that they can only belong to the possessors of a large fortune. Many people are wretched because they have not money to buy a fine horse, or to hire a fine house, or to keep a carriage, or to purchase a diamond necklace, or to go to a race-ball, or to give their servants new liveries. 147I cannot myself enter into all this. If I can live to think, and think to live, I am satisfied. Some want to possess pictures, others to collect libraries. All I wish is, sometimes, to see the one and read the other. Gray was mortified because he had not a hundred pounds to bid for a curious library; and the Duchess of —— has immortalized herself by her liberality on that occasion, and by the handsome compliment she addressed to the poet, that ‘if it afforded him any satisfaction, she had been more than paid, by her pleasure in reading the Elegy in a Country Church-yard.’

Literally and truly, one cannot get on well in the world without money. To be in want of money, is to pass through life with little credit or pleasure; it is to live out of the world, or to be despised if you come into it; it is not to be sent for to court, or asked out to dinner, or noticed in the street; it is not to have your opinion consulted or else rejected with contempt, to have your acquirements carped at and doubted, your good things disparaged, and at last to lose the wit and the spirit to say them; it is to be scrutinized by strangers, and neglected by friends; it is to be a thrall to circumstances, an exile in a foreign land; to forego leisure, freedom, ease of body and mind, to be dependent on the good-will and caprice of others, or earn a precarious and irksome livelihood by some laborious employment: it is to be compelled to stand behind a counter, or to sit at a desk in some public office, or to marry your landlady, or not the person you would wish; or to go out to the East or West-Indies, or to get a situation as judge abroad, and return home with a liver-complaint; or to be a law-stationer, or a scrivener or scavenger, or newspaper reporter; or to read law and sit in court without a brief, or be deprived of the use of your fingers by transcribing Greek manuscripts, or to be a seal engraver and pore yourself blind; or to go upon the stage, or try some of the Fine Arts; with all your pains, anxiety, and hopes, most probably to fail, or, if you succeed, after the exertions of years, and undergoing constant distress of mind and fortune, to be assailed on every side with envy, backbiting, and falsehood, or to be a favourite with the public for awhile, and then thrown into the back-ground—or a jail, by the fickleness of taste and some new favourite; to be full of enthusiasm and extravagance in youth, of chagrin and disappointment in after-life; to be jostled by the rabble because you do not ride in your coach, or avoided by those who know your worth and shrink from it as a claim on their respect or their purse; to be a burden to your relations, or unable to do any thing for them; to be ashamed to venture into crowds; to have cold comfort at home; to lose by degrees your confidence and any talent you might possess; to grow crabbed, morose, and querulous, dissatisfied 148with every one, but most so with yourself; and plagued out of your life, to look about for a place to die in, and quit the world without any one’s asking after your will. The wiseacres will possibly, however, crowd round your coffin, and raise a monument at a considerable expense, and after a lapse of time, to commemorate your genius and your misfortunes!

The only reason why I am disposed to envy the professions of the church or army is, that men can afford to be poor in them without being subjected to insult. A girl with a handsome fortune in a country town may marry a poor lieutenant without degrading herself. An officer is always a gentleman; a clergyman is something more. Echard’s book On the Contempt of the Clergy is unfounded. It is surely sufficient for any set of individuals, raised above actual want, that their characters are not merely respectable, but sacred. Poverty, when it is voluntary, is never despicable, but takes an heroical aspect. What are the begging friars? Have they not put their base feet upon the necks of princes? Money as a luxury is valuable only as a passport to respect. It is one instrument of power. Where there are other admitted and ostensible claims to this, it becomes superfluous, and the neglect of it is even admired and looked up to as a mark of superiority over it. Even a strolling beggar is a popular character, who makes an open profession of his craft and calling, and who is neither worth a doit nor in want of one. The Scotch are proverbially poor and proud: we know they can remedy their poverty when they set about it. No one is sorry for them. The French emigrants were formerly peculiarly situated in England. The priests were obnoxious to the common people on account of their religion; both they and the nobles, for their politics. Their poverty and dirt subjected them to many rebuffs; but their privations being voluntarily incurred, and also borne with the characteristic patience and good-humour of the nation, screened them from contempt. I little thought, when I used to meet them walking out in the summer’s-evenings at Somers’ Town, in their long great coats, their beards covered with snuff, and their eyes gleaming with mingled hope and regret in the rays of the setting sun, and regarded them with pity bordering on respect, as the last filmy vestige of the ancient regime, as shadows of loyalty and superstition still flitting about the earth and shortly to disappear from it for ever, that they would one day return over the bleeding corpse of their country, and sit like harpies, a polluted triumph, over the tomb of human liberty! To be a lord, a papist, and poor, is perhaps to some temperaments a consummation devoutly to be wished. There is all the subdued splendour of external rank, the pride of self-opinion, irritated and goaded on by petty privations 149and vulgar obloquy to a degree of morbid acuteness. Private and public annoyances must perpetually remind him of what he is, of what his ancestors were (a circumstance which might otherwise be forgotten); must narrow the circle of conscious dignity more and more, and the sense of personal worth and pretension must be exalted by habit and contrast into a refined abstraction—‘pure in the last recesses of the mind’—unmixed with, or unalloyed by ‘baser matter!’—It was an hypothesis of the late Mr. Thomas Wedgwood, that there is a principle of compensation in the human mind which equalizes all situations, and by which the absence of any thing only gives us a more intense and intimate perception of the reality; that insult adds to pride, that pain looks forward to ease with delight, that hunger already enjoys the unsavoury morsel that is to save it from perishing; that want is surrounded with imaginary riches, like the poor poet in Hogarth, who has a map of the mines of Peru hanging on his garret walls; in short, that ‘we can hold a fire in our hand by thinking on the frosty Caucasus’—but this hypothesis, though ingenious and to a certain point true, is to be admitted only in a limited and qualified sense.

There are two classes of people that I have observed who are not so distinct as might be imagined—those who cannot keep their own money in their hands, and those who cannot keep their hands from other people’s. The first are always in want of money, though they do not know what they do with it. They muddle it away, without method or object, and without having any thing to show for it. They have not, for instance, a fine house, but they hire two houses at a time; they have not a hot-house in their garden, but a shrubbery within doors; they do not gamble, but they purchase a library, and dispose of it when they move house. A princely benefactor provides them with lodgings, where, for a time, you are sure to find them at home: and they furnish them in a handsome style for those who are to come after them. With all this sieve-like economy, they can only afford a leg of mutton and a bottle of wine, and are glad to get a lift in a common stage; whereas with a little management and the same disbursements, they might entertain a round of company and drive a smart tilbury. But they set no value upon money, and throw it away on any object or in any manner that first presents itself, merely to have it off their hands, so that you wonder what has become of it. The second class above spoken of not only make away with what belongs to themselves, but you cannot keep any thing you have from their rapacious grasp. If you refuse to lend them what you want, they insist that you must: if you let them have any thing to take charge of for a time (a print or a bust) they swear 150that you have given it them, and that they have too great a regard for the donor ever to part with it. You express surprise at their having run so largely in debt; but where is the singularity while others continue to lend? And how is this to be helped, when the manner of these sturdy beggars amounts to dragooning you out of your money, and they will not go away without your purse, any more than if they came with a pistol in their hand? If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power, for you necessarily feel some towards him; and since he will take no denial, you must comply with his peremptory demands, or send for a constable, which out of respect for his character you will not do. These persons are also poor—light come, light go—and the bubble bursts at last. Yet if they had employed the same time and pains in any laudable art or study that they have in raising a surreptitious livelihood, they would have been respectable, if not rich. It is their facility in borrowing money that has ruined them. No one will set heartily to work, who has the face to enter a strange house, ask the master of it for a considerable loan, on some plausible and pompous pretext, and walk off with it in his pocket. You might as well suspect a highwayman of addicting himself to hard study in the intervals of his profession.

There is only one other class of persons I can think of, in connexion with the subject of this Essay—those who are always in want of money from the want of spirit to make use of it. Such persons are perhaps more to be pitied than all the rest. They live in want, in the midst of plenty—dare not touch what belongs to them, are afraid to say that their soul is their own, have their wealth locked up from them by fear and meanness as effectually as by bolts and bars, scarcely allow themselves a coat to their backs or a morsel to eat, are in dread of coming to the parish all their lives, and are not sorry when they die, to think that they shall no longer be an expense to themselves—according to the old epigram:

The Monthly Magazine.] [March, 1827.

‘Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.’

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 every thing. To be young is to be as 151one of the Immortal Gods. One half of time indeed is flown—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.——

Death, old age, are words without a meaning, that pass by us like the idle air which we regard not. Others may have undergone, or may still be liable to them—we ‘bear a charmed life,’ which laughs to scorn all such sickly fancies. As in setting out on a delightful journey, we strain our eager gaze forward——

and see no end to the landscape, new objects presenting themselves as we advance; so, in the commencement of life, we set no bounds to our inclinations, nor to the unrestricted 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 symptoms how we shall be left behind in the natural course of things, 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 slight and our passions strong) deludes us into a belief of being immortal like it. Our short-lived connection with existence, we fondly flatter ourselves, is an indissoluble and lasting union—a honey-moon that knows neither coldness, jar, nor separation. As infants smile and sleep, we are rocked in the cradle of our wayward fancies, and lulled into security by the roar of the universe around us—we quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the more—objects press around us, filling the mind with their magnitude and with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death. From that plenitude of our being, we cannot change all at once to dust and ashes, we cannot imagine ‘this sensible, warm motion, to become a kneaded clod’—we are too much dazzled by the brightness of the waking dream around us to look into the darkness of the tomb. We no more see our end than our beginning: the one is lost in oblivion and vacancy, as the other is hid from us by the crowd and hurry of approaching events. Or the grim shadow is seen lingering in the horizon, which we are doomed never to overtake, or whose last, faint, glimmering outline touches 152upon Heaven and translates us to the skies! Nor would the hold that life has taken of us permit us to detach our thoughts from present objects and pursuits, even if we would. What is there more opposed to health, than sickness; to strength and beauty, than decay and dissolution; to the active search of knowledge than mere oblivion? Or is there none of the usual advantage to bar the approach of Death, and mock his idle threats; Hope supplies their place, and draws a veil over the abrupt termination of all our cherished schemes. While the spirit of youth remains unimpaired, ere the ‘wine of life is drank up,’ 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 passion loosens its hold upon the breast, that we by degrees become weaned from the world, and allow ourselves to contemplate, ‘as in a glass, darkly,’ the possibility of parting with it for good. The example of others, the voice of experience, has no effect upon us whatever. Casualties we must avoid: the slow and deliberate advances of age we can play at hide-and-seek with. We think ourselves too lusty and too nimble for that blear-eyed decrepid old gentleman to catch us. Like the foolish fat scullion, in Sterne, when she hears that Master Bobby is dead, our only reflection is—‘So am not I!’ The idea of death, instead of staggering our confidence, rather seems to strengthen and enhance our possession and our enjoyment of life. Others may fall around us like leaves, or be mowed down like flowers by the scythe of Time: these are but tropes and figures to the unreflecting ears and overweening presumption of youth. It is not till we see the flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy, withering around us, and our own pleasures cut up by the roots, that we bring the moral home to ourselves, that we abate something of the wanton extravagance of our pretensions, or that the emptiness and dreariness of the prospect before us reconciles us to the stillness of the grave!

Well might the poet begin his indignant invective against an art, whose professed object is its destruction, with this animated apostrophe to life. Life is indeed a strange gift, and its privileges are most miraculous. Nor is it singular that when the splendid boon is first granted us, 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 taken 153from the mighty scene that is opened to us, and we very innocently transfer its durability as well as magnificence to ourselves. So newly found, we cannot make up our minds to parting with it yet and at least put off that consideration to an indefinite term. Like a clown at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have no thoughts of going home, or that it will soon be night. We know our existence only from external objects, and we measure it by them. We can never be satisfied with gazing; and nature will still want us to look on and applaud. Otherwise, the sumptuous entertainment, ‘the feast of reason and the flow of soul,’ to which they were invited, seems little better than a mockery and a cruel insult. We do not go from a play till the scene is ended, and the lights are ready to be extinguished. But the fair face of things 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 life were a burthen to support, lets us instantly down again. Yet in that short interval, what ‘brave sublunary things’ does not the spectacle unfold; like a bubble, at one minute reflecting the universe, and the next, shook to air!—To see the golden sun and the azure sky, the outstretched ocean, to walk upon the green earth, and to be lord of a thousand creatures, to look down giddy precipices or over distant flowery vales, to see the world spread out under one’s finger in a map, to bring the stars near, to view the smallest insects in a microscope, to read history, and witness the revolutions of empires and the succession of generations, to hear of the glory of Sidon and Tyre, of Babylon and Susa, as of a faded pageant, and to say all these were, and are now nothing, to think that we exist in such a point of time, and in such a corner of space, to be at once spectators and a part of the moving scene, to watch the return of the seasons, of spring and autumn, to hear

to traverse desert wildernesses, to listen to the midnight choir, to visit lighted halls, or plunge into the dungeon’s gloom, or sit in crowded theatres and see life itself mocked, to feel heat and cold, pleasure and pain, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, to study the works of art and refine the sense of beauty to agony, to worship fame and to dream of immortality, to have read Shakspeare and belong to the same species as Sir Isaac Newton;^[31] to be and to do all this, and then in a 154moment to be nothing, to have it all snatched from one like a juggler’s ball or a phantasmagoria; there is something revolting and incredible to sense in the transition, and no wonder that, aided by youth and warm blood, and the flush of enthusiasm, the mind contrives for a long time to reject it with disdain and loathing as a monstrous and improbable fiction, like a monkey on a house-top, that is loath, amidst its fine discoveries and specious antics, to be tumbled headlong into the street, and crushed to atoms, the sport and laughter of the multitude!

The change, from the commencement to the close of life, appears like a fable, after it has taken place; how should we treat it otherwise than as a chimera before it has come to pass? There are some things that happened so long ago, places or persons we have formerly 155seen, of which such dim traces remain, we hardly know whether it was sleeping or waking they occurred; they are like dreams within the dream of life, a mist, a film before the eye of memory, which, as we try to recall them more distinctly, elude our notice altogether. It is but natural that the lone interval that we thus look back upon, should have appeared long and endless in prospect. There are others so distinct and fresh, they seem but of yesterday—their very vividness might be deemed a pledge of their permanence. Then, however far back our impressions may go, we find others still older (for our years are multiplied in youth); descriptions of scenes that we had read, and people before our time, Priam and the Trojan war; and even then, Nestor was old and dwelt delighted on his youth, and 156spoke of the race, of heroes that were no more;—what wonder that, seeing this long line of being pictured in our minds, and reviving as it were in us, we should give ourselves involuntary credit for an indeterminate period of existence? In the Cathedral at Peterborough there is a monument to Mary, Queen of Scots, at which I used to gaze when a boy, while the events of the period, all that had happened since, passed in review before me. If all this mass of feeling and imagination could be crowded into a moment’s compass, what might not the whole of life be supposed to contain? We are heirs of the past; we count upon the future as our natural reversion. Besides, there are some of our early impressions so exquisitely tempered, it appears that they must always last—nothing can add to or take away from their sweetness and purity—the first breath of spring, the hyacinth dipped in the dew, the mild lustre of the evening-star, the rainbow after a storm—while we have the full enjoyment of these, we must be young; and what can ever alter us in this respect? Truth, friendship, love, books, are also proof against the canker of time; and while we live, but for them, we can never grow old. We take out a new lease of existence from the objects on which we set our affections, and become abstracted, impassive, immortal in them. We cannot conceive how certain sentiments should ever decay or grow cold in our breasts; and, consequently, to maintain them in their first youthful glow and vigour, the flame of life must continue to burn as bright as ever, or rather, they are the fuel that feed the sacred lamp, that kindle ‘the purple light of love,’ and spread a golden cloud around our heads! Again, we not only flourish and survive in our affections (in which we will not listen to the possibility of a change, any more than we foresee the wrinkles on the brow of a mistress), but we have a farther guarantee against the thoughts of death in our favourite studies and pursuits, and in their continual advance. Art we know is long; life, we feel, should be so too. We see no end of the difficulties we have to encounter: perfection is slow of attainment, and we must have time to accomplish it in. Rubens complained that when he had just learnt his art, he was snatched away from it: we trust we shall be more fortunate! A wrinkle in an old head takes whole days to finish it properly: but to catch ‘the Raphael grace, the Guido air,’ no limit should be put to our endeavours. What a prospect for the future! What a task we have entered upon! and shall we be arrested in the middle of it? We do not reckon our time thus employed lost, or our pains thrown away, or our progress slow—we do not droop or grow tired, but ‘gain new vigour at our endless task;‘—and shall Time grudge us the opportunity to finish what we have auspiciously begun, and have formed a sort of compact 157with nature to achieve? The fame of the great names we look up to is also imperishable; and shall not we, who contemplate it with such intense yearnings, imbibe a portion of ethereal fire, the divinæ particula auræ, which nothing can extinguish? I remember to have looked at a print of Rembrandt for hours together, without being conscious of the flight of time, trying to resolve it into its component parts, to connect its strong and sharp gradations, to learn the secret of its reflected lights, and found neither satiety nor pause in the prosecution of my studies. The print over which I was poring would last long enough; why should the idea in my mind, which was finer, more impalpable, perish before it? At this, I redoubled the ardour of my pursuit, and by the very subtlety and refinement of my inquiries, seemed to bespeak for them an exemption from corruption and the rude grasp of Death.^[32]

Objects, on our first acquaintance with them, have that singleness and integrity of impression that it seems as if nothing could destroy or obliterate them, so firmly are they stamped and rivetted on the brain. We repose on them with a sort of voluptuous indolence, in full faith and boundless confidence. We are absorbed in the present moment, or return to the same point—idling away a great deal of time in youth, thinking we have enough and to spare. There is often a local feeling in the air, which is as fixed as if it were of marble; we loiter in dim cloisters, losing ourselves in thought and in their glimmering arches; a winding road before us seems as long as the journey of life, and as full of events. Time and experience dissipate this illusion; and by reducing them to detail, circumscribe the limits of our expectations. It is only as the pageant of life passes by and the masques turn their backs upon us, that we see through the deception, or believe that the train will have an end. In many cases, the slow progress and monotonous texture of our lives, before we mingle with the world and are embroiled in its affairs, has a tendency to aid the same feeling. We have a difficulty, when left to ourselves, and without the resource of books or some more lively pursuit, to ‘beguile the slow and creeping hours of time,’ and argue that if it moves on always at this tedious snail’s-pace, it can never come to an end. We are willing to skip over certain portions of it that separate us from favourite objects, that irritate ourselves at the unnecessary delay. The young are prodigal of life from a superabundance of it; the old are tenacious on the same score, because they have little left, and cannot enjoy even what remains of it.

For my part, I set out in life with the French Revolution, and 158that event had considerable influence on my early feelings, as on those of others. Youth was then doubly such. It was the dawn of a new era, a new impulse had been given to men’s minds, and the sun of Liberty rose upon the sun of Life in the same day, and both were proud to run their race together. Little did I dream, while my first hopes and wishes went hand in hand with those of the human race, that long before my eyes should close, that dawn would be overcast, and set once more in the night of despotism—‘total eclipse!’ Happy that I did not. I felt for years, and during the best part of my existence, heart-whole in that cause, and triumphed in the triumphs over the enemies of man! At that time, while the fairest aspirations of the human mind seemed about to be realized, ere the image of man was defaced and his breast mangled in scorn, philosophy took a higher, poetry could afford a deeper range. At that time, to read the ‘Robbers,’ was indeed delicious, and to hear

could be borne only amidst the fulness of hope, the crash of the fall of the strong holds of power, and the exulting sounds of the march of human freedom. What feelings the death-scene in Don Carlos sent into the soul! In that headlong career of lofty enthusiasm, and the joyous opening of the prospects of the world and our own, the thought of death crossing it, smote doubly cold upon the mind; there was a stifling sense of oppression and confinement, an impatience of our present knowledge, a desire to grasp the whole of our existence in one strong embrace, to sound the mystery of life and death, and in order to put an end to the agony of doubt and dread, to burst through our prison-house, and confront the King of Terrors in his grisly palace!... As I was writing out this passage, my miniature-picture when a child lay on the mantle-piece, and I took it out of the case to look at it. I could perceive few traces of myself in it; but there was the same placid brow, the dimpled mouth, the same timid, inquisitive glance as ever. But its careless smile did not seem to reproach me with having become a recreant to the sentiments that were then sown in my mind, or with having written a sentence that could call up a blush in this image of ingenuous youth!

‘That time is past with all its giddy raptures.’ Since the future was barred to my progress, I have turned for consolation to the past, gathering up the fragments of my early recollections, and putting them into a form that might live. It is thus, that when we find our personal and substantial identity vanishing from us, we strive to gain a reflected and substituted one in our thoughts: we do not like to 159perish wholly, and wish to bequeath our names at least to posterity. As long as we can keep alive our cherished thoughts and nearest interests in the minds of others, we do not appear to have retired altogether from the stage, we still occupy a place in the estimation of mankind, exercise a powerful influence over them, and it is only our bodies that are trampled into dust or dispersed to air. Our darling speculations still find favour and encouragement, and we make as good a figure in the eyes of our descendants, nay, perhaps, a better than we did in our lifetime. This is one point gained; the demands of our self-love are so far satisfied. Besides, if by the proofs of intellectual superiority we survive ourselves in this world, by exemplary virtue or unblemished faith, we are taught to ensure an interest in another and a higher state of being, and to anticipate at the same time the applauses of men and angels.

As we advance in life, we acquire a keener sense of the value of time. Nothing else, indeed, seems of any consequence; and we become misers in this respect. We try to arrest its few last tottering steps, and to make it linger on the brink of the grave. We can never leave off wondering how that which has ever been should cease to be, and would still live on, that we may wonder at our own shadow, and when ‘all the life of life is flown,’ dwell on the retrospect of the past. This is accompanied by a mechanical tenaciousness of whatever we possess, by a distrust and a sense of fallacious hollowness in all we see. Instead of the full, pulpy feeling of youth, every thing is flat and insipid. The world is a painted witch, that puts us off with false shews and tempting appearances. The ease, the jocund gaiety, the unsuspecting security of youth are fled: nor can we, without flying in the face of common sense,

If we can slip out of the world without notice or mischance, can tamper with bodily infirmity, and frame our minds to the becoming composure of still-life, before we sink into total insensibility, it is as much as we ought to expect. We do not in the regular course of nature die all at once: we have mouldered away gradually long before; faculty after faculty, attachment after attachment, we are torn from ourselves piecemeal while living; year after year takes something from us; and death only consigns the last remnant of what we were to the grave. The revulsion is not so great, and a quiet 160euthanasia is a winding-up of the plot, that is not out of reason or nature.

That we should thus in a manner outlive ourselves, and dwindle imperceptibly into nothing, is not surprising, when even in our prime the strongest impressions leave so little traces of themselves behind, and the last object is driven out by the succeeding one. How little effect is produced on us at any time by the books we have read, the scenes we have witnessed, the sufferings we have gone through! Think only of the variety of feelings we experience in reading an interesting romance, or being present at a fine play—what beauty, what sublimity, what soothing, what heart-rending emotions! You would suppose these would last for ever, or at least subdue the mind to a correspondent tone and harmony—while we turn over the page, while the scene is passing before us, it seems as if nothing could ever after shake our resolution, that ‘treason domestic, foreign levy, nothing could touch us farther!’ The first splash of mud we get, on entering the street, the first pettifogging shop-keeper that cheats us out of twopence, and the whole vanishes clean out of our remembrance, and we become the idle prey of the most petty and annoying circumstances. The mind soars by an effort to the grand and lofty: it is at home, in the grovelling, the disagreeable, and the little. This happens in the height and hey-day of our existence, when novelty gives a stronger impulse to the blood and takes a faster hold of the brain, (I have known the impression on coming out of a gallery of pictures then last half a day)—as we grow old, we become more feeble and querulous, every object ‘reverbs its own hollowness,’ and both worlds are not enough to satisfy the peevish importunity and extravagant presumption of our desires! There are a few superior, happy beings, who are born with a temper exempt from every trifling annoyance. This spirit sits serene and smiling as in its native skies, and a divine harmony (whether heard or not) plays around them. This is to be at peace. Without this, it is in vain to fly into deserts, or to build a hermitage on the top of rocks, if regret and ill-humour follow us there: and with this, it is needless to make the experiment. The only true retirement is that of the heart; the only true leisure is the repose of the passions. To such persons it makes little difference whether they are young or old; and they die as they have lived, with graceful resignation.

The Monthly Magazine.] [July, 1827.

‘And what of this new book, that the whole world make such a rout about?’—Sterne.

I cannot understand the rage manifested by the greater part of the world for reading New Books. If the public had read all those that have gone before, I can conceive how they should not wish to read the same work twice over; but when I consider the countless volumes that lie unopened, unregarded, unread, and unthought-of, I cannot enter into the pathetic complaints that I hear made, that Sir Walter writes no more—that the press is idle—that Lord Byron is dead. If I have not read a book before, it is, to all intents and purposes, new to me, whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago. If it be urged that it has no modern, passing incidents, and is out of date and old-fashioned, then it is so much the newer; it is farther removed from other works that I have lately read, from the familiar routine of ordinary life, and makes so much more addition to my knowledge. But many people would as soon think of putting on old armour, as of taking up a book not published within the last month, or year at the utmost. There is a fashion in reading as well as in dress, which lasts only for the season. One would imagine that books were, like women, the worse for being old;^[33] that they have a pleasure in being read for the first time; that they open their leaves more cordially; that the spirit of enjoyment wears out with the spirit of novelty; and that, after a certain age, it is high time to put them on the shelf. This conceit seems to be followed up in practice. What is it to me that another—that hundreds or thousands have in all ages read a work? Is it on this account the less likely to give me pleasure, because it has delighted so many others? Or can I taste this pleasure by proxy? Or am I in any degree the wiser for their knowledge? Yet this might appear to be the inference. Their having read the work may be said to act upon us by sympathy, and the knowledge which so many other persons have of its contents deadens our curiosity and interest altogether. We set aside the subject as one on which others have made up their minds for us (as if we really could have ideas in their heads), and are quite on the alert for the next new work, teeming hot from the press, which we shall be the first to read, criticise, and pass an opinion on. Oh, 162delightful! To cut open the leaves, to inhale the fragrance of the scarcely dry paper, to examine the type, to see who is the printer (which is some clue to the value that is set upon the work), to launch out into regions of thought and invention never trod till now, and to explore characters that never met a human eye before—this is a luxury worth sacrificing a dinner-party, or a few hours of a spare morning to. Who, indeed, when the work is critical and full of expectation, would venture to dine out, or to face a coterie of bluestockings in the evening, without having gone through this ordeal, or at least without hastily turning over a few of the first pages, while dressing, to be able to say that the beginning does not promise much, or to tell the name of the heroine?

A new work is something in our power: we mount the bench, and sit in judgment on it: we can damn or recommend it to others at pleasure, can decry or extol it to the skies, and can give an answer to those who have not yet read it and expect an account of it; and thus shew our shrewdness and the independence of our taste before the world have had time to form an opinion. If we cannot write ourselves, we become, by busying ourselves about it, a kind of accessaries after the fact. Though not the parent of the bantling that ‘has just come into this breathing world, scarce half made up,’ without the aid of criticism and puffing, yet we are the gossips and foster-nurses on the occasion, with all the mysterious significance and self-importance of the tribe. If we wait, we must take our report from others; if we make haste, we may dictate our’s to them. It is not a race, then, for priority of information, but for precedence in tattling and dogmatising. The work last out is the first that people talk and inquire about. It is the subject on the tapis—the cause that is pending. It is the last candidate for success (other claims have been disposed of), and appeals for this success to us, and us alone. Our predecessors can have nothing to say to this question, however they may have anticipated us on others; future ages, in all probability, will not trouble their heads about it; we are the panel. How hard, then, not to avail ourselves of our immediate privilege to give sentence of life or death—to seem in ignorance of what every one else is full of—to be behind-hand with the polite, the knowing, and fashionable part of mankind—to be at a loss and dumb-founded, when all around us are in their glory, and figuring away, on no other ground than that of having read a work that we have not! Books that are to be written hereafter cannot be criticised by us; those that were written formerly have been criticised long ago: but a new book is the property, the prey of ephemeral criticism, which it darts triumphantly upon; there is a raw thin air of ignorance and uncertainty about it, 163not filled up by any recorded opinion; and curiosity, impertinence, and vanity rush eagerly into the vacuum. A new book is the fair field for petulance and coxcombry to gather laurels in—the butt set up for roving opinion to aim at. Can we wonder, then, that the circulating libraries are besieged by literary dowagers and their granddaughters, when a new novel is announced? That Mail-Coach copies of the Edinburgh Review are or were coveted? That the Manuscript of the Waverley romances is sent abroad in time for the French, German, or even Italian translation to appear on the same day as the original work, so that the longing Continental public may not be kept waiting an instant longer than their fellow-readers in the English metropolis, which would be as tantalising and insupportable as a little girl being kept without her new frock, when her sister’s is just come home and is the talk and admiration of every one in the house? To be sure, there is something in the taste of the times; a modern work is expressly adapted to modern readers. It appeals to our direct experience, and to well-known subjects; it is part and parcel of the world around us, and is drawn from the same sources as our daily thoughts. There is, therefore, so far, a natural or habitual sympathy between us and the literature of the day, though this is a different consideration from the mere circumstance of novelty. An author now alive has a right to calculate upon the living public: he cannot count upon the dead, nor look forward with much confidence to those that are unborn. Neither, however, is it true that we are eager to read all new books alike: we turn from them with a certain feeling of distaste and distrust, unless they are recommended to us by some peculiar feature or obvious distinction. Only young ladies from the boarding-school, or milliners’ girls, read all the new novels that come out. It must be spoken of or against; the writer’s name must be well known or a great secret; it must be a topic of discourse and a mark for criticism—that is, it must be likely to bring us into notice in some way—or we take no notice of it. There is a mutual and tacit understanding on this head. We can no more read all the new books that appear, than we can read all the old ones that have disappeared from time to time. A question may be started here, and pursued as far as needful, whether, if an old and worm-eaten Manuscript were discovered at the present moment, it would be sought after with the same avidity as a new and hot-pressed poem, or other popular work? Not generally, certainly, though by a few with perhaps greater zeal. For it would not affect present interests, or amuse present fancies, or touch on present manners, or fall in with the public egotism in any way: it would be the work either of some obscure author—in which case it would want the principle of excitement; or 164of some illustrious name, whose style and manner would be already familiar to those most versed in the subject, and his fame established—so that, as a matter of comment and controversy, it would only go to account on the old score: there would be no room for learned feuds and heart-burnings. Was there not a Manuscript of Cicero’s talked of as having been discovered about a year ago? But we have heard no more of it. There have been several other cases, more or less in point, in our time or near it. A Noble Lord (which may serve to shew at least the interest taken in books not for being new) some time ago gave 2000l. for a copy of the first edition of the Decameron: but did he read it? It has been a fashion also of late for noble and wealthy persons to go to a considerable expense in ordering reprints of the old Chronicles and black-letter works. Does not this rather prove that the books did not circulate very rapidly or extensively, or such extraordinary patronage and liberality would not have been necessary? Mr. Thomas Taylor, at the instance, I believe, of the old Duke of Norfolk, printed fifty copies in quarto of a translation of the works of Plato and Aristotle. He did not choose that a larger impression should be struck off, lest these authors should get into the hands of the vulgar. There was no danger of a run in that way. I tried to read some of the Dialogues in the translation of Plato, but, I confess, could make nothing of it: ‘the logic was so different from ours!’^[34] A startling experiment was made on this sort of retrospective curiosity, in the case of Ireland’s celebrated Shakspeare forgery. The public there certainly manifested no backwardness nor lukewarmness: the enthusiasm was equal to the folly. But then the spirit exhibited on this occasion was partly critical and polemical, and it is a problem whether an actual and undoubted play of Shakspeare’s would have excited the same ferment; and, on the other hand, Shakspeare is an essential modern. People read and go to see his real plays, as well as his pretended ones. The fuss made 165about Ossian is another test to refer to. It was its being the supposed revival of an old work (known only by scattered fragments or lingering tradition) which gave it its chief interest, though there was also a good deal of mystery and quackery concerned along with the din and stir of national jealousy and pretension. Who reads Ossian now? It is one of the reproaches brought against Buonaparte that he was fond of it when young. I cannot for myself see the objection. There is no doubt an antiquarian spirit always at work, and opposed to the spirit of novelty-hunting; but, though opposed, it is scarcely a match for it in a general and popular point of view. It is not long ago that I happened to be suggesting a new translation of Don Quixote to an enterprising bookseller; and his answer was,—‘We want new Don Quixotes.’ I believe I deprived the same active-minded person of a night’s rest, by telling him there was the beginning of another novel by Goldsmith in existence. This, if it could be procured, would satisfy both tastes for the new and the old at once. I fear it is but a fragment, and that we must wait till a new Goldsmith appears. We may observe of late a strong craving after Memoirs and Lives of the Dead. But these, it may be remarked, savour so much of the real and familiar, that the persons described differ from us only in being dead, which is a reflection to our advantage: or, if remote and romantic in their interest and adventures, they require to be bolstered up in some measure by the embellishments of modern style and criticism. The accounts of Petrarch and Laura, of Abelard and Eloise, have a lusciousness and warmth in the subject which contrast quaintly and pointedly with the coldness of the grave; and, after all, we prefer Pope’s Eloise and Abelard with the modern dress and flourishes, to the sublime and affecting simplicity of the original Letters.

In some very just and agreeable reflections on the story of Abelard 166and Eloise, in a late number of a contemporary publication, there is a quotation of some lines from Lucan, which Eloise is said to have repeated in broken accents as she was advancing to the altar to receive the veil:

This speech, quoted by another person, on such an occasion, might seem cold and pedantic; but from the mouth of the passionate and unaffected Eloise it cannot bear that interpretation. What sounding lines! What a pomp, and yet what a familiar boldness in their application—‘proud as when blue Iris bends!’ The reading this account brought forcibly to mind what has struck me often before—the unreasonableness of the complaint we constantly hear of the ignorance and barbarism of former ages, and the folly of restricting all refinement and literary elegance to our own. We are indeed, indebted to the ages that have gone before us, and could not well do without them. But in all ages there will be found still others that have gone before with nearly equal lustre and advantage, though by distance and the intervention of multiplied excellence, this lustre may be dimmed or forgotten. Had it then no existence? We might, with the same reason, suppose that the horizon is the last boundary and verge of the round earth. Still, as we advance, it recedes from us; and so time from its store-house pours out an endless succession of the productions of art and genius; and the farther we explore the obscurity, other trophies and other landmarks rise up. It is only our ignorance that fixes a limit—as the mist gathered round the mountain’s brow makes us fancy we are treading the edge of the universe! Here was Heloise living at a period when monkish indolence and superstition were at their height—in one of those that are emphatically called the dark ages; and yet, as she is led to the altar to make her last fatal vow, expressing her feelings in language quite natural to her, but from which the most accomplished and heroic of our modern females would shrink back with pretty and affected wonder and affright. The glowing and impetuous lines which she murmured, as she passed on, with spontaneous and rising enthusiasm, were engraven on her heart, familiar to her as her daily thoughts; her mind must have been full of them to overflowing, and at the same time enriched with other stores and sources of knowledge equally elegant and impressive; and we persist, notwithstanding this and a thousand similar circumstances, 167in indulging our surprise how people could exist, and see, and feel, in those days, without having access to our opportunities and acquirements, and how Shakspeare wrote long after, in a barbarous age! The mystery in this case is of our own making. We are struck with astonishment at finding a fine moral sentiment or a noble image nervously expressed in an author of the age of Queen Elizabeth; not considering that, independently of nature and feeling, which are the same in all periods, the writers of that day, who were generally men of education and learning, had such models before them as the one that has been just referred to—were thoroughly acquainted with those masters of classic thought and language, compared with whom, in all that relates to the artificial graces of composition, the most studied of the moderns are little better than Goths and Vandals. It is true, we have lost sight of, and neglected the former, because the latter have, in a great degree, superseded them, as the elevations nearest to us intercept those farthest off; but our not availing ourselves of this vantage-ground is no reason why our forefathers should not (who had not our superfluity of choice), and most assuredly they did study and cherish the precious fragments of antiquity, collected together in their time, ‘like sunken wreck and sumless treasuries;’ and while they did this, we need be at no loss to account for any examples of grace, of force, or dignity in their writings, if these must always be traced back to a previous source. One age cannot understand how another could subsist without its lights, as one country thinks every other must be poor for want of its physical productions. This is a narrow and superficial view of the subject: we should by all means rise above it. I am not for devoting the whole of our time to the study of the classics, or of any other set of writers, to the exclusion and neglect of nature; but I think we should turn our thoughts enough that way to convince us of the existence of genius and learning before our time, and to cure us of an overweening conceit of ourselves, and of a contemptuous opinion of the world at large. Every civilised age and country (and of these there is not one, but a hundred) has its literature, its arts, its comforts, large and ample, though we may know nothing of them; nor is it (except for our own sakes) important that we should.

Books have been so multiplied in our days (like the Vanity Fair of knowledge), and we have made such progress beyond ourselves in some points, that it seems at first glance as if we had monopolised every possible advantage, and the rest of the world must be left destitute and in darkness. This is the cockneyism (with leave be it spoken) of the nineteenth century. There is a tone of smartness and piquancy in modern writing, to which former examples may, in one 168sense, appear flat and pedantic. Our allusions are more pointed and personal: the ancients are, in this respect, formal and prosaic personages. Some one, not long ago, in this vulgar, shallow spirit of criticism (which sees every thing from its own point of view), said that the tragedies of Sophocles and Æschylus were about as good as the pieces brought out at Sadler’s Wells or the Adelphi Theatre. An oration of Demosthenes is thought dry and meagre, because it is not ‘full of wise saws and modern instances:’ one of Cicero’s is objected to as flimsy and extravagant, for the same reason. There is a style in one age which does not fall in with the taste of the public in another, as it requires greater effeminacy and softness, greater severity or simplicity, greater force or refinement. Guido was more admired than Raphael in his day, because the manners were grown softer without the strength: Sir Peter Lely was thought in his to have eclipsed Vandyke—an opinion that no one holds at present: Holbein’s faces must be allowed to be very different from Sir Thomas Lawrence’s—yet the one was the favourite painter of Henry VIII., as the other is of George IV. What should we say in our time to the euphuism of the age of Elizabeth, when style was made a riddle, and the court talked in conundrums? This, as a novelty and a trial of the wits, might take for a while: afterwards, it could only seem absurd. We must always make some allowance for a change of style, which those who are accustomed to read none but works written within the last twenty years neither can nor will make. When a whole generation read, they will read none but contemporary productions. The taste for literature becomes superficial, as it becomes universal and is spread over a larger space. When ten thousand boarding-school girls, who have learnt to play on the harpsichord, are brought out in the same season, Rossini will be preferred to Mozart, as the last new composer. I remember a very genteel young couple in the boxes at Drury Lane being very much scandalised some years ago at the phrase in A New Way to Pay Old Debts—‘an insolent piece of paper’—applied to the contents of a letter—it wanted the modern lightness and indifference. Let an old book be ever so good, it treats (generally speaking) of topics that are stale in a style that has grown ‘somewhat musty;’ of manners that are exploded, probably by the very ridicule thus cast upon them; of persons that no longer figure on the stage; and of interests that have long since given place to others in the infinite fluctuations of human affairs. Longinus complains of the want of interest in the Odyssey, because it does not, like the Iliad, treat of war. The very complaint we make against the latter is that it treats of nothing else; or that, as Fuseli expresses it, every thing is seen ‘through the blaze of war.’ 169Books of devotion are no longer read (if we read Irving’s Orations, it is merely that we may go as a lounge to see the man): even attacks on religion are out of date and insipid. Voltaire’s jests, and the Jew’s Letters in answer (equal in wit, and more than equal in learning), repose quietly on the shelf together. We want something in England about Rent and the Poor Laws, and something in France about the Charter—or Lord Byron. With the attempts, however, to revive superstition and intolerance, a spirit of opposition has been excited, and Pascall’s Provincial Letters have been once more enlisted into the service. In France you meet with no one who has read the New Heloise: the Princess of Cleves is not even mentioned in these degenerate days. Is it not provoking with us to see the Beggar’s Opera cut down to two acts, because some of the allusions are too broad, and others not understood? And in America—that Van Diemen’s Land of letters—this sterling satire is hooted off the stage, because fortunately they have no such state of manners as it describes before their eyes; and because, unfortunately, they have no conception of any thing but what they see. America is singularly and awkwardly situated in this respect. It is a new country with an old language; and while every thing about them is of a day’s growth, they are constantly applying to us to know what to think of it, and taking their opinions from our books and newspapers with a strange mixture of servility and of the spirit of contradiction. They are an independent state in politics: in literature they are still a colony from us—not out of their leading strings, and strangely puzzled how to determine between the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews. We have naturalised some of their writers, who had formed themselves upon us. This is at once a compliment to them and to ourselves. Amidst the scramble and lottery for fame in the present day, besides puffing, which may be regarded as the hotbed of reputation, another mode has been attempted by transplanting it; and writers who are set down as drivellers at home, shoot up great authors on the other side of the water; pack up their all—a title-page and sufficient impudence; and a work, of which the flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication, in Shenstone’s phrase, is well known to every competent judge, is placarded into eminence, and ‘flames in the forehead of the morning sky’ on the walls of Paris or St. Petersburgh. I dare not mention the instances, but so it is. Some reputations last only while the possessors live, from which one might suppose that they gave themselves a character for genius: others are cried up by their gossiping acquaintances, as long as they give dinners, and make their houses places of polite resort; and, in general, in our time, a book may be considered to have passed the ordeal that is mentioned at all three months after it is printed. Immortality is not even a dream—a boy’s 170conceit; and posthumous fame is no more regarded by the author than by his bookseller.^[35]

This idle, dissipated turn seems to be a set-off to, or the obvious reaction of, the exclusive admiration of the ancients, which was formerly the fashion: as if the sun of human intellect rose and set at Rome and Athens, and the mind of man had never exerted itself to any purpose since. The ignorant, as well as the adept, were charmed only with what was obsolete and far-fetched, wrapped up in technical terms and in a learned tongue. Those who spoke and wrote a language which hardly any one at present even understood, must of course be wiser than we. Time, that brings so many reputations to decay, had embalmed others and rendered them sacred. From an implicit faith and overstrained homage paid to antiquity, we of the modern school have taken too strong a bias to what is new; and divide all wisdom and worth between ourselves and posterity,—not a very formidable rival to our self-love, as we attribute all its advantages to ourselves, though we pretend to owe little or nothing to our predecessors. About the time of the French Revolution, it was agreed that the world had hitherto been in its dotage or its infancy; and that Mr. Godwin, Condorcet, and others were to begin a new race of men—a new epoch in society. Every thing up to that period was to be set aside as puerile or barbarous; or, if there were any traces of thought and manliness now and then discoverable, they were to be regarded with wonder as prodigies—as irregular and fitful starts in that long sleep of reason and night of philosophy. In this liberal spirit Mr. Godwin composed an Essay, to prove that, till the publication of The Enquiry concerning Political Justice, no one knew how to write a word of common grammar, or a style that was not utterly uncouth, incongruous, and feeble. Addison, Swift, and Junius were included in this censure. The English language itself might be supposed to owe its stability and consistency, its roundness and polish, to the whirling motion of the French Revolution. Those who had gone before us were, like our grandfathers and grandmothers, decrepit, superannuated people, blind and dull; poor creatures, like flies in winter, without pith or marrow in them. The past was barren of interest—had neither thought nor object worthy to arrest our attention; and the future would be equally a senseless void, except as we projected ourselves and our theories into it. There is nothing I hate more than I do this exclusive, upstart spirit.

