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UNIV. . V EDITION
e
THAT HAvL ADVANCtiD CiV
DANTE AND BEATRICE.
\ After the Painting by Henry Holiday.
JMONG all the paintings suggested by the. « Divine Coniedy '* none per,
haps is more tuiiy inspired by Dante's own spirit than this by
Holiday. It will be noticed that in the face of Beatrice he gives
us a strong suggestion of Dante's own most pronounced characteristics. It is
fkirly inferable that he means to make her stand not only for ** Heavenly Love "
tiut for Dante's own ideal self.
TEN VOLUMES
VOL ^-^
BT. I.
\ ^.A^
.'llsa !;-c:^','i aw roi Jud
UNIVERSITY EDITION
(trowneb flbaeterpiecce
OF
Xiterature
THAT HAVE ADVANCED CIVILIZATION
As Pfesetvcd and Presented by
tSl)c Mor[^'0 Beet £00a^0
From the Earliest Period
to the Present Time
DAVID J. BREWER
Editor
EDWARD A. ALLEN
WILLIAM SCHUYLER
Associate Editors
0^
TEN VOLUMES
VOL. IV.
BT. LOUIS
ITERD. I*. KAISER PUB. OO.
IOCS
SPEQAJL TESTIMONIAL SET
Copyrfght, J 908
BY
FERD. P. KAISER PUB. CO.
All rights reserved.
THE ADVISORY COUNCIL
PROFESSOR KUNO FRANCKE. Ph. D.,
Department of G^erman, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
HIRAM CORSON, A. M. LL. D.,
Department of English Literature, Cornell University,, Ithaca, N. V
WILLIAM DRAPER LEWIS, Ph. D..
Dean of the Department of Law,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa
RICHARD GOTTHEIL, Ph. D.,
Professor of Oriental Languages,
Columbia University, in the City of New York.
MRS. LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON,
Author « Swallow Flights. » « Bed-Time Stories,® etc. Boston, Mass.
WILLIAM VINCENT BYARS,
Manager The Valley Press Bureau, St Louis-
F. M. CRUNDEN, A. M.,
Librarian St. Louis Public Library; President (1890) American
Library Association.
MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, A. M., LL. D.,
Professor of English and Literature,
Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C
ALCEE FORTIER, Lit. D.,
Professor of Romance Languages, Tulane University, New Orleans, La.
SHELDON JACKSON, D. D., LL. D.,
Bureau of Education, Washington, D. C.
A. MARSHALL ELLIOTT, Ph. D., LL. D.,
Professor of Romance Languages,
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.
WILLIAM P. TRENT, M. A.,
Professor of English Literature,
Columbia University, in the City of New York.
CHARLES MILLS GAYLEY, Litt. D.,
Department of English, University of California, Berkeley, Cal.
RICHARD JONES, Ph. D.,
Department of English, vice Austin H. Merrill, deceased. Department
of Elocution, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.
W. STUART SYMINGTON, Jr., Ph.D.,
Professor of Romance Languages, Amherst College, Amherst, Mass.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOLUME IV
LIVED PAGE
Dante, Alighieri 1265-1 321 1233
Of Riches and Their Dangerous Increase
That Desires Are Celestial or Infernal
That Long Descent Maketh No Man Noble
Concerning Certain Horrible Infirmities
Darmesteter, James i 849-1 894 1251
Love Songs of the Afghans
Darwin, Charles Robert 1809-1882 1258
Darwin's Summary of His Theory of Natural Selec-
tion
The Survival of the Fittest
Darwin's Conclusion on His Theory and Religion
Davy, Sir Humphry 1778-1829 1271
A Vision of Progress
Decker, Thomas c. 1570-1637 1280
Apishness
Defoe, Daniel 0 1661-1731 1283
On Projects and Projectors
Higher Education for Women
Delolme, Jean Louis 1740-1806 1291
Power of Public Opinion
Dennie, Joseph 1768-1812 1298
On Jefferson and French Philosophy
De Quincey, Thomas 1785-1859 1301
On the Knocking at the Gate in * Macbeth *>
The Pains of Opium
vl
UVEO PAGE
De Quincey, Thomas — Continued:
Anecdotage
On Madness
On English Physiology
On Superficial Knowledge
The Loveliest Sight for Woman's Eyes
Great Forgers: Chatterton, Walpole, and << Junius*
Descartes, Rene i 596-1650 1352
The Fifth « Meditation »— Of the Essence of Mate-
rial Things; and, Again, of God,— that He
Exists
DiBDiN, Thomas Frognall 1776-1847 1360
The Bibliomania
Dickens, Charles 1812-1870 1376
A Child's Dream of a Star
The Noble Savage
Diderot, Denis 1713-1784 1386
Compassion a Law of the Survival of Species
The Prophetic Quality of Genius
DiGBY, Sir Kenelm 1603-1665 1391
On Browne's Religio Medici
D'Israeli, Isaac 1766-1848 1394
The Man of One Book
On the Poverty of the Learned
The Six Follies of Science a
Early Printing
How Merit Has Been Rewarded
Female Beauty and Ornament
The Chinese Language
Metempsychosis
On Good Luck in Sneezing
Dobson, Austin 1840- 1420
Swift and His Stella
Doddridge, Philip 1702-1751 1431
On the Power and Beauty of the New Testament
Vll
LIVED PKCJE
Donne, John 1573-1631 i435
The Arithmetic of Sin
Death
DoRAN, John 1807-1878 1439
Some Realities of Chivalry
DouMic, Rene i860- 1442
Women during the Renaissance
DowDEN, Edward 1843- 145^
England in Shakespeare's Youth
Shakespeare's Deer-Stealing
<< Romeo and Juliet *
« Hamlet »
Draper, John W. 1811-1882 1461
The Development of Civilization in Europe
Drummond, Henry 1851-1897 1474
Natural Law in the Spiritual World
Drummond, William 1585-1649 1478
A Reverie on Death
Dryden, John 1631-1700 1482
On Epic Poetry-
Shakespeare and His Contemporaries
* Nitor in Adversum **
Duffy, Sir Charles Gavan 1816- 1495
A Dispute with Carlyle
DuNCOMBE, John 1729-1786 1499
Concerning Rouge, Whist, and Female Beauty
Earle, John e. 1601-1665 1504
On a Child
On a Young Raw Preacher
On the Self-Conceited Man
On the Too Idly Reserved Man
On the Young Man
Vlll
LIVED PAGB
Earle, John — Continued:
On Detractors
On the "College Man»
On the Weak Man
On the Contemplative Man
On a Vulgar-Spirited Man
On Pretenders to Learning
On Church Choirs
On a Shop-Keeper
On the Blunt Man
On a Critic
On the Modest Man
On the Insolent Man
On the Honorable Old Man
On High-Spirited Men
On Rash Men
On Profane Men
On Sordid Rich Men
On a Mere Great Man
On an Ordinary Honest Fellow
Edgeworth, Maria 1767-1849 1526
The Originality of Irish Bulls Examined
« Heads or Tails » in Dublin
Edwards, Jonathan 1703-1758 »535
On Order, Beauty, and Harmony
« Eliot, George » 1819-1880 1541
Moral Swindlers
Judgments on Authors
«A Fine Excess*— Feeling Is Energy
The Historic Imagination
Value in Originality
Debasing the Moral Currency
Story-Telling
On the Character of Spike — a Political Molecule
*< Leaves from a Notebook *
Divine Grace a Real Emanation
Felix Qui Non Potuit
«Dear Religious Love*
We Make Our Own Precedents
To the Prosaic All Things Are Prosaic
LIVED PAGE
Elyot, Sir Thomas c. 1490-1546 1569
On a Classical Education
The True Significance of Temperance as a Moral
Virtue
Emerson, Ralph Waldo 1803-1882 1574
Character
Intellect
Art
Love
Self-Reliance
The Mind in History
Compensation
Manners
Montaigne; or, the Skeptic
On Men, Common and Uncommon
Aristocracy in England
Norsemen and Normans
FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIOMS
VOLUME IV
PAGB
Dante and Beatrice (Photogravure) Frontispiece
Sir Humphry Davy (Portrait, Photogravure) 1271
Shakespeare and His Contemporaries
(Photogravure) 1482
Marie Edgeworth (Portrait, Photogravure) 1526
DANTE ALIGHIERl
(1265-1321)
|n order to understand Dante's metaphysics, it must be as-
sumed that the object of every human life is to achieve the
fullest possible expression of its spiritual realities, whatever
they are. The world, as it becomes visible at any given time, is the
sum of the expression of these realities,— of evil, of the struggle
away from evil, of good realized through hatred of evil,— or, as Dante
expressed it, of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise.
Dante saw that little by little a Socrates can develop, in opposi-
tion to the sum of the evil around him, the sum of the good in him-
self until it reaches its consummation in celestial self-mastery as he
raises the hemlock to his lips. He saw too how, little by little, a
Ciampolo as he uses public authority to enrich himself from the mis-
erable earnings of starving peasants, lets himself down into the in-
fernal pitch, — from which at last bat- winged devils of his own creat-
ing drag him by his clotted locks that he may know for a certainty
the reality of the hell he has made for himself.
To Dante it appeared that this development of individual realities
goes on continually in the world around us. It is, however, the prov-
ince only of the highest genius to imagine it as Dante did. The
eyes of others are << mercifully holden,® lest life should become in-
supportable to them by reason of such knowledge of evil. For even
as Dante himself approached the castle of Dis, which overlooks the
deeper hells of flame, he had raised against him the Gorgon's head
which petrifies with horror all who come too close to the knowledge
of what those hells actually are.
It is self-evident in the poetry of Dante that to him Hell, Purga-
tory, and Heaven are realities of the comiponplace every-day world
around us. We have his own assurance that the Ir.fetno he wrote of
he had seen on earth. This is the fundamental fact of his work as
a poet. Take it away and he has no significance except such as
Leigh Hunt attributes to him, — that of a passionate and revengeful
savage, constructing an Inferno in his own imagination the better to
libel and disgrace his enemies. This is commonly said of him, but
if it were true, or even fairly imaginable as true, he would be unim-
aginable as a poet, — as a «Vates,» one of the world prophets from
whose eyes the scales have fallen; who see in the commonplaces of
IV — 78
12 34 DANTE ALIGHIERI
our daily lives the infinite realities which belong to us as immortal
essences. In the Florence, in the Italy, in the Europe of his day,
Dante saw the continual action and reaction of fraud and force. He
saw law used for the oppression of the weak, and government made
an agency by which political and ecclesiastical authority worked to
enthrone individual evil in the place of universal good. He saw the
result of this on more than one battlefield, in such nameless horrors
of violence as inspired Voltaire to write his ^*Candide.*^ As his mind
slowly put together the details of the expression infernal passion finds
for itself on earth, he saw ** black, burning gulfs full of outcries and
blasphemy, feet red-hot with fire, men eternally preying on their
fellow-creatures, frozen wretches malignantly dashing their iced heads
against one another, other adversaries mutually exchanging shapes
by force of an attraction at once irresistible and loathsome, and spit-
ting with hate and disgust when it is done.'* He saw, in a word,
that evil is infinitely repulsive and infinitely diabolical; and by the
coercive power of this knowledge, which came to him in the fullness
of his intellect —
**-Nel mezzo del catiwiin di nostra vita^'* —
he was compelled to explain to himself the world as he had come to
see it. His explanation is only to be understood from the whole of
his great poem, but the premises on which all his conclusions depend
he saw written on the gates of the Inferno through which he was
about to pass.
'^Gitistizia mosse il mz'o alto Fattore^
Fece7ni la divina Potestate,
La somma Sapienza e il pritno Amore^*
Justice was the thought of power
That moved my architect sublime
In creation's natal hour!
Highest wisdom, primal love
Made me at the birth of time.
As no man can come to such genius as that of Dante except
through sympathy with humanity, — genius of this kind being essen-
tially the ability to feel and to express the underlying thought of
universal humanity, — he must have been tortured long by the cruel
indignation {sceva indignatid) from which death rescued Swift. It had
brought Dante not to the grave actually, but to the gates of the mys-
tery of death — to a place where he must either learn the meaning
of life or curse God and die. Knowing all that the philosophers and
poets of Greece and Rome could teach him, it was not from them
DANTE ALIGHIERI 1 235
but from his own life that he learned the meaning of the world as
he saw it around him. If it were true in the world of his day as he
saw it, that as the result of political and ecclesiastical statesmanship
the wounded were massacred on the battlefield, women and children
were put to the sword, and existence allowed to the weak only at
the price of their submission to enduring injustice, then the question
God must answer to justify his own existence to such a mind as that
of Dante was the meaning of all this! And the answer given at the
very gate of hell was ^' omnipotent power, eternal justice, and primal
love '^ confining evil within itself, so that while those who love evil
create for themselves an everlasting Inferno of infinite horrors, those
who love good pass through it on their way to the purifying experi-
ence which will fit them for heaven. Dante did not postpone hell
as a punishment for the infamies of the oppression he saw on earth
to some dim future. He saw through the fair outside of the cowls
of hypocrisy to the leaden linings, as those who love evil while they
pretend to worship good walk wearily between the lake of pitch on
one side of them and the serpent-infested wilderness on the other.
So long as they love evil and inflict it on others, it shall reward
them with eternal tortures. That is the law of love which protects
the meek, as Dante discovered it. Wherever evil existed on earth he
saw hell — as eternal as the love of evil which created it.
It is a hell in which no lover of good can remain, as no lover of
evil can depart from it. It is eternal and it results inevitably from
the ^* primal love >* through the omnipotent power of which all shall
suffer in themselves the evil they inflict on others. And as the love
of evil on earth means hell on earth to endure into eternity, so the
love of good means purification on earth for heaven, beginning on
earth m love and endurmg everlastingly in the beatific vision of cre-
ative power, raising every redeemed soul from strength to strength
through an eternity of always-increasing efficiency.
If this can be properly called « theology, » it is a theology of suf-
fering rather than of reason. Dante writes as a man who has lived
through sympathy the universal life of the race. It is not intellect
he expresses in his poems, but something higher — a divine enthusi-
asm of sympathetic anguish which moved him as the Hebrew proph-
ets were moved by the sight of the people they loved passing their
children « through the fire to Moloch. » He believed in Divine in-
spiration for all lovers of goodness, and in the fourth treatise of
"The Banquet* he declares that Fabrlcius, Regulus, Cincinnatus, —
the great heathen patriots of the classical age were divinely in-
spired. * Certainly,* he says, "it must be evident remembering the
lives of these men and of the other divine citizens that such wonders
(as they did) could not have bean without some light of Divine good-
1236 DANTE ALTGHIERI
ness added to their own goodness of nature. And it must be evident
that these most excellent men were instruments with which Divine
Providence worked." In the same way Dante regarded himself, Aris-
totle, Virgil, and all others who love goodness, as inspired by heaven.
This is his theology — that all goodness is of heaven and all evil of
hell. His politics as he defines himself in «The Banquet » are equally
simple. Neither power, nor money, nor long descent, nor any other
thing which was claimed in his time as a title to superiority can
give it. It comes only from the love of virtue and from virtuous
actions : —
«The noble man does noble deeds —
Who does a churl's act is a churl.*
In Dante's prose his intellect defines thus in explicit terms what
in his verse his imagination projects in thronging images of terror or
of beauty. His poetry is the least limited by intellect — the most
highly spiritual ever written in any European language. There is
more of the intellect, of the «wit» which shows itself in axiom and
epigram in Pope's "Essay on Man," than in ull the poetry Dante
ever wrote. But Pope was "a wit" and Dante was a prophet. Pope
could be satisfied with the world of the commonplace. To him << the
proper study of mankind is man." To Dante knowledge of God is
the only end of man's existence. He lived sick, passionate, and sad,
suffering the evil not only of his own nature, but of the whole evil
v/orld around him. Yet seeing things "bare to the buff," having no
illusions and waiting in the world as one cured of a long insanity
waits his discharge from the hospital, he still saw the darkness
around him "shot through with glory and fire," and in the lives of
the commonplace men and women around him, living steadfastly and
courageously the life of duty, he recognized the heaven to which he
looked for the reward of all suffering — a heaven of limitless power
for the weak, of limitless wisdom for the ignorant, of eternal crea-
tiveness for all who will consent to build up rather than to pull
down.
That an idea so sublime as this could find adequate expression in
any language or from any lips is not to be expected. There is much
that is grotesque and repulsive, much that is incoherent, much that
is unintelligible in the "Divine Comedy," but there is always in it an
almost superhuman melody of language as a vehicle for the aspira-
tion of a soul which, having attained its heaven, was perpetually dis-
quieted there by the necessity of proclaiming the truth and by the
fear of proving "but a timid friend" fco it. W. V B.
OF RICHES AND THEIR DANGEROUS INCREASE
[Dante's principal prose work, the «Convito,» or « Banquet, » is a collection
of essays, connected by a slender thread of argument and interspersed with
poems which they interpret. They illustrate a philosophy depending largely
on that of Aristotle, but they are dominated by Dante's individuality and
they do much to interpret it clearly to students of his poems.]
AS HAS been said, it is possible to see the imperfection of riches
not only in their indiscriminate advent, but also in their
dangerous increase; and that in this we may perceive
their defect more clearly, the text makes mention of it, saying
of those riches, ^* However great the heap may be it brings no
peace, but care ^' ; they create more thirst and render increase
more defective and insufficient. And here it is requisite to know
that defective things may fail in such a way that on the surface
they appear complete, but, under pretext of perfection, the short-
coming is concealed. But they may have those defects so en-
tirely revealed that the imperfection is seen openly on the surface.
And those things which do not reveal their defects in the first
place are the most dangerous, since very often it is not possible
to be on guard against them; even as we see in the traitor who,
before our face, shows himself friendly, so that he causes us to
have faith in him, and, under pretext of friendship, hides the defect
of his hostility. And in this way riches, in their increase, are
dangerously imperfect, for, submitting to our eyes this that they
promise, they bring just the contrary. The treacherous gains
always promise that, if collected up to a certain amount, they
will make the collector full of every satisfaction; and with this
promise they lead the Human Will into the vice of Avarice. And,
for this reason, Boethius calls them, in his book of "Consolations,**
dangerous, saying, "Oh, alas! who was that first man who dug
up the precious stones that wished to hide themselves, and who
dug out the loads of gold once covered by the hills, dangerous
treasures ? **
The treacherous ones promise, if we will but look, to remove
every want, to quench all thirst, to bring satisfaction and suffi-
ciency; and this they do to every man in the beginning, con-
firming promise to a certain point in their increase, and then, as
soon as their pile rises, in place of contentment and refreshment
they bring on an intolerable fever-thirst; and beyond sufficiency,
1238 DANTE ALIGHIERI
they extend their limit, create a desire to amass more, and, with
this, fear and anxiety far in excess of the new gain.
Then, truly, they bring no peace, but more care, more trouble,
than a man had in the first place when he was without them.
And therefore Tullius says, in that book on ^* Paradoxes, ** when
execrating riches: ^^ I at no time firmly believed the moi^ey of
those men, or magnificent mansions, or riches, or lordships, or
voluptuous joys, with which especially they are shackled, to be
amongst things good or desirable, since I saw certain men in
abundance of them especially desire those wherein they abounded;
because at no time is the thirst of cupidity quenched; not only
are they tormented by the desire for the increase of those things
which they possess, bvit also they have torment in the fear of
losing thera.^^ And all these are the words of Tullius, and even
thus they stand in that book which has been mentioned.
And, as a stronger witness to this imperfection, hear Boethius,
speaking in his book of " Consolations ** : ** If the Goddess of Riches
were to expand and multiply riches till they were as numerous
as the sands thrown up by the sea when tost by the tempest,
or countless as the stars that shine, still Man would weep.'*
And because still further testimony is needful to reduce this
to a proof, note how much Solomon and his father David ex-
claim against them, — how much against them is Seneca, especially
when writing to Lucilius, — how much Horace, — how much Juvenal,
— and, briefly, how much every writer, every poet, and how much
Divine Scripture. All Truthful cries aloud against these false
enticers to sin, full of all defect. Call to mind also, in aid of
faith, what your own eyes have seen, what is the life of those
men who follow after riches, how far they live securely when
they have piled them up, what their contentment is, how peace-
fully they rest.
What else daily endangers and destroys cities, countries, indi-
vidual persons, so much as the fresh heaping up of wealth in
the possession of some man ? His accumulation wakens new de-
sires, to the fulfillment of which it is not possible to attain
without injury to some one.