Neither do I see the good of it even in a personal and interested point of view. By despising all that has preceded us, we teach others to despise ourselves. Where there is no established scale nor rooted faith in excellence, all superiority—our own as well as that of others—soon comes to the ground. By applying the wrong end of the magnifying glass to all objects indiscriminately, the most respectable dwindle into insignificance, and the best are confounded with the worst. Learning, no longer supported by opinion, or genius by fame, is cast into the mire, and ‘trampled under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.’ I would rather endure the most blind and bigotted respect for great and illustrious names, than that pitiful, grovelling humour which has no pride in intellectual excellence, and no pleasure but in decrying those who have given proofs of it, and reducing them to its own level. If, with the diffusion of knowledge, we do not gain an enlargement and elevation of views, where is the benefit? If, by tearing asunder names from things, we do not leave even the name or shadow of excellence, it is better to let them remain as they were; for it is better to have something to admire than nothing—names, if not things—the shadow, if not the substance—the tinsel, if not the gold. All can now read and write equally; and, it is therefore presumed, equally well. Any thing short of this sweeping conclusion is an invidious distinction; and those who claim it for themselves or others are exclusionists in letters. Every one at least can call names—can invent a falsehood, or repeat a story against those who have galled their pragmatical pretensions by really adding to the stock of general amusement or instruction. Every one in a crowd has the power to throw dirt: nine out of ten have the inclination. It is curious that, in an age when the most universally-admitted claim to public distinction is literary merit, the attaining of this distinction is almost a sure title to public contempt and obloquy.^[36] They cry you up, because you are unknown, and do not excite their jealousy; and run you down, when they have thus distinguished you, out of envy and spleen at the very idol they have set up. A public favourite is ‘kept like an apple in the jaw of an ape—first mouthed, to be afterwards 172swallowed. When they need what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and spunge, you shall be dry again.’ At first they think only of the pleasure or advantage they receive; but, on reflection, they are mortified at the superiority implied in this involuntary concession, and are determined to be even with you the very first opportunity. What is the prevailing spirit of modern literature? To defame men of letters. What are the publications that succeed? Those that pretend to teach the public that the persons they have been accustomed unwittingly to look up to as the lights of the earth are no better than themselves, or a set of vagabonds or miscreants that should be hunted out of society.^[37] Hence men of letters, losing their self-respect, become government-tools, and prostitute their talents to the most infamous purposes, or turn dandy scribblers, and set up for gentlemen authors in their own defence. I like the Order of the Jesuits better than this: they made themselves respected by the laity, kept their own secret, and did not prey on one another. Resume then, oh! Learning, thy robe pontifical; clothe thyself in pride and purple; join the sacred to the profane; wield both worlds; instead of twopenny trash and mechanics’ magazines, issue bulls and decretals; say not, let there be light, but darkness visible; draw a bandage over the eyes of the ignorant and unlettered; hang the terrors of superstition and despotism over them;—and for thy pains they will bless thee: children will pull off their caps as thou dost pass; women will courtesy; the old will wipe their beards; and thou wilt rule once more over the base serving people, clowns, and nobles, with a rod of iron!

The Monthly Magazine.] [August, 1827.

Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are disagreeable to others. I do not here mean to speak of persons who offend intentionally, or are obnoxious to dislike from some palpable defect of mind or body, ugliness, pride, ill-humour, &c.,—but of those who are disagreeable in spite of themselves, and, as it might appear, with almost every qualification to recommend them to others. This want of success is owing chiefly to something in what is called their manner; and this again has its foundation in a certain cross-grained and unsociable state of feeling on their part, which influences us, perhaps, without our distinctly adverting to it. The mind is a finer instrument than we sometimes suppose it, and is not only swayed by overt acts and tangible proofs, but has an instinctive feeling of the air of truth. We find many individuals in whose company we pass our time, and have no particular fault to find with their understandings or character, and yet we are never thoroughly satisfied with them: the reason will turn out to be, upon examination, that they are never thoroughly satisfied with themselves, but uneasy and out of sorts all the time; and this makes us uneasy with them, without our reflecting on, or being able to discover the cause.

Thus, for instance, we meet with persons who do us a number of kindnesses, who shew us every mark of respect and good-will, who are friendly and serviceable,—and yet we do not feel grateful to them, after all. We reproach ourselves with this as caprice or insensibility, and try to get the better of it; but there is something in their way of doing things that prevents us from feeling cordial or sincerely obliged to them. We think them very worthy people, and would be glad of an opportunity to do them a good turn if it were in our power; but we cannot get beyond this: the utmost we can do is to save appearances, and not come to an open rupture with them. The truth is, in all such cases, we do not sympathise (as we ought) with them, because they do not sympathise (as they ought) with us. They have done what they did from a sense of duty in a cold dry manner, or from a meddlesome busybody humour; or to shew their superiority over us, or to patronise our infirmity; or they have dropped some hint by the way, or blundered upon some topic they should not, and have shewn, by one means or other, that they were occupied with any thing but the pleasure they were affording us, or a delicate attention to our feelings. Such persons may be styled friendly grievances. They are commonly people of low spirits and disappointed 174views, who see the discouraging side of human life, and, with the best intentions in the world, contrive to make every thing they have to do with uncomfortable. They are alive to your distress, and take pains to remove it; but they have no satisfaction in the gaiety and ease they have communicated, and are on the look-out for some new occasion of signalizing their zeal; nor are they backward to insinuate that you will soon have need of their assistance, to guard you against running into fresh difficulties, or to extricate you from them. From large benevolence of soul and ‘discourse of reason, looking before and after,’ they are continually reminding you of something that has gone wrong in time past, or that may do so in that which is to come, and are surprised that their awkward hints, sly inuendos, blunt questions, and solemn features do not excite all the complacency and mutual good understanding in you which it is intended that they should. When they make themselves miserable on your account, it is hard that you will not lend them your countenance and support. This deplorable humour of theirs does not hit any one else. They are useful, but not agreeable people; they may assist you in your affairs, but they depress and tyrannise over your feelings. When they have made you happy, they will not let you be so—have no enjoyment of the good they have done—will on no account part with their melancholy and desponding tone—and, by their mawkish insensibility and doleful grimaces, throw a damp over the triumph they are called upon to celebrate. They would keep you in hot water, that they may help you out of it. They will nurse you in a fit of sickness (congenial sufferers!)—arbitrate a law-suit for you, and embroil you deeper—procure you a loan of money;—but all the while they are only delighted with rubbing the sore place, and casting the colour of your mental or other disorders. ‘The whole need not a physician;’ and, being once placed at ease and comfort, they have no farther use for you as subjects for their singular beneficence, and you are not sorry to be quit of their tiresome interference. The old proverb, A friend in need is a friend indeed, is not verified in them. The class of persons here spoken of are the very reverse of summer-friends, who court you in prosperity, flatter your vanity, are the humble servants of your follies, never see or allude to any thing wrong, minister to your gaiety, smooth over every difficulty, and, with the slightest approach of misfortune or of any thing unpleasant, take French leave:—

However we may despise such triflers, yet we regret them more than those well-meaning friends on whom a dull melancholy vapour hangs, that drags them and every one about them to the ground.

Again, there are those who might be very agreeable people, if they had but spirit to be so; but there is a narrow, unaspiring, under-bred tone in all they say or do. They have great sense and information—abound in a knowledge of character—have a fund of anecdote—are unexceptionable in manners and appearance—and yet we cannot make up our minds to like them: we are not glad to see them, nor sorry when they go away. Our familiarity with them, however great, wants the principle of cement, which is a certain appearance of frank cordiality and social enjoyment. They have no pleasure in the subjects of their own thoughts, and therefore can communicate none to others. There is a dry, husky, grating manner—a pettiness of detail—a tenaciousness of particulars, however trifling or unpleasant—a disposition to cavil—an aversion to enlarged and liberal views of things—in short, a hard, painful, unbending matter-of-factness, from which the spirit and effect are banished, and the letter only is attended to, which makes it impossible to sympathise with their discourse. To make conversation interesting or agreeable, there is required either the habitual tone of good company, which gives a favourable colouring to every thing—or the warmth and enthusiasm of genius, which, though it may occasionally offend or be thrown off its guard, makes amends by its rapturous flights, and flings a glancing light upon all things. The literal and dogged style of conversation resembles that of a French picture, or its mechanical fidelity is like evidence given in a court of justice, or a police report.

From the literal to the plain-spoken, the transition is easy. The most efficient weapon of offence is truth. Those who deal in dry and repulsive matters-of-fact, tire out their friends; those who blurt out hard and home truths, make themselves mortal enemies wherever they come. There are your blunt, honest creatures, who omit no opportunity of letting you know their minds, and are sure to tell you all the ill, and conceal all the good they hear of you. They would not flatter you for the world, and to caution you against the malice of others, they think the province of a friend. This is not candour, but impudence; and yet they think it odd you are not charmed with their unreserved communicativeness of disposition. Gossips and tale-bearers, 176on the contrary, who supply the tittle-tattle of the neighbourhood, flatter you to your face, and laugh at you behind your back, are welcome and agreeable guests in all companies. Though you know it will be your turn next, yet for the sake of the immediate gratification, you are contented to pay your share of the public tax upon character, and are better pleased with the falsehoods that never reach your ears, than with the truths that others (less complaisant and more sincere) utter to your face—so short-sighted and willing to be imposed upon is our self-love! There is a man, who has the air of not being convinced without an argument: you avoid him as if he were a lion in your path. There is another, who asks you fifty questions as to the commonest things you advance: you would sooner pardon a fellow who held a pistol to your breast and demanded your money. No one regards a turnpike-keeper, or a custom-house officer, with a friendly eye: he who stops you in an excursion of fancy, or ransacks the articles of your belief obstinately and churlishly, to distinguish the spurious from the genuine, is still more your foe. These inquisitors and cross-examiners upon system make ten enemies for every controversy in which they engage. The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors. In doing them this piece of service, you make war equally on their prejudices, their interests, their pride, and indolence. You not only set up for a superiority of understanding over them, which they hate, but you deprive them of their ordinary grounds of action, their topics of discourse, of their confidence in themselves, and those to whom they have been accustomed to look up for instruction and advice. It is making children of them. You unhinge all their established opinions and trains of thought; and after leaving them in this listless, vacant, unsettled state—dissatisfied with their own notions and shocked at yours—you expect them to court and be delighted with your company, because, forsooth, you have only expressed your sincere and conscientious convictions. Mankind are not deceived by professions, unless they choose. They think that this pill of true doctrine, however it may be gilded over, is full of gall and bitterness to them; and, again, it is a maxim of which the vulgar are firmly persuaded, that plain-speaking (as it is called) is, nine parts in ten, spleen and self-opinion; and the other part, perhaps, honesty. Those who will not abate an inch in argument, and are always seeking to recover the wind of you, are, in the eye of the world, disagreeable, unconscionable people, who ought to be sent to Coventry, or left to wrangle by themselves. No persons, however, are more averse to contradiction than these same dogmatists. What shews our susceptibility on this point is, there is no flattery so adroit or effectual as that of implicit 177assent. Any one, however mean his capacity or ill-qualified to judge, who gives way to all our sentiments, and never seems to think but as we do, is indeed an alter idem—another self; and we admit him without scruple into our entire confidence, ‘yea, into our heart of hearts.’

It is the same in books. Those which, under the disguise of plain-speaking, vent paradoxes, and set their faces against the common sense of mankind, are neither ‘the volumes

nor, I fear, can it be added—

They excite a clamour and opposition at first, and are in general soon consigned to oblivion. Even if the opinions are in the end adopted, the authors gain little by it, and their names remain in their original obloquy; for the public will own no obligations to such ungracious benefactors. In like manner, there are many books written in a very delightful vein, though with little in them, and that are accordingly popular. Their principle is to please, and not to offend; and they succeed in both objects. We are contented with the deference shown to our feelings for the time, and grant a truce both to wit and wisdom. The ‘courteous reader’ and the good-natured author are well matched in this instance, and find their account in mutual tenderness and forbearance to each other’s infirmities. I am not sure that Walton’s Angler is not a book of this last description—

Hobbes and Mandeville are in the opposite extreme, and have met with a correspondent fate. The Tatler and the Spectator are in the golden mean, carry instruction as far as it can go without shocking, and give the most exquisite pleasure without one particle of pain. ‘Desire to please, and you will infallibly please,’ is a maxim equally applicable to the study or the drawing-room. Thus also we see actors of very small pretensions, and who have scarce any other merit than that of being on good terms with themselves, and in high good humour with their parts (though they hardly understand a word of them), who are universal favourites with the audience. Others, who are masters of their art, and in whom no slip or flaw can be detected, you have no pleasure in seeing, from something dry, repulsive, and unconciliating in their manner; and you almost hate the 178very mention of their names, as an unavailing appeal to your candid decision in their favour, and as taxing you with injustice for refusing it.

We may observe persons who seem to take a peculiar delight in the disagreeable. They catch all sorts of uncouth tones and gestures, the manners and dialect of clowns and hoydens, and aim at vulgarity as desperately as others ape gentility. [This is what is often understood by a love of low life.] They say the most unwarrantable things, without meaning or feeling what they say. What startles or shocks other people, is to them a sport—an amusing excitement—a fillip to their constitutions; and from the bluntness of their perceptions, and a certain wilfulness of spirit, not being able to enter into the refined and agreeable, they make a merit of despising every thing of the kind. Masculine women, for example, are those who, not being distinguished by the charms and delicacy of the sex, affect a superiority over it by throwing aside all decorum. We also find another class, who continually do and say what they ought not, and what they do not intend, and who are governed almost entirely by an instinct of absurdity. Owing to a perversity of imagination or irritability of nerve, the idea that a thing is improper acts as a provocation to it: the fear of committing a blunder is so strong, that in their agitation they bolt out whatever is uppermost in their minds, before they are aware of the consequence. The dread of something wrong haunts and rivets their attention to it; and an uneasy, morbid apprehensiveness of temper takes away their self-possession, and hurries them into the very mistakes they are most anxious to avoid.

If we look about us, and ask who are the agreeable and disagreeable people in the world, we shall see that it does not depend on their virtues or vices—their understanding or stupidity—but as much on the degree of pleasure or pain they seem to feel in ordinary social intercourse. What signify all the good qualities any one possesses, if he is none the better for them himself? If the cause is so delightful, the effect ought to be so too. We enjoy a friend’s society only in proportion as he is satisfied with ours. Even wit, however it may startle, is only agreeable as it is sheathed in good-humour. There are a kind of intellectual stammerers, who are delivered of their good things with pain and effort; and consequently what costs them such evident uneasiness does not impart unmixed delight to the bystanders. There are those, on the contrary, whose sallies cost them nothing—who abound in a flow of pleasantry and good-humour; and who float down the stream with them carelessly and triumphantly,—

Perhaps it may be said of English wit in general, that it too much 179resembles pointed lead: after all, there is something heavy and dull in it! The race of small wits are not the least agreeable people in the world. They have their little joke to themselves, enjoy it, and do not set up any preposterous pretensions to thwart the current of our self-love. Toad-eating is accounted a thriving profession; and a butt, according to the Spectator, is a highly useful member of society—as one who takes whatever is said of him in good part, and as necessary to conduct off the spleen and superfluous petulance of the company. Opposed to these are the swaggering bullies—the licensed wits—the free-thinkers—the loud talkers, who, in the jockey phrase, have lost their mouths, and cannot be reined in by any regard to decency or common sense. The more obnoxious the subject, the more are they charmed with it, converting their want of feeling into a proof of superiority to vulgar prejudice and squeamish affectation. But there is an unseemly exposure of the mind, as well as of the body. There are some objects that shock the sense, and cannot with propriety be mentioned: there are naked truths that offend the mind, and ought to be kept out of sight as much as possible. For human nature cannot bear to be too hardly pressed upon. One of these cynical truisms, when brought forward to the world, may be forgiven as a slip of the pen: a succession of them, denoting a deliberate purpose and malice prepense, must ruin any writer. Lord Byron had got into an irregular course of these a little before his death—seemed desirous, in imitation of Mr. Shelley, to run the gauntlet of public obloquy—and, at the same time, wishing to screen himself from the censure he defied, dedicated his Cain to Sir Walter Scott—a pretty godfather to such a bantling!

Some persons are of so teazing and fidgetty a turn of mind, that they do not give you a moment’s rest. Every thing goes wrong with them. They complain of a headache or the weather. They take up a book, and lay it down again—venture an opinion, and retract it before they have half done—offer to serve you, and prevent some one else from doing it. If you dine with them at a tavern, in order to be more at your ease, the fish is too little done—the sauce is not the right one; they ask for a sort of wine which they think is not to be had, or if it is, after some trouble, procured, do not touch it; they give the waiter fifty contradictory orders, and are restless and sit on thorns the whole of dinner-time. All this is owing to a want of robust health, and of a strong spirit of enjoyment; it is a fastidious habit of mind, produced by a valetudinary habit of body: they are out of sorts with every thing, and of course their ill-humour and captiousness communicates itself to you, who are as little delighted with them as they are with other things. Another sort of people, 180equally objectionable with this helpless class, who are disconcerted by a shower of rain or stopped by an insect’s wing, are those who, in the opposite spirit, will have every thing their own way, and carry all before them—who cannot brook the slightest shadow of opposition—who are always in the heat of an argument—who knit their brows and clench their teeth in some speculative discussion, as if they were engaged in a personal quarrel—and who, though successful over almost every competitor, seem still to resent the very offer of resistance to their supposed authority, and are as angry as if they had sustained some premeditated injury. There is an impatience of temper and an intolerance of opinion in this that conciliates neither our affection nor esteem. To such persons nothing appears of any moment but the indulgence of a domineering intellectual superiority to the disregard and discomfiture of their own and every body else’s comfort. Mounted on an abstract proposition, they trample on every courtesy and decency of behaviour; and though, perhaps, they do not intend the gross personalities they are guilty of, yet they cannot be acquitted of a want of due consideration for others, and of an intolerable egotism in the support of truth and justice. You may hear one of these Quixotic declaimers pleading the cause of humanity in a voice of thunder, or expatiating on the beauty of a Guido with features distorted with rage and scorn. This is not a very amiable or edifying spectacle.

There are persons who cannot make friends. Who are they? Those who cannot be friends. It is not the want of understanding or good-nature, of entertaining or useful qualities, that you complain of: on the contrary, they have probably many points of attraction; but they have one that neutralises all these—they care nothing about you, and are neither the better nor worse for what you think of them. They manifest no joy at your approach; and when you leave them, it is with a feeling that they can do just as well without you. This is not sullenness, nor indifference, nor absence of mind; but they are intent solely on their own thoughts, and you are merely one of the subjects they exercise them upon. They live in society as in a solitude; and, however their brain works, their pulse beats neither faster nor slower for the common accidents of life. There is, therefore, something cold and repulsive in the air that is about them—like that of marble. In a word, they are modern philosophers; and the modern philosopher is what the pedant was of old—a being who lives in a world of his own, and has no correspondence with this. It is not that such persons have not done you services—you acknowledge it; it is not that they have said severe things of you—you submit to it as a necessary evil: but it is the cool manner in which the whole 181is done that annoys you—the speculating upon you, as if you were nobody—the regarding you, with a view to experiment in corpore vili—the principle of dissection—the determination to spare no blemishes—to cut you down to your real standard;—in short, the utter absence of the partiality of friendship, the blind enthusiasm of affection, or the delicacy of common decency, that whether they ‘hew you as a carcase fit for hounds, or carve you as a dish fit for the gods,’ the operation on your feelings and your sense of obligation is just the same; and, whether they are demons or angels in themselves, you wish them equally at the devil!

Other persons of worth and sense give way to mere violence of temperament (with which the understanding has nothing to do)—are burnt up with a perpetual fury—repel and throw you to a distance by their restless, whirling motion—so that you dare not go near them, or feel as uneasy in their company as if you stood on the edge of a volcano. They have their tempora mollia fandi; but then what a stir may you not expect the next moment! Nothing is less inviting or less comfortable than this state of uncertainty and apprehension. Then there are those who never approach you without the most alarming advice or information, telling you that you are in a dying way, or that your affairs are on the point of ruin, by way of disburthening their consciences; and others, who give you to understand much the same thing as a good joke, out of sheer impertinence, constitutional vivacity, and want of something to say. All these, it must be confessed, are disagreeable people; and you repay their overanxiety or total forgetfulness of you, by a determination to cut them as speedily as possible. We meet with instances of persons who overpower you by a sort of boisterous mirth and rude animal spirits, with whose ordinary state of excitement it is as impossible to keep up as with that of any one really intoxicated; and with others who seem scarce alive—who take no pleasure or interest in any thing—who are born to exemplify the maxim,

and whose mawkish insensibility or sullen scorn are equally annoying. In general, all people brought up in remote country places, where life is crude and harsh—all sectaries—all partisans of a losing cause, are discontented and disagreeable. Commend me above all to the Westminster School of Reform, whose blood runs as cold in their veins as the torpedo’s, and whose touch jars like it. Catholics are, upon the whole, more amiable than Protestants—foreigners than English people. Among ourselves, the Scotch, as a nation, are 182particularly disagreeable. They hate every appearance of comfort themselves, and refuse it to others. Their climate, their religion, and their habits are equally averse to pleasure. Their manners are either distinguished by a fawning sycophancy (to gain their own ends, and conceal their natural defects), that makes one sick; or by a morose unbending callousness, that makes one shudder. I had forgot to mention two other descriptions of persons who fall under the scope of this essay:—those who take up a subject, and run on with it interminably, without knowing whether their hearers care one word about it, or in the least minding what reception their oratory meets with—these are pretty generally voted bores (mostly German ones);—and others, who may be designated as practical paradox-mongers—who discard the ‘milk of human kindness,’ and an attention to common observances, from all their actions, as effeminate and puling—who wear a white hat as a mark of superior understanding, and carry home a handkerchief-full of mushrooms in the top of it as an original discovery—who give you craw-fish for supper instead of lobsters; seek their company in a garret, and over a gin-bottle, to avoid the imputation of affecting genteel society; and discard them after a term of years, and warn others against them, as being honest fellows, which is thought a vulgar prejudice. This is carrying the harsh and repulsive even beyond the disagreeable—to the hateful. Such persons are generally people of common-place understandings, obtuse feelings, and inordinate vanity. They are formidable if they get you in their power—otherwise, they are only to be laughed at.

There are a vast number who are disagreeable from meanness of spirit, from downright insolence, from slovenliness of dress or disgusting tricks, from folly or ignorance: but these causes are positive moral or physical defects, and I only meant to speak of that repulsiveness of manners which arises from want of tact and sympathy with others. So far of friendship: a word, if I durst, of love. Gallantry to women (the sure road to their favour) is nothing but the appearance of extreme devotion to all their wants and wishes—a delight in their satisfaction, and a confidence in yourself, as being able to contribute towards it. The slightest indifference with regard to them, or distrust of yourself, are equally fatal. The amiable is the voluptuous in looks, manner, or words. No face that exhibits this kind of expression—whether lively or serious, obvious or suppressed, will be thought ugly—no address, awkward—no lover who approaches every woman he meets as his mistress, will be unsuccessful. Diffidence and awkwardness are the two antidotes to love.

To please universally, we must be pleased with ourselves and others. There should be a tinge of the coxcomb, an oil of self-complacency, 183an anticipation of success—there should be no gloom, no moroseness no shyness—in short, there should be very little of an Englishman, and a good deal of a Frenchman. But though, I believe, this is the receipt, we are none the nearer making use of it. It is impossible for those who are naturally disagreeable ever to become otherwise. This is some consolation, as it may save a world of useless pains and anxiety. ‘Desire to please, and you will infallibly please,’ is a true maxim; but it does not follow that it is in the power of all to practise it. A vain man, who thinks he is endeavouring to please, is only endeavouring to shine, and is still farther from the mark. An irritable man, who puts a check upon himself, only grows dull, and loses spirit to be any thing. Good temper and a happy spirit (which are the indispensable requisites) can no more be commanded than good health or good looks; and though the plain and sickly need not distort their features, and may abstain from success, this is all they can do. The utmost a disagreeable person can do is to hope to be less disagreeable than with care and study he might become, and to pass unnoticed in society. With this negative character he should be contented, and may build his fame and happiness on other things.

I will conclude with a character of men who neither please nor aspire to please anybody, and who can come in nowhere so properly as at the fag-end of an essay:—I mean that class of discontented but amusing persons, who are infatuated with their own ill success, and reduced to despair by a lucky turn in their favour. While all goes well, they are like fish out of water. They have no reliance on or sympathy with their good fortune, and look upon it as a momentary delusion. Let a doubt be thrown on the question, and they begin to be full of lively apprehensions again: let all their hopes vanish, and they feel themselves on firm ground once more. From want of spirit or of habit, their imaginations cannot rise above the low ground of humility—cannot reflect the gay, flaunting tints of the fancy—flag and droop into despondency—and can neither indulge the expectation, nor employ the means of success. Even when it is within their reach, they dare not lay hands upon it; and shrink from unlooked-for bursts of prosperity, as something of which they are both ashamed and unworthy. The class of croakers here spoken of are less delighted at other people’s misfortunes than their own. Their neighbours may have some pretensions—they have none. Querulous complaints and anticipations of discomfort are the food on which they live; and they at last acquire a passion for that which is the favourite theme of their thoughts, and can no more do without it than without the pinch of snuff with which they season their conversation, and enliven the pauses of their daily prognostics.

The Monthly Magazine.] [September, 1827.

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 mind is not capable. This weakness 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 desire a thing: we contemplate the end intently, 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 birth to the object of its idolatry, seems an adequate cause to produce the wished-for effect, and is 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 in the national character.

The English style is distinguished by what are called ébauches^[38]—rude sketches, or violent attempts at effect, with a total inattention to the details or delicacy of finishing. Now this, I apprehend, proceeds not exactly from grossness of perception, but from the wilfulness of our characters, our determination to have every thing our own way without any trouble, or delay, or distraction of mind. An object strikes us: we see and feel the whole effect at once. We wish to produce a likeness of it; but we wish to transfer the 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 process were a deviation from our original purpose. We thus degenerate, by 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 a little strange that the zealous devotion to the end should produce aversion to the means; but so it is: neither is it, however irrational, altogether unnatural. That which we are struck with, which we are enamoured of, is the general appearance or result; and it would certainly be most desirable to produce the effect we aim at by a word or wish, if it were possible, without 185being taken up with the mechanical drudgery or pettiness of detail, or dexterity of execution, which, though they are essential and component parts of the work, do not enter into our thoughts, or form any part of our contemplation. In a word, the hand does not keep pace with the eye; and it is the desire that it should, that causes all the contradiction and confusion. We would have a face to start out from the canvas at once—not feature by feature, or touch by touch; we would be glad to convey an attitude or a divine expression to the spectator by a stroke of the pencil, as it is conveyed by a glance of the eye, or by the magic of feeling, independently of measurements, and distances, and foreshortening, and numberless minute particulars, and all the instrumentality of the art. We may find it necessary, on a cool calculation, to go through and make ourselves masters of these; but, in so doing, we submit only to necessity, and they are still a diversion to, and a suspension of, our favourite purpose for the time—at least unless practice has given that facility which almost identifies the two together, and 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, renders us in proportion impatient of the other. So we view an object at a distance, which excites in us an inclination to visit it: this, after many tedious steps and intricate windings, we do; but, if we could fly, we should never consent to go on foot. The mind, however, has wings, though the body has not; and, wherever the imagination can come into play, our desires outrun their accomplishment. Persons of this extravagant humour should addict themselves to eloquence or poetry, where the thought ‘leaps at once to its effect,’ and is wafted, in a metaphor or an apostrophe, ‘from Indus to the Pole;’ though even there we should find enough, in the preparatory and mechanical parts of those arts, to try our patience and mortify our vanity! The first and strongest impulse of the mind is to achieve any object, on which it is set, at once, and by the shortest and most decisive means; but, as this cannot always be done, we ought not to neglect other more indirect and subordinate aids; nor should we be tempted to do so, but that the delusions of the will interfere with the convictions of the understanding, and what we ardently wish, we fancy to be both possible and true. Let us take the instance of copying a fine picture. We are full of the effect we intend to produce; and so powerfully does this prepossession affect us, that we imagine we have produced it, in spite of the evidence of our senses and the suggestions of friends. In truth, after a number of violent and anxious efforts to strike off a resemblance which we passionately long for, it seems an injustice not to have succeeded; it is too late to retrace our steps, and begin over again in a different 186method; we prefer even failure to arriving at our end by petty, mechanical tricks and rules; we have copied Titian or Rubens in the spirit in which they ought to be copied; though the likeness may not be perfect, there is a look, a tone, a something, which we chiefly aimed at, and which we persuade ourselves, seeing the copy only through the dazzled, hectic flush of feverish imagination, we have really given; and thus we persist, and make fifty excuses, sooner than own our error, which would imply its abandonment; or, if the light breaks in upon us, through all the disguises of sophistry and self-love, it is so painful that we shut our eyes to it. The more evident our failure, the more desperate the struggles we make to conceal it from ourselves, to stick to our original determination, and end where we began.

What makes me think that this is the real stumbling-block in our way, and not mere rusticity or want of discrimination, is that you will see an English artist admiring and thrown into downright raptures by the tucker of Titian’s Mistress, made up of an infinite number of little delicate folds; and, if he attempts to copy it, he proceeds deliberately to omit all these details, and dash it off by a single smear of his brush. This is not ignorance, or even laziness, I conceive, so much as what is called jumping at a conclusion. It is, in a word, an overweening presumption. ‘A wilful man must have his way.’ He sees the details, the varieties, and their effect: he sees and is charmed with all this; but he would reproduce it with the same rapidity and unembarrassed freedom that he sees it—or not at all. He scorns the slow but sure method, to which others conform, as tedious and inanimate. The mixing his colours, the laying in the ground, the giving all his attention to a minute break or nice gradation in the several lights and shades, is a mechanical and endless operation, very different from the delight he feels in studying the effect of all these, when properly and ably executed. Quam nihil ad tuum, Papiniane, ingenium! Such fooleries are foreign to his refined taste and lofty enthusiasm; and a doubt crosses his mind, in the midst of his warmest raptures, how Titian could resolve upon the drudgery of going through them, or whether it was not rather owing to extreme facility of hand, and a sort of trick in laying on the colours, abridging the mechanical labour! No one wrote or talked more eloquently about Titian’s harmony and clearness of colouring than the late Mr. Barry—discoursing of his greens, his blues, his yellows, ‘the little red and white of which he composed his flesh-colour,’ con amore; yet his own colouring was dead and dingy, and, if he had copied a Titian, he would have made it a mere daub, leaving out all that caused his wonder or admiration, or that induced him to copy it after the English or Irish fashion. We not only grudge the labour of beginning, but we stop short, for 187the 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 steps, the daily gradual improvement, the successive completion of parts, give us no pleasure; we strain at the final result; we wish to have the whole done, and, in our anxiety to get it off our hands, say it will do, and lose the benefit of all our pains by stinting a little more, and being unable to command a little patience. In a day or two, we will suppose, a copy of a fine Titian would be as like as we could make it: the prospect of this so enchants us, that we skip the intervening space, see no great use in going on with it, fancy that we may spoil it, and, in order to put an end to the question, take it home with us, where we immediately see our error, and spend the rest of our lives in regretting that we did not finish it properly when we were about it. We can execute only a part; we see the whole of nature or of a picture at once. Hinc illæ lachrymæ. The English grasp at this whole—nothing less interests or contents them; and, in aiming at too much, they miss their object altogether.

A French artist, on the contrary, has none of this uneasy, anxious feeling—of this desire to master the whole of his subject, and anticipate his good fortune at a blow—of this massing and concentrating principle. He takes the thing more easy and rationally. He has none of the mental qualms, the nervous agitation, the wild, desperate plunges and convulsive throes of the English artist. He does not set off headlong without knowing where he is going, and find himself up to the neck in all sorts of difficulties and absurdities, from impatience to begin and have the matter off his mind (as if it were an evil conscience); but takes time to consider, arranges his plans, gets in his outline and his distances, and lays a foundation before he attempts a superstructure which he may have to pull in pieces again, or let it remain—a monument of his folly. He looks before he leaps, which is contrary to the true blindfold English rule; and I should think that we had invented this proverb from seeing so many fatal examples of the violation of it. Suppose he undertakes to make a copy of a picture: he first looks at it, and sees what it is. He does not make his sketch 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 his tints (strange as it may seem) from green to red, from orange-tawny to yellow, from grey to brown, according as they vary in the original. He sees no inconsistency, no forfeiture of a principle, in this (any more than Mr. Southey in the change of the colours of his coat), but a great deal of right reason, and indeed an absolute necessity for it, if he wishes to succeed in what he is about. This is the last thing in an Englishman’s 188thoughts: he only wishes to have his own way, though it ends in defeat and ruin—strives hard to do what he is sensible he cannot—or, if he finds he can, gives over and leaves the matter short of a triumphant conclusion, which is too flattering an idea for him to indulge in. The French artist proceeds with due deliberation, and bit by bit. He takes some one part—a hand, an eye, a piece of drapery, an object in the back-ground—and finishes it carefully; then another, and so on to the end. When he has gone through every part, his picture is done: there is nothing more that he can add to it; it is a numerical calculation, and there are only so many items in the account. An Englishman may go on slobbering his over for the hundredth time, and be no nearer than when he began. As he tries to finish the whole at once, and as this is not possible, he always leaves his work in an imperfect state, or as if he had begun on a new canvas—like a man who is determined to leap to the top of a tower, instead of scaling it step by step, and who is necessarily thrown on his back every time he repeats the experiment. Again, the French student does not, from a childish impatience, when he is near the end, destroy the effect of the whole, by leaving some one part eminently deficient, an eye-sore to the rest; nor does he fly from what he is about, to any thing else that happens to catch his eye, neglecting the one and spoiling the other. He is, in our old poet’s phrase, ‘constrained by mastery,’ by the mastery of common sense and pleasurable feeling. He is in no hurry to get to the end; for he has a satisfaction in the work, and touches and retouches perhaps a single head, day after day and week after week, without repining, uneasiness, or apparent progress. The very lightness and buoyancy of his feeling renders him (where the necessity of this is pointed out) patient and laborious. An Englishman, whatever he undertakes, is as if he was carrying a heavy load that oppresses both his body and mind, and that he is anxious to throw down as soon as possible. The Frenchman’s hopes and fears are not excited to a pitch of intolerable agony, so that he is compelled, in mere compassion to himself, to bring the question to a speedy issue, even to the loss of his object. He is calm, easy, collected, and takes his time and improves his advantages as they occur, with vigilance and alacrity. Pleased with himself, he is pleased with whatever occupies his attention nearly alike. He is never taken at a disadvantage. Whether he paints an angel or a joint-stool, it is much the same to him: whether it is landscape or history, still it is he who paints it. Nothing puts him out of his way, for nothing puts him out of conceit with himself. This self-complacency forms an admirable ground-work for moderation and docility in certain particulars, though not in others.

189I remember an absurd instance enough of this deliberate mode of setting to work in a young French artist, who was copying the Titian’s Mistress in the Louvre, some twenty years ago. After getting in his chalk-outline, one would think he might have been attracted to the face—that heaven of beauty (as it appears to some), clear, transparent, open, breathing freshness, that ‘makes a sunshine in the shady place’; or to the lustre of the golden hair; or some part of the poetry of the picture (for, with all its materiality, this picture has a poetry about it); instead of which he began to finish a square he had marked out in the right-hand corner of the picture, containing a piece of board and a bottle of some kind of ointment. He set to work like a cabinet-maker or an engraver, and appeared to have no sympathy with the soul of the picture. On a Frenchman (generally speaking), the distinction between the great and the little, the exquisite and the indifferent, is in a great measure lost: his self-satisfied egotism supplies whatever is wanting up to a certain point, and neutralizes whatever goes beyond it. Another young man, at the time I speak of, was for eleven weeks daily employed in making a black-lead pencil drawing of a small Leonardo: he sat with his legs balanced across a rail to do it, kept his hat on, every now and then consulted with his friends about his progress, rose up, went to the fire to warm himself, talked of the styles of the different masters—praising Titian pour les coloris, Raphael pour l’expression, Poussin pour la composition—all being alike to him, provided they had each something to help him on in his harangue (for that was all he thought about),—and then returned to perfectionate (as he called it) his copy. This would drive an Englishman out of his senses, supposing him to be ever so stupid. The perseverance and the interruptions, the labour without impulse, the attention to the parts in succession, and disregard of the whole together, are to him utterly incomprehensible. He wants to do something striking, and bends all his thoughts and energies to one mighty effort. A Frenchman has no notion of this summary proceeding, exists mostly in his present sensations, and, if he is left at liberty to enjoy or trifle with these, cares about nothing farther, looking neither backwards nor forwards. They forgot the reign of terror under Robespierre in a month; they forgot that they had ever been called the great nation under Buonaparte in a week. They sat in chairs on the Boulevards (just as they do at other times), when the shots were firing into the next street, and were only persuaded to quit them when their own soldiers were seen pouring down all the avenues from the heights of Montmartre, crying ‘Sauve qui peut!’ They then went home and dressed themselves to see the Allies enter Paris, as a fine sight, just as they would witness a procession at a 190theatre. This is carrying the instinct of levity as far as it will go. With all their affectation and want of sincerity, there is, on the principle here stated, a kind of simplicity and nature about them after all. They lend themselves to the impression of the moment with good humour and good will, making it not much better nor worse than it is: the English constantly over-do or under-do every thing, and are either mad with enthusiasm or in despair. The extreme slowness and regularity of the French school have then arisen, as a natural consequence, out of their very fickleness and frivolity (their severally supposed national characteristics); for, owing to the last, their studious exactness costs them nothing; and, again, they have no headstrong impulses or ardent longings that urge them on to the violation of rules, or hurry them away with a subject or with the interest belonging to it. All is foreseen and settled beforehand, so as to assist the fluttering and feeble hold they have of things. When they venture beyond the literal and formal, and (mistaking pedantry and bombast for genius) attempt the grand and the impressive style, as in David’s and Girodet’s pictures, the Lord deliver us from sublimity engrafted on insipidity and petit maître-ism! You see a solitary French artist in the Louvre copying a Raphael or a Rubens, standing on one leg, not quite sure of what he is about: you see them collected in groupes about David’s, elbowing each other, thinking them even finer than Raphael, more truly themselves, a more perfect combination of all that can be taught by the Greek sculptor and the French posture-master! Is this patriotism, or want of taste? If the former, it is excusable, and why not, if the latter?

Even should a French artist fail, he is not disconcerted—there is something else he excels in: ‘for one unkind and cruel fair, another still consoles him.’ He studies in a more graceful posture, or pays greater attention to his dress; or he has a friend, who has beaucoup du talent, and conceit enough for them both. His self-love has always a salvo, and comes upon its legs again, like a cat or a monkey. Not so with Bruin the Bear. If an Englishman (God help the mark!) fails in one thing, it is all over with him; he is enraged at the mention of any thing else he can do, and at every consolation offered him on that score; he banishes all other thoughts, but of his disappointment and discomfiture, from his breast—neither eats nor sleeps (it is well if he does not swallow down double ‘potations, pottle-deep,’ to drown remembrance)—will not own, even to himself, any other thing in which he takes an interest or feels a pride; and is in the horrors till he recovers his good opinion of himself in the only point on which he now sets a value, and for which his anxiety and disorder of mind incapacitate him as 191effectually as if he were drunk with strong liquor instead of spleen and passion. I have here drawn the character of an Englishman, I am sure; for it is a portrait of myself, and, I am sorry to add, an unexaggerated one. I intend these Essays as studies of human nature; and as, in the prosecution of this design, I do not spare others, I see no reason why I should spare myself. I lately tried to make a copy of a portrait by Titian (after several years’ want of practice), with a view to give a friend in England some notion of the picture, which is equally remarkable and fine. I failed, and floundered on for some days, as might be expected. I must say the effect on me was painful and excessive. My sky was suddenly overcast. Every thing seemed of the colour of the paints I used. Nature in my eyes became dark and gloomy. I had no sense or feeling left, but of the unforeseen want of power, and of the tormenting struggle to do what I could not. I was ashamed ever to have written or spoken on art: it seemed a piece of vanity and affectation in me to do so—all whose reasonings and refinements on the subject ended in an execrable daub. Why did I think of attempting such a thing without weighing the consequences of exposing my presumption and incapacity so unnecessarily? It was blotting from my mind, covering with a thick veil all that I remembered of these pictures formerly—my hopes when young, my regrets since, one of the few consolations of my life and of my declining years. I was even afraid to walk out of an evening by the barrier of Neuilly, or to recall the yearnings and associations that once hung upon the beatings of my heart. All was turned to bitterness and gall. To feel any thing but the consciousness of my own helplessness and folly, appeared a want of sincerity, a mockery, and an insult to my mortified pride! The only relief I had was in the excess of pain I felt: this was at least some distinction. I was not insensible on that side. No French artist, I thought, would regret not copying a Titian so much as I did, nor so far shew the same value for it, however he might have the advantage of me in drawing or mechanical dexterity. Besides, I had copied this very picture very well formerly. If ever I got out of my present scrape, I had at any rate received a lesson not to run the same risk of vexation, or commit myself gratuitously again upon any occasion whatever. Oh! happy ought they to be, I said, who can do any thing, when I feel the misery, the agony, the dull, gnawing pain of being unable to do what I wish in this single instance! When I copied this picture before, I had no other resource, no other language. My tongue then stuck to the roof of my mouth: now it is unlocked, and I have done what I then despaired of doing in another way. Ought I not to be grateful and contented? Oh, yes!—and think how many there 192are who have nothing to which they can turn themselves, and fail in every object they undertake. Well, then, Let bygones be bygones (as the Scotch proverb has it); give up the attempt, and think no more of Titian, or of the portrait of a Man in black in the Louvre. This would be very well for any one else; but for me, who had nearly exhausted the subject on paper, that I should take it into my head to paint a libel of what I had composed so many and such fine panegyrics upon—it was a fatality, a judgment upon me for my vapouring and conceit. I must be as shy of the subject for the future as a damned author is of the title of his play or the name of his hero ever after. Yet the picture would look the same as ever. I could hardly bear to think so: it would be hid or defaced to me as ‘in a phantasma or a hideous dream.’ I must turn my thoughts from it, or they would lead to madness! The copy went on better afterwards, and the affair ended less tragically than I apprehended. I did not cut a hole in the canvas, or commit any other extravagance: it is now hanging up very quietly facing me; and I have considerable satisfaction in occasionally looking at it, as I write this paragraph.

Such are the agonies into which we throw ourselves about trifles—our rage and disappointment at want of success in any favourite pursuit, and, our neglect of the means to ensure it. A Frenchman, under the penalty of half the chagrin at failure, would take just twice the pains and consideration to avoid it: but our morbid eagerness and blundering impetuosity, together with a certain concreteness of imagination which prevents our dividing any operation into steps and stages, defeat the very end we have in view. The worst of these wilful mischiefs of our own making is, that they admit of no relief or intermission. Natural calamities or great griefs, as we do not bring them upon ourselves, so they find a seasonable respite in tears or resignation, or in some alleviating contrast or reflection: but pride scorns all alliance with natural frailty or indulgence; our wilful purposes regard every relaxation or moment’s ease as a compromise of their very essence, which consists in violence and effort: they turn away from whatever might afford diversion or solace, and goad us on to exertions as painful as they are unavailable, and with no other companion than remorse,—the most intolerable of all inmates of the breast; for it is constantly urging us to retrieve our peace of mind by an impossibility—the undoing of what is past. One of the chief traits of sublimity in Milton’s character of Satan is this dreadful display of unrelenting pride and self-will—the sense of suffering joined with the sense of power and ‘courage never to submit or yield’—and the aggravation of the original purpose of lofty ambition and opposition to the Almighty, with the total overthrow and signal punishment,—which 193ought to be reasons for its relinquishment. ‘His thoughts burn like a hell within him!’ but he gives them ‘neither truce nor rest,’ and will not even sue for mercy. This kind of sublimity must be thrown away upon the French critic, who would only think Satan a very ridiculous old gentleman for adhering so obstinately to his original pretensions, and not making the most of circumstances, and giving in his resignation to the ruling party! When Buonaparte fell, an English editor (of virulent memory) exhausted a great number of the finest passages in Paradise Lost, in applying them to his ill-fated ambition. This was an equal compliment to the poet and the conqueror: to the last, for having realized a conception of himself in the mind of his enemies on a par with the most stupendous creations of imagination; to the first, for having embodied in fiction what bore so strong a resemblance to, and was constantly brought to mind by, the fearful and imposing reality! But to return to our subject.

It is the same with us in love and literature. An Englishman makes love without thinking of the chances of success, his own disadvantages, or the character of his mistress—that is, without the adaptation of means to ends, consulting only his own humour or fancy;^[39] and he writes a book of history or travels, without acquainting himself with geography, or appealing to documents or dates; substituting his own will or opinion in the room of these technical helps or hindrances, as he considers them. It is not right. In business it is not by any means the same; which looks as if, where interest was the moving principle, and acted as a counterpoise to caprice and will, our headstrong propensity gave way, though it sometimes leads us into extravagant and ruinous speculations. Nor is it a disadvantage to us in war; for there the spirit of contradiction does every thing, and an Englishman will go to the devil sooner than yield to any odds. Courage is nothing but will, defying consequences; and this the English have in perfection. Burns somewhere calls out lustily, inspired by rhyme and usquebaugh,—

I apprehend, with his own countrymen or ours, all the love and loyalty would come to little, but for their hatred of the army opposed to them. It is the resistance, ‘the two to kill at a blow,’ that is the charm, and makes our fingers’-ends tingle. The Greek cause makes no progress with us for this reason: it is one of pure sympathy, but our sympathies must arise out of our antipathies; they were devoted to the Queen to spite the King. We had a wonderful affection for the Spaniards—the secret of which was that we detested the French. Our love must begin with hate. It is so far well that the French are opposed to us in almost every way; for the spirit of contradiction alone to foreign fopperies and absurdities keeps us within some bounds of decency and order. When an English lady of quality introduces a favourite by saying, ‘This is his lordship’s physician, and my atheist,’ the humour might become epidemic; but we can stop it at once by saying, ‘That is so like a Frenchwoman!’—The English excel in the practical and mechanic arts, where mere plodding and industry are expected and required; but they do not combine business and pleasure well together. Thus, in the Fine Arts, which unite the mechanical with the sentimental, they will probably never succeed; for the one spoils and diverts them from the other. An Englishman can attend but to one thing at a time. He hates music at dinner. He can go through any labour or pain with prodigious fortitude; but he cannot make a pleasure of it, or persuade himself he is doing a fine thing, when he is not. Again, they are great in original discoveries, which come upon them by surprise, and which they leave to others to perfect. It is a question whether, if they foresaw they were about to make the discovery, at the very point of projection as it were, they would not turn their backs upon it, and leave it to shift for itself; or obstinately refuse to take the last step, or give up the pursuit, in mere dread and nervous apprehension lest they should not succeed. Poetry is also their undeniable element; for the essence of poetry is will and passion, ‘and it alone is highly fantastical.’ French poetry is verbiage or dry detail.

I have thus endeavoured to shew why it is the English fail as a people in the Fine Arts, because the idea of the end absorbs that of the means. Hogarth was an exception to this rule; but then every stroke of his pencil was instinct with genius. As it has been well said, that ‘we read his works,’ so it might be said he wrote them. Barry is an 195instance more to my purpose. No one could argue better about gusto in painting, and yet no one ever painted with less. His pictures were dry, coarse, and wanted all that his descriptions of those of others indicate. For example, he speaks of ‘the dull, dead, watery look’ of the Medusa’s head of Leonardo, in a manner that conveys an absolute idea of the character: had he copied it, you would never have suspected any thing of the kind. His pen grows almost wanton in praise of Titian’s nymph-like figures. What drabs he has made of his own sea-nymphs, floating in the Thames, with Dr. Burney at their head, with his wig on! He is like a person admiring the grace of an accomplished rope-dancer; place him on the rope himself, and his head turns;—or he is like Luther’s comparison of Reason to a drunken man on horseback—‘set him up on one side, and he tumbles over on the other.’ Why is this? His mind was essentially ardent and discursive, not sensitive or observant; and though the immediate object acted as a stimulus to his imagination, it was only as it does to the poet’s—that is, as a link in the chain of association, as implying other strong feelings and ideas, and not for its intrinsic beauty or individual details. He had not the painter’s eye, though he had the painter’s general knowledge. There is as great a difference in this respect between our views of things as between the telescope and microscope. People in general see objects only to distinguish them in practice and by name—to know that a hat is black, that a chair is not a table, that John is not James; and there are painters, particularly of history in England, who look very little farther. They cannot finish any thing, or go over a head twice: the first coup-d’œil is all they ever arrive at, nor can they refine on their impressions, soften them down, or reduce them to their component parts, without losing their spirit. The inevitable result of this is grossness, and also want of force and solidity; for, in reality, the parts cannot be separated without injury from the whole. Such people have no pleasure in the art as such: it is merely to astonish or to thrive that they follow it; or, if thrown out of it by accident, they regret it only as a bankrupt tradesman does a business which was a handsome subsistence to him. Barry did not live, like Titian, on the taste of colours (there was here, perhaps—and I will not disguise it—in English painters in general, a defect of organic susceptibility); they were not a pabulum to his senses; he did not hold green, blue, red, and yellow for ‘the darlings of his precious eye.’ They did not, therefore, sink into his mind with all their hidden harmonies, nor nourish and enrich it with material beauty, though he knew enough of them to furnish hints for other ideas and to suggest topics of discourse. If he had had the most enchanting object in nature before him in his painting-room at the Adelphi, he 196would have turned from it, after a moment’s burst of admiration, to talk of the subject of his next composition, and to scrawl in some new and vast design, illustrating a series of great events in history, or some vague moral theory. The art itself was nothing to him, though he made it the stalking-horse to his ambition and display of intellectual power in general; and, therefore, he neglected its essential qualities to daub in huge allegories, or carry on cabals with the Academy, in which the violence of his will and the extent of his views found proper food and scope. As a painter, he was tolerable merely as a draftsman, or in that part of the art which may be best reduced to rules and precepts, or to positive measurements. There is neither colouring, nor expression, nor delicacy, nor striking effect in his pictures at the Adelphi. The group of youths and horses, in the representation of the Olympic Games, is the best part of them, and has more of the grace and spirit of a Greek bas-relief than any thing of the same kind in the French school of painting. Barry was, all his life, a thorn in the side of Sir Joshua, who was irritated by the temper and disconcerted by the powers of the man; and who, conscious of his own superiority in the exercise of his profession, yet looked askance at Barry’s loftier pretensions and more gigantic scale of art. But he had no more occasion to be really jealous of him than of an Irish porter or orator. It was like Imogen’s mistaking the dead body of Cloten for her lord’s—‘the jovial thigh, the brawns of Hercules’: the head, which would have detected the cheat, was missing!

I might have gone more into the subject of our apparent indifference to the pleasure of mere imitation, if I had had to run a parallel between English and Italian or even Flemish art; but really, though I find a great deal of what is finical, I find nothing of the pleasurable in the details of French more than of English art. The English artist, it is an old and just complaint, can with difficulty be prevailed upon to finish any part of a picture but the face, even if he does that any tolerable justice: the French artist bestows equal and elaborate pains on every part of his picture—the dress, the carpet, &c.; and it has been objected to the latter method, that it has the effect of making the face look unfinished; for as this is variable and in motion, it can never admit of the same minuteness of imitation as objects of still-life, and must suffer in the comparison, if these have the utmost possible degree of attention bestowed on them, and do not fall into their relative place in the composition from their natural insignificance. But does not this distinction shew generally that the English have no pleasure in art, unless there is an additional interest beyond what is borrowed from the eye, and that the French have the same pleasure in it, provided the mechanical operation is the same—like the 197fly that settles equally on the face or dress, and runs over the whole surface with the same lightness and indifference? The collar of a coat is out of drawing: this may be and is wrong. But I cannot say that it gives me the same disturbance as if the nose was awry. A Frenchman thinks that both are equally out of drawing, and sets about correcting them both with equal gravity and perseverance. A part of the back-ground of a picture is left in an unfinished state: this is a sad eye-sore to the French artist or connoisseur. We English care little about it: if the head and character are well given, we pass it over as of small consequence; and if they are failures, it is of even less. A French painter, after having made you look like a baboon, would go on finishing the cravat or the buttons of your coat with all the nicety of a man milliner or button-maker, and the most perfect satisfaction with himself and his art. This with us would be quite impossible. ‘They are careful after many things: with us, there is one thing needful’—which is effect. We certainly throw our impressions more into masses (they are not taken off by pattern, every part alike): there may be a slowness and repugnance at first; but, afterwards, there is an impulse, a momentum acquired—one interest absorbing and being strengthened by several others; and if we gain our principal object, we can overlook the rest, or at least cannot find time to attend to them till we have secured this. We have nothing of the petit maître, of the martinet style about us: we run into the opposite fault. If we had time, if we had power, there could be no objection to giving every part with the utmost perfection, as it is given in a looking-glass. But if we have only a month to do a portrait in, is it not better to give three weeks to the face and one to the dress, than one week to the face and three to the dress. How often do we look at the face compared to the dress? ‘On a good foundation,’ says Sancho Panza, ‘a good house may be built’; so a good picture should have a good back-ground, and be finished in every part. It is entitled to this mark of respect, which is like providing a frame for it, and hanging it in a good light. I can easily understand how Rubens or Vandyke finished the back grounds and drapery of their pictures:—they were worth the trouble; and, besides, it cost them nothing. It was to them no more than blowing a bubble in the air. One would no doubt have every thing right—a feather in a cap, or a plant in the foreground—if a thought or a touch would do it. But to labour on for ever, and labour to no purpose, is beyond mortal or English patience. Our clumsiness is one cause of our negligence. Depend upon it, people do with readiness what they can do well. I rather wonder, therefore, that Raphael took such pains in finishing his draperies and back grounds, which he did so indifferently. The 198expression is like an emanation of the soul, or like a lamp shining within and illuminating the whole face and body; and every part, charged with so sacred a trust as the conveying of this expression (even to the hands and feet), would be wrought up to the highest perfection. But his inanimate objects must have cost him some trouble; and yet he laboured them too. In what he could not do well, he was still determined to do his best; and that nothing should be wanting in decorum and respect to an art that he had consecrated to virtue, and to that genius that burnt like a flame upon its altars! We have nothing that for myself I can compare with this high and heroic pursuit of art for its own sake. The French fancy their own pedantic abortions equal to it, thrust them into the Louvre, ‘and with their darkness dare affront that light!’—thus proving themselves without the germ or the possibility of excellence—the feeling of it in others. We at least claim some interest in art, by looking up to its loftiest monuments—retire to a distance, and reverence the sanctuary, if we cannot enter it.

The Monthly Magazine.] [January, 1828.

‘If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes!’ said the Macedonian hero; and the cynic might have retorted the compliment upon 199the 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—

but we would still be our selves, 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, 200and feelings—to be endowed with other lofty and beatific attributes, 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 angels’ 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 truth and 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:—

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 201what Englishman would deliberately change with them? We would sooner be miserable after our own fashion than happy after their’s. It is not happiness, then, in the abstract, which we seek, that can be addressed as

but a happiness suited to our taste 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 our’s (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 pretensions, 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 202is 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:—

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 thorough-bred 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 203can 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 red face, and white hat, that I cannot, by any effort of candour, confound my personal identity with! If Mr. Hobhouse 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 out-riders, white favours, and a coronet on the panels; and then 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 born a 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 back, 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 is 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. Had I been a lord, I should have married Miss ——, and my life would not have been one long-drawn sigh, made up of sweet and bitter regret!^[41] Had I been a lord, I would have been a Popish lord, and then I might also have been an honest man:—poor, and then I might have been proud and not vulgar! 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 204of 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 ——, or 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 his 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, 205that, 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 of 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 shew 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 wonderful, therefore, that opera-singers and dancers refuse, or only condescend as it were, to accept lords, though the latter are so 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

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, 206I 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 civilization; 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 re-act 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. You say there is a common language in nature. They see nature through their wants, while you look at it for your pleasure. Ask a country lad if he does not like to hear the birds sing in the spring? And he will laugh in your face. ‘What is it, then, he does like?’—‘Good victuals and drink!’ As if you had not these too; but because he has them not, he thinks of nothing else, and laughs at you and your refinements, supposing you to 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 all ages, sexes, classes met. 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 207genteel are the slaves of appearances—the vulgar, of necessity; and neither has the smallest regard to true 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:—

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 Grave-digger. 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 were unlike us, we feel it as a presumption and an impertinence to usurp their place; if they were 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 their’s 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.

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 208are 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 our’s! 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,’ 209have 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 be glad to change with—which is that of a favoured rival. Even hatred gives way to envy. We would be any thing—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!

The Monthly Magazine.] [October, 1830–June, 1831.

I

Servility is a sort of bastard envy. We heap our whole stock of involuntary adulation on a single prominent figure, to have an excuse for withdrawing our notice from all other claims (perhaps juster and more galling ones), and in the hope of sharing a part of the applause as train-bearers.

II

Admiration is catching by a certain sympathy. The vain admire the vain; the morose are pleased with the morose; nay, the selfish and cunning are charmed with the tricks and meanness of which they are witnesses, and may be in turn the dupes.

Vanity is no proof of conceit. A vain man often accepts of praise as a cheap substitute for his own good opinion. He may think more highly of another, though he would be wounded to the quick if his own circle thought so. He knows the worthlessness and hollowness of the flattery to which he is accustomed, but his ear is tickled with the sound; and the effeminate in this way can no more live without the incense of applause, than the effeminate in another can live without perfumes or any other customary indulgence of the senses. Such people would rather have the applause of fools than the approbation of the wise. It is a low and shallow ambition.

IV

It was said of some one who had contrived to make himself popular abroad by getting into hot water, but who proved very troublesome and ungrateful when he came home—‘We thought him a very persecuted man in India’—the proper answer to which is, that there are some people who are good for nothing else but to be persecuted. They want some check to keep them in order.

V

It is a sort of gratuitous error in high life, that the poor are naturally thieves and beggars, just as the latter conceive that the rich are naturally proud and hard-hearted. Give a man who is starving a thousand a-year, and he will be no longer under a temptation to get himself hanged by stealing a leg of mutton for his dinner; he may still spend it in gaming, drinking, and the other vices of a gentleman, and not in charity, about which he before made such an outcry.

VI

Do not confer benefits in the expectation of meeting with gratitude; and do not cease to confer them because you find those whom you have served ungrateful. Do what you think fit and right to please yourself; the generosity is not the less real, because it does not meet with a correspondent return. A man should study to get through the world as he gets through St. Giles’s—with as little annoyance and interruption as possible from the shabbiness around him.

VII

Common-place advisers and men of the world, are always pestering you to conform to their maxims and modes, just like the barkers in Monmouth-street, who stop the passengers by entreating them to turn in and refit at their second-hand repositories.

The word gentility is constantly in the mouths of vulgar people; as quacks and pretenders are always talking of genius. Those who possess any real excellence think and say the least about it.

IX

Taste is often envy in disguise: it turns into the art of reducing excellence within the smallest possible compass, or of finding out the minimum of pleasure. Some people admire only what is new and fashionable—the work of the day, of some popular author—the last and frothiest bubble that glitters on the surface of fashion. All the rest is gone by, ‘in the deep bosom of the ocean buried;’ to allude to it is Gothic, to insist upon it odious. We have only to wait a week to be relieved of the hot-pressed page, of the vignette-title; and in the interim can look with sovereign contempt on the wide range of science, learning, art, and on those musty old writers who lived before the present age of novels. Peace be with their manes! There are others, on the contrary, to whom all the modern publications are anathema, a by-word—they get rid of this idle literature ‘at one fell swoop’—disqualify the present race from all pretensions whatever, get into a corner with an obscure writer, and devour the cobwebs and the page together, and pick out in the quaintest production, the quaintest passages, the merest choke-pear, which they think nobody can swallow but themselves.

X

The source of the love of nature or of the country has never been explained so well as it might. The truth is this. Natural or inanimate objects please merely as objects of sense or contemplation, and we ask no return of the passion or admiration from them, so that we cannot be disappointed or distracted in our choice. If we are delighted with a flower or a tree, we are pleased with it for its own sake; nothing more is required to make our satisfaction complete; we do not ask the flower or tree whether it likes us again; and, therefore, wherever we can meet with the same or a similar object, we may reckon upon a recurrence of the same soothing emotion. Nature is the only mistress that smiles on us still the same; and does not repay admiration with scorn, love with hatred. She is faithful to us, as long as we are faithful to ourselves. Whereas, in regard to the human species, we have not so much to consider our own dispositions towards others, as theirs towards us; a thousand caprices, interests, and opinions, may intervene before the good understanding can be 212mutual; we not only cannot infer of one individual from another, but the same individual may change to-morrow: so that in our intercourse with the world, there is nothing but littleness, uncertainty, suspicion, and mortification, instead of the grandeur and repose of nature.

XI

It has been objected to the soothing power of Nature, that it cannot take away the sharp pang of vehement distress, but rather barbs the dart, and seems to smile in mockery of our anguish. But the same might be said of music, poetry, and friendship, which only tantalize and torment us by offering to divert our grief in its keenest paroxysms; but yet cannot be denied to be enviable resources and consolations of the human mind, when the bitterness of the moment has passed over.

XII

Every one is a hero, the circumstances being given. All that is necessary is, that the outward impression should be so strong as to make a man forget himself. A woman rushes into the flames to save her child, not from duty or reason—but because the distracting terror for another banishes all recollection of, and fear for, herself. For the same reason, a person throws himself from a precipice, because the apprehension of danger gets the better of and confounds the sense of self-preservation. The doctrine of self-love, as an infallible metaphysical principle of action, is nonsense.

XIII

The heroical ages were those in which there was a constant question between life and death, and men ate their scanty meal with their swords in their hands.

XIV

The hero acts from outward impulse; the martyr from internal faith, and so far is the greater character of the two. And yet it may be doubted whether the latter is properly a voluntary agent, or whether, if he could do it unperceived, he would not abstract himself from the scene, instead of becoming a sacrifice and a witness to the truth.

XV

What shews that persecution and danger act as incentives rather than impediments to the will, is that zeal generally goes out with the fires that kindle it; and we become indifferent to a cause, when life, 213property, and limb are no longer endangered. He is the real philosopher who loves truth for its own sake, not in the spirit of contradiction: he the genuine friend of freedom and justice, who hates oppression and wrong after they have ceased, and as long as the very name of them remains, as well as while it is a bone of contention between infuriated sects and parties.

XVI

If reform were to gain the day, reform would become as vulgar as cant of any other kind. We only shew a spirit of independence and resistance to power, as long as power is against us. As soon as the cause of opposition prevails, its essence and character are gone out of it; and the most flagrant radicalism degenerates into the tamest servility. We then say as others say; sail with the stream; no longer sacrifice interest to principle, but are in a pitiful majority. Had events taken a different turn in 1794, who can predict what the popular cry would have been? This may point out how little chance there is of any great improvement in the affairs of the world. Virtue ceases with difficulty; honesty is militant. The mass of mankind, who are governed by indolence and habit, fall in with existing events and interests; the imaginative and reasoning part fall out with facts and reality; but could they have their way, and model the world at their pleasure, their occupation would be gone; or if all governments were wise and good, the character of the patriot would become obsolete, and a sinecure. At present there is a very convenient division of labour; and each class fulfils its vocation. It is essential to the triumph of reform that it should never succeed.

XVII

We talk about the cant of politics or religion, as if there were no cant but that which is common to the multitude. But whenever any two individuals agree about any one thing, they begin to cant about it, and take the echo of one another’s voices for the verdict of truth. Half-a-dozen persons will always make a quorum of credulity and vulgarity.

XVIII

When people have done quarrelling about one set of questions they start another. Motion is necessary to mind as much as to matter; and for ‘an ultimate end,’ Hobbes denies that there is any such thing. Hence the tendency to all Ultra opinions and measures! Man is seldom contented to go as far as others, unless he can go beyond them, and make a caricature and a paradox even of the most vulgar prejudice. 214It is necessary to aim at some kind of distinction—to create some difficulty, were it only for the sake of overcoming it. Thus we find that O’Connell, having carried his cause, would not let the ‘agitation’ subside without turning it into a personal quarrel: the way was opened to him into the House, and he wanted to force his way there by an ex post facto inference; the banns of marriage were published between him and parliament, and he would fain, with the petulance of opposition, seize a seat there.

XIX

Truth itself becomes but a fashion. When all the world acknowledge it, it seems trite and stale. It is tinged by the coarse medium through which it passes.

XX

Erasmus, in his ‘Remains,’ tells a story of two thieves, who were recommended by their mother to rob every one they met with; but warned, on peril of their lives, to avoid one Black-breeches (Hercules). Meeting him, however, without knowing him, they set upon him, and were slung across his shoulder,—where Hercules heard them muttering behind his back, a long way off, ‘This must surely be he that our mother warned us of.’ In contempt and pity he let them escape. What modern wit can come up to the grotesque grandeur of this invention?

XXI

People addicted to secresy are so without knowing why; they are so not ‘for cause,’ but for secresy’s sake. It is a mixture of cowardice and conceit. They think, if they tell you any thing, you may understand it better than they do, or turn it in some way against them; but that while they shut up their mouths they are wiser than you, just as liars think by telling you a falsehood they have an advantage over you. There are others who deal in significant nods, smiles, and half-sentences, so that you never can get at their meaning, and indeed they have none, but leave it to you to put what interpretation you please on their embryo hints and conceptions. They are glad to find a proxy for their want of understanding.

XXII

It is the force and violence of the English mind that has put it into the safe custody of the law, and it is every man’s disposition to act upon his own judgment and presumption, without regard to others, that has made it absolutely necessary to establish equal claims to curb 215them. We are too much in a state of nature to submit to what Burke calls ‘the soft collar of social esteem,’ and require ‘the iron rod, the torturing hour,’ to tame us. But though the foundations of liberty, life, and property, are formally secured in this way from the ebullitions of national character, yet the spirit breaks out upon the surface of manners, and is often spurted in our face. Lord Castlereagh was wrong in saying that ‘liberty was merely a custom of England;’ it is the indigenous growth of our temper and our clime; and woe to him who deprives us of the only amends for so many disadvantages and failings! The wild beast roaming his native forests is respectable though formidable—shut up in Exeter ‘Change, he is equally odious and wretched.

XXIII

It was a long time made an argument for not throwing open the galleries of noblemen and others to the public, that if permission were given they would be filled with the lowest of the rabble, and with squalid wretches, who would run up against well-dressed people, and damage the works of art. Nothing could be more false than this theory, as experience has shown. It was in vain to quote the example of foreign countries, as it was said the common people there were kept more in subjection; but if they are tamer, ours are prouder for that very reason. The National Gallery in Pall-Mall is now open to all the world; and, except a shabby artist or two, who ever saw a soul there who was not, if not well-dressed, yet dressed in his best, and behaving with decency, instead of trying to turn the place into a bear-garden, as had been predicted.^[42] People will not go out of their way to see pictures unless they have an interest in them, which gives the title, and is a security against ill consequences; much less will any class of people obtrude themselves where they are pointed at as inferior to the rest of the company, or subject themselves to looks of scorn and disgust, to see any sights in the world. There is no man so poor or low but he loves himself better than pictures or statues; and if he must get snubbed and treated with contempt to indulge his admiration of celebrated works, he will forego the latter. Comparisons are odious; and we avoid them. The first object of every human being (high or low, great or small) is to stand well with himself, and to appear to the best advantage to others. A man is not very fond of passing along the streets in a thread-bare coat, and shoes with holes in them. Will he go in this trim into a group of well-dressed people 216to make himself ridiculous? The mind, so far from being dull or callous on this point, is but too sensitive; our jealousy of public opinion is the ruling passion, a morbid disease. Does not the consciousness of any singularity or impropriety of appearance immediately take off from our pleasure at a play? How seldom we observe an interloper in the dress circle; and how sure he is to pay for it! If a man has any defect or inferiority, this is certain, he will keep it in the back-ground. If a chimney-sweeper or scavenger had a ticket to a ball, would he go? Oh! no; it is enough to bear the sense of our own infirmity and disgrace in silence, and unnoticed, without having it wrought to agony by the glare of contrast and ostentation of insult! What linendraper or grocer’s son would dine with a prince every day though he might, to be crushed into insignificance, and stifled with ironical civility? Do we not observe the difficulty there is in making servants and mechanics sit down, or keep on their hats in speaking to their betters, for fear of being thought to encroach, and made liable to a rebuff in consequence? Assuredly, then, the great may throw open their palace-doors and galleries of art without having to dread the inroad or outrages of the mob, or fancying that any one will go who is not qualified to appear, or will not come away with his mind and manners improved. The wooden shoes and mob caps in the Louvre or the Vatican do no harm to the pictures on the walls: but add a new interest to them, and throw a pleasing light on human nature. If we are behind other nations in politeness and civilization, the best way to overtake them is to tread in their steps.

XXIV

It is at the same time true that familiarity breeds contempt; or that the vulgar, if admitted to an intimacy and footing of equality, try to make you feel all your defects, and to pay for the superiority you have so long usurped over them. The same pride that before kept them at a distance makes them ready to throw down any barrier of deference or distinction the moment they can do so with impunity. No one willingly admits a superiority in another; or does not secretly prefer himself to the whole universe beside. The slave would kill the tyrant, whose feet he kisses; and there is no Turk so loyal that he would not cut off the head of the best of Sultans, if he was sure of putting the diadem upon his own.

XXV

The strongest minds are governed more by appearances than by a regard to consequences. Those who pretend to be the greatest calculators of their own interest, or the main-chance, are the very slaves 217of opinion, and dupes of shallow pretension. They are often so mad in this respect, that they think neither better nor worse of the oldest friend they have in the world than the first person they happen to be in company with does, or the last rumour they heard gives him out. Their circumspection amounts to looking three ways at once, and missing the right point of view at last. They would rather speak to a well-dressed fool in the street than to the wisest man in a thread-bare suit. I know an author who succeeds with a set of second-hand thoughts by having a coat of the newest cut; and an editor, who flourishes about the town in virtue of a pair of green spectacles. Lay out all you are worth in decking out the person of a vulgar woman, and she will cut you in the very finery you have given her; lay it out on your own back, and she will be ambitious of your least notice. People judge of you not from what they know, but from the impression you make on others, which depends chiefly on professions, and on outward bearing and bravery. De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio. If a man has no opinion of himself, how the deuce should any one else? It is like electing a person member of parliament who refuses to come forward as a candidate. On the other hand, let a man have impudence in lieu of all other qualifications, and he needs not despair. The part of quack or coxcomb is a favourite one with the town. The only character that is likely to get on by passing for a poor creature is the legacy-hunter. Nothing can be too low or insignificant for that. A man is only grateful to you in the other world for having been a foil to him in this. A miser (if he could) would leave his fortune to his dog, that no human being might be the better for it, or no one that he could envy in the possession of it, or think raised to an equality with himself.

XXVI

We complain of old friends who have made their fortunes in the world and slighted us in their prosperity, without considering those who have been unsuccessful, and whom we have neglected in our turn. When our friends betray or desert us, we cling the closer to those that remain. Our confidence is strengthened by being circumscribed; we do not wish to give up a forlorn hope. With the crumbling and decayed fragments of friendship around us, we maintain our point to the last; like the cobbler, who kept his stall and cooked his beef-steak in the ruins of Drury Lane. Bonaparte used to speak of old generals and favourites who would not have abandoned him in his misfortunes if they had lived; it was perhaps well for them that they were dead. The list of traitors and the ungrateful is too much swelled without any probable additions to it.

When we hear of any base or shocking action or character, we think the better of ourselves; instead of which, we ought to think the worse. It strikes at the grounds of our faith in human nature. The reflection of the old divine was wiser on seeing a reprobate—‘There goes my wicked self!’

XXVIII

Over-civility generally ends in impertinence; for as it proceeds from design, and not from any kindness or respect, it ceases with its object.

XXIX

I am acquainted with but one person, of whom I feel quite sure that if he were to meet an old and tried friend in the street, he would go up and speak to him in the same manner, whether in the interim he had become a lord or a beggar. Upon reflection, I may add a second to the list. Such is my estimate of the permanence and sincerity of our most boasted virtues. ‘To be honest as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.’

XXX

It has been said that family attachments are the only ones that stand the test of adversity, because the disgrace or misfortune is there in some measure reflected upon ourselves. A friend is no longer a friend, provided we choose to pick a quarrel with him; but we cannot so easily cut the link of relationship asunder. We therefore relieve the distresses of our near relations, or get them out of the way, lest they should shame us. But the sentiment is unnatural, and therefore must be untrue.

XXXI

L—— said of some monkeys at a fair, that we were ashamed of their resemblance to ourselves on the same principle that we avoided poor relations.

XXXII

Servants and others who consult only their ease and convenience, give a great deal of trouble by their carelessness and profligacy; those who take a pride in their work often carry it to excess, and plague you with constant advice and interference. Their duty gets so much a-head in their imagination, that it becomes their master, and your’s too.

There are persons who are never easy unless they are putting your books or papers in order, that is, according to their notions of the matter; and hide things lest they should be lost, where neither the owner nor any body else can find them. This is a sort of magpie faculty. If any thing is left where you want it, it is called making a litter. There is a pedantry in housewifery as in the gravest concerns. Abraham Tucker complained that whenever his maid servant had been in his library, he could not set comfortably to work again for several days.

XXXIV

True misanthropy consists not in pointing out the faults and follies of men, but in encouraging them in the pursuit. They who wish well to their fellow-creatures are angry at their vices and sore at their mishaps; he who flatters their errors and smiles at their ruin is their worst enemy. But men like the sycophant better than the plain-dealer, because they prefer their passions to their reason, and even to their interest.

XXXV

I am not very patriotic in my notions, nor prejudiced in favour of my own countrymen; and one reason is, I wish to have as good an opinion as I can of human nature in general. If we are the paragons that some people would make us out, what must the rest of the world be? If we monopolize all the sense and virtue on the face of the globe, we ‘leave others poor indeed,’ without having a very great superabundance falling to our own share. Let them have a few advantages that we have not—grapes and the sun!

XXXVI

When the Persian ambassador was at Edinburgh, an old Presbyterian lady, more full of zeal than discretion, fell upon him for his idolatrous belief, and said ‘I hear you worship the sun!’—‘In faith, Madam,’ he replied, ‘and so would you too if you had ever seen him!’

XXXVII

‘To be direct and honest is not safe,’ says Iago. Shakspeare has here defined the nature of honesty, which seems to consist in the absence of any indirect or sinister bias. The honest man looks at and decides upon an object as it is in itself, without a view to consequences, and as if he himself were entirely out of the question; the prudent 220man considers only what others will think of it; the knave, how he can turn it to his own advantage or another’s detriment, which he likes better. His straightforward simplicity of character is the reverse of what is understood by the phrase, a man of the world: an honest man is independent of and abstracted from material ties. This character is owing chiefly to strong natural feeling and a love of right, partly to pride and obstinacy, and a want of discursiveness of imagination. It is not well to be too witty or too wise. In many circles (not including the night-cellar or a mess-table) a clever fellow means a rogue. According to the French proverb, ‘Tout homme reflechi est méchant.’ Your honest man often is, and is always set down as no better than an ass.

XXXVIII

A person who does not tell lies will not believe that others tell them. From old habit, he cannot break the connection between words and things. This is to labour under a great disadvantage in his transactions with men of the world: it is playing against sharpers with loaded dice. The secret of plausibility and success is point-blanc lying. The advantage which men of business have over the dreamers and sleep-walkers is not in knowing the exact state of a case, but in telling you with a grave face what it is not, to suit their own purposes. This is one obvious reason why students and book-worms are so often reduced to their last legs. Education (which is a study and discipline of abstract truth) is a diversion to the instinct of lying and a bar to fortune.

XXXIX

Those who get their money as wits, spend it like fools.

XL

It is not true that authors, artists, &c., are uniformly ill-paid; they are often improvident, and look upon an income as an estate. A literary man who has made even five or six hundred a-year for a length of time has only himself to blame if he has none of it left (a tradesman with the same annual profits would have been rich or independent); an artist who breaks for ten thousand pounds cannot surely lament the want of patronage. A sieve might as well petition against a dry season. Persons of talent and reputation do not make money, because they do not keep it; and they do not keep it, because they do not care about it till they feel the want of it—and then the public stop payment. The prudent and careful, even among players, lay by fortunes.

In general, however, it is not to be expected that those should grow rich by a special Providence, whose first and last object is by every means and at every sacrifice to grow famous. Vanity and avarice have different goals and travel different roads. The man of genius produces that which others admire: the man of business that which they will buy. If the poet is delighted with the ideas of certain things, the reader is equally satisfied with the idea of them too. The man of genius does that which no one else but himself can do: the man of business gets his wealth from the joint mechanical drudgery of all whom he has the means to employ. Trade is the Briareus that works with a hundred hands. A popular author grew rich, because he seemed to have a hundred hands to write with: but he wanted another hand to say to his well-got gains, ‘Come, let me clutch thee.’ Nollekens made a fortune (how he saved it we know) by having blocks of marble to turn into sharp-looking busts (which required a capital), and by hiring a number of people to hack and hew them into shape. Sir Joshua made more money than West or Barry, partly because he was a better painter, partly because gentlemen like their own portraits better than those of prophet or apostle, saint or hero. What the individual wants, he will pay the highest price for: what is done for the public the State must pay for. How if they will not? The historical painter cannot make them; and if he persists in the attempt, must be contented to fall a martyr to it. It is some glory to fail in great designs; and some punishment is due to having rashly or presumptuously embarked in them.

XLII

It is some comfort to starve on a name: it is something to be a poor gentleman; and your man of letters ‘writes himself armigero, in any bond, warrant, or quittance.’ In fixing on a profession for a child, it is a consideration not to place him in one in which he may not be thought good enough to sit down in any company. Miserable mortals that we are! If you make a lawyer of him, he may become Lord Chancellor; and then all his posterity are lords. How cheap and yet acceptable a thing is nobility in this country! It does not date from Adam or the conquest. We need not laugh at Buonaparte’s mushroom peers, who were something like Charlemagne’s or the knights of King Arthur’s round table.

XLIII

We talk of the march of intellect, as if it only unfolded the knowledge of good: the knowledge of evil, which communicates with 222twenty times the rapidity, is never once hinted at. Eve’s apple, the torch of Prometheus, and Pandora’s box, are discarded as childish fables by our wise moderns.

XLIV

As I write this, I hear out of the window a man beating his wife and calling her names. Is this what is meant by good-nature and domestic comfort? Or is it that we have so little of these, ordinarily speaking, that we are astonished at the smallest instances of them; and have never done lauding ourselves for the exclusive possession of them?