And what else does the Law, both Canonical and Civil, intend
to rectify except cupidity or avarice, which grows with such heaps
of riches, and which the Law seeks to resist or prevent ? Truly,
the Canonical and the Civil Law make it sufficiently clear, if the
first sections of their written word are read. How evident it is,
DANTE ALIGHIERI I239
nay, I say it is most evident, that these riches are, in their in-
crease, entirely imperfect; when, being amassed, naught else but
imperfection can possibly spring forth from thein. And this is
what the text says.
But here arises a doubtful question, which is not to be passed
over without being put and answered. Some calumniator of the
Truth might be able to say that if by increasing desire in their
acquisition, riches are imperfect and therefore vile, for this rea-
son science or knowledge is imperfect and vile, in the acquisition
of which the desire steadily increases; wherefore Seneca says,
* If I should have one foot in the grave, I should still wish to
learn. *^
But it is not true that knowledge is vile through imperfec-
tion. By distinction of the consequences, increase of desire is
not in knowledge the cause of vileness. That it is perfect is evi-
dent, for the Philosopher, in the sixth book of the ^^ Ethics,** says
that science or knowledge is the perfect reason of certain things.
To this question one has to reply briefly; but in the first place
it is to be seen whether in the acquisition of Knowledge the de-
sire for it is enlarged in the way suggested by the question, and
whether the argument be rational. Wherefore I say that not
only in the acquisition of knowledge and riches, but in each and
every acquisition, human desire expands, although in different
ways; and the reason is this: that the supreme desire of each
thing bestowed by Nature in the first place is to return to its
first source. And since God is the First Cause of our Souls, and
the Maker of them after His Own Image, as it is written, " Let us
make Man in Our Image, after Our likeness,** the Soul especially
desires to return to that First Cause. As a pilgrim who goes along
a path where he never journeyed before, may believe every house
that he sees in the distance to be his inn, and not finding it to
be so may direct his belief to the next, and so travel on from
house to house until he reach the inn, even so our Soul, as soon
as it enters the untrodden path of this life, directs its eyes to its
supreme good, the sum of its day's travel to good; and there-
fore whatever thing it sees which seems to have in itself some
goodness, it thinks to be the supreme good. And because its
knowledge at first is imperfect, owing to want of experience and
want of instruction, good things that are but little appear great
to it; and therefore in the first place it begins to desire those.
So we see little children desire above all things an apple; and
I240 DANTE ALIGHIERI
then, growing older, they desire a little bird; and then, being
older, desire a beautiful garment; and then a horse, and then a
wife, and then moderate wealth, and then greater wealth, and
then still more. And this happens because in none of these
things that is found for which search is made, and as we live on
we seek further. Wherefore it is possible to see that one de-
sirable thing stands under the other in the eyes of our soul in a
way almost pyramidal, for the least first covers the whole, and is
as it were the point of the desirable good, which is God, at the
basis of all; so that the further it proceeds from the point towards
the basis, so much the greater do the desirable good things ap-
pear; and this is the reason why, by acquisition, human desires
become broader the one after the other.
But, thus this pathway is lost through error, even as in the
roads of the earth; for as from one city to another there is of
necessity an excellent direct road, and often another which
branches from that, the branch road goes into another part, and
of many others some do not go all the way, and some go further
round; so in Human Life there are different roads, of which one
is the truest, and another the most misleading, and some are less
right, and some less wrong. And as we see that the straightest
road to the city satisfies desire and gives rest after toil, and that
which goes in the opposite direction never satisfies and never
can give rest, so it happens in our Life. The man who follows
the right path attains his end, and gains his rest. The man who
follows the wrong path never attains it, but with much fatigue
of mind and greedy eyes looks always before him.
Wherefore, although this argument does not entirely reply to
the question asked above, at least it opens the way to the reply,
which causes us to see that each desire of ours does not proceed
in its expansion in one way alone. But because this chapter is
somewhat prolonged, we will reply in a new chapter to the ques-
tion, wherein may be ended the whole disputation which it is
our intention to make against riches.
Chapter xii. of the fourth treatise of
« The Banquet » complete.
THAT DESIRES ARE CELESTIAL OR INFERNAL
IN REPLY to the question, I say that it is not possible to affirm
properly that the desire for knowledge does increase, although,
as has been said, it does expand in a certain way. For that
which properly increases is always one; the desire for knowledge
is not always one, but is many; and one desire fulfilled, another
comes; so that, properly speaking, its expansion is not its in-
crease, but it is advance of a succession of smaller things into
great things. For if I desire to know the principles of natural
things, as soon as I know these, that desire is satisfied and there
is an end of it. If I then desire to know the why and the where-
fore of each one of these principles, this is a new desire altogether.
Nor by the advent of that new desire am I deprived of the per-
fection to which the other might lead me. Such an expansion
as that is not the cause of imperfection, but of new perfection.
That expansion of riches, however, is properly increased which
is always one, so that no succession is seen therein, and there-
fore no end and no perfection.
And if the adversary would say that if the desire to know the
first principles of natural things is one thing, and the desire to
know what they are is another, so is the desire for a hundred
marks one thing, and the desire for a thousand marks is another,
I reply that it is not true ; for the hundred is part of the thou-
sand and is related to it, as part of a line to the whole of the
line along which one proceeds by one impulse alone; and there
is no succession there, nor completion of motion in any part.
But to know what the principles of natural things are is not the
same as to know what each one of them is; the one is not part
of the other, and they are related to each other as diverging
lines along which one does not proceed by one impulse, but the
completed movement of the one succeeds the completed move-
ment of the other. And thus it appears that, because of the de-
sire for knowledge, knowledge is not to be called imperfect in
the same way as riches are to be called imperfect, on account of
the desire for them, as the question put it; for in the desire for
knowledge the desires terminate successively with the attainment
of their aims; and in the desire for riches, No; so that the ques-
tion is solved.
I24<
DANTE ALIGHIERI
Again, the adversary may calumniate, saying that, although
many desires are fulfilled in the acquisition of knowledge, the
last is never attained, which is the imperfection of that one
desire which does not gain its end; and that will be both one
and imperfect.
Again, one here replies that it is not a truth which is brought
forward in opposition, that is, that the last desire is never at-
tained; for our natural desires, as is proved in the third treatise
of this book, are all tending to a certain end; and the desire for
knowledge is natural, so that this desire compasses a certain end,
although but few, since they walk in the wrong path, accomplish
the day's journey. And he who understands the Commentator in
the third chapter, "On the Soul,*^ learns this of him; and there-
fore Aristotle says in the tenth chapter of the << Ethics'* (against
Simonides the Poet), that man ought to draw near to Divine
things as much as is possible; wherein he shows that our power
tends towards a certain end. And in the first book of the
« Ethics '* he says that the disciplined Mind demands certainty in
its knowledge of things in proportion as their nature received
certainty, in which he proves that not only on the side of the
man desiring knowledge, but on the side of the desired object of
knowledge, attention ought to be given; and therefore St. Paul
says: "Not much knowledge, but right knowledge in modera-
tion.'* So that in whatever way the desire for knowledge is con-
sidered, either generally or particularly, it comes to perfection.
And since knowledge is a noble perfection, and through the
desire for it its perfection is not lost, as is the case with accursed
riches, we must note briefly how injurious they are when pos-
sessed, and this is the third notice of their imperfection. It is
possible to see that the possession of them is injurious for two
reasons: one, that it is the cause of evil; the other, that it is
the privation of good. It is the cause of evil, which makes the
timid possessor wakeful, watchful, and suspicious or hateful.
How great is the fear of that man who knows he carries
wealth about him, when walking abroad, when dwelling at home,
when not only wakeful or watching, but when sleeping, not only
the fear that he may lose his property, but fear for his life be-
cause he possesses these riches! Well do the miserable merchants
know, who travel through the world, that the leaves which the
wind stirs on the trees cause them to tremble when they are bear-
DANTE ALIGHIERI 1 243
ing their wealth with them ; and when they are without it, full of
confidence they go singing and talking, and thus make their jour-
ney shorter! Therefore the Wise Man says: *^ If the traveler en-
ters on his road empty, he can sing in the presence of thieves.*'
And this Lucan desires to express in the fifth book, when he
praises the safety of poverty : " Oh, the safe and secure liberty of
the poor Life! Oh, narrow dwelling-places and thrift! Oh, never
again deem riches to be of the gods! In what temples and
within what palace walls could this be, that one is to have no
fear, in some tumult or other, of striking the hand of Caesar ? ^*
And Lucan says this when he depicts how Caesar came by
night to the little house of the fisher Amyclas to cross the Adri-
atic Sea. And how great is the hatred that each man bears to
the possessor of riches, either through envy, or from the desire
to take possession of his wealth ! So true it is, that often and
often, contrary to due filial piety, the son meditates the death of
the father; the most great and most evident experience of this
the Italians can have, both on the banks of the Po and on the
banks of the Tiber. And therefore Boethius in the second chap-
ter of his " Consolations '* says : ** Certainly avarice makes men hate-
ful.'* Nay, their possession is privation of good, for, possessing
those riches, a man does not give freely with generosity, which
is a virtue, which is a perfect good, and which makes men mag-
nificent and beloved; which does not lie in possession of those
riches, but in ceasing to possess them. Wherefore Boethius in
the same book says : ^* Then money is good when, bartered for
other things; by the use of generosity, one no longer possesses
it.'' Wherefore the baseness of riches is sufficiently proved by
all these remarks of his; and therefore the man with an upright
desire and true knowledge never loves them; and, not loving
them, he does not unite himself to them, but always desires them
to be far from himself, except inasmuch as they are appointed
to some necessary service; and it is a reasonable thing, since the
perfect cannot be united with the imperfect. So we see that
the curved line never joins the straight line, and if there be any
conjunction, it is not of line to line, but of point to point. And
thus it follows that the Mind which is upright in desire, and
truthful in knowledge, is not disheartened at the loss of wealth;
as the text asserts at the end of that part. And by this the text
intends to prove that riches are as a river flowing in the distance
1244 DANTE ALIGHIERI
past the upright tower of Reason, or rather of Nobility; and that
these riches cannot take NobiHty away from him who has it,
And in this manner in the present Song it is argued against
riches.
Chapter xiii. of the fourth treatise
of «The Banquet » complete.