XLV

A man should never marry beneath his own rank in life—for love. It shews goodness of heart, but want of consideration; and the very generosity of purpose will defeat itself. She may please him and be every way qualified to make him happy: but what will others think? Can he with equal certainty of the issue introduce her to his friends and family? If not, nothing is done; for marriage is an artificial institution, and a wife a part of the machinery of society. We are not in a state of nature, to be quite free and unshackled to follow our spontaneous impulses. Nothing can reconcile the difficulty but a woman’s being a paragon of wit or beauty; but every man fancies his Dulcinea a paragon of wit or beauty. Without this, he will only (with the best intentions in the world) have entailed chagrin and mortification both on himself and her; and she will be as much excluded from society as if he had made her his mistress instead of his wife. She must either mope at home, or tie him to her apron-string; and he will drag a clog and a load through life, if he be not saddled with a scold and a tyrant to boot.

XLVI

I believe in the theoretical benevolence, and practical malignity of man.

XLVII

We pity those who lived three hundred years ago, as if the world was hardly then awake, and they were condemned to feel their way and drag out an inanimate existence in the obscure dawn of manners and civilization: we forsooth are at the meridian, and the ages that are to follow are dark night. But if there were any truth in our theory, we should be as much behind-hand and objects of scorn to those who are to come after us, as we have a fancied advantage over 223those that have preceded us. Supposing it to be a misfortune to have lived in the age of Raphael or Virgil, it would be desirable (if it were possible) still to postpone the period of our existence sine die: for the value of time must mount up, as it proceeds, through the positive, comparative, and superlative degrees. Common sense with a little reflection will teach us, that one age is as good as another; that in familiar phrase we cannot have our cake and eat it; and that there is no time like the time present, whether in the first, the tenth or the twentieth century.

XLVIII

The world does not start fair in the race of time: one country has run its course before another has set out or even been heard of. Riches, luxury, and the arts, reach their utmost height in one place, while the rest of the globe is in a crude and barbarous state; decline thenceforward, and can no more be resuscitated than the dead. The twelve old Etruscan cities are stone-walls, surrounded with heaps of cinders: Rome is but the tomb of its ancient greatness. Venice, Genoa, are extinct; and there are those who think that England has had her day. She may exclaim in the words of Gray’s Bard—‘To triumph and to die are mine.’ America is just setting out in the path of history, on the model of England, without a language of its own, and with a continent instead of an island to run its career in—like a novice in the art, who gets a larger canvass than his master ever had to cover with his second-hand designs.

XLIX

It was shrewdly observed that the ruin of states commences with the accumulation of people in great cities, which conceal and foster vice and profligacy.

L

The world, said a sensible man, does not on the whole grow much worse, nor abandon itself to absolute licentiousness, because as people have children growing up, they do not wish them to be reprobates; but give them good advice and conceal their failings from them. This in each successive generation brings morality on its legs again, however sceptical in virtue or hardened in vice the old may become through habit or bad example.

LI

As children puzzle you by asking explanations of what they do not understand, many grown people shine in company and triumph over their antagonists by dint of ignorance and conceit.

A certain bookseller wanted Northcote to write a history of art in all ages and countries, and in all its ramifications and collateral bearings. It would have taken a life to execute it; but the projector thought it was as easy to make the book as to draw up the title-page. Some minds are as sanguine from a want of imagination, as others are from an excess of it; they see no difficulty or objection in the way of what they undertake, and are blind to every thing but their own interest and wishes.

LIII

An outcry is raised against the distresses of literature as a tax upon the public, and against the sums of money and unrepaid loans which authors borrow of strangers or friends. It is not considered that but for authors we should still have been in the hands of tyrants, who rioted in the spoil of widows and orphans, and swept the fortunes of individuals and the wealth of provinces into their pouch. It will be time enough to be alarmed when the Literary Fund has laid its iron grasp on fat abbey lands and portly monasteries for the poor brethren of the Muses, has establishments like those of the Franciscan and Dominican Friars for its hoary veterans or tender novices, and has laid half the property of the country under contribution. Authors are the ideal class of the present day, who supply the brains of the community with ‘fancies and good-nights,’ as the priests did of old; and who cultivating no goodly vineyard of their own to satisfy the wants of the body, are sometimes entitled, besides their pittance, to ask the protection of taste or liberality. After all, the fees of Parnassus are trifling in comparison with the toll of Purgatory.

LIV

There are but few authors who should marry: they are already wedded to their studies and speculations. Those who are accustomed to the airy regions of poetry and romance, have a fanciful and peculiar standard of perfection of their own, to which realities can seldom come up; and disappointment, indifference, or disgust, is too often the result. Besides, their ideas and their intercourse with society make them fit for the highest matches. If an author, baulked of the goddess of his idolatry, marries an ignorant and narrow-minded person, they have no language in common: if she is a bluestocking, they do nothing but wrangle. Neither have most writers the means to maintain a wife and family without difficulty. They have chosen their part, the pursuit of the intellectual and abstracted; and should not attempt to force the world of reality into a union with it, like mixing gold with 225clay. In this respect, the Romish priests were perhaps wiser. ‘From every work they challenged essoin for contemplation’s sake.’ Yet their celibacy was but a compromise with their sloth and supposed sanctity. We must not contradict the course of nature, after all.

LV

There is sometimes seen more natural ease and grace in a common gipsy-girl than in an English court-circle. To demand a reason why, is to ask why the strolling fortune-teller’s hair and eyes are black, or her face oval.

LVI

The greatest proof of pride is its being able to extinguish envy and jealousy. Vanity produces the latter effect on the continent.

LVII

When you speak of the popular effect and enthusiasm produced by the ceremonies of the Catholic church, it is presently objected that all this faith and zeal is excited by mummery and superstition. I am ready to allow that; and when I find that truth and reason have the same homage and reverence paid to them as absurdity and falsehood, I shall think all the advantages are clearly on the side of the former. The processes of reason do not commonly afford the elements of passion as their result; and the object of strong and even lofty feeling seems to appeal rather to the grossness and incongruity of the senses and imagination, than to the clear and dry deductions of the understanding. Man has been truly defined a religious animal; but his faith and heavenward aspirations cease if you reduce him to a mere mathematical machine. The glory and the power of the true religion are in its enlisting the affections of man along with the understanding.

LVIII

We are imposed upon by the affectation of grace and gentility only till we see the reality; and then we laugh at the counterfeit, and are surprised that we did not see through it before.

LIX

English women, even of the highest rank, look like dowdies in Paris; or exactly as countrywomen do in London. It is a rule-of-three proportion. A French milliner or servant maid laughs (not without reason) at an English Duchess. The more our fair country women dress à la Française, the more unlucky they seem; and the 226more foreign graces they give themselves, the more awkward they grow. They want the tournure Françoise. Oh! how we have ‘melted, thawed, and dissolved into a dew,’ to see a bustling, red-faced, bare-necked English Duchess, or banker’s wife, come into a box at the French theatre, bedizened and bedaubed! My Lady-mayoress or the Right Honourable the Countess Dowager of ——, before she ventures on the word vulgar, or scorns her untitled and untutored neighbours as beneath her notice, should go to see les Angloises pour rire! That is the looking-glass for upstart wealth and inflated aristocracy.

LX

The advantage of our nobility over the plebeian classes is said to be in the blood and in the breed—the Norman breed, we suppose—the high noses and arched eyebrows date from the Conquest. We plead guilty to the insinuation conveyed in the expression—‘the coronet face’—and bow with some sort of pride to the pride of birth. But this hypothesis is hardly compatible with the evident improvement in the present generation of noblemen and gentlemen by the intermarriages with rich heiresses, or the beautiful Pamelas of an humbler stock. Crossing the breed has done much good; for the actual race of Bond-street loungers would make a very respectable regiment of grenadiers; and the satire on Beau Didapper, in Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, has lost its force.

LXI

The tone of society in Paris is very far from John Bullish. They do not ask what a man is worth, or whether his father is owner of a tin-mine or a borough—but what he has to say, whether he is amiable and spirituel. In the case (unless a marriage is on the tapis) no one inquires whether his account at his banker’s is high or low; or whether he has come in his carriage or on foot. An English soldier of fortune, or a great traveller, is listened to with some attention as a marked character; while a booby lord is no more regarded than his own footman in livery. The blank after a man’s name is expected to be filled up with talent or adventures, or he passes for what he really is, a cypher.

LXII

Our young Englishmen in Paris do not make much figure in the society of Frenchmen of education and spirit. They stumble at the threshold in point of manners, dress, and conversation. They have not only to learn the language, but to unlearn almost every thing else. 227Both words and things are different in France; our raw recruits have to get rid of a host of prejudices, and they do it awkwardly and reluctantly, and if they attempt to make a regular stand, are presently out-voted. The terms gothic and barbarous are talisman to strike them dumb. There is, moreover, a clumsiness in both their wit and advances to familiarity, that the spiteful brunettes on the other side of the water do not comprehend, and that subjects them to constant sneers; and every false step adds to their confusion and want of confidence. But their lively antagonists are so flushed with victory and victims to their loquacity and charms, that they are not contented to lecture them on morals, metaphysics, sauces, and virtù, but proceed to teach them the true pronunciation and idiom of the English tongue. Thus a smart French widow having blundered by saying, ‘I have never made a child;’ and perceiving that it excited a smile, maintained, for three whole days, against a large company, that it was better than saying, ‘I never had a child.’

LXIII

The Parisian trip (say what they will) is not grace. It is the motion of a puppet, and may be mimicked, which grace cannot. It may be different from the high, heavy-heeled walk of the Englishwoman. Is it not equally remote from the step (if step it may be called) of an Andalusian girl?

LXIV

It has been often made a subject of dispute, What is the distinguishing characteristic of man? And the answer may, perhaps, be given that he is the only animal that dresses. He is the only being who is coxcomb enough not to go out of the world naked as he came into it; that is ashamed of what he really is, and proud of what he is not; and that tries to pass off an artificial disguise as himself. We may safely extend the old maxim, and say that it is the tailor that makes both the gentleman and the man. Fine feathers make fine birds—this lie is the motto of the human mind. Dress a fellow in sheepskin, and he is a clown—dress him in scarlet, and he is a gentleman. It is then the clothes that makes all the difference; and the moral agent is simply the lay-figure to hang them on. Man, in short, is the only creature in the known world, with whom appearances pass for realities, words for things; or that has the wit to find out his own defects, and the impudence and hypocrisy, by merely concealing them, to persuade himself and others that he has them not. Teniers’s monkeys, habited like monks, may be thought a satire on human nature—alas! 228it is a piece of natural history. The monks are the larger and more solemn species, to be sure. Swift has taken a good bird’s eye view of man’s nature, by abstracting the habitual notions of size, and looking at it in great or in little: would that some one had the boldness and the art to do a similar service, by stripping off the coat from his back, the vizor from his thoughts, or by dressing up some other creature in similar mummery! It is not his body alone that he tampers with, and metamorphoses so successfully; he tricks out his mind and soul in borrowed finery, and in the admired costume of gravity and imposture. If he has a desire to commit a base or cruel action without remorse and with the applause of the spectators, he has only to throw the cloak of religion over it, and invoke Heaven to set its seal on a massacre or a robbery. At one time dirt, at another indecency, at another rapine, at a fourth rancorous malignity, is decked out and accredited in the garb of sanctity. The instant there is a flaw, a ‘damned spot’ to be concealed, it is glossed over with a doubtful name. Again, we dress up our enemies in nicknames, and they march to the stake as assuredly as in san Benitos. The words Heretic or Papist, Jew or Infidel, labelled on those who differ from us, stand us in lieu of sense or decency. If a man be mean, he sets up for economy; if selfish, he pretends to be prudent; if harsh, firm; and so on. What enormities, what follies are not undertaken for the love of glory?—and the worst of all, are said to be for the glory of God! Strange, that a reptile should wish to be thought an angel; or that he should not be content to writhe and grovel in his native earth, without aspiring to the skies! It is from the love of dress and finery. He is the Chimney-sweeper on May-day all the year round: the soot peeps through the rags and tinsel, and all the flowers of sentiment!

LXV

The meaning of all which is, that man is the only hypocrite in the creation; or that he is composed of two natures, the ideal and the physical, the one of which he is always trying to keep a secret from the other. He is the Centaur not fabulous.

LXVI

A person who is full of secrets is a knave or a fool, or both.

LXVII

The error of Mandeville, as well as of those opposed to him, is in concluding that man is a simple and not a compound being. The schoolmen and divines endeavour to prove that the gross and material 229part of his nature is a foreign admixture, distinct from and unworthy of the man himself. The misanthropes and sceptics, on the other hand, maintain the falsity of all human virtues, and that all that is not sensual and selfish is a mere theatrical deception. But in order that man should be a wholly and incorrigibly selfish being, he should be shut up like an oyster in its shell, without any possible conception of what passes beyond the wall of his senses; and the feelers of his mind should not extend their ramifications under any circumstance or in any manner, to the thoughts and sentiments of others. Shakspeare has expressed the matter better than the pedants on either side, who wish unreasonably to exalt or degrade human nature.—‘The web of our lives is as of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not, and our vices would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.’

LXVIII

People cry out against the preposterous absurdity of such representations as the German inventions of the Devil’s Elixir and the Bottle Imp. Is it then a fiction that we see? Or is it not rather a palpable reality that takes place every day and hour? Who is there that is not haunted by some heated phantom of his brain, some wizard spell, that clings to him in spite of his will, and hurries him on to absurdity or ruin? There is no machinery or phantasmagoria of a melo-drame, more extravagant than the workings of the passions. Mr. Farley may do his worst with scaly forms, with flames, and dragon’s wings: but after all, the true demon is within us. How many, whose senses are shocked at the outward spectacle, and who turn away startled or disgusted might say, pointing to their bosoms, ‘The moral is here!’

LXIX

Mr. L—— asked Sir Thomas —— who had been intimate with the Prince, if it was true that he was so fine a gentleman as he was generally represented? Sir Thomas —— made answer, that it was certainly true that the Prince was a very fine gentleman indeed: ‘but,’ added he, ‘if I am to speak my mind, the finest gentleman I ever saw, was Sadi Baba, the ambassador to Constantinople, from the Usbek Tartars.’

LXX

‘Man is in no haste to be venerable.’ At present, it seems as if there were no occasion to become so. People die as usual; but it is not the fashion to grow old. Formerly, men subsided and settled down into a respectable old age at forty, as they did into a bob-wig, 230and a brown coat and waistcoat of a certain cut. The father of a family no longer pretended to pass for a gay young fellow, after he had children grown up; and women dwindled, by regular and willing gradations, into mothers and grandmothers, transferring their charms and pretensions to a blooming posterity; but these things are never thought of now-a-days. A matron of sixty flaunts it in ‘La Belle Assemblée’s dresses for May:’ and certainly M. Stultz never inquires into the grand climacteric of his customers. Dress levels all ages as well as all ranks.

The Monthly Magazine.] [November, 1830.

Editors are (to use an approved Scotch phrase—for what that is Scotch is not approved?) a ‘sort of tittle-tattle‘—difficult to deal with, dangerous to discuss. ‘A capital subject for an article, great scope, complete novelty, and ground never touched upon!’ Very true; for what Editor would insert an article against himself? Certainly none that did not feel himself free from and superior to the common foibles of his tribe. What might, therefore, be taken for a satire in manuscript, turns to a compliment in print—the exception in this, as in other cases, proves the rule—an inference we have endeavoured to express in our motto.

With one exception, then, Editors in general partake of the usual infirmity of human nature, and of persons placed in high and honorary situations. Like other individuals raised to authority, they are chosen to fill a certain post for qualities useful or ornamental to the reading public; but they soon fancy that the situation has been invented for their own honour and profit, and sink the use in the abuse. Kings are not the only servants of the public who imagine that they are the state. Editors are but men, and easily ‘lay the flattering unction to their souls’ that they are the Magazine, the Newspaper, or the Review they conduct. They have got a little power in their hands, and they wish to employ that power (as all power is employed) to increase the sense of self-importance; they borrow a certain dignity from their situation as arbiters and judges of taste and elegance, and they are determined to keep it to the detriment of their employers and of every one else. They are dreadfully afraid there should be any thing behind the Editor’s chair, greater than the Editor’s chair. That is a scandal to be prevented at all risks. The publication they are entrusted with for the amusement and edification of the town, they 231convert, in theory and practice, into a stalking-horse of their own vanity, whims, and prejudices. They cannot write a whole work themselves, but they take care that the whole is such as they might have written: it is to have the Editor’s mark, like the broad R, on every page, or the N. N. at the Tuileries; it is to bear the same image and superscription—every line is to be upon oath: nothing is to be differently conceived or better expressed than the Editor could have done it. The whole begins in vanity, and ends too often in dulness and insipidity.

It is utterly impossible to persuade an Editor that he is nobody. As Mr. Horne Tooke said, on his trial for a libel before Lord Kenyon, ‘There are two parties in this cause—myself and the jury; the judge and the crier of the court attend in their respective places:’ so in every periodical miscellany, there are two essential parties—the writers and the public; the Editor and the printer’s-devil are merely the mechanical instruments to bring them together. There is a secret consciousness of this on the part of the Conductor of the Literary Diligence, that his place is one for shew and form rather than use; and as he cannot maintain his pretended superiority by what he does himself, he thinks to arrive at the same end by hindering others from doing their best. The ‘dog-in-the-manger’ principle comes into full play. If an article has nothing to recommend it, is one of no mark or likelihood, it goes in; there is no offence in it. If it is likely to strike, to draw attention, to make a noise, then every syllable is scanned, every objection is weighed: if grave, it is too grave; if witty, it is too witty. One way or other, it might be better; and while this nice point is pending, it gives place, as a matter of course, to something that there is no question about.

The responsibility, the delicacy, the nervous apprehension of the Editor, naturally increase with the probable effect and popularity of the contributions on which he has to pass judgment; and the nearer an effusion approaches to perfection, the more fatal is a single flaw, or its falling short of that superhuman standard by a hair’s-breadth difference, to its final reception. If people are likely to ask, ‘Who wrote a certain paper in the last number of ——?’ the Editor is bound, as a point of honour, to baulk that impertinent curiosity on the part of the public. He would have it understood that all the articles are equally good, and may be equally his own. If he inserts a paper of more than the allowed average merit, his next care is to spoil by revising it. The sting, with the honey, is sure to be left out. If there is any thing that pleased you in the writing, you look in vain for it in the proof. What might electrify the reader, startles the Editor. With a paternal regard for the interests of the public, he 232takes care that their tastes should not be pampered, and their expectations raised too high, by a succession of fine passages, of which it is impossible to continue a supply. He interposes between the town and their vicious appetite for the piquant and high-seasoned, as we forbid children to indulge in sweetmeats. The trite and superficial are always to be had to order, and present a beautiful uniformity of appearance. There is no unexpected relief, no unwelcome inequality of style, to disorder the nerves or perplex the understanding: the reader may read, and smile, and sleep, without meeting a single idea to break his repose!

Some Editors, moreover, have a way of altering the first paragraph: they have then exercised their privileges, and let you alone for the rest of the chapter. This is like paying ‘a pepper-corn rent,’ or making one’s bow on entering a room: it is being let off cheap. Others add a pointless conclusion of their own: it is like signing their names to the article. Some have a passion for sticking in the word however at every opportunity, in order to impede the march of the style; and others are contented and take great pains (with Lindley Murray’s Grammar lying open before them) to alter ‘if it is’ into ‘if it be.’ An Editor abhors an ellipsis. If you fling your thoughts into continued passages, they set to work to cut them up into short paragraphs: if you make frequent breaks, they turn the tables on you that way, and throw the whole composition into masses. Any thing to preserve the form and appearance of power, to make the work their own by mental stratagem, to stamp it by some fiction of criticism with their personal identity, to enable them to run away with the credit, and look upon themselves as the master-spirits of the work and of the age! If there is any point they do not understand, they are sure to meddle with it, and mar the sense; for it piques their self-love, and they think they are bound ex-officio to know better than the writer. Thus they substitute (at a venture, and merely for the sake of altering) one epithet for another, when perhaps the same word has occurred just before, and produces a cruel tautology, never considering the trouble you have taken to compare the context and vary the phraseology.

Editors have no misplaced confidence in the powers of their contributors: they think by the supposition they must be in the right from a single supercilious glance,—and you in the wrong, after poring over a subject for a month. There are Editors who, if you insert the name of a popular actor or artist, strike it out, and, in virtue of their authority, insert a favourite of their own,—as a dexterous attorney substitutes the name of a friend in a will. Some Editors will let you praise nobody; others will let you blame nobody. The first excites 233their jealousy of contemporary merit; the last excites their fears, and they do not like to make enemies. Some insist upon giving no opinion at all, and observe an unarmed neutrality as to all parties and persons;—it is no wonder the world think very little of them in return. Some Editors stand upon their characters for this; others for that. Some pique themselves upon being genteel and well-dressed; others on being moral and immaculate, and do not perceive that the public never trouble their heads about the matter. We only know one Editor who openly discards all regard to character and decency, and who thrives by the dissolution of partnership, if indeed the articles were ever drawn up. We shall not mention names, as we would not advertise a work that ‘ought to lie on no gentleman’s table.’ Some Editors drink tea with a set of blue stockings and literary ladies: not a whisper, not a breath that might blow away those fine cobwebs of the brain—

Others dine with Lords and Academicians—for God’s sake, take care what you say! Would you strip the Editor’s mantel-piece of the cards of invitation that adorn it to select parties for the next six months? An Editor takes a turn in St. James’s-street, and is congratulated by the successive literary or political groups on all he does not write; and when the mistake is found out, the true Simon Pure is dismissed. We have heard that it was well said by the proprietor of a leading journal, that he would take good care never to write a line in his own paper, as he had conflicting interests enough to manage, without adding literary jealousies to the number. On the other hand, a very good-natured and warm-hearted individual declared, ‘he would never have another man of talents for an Editor’ (the Editor, in this case, is to the proprietor as the author to the Editor), ‘for he was tired of having their good things thrust in his teeth.’ Some Editors are scrubs, mere drudges, newspaper-puffs: others are bullies or quacks: others are nothing at all—they have the name, and receive a salary for it! A literary sinecure is at once lucrative and highly respectable. At Lord’s-Ground there are some old hands that are famous for ‘blocking out and staying in:’ it would seem that some of our literary veterans had taken a lesson from their youthful exercises at Harrow or Eton.

All this is bad enough; but the worst is, that Editors, besides their own failings, have friends who aggravate and take advantage of them. These self-styled friends are the night-shade and hemlock clinging to 234the work, preventing its growth and circulation, and dropping a slumberous poison from its jaundiced leaves. They form a cordon, an opake mass round the Editor, and persuade him that they are the support, the prop, and pillar of his reputation. They get between him and the public, and shut out the light, and set aside common sense. They pretend anxiety for the interest of some established organ of opinion, while all they want is to make it the organ of their dogmas, prejudices, or party. They want to be the Magazine or the Review—to wield that power covertly, to warp that influence to their own purposes. If they cannot do this, they care not if it sinks or swims. They prejudge every question—fly-blow every writer who is not of their own set. A friend of theirs has three articles in the last number of ——; they strain every nerve and make pressing instances to throw a slur on a popular contribution by another hand, in order that he may write a fourth in the next number. The short articles which are read by the vulgar, are cut down to make room for the long ones, which are read by nobody but the writers and their friends. If an opinion is expressed contrary to the shibboleth of the party, it is represented as an outrage on decency and public opinion, when in truth the public are delighted with the candour and boldness displayed. They would convert the most valuable and spirited journal into a dull pamphleteer, stuffed with their own lucubrations on certain heavy topics. The self-importance of these people is in proportion to their insignificance; and what they cannot do by an appeal to argument or sound policy, they effect by importunity and insinuation. They keep the Editor in continual alarm as to what will be said of him by the public, when in fact the public will think (in nine cases out of ten) just what he tells them.

These people create much of the mischief. An Editor should have no friends—his only prompter should be the number of copies of the work that sell. It is superfluous to strike off a large impression of a work for those few squeamish persons who prefer lead to tinsel. Principle and good manners are barriers that are, in our estimate, inviolable: the rest is open to popular suffrage, and is not to be prejudged by a coterie with closed doors. Another difficulty lies here. An Editor should, in one sense, be a respectable man—a distinguished character; otherwise, he cannot lend his name and sanction to the work. The conductor of a periodical publication which is to circulate widely and give the tone to taste and opinion, ought to be of high standing, should have connections with society, should belong to some literary institution, should be courted by the great, be run after by the obscure. But ‘here’s the rub’—that one so graced and gifted can neither have his time nor his thoughts to himself. Our obligations 235are mutual; and those who owe much to others, become the slaves of their good opinion and good word. He who dines out loses his free agency. He may improve in politeness; he falls off in the pith and pungency of his style. A poem is dedicated to the son of the Muses:—can the critic do otherwise than praise it? A tragedy is brought out by a noble friend and patron:—the severe rules of the drama must yield in some measure to the amenities of private life. On the contrary, Mr. —— is a garretteer—a person that nobody knows; his work has nothing but the contents to recommend it; it sinks into obscurity, or addresses itself to the canaille. An Editor, then, should be an abstraction—a being in the clouds—a mind without a body—reason without passion.——But where find such a one?

The Monthly Magazine.] [March, 1831.

Complaints are frequently made of the vanity and shortness of human life, when, if we examine its smallest details, they present a world by themselves. The most trifling objects, retraced with the eye of memory, assume the vividness, the delicacy, and importance of insects seen through a magnifying glass. There is no end of the brilliancy or the variety. The habitual feeling of the love of life may be compared to ‘one entire and perfect chrysolite,’ which, if analysed, breaks into a thousand shining fragments. Ask the sum-total of the value of human life, and we are puzzled with the length of the account, and the multiplicity of items in it: take any one of them apart, and it is wonderful what matter for reflection will be found in it! As I write this, the Letter-Bell passes: it has a lively, pleasant sound with it, and not only fills the street with its importunate clamour, but rings clear through the length of many half-forgotten years. It strikes upon the ear, it vibrates to the brain, it wakes me from the dream of time, it flings me back upon my first entrance into life, the period of my first coming up to town, when all around was strange, uncertain, adverse—a hubbub of confused noises, a chaos of shifting objects—and when this sound alone, startling me with the recollection of a letter I had to send to the friends I had lately left, brought me as it were to myself, made me feel that I had links still connecting me with the universe, and gave me hope and patience to persevere. At that loud-tinkling, interrupted sound (now and then), the long line of blue hills near the place where I was brought up waves in the horizon, a golden sunset hovers over them, the dwarf-oaks rustle their red leaves in the eveningbreeze, 236and the road from —— to ——, by which I first set out on my journey through life, stares me in the face as plain, but from time and change not less visionary and mysterious, than the pictures in the Pilgrim’s Progress. I should notice, that at this time the light of the French Revolution circled my head like a glory, though dabbled with drops of crimson gore: I walked comfortable and cheerful by its side—

It rose then in the east: it has again risen in the west. Two suns in one day, two triumphs of liberty in one age, is a miracle which I hope the Laureate will hail in appropriate verse. Or may not Mr. Wordsworth give a different turn to the fine passage, beginning—

For is it not brought back, ‘like morn risen on mid-night‘; and may he not yet greet the yellow light shining on the evening bank with eyes of youth, of genius, and freedom, as of yore? No, never! But what would not these persons give for the unbroken integrity of their early opinions—for one unshackled, uncontaminated strain—one Io pæan to Liberty—one burst of indignation against tyrants and sycophants, who subject other countries to slavery by force, and prepare their own for it by servile sophistry, as we see the huge serpent lick over its trembling, helpless victim with its slime and poison, before it devours it! On every stanza so penned should be written the word Recreant! Every taunt, every reproach, every note of exultation at restored light and freedom, would recal to them how their hearts failed them in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. And what shall we say to him—the sleep-walker, the dreamer, the sophist, the word-hunter, the craver after sympathy, but still vulnerable to truth, accessible to opinion, because not sordid or mechanical? The Bourbons being no longer tied about his neck, he may perhaps recover his original liberty of speculating; so that we may apply to him the lines about his own Ancient Mariner—

This is the reason I can write an article on the Letter-Bell, and other such subjects; I have never given the lie to my own soul. If I 237have felt any impression once, I feel it more strongly a second time; and I have no wish to revile or discard my best thoughts. There is at least a thorough keeping in what I write—not a line that betrays a principle or disguises a feeling. If my wealth is small, it all goes to enrich the same heap; and trifles in this way accumulate to a tolerable sum. Or if the Letter-Bell does not lead me a dance into the country, it fixes me in the thick of my town recollections, I know not how long ago. It was a kind of alarm to break off from my work when there happened to be company to dinner or when I was going to the play. That was going to the play, indeed, when I went twice a year, and had not been more than half a dozen times in my life. Even the idea that any one else in the house was going, was a sort of reflected enjoyment, and conjured up a lively anticipation of the scene. I remember a Miss D——, a maiden lady from Wales (who in her youth was to have been married to an earl), tantalised me greatly in this way, by talking all day of going to see Mrs. Siddons’ ‘airs and graces’ at night in some favourite part; and when the Letter-Bell announced that the time was approaching, and its last receding sound lingered on the ear, or was lost in silence, how anxious and uneasy I became, lest she and her companion should not be in time to get good places—lest the curtain should draw up before they arrived—and lest I should lose one line or look in the intelligent report which I should hear the next morning! The punctuating of time at that early period—every thing that gives it an articulate voice—seems of the utmost consequence; for we do not know what scenes in the ideal world may run out of them: a world of interest may hang upon every instant, and we can hardly sustain the weight of future years which are contained in embryo in the most minute and inconsiderable passing events. How often have I put off writing a letter till it was too late! How often had to run after the postman with it—now missing, now recovering the sound of his bell—breathless, angry with myself—then hearing the welcome sound come full round a corner—and seeing the scarlet costume which set all my fears and self-reproaches at rest! I do not recollect having ever repented giving a letter to the postman, or wishing to retrieve it after he had once deposited it in his bag. What I have once set my hand to, I take the consequences of, and have been always pretty much of the same humour in this respect. I am not like the person who, having sent off a letter to his mistress, who resided a hundred and twenty miles in the country, and disapproving, on second thoughts, of some expressions contained in it, took a post-chaise and four to follow and intercept it the next morning. At other times, I have sat and watched the decaying embers in a little 238back painting-room (just as the wintry day declined), and brooded over the half-finished copy of a Rembrandt, or a landscape by Vangoyen, placing it where it might catch a dim gleam of light from the fire; while the Letter-Bell was the only sound that drew my thoughts to the world without, and reminded me that I had a task to perform in it. As to that landscape, methinks I see it now—

There was a windmill, too, with a poor low clay-built cottage beside it:—how delighted I was when I had made the tremulous, undulating reflection in the water, and saw the dull canvas become a lucid mirror of the commonest features of nature! Certainly, painting gives one a strong interest in nature and humanity (it is not the dandy-school of morals or sentiment)—

Perhaps there is no part of a painter’s life (if we must tell ‘the secrets of the prison-house’) in which he has more enjoyment of himself and his art, than that in which after his work is over, and with furtive, sidelong glances at what he has done, he is employed in washing his brushes and cleaning his pallet for the day. Afterwards, when he gets a servant in livery to do this for him, he may have other and more ostensible sources of satisfaction—greater splendour, wealth, or fame; but he will not be so wholly in his art, nor will his art have such a hold on him as when he was too poor to transfer its meanest drudgery to others—too humble to despise aught that had to do with the object of his glory and his pride, with that on which all his projects of ambition or pleasure were founded. ‘Entire affection scorneth nicer hands.’ When the professor is above this mechanical part of his business, it may have become a stalking-horse to other worldly schemes, but is no longer his hobby-horse and the delight of his inmost thoughts—

I used sometimes to hurry through this part of my occupation, while the Letter-Bell (which was my dinner-bell) summoned me to the fraternal board, where youth and hope

239or oftener I put it off till after dinner, that I might loiter longer and with more luxurious indolence over it, and connect it with the thoughts of my next day’s labours.

The dustman’s bell, with its heavy, monotonous noise, and the brisk, lively tinkle of the muffin-bell, have something in them, but not much. They will bear dilating upon with the utmost licence of inventive prose. All things are not alike conductors to the imagination. A learned Scotch professor found fault with an ingenious friend and arch-critic for cultivating a rookery on his grounds: the professor declared ‘he would as soon think of encouraging a froggery.’ This was barbarous as it was senseless. Strange, that a country that has produced the Scotch novels and Gertrude of Wyoming should want sentiment!

The postman’s double knock at the door the next morning is ‘more germain to the matter.’ How that knock often goes to the heart! We distinguish to a nicety the arrival of the Two-penny or the General Post. The summons of the latter is louder and heavier, as bringing news from a greater distance, and as, the longer it has been delayed, fraught with a deeper interest. We catch the sound of what is to be paid—eight-pence, nine-pence, a shilling—and our hopes generally rise with the postage. How we are provoked at the delay in getting change—at the servant who does not hear the door! Then if the postman passes, and we do not hear the expected knock, what a pang is there! It is like the silence of death—of hope! We think he does it on purpose, and enjoys all the misery of our suspense. I have sometimes walked out to see the Mail-Coach pass, by which I had sent a letter, or to meet it when I expected one. I never see a Mail-Coach, for this reason, but I look at it as the bearer of glad tidings—the messenger of fate. I have reason to say so. The finest sight in the metropolis is that of the Mail-Coaches setting off from Piccadilly. The horses paw the ground, and are impatient to be gone, as if conscious of the precious burden they convey. There is a peculiar secresy and despatch, significant and full of meaning, in all the proceedings concerning them. Even the outside passengers have an erect and supercilious air, as if proof against the accidents of the journey. In fact, it seems indifferent whether they are to encounter the summer’s heat or winter’s cold, since they are borne on through the air in a winged chariot. The Mail-Carts drive up; the transfer of packages is made; and, at a signal given, they start off, bearing the irrevocable scrolls that give wings to thought, and that bind or sever hearts for ever. How we hate the Putney and Brentford stages that draw up in a line after they are gone! Some persons think the sublimest object in nature is 240a ship launched on the bosom of the ocean: but give me, for my private satisfaction, the Mail-Coaches that pour down Piccadilly of an evening, tear up the pavement, and devour the way before them to the Land’s-End!

In Cowper’s time, Mail-Coaches were hardly set up; but he has beautifully described the coming in of the Post-Boy:—

And yet, notwithstanding this, and so many other passages that seem like the very marrow of our being, Lord Byron denies that Cowper was a poet!—The Mail-Coach is an improvement on the Post-Boy; but I fear it will hardly bear so poetical a description. The picturesque and dramatic do not keep pace with the useful and mechanical. The telegraphs that lately communicated the intelligence of the new revolution to all France within a few hours, are a wonderful contrivance; but they are less striking and appalling than the beacon-fires (mentioned by Æschylus), which, lighted from hill-top to hill-top, announced the taking of Troy, and the return of Agamemnon.

The Liberal.] [1822.

‘As for politics, I think poets are Tories by nature, supposing them to be by nature poets. The love of an individual person or family, that has worn a crown for many successions, is an inclination greatly adapted to the fanciful tribe. On the other hand, mathematicians, abstract reasoners, of no manner of attachment to persons, at least to the visible part of them, but prodigiously devoted to the ideas of virtue, liberty, and so forth, are generally Whigs. It happens agreeably enough to this maxim, that the Whigs are friends to that wise, plodding, unpoetical people, the Dutch.’—Skenstone’s Letters, 1746.

The Spirit of Monarchy then is nothing but the craving in the human mind after the Sensible and the One. It is not so much a matter of state-necessity or policy, as a natural infirmity, a disease, a false appetite in the popular feeling, which must be gratified. Man is an individual animal with narrow faculties, but infinite desires, which he is anxious to concentrate in some one object within the grasp of his imagination, and where, if he cannot be all that he wishes himself, he may at least contemplate his own pride, vanity, and passions, displayed in their most extravagant dimensions in a being no bigger and no better than himself. Each individual would (were it in his power) be a king, a God: but as he cannot, the next best thing is to see this reflex image of his self-love, the darling passion of his breast, realized, embodied out of himself in the first object he can lay his hands on for the purpose. The slave admires the tyrant, because the last is, what the first would be. He surveys himself all over in the glass of royalty. The swelling, bloated self-importance of the one is the very counterpart and ultimate goal of the abject servility of the other. But both hate mankind for the same reason, because a respect for humanity is a diversion to their inordinate self-love, and the idea of the general good is a check to the gross intemperance of passion. The worthlessness of the object does not diminish but irritate the propensity to admire. It serves to pamper our imagination equally, and does not provoke our envy. All we want is to aggrandize our own vain-glory at second-hand; and the less of real superiority or excellence there is in the person we fix upon as our proxy in this dramatic exhibition, the more easily can we change places with him, and fancy ourselves as good as he. Nay, the descent favours the rise; and we heap our tribute of applause the higher, in proportion as it is a free gift. An idol is not the worse for being of coarse materials: 242a king should be a common-place man. Otherwise, he is superior in his own nature, and not dependent on our bounty or caprice. Man is a poetical animal, and delights in fiction. We like to have scope for the exercise of our mere will. We make kings of men, and Gods of stocks and stones: we are not jealous of the creatures of our own hands. We only want a peg or loop to hang our idle fancies on, a puppet to dress up, a lay-figure to paint from. It is ‘Thing Ferdinand, and not King Ferdinand,’ as it was wisely and wittily observed. We ask only for the stage effect; we do not go behind the scenes, or it would go hard with many of our prejudices! We see the symbols of majesty, we enjoy the pomp, we crouch before the power, we walk in the procession, and make part of the pageant, and we say in our secret hearts, there is nothing but accident that prevents us from being at the head of it. There is something in the mock-sublimity of thrones, wonderfully congenial to the human mind. Every man feels that he could sit there; every man feels that he could look big there; every man feels that he could bow there; every man feels that he could play the monarch there. The transition is so easy, and so delightful! The imagination keeps pace with royal state,

The Madman in Hogarth who fancies himself a king, is not a solitary instance of this species of hallucination. Almost every true and loyal subject holds such a barren sceptre in his hand; and the meanest of the rabble, as he runs by the monarch’s side, has wit enough to think—‘There goes my royal self!’ From the most absolute despot to the lowest slave there is but one step (no, not one) in point of real merit. As far as truth or reason is concerned, they might change situations to-morrow—nay, they constantly do so without the smallest loss or benefit to mankind! Tyranny, in a word, is a farce got up for the entertainment of poor human nature; and it might pass very well, if it did not so often turn into a tragedy.

We once heard a celebrated and elegant historian and a hearty Whig declare, he liked a king like George III. better than such a one as Buonaparte; because, in the former case, there was nothing to overawe the imagination but birth and situation; whereas he could not so easily brook the double superiority of the other, mental as well as adventitious. So does the spirit of independence and the levelling pride of intellect join in with the servile rage of the vulgar! This is the advantage which an hereditary has over an elective monarchy: for there is no end of the dispute about precedence while merit is 243supposed to determine it, each man laying claim to this in his own person; so that there is no other way to set aside all controversy and heart-burnings, but by precluding moral and intellectual qualifications altogether, and referring the choice to accident, and giving the preference to a nonentity. ‘A good king,’ says Swift, ‘should be, in all other respects, a mere cypher.’

It has been remarked, as a peculiarity in modern criticism, that the courtly and loyal make a point of crying up Mr. Young, as an actor, and equally running down Mr. Kean; and it has been conjectured in consequence that Mr. Kean was a radical. Truly, he is not a radical politician; but what is as bad, he is a radical actor. He savours too much of the reality. He is not a mock-tragedian, an automaton player—he is something besides his paraphernalia. He has ‘that within which passes shew.’ There is not a particle of affinity between him and the patrons of the court-writers. Mr. Young, on the contrary, is the very thing—all assumption and strut and measured pomp, full of self-importance, void of truth and nature, the mask of the characters he takes, a pasteboard figure, a stiff piece of wax-work. He fills the throne of tragedy, not like an upstart or usurper, but as a matter of course, decked out in his plumes of feathers, and robes of state, stuck into a posture, and repeating certain words by rote. Mr. Kean has a heart in his bosom, beating with human passion (a thing for the great ‘to fear, not to delight in!’) he is a living man, and not an artificial one. How should those, who look to the surface, and never probe deeper, endure him? He is the antithesis of a court-actor. It is the object there to suppress and varnish over the feelings, not to give way to them. His overt manner must shock them, and be thought a breach of all decorum. They are in dread of his fiery humours, of coming near his Voltaic Battery—they chuse rather to be roused gently from their self-complacent apathy by the application of Metallic Tractors. They dare not trust their delicate nerves within the estuary of the passions, but would slumber out their torpid existence in a calm, a Dead Sea—the air of which extinguishes life and motion!