THAT LONG DESCENT MAKETH NO MAN NOBLE
HAVING confuted the error of other men in that part wherein
it was advanced in support of riches, it remains now to
confute it in that part where Time is said to be a cause of
Nobility, saying, " Descent of wealth ** ; and this reproof or con-
futation is made in that part which begins: "They will not have
the vile turn noble. *^ And in the first place one confutes this
by means of an argument taken from those men themselves who
err in this way; then, to their greater confusion, this their argu-
ment is also destroyed ; and it does this when it says, ** It follows
then from this.** Finally it concludes, their error being evident,
and it being therefore time to attend to the Truth: and it does
this when it says, * Sound intellect reproves.**
I say, then, *^ They will not have the vile turn noble.** Where
it is to be known that the opinion of these erroneous persons is,
that a man who is a peasant in the first place can never possibly
be called a Nobleman ; and the man who is the son of a peasant
in like manner can never be Noble; and this breaks or destroys
their own argument when they say that Time is requisite to
Nobility, adding that word " descent. ** For it is impossible by
process of Time to come to the generation of Nobility in this
way of theirs, which declares it to be impossible for the humble
peasant to become Noble by any work that he may do, or
through any accident; and declares the mutation of a peasant
father into a Noble son to be impossible. For if the son of the
peasant is also a peasant, and his son again is also a peasant,
and so always, it will never be possible to discover the place
where Nobility can begin to be established by process of Time.
And if the adversary, wishing to defend himself, should say
that Nobility will begin at that period of Time when the low
estate of the ancestors will be forgotten, I reoly that this gfoes
DANTE ALIGHIERI 1*45
Against themselves, for even of necessity there will be a trans-
mutation of peasant into Noble, from one man into another, o:
from father to son, which is against that which they propound.
And if the adversary should defend himself pertinaciously,
saying that indeed they do desire that it should be possible foi
this transmutation to take place when the low estate of the an-
cestors passes into oblivion, although the text takes no notice of
this, it is right that the Commentary should reply to it. And
therefore I reply thus: that from this which they say there fol-
low four very great difficulties, so that it cannot possjbly be ^
good argument. One is, that in proportion as Human Nature
might become better, the slower would be the generation of No-
bility, which is a very great inconvenience; since in proportion
as a thing is honored for its excellence, so much the more is it
the cause of goodness; and Nobility is reckoned amongst the
good. What this means is shown thus: If Nobility, which I un-
derstand as a good thing, should be generated by oblivion, No-
bility would be generated in proportion to the speediness with
which men might be forgotten, for so much the sooner would
oblivion descend upon all. Hence, in proportion as men might
be forgotten, so much the sooner would they be Noble; and, on
the contrary, in proportion to the length of time during which
they were held in remembrance, so much the longer it would be
before they could be ennobled.
The second difficulty is, that in nothing apart from men would
it be possible to make this distinction, that is to say, Noble or
Vile, which is very inconvenient; since in each species of things
we see the image of Nobility or of Baseness, wherefore we often
call one horse noble and one vile; and one falcon noble and one
vile; and one pearl noble and one vile. And that it would not
be possible to make this distinction is thus proved; if the obliv-
ion of the humble ancestors is the cause of Nobility, or rather
the baseness of the ancestors never was, it is not possible for
oblivion of them to be, since oblivion is a destruction of remem-
brance, and in those other animals, and in plants, and in min-
erals, lowness and loftiness are not observed, since in one they
are natural or innate and in an equal state, and Nobility cannot
possibly be in their generation, and likewise neither can vileness
nor baseness; since one regards the one and the other as habit
and privation, which are possible to occur in the same subject:
1246 DANTE ALIGHIERI
and therefore in them it would not be possible for a distinction
to exist between the one and the other.
And if the adversary should wish to say, that in other things
Nobility is represented by the goodness of the thing, but in a
man it is understood because there is no remembrance of his
humble or base condition, one would wish to reply not with
words, but with the sword, to such bestiality as it would be to
^ive to other things goodness as a cause for Nobility, and to
found the Nobility of men upon forgetfulness or oblivion as a
first cause.
The third difficulty is, that often the person or thing gener-
ated would come before the generator, which is quite impossible;
and it is possible to prove this thus: Let us suppose that Ghe-
rardo da Cammino might have been the grandson of the most
vile peasant who ever drank of the Nile or of the Cagnano, and
that oblivion had not yet overtaken his grandfather; who will be
bold enough to say that Gherardo da Cammino was a vile man ?
and who will not agree with me in saying that he was Noble ?
Certainly no one, however presumptuous he may wish to be, for
he was so, and liis memory will always be treasured. If obliv-
ion had not yet overtaken his ancestor, as is proposed in opposi-
tion, so that he might be great through Nobility, and the Nobility
in him might be seen so clearly, even as one does see it, then it
would have been first in him before the founder of his Nobility
could have existed; and this is impossible in the extreme.
The fourth difficulty is, that such a man, the supposed grand-
father, would have been held Noble after he was dead who was
not Noble whilst alive; and a more inconvenient thing could not
be. One proves it thus: Let us suppose that in the age of Dar-
danus there might be a remembrance of his low ancestors, and
let us suppose that in the age of Laomedon this memory might
have passed away, and that oblivion had overtaken it. Accord-
ing to the adverse opinion, Laomedon was Noble and Dardinus
was vile, each in his lifetime. We, to whom the remembrance of
the ancestors of Dardanus has not come, shall we say that Dar-
danus living was vile, and dead a Noble? And is this not con-
trary to the legend which says that Dardanus was the son of
Jupiter (for such is the fable, which one ought not to regard
whilst disputing philosophically) ; and yet if the adversary might
wish to find support in the fable, certainly that which the fabl«
DANTE ALIGHIERI 1247
veils destroys his arguments. And thus it is proved that the
argument, which asserted that oblivion is the cause of Nobility,
is false.
Chapter xiv. of the fourth treatise
of «The Banquet '> complete.
CONCERNING CERTAIN HORRIBLE INFIRMITIES
SINCE, by their own argument, the Song has confuted them, and
proved that Time is not requisite to Nobility, it proceeds
immediately to confound their premises, since of their false
arguments no rust remains in the mind which is disposed towards
Truth; and this it does when it says, ^\It follows then from this.'*
Where it is to be known that if it is not possible for a peasant
to become a Noble, or for a Noble son to be born of a humble
father, as is advanced in their opinion, of two difficulties one must
follow.
The first is, that there can be no Nobility; the other is, that
the World may have been always full of men, so that from one
alone the Human Race cannot be descended; and this it is pos-
sible to prove.
If Nobility is not generated afresh, and it has been stated
many times that such is the basis of their opinion, the peasant
man not being able to beget it in himself, or the humble father
to pass it on to his son, the man always is the same as he was
born; and such as the father was born, so is the son bom; and
so this process from one condition onwards is reached even by
the first parent; for such as was the first father, that is, Adam,
so must the whole Human Race be, because from him to the
modern nations it will not be possible to find, according to that
argument, any change whatever. Then, if Adam himself v/as
Noble, we are all Noble; if he was vile, we are all vile or base;
which is no other than to remove the distinction between these
conditions, and thus it is to remove the conditions.
And the Song states this, which follows from what is advanced,
saying, << That all are high or base. '' And if this is not so, then
any nation is to be called Noble, and any is to be called vile, of
necessity. Transmutation from vileness into Nobility being thus
taken away, the Human Race must be descended from different
ancestors, that is, some from Nobles, and some from vile persons,
and so the Song says, " Or that in Time there never was Begin-
1248 DANTE ALIGHIERI
ning- to our race,'^ that is to say, one beginning; it does not say-
beginnings. And this is most false according to the Philosopher,
according to cur Faith, which cannot lie, according to the Law
and ancient belief of the Gentiles. For although the Philosopher
does not assert the succession from one first man, yet he would
have one essential being to be in all men, which cannot possibly
have different origins. And Plato would have that all men de-
pend upon one idea alone, and not on more or many, which is
to give them only one beginning. And undoubtedly Aristotle
would laugh very loudly if he heard of two species to be made
out of the Human Race, as of horses and asses; and (may Aris-
totle forgive me) one might call those men asses who think in
this way. For according to our Faith (which is to be preserved
in its entirety) it is most false, as Solomon makes evident where
he draws a distinction between men and the brute animals, for
he calls men "all the sons of Adam,^^ and this he does when he
says: "Who knows if the spirits of the sons of Adam mount up-
wards, and if those of the beasts go downwards ? '* And it is false
according to the Gentiles, let the testimony of Ovid in the first
chapter of his " Metamorphoses *^ prove, where he treats of the
constitution of the World according to the Pagan belief, or rather
belief of the Gentiles, saying: "Man is bom'^ — he did not say
"Men^^; he said, "Man is born,'^ or rather, "that the Artificer of
all things inade him from Divine seed, or that the new earth, but
lately parted from the noble ether, retained seeds of the kindred
Heaven, which, mingled with the water of the river, formed the
son of Japhet into an image of the gods, who govern all.-*^ Where
evidently he asserts the first man to have been one alone; and
therefore the song says, " But that I cannot hold,^^ that is, to the
opinion that man had not one beginning; and the song subjoins,
" Nor yet if Christians they. '^ And it says Christians, not Philos-
ophers, or rather Gentiles, whose opinions also is adverse, because
the Christian opinion is of greater force, and is the destroyer of
all calumny, thanks to the supreme light of Heaven, which illu-
minates it.
Then when I say, " Sound intellect reproves their words as
false, and turns away," I conclude this error to be confuted, and
I say that it is time to open the eyes to the Truth; and this is
expressed when I say, "And now I seek to tell. As it appears to
me." It is now evident to sound minds that the words of those
men are vain, that is, without a crumb or particle of Triith;
DANTE ALIGHIERI 1 249
and I say sound not without cause. Our intellect may be said
to be sound or unsound. And I say intellect for the noble part
of our Soul, which it is possible to designate by the common
word " Mind. " It may be called sound or healthy, when it is
not obstructed in its action by sickness of mind or body, which
is to know what things are, as Aristotle expresses it in the third
chapter on the Soul.
For, owing to the sickness of the Soul, I have seen three
horrible infirmities in the minds of men.
One is caused by natural vanity, for many men are so pre-
sumptuous that they believe they know everything, and, owing
to this, they assert things to be facts which are not facts. Tul-
lius especially execrates this vice in the first chapter of the ** Of-
fices, ^^ and St. Thomas in his book against the Gentiles, saying:
^* There are many men, so presumptuous in their conceit, who
believe that they can compass all things with their intellects,
deeming all that appears to them to be true, and count as false
that which does not appear to them.'* Hence it arises that they
never attain to any knowledge; believing themselves to be suffi-
ciently learned, they never inquire, they never listen; they desire
to be inquired of, and when a question is put, bad enough is
their reply. Of those men Solomon speaks in Proverbs : ^* Seest
thou a man that is hasty in his words ? There is more hope of
a fool than of him.®
Another infirmity of mind is caused by natural weakness or
smallness, for many men are so vilely obstinate or stubborn that
they cannot believe that it is possible either for them or for
others to know things; and such men as these never of them-
selves seek knowledge, nor ever reason; for what other men say,
they care not at all. And against these men Aristotle speaks in
the first book of the ^* Ethics, " declaring those men to be insuffi-
cient or unsatisfactory hearers of Moral Philosophy. Those men
always live, like beasts, a life of grossness, the despair of all
learning.
The third infirmity of mind is caused by the levity of nature;
for many men are of such light fancy that in all their arguments
they go astray, and even when they make a syllogism and have
concluded, from that conclusion they fly off into another, and it
seems to them most subtle argument. They start not from any
true beginning, and truly they see nothing true in their imagina-
tion. Of those men the Philosopher says that it is not right to
IV— 79
1250 DANTE ALIGHIERI
trouble about them, or to have business with them, saying, in
the first book of *' Physics, ^^ that against him who denies the first
postulate it is not right to dispute. And of such men as these
are many idiots, who may not know their ABC, and who would
wish to dispute in Geometry, in Astrology, and in the Science of
Physics.
Also through sickness or defect of body, it is possible for the
Mind to be unsound or sick; even as through some primal defect
at birth, as with those who are born fools, or through alteration
in the brain, as with the madmen. And of this mental infirmity
the Law speaks when it says : ^* In him who makes a Will or
Testament, at the time when he makes the "Will or Testament
health of mind, not health of body, is required. ^^
But to those intellects which from sickness of mind or body
are not infirm, but are free, diligent, and whole in the light of
Truth, I say it must be evident that the opinion of the people,
which has been stated above, is vain, that is without any value
whatever, worthless.
Afterwards the Song subjoins that I thus judge them to be
false and vain ; and this it does when it says, ^* Sound intellect
reproves their words as false, and turns away.** And afterwards
I say that it is time to demonstrate or prove the Truth; and I
say that it is now right to state what kind of thing true Nobility
is, and how it is possible to know the man in whom it exists;
and I speak of this where I say : —
**And now I seek to tell
As it appears to me,
What is, whence comes, what signs attest
A true Nobility.**
Chapter xiv. of the fourth treatise of « The Banquet » complete. Translated b-«
Elizabeth Pryce Sayers, and edited by Henry Morley.
JAMES DARMESTETER
(I 849- I 894)
^^AMES Darmesteter, the noted French Orientalist, was born
March 28th, 1849, of Jewish parentage. From 1885 until his
death, October 19th, 1894, he was professor of the Iranian
languages in the College de France. His works on Philology are
numerous and highly valued. He is happy in popularizing science,
as he does in the "Love Songs of the Afghans, » an essay based on
a personal investigation made by Darmesteter during a visit to Af-
ghanistan. The subject is specially interesting in view of its bearing
on the development of the great Persian classics.
LOVE SONGS OF THE AFGHANS
LOVE songs are plentiful with the Afghans, though whether
they are acquainted with love is rather doubtful. Woman
with the Afghans is a purchasable commodity; she is not
wooed and won with her own consent; she is bought from her
father. The average price of a young and good-looking girl is
from about three hundred to five hundred rupees. To reform the
ideas of an Afghan upon that matter would be a desperate task.
When Seid Ahmed, the great Wahabi leader, the prophet, leader,
and king of the Yusufzai Afghans, tried to abolish the marriage
by sale, his power fell at once, he had to flee for his life, and
died an outlaw. There is no song in the world so sad and dis-
mal as that which is sung to the bride b)?- her friends. They
come to congratulate — no, to console her; like Jephthah's daugh-
ter; they go to her, sitting in a corner, and sing: —
"You remain sitting in a corner and cry to us.
What can we do for you?
Your father has received the money."
All of love that the Afghan knows is jealousy. All crimes
are said to have their cause in one of the three z's: zar, zamin,
1252 JAMES DARMESTETER
or zan — money, earth, or woman; the third z is, in fact, the most
frequent of the three causes.
The Afghan love song is artificial; the Afghan poet seems to
have been at the school of the Minnesinger or the Troubadours.
It is the same niievrcrie which seems almost to amuse itself with
its love — more witty than passionate, a play of imagination more
than a cry of the heart. They would have felt with Petrarch or
Heine, si parva licet componere viagnis. There is much of the
convenu and of the poetical commonplace in their songs, as
there is in those of their elder brothers in Europe. You will
hardly find one in which you do not meet the clinking of the
pezvan (the ring in the nose of the Afghan beauty), the blink-
ing of the gold inuhurs dangling from her hair, the radiance of
the green mole on her cheek; and the flames of separation, and
the begging of the beggar, the dervish at her door, come as pil-
grim of love; and the sickness of the sick waiting for health at
her hand; and the warbling of the tuti, sighing by night for his
beloved kharo bird. Yet, in the long run, one finds a charm in
these rather affected strains, though not the direct, straightfor-
ward, all-possessing rapture of simple and sincere emotion. It is
difficult to give in a translation an idea of that charm, as it can
hardly be separated from the simple, monotonous tune ever re-
curring, as well as from the rich and high-sounding rhyme for
which the Afghan poet has the instinct of a modem Parnassian.
The most popular love songs are those of Mira of Peshawer,
Tavakkul of Jelalabad, and Mohammed Taila of Naushehra. Here
is the world-known " Zakhme ^^ of Mira: —
1. I am sitting in sorrow, wounded with the stab of separation, low
low!
She carried back my heart in her talons, when she came to-
day, my bird kharo, low low!
2. I am ever struggling, I am red with my blood, I am your
dervish.
My life is a pang. My love is my doctor; I am waiting for
the remedy, low low!
3. She has a pomegranate on her breast, she has sugar on her lips,
she has pearls for her teeth :
All this she has, my beloved one ; I am wounded in my heart,
and therefore I am a beggar that cries, low low!
JAMES DARMESTETER 1253
4. It is due that I should be your servant; have a thought for me,
my soul, ever and ever.
Evening and morning, I lie at thy door; I am the first of thy
lovers, low low !
5. Mira is thy slave, his salam is on thee ; thy tresses are his net,
thy place is Paradise ; put in thy cage thy slanderer.
6. He who says a ghazal and says it on the tune of another man,
he can call himself a thief at every ghazal he says. — This
word of mine is truth.
I shall give only one other ghazal, which derives a particular
interest from the personality of its author, as well as from a
touch of reverie and quaint lunacy rarely met in Afghan poetry.
As I visited the prison of Abbottabad, in company with the com-
missioner Mr. P., I saw there a man who had been sentenced to
several months' imprisonment for breaking a Hindu's leg in a
drunken brawl. The man was not quite sane; he told Mr. P.
that he was not what he was supposed to be; that he was a king,
and ought to be put on the gadi. His name was Mohammadji.
Next day I was surprised to hear from a native that Moham-
madji was a poet, an itinerant poet from Pakli, who more than
once had been in trouble with justice, for he was rather a disor-
derly sort of poet. Here is a ballad, written by the prisoner,
which is quite a little masterpiece, " in a sensuous, elementary
way, — half Baudelaire, half Song of Solomon : * —
Last night I strolled through the bazar of the black locks; I foraged,
like a bee, in the bazar of the black locks.
Last night I strolled through the grove of the black locks; I foraged,
like a bee, through the sweetness of the pomegranate.
I bit my teeth into the virgin chin of my love; then I breathed up
the smell of the garland from the neck of my Queen, from her
black locks.
Last night I strolled in the bazar of the black locks; I foraged, etc.
You have breathed up the smell of my garland, O my friend, and
therefore you are drunken with it; you fell asleep, like Bahram
on the bed of Sarasia. Then thereafter, there is one who will
take your life, because you have played the thief upon my
cheeks. He is so angry with you, the chaukidar of the black
locks.
Last night, etc.
ia54 JAMES DARMESTETER
Is he so angry with me, my little one ? God will keep me, will he
not ?
Stretch out, as a staff, thy long, black locks, wilt thou not ?
Give me up thy white face, satiate me like the Tuti, wilt thou not?
For once let me loose through the granary of the black locks.
Last night, etc.
I shall let you, my friend, into the garden of the white breast.
But after that you will rebel from me and go scornfully away.
And yet when I show my white face the light of the lamp vanishes.
0 Lord! give me the beauty of the black locks.
Last night, etc.
The Lord gave thee the peerless beauty. Look upon me, my en-
chanting one! I am thy servant.
Yesterday, at the dawn of day, I sent to thee the messenger. The
snake bit me to the heart, the snake of thy black locks.
Last night, etc.
1 will charm the snake with my breath ; my little one, I am a charmer.
But I, poor wretch, I am slandered in thine honor.
Come, let us quit Pakli, I hold the wicked man in horror.
I give to thee full power over the black locks.
Mohammadji has full power over the poets in Pakli.
He raises the tribute, he is one of the Emirs of Delhi.
He rules his kingdom, he governs it with the black locks.
Last night I strolled through the bazar of the black locks; I foraged,
like a bee, through the bazar of the black locks.
Poor Mohammadji, as you may see from the last stanza, was
already seized with the mania of grandeur before he entered the
prison at Abbottabad, though he dreamed as yet only of poetical
royalty. If these lines ever reach Penjab, and find there any
friend of poetry amongst the powers that be, may I be allowed
to recommend to their merciful aid the poor poet of Pakli, a be-
ing doubly sacred, a poet and a divana, and one who thus doubly
needs both mercy for his faults and help through life.
There is a poetical genre peculiar to Afghan poetry: it is the
misra. The misra is a distique, that expresses one idea, one feel-
ing, and is a complete poem by itself. Poets, in poetical assaults,
vie with one another in quoting or improvising misras. They
refer generally to love and love affairs, and some are exquisitely
simple : —
JAMES DARMESTETER 1 255
My love does not accept the flower from my hand; I will send her
the stars of heaven in a Firga.
Thy image appears to me in my dreams, I ctwake in the night and
cry till the morning.