Would it not be hard upon a little girl, who is busy in dressing up a favourite doll, to pull it in pieces before her face in order to shew her the bits of wood, the wool, and rags it is composed of? So it would be hard upon that great baby, the world, to take any of its idols to pieces, and shew that they are nothing but painted wood. Neither of them would thank you, but would consider the offer as an insult. The little girl knows as well as you do that her doll is a cheat; but she shut her eyes to it, for she finds her account in keeping up the deception. Her doll is her pretty little self. In its 244glazed eyes, its cherry cheeks, its flaxen locks, its finery and its baby-house, she has a fairy vision of her own future charms, her future triumphs, a thousand hearts led captive, and an establishment for life. Harmless illusion! that can create something out of nothing, can make that which is good for nothing in itself so fine in appearance, and clothe a shapeless piece of deal-board with the attributes of a divinity! But the great world has been doing little else but playing at make-believe all its lifetime. For several thousand years its chief rage was to paint larger pieces of wood and smear them with gore and call them Gods and offer victims to them—slaughtered hecatombs, the fat of goats and oxen, or human sacrifices—shewing in this its love of shew, of cruelty, and imposture; and woe to him who should ‘peep through the blanket of the dark to cry, Hold, hold.’—Great is Diana of the Ephesians, was the answer in all ages. It was in vain to represent to them, ‘Your Gods have eyes but they see not, ears but they hear not, neither do they understand’—the more stupid, brutish, helpless, and contemptible they were, the more furious, bigotted, and implacable were their votaries in their behalf.^[43] The more absurd the fiction, the louder was the noise made to hide it—the more mischievous its tendency, the more did it excite all the phrenzy of the passions. Superstition nursed, with peculiar zeal, her ricketty, deformed, and preposterous offspring. She passed by the nobler races of animals even, to pay divine honours to the odious and unclean—she took toads and serpents, cats, rats, dogs, crocodiles, goats and monkeys, and hugged them to her bosom, and dandled them into deities, and set up altars to them, and drenched the earth with tears and blood in their defence; and those who did not believe in them were cursed, and were forbidden the use of bread, of fire, and water, and to worship them was piety, and their images were held sacred, and their race became Gods in perpetuity and by divine right. To touch them, was sacrilege: to kill them, death, even in your own defence. If they stung you, you must die: if they infested the land with their numbers and their pollutions, there was no remedy. The nuisance was intolerable, impassive, immortal. Fear, religious horror, disgust, hatred, heightened the flame of bigotry and intolerance. There was nothing so odious or contemptible but it found a sanctuary in the more odious and contemptible perversity of human nature. The barbarous Gods of antiquity reigned in contempt of their worshippers!

245This game was carried on through all the first ages of the world, and is still kept up in many parts of it; and it is impossible to describe the wars, massacres, horrors, miseries and crimes, to which it gave colour, sanctity, and sway. The idea of a God, beneficent and just, the invisible maker of all things, was abhorrent to their gross, material notions. No, they must have Gods of their own making, that they could see and handle, that they knew to be nothing in themselves but senseless images, and these they daubed over with the gaudy emblems of their own pride and passions, and these they lauded to the skies, and grew fierce, obscene, frantic before them, as the representatives of their sordid ignorance and barbaric vices. Truth, Good, were idle names to them, without a meaning. They must have a lie, a palpable, pernicious lie, to pamper their crude, unhallowed conceptions with, and to exercise the untameable fierceness of their wills. The Jews were the only people of antiquity who were withheld from running headlong into this abomination; yet so strong was the propensity in them (from inherent frailty as well as neighbouring example) that it could only be curbed and kept back by the hands of Omnipotence.^[44] At length, reason prevailed over imagination so far, that these brute idols and their altars were overturned; it was thought too much to set up stocks and stones, Golden Calves and Brazen Serpents, as bonâ-fide Gods and Goddesses, which men were to fall down and worship at their peril—and Pope long after summed up the merits of the whole mythologic tribe in a handsome distich—

It was thought a bold stride to divert the course of our imaginations, the overflowings of our enthusiasm, our love of the mighty and the marvellous, from the dead to the living subject, and there we stick. We have got living idols, instead of dead ones; and we fancy that they are real, and put faith in them accordingly. Oh, Reason! when will thy long minority expire? It is not now the fashion to make Gods of wood and stone and brass, but we make kings of common men, and are proud of our own handy-work. We take a child from his birth, and we agree, when he grows up to be a man, to heap the highest honours of the state upon him, and to pay the most devoted homage to his will. Is there any thing in the person, ‘any mark, any likelihood,’ to warrant this sovereign awe and dread? No: he may be little better than an ideot, little short of a madman, and yet 246he is no less qualified for king.^[45] If he can contrive to pass the College of Physicians, the Herald’s College dub him divine. Can we make any given individual taller or stronger or wiser than other men, or different in any respect from what nature intended him to be? No; but we can make a king of him. We cannot add a cubit to the stature, or instil a virtue into the minds of monarchs—but we can put a sceptre into their hands, a crown upon their heads, we can set them on an eminence, we can surround them with circumstance, we can aggrandise them with power, we can pamper their appetites, we can pander to their wills. We can do every thing to exalt them in external rank and station—nothing to lift them one step higher in the scale of moral or intellectual excellence. Education does not give capacity or temper; and the education of kings is not especially directed to useful knowledge or liberal sentiment. What then is the state of the case? The highest respect of the community and of every individual in it is paid and is due of right there, where perhaps not an idea can take root, or a single virtue be engrafted. Is not this to erect a standard of esteem directly opposite to that of mind and morals? The lawful monarch may be the best or the worst man in his dominions, he may be the wisest or the weakest, the wittiest or the stupidest: still he is equally entitled to our homage as king, for it is the place and power we bow to, and not the man. He may be a sublimation of all the vices and diseases of the human heart; yet we are not to say so, we dare not even think so. ‘Fear God, and honour the King,’ is equally a maxim at all times and seasons. The personal character of the king has nothing to do with the question. Thus the extrinsic is set up over the intrinsic by authority: wealth and interest lend their countenance to gilded vice and infamy on principle, 247and outward shew and advantages become the symbols and the standard of respect in despite of useful qualities or well-directed efforts through all ranks and gradations of society. ‘From the crown of the head to the sole of the foot there is no soundness left.’ The whole style of moral thinking, feeling, acting, is in a false tone—is hollow, spurious, meretricious. Virtue, says Montesquieu, is the principle of republics; honour, of a monarchy. But it is ‘honour dishonourable, sin-bred’—it is the honour of trucking a principle for a place, of exchanging our honest convictions for a ribbon or a garter. The business of life is a scramble for unmerited precedence. Is not the highest respect entailed, the highest station filled without any possible proofs or pretensions to public spirit or public principle? Shall not the next places to it be secured by the sacrifice of them? It is the order of the day, the understood etiquette of courts and kingdoms. For the servants of the crown to presume on merit, when the crown itself is held as an heir-loom by prescription, is a kind of lèse majesté, an indirect attainder of the title to the succession. Are not all eyes turned to the sun of court-favour? Who would not then reflect its smile by the performance of any acts which can avail in the eye of the great, and by the surrender of any virtue, which attracts neither notice nor applause? The stream of corruption begins at the fountainhead of court influence. The sympathy of mankind is that on which all strong feeling and opinion floats; and this sets in full in every absolute monarchy to the side of tinsel shew and iron-handed power, in contempt and defiance of right and wrong. The right and the wrong are of little consequence, compared to the in and the out. The distinction between Whig and Tory is merely nominal: neither have their country one bit at heart. Phaw! we had forgot—Our British monarchy is a mixed, and the only perfect form of government; and therefore what is here said cannot properly apply to it. But Might before Right is the motto blazoned on the front of unimpaired and undivided Sovereignty!—

A court is the centre of fashion; and no less so, for being the sink of luxury and vice—

The goods of fortune, the baits of power, the indulgences of vanity, may be accumulated without end, and the taste for them increases as it is gratified: the love of virtue, the pursuit of truth, grow stale and dull in the dissipation of a court. Virtue is thought crabbed and morose, knowledge pedantic, while every sense is pampered, and every folly tolerated. Every thing tends naturally to personal 248aggrandisement and unrestrained self-will. It is easier for monarchs as well as other men ‘to tread the primrose path of dalliance’ than ‘to scale the steep and thorny road to heaven.’ The vices, when they have leave from power and authority, go greater lengths than the virtues; example justifies almost every excess, and ‘nice customs curtsey to great kings.’ What chance is there that monarchs should not yield to the temptations of gallantry there, where youth and beauty are as wax? What female heart can indeed withstand the attractions of a throne—the smile that melts all hearts, the air that awes rebellion, the frown that kings dread, the hand that scatters fairy wealth, that bestows titles, places, honour, power, the breast on which the star glitters, the head circled with a diadem, whose dress dazzles with its richness and its taste, who has nations at his command, senates at his controul, ‘in form and motion so express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a God; the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!’ The power of resistance is so much the less, where fashion extends impunity to the frail offender, and screens the loss of character.

249The air of a court is not assuredly that which is most favourable to the practice of self-denial and strict morality. We increase the temptations of wealth, of power, and pleasure a thousand-fold, while we can give no additional force to the antagonist principles of reason, disinterested integrity and goodness of heart. Is it to be wondered at that courts and palaces have produced so many monsters of avarice, cruelty, and lust? The adept in voluptuousness is not likely to be a proportionable proficient in humanity. To feed on plate or be clothed in purple, is not to feel for the hungry and the naked. He who has the greatest power put into his hands, will only become more impatient of any restraint in the use of it. To have the welfare and the lives of millions placed at our disposal, is a sort of warrant, a challenge to squander them without mercy. An arbitrary monarch set over the heads of his fellows does not identify himself with them, or learn to comprehend their rights or sympathise with their interests, but looks down upon them as of a different species from himself, as insects crawling on the face of the earth, that he may trample on at his pleasure, or if he spares them, it is an act of royal grace—he is besotted with power, blinded with prerogative, an alien to his nature, a traitor to his trust, and instead of being the organ of public feeling and public opinion, is an excrescence and an anomaly in the state, a bloated mass of morbid humours and proud flesh! A constitutional king, on the other hand, is a servant of the public, a representative of the people’s wants and wishes, dispensing justice and mercy according to law. Such a monarch is the King of England! Such was his late, and such is his present Majesty George the IVth!—

Let us take the Spirit of Monarchy in its highest state of exaltation, in the moment of its proudest triumph—a Coronation-day. We now see it in our mind’s eye; the preparation of weeks—the expectation of months—the seats, the privileged places, are occupied in the obscurity of night, and in silence—the day dawns slowly, big with the hope of Cæsar and of Rome—the golden censers are set in order, the tables groan with splendour and with luxury—within the inner space the rows of peeresses are set, and revealed to the eye decked out in ostrich feathers and pearls, like beds of lilies sparkling with a thousand dew-drops—the marshals and the heralds are in motion—the full organ, majestic, peals forth the Coronation Anthem—every thing is ready—and all at once the Majesty of kingdoms bursts upon the astonished sight—his person is swelled out with all the gorgeousness of dress, and swathed in bales of silk and golden tissues—the bow with which he greets the assembled multitude, and the representatives of foreign kings, is the climax of conscious dignity, bending gracefully on its own bosom, and instantly thrown back into the 250sightless air, as if asking no recognition in return—the oath of mutual fealty between him and his people is taken—the fairest flowers of female beauty precede the Sovereign, scattering roses; the sons of princes page his heels, holding up the robes of crimson and ermine—he staggers and reels under the weight of royal pomp, and of a nation’s eyes; and thus the pageant is launched into the open day, dazzling the sun, whose beams seem beaten back by the sun of royalty—there were the warrior, the statesman, and the mitred head—there was Prince Leopold, like a panther in its dark glossy pride, and Castlereagh, clad in triumphant smiles and snowy satin, unstained with his own blood—the loud trumpet brays, the cannon roars, the spires are mad with music, the stones in the street are startled at the presence of a king:—the crowd press on, the metropolis heaves like a sea in restless motion, the air is thick with loyalty’s quick pants in its monarch’s arms—all eyes drink up the sight, all tongues reverberate the sound—

What does it all amount to? A shew—a theatrical spectacle! What does it prove? That a king is crowned, that a king is dead! What is the moral to be drawn from it, that is likely to sink into the heart of a nation? That greatness consists in finery, and that supreme merit is the dower of birth and fortune! It is a form, a ceremony to which each successor to the throne is entitled in his turn as a matter of right. Does it depend on the inheritance of virtue, on the acquisition of knowledge in the new monarch, whether he shall be thus exalted in the eyes of the people? No;—to say so is not only an offence in manners, but a violation of the laws. The king reigns in contempt of any such pragmatical distinctions. They are set aside, proscribed, treasonable, as it relates to the august person of the monarch; what is likely to become of them in the minds of the people? A Coronation overlays and drowns all such considerations for a generation to come, and so far it serves its purpose well. It debauches the understandings of the people, and makes them the slaves of sense and show. It laughs to scorn and tramples upon every other claim to distinction or respect. Is the chief person in the pageant a tyrant? It does not lessen, but aggrandise him to the imagination. Is he the king of a free people? We make up in love and loyalty what we want in fear. Is he young? He borrows understanding and experience from the learning and tried wisdom of councils and parliaments. Is he old? He leans upon the youth and beauty that attend his triumph. Is he weak? Armies support him with their myriads. Is he diseased? What is health to a staff of 251physicians? Does he die? The truth is out, and he is then—nothing!

There is a cant among court-sycophants of calling all those who are opposed to them, ‘the rabble,’ ‘fellows,’ ‘miscreants,’ &c. This shews the grossness of their ideas of all true merit, and the false standard of rank and power by which they measure every thing; like footmen, who suppose their masters must be gentlemen, and that the rest of the world are low people. Whatever is opposed to power, they think despicable; whatever suffers oppression, they think deserves it. They are ever ready to side with the strong, to insult and trample on the weak. This is with us a pitiful fashion of thinking. They are not of the mind of Pope, who was so full of the opposite conviction, that he has even written a bad couplet to express it:—

Those lines in Cowper also must sound very puerile or old-fashioned to courtly ears:—

To this sentiment, however, we subscribe our hearts and hands. There is nothing truly liberal but that which postpones its own claims to those of propriety—or great, but that which looks out of itself to others. All power is but an unabated nuisance, a barbarous assumption, an aggravated injustice, that is not directed to the common good: all grandeur that has not something corresponding to it in personal merit and heroic acts, is a deliberate burlesque, and an insult on common sense and human nature. That which is true, the understanding ratifies: that which is good, the heart owns: all other claims are spurious, vitiated, mischevious, false—fit only for those who are sunk below contempt, or raised above opinion. We hold in scorn all right-lined pretensions but those of rectitude. If there is offence in this, we are ready to abide by it. If there is shame, we take it to ourselves: and we hope and hold that the time will come, when all other idols but those which represent pure truth and real good, will be looked upon with the same feelings of pity and wonder that we now look back to the images of Thor and Woden!

Really, that men born to a throne (limited or unlimited) should employ the brief span of their existence here in doing all the mischief in their power, in levying cruel wars and undermining the liberties of the world, to prove to themselves and others that their pride and 252passions are of more consequence than the welfare of mankind at large, would seem a little astonishing, but that the fact is so. It is not our business to preach lectures to monarchs, but if we were at all disposed to attempt the ungracious task, we should do it in the words of an author who often addressed the ear of monarchs.

‘A man may read a sermon,’ says Jeremy Taylor, ‘the best and most passionate that ever man preached, if he shall but enter into the sepulchres of kings. In the same Escurial where the Spanish princes live in greatness and power, and decree war or peace, they have wisely placed a cemetery where their ashes and their glory shall sleep till time shall be no more: and where our kings have been crowned, their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk over their grandsire’s head to take his crown. There is an acre sown with royal seed, the copy of the greatest change from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs to arched coffins, from living like Gods to die like men. There is enough to cool the flames of lust, to abate the height of pride, to appease the itch of covetous desires, to sully and dash out the dissembling colours of a lustful, artificial, and imaginary beauty. There the warlike and the peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and the despised princes mingle their dust, and pay down their symbol of mortality, and tell all the world, that when we die our ashes shall be equal to kings, and our accounts shall be easier, and our pains for our crimes shall be less. To my apprehension, it is a sad record which is left by Athenæus concerning Ninus, the great Assyrian monarch, whose life and death is summed up in these words: “Ninus, the Assyrian, had an ocean of gold, and other riches more than the sand in the Caspian sea; he never saw the stars, and perhaps he never desired it; he never stirred up the holy fire among the Magi; nor touched his God with the sacred rod, according to the laws; he never offered sacrifice, nor worshipped the Deity, nor administered justice, nor spake to the people, nor numbered them; but he was most valiant to eat and drink, and having mingled his wines, he threw the rest upon the stones. This man is dead: behold his sepulchre, and now hear where Ninus is. Sometime I was Ninus, and drew the breath of a living man, but now am nothing but clay. I have nothing but what I did eat, and what I served to myself in lust is all my portion: the wealth with which I was blest, my enemies meeting together shall carry away, as the mad Thyades carry a raw goat. I am gone to Hell; and when I went thither, I carried neither gold nor horse, nor a silver chariot. I that wore a mitre, am now a little heap of dust!”‘—Taylor’s Holy Living and Dying.

The Liberal.] [1822.

The Scotch nation are a body-corporate. They hang together like a swarm of bees. I do not know how it may be among themselves, but with us they are all united as one man. They are not straggling individuals, but embodied, formidable abstractions—determined personifications of the land they come from. A Scotchman gets on in the world, because he is not one, but many. He moves in himself a host, drawn up in battle-array, and armed at all points against all impugners. He is a double existence—he stands for himself and his country. Every Scotchman is bond and surety for every other Scotchman—he thinks nothing Scotch foreign to him. If you see a Scotchman in the street, you may be almost sure it is another Scotchman he is arm in arm with; and what is more, you may be sure they are talking of Scotchmen. Begin at the Arctic Circle, and they take Scotland in their way back. Plant the foot of the compasses in the meridian, and they turn it by degrees to ‘Edina’s darling seat’—true as the needle to the Pole. If you happen to say it is a high wind, they say there are high winds in Edinburgh. Should you mention Hampstead or Highgate, they smile at this as a local prejudice, and remind you of the Calton Hill. The conversation wanders and is impertinent, unless it hangs by this loop. It ‘runs the great mile, and is still at home.’ You would think there was no other place in the world but Scotland, but that they strive to convince you at every turn of its superiority to all other places. Nothing goes down but Scotch Magazines and Reviews, Scotch airs, Scotch bravery, Scotch hospitality, Scotch novels, and Scotch logic. Some one the other day at a literary dinner in Scotland apologised for alluding to the name of Shakespear so often, because he was not a Scotchman. What a blessing that the Duke of Wellington was not a Scotchman, or we should never have heard the last of him! Even Sir Walter Scott, I understand, talks of the Scotch novels in all companies; and by waving the title of the author, is at liberty to repeat the subject ad infinitum.

Lismahago in Smollett is a striking and laughable picture of this national propensity. He maintained with good discretion and method that oat-cakes were better than wheaten bread, and that the air of the old town of Edinburgh was sweet and salubrious. He was a favourable specimen of the class—acute though pertinacious, pleasant but 254wrong.^[47] In general, his countrymen only plod on with the national character fastened behind them, looking round with wary eye and warning voice to those who would pick out a single article of their precious charge; and are as drawling and troublesome as if they were hired by the hour to disclaim and exemplify all the vices of which they stand accused. Is this repulsive egotism peculiar to them merely in their travelling capacity, when they have to make their way amongst strangers, and are jealous of the honour of the parent-country, on which they have ungraciously turned their backs? So Lord Erskine, after an absence of fifty years, made an appropriate eulogy on the place of his birth, and having traced the feeling of patriotism in himself to its source in that habitual attachment which all wandering tribes have to their places of fixed residence, turned his horses’ heads towards England—and farewell sentiment!

The Irish and others, who come and stay among us, however full they may be of the same prejudice, keep it in a great measure to themselves, and do not vent it in all companies and on all occasions, proper or improper. The natives of the sister-kingdom in particular rather cut their country like a poor relation, are shy of being seen in one another’s company, and try to soften down the brogue into a natural gentility of expression. A Scotchman, on the contrary, is never easy but when his favourite subject is started, treats it with unqualified breadth of accent, and seems assured that every one else must be as fond of talking of Scotland and Scotchmen as he is.

Is it a relic of the ancient system of clanship? And are the Scotch pitted against all the rest of the world, on the same principle that they formerly herded and banded together under some chosen leader, and harried the neighbouring district? This seems to be the most likely solution. A feeling of antipathy and partisanship, of offensive and defensive warfare, may be considered as necessary to the mind of a Scotchman. He is nothing in himself but as he is opposed to or in league with others. He must be for or against somebody. He must have a cause to fight for; a point to carry in argument. He is not an unit but an aggregate; he is not a link, but a chain. He belongs to the regiment. I should hardly call a Scotchman conceited, though there is often something that borders strongly on the appearance of it. He has (speaking in the lump) no personal or individual pretensions. He is not proud of himself, but of being a Scotchman. He has no existence or excellence except what he derives from some external accident, or shares with some body of men. He is a Brunonian, a Cameronian, a Jacobite, a Covenanter; he is of some party, he 255espouses some creed, he is great in some controversy, he was bred in some University, has attended a certain course of lectures, understands Gaelic, and upon occasion wears the Highland dress. An Englishman is satisfied with the character of his country, and proceeds to set up for himself; an Irishman despairs of that of his, and leaves it to shift for itself; a Scotchman pretends to respectability as such, and owes it to his country to make you hate the very name by his ceaseless importunity and intolerance in its behalf. An Irishman is mostly vain of his person, an Englishman of his understanding, a Frenchman of his politeness—a Scotchman thanks God for the place of his birth. The face of a Scotchman is to him accordingly the face of a friend. It is enough for him to let you know that he speaks the dialect that Wilkie speaks, that he has sat in company with the Author of Waverley. He does not endeavour to put forward his own notions so much as to inform you of the school in politics, in morals, in physic, in which he is an adept; nor does he attempt to overpower you by wit, by reason, by eloquence, but to tire you out by dint of verbal logic; and in common-places it must be confessed that he is invincible. There he is teres et rotundus. He fortifies himself in these, circumvallation within circumvallation, till his strong-hold is impregnable by art and nature. I never knew a Scotchman give up an argument but once. It was a very learned man, the Editor of an Encyclopedia,—not my friend, Mr. Macvey Napier. On some one’s proposing the question why Greek should not be printed in the Roman type, this gentleman answered, that in that case it would be impossible to distinguish the two languages. Every one stared, and it was asked how at this rate we distinguished French from English? It was the forlorn hope. Any one else would have laughed, and confessed the blunder. But the Editor was a grave man—made an obstinate defence (the best his situation allowed of) and yielded in the forms and with the honours of war.

A Scotchman is generally a dealer in staple-propositions, and not in rarities and curiosities of the understanding. He does not like an idea the worse for its coming to him from a reputable, well-authenticated source, as I conceive he might feel more respect for a son of Burns than for Burns himself, on the same hereditary or genealogical principle. He swears (of course) by the Edinburgh Review, and thinks Blackwood not easily put down. He takes the word of a Professor in the University-chair in a point of philosophy as he formerly took the Laird’s word in a matter of life and death; and has the names of the Says, the Benthams, the Mills, the Malthuses, in his mouth, instead of the Montroses, the Gordons, and the Macullamores. He follows in a train; he enlists under some standard; he 256comes under some collateral description. He is of the tribe of Issachar, and not of Judah. He stickles for no higher distinction than that of his clan, or vicinage.^[48] In a word, the Scotch are the creatures of inveterate habit. They pin their faith on example and authority. All their ideas are cast in a previous mould, and rivetted to those of others. It is not a single blow, but a repetition of blows, that leaves an impression on them. They are strong only in the strength of prejudice and numbers. The genius of their greatest living writer is the genius of national tradition. He has ‘damnable iteration in him’; but hardly one grain of sheer invention. His mind is turned instinctively backward on the past—he cannot project it forward to the future. He has not the faculty of imagining any thing, either in individual or general truth, different from what has been handed down to him for such. Give him costume, dialect, manners, popular superstitions, grotesque characters, supernatural events, and local scenery, and he is a prodigy, a man-monster among writers—take these actually embodied and endless materials from him, and he is a common man, with as little original power of mind as he has (unfortunately) independence or boldness of spirit!

The Scotch, with all their mechanical, wholesale attachment to names and parties, are venal in politics,^[49] and cowardly in friendship. They crouch to power; and would be more disposed to fall upon and crush, than come forward to the support of, a sinking individual. They are not like La Fleur in the Sentimental Journey, who advanced three steps forward to his master when the Gens-d’ Armes arrested him: they are like the Maitre d’ Hotel, who retired three paces backwards on the same occasion. They will support a generic denomination, where they have numbers to support them again: they make a great gulp, and swallow down a feudal lord with all the retinue he can muster—the more, the merrier—but of a single unprotected straggler they are shy, jealous, scrupulous in the extreme as to character, inquisitive as to connections, curious in all the particulars of birth, parentage and education. Setting his prejudices of country, religion, or party aside, you have no hold of a Scotchman but by his self-interest. If it is for his credit or advantage to stand by you, he will 257do it: otherwise, it will go very much against both his stomach and his conscience to do so, and you must e’en shift for yourself. You may trust something to the generosity and magnanimity of an Englishman or an Irishman; they act from an impulse of the blood or from a sense of justice: A Scotchman (the exceptions are splendid indeed) uniformly calculates the consequences to himself. He is naturally faithful to a leader, as I said before, that is, to a powerful head; but his fidelity amounts to little more than servility. He is a bigot to the shadow of power and authority, a slave to prejudice and custom, and a coward in every thing else. He has not a particle of mental courage. Cæsar’s wife was not to be suspected; and it is the same with a Scotchman’s friend. If a word is said against your moral character, they shun you like a plague-spot. They are not only afraid of a charge being proved against you, but they dare not disprove it, lest by clearing you of it they should be supposed a party to what had no existence or foundation. They thus imbibe a bad opinion of you from hearsay, and conceal the good they know of you both from themselves and the world. If your political orthodoxy is called in question, they take the alarm as much as if they were apprehensive of being involved in a charge of high treason. One would think that the whole country laboured, as they did Sixty Years Since, under an imputation of disaffection, and were exposed to the utmost vigilance of the police, so that each person had too little character for loyalty himself to run any additional risk by his neighbour’s bad name. This is not the case at present: but they carry their precautions and circumspection in this respect to such an idle and stupid excess, as can only be accounted for from local circumstances and history—that is to say, from the effects of that long system of suspicion, persecution and surveillance, to which they were exposed during a century of ridiculous (at least of unsuccessful) wars and rebellions, in favour of the House of Stuart. They suffered much for King James and the Good Cause; but since that time their self-love must be excused to look at home. On my once complaining to a Scotchman of what I thought a dereliction of his client’s cause by the counsel for the defendant in a prosecution for libel, I received for answer—That ‘Mr. —— had defended the accused as far as he could, consistently with his character,’—though the only character the Learned Gentleman could boast, had been acquired by his skill, if not his courage, in resisting prosecutions of this kind.

The delicate sensibility (not to say soreness) of the Scotch in matters of moral reputation, may in like manner be accounted for (indirectly) from their domiciliary system of church-government, of Kirk-assemblies, and Ruling Elders: and in the unprincipled assurance 258with which aspersions of this sort are thrown out, and the panic-terror which they strike into the timid or hypocritical, one may see the remaining effects of Penance-Sheets and Cutty-Stools! Poor Burns! he called up the ghost of Dr. Hornbook, but did not lay the spirit of cant and lying in the Cunning North!

Something however, it must be confessed, has been done; a change has been effected. Extremes meet; and the Saint has been (in some instances) merged in the Sinner. The essential character of the Scotch is determined self-will, the driving at a purpose; so that whatever they undertake, they make thorough-stitch work, and carry as far as it will go. This is the case in the pretensions some of their writers have lately set up to a contempt for Cutty-Stools, and to all the freedom of wit and humour. They have been so long under interdict that they break out with double violence, and stop at nothing. Of all blackguards (I use the term for want of any other) a Scotch blackguard is for this reason the worst. First, the character sits ill upon him for want of use, and is sure to be most outrageously caricatured. He is only just broke loose from the shackles of regularity and restraint, and is forced to play strange antics to be convinced that they are not still clinging to his heels. Secondly, formality, hypocrisy, and a deference to opinion, are the ‘sins that most easily beset him.’ When therefore he has once made up his mind to disregard appearances, he becomes totally reckless of character, and ‘at one bound high overleaps all bound’ of decency and common sense. Again, there is perhaps a natural hardness and want of nervous sensibility about the Scotch, which renders them (rules and the consideration of consequences apart) not very nice or scrupulous in their proceedings. If they are not withheld by conscience or prudence, they have no mauvaise honte, no involuntary qualms or tremors, to qualify their effrontery and disregard of principle. Their impudence is extreme, their malice is cold-blooded, covert, crawling, deliberate, without the frailty or excuse of passion. They club their vices and their venality together, and by the help of both together are invincible. The choice spirits who have lately figured in a much-talked-of publication, with ‘old Sylvanus at their head,’—

in their ‘pious orgies’ resemble a troop of Yahoos, or a herd of Satyrs—

that is to say, the floor of Mr. Blackwood’s shop! There is one other publication, a match for this in flagrant impudence and dauntless 259dulness, which is the John Bull. The Editor is supposed, for the honour of Scotland, to be an Irishman. What the Beacon might have proved, there is no saying; but it would have been curious to have seen some articles of Sir Walter’s undoubted hand proceeding from this quarter, as it has been always contended that Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine was too low and scurrilous a publication for him to have any share in it. The adventure of the Beacon has perhaps discovered to Sir Walter’s admirers and the friends of humanity in general, that

Old Dr. Burney, about the middle of the last century, called one morning on Thomson, the Author of The Seasons, at a late hour, and on expressing his surprise at the poet’s not having risen sooner, received for answer,—‘I had no motive, young man!’ A Scotchman acts always from a motive, and on due consideration; and if he does not act right or with a view to honest ends, is more dangerous than any one else. Others may plead the vices of their blood in extenuation of their errors; but a Scotchman is a machine, and should be constructed on sound moral, and philosophical principles, or should be put a stop to altogether.

The Liberal.] [1823.

My father was a Dissenting Minister at W——m in Shropshire; and in the year 1798 (the figures that compose that 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 staid; 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 260eagle 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

As we passed along between W——m 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 Siren’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 from the deadly bands that ‘bound 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 Æschylus, 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 to 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, 1798, that I rose one morning before daylight, to walk ten miles in the mud, and went to hear this celebrated person preach. Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such 261another 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 siècles entiers, le doux tems de ma jeunesse ne peut renaître pour moi, ni s’effacer jamais dans ma mémoire. 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 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 shew 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.

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 every thing into good. The face of nature had not then the brand of Jus Divinum on it:

262On 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 W. H.’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—

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 Velasquez. 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, 263throbbing 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 264face, to think that Truth had found a new ally in Fancy!^[50] 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 Vindiciæ Gallicæ 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 common-places. 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 ascendancy which people of imagination exercised over those of mere intellect.’ He did not rate Godwin very high^[51] (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 265for book-making. 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 150l. a-year if he chose to wave 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

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, shewing that he 266could 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 foot-path 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 strait 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 Judæus Apella!) 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 choke-pears, his Treatise on Human Nature, to which the Essays, in point of scholastic subtlety 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 of 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 267vain to pump up any words, images, notions, apprehensions, facts, or observations, from that gulph 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 W——m 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 any thing 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 Junto, has taken 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 268in 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 baptised 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 shew 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 omitted 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 269stopped 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

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!

270That 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,

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,

Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening, and his voice sounded high

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 gold-finch 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 271objects 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. Chantry’s bust wants the marking traits; but he was teazed 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 unproductive 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 sunset 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 made 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 272different 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 chuse 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 eying 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 seaside, 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 273Coleridge’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. 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 Shakespear and Milton. He said ‘he hardly knew which to prefer. Shakespear 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 274whole 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.^[52] 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 sea-weed, 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 any thing 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, 275and 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 from 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,—

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 common-place 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.

The Liberal.] [1823.

The Scotch at present seem to bear the bell, and to have ‘got the start of the majestic world.’ They boast of the greatest novelists, the greatest preachers, the greatest philanthropists, and the greatest blackguards in the world. Sir Walter Scott stands at the head of these for Scotch humour, Dr. Chalmers for Scotch logic, Mr. Owen for Scotch Utopianism, and Mr. Blackwood for Scotch impudence. Unrivalled four! Nay, here is Mr. Irving, who threatens to make a fifth, and stultify all our London orators, from ‘kingly Kensington’ to Blackwall! Who has not heard of him? Who does not go to hear him? You can scarcely move along for the coronet-coaches that besiege the entrance to the Caledonian chapel in Hatton-garden; and when, after a prodigious squeeze, you get in so as to have standing-room, you see in the same undistinguished crowd Brougham and Mackintosh, Mr. Peel and Lord Liverpool, Lord Landsdown and Mr. Coleridge. Mr. Canning and Mr. Hone are pew fellows. Mr. Waithman frowns stern applause, and Mr. Alderman Wood 276does the honours of the Meeting! The lamb lies down with the lion, and the Millennium seems to be anticipated in the Caledonian chapel, under the new Scotch preacher. Lords, ladies, sceptics, fanatics, join in approbation,—some admire the doctrine, others the sound, some the picturesque appearance of the orator, others the grace of action, some the ingenuity of the argument, others the beauty of the style or the bursts of passion, some even go so far as to patronize a certain brackish infusion of the Scottish dialect, and a slight defect of vision. Lady Bluemount declares it to be only inferior to the Excursion in imagination, and Mr. Botherby cries—‘Good, good!’ The ‘Talking Potato’^[53] and Mr. Theodore Flash have not yet been.

Mr. Irving appears to us the most accomplished barbarian, and the least offensive and most dashing clerical holder-forth we remember to have seen. He puts us in mind of the first man, Adam, if Adam had but been a Scotchman, and had had coal black hair. He seems to stand up in the integrity of his composition, to begin a new race of practising believers, to give a new impulse to the Christian religion, to regenerate the fallen and degenerate race of man. You would say he had been turned out of the hands of Nature and the Schools a perfect piece of workmanship. See him in the street, he has the air, the free swing, the bolt upright figure of an Indian savage, or a northern borderer dressed in canonicals: set him in the pulpit, and he is armed with all the topics, a master of fence, the pupil of Dr. Chalmers! In action he has been compared to Kean; in the union of external 277and intellectual advantages, we might start a parallel for him in the admirable Crichton. He stands before Haydon’s picture of Lazarus, and says, ‘Look at me! ’ He crosses Piccadilly, and clears Bond-street of its beaux! Rob Roy, Macbriar is come again. We saw him stretched on a bench at the Black Bull in Edinburgh,—we met him again at a thirteen-penny ordinary in London, in the same attitude, and said, without knowing his calling, or his ghostly parts, ‘That is the man for a fair saint.’ We swear it by

Aye, there we stop like Imogen—there is a want of expression in it. ‘The iron has not entered his soul.’ He has not dared to feel but in trammels and in dread. He has read Werter but to criticise him; Rousseau, but to steel himself against him; Shakespear, but to quote him; Milton, but to round his periods. Pleasure, fancy, humanity, are syrens that he repels and keeps at arms-length; and hence his features are hardened, and have a barbaric crust upon them. They are not steeped in the expression of Titian or Raphael; but they would do for Spagnoletti to paint, and his dark profile and matted locks have something of the grave commanding appearance of Leonardo da Vinci’s massive portraits.

Dr. Chalmers is not so good-looking a man as Mr. Irving; he wants the same vigour and spirit. His face is dead and clammy, cold, pale, bloodless, passionless, and there is a glazed look of insincerity about the eyes, uninformed, uninspired from within. His voice is broken, harsh, and creaking, while Mr. Irving’s is flowing and silvery: his Scotch accent and pronunciation are a terrible infliction on the uncultivated ear. His ‘Whech observation I oorge upon you my frinds and breethren’ desolates and lays waste all the humanities. He grinds out his sentences between his teeth, and catches at truth with his fists, as a monkey catches an apple or a stick thrown at him with his paws. He seems by his action and his utterance to say to difficulties, ‘Come, let me clutch thee,’ and having got them in his grasp, tears and rends them in pieces as a dog tears an old rag to tatters or mumbles a stone that is flung in his way. Dr. Chalmers engages attention and secures sympathy solely by the intensity of his own purpose: there is neither eloquence nor wisdom, neither imagination nor feeling, neither the pomp of sound nor grace nor solemnity of manner about him, but he is in earnest, and eager in pursuit of his argument, and arrests the eye and ear of his congregation by this alone. He dashes head foremost into the briars and thorns of controversy, and drags you along with him whether you will or no, and 278your only chance is to push on and get out of them as well as you can, though dreadfully scratched and almost blinded. He involves you in a labyrinth, and you are anxious to escape from it: you have to pass through many a dark, subterranean cavern with him in his theological ferry-boat, and are glad enough to get out on the other side, with the help of Scotch logic for oars, and Scotch rhetoric for sails! You hear no home truths, nothing that touches the heart, or swells or expands the soul; there is no tide of eloquence lifting you up to Heaven, or wafting you from Indus to the Pole.—No, you are detained in a canal, with a great number of locks in it.—You make way by virtue of standing still, your will is irritated, and impelled forward by stoppages—you are puzzled into sympathy, pulled into admiration, tired into patience! The preacher starts a difficulty, of which you had no notion before, and you stare to see how he will answer it. He first makes you uneasy, sceptical, sensible of your helplessness and dependence upon his superior sagacity and recondite learning, and proportionably thankful for the relief he affords you in the unpleasant dilemma to which you have been reduced. It is like proposing a riddle, and then, after playing with the curiosity and impatience of the company for some time, giving the solution, which nobody else has the wit to find out. We never saw fuller attendances or more profound attention than at the Tron Church in Glasgow—it was like a sea of eyes, a swarm of heads, gaping for mysteries, and staring for elucidations—it was not the sublime or beautiful; the secret was that which has been here explained, a desire to get rid of the difficult, the disagreeable, the dry, and the discordant matter that had been conjured up in the imagination. Dr. Chalmers, then, succeeds by the force of sophistry and casuistry, in our humble judgment. Riddles (of which we spoke just now) are generally traditional: those that Dr. Chalmers unfolds from the pulpit, are of his own invention, or at least promulgation. He started an objection to the Christian religion (founded on its supposed inconsistency with the Newtonian philosophy) which objection had never been noticed in books, on purpose that he might answer it. ‘Well,’ said a Scotchman, ‘and if the answer was a good one, was he not right?’ ‘No, assuredly,’ we should answer, ‘for there is no faith so firm as that which has never been called in question.’ The answer could only satisfy those who had been unsettled by the question; and there would be many who would not be convinced by the Doctor’s reasoning, however he might plume himself on his success. We suspect that this is looking after a reputation for literary ingenuity and philosophical depth, rather than the peace of consciences or the salvation of souls; which, in a Christian minister, is unbecoming, and savours 279of the Mammon of unrighteousness. We ourselves were staggered by the blow (either then or long before) and still gasp for a reply, notwithstanding Dr. Chalmers’s nostrum. Let the reader briefly judge:—The Doctor tells us, it may be said, that the Christian Dispensation supposes that the counsels of God turn upon this world as its center; that there is a heaven above and an earth beneath; and that man is the lord of the universe, the only creature made in the divine likeness, and over whom Providence watches, and to whom revelations are given, and an inheritance everlasting. This agrees with the cosmogony of Moses, which makes the earth the center of all things, and the sun, moon, and stars, little shining spots like silver sixpences moving round it. But it does not so well agree with Newton’s Principia (we state Dr. Chalmers’s objection) which supposes the globe we inhabit to be but a point in the immensity of the universe; that ours is but one, and that the most insignificant (perhaps) among innumerable worlds, filled, probably, with created intelligences, rational and fallen souls, that share the eye of God with us, and who require to know that their Redeemer liveth. We alone (it would appear) cannot pretend to monopolize heaven or hell: there are other contingent candidates besides us. Jacob’s dream was poetical and natural, while the earth was supposed to be a flat surface and the blue sky hung over it, to which angels might ascend by a ladder, and the face of God be seen at the top, as his lofty and unchangeable abode; but this beautiful episode hardly accords with the Antipodes. Sir Isaac turned the world upon its back, and divided heaven from itself, and removed it far from every one of us. As we thought the universe turned round the earth as its pivot, so religion turned round man as its center, as the sole, important, moral and accountable agent in existence. But there are other worlds revolving in infinite space, to which this is a speck. Are they all desert, worthless? Were they made for us? Have they no especial dispensations of life and light? Have we alone a God, a Saviour, revealed to us? Is religion triumphant only here, or is it itinerant through each? It can hardly seem that we alone have occupied the thoughts or been the sole objects of the plans of infinite wisdom from eternity—that our life, resurrection, and judgment to come, are the whole history of a wide-seeing Providence, or the loftiest events in the grand drama of the universe, which was got up as a theatre only for us to perform our petty parts in, and then to be cast, most of us, into hell fire? Dr. Chalmers’s Astronomical Discourses indeed may be said to dwarf his mighty subject, and make mankind a very Lilliputian race of beings, which this Gulliver in vain dandles in the hard, broad, brawny hand of school divinity, and tries to lift into their 280bigotted self-sufficiency and exclusive importance again. How does he answer his own objection, and turn the tables on himself—how reverse this pitiful, diminished perspective, and aggrandise us in our own estimation once more as undoubted heirs of heaven or of hell—the sole favoured or reprobated sons of God? Why, his answer is this—that the microscope has done as much to lift man in the scale of being, and to enlarge the bounds of this atom the earth, as the telescope has done to circumscribe and lessen it; that there are infinite gradations BELOW man, worlds within worlds, as there are degrees of being above, and stars and suns blazing round each other; that, for what we know, a speck, a lucid drop circulating in a flea’s back, may be another habitable globe like this!—And has that, too, a revelation of its own, an avenging God, and a Christ crucified? Does every particle in a flea’s back contain a Mosaic dispensation, a Popish and a Protestant religion? Has it its Tron Church and its Caledonian Chapel, and Dr. Chalmers’s Discourses and Mr. Irving’s Orations in little? This does not seem to obviate the difficulty, but to increase it a million-fold. It is his objection and his answer to it, not ours: if blasphemy, it is his; and, if orthodoxy, he is entitled to all the credit of it. But his whole scheme shows how impossible it is to reconcile the faith delivered to the saints with the subtleties and intricacies of metaphysics. It displays more pride of intellect than simplicity of heart, is an insult equally on the understandings or prejudices of men, and could only have been hit upon by that personification and abstraction of cross-purposes, a Scotch metaphysical divine. In his general preaching, Dr. Chalmers is a great casuist, and a very indifferent moralist. He states the pros and cons of every question with extreme pertinacity, and often ‘spins the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.’ He assigns possible reasons, not practical motives, for conduct; and vindicates the ways of God, and his own interpretation of the Scriptures, to the head, not to the heart. The old school-divines set this practice afoot; for being accustomed to hear the secrets of confession, and to salve the tender consciences of the great and powerful, they had to bandy all sorts of questions about; and if they could find out ‘a loop or peg to hang a doubt on,’ were well rewarded for their trouble; they were constantly reduced to their shifts, and forced to go on the forlorn hope of morality by the ticklish cases referred to them for arbitration; and when they had exhausted the resources of humanity and natural sentiment, endeavoured to find new topics within the range of abstract reason and possibility. Dr. Chalmers’s reasoning is as unlike as possible to a chapter in the Gospels: but he may do very well to comment on the Apocalypse or an Epistle of St. Paul’s. We do 281not approve of this method of carving out excuses or defences of doctrinal points from the dry parchment of the understanding or the cobwebs of the brain. Whatever sets or leaves the dogmas of religion at variance with the dictates of the heart, hardens the last, and lends no advantage to the first.

Mr. Irving is a more amiable moralist, and a more practical reasoner. He throws a glancing, pleasing light over the gloomy ground of Calvinism. There is something humane in his appeals, striking in his apostrophes, graceful in his action, soothing in the tones of his voice. He is not affected and theatrical; neither is he deeply impassioned or overpowering from the simple majesty of his subject. He is above common-place both in fancy and argument; yet he can hardly rank as a poet or philosopher. He is a modernised covenanter, a sceptical fanatic. We do not feel exactly on sure ground with him—we scarcely know whether he preaches Christ crucified, or himself. His pulpit style has a resemblance to the florid gothic. We are a little mystified when a man with one hand brings us all the nice distinctions and air-drawn speculations of modern unbelievers, and arms the other with ‘fire hot from Hell,’—when St. Paul and Jeremy Bentham, the Evangelists and the Sorrows of Werter, Seneca, Shakespear, the author of Caleb Williams and the Political Justice, are mingled together in the same passage, and quoted in the same breath, however eloquent that breath may be. We see Mr. Irving smile with decent scorn at this remark, and launch one more thunderbolt at the critics. He is quite welcome, and we should be proud of his notice. In the discourses he has lately delivered, and which have drawn crowds to admire them, he has laboured to describe the Sensual Man, the Intellectual Man, the Moral Man, and the Spiritual Man; and has sacrificed the three first at the shrine of the last. He gave certainly a terrific picture of the death-bed of the Sensual Man—a scene where few shine—but it is a good subject for oratory, and he made the most of it. He described the Poet well, walking by the mountain side, in the eye of nature—yet oppressed, panting rather than satisfied, with beauty and sublimity. Neither Fame nor Genius, it is most true, are all-sufficient to the mind of man! He made a fair hit at the Philosophers; first, at the Political Economist, who draws a circle round man, gives him so many feet of earth to stand upon, and there leaves him to starve in all his nobler parts and faculties: next, at the great Jurisconsult, who carves out a mosaic work of motives for him, cold, hard, and dry, and expects him to move mechanically in right lines, squares, and parallelograms, drills him into perfection, and screws him into utility. He then fell foul of the Moralist and Sentimentalist, weighed him in the balance 282and found him wanting—deficient in clearness of sight to discern good, in strength of hand and purpose to seize upon it when discerned. But Religion comes at last to the aid of the Spiritual Man, couches the blind sight, and braces the paralytic limb; the Lord of Hosts is in the field, and the battle is won, his countenance pours light into our souls, and his hand stretched out imparts strength to us, by which we tower to our native skies! In treating of this subject, Mr. Irving introduced several powerful images and reflections, to show how feeble moral and intellectual motives are to contend with the allurements of sense and the example of the world. Reason alone, he said, was no more able to stem the tide of prejudice and fashion, than the swimmer with his single arm (here he used an appropriate and spirited gesture, which reminded us of the description of the heroic action of the swimmer in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia) is able to oppose the raging torrent, as the voice of conscience was only heard in the tumultuous scenes of life like the faint cry of the sea-bird in the wide world of waters. He drew an animated but mortifying sketch of the progress of the Patriot and Politician, weaned by degrees from his attachment to young Liberty to hug old Corruption; and showed (strikingly enough) that this change from youthful ardour to a hoary, heartless old age of selfishness and ridicule (there were several Members of the Honourable House present) was not owing to increased wisdom or strength of sight, but to faltering resolution and weakness of hand, that could no longer hold out against the bribes, the snares, and gilded chains prepared for it. The romantic Tyro was right and free, the callous Courtier was a slave and self-conceited. All this was true; it was honest, downright, and well put. There was no cant in it, as far as regards the unequal odds and the hard battle that reason has to fight with pleasure, or ambition, or interest, or other antagonist motives. But does the objection apply to morality solely, or has not religion its share in it? Man is not what he ought to be—Granted; but is he not different from this ideal standard, in spite of religion as well as of morality? Is not the religious man often a slave to power, the victim of pleasure, the thrall of avarice, hard of heart, a sensual hypocrite, cunning, mercenary, miserable? If it be said that the really religious man is none of these, neither is the truly moral man. Real morality, as well as vital Christianity, implies right conduct and consistent principle. But the question simply at issue is, whether the profession or the belief of sound moral opinion implies these; and it certainly does it no more than the profession or belief of orthodox religious opinions does. The conviction of the good or ill consequences of our actions in this life does not absolutely conform the will or the desires to good; neither does the 283apprehension of future rewards or punishments produce this effect completely or necessarily. The candidate for Heaven is a backslider; the dread of eternal torments makes but a temporary impression on the mind. This is not a reason, in our judgment, for neglecting or giving up in despair the motives of religion or morality, but for strengthening and cultivating both. With Mr. Irving, it is a triumphant and unanswerable ground for discarding and denouncing morality, and for exalting religion, as the sovereign cure for all wounds, as the thaumaturgos, or wonder-worker, in the reform of mankind! We are at a loss to understand how this exclusive and somewhat intolerant view of the subject is reconcileable with sound reason or with history. Religion is no new experiment now first making on mankind; we live in the nineteenth century of the Christian æra; it is not as if we lived in the age of apostles, when we might (from novelty and inexperience of the intended dispensations of Providence) expect the earth to wear a new face, and darkness suddenly to flee away before the light of the gospel: nor do we apprehend that Mr. Irving is one of those who believe with Mr. Croly, that the millennium actually commenced with the battle of Waterloo; that event seems as far off, to all outward appearance, as it was two thousand years ago. What does this make against the doctrines of Christianity? Nothing; if, as far as they are implanted and take root, they bear fruit accordingly, notwithstanding the repugnance and thanklessness of the soil. Why then is Mr. Irving so hard upon the labours of philosophers, moralists, and men of letters, because they do not do all their work at once? Bishop Butler indeed wrote a most able and learned quarto volume, to prove that the slow growth and imperfect influence of Christianity was a proof of its divine origin, and that in this respect we had a right to look for a direct analogy between the operations of the world of grace and nature, both proceeding as they did from the same Almighty hands! Our deservedly popular preacher has, however, an answer to what we have here stated: he says, ‘the time MUST and WILL shortly come!’ We never contradict prophecies; we only speak to facts. In addressing himself to this point, Mr. Irving made a spirited digression to the Missionary Societies, and the impending propagation of the Gospel at home and abroad—all obstacles to it would speedily be surmounted:—‘The Negro slave was not so enchained but that the Gospel would set him free; the Hottentot was not so benighted but that its light would penetrate to him; the South Sea Islander was not so indolent and voluptuous but that he would rouse himself at its call; neither the cunning of the Italian, nor the superstition of the Spaniard, nor the tameness of the German, nor the levity of the French, nor the buoyancy of the Irish, nor the indomitable pride of the English, 284nor the fiery manhood of the Scotch, would be long able to withstand its all-pervading influence!’ We confess, when our Caledonian pastor launched his canoe from the South Sea Isles and landed on European terra firma, taking measure of the vices of each nation that were opposed to the spirit of Christianity, we did prick up our ears to know what fault he would, in due course of argument, find with his native country—it would go against the grain, no doubt, but still he had undertaken it, and he must speak out—When lo! for some sneaking vice or sordid pettifogging disposition, we have our own ‘best virtue’ palmed upon us as the only failing of the most magnanimous natives of the North—fiery manhood, quotha! The cold sweat of rankling malice, hypocrisy, and servility, would be nearer the mark—Eh! Sir Walter? Nay, good Mr. Blackwood, we meant no offence to you! ‘Fiery manhood’ is the Anti-Christian vice or virtue of the Scotch that meets true religion on the borders, and beats her back with suffocating breath! Is Christianity still then to be planted like oak timber in Scotland? What will Dr. Chalmers and the other labourers in the vineyard say to this?—‘We pause for a reply!’ The best and most impressive part of Mr. Irving’s discourse (Sunday, the 22nd June) was that, in which he gave a very beautiful account of what Christianity had done, or rather might do, in aid of morality and the regeneration of the spirit of man. It had made ‘corruption blossom,’ ‘annihilated time in the prospect of eternity,’ and ‘changed all nature, from a veil hiding the face of God, into a mirror reflecting his power and beneficence.’ We do not, however, see why in the fervour of his enthusiasm he should affirm ‘that Jesus Christ had destroyed melody,’ nor why, by any allowed licence of speech, he should talk of ‘the mouth of God being muzzled by man.’ We might not perhaps have noticed this last expression, considering it as a slip of the tongue; but Mr. Irving preaches from written notes, and his style is, on the whole, polished and ambitious. We can conceive of a deeper strain of argument, of a more powerful and overwhelming flood of eloquence; but altogether we deem him an able and attractive expounder of Holy Writ; and farther, we believe him to be an honest man. We suspect there is a radical ‘taint in him,’ and that Mr. Canning will be advised to withdraw himself from the congregation. His strokes aimed at iniquity in high places are bold, unsparing, and repeated. We would however suggest to him the propriety of containing his indignation at the advancement of the secular priesthood by ‘the powers that be;’ it is a thing of course, and his impatience of their elevation may be invidiously construed into a jealousy of the spoil. When we compare Mr. Irving with some other preachers that we have heard, and 285particularly with that crawling sycophant Daniel Wilson (who tendered his gratuitous submission to Nero the other day in the excess of his loyalty to George IV.) we are sorry that we have not been able to make our tribute of approbation unqualified as it is cordial, and to stifle their venal breath with the applauses bestowed upon him. ‘Oh! for an eulogy to kill’ all such with!

The Liberal.] [1823.

There was an account in the newspapers the other day of a fracas in the street, in which a Lord and one or two Members of Parliament were concerned. It availed them nought to plead the privilege of Peerage, or to have made speeches in the House—they were held to bail, like the vilest of the rabble, and the circumstance was not considered one to come before the public. Ah! it is that public that is the sad thing. It is the most tremendous ring that ever was formed to see fair play between man and man; it puts people on their good behaviour immediately; and wherever it exists, there is an end of the airs and graces which individuals, high in rank, and low in understanding and morals, may chuse to give themselves. While the affair is private and can be kept in a corner, personal fear and favour are the ruling principles, might prevails over right: but bring it before the world, and truth and justice stand some chance. The public is too large a body to be bribed or browbeat. Its voice, deep and loud, quails the hearts of princes: its breath would make the feather in a lord’s cap bend and cower before it, if its glance, measuring the real magnitude of such persons with their lofty, tiptoe, flaunting pretensions, had not long since taken the feathers out of their caps. A lord is now dressed (oh! degenerate world) like any other man; and a watchman will no sooner let go his grasp of his plain collar than he will that of a Commoner or any other man, who has his ‘fancies and good-nights.’ What a falling off is here from the time when if a ‘base cullionly fellow’ had dared to lay hands on a nobleman, on ‘one of quality,’ he would have whipped his sword out of its scabbard and run him through the body; the ‘beggarly, unmannered corse’ would have been thrown into the Thames or the next ditch; and woe to any person that should have attempted to make a stir in the matter! ‘The age of chivalry is gone, that of constables, legislators, and Grub-street writers, has succeeded, and the glory of heraldry is extinguished for ever.’

286Poor Sir Walter! the times are changed indeed, since a Duke of Buckingham could send a couple of bullies, equipped in his livery, with swords and ribbons, to carry off a young lady from a Peveril of the Peak, by main force, in the face of day, and yet the bye-standers not dare to interfere, from a dread of the Duke’s livery and the High Court of Star Chamber! It is no wonder that the present Duke of Buckingham (the old title new revived) makes speeches in the Upper House to prove that legitimate monarchs have a right, whenever they please, to run their swords through the heart of a nation and pink the liberties of mankind, thinking if this doctrine were once fully restored, the old times of his predecessor might come again,—

It is in tracing the history of private manners that we see (more than any thing else) the progress that has been made in public opinion and political liberty, and that may be still farther made. No one individual now sets up his will as higher than the law: no noble Duke or Baron bold acts the professed bully or glories in the character of a lawless ruffian, as a part of the etiquette and privileges of high rank: no gay, gaudy minion of the court takes the wall of the passengers, sword in hand, cuts a throat, washes his white, crimson-spotted hands, and then to dinner with the king and the ladies.—That is over with us at present; and while that is the case, Hampden will not have bled in the field, nor Sydney on the scaffold, in vain! Even the monarch in this country, though he is above the law, is subject to opinion; ‘submits,’ as Mr. Burke has it, both from choice and necessity, ‘to the soft collar of social esteem, and gives a domination, vanquisher of laws, to be subdued by manners!’

It is this which drives the Despots of the Continent mad, and makes their nobles and chief vassals league together, like a herd of tygers, to destroy the example of liberty which we (the people of England) have set to the rest of the world. They are afraid that if this example should spread and things go on much farther in the road they have taken, they will no longer be able to give their subjects and dependants the knout, to send them to the galleys or a dungeon without any warrant but their own unbridled will, and that a lord or a king will be no more above the law than any other man. Mankind, in short, till lately and except in this country, were considered as a herd of deer which the privileged classes were to use for their pleasure, or which they were to hunt down for spite or sport, as liked them best. That they should combine together with a knot of obscure philosophers and hair-brained philanthropists, to set up a plea not to be used at any man’s pleasure, or hunted down like vermin for any 287man’s sport, was an insult to be avenged with seas of blood, an attack upon the foundations of social order, and the very existence of all law, religion, and morality. In all the legitimate governments of Europe, there existed, and there still exist, a number of individuals who were exempted (by birth and title) from the law, who could offer every affront to religion, and commit every outrage upon morality with impunity, with insolence and loud laughter, and who pretended that in asserting this monstrous privilege of theirs to the very letter, the essence of all law, religion, and morality consisted. This was the case in France till the year 1789. The only law was the will of the rich to insult and harass the poor, the only religion a superstitious mummery, the only morality subserviency to the pleasures of the great. In the mild reign of Louis XV. only, there were fifteen thousand lettres de cachet issued for a number of private, nameless offences, such as the withholding a wife or daughter from the embraces of some man of rank, for having formerly received favours from a king’s mistress, or writing an epigram on a Minister of State. It was on the ruins of this flagitious system (no less despicable than detestable) that the French Revolution rose; and the towers of the Bastille, as they fell, announced the proud truth in welcome thunder to the human race—to all but those who thought they were born, and who only wished to live, to exercise their sweeping, wholesale, ruthless tyranny, or to vent the workings of their petty, rankling spleen, pride, bigotry, and malice, in endless, tormenting details on their fellow-creatures.

It will, I conceive, hereafter be considered as the greatest enormity in history, the stupidest and the most barefaced insult that ever was practised on the understandings or the rights of men, that we should interfere in this quarrel between liberty and slavery, take the wrong side, and endeavour to suppress the natural consequences of that very example of freedom we had set. That we should do this, we who had ‘long insulted the slavery of Europe by the loudness of our boasts of freedom,’ who had laughed at the Grand Monarque for the last hundred and fifty years, and treated his subjects with every indignity, as belonging to an inferior species to ourselves, for submitting to his cruel and enervated sway; that the instant they took us at our word and were willing to break the chains of Popery and Slavery that we never ceased to taunt them with, we should turn against them, stand passive by ‘with jealous leer malign,’ witnessing the machinations of despots to extinguish the rising liberties of the world, and with the first plausible protest, the first watch-word given (the blow aimed at the head of a king confederate with the enemies of his country against its freedom) should join the warwhoop, and 288continue it loudest and longest, and never rest, under one hollow, dastard, loathsome pretence or other, till we had put down ‘the last example of democratic rebellion’ (we, who are nothing but rebellion all over, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot!) and had restored the doctrine of Divine Right, that had fallen headless from its throne of Ignorance and Superstition with the First Charles, long before it was condemned to the same fate in the person of the French king; that we should do this, and be led, urged on to the unhallowed task by a descendant of the House of Brunswick, who held his crown in contempt of the Stuarts, and grew old, blind, and crazed in the unsated, undiverted, sacred thirst of Legitimacy, is a thing that posterity will wonder at. We pretend to have interfered to put down the horrors of the French Revolution, when it was our interference (with that of others) that produced those horrors, of which we were glad as an excuse to justify our crooked policy and to screen the insidious, deadly, fatal blow aimed at liberty. No; the ‘cause was hearted’ in the breasts of those who reign, or who would reign, in contempt of the people, and with whom it rests to make peace or war. Is not the same principle at work still? What horrors have the Holy Alliance to plead in vindication of their interference with Spain? They have not a rag, a thread of all their hideous tissue of sophistry and lies to cover ‘the open and apparent shame’ of this sequel and consistent comment on their former conduct. It is a naked, barefaced, undisguised attack upon the rights and liberties of the world: it is putting the thing upon its true and proper footing—the claim of Kings to hold mankind as a property in perpetuity. There are no horrors, real or pretended, to warrant this new outrage on common sense and human nature. It stands on its own proud basis of injustice—it towers and mocks the skies in all the majesty of regal wrong. ‘The shame, the blood be upon their heads.’ If there are no horrors ready-made to their hands, they stand upon their privilege to commit wanton outrage and unqualified aggression; and if by these means they can provoke horrors, then the last are put first as the most plausible plea, as a handsome mask and soft lining to the hard gripe and features of Legitimacy—Religion consecrates, and Loyalty sanctions the fraud! But, should the scheme fail in spite of every art and effort, and the wrong they have meditated be retorted on their own heads, then we shall have, as before, an appeal made to Liberty and Humanity—the motto of despots will once more be peace on earth and good will to men—and we too shall join in the yell of blood and the whine of humanity. We are only waiting for an excuse now—till the threats and insults and cruelties of insolent invaders call forth reprisals, and lead to some 289act of popular fury or national justice that shall serve as a signal to rouse the torpid spirit of trade in the city, or to inflame the loyalty of country gentlemen deaf for the present to all other sounds but that appalling one of Rent! We must remain neuter while a grievous wrong is acting, unless we can get something by the change, or pick a quarrel with the right. We are peaceable, politic, when a nation’s liberty only is at stake, but were it a monarch’s crown that hung tottering in the air, oh! how soon would a patriot senate and people start out to avenge the idle cause: a single speech from the throne would metamorphose us into martyrs of self-interest, saviours of the world, deliverers of Europe from lawless violence and unexampled wrong. But here we have no heart to stir, because the name of liberty alone (without the cant of loyalty) has lost its magic charm on the ears of Englishmen—impotent to save, powerful only to betray and destroy themselves and others!

We want a Burke to give the thing a legitimate turn at present. I am afraid the Editor of the New Times can hardly supply his place. They could hardly have done before, without that eloquent apostate, that brilliant sophist, to throw his pen into the scale against truth and liberty. He varnished over a bad cause with smooth words, and had power to ‘make the worse appear the better reason’—the devil’s boast! The madness of genius was necessary to second the madness of a court; his flaming imagination was the torch that kindled the smouldering fire in the inmost sanctuary of pride and power, and spread havoc, dismay, and desolation through the world. The light of his imagination, sportive, dazzling, beauteous as it seemed, was followed by the stroke of death. It so happens that I myself have played all my life with his forked shafts unhurt, because I had a metaphysical clue to carry off the noxious particles, and let them sink into the earth, like drops of water. But the English nation are not a nation of metaphysicians, or they would have detected, and smiled or wept over the glittering fallacies of this half-bred reasoner, but, at the same time, most accomplished rhetorician that the world ever saw. But they are perplexed by sophistry, stupified by prejudice, staggered by authority. In the way of common sense and practical inquiry, they do well enough; but start a paradox, and they know not what to make of it. They either turn from it altogether, or, if interest or fear give them motives to attend to it, are fascinated by it. They cannot analyze or separate the true from the seeming good. Mr. Pitt, with his deep-mouthed common-places, was able to follow in the same track, and fill up the cry; but he could not have given the tone to political feeling, or led on the chase with ‘so musical a discord, such sweet; thunder.’ Burke strewed the flowers of his style over the rotten 290carcase of corruption, and embalmed it in immortal prose: he contrived, by the force of artful invective and misapplied epithets, to persuade the people of England that Liberty was an illiberal, hollow sound; that humanity was a barbarous modern invention, that prejudices were the test of truth; that reason was a strumpet, and right a fiction. Every other view of the subject but his (‘so well the tempter glozed’) seemed to be without attraction, elegance, or refinement. Politics became poetry in his hands, his sayings passed like proverbs from mouth to mouth, and his descriptions and similes were admired and repeated by the fashionable and the fair. Liberty from thenceforward became a low thing: philosophy was a spring-nailed, velvet-pawed tyger-cat, with green eyes, watching its opportunity to dart upon its prey: humanity was a lurking assassin. The emblems of our cardinal and favourite virtues were overturned: the whole vocabulary of national watch-words was inverted or displaced. This was a change indeed in our style of thinking, more alarming than that in our calendar formerly: and this change was brought about by Mr. Burke, who softened down hard reasons in the crucible of his fancy, and who gave to his epithets the force of nicknames. Half the business was done by his description of the Queen of France. It was an appeal to all women of quality; to all who were, or would be thought, cavaliers or men of honour; to all who were admirers of beauty, or rank, or sex. Yet what it had to do with the question, it would be difficult to say. If a woman is handsome, it is well: but it is no reason why she should poison her husband, or betray a country. If, instead of being young, beautiful, and free of manners, Marie Antoinette had been old, ugly, and chaste, all this mischief had been prevented. The author of the Reflections had seen or dreamt he saw a most delightful vision sixteen years before, which had thrown his brain into a ferment; and he was determined to throw his readers and the world into one too. It was a theme for a copy of verses, or a romance; not for a work in which the destinies of mankind were to be weighed. Yet she was the Helen that opened another Iliad of woes; and the world has paid for that accursed glance at youthful beauty with rivers of blood. If there was any one of sufficient genius now to deck out some Castilian maid, or village girl in the Army of the Faith, in all the colours of fancy, to reflect her image in a thousand ages and hearts, making a saint and a martyr of her; turning loyalty into religion, and the rights and liberties of the Spanish nation, and of all other nations, into a mockery, a bye-word, and a bugbear, how soon would an end be put to Mr. Canning’s present bizarre (almost afraid to know itself) situation! How gladly he would turn round on the 291pivot of his forced neutrality, and put all his drooping tropes and figures on their splendid war-establishment again!

Mr. Burke was much of a theatrical man. I do not mean that his high-wrought enthusiasm or vehemence was not natural to him; but the direction that he gave to it, was exceedingly capricious and arbitrary. It was for some time a doubtful question which way he should turn with respect to the French Revolution, whether for or against it. His pride took the alarm, that so much had been done with which he had nothing to do, and that a great empire had been overturned with his favourite engines, wit and eloquence, while he had been reforming the ‘turn-spit of the king’s kitchen,’ in set speeches far superior to the occasion. Rousseau and the Encyclopædists had lamentably got the start of him; and he was resolved to drag them back somehow by the heels, and bring what they had effected to an untimely end,—

The ‘Reflections on the French Revolution’ was a spiteful and dastard but too successful attempt to put a spoke in the wheels of knowledge and progressive civilization, and throw them back for a century and a half at least. In viewing the change, in the prospects of society, in producing which he had only a slight and indirect hand by his efforts in the cause of American freedom, he seemed to say, with Iago in the play,—

He went beyond his own most sanguine hopes, but did not live to witness their final accomplishment, by seeing France literally ‘blotted out of the map of Europe.’ He died in the most brilliant part of Buonaparte’s victorious and captain-like campaigns in Italy. If it could have been foreseen what an ‘ugly customer’ he was likely to prove, the way would have been to have bribed his vanity (a great deal stronger than his interest) over to the other side, by asking his opinion; and, indeed, he has thrown out pretty broad hints in the early stage of his hostility, and before the unexpected success of the French arms, and the whizzing arrows flung at him by his old friends and new antagonists had stung him to madness, that the great error of the National Assembly was in not having consulted able and experienced heads on this side the water, as to demolishing 292the old, and constructing the new edifice. If he had been employed to lay the first stone, or to assist, by an inaugural dissertation, at the baptism of the new French Constitution, the fabric of the Revolution would thenceforth have risen,—

without let or molestation from his tongue or pen. But he was overlooked. He was not called from his closet, or from his place in the House (where, it must be confessed, he was out of his place) to ‘ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm’; and therefore he tried, like some malicious hag, to urge the veering gale into a hurricane; to dash the labouring vessel of the state in pieces, and make shipwreck of the eternal jewel of man’s happiness, which it had on board—Liberty. The stores of practical and speculative knowledge which he had been for years collecting and digesting, and for which he had no use at home, were not called into play abroad. His genius had hitherto been always too mighty for the occasion; but here his utmost grasp of intellect would hardly have been sufficient to grapple with it. What an opportunity was lost! Something, therefore, was to be done, to relieve the galling sense of disappointed ambition and mortified self-consequence. Our political Busy body turned Marplot; and maliciously, and like a felon, strangled the babe that he was not professionally called in to swaddle, and dandle, and bring to maturity. He had his revenge: but so must others have their’s on his memory.

Burke was not an honest man. There was always a dash of insincerity, a sinister bias in his disposition. We see, from the letters that passed between him and his two brothers, and Barry the painter, that there was constantly a balancing of self-interest and principle in his mind; a thanking of God that he was in no danger of yielding to temptation, yet as if it were a doubtful or ticklish point; and a patient, pensive expectation of place and emolument, till he could reconcile it with integrity and fidelity to his party; which might easily be construed into a querulous hankering after it, and an opinion that this temporary self-denial implied a considerable sacrifice on his part, or that he displayed no small share of virtue in not immediately turning knave. All this, if narrowly looked into, has a very suspicious appearance. Burke, with all his capricious wildness and flighty impulses, was a self-seeker and more constant in his enmities than in his friendships. He bore malice, and did not forgive to the last. His cold, sullen behaviour to Fox, who shed tears when they had a quarrel in the House, and his refusal to see him afterwards, when the latter came to visit him on his death-bed, 293will for ever remain a stigma on his memory. He was, however, punished for his fault. In his latter writings, he complains bitterly of the solitariness of his old age, and of the absence of the friends of his youth—whom he had deserted. This is natural justice, and the tribute due to apostacy. A man may carry over his own conscience to the side of his vanity or interest, but he cannot expect, at the same time, to carry over along with him all those with whom he has been connected in thought and action, and whose society he will miss, sooner or later. Mr. Burke could hardly hope to find, in his casual, awkward, unaccountable intercourse with such men as Pitt or Dundas, amends for the loss of his old friends, Fox and Sheridan, to whom he was knit not only by political ties, but by old habitudes, lengthened recollections, and a variety of common studies and pursuits. Pitt was a mere politician; Dundas, a mere worldling. What would they care about him, and his ‘winged words’? No more of talk about the meetings at Sir Joshua’s—the Noctes cœnæque Deûm; about the fine portraits of that great colourist; about Johnson or Goldsmith, or Dunning or Barrè; or their early speeches; or the trying times in the beginning of the American war; or the classic taste and freeborn spirit of Greece and Rome;—

Perhaps, indeed, he would wish to forget most of these, as ungrateful topics; but when a man seeks for repose in oblivion of himself, he had better seek it, where he will soonest find it,—in the grave! Whatever the talents, or the momentary coincidence of opinion of his new allies, there would be a want of previous sympathy between them. Their notions would not amalgamate, or they would not be sure that they did. Every thing would require to be explained, to be reconciled. There would be none of the freedom of habitual intimacy. Friendships, like the clothes we wear, become the easier from custom. New friendships do not sit well on old or middle age. Affection is a science, to which it is too late to serve an apprenticeship after a certain period of life. This is the case with all patched-up, conventional intimacies; but it is worse when they are built on inveterate hostility and desertion from an opposite party, where their naturally crude taste is embittered by jealousy and rankling wounds. We think to exchange old friends and connections for new ones, and to be received with an additional welcome for the sacrifice we have made; but we gain nothing by it but the contempt of those whom we have left, and the suspicions of those whom we have joined. By betraying a cause, and turning our backs on a principle, we forfeit the esteem of the honest, and do not inspire one particle of 294confidence or respect in those who may profit by and pay us for our treachery.

Deserters are never implicitly trusted. There is, besides the sentiment or general principle of the thing, a practical reason for this. Their zeal, their eagerness to distinguish themselves in their new career, makes them rash and extravagant; and not only so, but there is always a leaven of their old principles remaining behind, which breaks out in spite of themselves, and which it is difficult for their encouragers and patrons to guard against. This was remarkably the case with the late Mr. Windham. He was constantly running a-muck at some question or other, and committing the Ministers. His old, free-thinking, opposition habits returned upon him before he was aware of it; and he was sure to hazard some paradox, or stickle for some objectionable point, contrary to the forms of office. The cabinet had contemplated no such thing. He was accordingly kept in check, and alarmed the treasury-bench whenever he rose. He was like a dog that gives mouth before the time, or is continually running on a stray scent: he was chid and fed! The same thing is observable in the present Poet-Laureat, whose jacobinical principles have taken such deep root in him (intus et in cute) that they break out even in his Court poems, like ‘a thick scurf’ on loyalty; and he presents them unconsciously, (as an offering of ‘sweet smelling gums,’) at the very foot of the throne. He at present retains his place apparently on condition of holding his tongue. He writes such Odes on kings, that it is next to impossible not to travestie them into lampoons!

The remarks I have made above apply strongly to him and some of his associates of the Lake School. I fancy he has felt, as much as anyone, the inconvenience of drawing off from a cause, and that by so doing we leave our oldest and our best friends behind. There are those among the favourers and admirers of his youth, whom his dim eyes discover not, and who do not count his grey hairs. Not one or two, but more;—men of character and understanding, who have pledged mutual faith, and drank the cup of freedom with him, warm from the wine-press, as well as the ‘dews of Castalie.’ He gave up a principle, and one left him;—he insulted a feeling, and another fled; he accepted a place, and received the congratulations of no one but Mr. Croker. He looks round for them in vain, with throbbing heart, (the heart of a poet can never lie still; he should take the more care what it is that agitates it!)—sees only the shadows or the carcases of old friendships; or stretches out his hand to grasp some new patron, and finds that also cold. If our friends are sometimes accused of short memories, our enemies make it up by 295having long ones. We had better adhere to the first; for we must despair of making cordial converts of the last. This double desolation is cheerless, and makes a man bethink himself. We may make a shift (a shabby one) without our self-respect; but it will never do to have it followed by the loss of the respect of those whose opinion we once valued most. We may tamper with our own consciences; but we feel at a loss without the testimony of others in our favour, which is seldom paid, except to integrity of purpose and principle. Perhaps, however, Mr. Southey consoles himself for a certain void without and within, by receiving the compliments of some Undergraduate of either of our Universities, on his last article in defence of Rotten Boroughs, in the Quarterly Review; or of a Dignitary of the Church, on his share in the Six Acts, and for suggesting to Lord Sidmouth the propriety of punishing the second conviction for libel with banishment. We do not know how this may be: but with us, it would barb the dart.

It would not matter, if these turn-coats were not in such violent extremes. Between the two, they must be strangely perplexed in their own minds, and scarcely know what to make of themselves. They must have singular qualms come over them at times—the apparitions of former acquaintance and opinions. If they were contented to correct, to qualify their youthful extravagancies, and to be taught by experience to steer a middle course, and pay some deference to the conclusions of others, it would be mighty well; but this is not their humour. They must be conspicuous, dogmatical, exclusive, intolerant, on whichever side they are: the mode may be different, the principle is the same. A man’s nature does not change, though he may profess different sentiments. A Socinian may become a Calvinist, or a Whig a Tory: but a bigot is always a bigot; an egotist never becomes humble. Besides, what excuse has a man, after thirty, to change about all of a sudden to the very opposite side? If he is an uneducated man, he may indeed plead ignorance yesterday of what he has learnt to-day: but a man of study and reading can’t pretend that a whole host of arguments has suddenly burst upon him, of which he never heard before, and that they have upset all his earlier notions: he must have known them long before, and if they made no impression on him then to modify his violent zeal (supposing them to be right now) it is a sign either of a disinclination, or of an incapacity, on his part, to give truth a fair hearing—a bad ground to build his present dogmatical and infallible tone upon! It is certain, that the common sense of the world condemns these violent changes of opinion; and if they do not prove that a man prefers his convenience to his virtue, they at least show that he 296prefers it to his reputation; for he loses his character by them. An apostate is a name that all men abhor, that no man ever willingly acknowledges; and the tergiversation which it denotes is not likely to come into much greater request, till it is no longer observed that a man seldom changes his principles except for his interest! Those who go over from the winning to the losing side, do not incur this appellation; and however we may count them fools, they can’t be called knaves into the bargain.

The London Weekly Review.] [November 17, 1827.

1. Why is the word comfort so continually in the mouths of the English?—Because the English are the most uncomfortable of all people: for being so liable to receive pain from outward objects, and being made uneasy by everything that is not as they wish it, they are obliged to remove, if possible, every source of annoyance, and have all their comforts about them.

2. Why are the English so fond of clubs, corporate bodies, joint-stock companies, and large associations of all kinds?—Because they are the most unsociable set of people in the world: for being mostly at variance with each other, they are glad to get any one else to join and be on their side; having no spontaneous attraction, they are forced to fasten themselves into the machine of society; and each holds out in his individual shyness and reserve, till he is carried away by the crowd, and borne with a violent, but welcome shock against some other mass of aggregate prejudice or self-interest. The English join together to get rid of their sharp points and sense of uncomfortable peculiarity. Hence, their clubs, their mobs, their sects, their parties, their spirit of co-operation, and previous understanding in every thing. An English mob is a collection of violent and headstrong humours, acting with double force from each man’s natural self-will, and the sense of opposition to others; and the same may be said of the nation at large. The French unite and separate more easily; and therefore do not collect into such formidable masses, and act with such unity and tenacity of purpose. It is the same with their ideas, which easily join together, and easily part company; but do not form large or striking masses: and hence, the French are full of wit and fancy, but without imagination and principle. The French are governed by fashion, the English by cabal.

2973. Why are the English a credulous nation, and the eager dupes of all sorts of quacks and impostors?—Because they are a dry, plodding, matter-of-fact people, and having, in general, no idea of the possibility of telling lies, think all they hear or read must be true, and are left at the mercy of every empiric or knavish pretender, who will take the trouble to impose on them. From their very gravity and seriousness, they are the dupes of superficial professions and appearances, which they think, (judging from themselves,) must imply all they pretend. Their folly and love of the marvellous takes a practical and mischievous turn; they despise the fictitious, and require to be amused by something that they think solid and useful. Hence, they swallow Dr. Brodum’s pills, Joanna Southcote’s prophecies, the Literary Gazette, and Blackwood’s Magazine, taking them all for gospel. They constantly have a succession of idols or bugbears. There is always some one to be hunted down at the time for their amusement, like a strange dog in a village; and some name, some work that is cried up for half-a-dozen years, as containing all wisdom, and then you hear no more of it. No people judge so much as the English at second-hand, except in mere matters of pounds, shillings, and pence; and even then they may be gulled by impudence and quackery. Every thing is either in collusion or collision. Thimble was a great man in the O. P. Row, and now regulates the debates in Parliament. If a man has a monstrous good opinion of himself, and nothing will drive him out of it, the English will come into his way of thinking, sooner than be left in a minority, or not appear to be in the secret! Lest they should seem stupid, they try to be knowing, as they become forward in aiming to be witty, and vulgar in affecting to be genteel.

The London Weekly Review.] [December 1, 1827.

‘Who shall go about to cozen fortune, or wear the badge of honour without the stamp of merit?’

A knowledge of the world is generally supposed to be the fruit of experience and observation, or of a various, practical acquaintance with men and things. On the contrary, it appears to me to be a kind of instinct, arising out of a peculiar construction and turn of mind. Some persons display this knowledge at their first outset in life: others, with all their opportunities and dear-bought lessons, never acquire it to the end of their career. In fact, a knowledge of the world only means a knowledge of our own interest; it is nothing but 298a species of selfishness or ramification of the law of self-preservation. There may be said to be two classes of people in the world, which remain for ever distinct: those who consider things in the abstract, or with a reference to the truth, and those who consider them only with a reference to themselves, or to the main-chance. The first, whatever may be their acquirements or discoveries, wander through life in a sort of absence of mind, or comparative state of sleep-walking: the last, though their attention is riveted to a single point of view, are always on the alert, know perfectly well what they are about, and calculate with the greatest nicety the effect which their words or actions will have on others. They do not trouble themselves about the arguments on any subject: they know the opinion entertained on it, and that is enough for them to regulate themselves by; the rest they regard as quite Utopian, and foreign to the purpose. ‘Subtle as the fox for prey, like warlike as the wolf for what they eat,’ they leave mere speculative points to those who, from some unaccountable bias or caprice take an interest in what does not personally concern them, and make good the old saying, that ‘the children of the world are wiser in their generation than the children of the light!’

The man of the world is to the man of science very much what the chamelion is to the armadillo: the one takes its hue from every surrounding object, and is undistinguishable from them; the other is shut up in a formal crust of knowledge, and clad in an armour of proof, from which the shaft of ridicule or the edge of disappointment falls equally pointless. It is no uncommon case to see a person come into a room, which he enters awkwardly enough, and has nothing in his dress or appearance to recommend him, but after the first embarrassments are over, sits down, takes his share in the conversation, in which he acquits himself creditably, shews sense, reading, and shrewdness, expresses himself with point, articulates distinctly, when he blunders on some topic which he might see is disagreeable, but persists in it the more as he finds others shrink from it; mentions a book of which you have not heard, and perhaps do not wish to hear, and he therefore thinks himself bound to favour you with the contents; gets into an argument with one, proses on with another on a subject in which his hearer has no interest; and when he goes away, people remark, ‘What a pity that Mr. —— has not more knowledge of the world, and has so little skill in adapting himself to the tone and manners of society!’ But will time and habit cure him of this defect? Never. He wants a certain tact, he has not a voluntary power over his ideas, but is like a person reading out of a book, or who can only pour out the budget of knowledge with which his brain is crammed in all places and companies alike. If you attempt to divert 299his attention from the general subject to the persons he is addressing, you puzzle and stop him quite. He is a mere conversing automaton. He has not the sense of personality—the faculty of perceiving the effect (as well as the grounds) of his opinions; and how then should failure or mortification give it him? It must be a painful reflection, and he must be glad to turn from it; or after a few reluctant and unsuccessful efforts to correct his errors, he will try to forget or harden himself in them. Finding that he makes so slow and imperceptible a progress in amending his faults, he will take his swing in the opposite direction, will triumph and revel in his supposed excellences, will launch out into the wide, untrammelled field of abstract speculation, and silence envious sneers and petty cavils by force of argument and dint of importunity. You will find him the same character at sixty that he was at thirty; or should time soften down some of his asperities, and tire him of his absurdities as he has tired others, nothing will transform him into a man of the world, and he will die in a garret, or a paltry second-floor, from not having been able to acquire the art ‘to see ourselves as others see us,’ or to dress his opinions, looks, and actions in the smiles and approbation of the world. On the other hand, take a youth from the same town (perhaps a school-fellow, and the dunce of the neighbourhood); he has ‘no figures, nor no fantasies which busy thought draws in the brains of men,’ no preconceived notions by which he must square his conduct or his conversation, no dogma to maintain in the teeth of opposition, no Shibboleth to which he must force others to subscribe; the progress of science or the good of his fellow-creatures are things about which he has not the remotest conception, or the smallest particle of anxiety—

all that he sees or attends to is the immediate path before him, or what can encourage or lend him a helping hand through it; his mind is a complete blank, on which the world may write its maxims and customs in what characters it pleases; he has only to study its humours, flatter its prejudices, and take advantage of its foibles; while walking the streets he is not taken up with solving an abstruse problem, but with considering his own and the appearance of others; instead of contradicting a patron, assents to all he hears; and in every proposition that comes before him asks himself only what he can get by it, and whether it will make him friends or enemies: such a one is said to possess great penetration and knowledge of the world, understands his place in society, gets on in it, rises from the counter to the 300counting-house, from the dependant to be a partner, amasses a fortune, gains in size and respectability as his affairs prosper, has his town and country house, and ends with buying up half the estates in his native county!