I told him, There is such a thing as separation, and my friend burst
into laughter till he grew green.
When the perfume of thy locks comes to me, it is the morning that
comes to me, and I blossom like the rose.
O letter, blessed be thy fate! Thou art going to see my beloved.
My honor and my name, my life and my wealth — I will give every-
thing for the eyes of my beloved.
Strike my head, plunder my goods, but let me see the eyes of the
one I love, and I will give my blood.
Red are thy lips, white are thy teeth, so that at thy sight the angels
of heaven are confounded.
— Red are my lips, white are my teeth; they are thine. To the
others the dust of the earth!
O my soul! at last thou wilt become dust; for I have seen the eyes
of my friend, and they were friendly no more.
Were there a narrow passage to the dark niche in the grave, I should
go and offer flowers to my love.
O master builder! his grave was too well made; and my friend will
stay as long as time lasts.
Of the inner family life popular song is rather reticent. Of
the brutality of man, the slavery of woman, the harsh voice, the
insult, the strokes, the whipping at the post, the fits of mad jeal-
ousy without love, it has nothing to say. Women, however, have
also tneir poetry and their poets, the ^Muman^*; but that poetry
goes hardly out of the walls of the harem. I was fortunate
enough to gather some fragments of it, though less than I should
have liked, A child is a child even to an Afghan mother: —
Your two large eyes are like the stars of heaven;
Your white face is like the throne of Shah Jahan:
Your two tender, delicate arms are like blades of Iran:
And your slender body is like the standard of Solomon.
My life for you! Do not cry!
O Lord! give me a son who says, ^*Papa! papa!*^
Let his mother wash him in milk!
Let her rub him with butter!
They will call him to the mosque.
The molla will teach him reading.
And the students will kiss him.
1256 JAMES DARMESTETER
Dear, dear child! a flower in your hat!
It shines like a sprig of gold!
The following is a nursery rhyme which I believe is unparal-
leled in the whole of the nursery literature; it is history as well
as a lullaby.
In the time of the Sikh domination, I am told, a Sikh carried
away by force a Yusufzai girl, and took her to Lahore. Her
brothers went in search of her, and found at last, after a year,
the place where she lived. She had a child by the Sikh. She
recognized them from the window, put the child in the cradle,
and while her husband was drunk and asleep, she rocked the child
with a lullaby in which she informed her brothers of all they
had to do. The Sikhs are gone, but the lullaby is still sung: —
Swing, swing, zangutai! Come not, ye robbers. Come not by the
lower side : come by the upper side, sweet and low.
Swing, swing, zangutai! There are two dogs inside; I have tied
them with rims.
Swing, swing, zangutai ! There is a little basket inside, full with
sovereigns.
Swing, swing, zangutai! There is a bear asleep; come quickly there-
fore.
Swing, swing, zangutai ! If he becomes aware of you, there will be
no salvation in your distress.
Swing, swing, zangutai! The infidel is a drunkard, he does not per-
ceive the noise.
Swing, swing, zangutai!
Every life must end with "voceros." During the agony all
the family surround the dying, and repeat the sacred formula,
^'Ashhadu: — I bear witness that Allah is God, and there is no
other God. I bear witness that Mohammed is his servant and
apostle.* Thus the dying soul is kept in the remembrance of
God, and brought to repeat the Ashhadu, and dies in confessing
God, and is saved. In the moment when his soul goes, an angel
comes, and converses, with him, questions him, and recognizing
a good Mussulman, says: << Thy faith is perfect.** Then the men
leave the room; the women sit around the dying bed; the daugh-
ter, sister, or wife of the deceased, standing before the dead,
repeats the vocero for an hour, and at each time the chorus of
women answer with a long, piercing lamentation, that thrills
JAMES DARMESTETER 1 257
through the hearts of the men in the courtyard, and creates the
due sorrow.
Here are some of the voceros; a mere translation cannnot of
course render the effect of those simple plaints, which derive
most of their power from the accent and the mere physical dis-
play of emotion.
For a father: —
Alas! alas! my father!
I shall see you no more on the road.
The world has become desolate to you forever.
For a mother : —
0 my mother! the rose-hued.
You kept me so tenderly,
1 shed for you tears of blood.
For a husband: —
You were the lord of my life:
Then to me a king was a beggar:
This was the time when I was a queen.
For a daughter:
O my daughter! so much caressed,
Whom I had kept so tenderly.
Now you have deserted me.
This world is the place of sorrow.
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
(1 809- 1 882)
[nlike his disciples Spencer and Huxley, Darwin shunned the
<* Reviews.*^ He wrote " works >^ and << treatises,^* — nothing
which can be called an essay in the popular sense, though
such works as ** The Origin of Species *^ and « The Descent of Man *
are constructed on a plan which often results incidentally in com-
pletely elaborated essays of great merit. Darwin is voluminous, but
not diffuse. He deals with facts by massing as illustrations of his
hypotheses everything which can be brought to bear from his own
extensive observation and his still more extensive reading. It is said
that he had a habit of buying books and tearing from them, to be
filed for reference, everything in them which bore on his own work.
He handles his facts with great literary skill, but the nature of the
subjects he treated called for amplification rather than for the con-
densation which the highest class of the essay demands. In his sum-
mary of the theory of Natural Selection and in his restatement of
his views of the Survival of the Fittest, he illustrates his habit of
thinking coherently and compactly and shows at the same time the
essentially poetical quality of his imagination. *As buds give rise by
growth to fresh buds,>^ he writes, << and these, if vigorous, branch out
and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I
believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its
dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the sur-
face with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications.**
Though perhaps he never attempted verse in his life, Darwin is
indeed much more a poet than his grandfather Erasmus Darwin, au-
thor of "The Loves of the Plants,** — from whom and Lord Monboddo
he inherited his theory of "The Descent of Man.** "Would it be too
bold to imagine that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one
living filament?** — asks the elder Darwin — "from one living filament
which the great First Cause endued with animality, with the power
of acquiring new parts, attended with new propensities, directed by
irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations?** This is in itself
doubtlessly a much higher achievement of constructive imagination
than anything the elder Darwin ever put into his verse, but in trac-
ing the earthworm through the clay as he prepares the barren earth
for man; in following the insect from flower to flower, to find how
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN 1 259
the beauty and fragrance of the flower harmonize the instincts of
insect life with a great plan of perpetual improvement operating
throughout all nature, the younger Darwin showed the same mind
which was in Milton and Shakespeare. Though himself an agnostic,
he insisted that his theories were compatible with orthodox Chris-
tianity, and his celebrated pupil, the learned and saintly Drummond,
has demonstrated it to the satisfaction of many who at first believed
it impossible. But however much the science of some may conflict
with the theology of others, the theory that all the laws of nature
work to force progress resulted under Darwin's researches in develop-
ing such new ideas of beauty and harmony that there was an irre-
sistible impulse to accept it as true. It was the highest poetical idea
ever attained by biological science, and it has already worked itself
out in revolutionary improvements of flowers and fruits by methods
which Darwin first suggested.
This is the positive part of Darwin's great work. The negative
part remains still to be fought over in the twentieth century — as it
must necessarily be with bitterness. The Malthusian theory that
among men the strong must crush the weak in order to survive has
been discredited in political economy, but as Darwin introduced it
into science as the basis of his theory of struggle and survival, it
comes back into politics from an unexpected quarter, and it has al-
ready resulted in bold denial that there can exist as a reality what
Beccaria and Burlamaqui asserted as natural, inherent, and inalien-
able rights.
Darwin was born at Shrewsbury, England, February 12th, 1809.
Educated at the Universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge, he made
up his mind early in life to devote himself to science. In pursuance
of his plan, he retired in 1842 to a secluded part of Kent where he
carried on the investigation which resulted in his first epoch-marking
work, «The Origin of Species, » published in 1859. «The Descent of
Man,» which appeared in 1871, provoked the most heated controversy
of the nineteenth century. But Darwin took no part in it. While it
was raging, he devoted his time to the study of the minutiae of na-
ture. His work on Earthworms has been greatly admired by some
because of the faculty of close observation it shows. This faculty,
illustrated in his researches into the cross-fertilization of plants by
means of insects, has proved more immediately valuable than his
great powers of generalization. The modern rose-garden and the
modern orchard are products of this kind of << Darwinism." These
noble results of his ideas remain as his best memorial.
W. V. B.
I26o CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
DARWIN'S SUMMARY OF HIS THEORY OF NATURAL
SELECTION
IF UNDER changing conditions of life organic beings present
individual differences in almost every part of their structure
(and this cannot be disputed), if there be, owing to their
geometrical rate of increase a severe struggle for life at some
age, season, or year, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then,
considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic
beings to each other and to their conditions of life, causing an
infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be ad-
vantageous to them, it would be a most extraordinary fact if no
variations had occurred useful to each being's own welfare, in
the same manner as so many variations have occurred useful to
man. But if variations useful to any organic being ever do
occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best
chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the
strong principle of inheritance, these will tend to produce off-
spring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, or
the survival of the fittest, I have called Natural Selection. It
leads to the improvement of each creature in relation to its
organic and inorganic conditions of life ; and consequently, in
most cases, to what must be regarded as an advance in organi-
zation. Nevertheless, low and simple forms will long endure if
well fitted for their simple conditions of life.
Natural selection, on the principle of qualities being inherited
at corresponding ages, can modify the egg, seed, or young, as
easily as the adult. Amongst many animals, sexual selection will
have given its aid to ordinary selection, by assuring to the most
vigorous and best adapted males the greatest number of off-
spring. Sexual selection will also give characters useful to the
males alone, in their struggles or rivalry with other males; and
these characters will be transmitted to one sex or to both sexes,
according to the form of inheritance which prevails.
Whether natural selection has really thus acted in adapting
the various forms of life to their several conditions and stations,
must be judged by the general tenor and balance of evidence
given in the following chapters. But we have already seen how
it entails extinction, and how largely extinction has acted in the
world's history, geology plainly declares. Natural selection, also,
leads to divergence of character; for the more organic beings
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN 1261
diverge in structure, habits, and constitution, by so much the
more can a large number be supported on the area, — of which
we see proof by looking to the inhabitants of any small spot,
and to the productions naturalized in foreign lands. Therefore,
during the modification of the descendants of any one species,
and during the incessant struggle of all species to increase in
numbers, the more diversified the descendants become, the better
will be their chance of success in the battle for life. Thus the
small differences distinguishing varieties of the same species,
steadily tend to increase, till they equal the greater differences
between species of the same genus, or even of distinct genera.