The great secret of a knowledge of the world, then, consists in a subserviency to the will of others, and the primary motive to this attention is a mechanical and watchful perception of our own interest. It is not an art that requires a long course of study, the difficulty is in putting one’s self apprentice to it. It does not surely imply any very laborious or profound inquiry into the distinctions of truth or falsehood, to be able to assent to whatever one hears; nor any great refinement of moral feeling, to approve of whatever has custom, power, or interest on its side. The only question is, ‘Who is willing to do so?’—and the answer is, those who have no other faculties or pretensions, either to stand in the way of or to assist their progress through life. Those are slow to wear the livery of the world who have any independent resources of their own. It is not that the philosopher or the man of genius does not see and know all this, that he is not constantly and forcibly reminded of it by his own failure or the success of others, but he cannot stoop to practice it. He has a different scale of excellence and mould of ambition, which has nothing in common with current maxims and time-serving calculations. He is a moral and intellectual egotist, not a mere worldly-minded one. In youth, he has sanguine hopes and brilliant dreams, which he cannot sacrifice for sordid realities—as he advances farther in life, habit and pride forbid his turning back. He cannot bring himself to give up his best-grounded convictions to a blockhead, or his conscientious principles to a knave, though he might make his fortune by so doing. The rule holds good here as well as in another sense—‘What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’ If his convictions and principles had been less strong, they would have yielded long ago to the suggestions of his interest, and he would have relapsed into the man of the world, or rather he would never have had the temptation or capacity to be any thing else. One thing that keeps men honest, as well as that confirms them knaves, is their incapacity to do any better for themselves than nature has done for them. One person can with difficulty speak the truth, as another lies with a very ill grace. After repeated awkward attempts to change characters, they each very properly fall back into their old jog-trot path, as best suited to their genius and habits.

There are individuals who make themselves and every one else uncomfortable by trying to be agreeable, and who are only to be 301endured in their natural characters of blunt, plain-spoken people. Many a man would have turned rogue if he had known how. Non ex quovis ligno fit Mercurius. The modest man cannot be impudent if he would. The man of sense cannot play the fool to advantage. It is not the mere resolution to act a part that will enable us to do it, without a natural genius and fitness for it. Some men are born to be valets, as others are to be courtiers. There is the climbing genus in man as well as in plants. It is sometimes made a wonder how men of ‘no mark or likelihood’ frequently rise to court-preferment, and make their way against all competition. That is the very reason. They present no tangible point; they offend no feeling of self-importance. They are a perfect unresisting medium of patronage and favour. They aspire through servility; they repose in insignificance. A man of talent or pretension in the same circumstances would be kicked out in a week. A look that implied a doubt, a hint that suggested a difference of opinion, would be fatal. It is of no use, in parleying with absolute power, to dissemble, to suppress: there must be no feelings or opinions to dissemble or suppress. The artifice of the dependant is not a match for the jealousy of the patron: ‘The soul must be subdued to the very quality of its lord.’ Where all is annihilated in the presence of the sovereign, is it astonishing that nothings should succeed? Ciphers are as necessary in courts as eunuchs in seraglios.

The London Weekly Review.] [December 8, 1827,

I do not think Mr. Cobbett would succeed in an interview with the Prince. Bub Doddington said, ‘he would not justify before his Sovereign,’ even where his own character was at stake. I am afraid we could hardly reckon upon the same forbearance in Mr. Cobbett where his country’s welfare was at stake, and where he had an opportunity of vindicating it. He might have a great deal of reason on his side; but he might forget, or seem to forget, that as the king is above the law, he is also above reason. Reason is but a suppliant at the foot of thrones, and waits for their approval or rebuke. Salus populi suprema lex—may be a truism anywhere else. If reason dares to approach them at all, it must be in the shape of deference and humility, not of headstrong importunity and self-will. Instead of breathless awe, of mild entreaty, of humble remonstrance, it is Mr. Cobbett, who, upon very slight encouragement, would give the law, and the monarch who must kiss the rod. The upstart, the bully, and the dogmatist, would break out, and the King would assert himself. 302The reformer would be too full of his own opinion to allow an option even to Majesty, and the affair would have the same ending as that of the old ballad—

As I have brought Mr. Cobbett in here by the neck and shoulders, I may add that I do not think he belongs properly to the class, either of philosophical speculators, or men of the world. He is a political humourist. He is too much taken up with himself either to attend to right reason, or to judge correctly of what passes around him. He mistakes strength of purpose and passion, not only for truth but for success. Because he can give fifty good reasons for a thing, he thinks it not only ought to be, but must be. Because he is swayed so entirely by his wishes and humours, he believes others will be ready to give up their prejudices, interests, and resentments to oblige him. He persuades himself that he is the fittest person to represent Westminster in parliament, and he considers this point (once proved) tantamount to his return. He knows no more of the disposition or sentiments of the people of Westminster than of the inhabitants of the moon (except from what he himself chooses to say or write of them), and it is this want of sympathy which, as much as anything, prevents his being chosen. The exclusive force and bigotry of his opinions deprives them of half their influence and effect, by allowing no toleration to others, and consequently setting them against him.

Mr. Cobbett seemed disappointed, at one time, at not succeeding in the character of a legacy-hunter. Why, a person to succeed in this character, ought to be a mere skin or bag to hold money, a place to deposit it in, a shadow, a deputy, a trustee who keeps it for the original owner—so that the transfer is barely nominal, and who, if he were to return from the other world, would modestly yield it up—one who has no personal identity of his own, no will to encroach upon or dispose of it otherwise than his patron would wish after his death—not a hair-brained egotist, a dashing adventurer, to squander, hector and flourish away with it in wild schemes and ruinous experiments, every one of them at variance with the opinions of the testator; in new methods of turnip hoeing; in speculations in madder—this would be to tear his soul from his body twice over—

Mr. Cobbett complained, that in his last interview with Baron Mazeres, that gentleman was in his dotage, and that the reverend 303legatee sat at the bottom of the table, cutting a poor figure, and not contradicting a word the Baron said. No doubt, as he has put this in print in the exuberance of his dissatisfaction, he let both gentlemen see pretty plainly what he thought of them, and fancied that this expression of his contempt, as it gratified him, was the way to ensure the good will of the one to make over his whole estate, or the good word of the other to let him go snacks. This is a new way of being quits with one’s benefactors, and an egregious quid pro quo. If Baron Mazeres had left Mr. Cobbett 200,000l. it must have been not to write his epitaph, or visit him in his last moments!

A gossiping chambermaid who only smiles and assents when her mistress wishes her to talk, or an ignorant country clown who stands with his hat off when he has a favour to ask of the squire, (and if he is wise, at all other times,) knows more of the matter. A knowledge of mankind is little more than the Scotch instinct of bowing, or of ‘never standing upright in the presence of a great man,’ or of that great blockhead, the world. It is not a perception of truth, but a sense of power, and an instant determination of the will to submit to it. It is therefore less an intellectual acquirement than a natural disposition. It is on this account that I think both cunning and wisdom are a sort of original endowments, or attain maturity much earlier than is supposed, from their being moral qualities, and having their seat in the heart rather than the head. The difference depends on the manner of seeing things. The one is a selfish, the other is a disinterested view of nature. The one is the clear open look of integrity, the other is a contracted and blear-eyed obliquity of mental vision. If any one has but the courage and honesty to look at an object as it is in itself, or divested of prejudice, fear, and favour, he will be sure to see it pretty right; as he who regards it through the refractions of opinion and fashion, will be sure to see it distorted and falsified, however the error may rebound to his own advantage. Certainly, he who makes the universe tributary to his convenience, and subjects all his impressions of what is right or wrong, true or false, black or white, round or square, to the standard and maxims of the world, who never utters a proposition but he fancies a patron close at his elbow who overhears him, who is even afraid, in private, to suffer an honest conviction to rise in his mind, lest it should mount to his lips, get wind, and ruin his prospects in life, ought to gain something in exchange for the restraint and force put upon his thoughts and faculties: on the contrary, he who is confined by no such petty and debasing trammels, whose comprehension of mind is ‘in large heart enclosed,’ finds his inquiries and his views expand in a degree commensurate 304with the universe around him; makes truth welcome wherever he meets her, and receives her cordial embrace in return. To see things divested of passion and interest, is to see them with the eye of history and philosophy. It is easy to judge right, or at least to come to a mutual understanding in matters of history and abstract morality. Why then is it so difficult to arrive at the same calm certainty in actual life? Because the passions and interests are concerned, and it requires so much more candour, love of truth, and independence of spirit to encounter ‘the world and its dread laugh,’ to throw aside every sinister consideration, and grapple with the plain merits of the case. To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth. Perhaps the courage may be also owing to the strength; but both go together, and are natural, and not acquired. Do we not see in fables the force of the moral principle in detecting the truth? The only effect of fables is, by making inanimate or irrational things actors in the scene, to remove the case completely from our own sphere, to take our self-love off its guard, to simplify the question; and yet the result of this obvious appeal is allowed to be universal and irresistible. Is not this another example that ‘the heart of man is deceitful above all things;’ or, that it is less our incapacity to distinguish what is right, than our secret determination to adhere to what is wrong, that prevents our discriminating one from the other? It is not that great and useful truths are not manifest and discernible in themselves; but little, dirty objects get between them and us, and from being near and gross, hide the lofty and distant! The first business of the patriot and the philanthropist is to overleap this barrier, to rise out of this material dross. Indignation, contempt of the base and grovelling, makes the philosopher no less than the poet; and it is the power of looking beyond self that enables each to inculcate moral truth and nobleness of sentiment, the one by general precepts, the other by individual example.

I have no quarrel with men of the world, mere muck-worms: every one after his fashion, ‘as the flesh and fortune shall serve;’ but I confess I have a little distaste to those, who, having set out as loud and vaunting enthusiasts, have turned aside to ‘tread the primrose path of dalliance,’ and to revile those who did not choose to follow so edifying an example. The candid brow and elastic spring of youth may be exchanged for the wrinkles and crookedness of age; but at least we should retain something of the erectness and openness of our first unbiassed thoughts. I cannot understand how any degree of egotism can dispense with the consciousness of personal identity. As we advance farther in life, we are naturally inclined to revert in imagination to its commencement; but what can those 305dwell upon there who find only feelings that they despise, and opinions that they have abjured? ‘If thine eye offend thee, pull it out and cast it from thee:’ but the operation is a painful one, and the body remains after it only a mutilated fragment. Generally, those who are cut off from this resource in former recollections, make up for it (as well as they can) by an exaggerated and uxorious fondness for their late-espoused convictions—a thing unsightly and indecent! Why does he, who, at one time, despises ‘the little chapel-bell,’ afterwards write ‘the Book of the Church?’ The one is not an atonement for the other: each shows only a juvenile or a superannuated precocity of judgment. It is uniting Camille-Desmoulins and Camille-Jourdan, (Jourdan of the Chimes) in one character. I should like (not out of malice, but from curiosity) to see Mr. Southey re-write the beautiful poem on ‘his own miniature-picture, when he was two years old,’ and see what he would substitute for the lines—

There must here, I think, be hiatus in manuscriptis: the verse must halt a little! The laureate and his friends say that they are still labouring on the same design as ever, correcting the outlines and filling up the unfinished sketch of their early opinions. They seem rather to have blotted them quite out, and to have taken a fresh canvas to begin another and no less extravagant caricature. Or their new and old theories remind one of those heads in picturedealers’ shops, where one half of the face is thoroughly cleaned and repaired, and the other left covered with stains and dirt, to show the necessity of the picture-scourer’s art: the transition offends the sight. It may be made a question whether men grow wiser as they grow older, any more than they grow stronger or healthier or honester. They may, in one sense, imbibe a greater portion of worldly wisdom, and have their romantic flights tamed to the level of every day’s practice and experience; but perhaps it would be better if some of the extravagance and enthusiasm of youth could be infused into the latter, instead of being absorbed (perforce) in that sink of pride, envy, selfishness, ignorance, conceit, prejudice, and hypocrisy. One thing is certain, that this is the present course of events, and that if the individual grows wiser as he gains experience, the world does not, and that the tardy penitent who is treading back his steps, may meet the world advancing as he is retreating, and adopting more and more of the genuine impulses and disinterested 306views of youth into its creed. It is, indeed, only by conforming to some such original and unsophisticated standard, that it can acquire either soundness or consistency. The appeal is a fair one, from the bad habits of society to the unprejudiced aspirations and impressions of human nature.

The London Weekly Review.] [December 15, 1827.

It seems, in truth, a hard case to have all the world against us, and to require uncommon fortitude (not to say presumption) to stand out single against such a host. The bare suggestion must ‘give us pause,’ and has no doubt overturned many an honest conviction. The opinion of the world, (as it pompously entitles itself,) if it means anything more than a set of local and party prejudices, with which only our interest, not truth, is concerned, is a shadow, a bugbear, and a contradiction in terms. Having all the world against us, is a phrase without a meaning; for in those points in which all the world agree, no one differs from the world. If all the world were of the same way of thinking, and always kept in the same mind, it would certainly be a little staggering to have them against you. But however widely and angrily they may differ from you, they differ as much so from one another, and even from themselves. What is gospel at one moment, is heresy the next:—different countries and climates have different notions of things. When you are put on your trial, therefore, for impugning the public opinion, you may always subpœna this great body against itself. For example, I have been twitted for somewhere calling Tom Paine a great writer, and no doubt his reputation at present ‘does somewhat smack:’ yet in 1792 he was so great, or so popular an author, and so much read and admired by numbers who would not now mention his name, that the Government was obliged to suspend the Constitution, and to go to war to counteract the effects of his popularity. His extreme popularity was then the cause (by a common and vulgar reaction) of his extreme obnoxiousness. If the opinion of the world, then, contradicts itself, why may not I contradict it, or choose at what time, and to what extent I will agree with it? I have been accused of abusing dissenters, and saying that sectaries, in general, are dry and suspicious; and I believe that all the world will say the same thing except themselves. I have said that the church people are proud and overbearing, which has given them umbrage, though in this I have all the sectaries on my side. I have laughed at the Methodists, 307and for this I have been accused of glancing at religion: yet who does not laugh at the Methodists as well as myself? But I also laugh at those who laugh at them. I have pointed out by turns the weak sides and foibles of different sects and parties, and they themselves maintain that they are perfect and infallible: and this is what is called having all the world against me. I have inveighed all my life against the insolence of the Tories, and for this I have the authority both of Whigs and Reformers; but then I have occasionally spoken against the imbecility of the Whigs, and the extravagance of the Reformers, and thus have brought all three on my back, though two out of the three regularly agree with all I say of the third party. Poets do not approve of what I have said of their turning prose-writers; nor do the politicians approve of my tolerating the fooleries of the fanciful tribe at all: so they make common cause to damn me between them. People never excuse the drawbacks from themselves, nor the concessions to an adversary: such is the justice and candour of mankind! Mr. Wordsworth is not satisfied with the praise I have heaped upon himself, and still less, that I have allowed Mr. Moore to be a poet at all. I do not think I have ever set my face against the popular idols of the day; I have been among the foremost in crying up Mrs. Siddons, Kean, Sir Walter Scott, Madame Pasta, and others; and as to the great names of former times, my admiration has been lavish, and sometimes almost mawkish. I have dissented, it is true, in one or two instances; but that only shows that I judge for myself, not that I make a point of contradicting the general taste. I have been more to blame in trying to push certain Illustrious Obscure into notice:—they have not forgiven the obligation, nor the world the tacit reproach. As to my personalities, they might quite as well be termed impersonalities. I am so intent on the abstract proposition and its elucidation, that I regard everything else as of very subordinate consequence: my friends, I conceive, will not refuse to contribute to so laudable an undertaking, and my enemies must! I have found fault with the French, I have found fault with the English; and pray, do they not find great, mutual, and just fault with one another? It may seem a great piece of arrogance in any one, to set up his individual and private judgment against that of ten millions of people; but cross the channel, and you will have thirty millions on your side. Even should the thirty millions come over to the opinions of the ten, (a thing that may happen to-morrow,) still one need not despair. I remember my old friend Peter Finnerty, laughing very heartily at something I had written about the Scotch, but it was followed up by a sketch of the Irish, on which he closed 308the book, looked grave, and said he disapproved entirely of all national reflections. Thus you have all the world on your side, except when it is the party concerned. What any set of people think or say of themselves is hardly a rule for others: yet, if you do not attach yourself to some one set of people and principles, and stick to them through thick and thin, instead of giving your opinion fairly and fully all round, you must expect to have all the world against you, for no other reason than because you express sincerely, and for their good, not only what they say of others, but what is said of themselves, which they would fain keep a profound secret, and prevent the divulging of it under the severest pains and penalties. When I told J—— that I had composed a work in which I had ‘in some sort handled’ about a score of leading characters, he said, ‘Then you will have one man against you, and the remaining nineteen for you!’ I have not found it so. In fact, these persons would agree pretty nearly to all that I say, and allow that, in nineteen points out of twenty, I am right; but the twentieth, that relates to some imperfection of their own, weighs down all the rest, and produces an unanimous verdict against the author. There is but one thing in which the world agree, a certain bigoted blindness, and conventional hypocrisy, without which, according to Mandeville, (that is, if they really spoke what they thought and knew of one another,) they would fall to cutting each other’s throats immediately.

We find the same contrariety and fluctuation of opinion in different ages, as well as countries and classes. For about a thousand years, during ‘the high and palmy state’ of the Romish hierarchy, it was agreed (nemine contradicente) that two and two made five: afterwards, for above a century, there was great battling and controversy to prove that they made four and a half; then, for a century more, it was thought a great stride taken to come down to four and a quarter; and, perhaps, in another century or two, it will be discovered for a wonder that two and two actually make four! It is said, that this slow advance and perpetual interposition of impediments is a salutary check to the rashness of innovation, and to hazardous experiments. At least, it is a very effectual one, amounting almost to a prohibition. One age is employed in building up an absurdity, and the next exhausts all its wit and learning, zeal and fury, in battering it down, so that at the end of two generations you come to the point where you set out, and have to begin again. These heats and disputes about external points of faith may be things of no consequence, since under all the variations of form or doctrine the essentials of practice remain the same. It does not seem so; at any rate, the non-essentials appear to excite all 309the interest, and ‘keep this dreadful pudder o’er our heads;’ and when the dogma is once stripped of mystery and intolerance, and reduced to common sense, no one appears to take any further notice of it.

The appeal, then, to the authority of the world, chiefly resolves itself into the old proverb, that ‘when you are at Rome you must do as those at Rome do;’ that is, it is a shifting circle of local prejudices and gratuitous assumptions, a successful conformity to which is best insured by a negation of all other qualities that might interfere with it: solid reason and virtue are out of the question. But it may be insisted, that there are qualities of a more practical order that may greatly contribute to and facilitate our advancement in life, such as presence of mind, convivial talents, insight into character, thorough acquaintance with the profounder principles and secret springs of society, and so forth. I do not deny that all this may be of advantage in extraordinary cases, and often abridge difficulties; but I do not think that it is either necessary or generally useful. For instance, habitual caution and reserve is a surer resource than that presence of mind, or quick-witted readiness of expedient, which, though it gets men out of scrapes, as often leads them into them by begetting a false confidence. Persons of agreeable and lively talents often find to their cost that one indiscretion procures them more enemies then ten agreeable sallies do friends. A too great penetration into character is less desirable than a certain power of hoodwinking ourselves to their defects, unless the former is accompanied with a profound hypocrisy, which is also liable to detection and discomfiture: and as to general maxims and principles of worldly knowledge, I conceive that an instinctive sympathy with them is much more profitable than their incautious discovery and formal announcement. Thus, the politic rule, ‘When a great wheel goes up a hill, cling fast to it; when a great wheel runs down a hill, let go your hold of it,’ may be useful as a hint or warning to the shyness or fidelity of an Englishman; a North Briton feels its truth instinctively, and acts upon it unconsciously. When it is observed in the History of a Foundling, that ‘Mr. Alworthy had done so many charitable actions that he had made enemies of the whole parish,’ the sarcasm is the dictate of a generous indignation at ingratitude rather than a covert apology for selfish niggardliness. Misanthropic reflections have their source in philanthropic sentiments; the real despiser of the world keeps up appearances with it, and is at pains to varnish over its vices and follies, even to himself, lest his secret should be betrayed, and do him an injury. Those who see completely into the world begin to play tricks with it, and overreach themselves by being too knowing: it is even possible to out-cant it, and get laughed at that 310way. Fielding knew something of the world, yet he did not make a fortune. Sir Walter Scott has twice made a fortune by descriptions of nature and character, and has twice lost it by the same fondness for speculative gains. Wherever there is a strong faculty for anything, the exercise of that faculty becomes its own end and reward, and produces an indifference or inattention to other things; so that the best security for success in the world is an incapacity for success in any other way. A bookseller to succeed in his business should have no knowledge of books, except as marketable commodities: the instant he has a taste, an opinion of his own on the subject, he may consider himself as a ruined man. In like manner, a picture-dealer should know nothing of pictures but the catalogue price, the cant of the day. The moment he has a feeling for the art, he will be tenacious of it: a Guido, a Salvator ‘will be the fatal Cleopatra for which he will lose all he is worth, and be content to lose it.’ Should a general then know nothing of war, a physician of medicine? No: because this is an art and not a trick, and the one has to contend with nature, and the other with an enemy, and not to pamper or cajole the follies of the world. It requires also great talents to overturn the world; not, to push one’s fortune in it: to rule the state like Cromwell or Buonaparte; not, to rise in it like Castlereagh or Croker. Yet, even in times of crisis and convulsion, he who outrages the feeling of the moment and echoes the wildest extravagance, succeeds; as, in times of peace and tranquillity, he does so who acquiesces most tamely in the ordinary routine of things. This may serve to point out another error, common to men of the world, who sometimes, giving themselves credit for more virtue than they possess, declare very candidly that if they had to begin life over again, they would have been great rogues. The answer to this is, that then they would have been hanged! No: the way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours, neither to be a ‘reformer nor a house-breaker,’ neither to advance before the age nor lag behind it, but to be as like it as possible, to reflect its image and superscription at every turn, and then you will be its darling and its delight, and it will dandle you and fondle you, and make much of you, as a monkey doats upon its young! The knowledge of vice—that is, of statutable vice—is not the knowledge of the world: otherwise a Bow-street runner and the keeper of a house of ill fame, would be the most knowing characters, and would soon rise above their professions.

The London Weekly Review.] [January 19, 1828.

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 attachment 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 312after making ourselves and everyone 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 place 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.^[54]

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, farther, it may happen, 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 it 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 313it 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 of 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 everyone joins in asserting, propagating, and in outwardly approving what everyone, in his private and unbiassed judgment, believes and knows to be scandalous and untrue. For everyone 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 everyone 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 by 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 everyone; 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 314slander 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 someone 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 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. I walk into a church in Paris, where I am struck with a number of idle forms and ceremonies, the chaunting 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, I step out of the church of St. Roche, and drop into an English reading-room hard by: what am I the better? I see a dozen or a score of my 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 any 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 Mr. Blackwood, (you see it in their faces) as implicitly as in Sir John Barleycorn; in the John Bull as in a sirloin of beef; in the Quarterly as assuredly 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 these oracles, scouts, and champions of theirs? They know that the John Bull, for instance, is a hoax, a humbug, an impudent 315imposture, got up, week by week, to puff whom it pleases, to bully whom it pleases, to traduce whom it pleases, without any principle but a hint from its patrons, or without a pretence to any other principle. Do they believe in the known lie, the gross ribaldry, the foul 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 be thought that the enlightened part of the British public (persons of family and fortune, and often title, who have had a college-education and received the benefit of foreign travel) see through the quackery, which they encourage only for a political purpose, without being themselves the dupes of it. Suppose an individual of whom it has been repeatedly asserted that he has warts on his nose, were to enter the reading-room aforesaid in the Rue de la Paix—is there a single red-faced country squire who would not be surprised at not finding this part of the story true—would not persuade himself five minutes after that he could not have been seen correctly, or that some art had been used to conceal the defect, or would be led to doubt, from this instance, Mr. Blackwood’s general candour and veracity? On the contrary, the gentleman would be obliged to disbelieve his senses rather than give Mr. Blackwood the lie, who is read and believed by the whole world. He would have a host of witnesses against him: there is not a reader of Blackwood who would not swear to the fact. Seeing is believing, it is said. Lying is believing, say I. We do not even see with our own eyes, but must ‘wink and shut our apprehensions up,’ that we may be able to agree to the report of others, as a piece of good manners and 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 one he did not like—and who will give up what tends to strengthen his aversion against another? To Tory prejudice, sore as it is—to English imagination, morbid as it is, a nickname, a ludicrous epithet, a malignant falsehood (when it has once been propagated and taken to bosoms 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 a plenary indulgence (published monthly with the court privilege) to speak and think with contempt of those who would abolish the one or throw open the other.

The London Weekly Review.] [February 16, 1828.

Party-Spirit is the best reason in the world for personal antipathy and vulgar abuse.

‘But, do you not think, Sir,’ (methinks I hear some Scotch dialectician exclaim,) ‘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, such as Mr. Dugald Stewart and the Editors of the Edinburgh Encyclopædia?’

May I ask, my dear Sir, did you ever read Mr. Wordsworth’s poem of Michael?

‘I cannot charge my memory with the fact; or I paid no particular attention to it at the time, as I have always agreed with the Edinburgh Review in considering Mr. Wordsworth’s poetry as remarkably silly and puerile.’

But still true to Nature in a humble way.

‘Why, I think, Sir, something of that kind is admitted (either by way of ridicule or praise) in the article in the Review.’

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 to work at this sheep-fold—

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 Scotchman answer kindly to interrogatories, 317I must get on without him. Indeed, I have generally found the natives of that country greater hindrances than helps. 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 the 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 318the 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 anyone, 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 characterizes himself as one

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 questions 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 319social 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 that 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 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 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 320bring it out and set it off by a variety of ornaments and allusions. This puzzled the court-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. Oh, had I been but one of them, I might even have dined with Mr. Murray! 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 (not Scotch) metaphysics, J—— who echoes this florid charge, said he preferred what I wrote for effect, and was afraid of its being thought heavy—by the side of Macculloch! 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 warwhoop 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 common-place, 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 (except one that appeared in the Retrospective Review, which was not my own, though I was very handsomely paid the full price of an original composition for it), and will take a sponge and 321clear the dust from the face of my Old Woman (which he can see at a common friend’s), 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.

The London Weekly Review.] [March 29, 1828.

Food, warmth, sleep, and a book; these are all I at present ask—the ultima thule of my wandering desires. Do you not then wish for

Expected, well enough:—gone, still better. Such attractions are strengthened by distance. Nor a mistress? ‘Beautiful mask! I know thee!’ When I can judge of the heart from the face, of the thoughts from the lips, I may again trust myself. Instead of these, give me the robin red-breast, pecking the crumbs at the door, or warbling on the leafless spray, the same glancing form that has followed me wherever I have been, and ‘done its spiriting gently;’ or the rich notes of the thrush that startle the ear of winter, and seem to have drunk up the full draught of joy from the very sense of contrast. To these I adhere and am faithful, for they are true to me; and, dear in themselves, are dearer for the sake of what is departed, leading me back (by the hand) to that dreaming world, in the innocence of which they sat and made sweet music, waking the promise of future years, and answered by the eager throbbings of my own breast. But now ‘the credulous hope of mutual minds is o’er,’ and I turn back from the world that has deceived me, to nature that lent it a false beauty, and that keeps up the illusion of the past. As I quaff my libations of tea in a morning, I love to watch the clouds sailing from the west, and fancy that ‘the spring comes slowly up this way.’ In this hope, while ‘fields are dank and ways are mire,’ I follow the same direction to a neighbouring wood, where, having gained the dry, level greensward, I can see my way for a mile before me, closed in on each side by copse-wood, and ending in a point of light more or less brilliant, as the day is bright or cloudy. What a walk is this to me! I have no need of book or companion—the days, the hours, the thoughts of my youth are at my side, and 322blend with the air that fans my cheek. Here I can saunter for hours, bending my eye forward, stopping and turning to look back, thinking to strike off into some less trodden path, yet hesitating to quit the one I am in, afraid to snap the brittle threads of memory. I remark the shining trunks and slender branches of the birch trees, waving in the idle breeze; or a pheasant springs up on whirring wing; or I recall the spot where I once found a wood-pigeon at the foot of a tree, weltering in its gore, and think how many seasons have flown since ‘it left its little life in air.’ Dates, names, faces come back—to what purpose? Or why think of them now? Or rather, why not think of them oftener? We walk through life, as through a narrow path, with a thin curtain drawn around it; behind are ranged rich portraits, airy harps are strung—yet we will not stretch forth our hands and lift aside the veil, to catch glimpses of the one, or sweep the chords of the other. As in a theatre, when the old-fashioned green curtain drew up, groups of figures, fantastic dresses, laughing faces, rich banquets, stately columns, gleaming vistas appeared beyond; so we have only at any time to ‘peep through the blanket of the past,’ to possess ourselves at once of all that has regaled our senses, that is stored up in our memory, that has struck our fancy, that has pierced our hearts:—yet to all this we are indifferent, insensible, and seem intent only on the present vexation, the future disappointment. If there is a Titian hanging up in the room with me, I scarcely regard it: how then should I be expected to strain the mental eye so far, or to throw down, by the magic spells of the will, the stone-walls that enclose it in the Louvre? There is one head there of which I have often thought, when looking at it, that nothing should ever disturb me again, and I would become the character it represents—such perfect calmness and self-possession reigns in it! Why do I not hang an image of this in some dusky corner of my brain, and turn an eye upon it ever and anon, as I have need of some such talisman to calm my troubled thoughts? The attempt is fruitless, if not natural; or, like that of the French, to hang garlands on the grave, and to conjure back the dead by miniature pictures of them while living! It is only some actual coincidence, or local association that tends, without violence, to ‘open all the cells where memory slept.’ I can easily, by stooping over the long-sprent grass and clay-cold clod, recall the tufts of primroses, or purple hyacinths, that formerly grew on the same spot, and cover the bushes with leaves and singing-birds, as they were eighteen summers ago; or prolonging my walk and hearing the sighing gale rustle through a tall, strait wood at the end of it, can fancy that I distinguish the cry of hounds, and the fatal group issuing from it, as in 323the tale of Theodore and Honoria. A moaning gust of wind aids the belief; I look once more to see whether the trees before me answer to the idea of the horror-stricken grove, and an air-built city towers over their grey tops.

I return home resolved to read the entire poem through, and, after dinner, drawing my chair to the fire, and holding a small print close to my eyes, launch into the full tide of Dryden’s couplets (a stream of sound), comparing his didactic and descriptive pomp with the simple pathos and picturesque truth of Boccacio’s story, and tasting with a pleasure, which none but an habitual reader can feel, some quaint examples of pronunciation in this accomplished versifier.

These trifling instances of the wavering and unsettled state of the language give double effect to the firm and stately march of the verse, and make me dwell with a sort of tender interest on the difficulties and doubts of an earlier period of literature. They pronounced words then in a manner which we should laugh at now; and they wrote verse in a manner which we can do anything but laugh at. The pride of a new acquisition seems to give fresh confidence to it; to impel the rolling syllables through the moulds provided for them, and to overflow the envious bounds of rhyme into time-honoured triplets. I am much pleased with Leigh Hunt’s mention of Moore’s involuntary admiration of Dryden’s free, unshackled verse, and of his repeating con amore, and with an Irish spirit and accent, the fine lines—

What sometimes surprises me in looking back to the past, is, with the exception already stated, to find myself so little changed in the time. The same images and trains of thought stick by me: I have the same tastes, likings, sentiments, and wishes that I had then. One great ground of confidence and support has, indeed, been struck from under my feet; but I have made it up to myself by proportionable 324pertinacity of opinion. The success of the great cause, to which I had vowed myself, was to me more than all the world: I had a strength in its strength, a resource which I knew not of, till it failed me for the second time.

It was not till I saw the axe laid to the root, that I found the full extent of what I had to lose and suffer. But my conviction of the right was only established by the triumph of the wrong; and my earliest hopes will be my last regrets. One source of this unbendingness, (which some may call obstinacy,) is that, though living much alone, I have never worshipped the Echo. I see plainly enough that black is not white, that the grass is green, that kings are not their subjects; and, in such self-evident cases, do not think it necessary to collate my opinions with the received prejudices. In subtler questions, and matters that admit of doubt, as I do not impose my opinion on others without a reason, so I will not give up mine to them without a better reason; and a person calling me names, or giving himself airs of authority, does not convince me of his having taken more pains to find out the truth than I have, but the contrary. Mr. Gifford once said, that ‘while I was sitting over my gin and tobacco-pipes, I fancied myself a Leibnitz.’ He did not so much as know that I had ever read a metaphysical book:—was I therefore, out of complaisance or deference to him, to forget whether I had or not? I am rather disappointed, both on my own account and his, that Mr. Hunt has missed the opportunity of explaining the character of a friend, as clearly as he might have done. He is puzzled to reconcile the shyness of my pretensions with the inveteracy and sturdiness of my principles. I should have thought they were nearly the same thing. Both from disposition and habit, I can assume nothing in word, look, or manner. I cannot steal a march upon public opinion in any way. My standing upright, speaking loud, entering a room gracefully, proves nothing; therefore I neglect these ordinary means of recommending myself to the good graces and admiration of strangers, (and, as it appears, even of philosophers and friends). Why? Because I have other resources, or, at least, am absorbed in other studies and pursuits. Suppose this absorption to be extreme, and even morbid, that I have brooded over an idea till it has become a kind of substance in my brain, that I have reasons for a thing which I have found out with much labour and pains, and to which I can scarcely do justice without the utmost violence of exertion (and that only to a few persons,)—is this a reason for my playing off my 325out-of-the-way notions in all companies, wearing a prim and self-complacent air, as if I were ‘the admired of all observers?’ or is it not rather an argument, (together with a want of animal spirits,) why I should retire into myself, and perhaps acquire a nervous and uneasy look, from a consciousness of the disproportion between the interest and conviction I feel on certain subjects, and my ability to communicate what weighs upon my own mind to others? If my ideas, which I do not avouch, but suppose, lie below the surface, why am I to be always attempting to dazzle superficial people with them, or smiling, delighted, at my own want of success?

What I have here stated is only the excess of the common and well-known English and scholastic character. I am neither a buffoon, a fop, nor a Frenchman, which Mr. Hunt would have me to be. He finds it odd that I am a close reasoner and a loose dresser. I have been (among other follies) a hard liver as well as a hard thinker; and the consequences of that will not allow me to dress as I please. People in real life are not like players on a stage, who put on a certain look or costume, merely for effect. I am aware, indeed, that the gay and airy pen of the author does not seriously probe the errors or misfortunes of his friends—he only glances at their seeming peculiarities, so as to make them odd and ridiculous; for which forbearance few of them will thank him. Why does he assert that I was vain of my hair when it was black, and am equally vain of it now it is grey, when this is true in neither case? This transposition of motives makes me almost doubt whether Lord Byron was thinking so much of the rings on his fingers as his biographer was. These sort of criticisms should be left to women. I am made to wear a little hat, stuck on the top of my head the wrong way. Nay, I commonly wear a large slouching hat over my eyebrows; and if ever I had another, I must have twisted it about in any shape to get rid of the annoyance. This probably tickled Mr. Hunt’s fancy, and retains possession of it, to the exclusion of the obvious truism, that I naturally wear ‘a melancholy hat.’

I am charged with using strange gestures and contortions of features in argument, in order to ‘look energetic.’ One would rather suppose that the heat of the argument produced the extravagance of the gestures, as I am said to be calm at other times. It is like saying that a man in a passion clenches his teeth, not because he is, but in order to seem, angry. Why should everything be construed into air and affectation? With Hamlet, I may say, ‘I know not seems.’

Again, my old friend and pleasant ‘Companion’ remarks it, as an anomaly in my character, that I crawl about the Fives Court like a 326cripple till I get the racket in my hand, when I start up as if I was possessed with a devil. I have then a motive for exertion; I lie by for difficulties and extreme cases. Aut Cæsar aut nullus. I have no notion of doing nothing with an air of importance, nor should I ever take a liking to the game of battledoor and shuttlecock. I have only seen by accident a page of the unpublished Manuscript relating to the present subject, which I dare say is, on the whole, friendly and just, and which has been suppressed as being too favourable, considering certain prejudices against me.

In matters of taste and feeling, one proof that my conclusions have not been quite shallow or hasty, is the circumstance of their having been lasting. I have the same favourite books, pictures, passages that I ever had: I may therefore presume that they will last me my life—nay, I may indulge a hope that my thoughts will survive me. This continuity of impression is the only thing on which I pride myself. Even L——, whose relish of certain things is as keen and earnest as possible, takes a surfeit of admiration, and I should be afraid to ask about his select authors or particular friends, after a lapse of ten years. As to myself, any one knows where to have me. What I have once made up my mind to, I abide by to the end of the chapter. One cause of my independence of opinion is, I believe, the liberty I give to others, or the very diffidence and distrust of making converts. I should be an excellent man on a jury: I might say little, but should starve ‘the other eleven obstinate fellows’ out. I remember Mr. Godwin writing to Mr. Wordsworth, that ‘his tragedy of Antonio could not fail of success.’ It was damned past all redemption. I said to Mr. Wordsworth that I thought this a natural consequence; for how could any one have a dramatic turn of mind who judged entirely of others from himself? Mr. Godwin might be convinced of the excellence of his work; but how could he know that others would be convinced of it, unless by supposing that they were as wise as himself, and as infallible critics of dramatic poetry—so many Aristotles sitting in judgment on Euripides! This shows why pride is connected with shyness and reserve; for the really proud have not so high an opinion of the generality as to suppose that they can understand them, or that there is any common measure between them. So Dryden exclaims of his opponents with bitter disdain—

I have not sought to make partisans, still less did I dream of making enemies; and have therefore kept my opinions myself, whether they were currently adopted or not. To get others to come into our 327ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs; and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead. At the time I lived here formerly, I had no suspicion that I should ever become a voluminous writer; yet I had just the same confidence in my feelings before I had ventured to air them in public as I have now. Neither the outcry for or against moves me a jot: I do not say that the one is not more agreeable than the other.

Not far from the spot where I write, I first read Chaucer’s Flower and Leaf, and was charmed with that young beauty, shrouded in her bower, and listening with ever-fresh delight to the repeated song of the nightingale close by her—the impression of the scene, the vernal landscape, the cool of the morning, the gushing notes of the songstress,

is as vivid as if it had been of yesterday; and nothing can persuade me that that is not a fine poem. I do not find this impression conveyed in Dryden’s version, and therefore nothing can persuade me that that is as fine. I used to walk out at this time with Mr. and Miss L—— of an evening, to look at the Claude Lorraine skies over our heads, melting from azure into purple and gold, and to gather mushrooms, that sprung up at our feet, to throw into our hashed mutton at supper. I was at that time an enthusiastic admirer of Claude, and could dwell for ever on one or two of the finest prints from him hung round my little room; the fleecy flocks, the bending trees, the winding streams, the groves, the nodding temples, the air-wove hills, and distant sunny vales; and tried to translate them into their lovely living hues. People then told me that Wilson was much superior to Claude. I did not believe them. Their pictures have since been seen together at the British Institution, and all the world have come into my opinion. I have not, on that account, given it up. I will not compare our hashed mutton with Amelia’s; but it put us in mind of it, and led to a discussion, sharply seasoned and well sustained, till midnight, the result of which appeared some years after in the Edinburgh Review. Have I a better opinion of those criticisms on that account, or should I therefore maintain them with greater vehemence and tenaciousness? Oh no! Both rather with less, now that they are before the public, and it is for them to make their election.

It is in looking back to such scenes that I draw my best consolation for the future. Later impressions come and go, and serve to fill up the intervals; but these are my standing resource, my true classics. If I have had few real pleasures or advantages, my ideas, 328from their sinewy texture, have been to me in the nature of realities; and if I should not be able to add to the stock, I can live by husbanding the interest. As to my speculations, there is little to admire in them but my admiration of others; and whether they have an echo in time to come or not, I have learned to set a grateful value on the past, and am content to wind up the account of what is personal only to myself and the immediate circle of objects in which I have moved, with an act of easy oblivion,

The London Weekly Review.] [April 5, 1828.

I am much surprised at Lord Byron’s haste to return a volume of Spenser, which was lent him by Mr. Hunt, and at his apparent indifference to the progress and (if he pleased) advancement of poetry up to the present day. Did he really think that all genius was concentred in his own time, or in his own bosom? With his pride of ancestry, had he no curiosity to explore the heraldry of intellect? or did he regard the Muse as an upstart—a mere modern bluestocking and fine lady? I am afraid that high birth and station, instead of being (as Mr. Burke predicates,) ‘a cure for a narrow and selfish mind,’ only make a man more full of himself, and, instead of enlarging and refining his views, impatient of any but the most inordinate and immediate stimulus. I do not recollect, in all Lord Byron’s writings, a single recurrence to a feeling or object that had ever excited an interest before; there is no display of natural affection—no twining of the heart round any object: all is the restless and disjointed effect of first impressions, of novelty, contrast, surprise, grotesque costume, or sullen grandeur. His beauties are the houris of Paradise, the favourites of a seraglio, the changing visions of a feverish dream. His poetry, it is true, is stately and dazzling, arched like a rainbow, of bright and lovely hues, painted on the cloud of his own gloomy temper—perhaps to disappear as soon! It is easy to account for the antipathy between him and Mr. Wordsworth. Mr. Wordsworth’s poetical mistress is a Pamela; Lord Byron’s an Eastern princess or a Moorish maid. It is the extrinsic, the uncommon that captivates him, and all the rest he holds in sovereign contempt. This is the obvious result of pampered luxury and high-born sentiments. The mind, like the 329palace in which it has been brought up, admits none but new and costly furniture. From a scorn of homely simplicity, and a surfeit of the artificial, it has but one resource left in exotic manners and preternatural effect. So we see in novels, written by ladies of quality, all the marvellous allurements of a fairy tale, jewels, quarries of diamonds, giants, magicians, condors and ogres.^[55] The author of the Lyrical Ballads describes the lichen on the rock, the withered fern, with some peculiar feeling that he has about them: the author of Childe Harold describes the stately cypress, or the fallen column, with the feeling that every schoolboy has about them. The world is a grown schoolboy, and relishes the latter most. When Rousseau called out—‘Ah! voila de la pervenche!’ in a transport of joy at sight of the periwinkle, because he had first seen this little blue flower in company with Madame Warens thirty years before, I cannot help thinking, that any astonishment expressed at the sight of a palm-tree, or even of Pompey’s Pillar, is vulgar compared to this! Lord Byron, when he does not saunter down Bond-street, goes into the East: when he is not occupied with the passing topic, he goes back two thousand years, at one poetic, gigantic stride! But instead of the sweeping mutations of empire, and the vast lapses of duration, shrunk up into an antithesis, commend me to the ‘slow and creeping foot of time,’ in the commencement of Ivanhoe, where the jester and the swine-herd watch the sun going down behind the low-stunted trees of the forest, and their loitering and impatience make the summer’s day seem so long, that we wonder how we have ever got to the end of the six hundred years that have passed since! That where the face of nature has changed, time should have rolled on its course, is but a common-place discovery; but that where all seems the same, (the long rank grass, and the stunted oaks, and the innocent pastoral landscape,) all should have changed—this is to me the burthen and the mystery. The ruined pile is a memento and a monument to him that reared it—oblivion has here done but half its work; but what yearnings, what vain conflicts with its fate come over the soul in the other case, which makes man seem like a grasshopper—an insect of the hour, and all that he is, or that others have been—nothing!

The London Weekly Review.] [December 6, 1828.

‘If to do were as easy as to teach others what were good to be done, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces.’

Mr. Addison, it is said, was fond of tippling; and Curl, it is added, when he called on him in the morning, used to ask as a particular favour for a glass of Canary, by way of ingratiating himself, and that the other might have a pretence to join him and finish the bottle. He fell a martyr to this habit, and yet (some persons more nice than wise exclaim,) he desired that the young Earl of Warwick might attend him on his death-bed, ‘to see how a Christian could die!’ I see no inconsistency nor hypocrisy in this. A man may be a good Christian, a sound believer, and a sincere lover of virtue, and have, notwithstanding, one or more failings. If he had recommended it to others to get drunk, then I should have said he was a hypocrite, and that his pretended veneration for the Christian religion was a mere cloak put on to suit the purposes of fashion or convenience. His doing what it condemned was no proof of any such thing: ‘The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.’ He is a hypocrite who professes what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes or approves. It might on the same ground be argued, that a man is a hypocrite who admires Raphael or Shakespeare, because he cannot paint like the one, or write like the other. If any one really despised what he affected outwardly to admire, this would be hypocrisy. If he affected to admire it a great deal more than he really did, this would be cant. Sincerity has to do with the connexion between our words and thoughts, and not between our belief and actions. The last constantly belie the strongest convictions and resolutions in the best of men; it is only the base and dishonest who give themselves credit with their tongue, for sentiments and opinions which in their hearts they disown.

I do not therefore think that the old theological maxim—‘The greater the sinner, the greater the saint’—is so utterly unfounded. There is some mixture of truth in it. For as long as man is composed of two parts, body and soul; and while these are allowed to pull different ways, I see no reason why, in proportion to the length the one goes, the opposition or reaction of the other should not be more violent. It is certain, for example, that no one makes such good resolutions as the sot and the gambler in their moments 331of repentance, or can be more impressed with the horrors of their situation;—should this disposition, instead of a transient, idle pang, by chance become lasting, who can be supposed to feel the beauty of temperance and economy more, or to look back with greater gratitude to their escape from the trammels of vice and passion? Would the ingenious and elegant author of the Spectator feel less regard for the Scriptures, because they denounced in pointed terms the infirmity that ‘most easily beset him,’ that was the torment of his life, and the cause of his death? Such reasoning would be true, if man was a simple animal or a logical machine, and all his faculties and impulses were in strict unison; instead of which they are eternally at variance, and no one hates or takes part against himself more heartily or heroically than does the same individual. Does he not pass sentence on his own conduct? Is not his conscience both judge and accuser? What else is the meaning of all our resolutions against ourselves, as well as of our exhortations to others? Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor, is not the language of hypocrisy, but of human nature.

The hypocrisy of priests has been a butt for ridicule in all ages; but I am not sure that there has not been more wit than philosophy in it. A priest, it is true, is obliged to affect a greater degree of sanctity than ordinary men, and probably more than he possesses; and this is so far, I am willing to allow, hypocrisy and solemn grimace. But I cannot admit, that though he may exaggerate, or even make an ostentatious display of religion and virtue through habit and spiritual pride, that this is a proof he has not these sentiments in his heart, or that his whole behaviour is the mere acting of a part. His character, his motives, are not altogether pure and sincere: are they therefore all false and hollow? No such thing. It is contrary to all our observation and experience so to interpret it. We all wear some disguise—make some professions—use some artifice to set ourselves off as being better than we are; and yet it is not denied that we have some good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom, though we may endeavour to keep some others that we think less to our credit as much as possible in the back-ground:—why then should we not extend the same favourable construction to monks and friars, who may be sometimes caught tripping as well as other men—with less excuse, no doubt; but if it is also with greater remorse of conscience, which probably often happens, their pretensions are not all downright, barefaced imposture. Their sincerity, compared with that of other men, can only be judged of by the proportion between the degree of virtue they profess, and that which they practice, or at least carefully seek to realise. To conceive it otherwise, is to insist that characters 332must be all perfect, or all vicious—neither of which suppositions is even possible. If a clergyman is notoriously a drunkard, a debauchee, a glutton, or a scoffer, then for him to lay claim at the same time to extraordinary inspirations of faith or grace, is both scandalous and ridiculous. The scene between the Abbot and the poor brother in the ‘Duenna’ is an admirable exposure of this double-faced dealing. But because a parson has a relish for the good things of this life, or what is commonly called a liquorish tooth in his head, (beyond what he would have it supposed by others, or even by himself,) that he has therefore no fear or belief of the next, I hold for a crude and vulgar prejudice. If a poor half-starved parish priest pays his court to an olla podrida, or a venison pasty, with uncommon gusto, shall we say that he has no other sentiments in offering his devotions to a crucifix, or in counting his beads? I see no more ground for such an inference, than for affirming that Handel was not in earnest when he sat down to compose a Symphony, because he had at the same time perhaps a bottle of cordials in his cupboard; or that Raphael was not entitled to the epithet of divine, because he was attached to the Fornarina! Everything has its turn in this chequered scene of things, unless we prevent it from taking its turn by over-rigid conditions, or drive men to despair or the most callous effrontery, by erecting a standard of perfection, to which no one can conform in reality! Thomson, in his ‘Castle of Indolence,’ (a subject on which his pen ran riot,) has indulged in rather a free description of ‘a little round, fat, oily man of God—

Now, was the piety in this case the less real, because it had been forgotten for a moment? Or even if this motive should not prove the strongest in the end, would this therefore show that it was none, which is necessary to the argument here combated, or to make out our little plump priest a very knave! A priest may be honest, and yet err; as a woman may be modest, and yet half-inclined to be a rake. So the virtue of prudes may be suspected, though not their sincerity. The strength of their passions may make them more conscious of their weakness, and more cautious of exposing themselves; but not more to blind others than as a guard upon themselves. Again, suppose a clergyman hazards a jest upon sacred subjects, does it follow that he does not believe a word of the matter? Put the case that any one else, encouraged 333by his example, takes up the banter or levity, and see what effect it will have upon the reverend divine. He will turn round like a serpent trod upon, with all the vehemence and asperity of the most bigoted orthodoxy. Is this dictatorial and exclusive spirit then put on merely as a mask and to browbeat others? No; but he thinks he is privileged to trifle with the subject safely himself, from the store of evidence he has in reserve, and from the nature of his functions; but he is afraid of serious consequences being drawn from what others might say, or from his seeming to countenance it; and the moment the Church is in danger, or his own faith brought in question, his attachment to each becomes as visible as his hatred to those who dare to impugn either the one or the other. A woman’s attachment to her husband is not to be suspected, if she will allow no one to abuse him but herself! It has been remarked, that with the spread of liberal opinions, or a more general scepticism on articles of faith, the clergy and religious persons in general have become more squeamish and jealous of any objections to their favourite doctrines: but this is what must follow in the natural course of things—the resistance being always in proportion to the danger; and arguments and books that were formerly allowed to pass unheeded, because it was supposed impossible they could do any mischief, are now denounced or prohibited with the most zealous vigilance, from a knowledge of the contagious nature of their influence and contents. So in morals, it is obvious that the greatest nicety of expression and allusion must be observed, where the manners are the most corrupt, and the imagination most easily excited, not out of mere affectation, but as a dictate of common sense and decency.

One of the finest remarks that has been made in modern times, is that of Lord Shaftesbury, that there is no such thing as a perfect Theist, or an absolute Atheist; that whatever may be the general conviction entertained on the subject, the evidence is not and cannot be at all times equally present to the mind; that even if it were, we are not in the same humour to receive it: a fit of the gout, a shower of rain shakes our best-established conclusions; and according to circumstances and the frame of mind we are in, our belief varies from the most sanguine enthusiasm to lukewarm indifference, or the most gloomy despair. There is a point of conceivable faith which might prevent any lapse from virtue, and reconcile all contrarieties between theory and practice; but this is not to be looked for in the ordinary course of nature, and is reserved for the abodes of the blest. Here, ‘upon this bank and shoal of time,’ the utmost we can hope to attain is, a strong habitual belief in the excellence of virtue, or the dispensations of Providence; and the conflict of the passions, and their 334occasional mastery over us, far from disproving or destroying this general, rational conviction, often fling us back more forcibly upon it, and like other infidelities and misunderstandings, produce all the alternate remorse and raptures of repentance and reconciliation.

It has been frequently remarked that the most obstinate heretic or confirmed sceptic, witnessing the service of the Roman Catholic church, the elevation of the host amidst the sounds of music, the pomp of ceremonies, the embellishments of art, feels himself spell-bound: and is almost persuaded to become a renegade to his reason or his religion. Even in hearing a vespers chaunted on the stage, or in reading an account of a torch-light procession in a romance, a superstitious awe creeps over the frame, and we are momentarily charmed out of ourselves. When such is the obvious and involuntary influence of circumstances on the imagination, shall we say that a monkish recluse surrounded from his childhood by all this pomp, a stranger to any other faith, who has breathed no other atmosphere, and all whose meditations are bent on this one subject both by interest and habit and duty, is to be set down as a rank and heartless mountebank in the professions he makes of belief in it, because his thoughts may sometimes wander to forbidden subjects, or his feet stumble on forbidden ground? Or shall not the deep shadows of the woods in Vallombrosa enhance the solemnity of this feeling, or the icy horrors of the Grand Chartreux add to its elevation and its purity? To argue otherwise is to misdeem of human nature, and to limit its capacities for good or evil by some narrow-minded standard of our own. Man is neither a God nor a brute; but there is a prosaic and a poetical side to everything concerning him, and it is as impossible absolutely and for a constancy to exclude either one or the other from the mind, as to make him live without air or food. The ideal, the empire of thought and aspiration after truth and good, is inseparable from the nature of an intellectual being—what right have we then to catch at every strife which in the mortified professors of religion the spirit wages with the flesh as grossly vicious, or at every doubt, the bare suggestion of which fills them with consternation and despair, as a proof of the most glaring hypocrisy? The grossnesses of religion and its stickling for mere forms as its essence, have given a handle, and a just one, to its impugners. At the feast of Ramadan (says Voltaire) the Mussulmans wash and pray five times a day, and then fall to cutting one another’s throats again with the greatest deliberation and good-will. The two things, I grant, are sufficiently at variance; but they are, I contend, equally sincere in both. The Mahometans are savages, but they are not the less true believers—they hate their enemies as heartily as they revere the Koran. This, 335instead of showing the fallacy of the ideal principle, shows its universality and indestructible essence. Let a man be as bad as he will, as little refined as possible, and indulge whatever hurtful passions or gross vices he thinks proper, these cannot occupy the whole of his time; and in the intervals between one scoundrel action and another he may and must have better thoughts, and may have recourse to those of religion (true or false) among the number, without in this being guilty of hypocrisy or of making a jest of what is considered as sacred. This, I take it, is the whole secret of Methodism, which is a sort of modern vent for the ebullitions of the spirit through the gaps of unrighteousness.

We often see that a person condemns in another the very thing he is guilty of himself. Is this hypocrisy? It may, or it may not. If he really feels none of the disgust and abhorrence he expresses, this is quackery and impudence. But if he really expresses what he feels, (and he easily may, for it is the abstract idea he contemplates in the case of another, and the immediate temptation to which he yields in his own, so that he probably is not even conscious of the identity or connexion between the two,) then this is not hypocrisy, but want of strength and keeping in the moral sense. All morality consists in squaring our actions and sentiments to our ideas of what is fit and proper; and it is the incessant struggle and alternate triumph of the two principles, the ideal and the physical, that keeps up this ‘mighty coil and pudder’ about vice and virtue, and is one great source of all the good and evil in the world. The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be as constantly wound up. The ideal principle is the master-key that winds it up, and without which it would come to a stand: the sensual and selfish feelings are the dead weights that pull it down to the gross and grovelling. Till the intellectual faculty is destroyed, (so that the mind sees nothing beyond itself, or the present moment,) it is impossible to have all brutal depravity: till the material and physical are done away with, (so that it shall contemplate everything from a purely spiritual and disinterested point of view,) it is impossible to have all virtue. There must be a mixture of the two, as long as man is compounded of opposite materials, a contradiction and an eternal competition for the mastery. I by no means think a single bad action condemns a man, for he probably condemns it as much as you do; nor a single bad habit, for he is probably trying all his life to get rid of it. A man is only thoroughly profligate when he has lost the sense of right and wrong; or a thorough hypocrite, when he has not even the wish to be what he appears. The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of it. To recommend certain things is worse than to practise 336them. There may be an excuse for the last in the frailty of passion; but the former can arise from nothing but an utter depravity of disposition. Any one may yield to temptation, and yet feel a sincere love and aspiration after virtue: but he who maintains vice in theory, has not even the conception or capacity for virtue in his mind. Men err: fiends only make a mock at goodness.

The London Weekly Review.] [December 13, 1828.

We sometimes deceive ourselves, and think worse of human nature than it deserves, in consequence of judging of character from names, and classes, and modes of life. No one is simply and absolutely any one thing, though he may be branded with it as a name. Some persons have expected to see his crimes written in the face of a murderer, and have been disappointed because they did not, as if this impeached the distinction between virtue and vice. Not at all. The circumstance only showed that the man was other things, and had other feelings besides those of a murderer. If he had nothing else,—if he had fed on nothing else,—if he had dreamt of nothing else, but schemes of murder, his features would have expressed nothing else: but this perfection in vice is not to be expected from the contradictory and mixed nature of our motives. Humanity is to be met with in a den of robbers; nay, modesty in a brothel. Even among the most abandoned of the other sex, there is not unfrequently found to exist (contrary to all that is generally supposed) one strong and individual attachment, which remains unshaken to the last. Virtue may be said to steal, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice and infamy; it clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart. Again, there is a heroism in crime, as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have also their altars and their religion. This makes nothing in their favour, but is a proof of the heroical disinterestedness of man’s nature, and that whatever he does, he must fling a dash of romance and sublimity into it; just as some grave biographer has said of Shakespeare, that ‘even when he killed a calf, he made a speech and did it in a great style.’

It is then impossible to get rid of this original distinction and contradictory bias, and to reduce everything to the system of French levity and Epicurean indifference. Wherever there is a capacity of conceiving of things as different from what they are, there must be a principle of taste and selection—a disposition to make them better, and a power to make them worse. Ask a Parisian milliner if she does not think one bonnet more becoming than another—a Parisian 337dancing-master if French grace is not better than English awkwardness—a French cook if all sauces are alike—a French blacklegs if all throws are equal on the dice? It is curious that the French nation restrict rigid rules and fixed principles to cookery and the drama, and maintain that the great drama of human life is entirely a matter of caprice and fancy. No one will assert that Raphael’s histories, that Claude’s landscapes are not better than a daub: but if the expression in one of Raphael’s faces is better than the most mean and vulgar, how resist the consequence that the feeling so expressed is better also? It does not appear to me that all faces or all actions are alike. If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will—the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them. It is no small consideration that the mind is capable even of feigning such things. So I would contend against that reasoning which would have it thought that if religion is not true, there is no difference between mankind and the beasts that perish;—I should say, that this distinction is equally proved, if religion is supposed to be a mere fabrication of the human mind; the capacity to conceive it makes the difference. The idea alone of an over-ruling Providence, or of a future state, is as much a distinctive mark of a superiority of nature, as the invention of the mathematics, which are true,—or of poetry, which is a fable. Whatever the truth or falsehood of our speculations, the power to make them is peculiar to ourselves.

The contrariety and warfare of different faculties and dispositions within us has not only given birth to the Manichean and Gnostic heresies, and to other superstitions of the East, but will account for many of the mummeries and dogmas both of Popery and Calvinism,—confession, absolution, justification by faith, &c.; which, in the hopelessness of attaining perfection, and our dissatisfaction with ourselves for falling short of it, are all substitutes for actual virtue, and an attempt to throw the burthen of a task, to which we are unequal or only half disposed, on the merits of others, or on outward forms, ceremonies, and professions of faith. Hence the crowd of

If we do not conform to the law, we at least acknowledge the jurisdiction of the court. A person does wrong; he is sorry for it; and as he still feels himself liable to error, he is desirous to make 338atonement as well as he can, by ablutions, by tithes, by penance, by sacrifices, or other voluntary demonstrations of obedience, which are in his power, though his passions are not, and which prove that his will is not refractory, and that his understanding is right towards God. The stricter tenets of Calvinism, which allow of no medium between grace and reprobation, and doom man to eternal punishment for every breach of the moral law, as an equal offence against infinite truth and justice, proceed (like the paradoxical doctrine of the Stoics) from taking a half-view of this subject, and considering man as amenable only to the dictates of his understanding and his conscience, and not excusable from the temptations and frailty of human ignorance and passion. The mixing up of religion and morality together, or the making us accountable for every word, thought, or action, under no less a responsibility than our everlasting future welfare or misery, has also added incalculably to the difficulties of self-knowledge, has superinduced a violent and spurious state of feeling, and made it almost impossible to distinguish the boundaries between the true and false, in judging of human conduct and motives. A religious man is afraid of looking into the state of his soul, lest at the same time he should reveal it to Heaven; and tries to persuade himself that by shutting his eyes to his true character and feelings, they will remain a profound secret both here and hereafter. This is a strong engine and irresistible inducement to self-deception; and the more zealous any one is in his convictions of the truth of religion, the more we may suspect the sincerity of his pretensions to piety and morality.

Thus, though I think there is very little downright hypocrisy in the world, I do think there is a great deal of cant—‘cant religious, cant political, cant literary,’ &c. as Lord Byron said. Though few people have the face to set up for the very thing they in their hearts despise, we almost all want to be thought better than we are, and affect a greater admiration or abhorrence of certain things than we really feel. Indeed, some degree of affectation is as necessary to the mind as dress is to the body; we must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all. There was formerly the two hours’ sermon, the long-winded grace, the nasal drawl, the uplifted hands and eyes; all which, though accompanied with some corresponding emotion, expressed more than was really felt, and were in fact intended to make up for the conscious deficiency. As our interest in anything wears out with time and habit, we exaggerate the outward symptoms of zeal as mechanical helps to devotion, dwell the longer on our words as they are less felt, and hence the very origin of the term, cant. The cant of sentimentality has succeeded to that of religion. There is a cant of humanity, of patriotism and loyalty—not 339that people do not feel these emotions, but they make too great a fuss about them, and drawl out the expression of them till they tire themselves and others. There is a cant about Shakespeare. There is a cant about Political Economy just now. In short, there is and must be a cant about everything that excites a considerable degree of attention and interest, and that people would be thought to know and care rather more about than they actually do. Cant is the voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real sentiment; hypocrisy is the setting up a pretension to a feeling you never had and have no wish for. Mr. Coleridge is made up of cant, that is, of mawkish affectation and sensibility; but he has not sincerity enough to be a hypocrite, that is, he has not hearty dislike or contempt enough for anything, to give the lie to his puling professions of admiration and esteem for it. The fuss that Mr. Liberal Snake makes about Political Economy is not cant, but what Mr. Theodore Hook politely calls humbug; he himself is hardly the dupe of his own pompous reasoning, but he wishes to make it the stalking-horse of his ambition or interest to sneak into a place and curry favour with the Government....

The Atlas.] [March 8, 1829.

As there are two kinds of rhyme, one that is rhyme to the ear, and another to the eye only; so there may be said to be two kinds of poetry, one that is a description of objects to those who have never seen or but slightly studied them; the other is a description of objects addressed to those who have seen and are intimately acquainted with them, and expressing the feeling which is the result of such knowledge. It is needless to add that the first kind of poetry is comparatively superficial and common-place; the last profound, lofty, nay often divine. Take an example (one out of a thousand) from Shakspeare. In enumerating the wished-for contents of her basket of flowers, Perdita in the Winter’s Tale mentions among others——

340This passage which knocks down John Bull with its perfumed and melting softness, and savours of ‘that fine madness which our first poets had,’ is a mystery, an untranslateable language, to all France: Racine could not have conceived what it was about—the stupidest Englishman feels a certain pride and pleasure in it. What a privilege (if that were all) to be born on this the cloudy and poetical side of the Channel! We may in part clear up this contradiction in tastes by the clue above given. The French are more apt at taking the patterns of their ideas from words; we, who are slower and heavier, are obliged to look closer at things before we can pronounce upon them at all, which in the end perhaps opens a larger field both of observation and fancy. Thus the phrase ‘violets dim,’ to those who have never seen the object, or who, having paid no attention to it, refer to the description for their notion of it, seems to convey a slur rather than a compliment, dimness being no beauty in itself; so this part of the story would not have been ventured upon in French or tinsel poetry. But to those who have seen, and been as it were enamoured of the little hedge-row candidate for applause, looking at it again and again (as misers contemplate their gold—as fine ladies hang over their jewels), till its image has sunk into the soul, what other word is there that (far from putting the reader out of conceit with it) so well recals its deep purple glow, its retired modesty, its sullen, conscious beauty? Those who have not seen the flower cannot form an idea of its character, nor understand the line without it. Its aspect is dull, obtuse, faint, absorbed; but at the same time soft, luxurious, proud, and full of meaning. People who look at nature without being sensible to these distinctions and contrarieties of feeling, had better (instead of the flower) look only at the label on the stalk. Connoisseurs in French wines pretend to know all these depths and refinements of taste, though connoisseurs in French poetry pretend to know them not. To return to our text——

How bizarre! cries one hypercritic. What far-fetched metaphors! exclaims another. We shall not dwell on the allusion to ‘Cytherea’s breath,’ it is obvious enough: but how can the violet’s smell be said to be ‘sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes?’ Oh! honeyed words, how ill understood! And is there no true and rooted analogy between our different sensations, as well as a positive and literal identity? Is there not a sugared, melting, half-sleepy look in some eyelids, like the luscious, languid smell of flowers? How otherwise 341express that air of scorn and tenderness which breathes from them? Is there not a balmy dew upon them which one would kiss off? Speak, ye lovers! if any such remain in these degenerate days to take the part of genuine poetry against cold, barren criticism; for poetry is nothing but an intellectual love——Nature is the poet’s mistress, and the heart in his case lends words and harmonious utterance to the tongue.——Again, how full of truth and pity is the turn which is given to the description of the pale and faded primrose, watching for the sun’s approach as for the torch of Hymen! Milton has imitated this not so well in ‘cowslips wan that hang the pensive head.’ Cowslips are of a gold colour, rather than wan. In speaking of the daffodils, it seems as if our poet had been struck with these ‘lowly children of the ground’ on their first appearance, and seeing what bright and unexpected guests they were at that cold, comfortless season, wondered how ‘they came before the swallow (the harbinger of summer) dared,’ and being the only lovely thing in nature, fancied the winds of March were taken with them, and tamed their fury at the sight. No one but a poet who has spent his youth in the company of nature could so describe it, as no reader who has not experienced the same elementary sensations, their combinations and contrasts, can properly enter into it when so described. The finest poetry, then, is not a paradox nor a trite paraphrase; but a bold and happy enunciation of truths and feelings deeply implanted in the mind——Apollo, the god of poetry and day, evolving the thoughts of the breast, as he does the seed from the frozen earth, or enables the flower to burst its folds. Poetry is, indeed, a fanciful structure; but a fanciful structure raised on the ground-work of the strongest and most intimate associations of our ideas: otherwise, it is good for nothing, vox et preterea nihil. A literal description goes for nothing in poetry, a pure fiction is of as little worth; but it is the extreme beauty and power of an impression with all its accompaniments, or the very intensity and truth of feeling, that pushes the poet over the verge of matter-of-fact, and justifies him in resorting to the licence of fiction to express what without his ‘winged words’ must have remained for ever untold. Thus the feeling of the contrast between the roughness and bleakness of the winds of March and the tenderness and beauty of the flowers of spring is already in the reader’s mind, if he be an observer of nature: the poet, to show the utmost extent and conceivable effect of this contrast, feigns that the winds themselves are sensible of it and smit with the beauty on which they commit such rude assaults. Lord Byron, whose imagination was not of this compound character, and more wilful than natural, produced splendid exaggerations. Mr. Shelley, who felt the want of originality without 342the power to supply it, distorted every thing from what it was, and his pen produced only abortions. The one would say that the sun was a ‘ball of dazzling fire;’ the other, not knowing what to say, but determined ‘to elevate and surprize,’ would swear that it was black. This latter class of poetry may be denominated the Apocalyptical.

The Atlas.] [March 15, 1829.

This is one of those subjects on which the human understanding has played the fool, almost as egregiously, though with less dire consequences, than on many others; or rather one on which it has not chosen to exert itself at all, being hoodwinked and led blindfold by mere precedent and authority. Scholars who have made and taught from English grammars were previously and systematically initiated in the Greek and Latin tongues, so that they have, without deigning to notice the difference, taken the rules of the latter and applied them indiscriminately and dogmatically to the former. As well might they pretend that there is a dual number in the Latin language because there is one in the Greek.

The Definitions alone are able to corrupt a whole generation of ingenuous youth. They seem calculated for no other purpose than to mystify and stultify the understanding, and to inoculate it betimes with a due portion of credulity and verbal sophistry. After repeating them by rote, to maintain that two and two makes five is easy, and a thing of course. What appears most extraordinary is that notwithstanding the complete exposure of their fallacy and nonsense by Horne Tooke and others, the same system and method of instruction should be persisted in; and that grammar succeeds grammar and edition edition, re-echoing the same point-blank contradictions and shallow terms. Establishments and endowments of learning (which subsist on a ‘foregone conclusion’) may have something to do with it; independently of which, and for each person’s individual solace, the more senseless the absurdity and the longer kept up, the more reluctant does the mind seem to part with it, whether in the greatest things or mere trifles and technicalities; for in the latter, as the retracting an error could produce no startling sensation, and be accompanied with no redeeming enthusiasm, its detection must be a pure loss and pitiful mortification. One might suppose, that out of so many persons as have their attention directed to this subject, some few would find out their mistake and protest against the common practice; but the greater 343the number of professional labourers in the vineyard, who seek not truth but a livelihood, and can pay with words more currently than with things, the less chance must there be of this, since the majority will always set their faces against it, and insist upon the old Mumpsimus in preference to the new Sumpsimus. A schoolmaster who should go so far out of his way as to take the Diversions of Purley for a text-book, would be regarded by his brethren of the rod as ‘a man of Ind,’ and would soon have the dogs of the village bark at him. It is said without blushing, by both masters and ushers who do not chuse to be ‘wise above what is written,’ that a noun is the name of a thing, i.e. substance, as if love, honour, colour, were the names of substances. An adjective is defined to be the name of a quality; and yet in the expressions, a gold snuff-box, a wooden spoon, an iron chest, &c., the words gold, wooden, iron, are allowed by all these profound writers, grammarians, and logicians, to be essentially adjectives. A verb is likewise defined to be a word denoting being, action, or suffering; and yet the words being, action, suffering (or passion), are all substantives; so that these words cannot be supposed to have any reference to the things whose names they bear, if it be the peculiar and sole office of the verb to denote them. If a system were made in burlesque and purposely to call into question and expose its own nakedness, it could not go beyond this, which is gravely taught in all seminaries, and patiently learnt by all school-boys as an exercise and discipline of the intellectual faculties. Again, it is roundly asserted that there are six cases (why not seven?) in the English language; and a case is defined to be a peculiar termination or inflection added to a noun to show its position in the sentence. Now in the Latin language there are no doubt a number of cases, inasmuch as there are a number of inflections;^[56] and for the same reason (if words have a meaning) in the English Language there are none, or only one, the genitive; because if we except this, there is no inflection or variety whatever in the terminations. Thus to instance in the present noun—A case, Of a case, To a case, A case, O case, From a case—they tell you that the word case is here its own nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, and ablative, though the deuce of any case—that is inflection of the noun—is there in the case. Nevertheless, many a pedagogue would swear till he was black in the face that it is so; and would lie awake many a restless night boiling with rage and vexation that any one should be so lost to shame and reason as to suspect that there is here also a distinction without a difference. In strictness, in the Latin word there are only four, casus, casui, casum, casu; and the rest are conceded out of 344uniformity with other cases where the terminations are six times varied:^[57] but why insist on the full complement, where there is no case in the whole language (but for the arbitrary one already excepted) to bear it out? Again, it is agreed on all hands, that English nouns have genders. Except with a few, where the termination is borrowed from another language, such as Empress, &c., there is no possibility of generally telling the sex implied from the form of the termination: but men looking at the point with their Latin eyes, see genders wherever they have been accustomed to find them in a foreign tongue. The difference of sex is vernacularly conveyed in English by a different word—man, woman, stag, deer, king, queen, &c.; and there is no such thing as conventional gender in neutral things—house, church, field, and so on. All this might be excusable as a prejudice or oversight; but then why persist in it in the thirty-eighth edition of a standard book published by the great firm in Paternoster-row? We sometimes think mankind have a propensity to lying not more in matters-of-fact than theory. They maintain what they know to be without a shadow of foundation, and in the sheer spirit of contradiction, or because they hate to be convinced. In the same manner as the cases and genders of nouns, the whole ramification of the verb is constructed, and hung up for the admiration of the credulous upon the ideal of the Latin and Greek verb, with all its tenses, persons, moods, and participles, whether there be anything more than a mere skeleton of a resemblance to suspend all this learned patch-work upon or not. ‘I love, thou lovest he loves; we, ye, they love.’ There is a difference in the three first, so that from announcing the verb, you know the prefix; but in the three last, what difference is there, what sign of separation from one another, or from the first person singular? ‘I loved’ is the past tense doubtless: it is a difference of inflection denoting time: but ‘I did love, I have loved, I will, can, shall, would love,’ are not properly tenses or moods of the verb love, but other verbs with the infinitive or participle of the first verb appended to them. Thus is our irregular verb professionally licked into regularity and shape. When the thing is wanting it is supplied by the name. Empedocles was a cobbler, even when he did not cobble. A conjunction is held to be a part of speech without any meaning in itself, but that serves to connect sentences together, such as that, and, &c. It is proved by Mr. Horne Tooke, that the conjunction that is no other than the pronoun that (with the words thing or proposition understood)—as and is the imperative of the old Saxon verb anandad (to add), upon a similar principle—‘I say this and (or add) that’—and though it is above fifty years since this luminous discovery was published to the world, no hint of 345it has crept into any Grammar used in schools, and by authority. It seems to be taken for granted that all sound and useful knowledge is by rote, and that if it ceased to be so, the Church and State might crumble to pieces like the conjunctions and and that. There may be some truth in that.

It is strange that Mr. Horne Tooke, with all his logical and etymological acuteness, should have been so bad a metaphysician as to argue that all language was merely a disjointed tissue of names of objects (with certain abbreviations), and that he should have given or attempted no definition of the verb. He barely hints at it in one place, viz.—that the verb is quod loquimur, the noun de quo; that is, the noun expresses the name of any thing or points out the object; the verb signifies the opinion or will of the speaker concerning it. What then becomes of the infinitive mood, which neither affirms, denies, nor commands any thing, but is left like a log of wood in the high road of grammar, to be picked up by the first jaunting-car of ‘winged words’ that comes that way with its moods, persons, and tenses, flying, and turned to any use that may be wanted? Mr. Tooke was in the habit of putting off his guests at Wimbledon with promising to explain some puzzle the following Sunday; and he left the world in the dark as to the definition of the verb, much in the same spirit of badinage and mystery. We do not know when the deficiency is likely to be supplied, unless it has been done by Mr. Fearn in his little work called Anti-Tooke. We have not seen the publication, but we know the author to be a most able and ingenious man, and capable of lighting upon nice distinctions which few but himself would ever dream of. An excess of modesty, which doubts every thing, is much more favourable to the discovery of truth than that spirit of dogmatism which presumptuously takes every thing for granted; but at the same time it is not equally qualified to place its conclusions in the most advantageous and imposing light; and we accordingly too often find our quacks and impostors collecting a crowd with their drums, trumpets, and placards of themselves at the end of a street, while the ‘still, small’ pipe of truth and simplicity is drowned in the loud din and bray, or forced to retire to a distance to solace itself with its own low tones and fine-drawn distinctions. Having touched upon this subject, we may be allowed to add that some of our most eminent writers, as, for instance, Mr. Maculloch with his Principles of Political Economy, and Mr. Mill with his Elements of Political Economy, remind us of two barrel-organ grinders in the same street, playing the same tune and contending for precedence and mastery. What is Mozart to any of the four?

The Atlas.] [March 22, 1829.

He said of an old cathedral, that it always appeared to him like a petrified religion.

Hearing some one observe that the religious sentiments introduced in Sheridan’s Pizarro met with great applause on the stage, he replied, that he thought this a sure sign of the decay of religion; for when people began to patronise it as an amiable theatrical sentiment, they had no longer any real faith in it.

He said of a Mr. H——, a friend of Fox’s, who always put himself forward to interpret the great orator’s sentiments, and almost took the words out of his mouth, that it put him in mind of the steeple of St. Thomas, on Ludgate-hill, which is constantly getting in the way when you wish to see the dome of St. Paul’s.

Seeing a little soiled copy of Thomson’s Seasons lying in the window-seat of an obscure inn on the sea-coast of Somersetshire, he said, ‘That is true fame.’

He observed of some friend, that he had thought himself out of a handsome face, and into a fine one.

He said of the French, that they received and gave out sensations too quickly, to be a people of imagination. He thought Moliere’s father must have been an Englishman.

According to Mr. Coleridge, common rhetoricians argued by metaphors; Burke reasoned in them.

He considered acuteness as a shop-boy quality compared with subtlety of mind; and quoted Paine as an example of the first, Berkeley as the perfection of the last.

He extolled Bishop Butler’s Sermons at the Rolls’ Chapel as full of thought and sound views of philosophy; and conceived that he had proved the love of piety and virtue to be as natural to the mind of man as the delight it receives from the colour of a rose or the smell of a lily. He spoke of the Analysis as theological special-pleading.

He had no opinion of Hume, and very idly disputed his originality. He said the whole of his argument on miracles was to be found stated (as an objection) somewhere in Barrow.

He said Thomson was a true poet, but an indolent one. He seldom wrote a good line, but he ‘rewarded resolution’ by following it up with a bad one. Cowper he regarded as the reformer of the Della Cruscan style in poetry, and the founder of the modern school.

Being asked which he thought the greater man, Milton or Shakspeare, he replied that he could hardly venture to pronounce an 347opinion—that Shakspeare appeared to him to have the strength, the stature of his rival, with infinitely more agility; but that he could not bring himself after all to look upon Shakspeare as any thing more than a beardless stripling, and that if he had ever arrived at man’s estate, he would not have been a man but a monster of intellect.

Being told that Mrs. Wolstonecraft exerted a very great ascendancy over the mind of her husband, he said—‘It was always the case: people of imagination naturally took the lead of people of mere understanding and acquirement.’ This was scarcely doing justice to the author of Caleb Williams.

He spoke of Mackintosh as deficient in original resources: he was neither the great merchant nor manufacturer of intellectual riches; but the ready warehouseman, who had a large assortment of goods, not properly his own, and who knew where to lay his hand on whatever he wanted. An argument which he had sustained for three hours together with another erudite person on some grand question of philosophy, being boasted of in Coleridge’s hearing as a mighty achievement, the latter bluntly answered—‘Had there been a man of genius among you, he would have settled the point in five minutes.’

Having been introduced to a well-known wit and professed jester, and his own silence being complained of, he said he should no more think of speaking where Mr. —— was present, than of interrupting an actor on the stage.

Mr. Coleridge preferred Salvator Rosa to Claude, therein erring. He however spoke eloquently and feelingly of pictures, where the subject-matter was poetical, and where ‘more was meant than met the eye.’ Thus he described the allegorical picture by Giotto in the cemetery at Pisa, the Triumph of Death, where the rich, the young, and the prosperous, are shrinking in horror and dismay from the grim monster; and the wretched, the cripple, and the beggar, are invoking his friendly aid, both in words and tones worthy of the subject. Mr. Coleridge’s was the only conversation we ever heard in which the ideas seemed set to music—it had the materials of philosophy and the sound of music; or if the thoughts were sometimes poor and worthless, the accompaniment was always fine.

He stated of Henderson, the actor, or some person of whom a very indifferent jest was repeated, that it was the strongest proof of his ability, and of the good things he must have said to make his bad ones pass current.

He characterised the Prometheus Bound of Æschylus, as being less a drama than an Ode to Justice.

He said that formerly men concealed their vices; but now, in the 348change of manners and the laxity of theories, they boasted of those they had not.

He sometimes told a story well, though but rarely. He used to speak with some drollery and unction of his meeting in his tour in Germany with a Lutheran clergyman, who expressed a great curiosity about the fate of Dr. Dodd in a Latin gibberish which he could not at first understand. ‘Doctorem Tott, Doctorem Tott! Infelix homo, collo suspensus!‘—he called out in an agony of suspense, fitting the action to the word, and the idea of the reverend divine just then occurring to Mr. Coleridge’s imagination. The Germans have a strange superstition that Dr. Dodd is still wandering in disguise in the Hartz forest in Germany; and his Prison Thoughts are a favourite book with the initiated.

If these remarkable sayings are fewer than the reader might expect, they are all we remember; and we might avail ourselves of the answer which Quevedo puts into the mouth of the door-keeper of Hell, when the poet is surprised to find so few kings in his custody—‘There are all that ever existed!’

The Atlas.] [April 5, 1829.