We have seen that it is the common, the widely diffused and
widely ranging species, belonging to the larger genera within
each class, which vary most; and these tend to transmit to their
modified offspring that superiority which now makes them domi-
nant in their own countries. Natural selection, as has just been
remarked, leads to divergence of character and to much extinc-
tion of the less improved and intermediate forms of life. On
these principles, the nature of the affinities, and the generally
well-defined distinctions between the innumerable organic beings
in each class throughout the world, may be explained. It is a
truly wonderful fact — the wonder of which we are apt to over-
look from familiarity — that all animals and all plants throughout
all time and space should be related to each other in groups,
subordinate to groups, in the manner which we everywhere be-
hold— namely, varieties of the same species most closely related,
species of the same genus less closely and unequally related,
forming sections and subgenera, species of distinct genera much
less closely related, and genera related in different degrees,
forming sub-families, families, orders, subclasses and classes.
The several subordinate groups in any class cannot be ranked in
a single file, but seem clustered round points, and these round
other points, and so on in almost endless cycles. If species had
been independently created, no explanation would have been
possible of this kind of classification; but it is explained through
inheritance and the complex action of natural selection, entailing
extinction and divergence of character.
The affinities of all the beings of the same class have some-
times been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile
largely speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may
represent existing species; and those produced during former
1262 CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
years may represent the long succession of extinct species. At
each period of growth all the growing twigs have tried to branch
out on all sides, and to overtop and kill the surrounding twigs
and branches, in the same manner as species and groups of spe-
cies in the great battle for life. The limbs divided into great
branches, and these into lesser and lesser branches, were them-
selves once, when the tree was young, budding twigs; and this
connection of the former and present buds by ramifying branches
may well represent the classification of all extinct and living spe-
cies in groups subordinate to groups. Of the many twigs which
flourished when the tree was a mere bush, only two or three,
now grown into great branches, yet survive and bear the other
branches; so with the species which lived during long-past geo-
logical periods, very few have left living and modified descend-
ants. From the first growth of the tree many a limb and branch
has decayed and dropped off; and these fallen branches of vari-
ous sizes may represent those whole orders, families, and genera
which have now no living representatives, and which are known
to us only in a fossil state. As we here and there see a thin,
straggling branch springing from a fork low down in a tree,
and which by some chance has been favored and is still alive on
its summit, so we occasionally see an animal like the ornitho-
rhynchus or lepidosiren, which in some small degree connects
by its affinities two large branches of life, and which has appar-
ently been saved from fatal competition by having inhabited a
protected station. As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds,
and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many
a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the
great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches
the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-
branching and beautiful ramifications.
Darwin's Summary of Chapter iv. of ** The
Origin of Species >' complete
THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
IN ORDER to make it clear how, as I believe, natural selection
acts, I must beg permission to give one or two imaginary
illustrations. Let us take the case of a wolf, which preys
on various animals, securing some by craft, some by strength,
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN I 263
and some by fleetness; and let us suppose that the fleetest prey,
a deer for instance, had from any change in the country increased
in numbers, or that other prey had decreased in numbers, during
that season of the year when the wolf was hardest pressed for
food. Under such circumstances the swiftest and slimmest wolves
would have the best chance of surviving and so be preserved or
selected, — provided always that they retained strength to master
their prey at this or some other period of the year, when they
were compelled to prey on other animals. I see no more reason
to doubt that this would be the result than that man should be
able to improve the fleetness of his greyhounds by careful and
methodical selection, or by that kind of unconscious selection
which follows from each man trying to keep the best dogs with-
out any thought of modifying the breed. I may add that, ac-
cording to Mr. Pierce, there are two varieties of the wolf inhabiting
the Catskill Mountains, in the United States, one with a light
greyhound-like form, which pursues deer, and the other more
bulky, with shorter legs, which more frequently attacks the shep-
herd's flocks.
It should be observed that, in the above illustration, I speak
of the slimmest individual wolves, and not of any single strongly-
marked variation having been preserved. In former editions of
this work I sometimes spoke as if this latter alternative had fre-
quently occurred. I saw the great importance of individual
differences, and this led me fully to discuss the results of uncon-
scious selection by man, which depends on the preservation of
all the more or less valuable individuals, and on the destruction
of the worst. I saw, also, that the preservation in a state of
nature of any occasional deviation of structure, such as a mon-
strosity, would be a rare event; and that, if at first preserved, it
would generally be lost by subsequent intercrossing with ordinary
individuals. Nevertheless, until reading an able and valuable
article in the North British Review (1867), I did not appreciate
how rarely single variations, whether slight or strongly marked,
could be perpetuated. The author takes the case of a pair
of animals, producing during their lifetime two hundred o£E-
spring, of which, from various causes of destruction, only two on
an average survive to procreate their kind. This is rather an
extreme estimate for most of the higher animals, but by no
means so for many of the lower organisms. He then shows that
if a single individual were born, which varied in some manner,
1264 CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
giving it twice as good a chance of life as that of the other in-
dividuals, yet the chances would be strongly against its survival.
Supposing it to survive and breed, and that half its young in-
herited the favorable variation; still, as the Reviewer goes on to
show, the young would have only a slightly better chance of sur-
viving and breeding; and this chance would go on decreasing in
the succeeding generations. The justice of these remarks cannot,
I think, be disputed. If, for instance, a bird of some kind could
procure its food more easily by having its beak curved, and if one
were born with its beak strongly curved, and which consequently
flourished, nevertheless there would be a very poor chance of this
one individual perpetuating its kind to the exclusion of the com-
mon form; but there can hardly be a doubt, judging by what we
see taking place under domestication, that this result would fol-
low from the preservation during many generations of a large
number of individuals with more or less strongly curved beaks,
and from the destruction of a still larger number with the
straightest beaks.
It should not, however, be overlooked that certain rather
strongly marked variations, which no one would rank as mere
individual diflEerences, frequently recur owing to a similar organ-
ization being similarly acted on — of which fact numerous in-
stances could be given with our domestic productions. In such
cases, if the varying individual did not actually transmit to its
offspring its newly acquired character, it would undoubtedly
transmit to them, as long as the existing conditions remained
the same, a still stronger tendency to vary in the same manner.
There can also be little doubt that the tendency to vary in the
same manner has often been so strong that all the individuals
of the same species have been similarly modified without the aid
of any form of selection. Or only a third, fifth, or tenth part of
the individuals may have been thus affected, of which fact sev-
eral instances could be given. Thus Graba estimates that about
one-fifth of the guillemots in the Faroe Islands consists of a variety
so well marked, that it was formerly ranked as a distinct species
under the name of Uria Lacrymans. In cases of this kind, if
the variation were of a beneficial nature, the original form would
soon be supplanted by the modified form, through the survival
of the fittest.
To the effects of intercrossing in eliminating variations of all
kinds, I shall have to recur; but it may here be remarked that
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN 1265
most animals and plants keep to their proper homes, and do not
needlessly wander about; we see this even with migratory birds,
which almost always return to the same spot. Consequently each
newly formed variety would generally be at first local, as seems
to be the common rule with varieties in a state of nature; so
that similarly modified individuals would soon exist in a small
body together, and would often breed together. If the new
variety were successful in its battle for life, it would slowly
spread from a central district, competing with and conquering
the unchanged individuals on the margins of an ever-increasing
circle.
It may be worth while to give another and more complex
illustration of the action of natural selection. Certain plants ex-
crete sweet juice, apparently for the sake of eliminating some-
thing injurious from the sap; this is effected, for instance, by
glands at the base of the stipules in some Leguminosae, and at
the backs of the leaves of the common laurel. This juice, though
small in quantity, is greedily sought by insects; but their visits
do not in any way benefit the plant. Now, let us suppose that
the juice or nectar was excreted from the inside of the flowers
of a certain number of plants of any species. Insects in seeking
the nectar would get dusted v/ith pollen, and would often trans-
port it from one flower to another. The flowers of two distinct
individuals of the same species would thus get crossed; and the
act of crossing, as can be fully proved, gives rise to vigorous
seedlings which, consequently, would have the best chance of
flourishing and surviving. The plants which produced flowers
with the largest glands or nectaries, excreting most nectar,
would oftenest be visited by insects, and would oftenest be
crossed; and so in the long run would gain the upper hand and
form a local variety. The flowers, also, which had their stamens
and pistils placed, in relation to the size and habits of the par-
ticular insects which visited them, so as to favor in any degree
the transportal of the pollen, would likewise be favored. We
might have taken the case of insects visiting flowers for the sake
of collecting pollen instead of nectar; and as pollen is formed for
the sole purpose of fertilization, its destruction appears to be a
simple loss to the plant; yet if a little pollen were carried, at first
occasionally and then habitually, by the pollen-devouring insects
from flower to flower, and a cross thus affected, although nine-
tentV of the pollen were destroyed it might still be a great gain
IV— 81.
1266 CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
to the plant to be thus robbed; and the individuals which pro-
duced more and more pollen, and had larger anthers, would be
selected.
When our plant, by the above process long continued, had been
rendered highly attractive to insects, they would, unintentionally
on their part, regularly carry pollen from flower to flower; and
that they do this effectually, I could easily show by many strik-
ing facts. I will give only one, as likewise illustrating one step
in the separation of the sexes of plants. Some holly trees bear
only male flowers, which have four stamens producing a rather
small quantity of pollen, and a rudimentary pistil; other holly
trees bear only female flowers; these have a full-sized pistil and
four stamens with shriveled anthers, in which not a grain of pol-
len can be detected. Having found a female tree exactly sixty
yards from a male tree, I put the stigmas of twenty flowers, taken
from different branches, under the microscope, and on all, with-
out exception, there were a few pollen grains, and on some a
profusion. As the wind had set for several days from the female
tree to the male tree, the pollen could not thus have been car-
ried. The weather had been cold and boisterous, and therefore
not favorable to bees; nevertheless, every female flower which I
examined had been effectually fertilized by the bees, which had
flown from tree to tree in search of nectar. But to return to
our imaginary case: as soon as the plant had been rendered so
highly attractive to insects that pollen was regularly carried from
flower to flower, another process might commence. No natural-
ist doubts the advantage of what has been called the ^< physiolog-
ical division of labor*; hence, we may believe that it would be
advantageous to a plant to produce stamens alone in one flower
or on one whole plant, and pistils alone in another flower or on
another plant. In plants under culture and placed under new
conditions of life, sometimes the male organs become more or
less impotent: now if we suppose this to occur in ever so slight
a degree under nature, then, as pollen is already carried regu-
larly from flower to flower, and as a more complete separation
of the sexes of our plant would be advantageous on the prin-
ciple of the division of labor, individuals with this tendency
more and more increased would be continually favored or se-
lected, until at last a complete separation of the sexes might
be effected. It would take up too much space to show the vari-
ous steps, through dimorphism and other means, by which the
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN 1267
separation of the sexes in plants of various kinds is apparently
now in progress; but I may add that some of the species of holly
in North America are, according to Asa Gray, in an exactly in-
termediate condition ; or, as he expresses it, are more or less
dioeciously polygamous.
Let us now turn to the nectar-feeding insects. We may sup-
pose the plant, of which we have been slowly mcreasing the
nectar by continued selection, to be a common plant; and that
certain insects depended in main part on its nectar for food. I
could give many facts showing how anxious bees are to save
time; for instance, their habit of cutting holes and sucking the
nectar at the bases of certain flowers, which, with a very little
more trouble, they can enter by the mouth. Bearing such facts
in mind, it may be believed that under certain circumstances in-
dividual differences in the curvature or length of the proboscis,
etc., too slight to be appreciated by us, might profit a bee or other
insect, so that certain individuals would be able to obtain their
food more quickly than others; and thus the communities to
which they belonged would flourish and throw off many swarms
inheriting the same peculiarities. The tubes of the corolla of
the common red and incarnate clovers {Trifolium pratense and
incarnatmn) do not on a hasty glance appear to differ in length;
yet the hive-bee can easily suck the nectar out of the incarnate
clover, but not out of the common red clover, which is visitecj
by humble-bees al®ne ; so that whole fields of red clover offer in
vain an abundant supply of precious nectar to the hive-bee.
That this nectar is much liked by the hive-bee is certain; for I
have repeatedly seen, but only in the autumn, many hive-bees
sucking the flowers through holes bitten in the base of the tube
by humble-bees. The difference in the length of the corolla in
the two kinds of clover, which determines the visits of the hive-
bee, must be very trifling; for I have been assured that when
red clover has been mown, the flowers of the second crop are
somewhat smaller, and that these are visited by many hive-bees.
I do not know whether this statement is accurate; nor whether
another published statement can be trusted, namely, that the
Ligurian bee which is generally considered a mere variety of the
common hive-bee, and which freely crosses with it, is able to
reach and suck the nectar of the red clover. Thus, in a country
where this kind of clover abounded, it might be a great advan-
tage to the hive-bee to have a slightly longer or differently con-
1268 CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
structed proboscis. On the other hand, as the fertility of thi?
clover absolutely depends on bees visiting the flowers, if humble-
bees were to become rare in any country, it might be a great
advantage to the plant to have a shorter or more deeply divided
corolla, so that the hive-bees should be enabled to suck its flow-
ers. Thus I can understand how a flower and a bee might slowly
become, either simultaneously or one after the other, modified
and adapted to each other in the most perfect manner, by the
continued preservation of all the individuals which presented
slight deviations of structure mutually favorable to each other.
I am well aware that this doctrine of natural selection, ex-
emplified in the above imaginary instances, is open to the same
objections which were first urged against Sir Charles Lyell's no-
ble views on *'the modem changes of the earth, as illustrative of
geology " ; but we now seldom hear the agencies which we see
still at work spoken of as trifling or insignificant, when used in
explaining the excavation of the deepest valleys or the formation
of long lines of inland cliffs. Natural selection acts only by the
preservation and accumulation of small inherited modifications,
each profitable to the preserved being; and as modern geology
has almost banished such views as the excavation of a great val-
ley by a single diluvial wave, so will natural selection banish the
belief of the continued creation of new organic beings, or of any
great and sudden modification in their structure.
From ^^The Origin of Species.''
DARWIN'S CONCLUSION ON HIS THEORY AND RELIGION
T SEE no good reason wh^v the views given in this volume should
I shock the religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory, as
showing how transient such impressions are, to remember
that the greatest discovery ever made by man, namely, the law
of the attraction of gravity, was also attacked by Leibnitz, *'as
subversive of natural, and inferentially of revealed, religion. ^^ A
celebrated author and divine has written to me that *'he has
gradually learned to see that it is just as noble a conception of
the Deity to believe that he created a few original forms, cap-
able of self-development into other and needful forms, as to be-
lieve that he required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids
caused by the action of his laws."
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN 1 269
Why, it may be asked, until recently did nearly all the most
eminent living naturalists and geologists disbelieve in the muta-
bility of species ? It cannot be asserted that organic beings in a
state of nature are subject to no variation; it cannot be proved
that the amount of variation in the course of long ages is a lim-
ited quantity; no clear distinction has been, or can be, drawn be-
tween species and well-marked varieties. It cannot be maintained
that species when intercrossed are invariably sterile, and varieties
invariably fertile; or that sterility is a special endowment and
sign of creation. The belief that species were immutable pro-
ductions was almost unavoidable as long as the history of the
world was thought to be of short duration; and now that we
have acquired some idea of the lapse of time, we are too apt to
assume, without proof, that the geological record is so perfect
that it would have afforded us plain evidence of the mutation of
species, if they had undergone mutation. . . .
Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied
with the view that each species has been independently created.
To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws
impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and ex-
tinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should
have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the
birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings not
as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few
beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian sys-
tem was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. Judg-
ing from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species
will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. And of
the species now living very few will transmit progeny of any
kind to a far distant futurity; for the manner in which all or-
ganic beings are grouped shows that the greater number of spe-
cies in each genus, and all the species in many genera, have left
no descendants, but have become utterly extinct. We can so far
take a prophetic glance into futurity as to foretell that it will be
the common and widely spread species, belonging to the larger
and dominant groups within each class, which will ultimately pre-
vail and procreate new and dominant species. I'^As all the living
forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long
before the Cambrian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary
succession by generation has never once been broken, and that
no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look
1270 CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN
with some confidence to a secure future of great length. ^, And as
natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being,
all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards
perfection.
It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with
many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with
various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through
the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed
forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each
other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws
acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being
growth with reproduction; inheritance, which is almost implied by
reproduction; variability from the indirect and direct action of
the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a ratio of increase
so high as to lead to a struggle for life, and as a consequence
to natural selection, entailing divergence of character and the
extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature,
from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are
capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher ani-
mals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life,
with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the
Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet
has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from
so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most
wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
From «The Origin of Species. » Conclusion.
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are
HIS portrait of Sir Humphry Davy was painted while he was living,
and the facsimile of his signature as President of the Royal Societj
fixes the date of the engraving here reproduced as probably between
1820 and 1829. The original painting was by Thomas Phillips, a celebrated
English Portrait Painter (i 770-1 845), who was a member of the Royal Academj
and from 1824-32 a profesisor in it
iji have j<'.
nclusioD.
X
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^dk^^t^^9<./ i^y
SIR HUMPHRY DAVY
(1778-1829)
[n his « Consolations in Travel, ^^ written during the last years
of his life and published after his death, Sir Humphry
Davy shows the imaginative power and command of lan-
guage which excited the admiration of Coleridge for his scientific
lectures. ^* I attend Davy's lectures, '> said the author of ^^The Ancient
Mariner, *> <Ho increase my stock of metaphors.'^ Davy was himself a
fluent versifier from his boyhood, but while still in his teens he con-
cluded to be a great scientist instead of a poet, and alarmed the
neighbors accordingly by the frequent explosions which ensued as a
result of his chemical experiments secretly carried on in the garret.
Born at Penzance, in Cornwall, December 17th, 1778, he lost his father
in 1794, and his extensive and deep learning was acquired largely by
self-education. It is scarcely an exaggeration to call him the founder
of nineteenth-century chemistry, for besides his own work resulting
in a long list of far-reaching discoveries, he taught Faraday who
was a pupil in his laboratory. The safety lamp, which he invented
out of compassion for the coal miners of Newcastle, has saved gener-
ations of workers from death in its worst form, but as he prepared
the way for reducing metals from their oxides by exciting them to
molecular vibration, it may fairly be expected that his greatest use-
fulness is still in the future. He died May 29th, 1829, at Geneva,
where he had stopped during the travels by which, after collapsing
under his studies, he had hoped to recover his health.
A VISION OF PROGRESS
(The Genius of Humanity Speaks)
«TN THE population of the world, the great object is evidently to
I produce organized frames most capable of the happy and in-
tellectual enjoyment of life — to raise man above the mere
animal state. To perpetuate the advantages of civilization, the
races most capable of these advantages are preserved and ex-
tended, and no considerable improvement made by an individual
12 72 SIR HUMPHRY DAVY
is ever lost to society. You see living forms perpetuated in the
series of ages, and apparently the quantity of life increased. In
comparing the population of the globe as it now is with what it
was centuries ago, you would find it considerably greater; and
if the quantity of life is increased, the quantity of happiness,
particularly that resulting from the exercise of intellectual power,
is increased in a still higher ratio. Now, you will say, * Is mind
generated, is spiritual power created; or are those results de-
pendent upon the organization of matter, upon new perfections
given to the machinery upon which thought and motion de-
pend?* I proclaim to you,** said the Genius, raising his voice
from its low and sweet tone to one of ineffable majesty, ^^ neither
of these opinions is true. Listen, whilst I reveal to you the
mysteries of spiritual natures, but I almost fear that with the
mortal veil of your senses surrounding you, these mysteries can
never be made perfectly intelligible to your mind. Spiritual na-
tures are eternal and indivisible, but their modes of being are as
infinitely varied as the forms of matter. They have no relation
to space, and, in their transitions, no dependence upon time, so
that they can pass from one part of the universe to another by
laws entirely independent of their motion. The quantity or the
number of spiritual essences, like the quantity or number of the
atoms of the material world, are always the same; but their
arrangements, like those of the materials which they are destined
to guide or govern, are infinitely diversified; they are, in fact,
parts more or less inferior of the infinite mind, and in the plane-
tary systems, to one of which this globe you inhabit belongs, are
in a state of probation, continually aiming at, and generally ris-
ing to a higher state of existence. Were it permitted me to
extend your vision to the fates of individual existences, I could
show you the same spirit, which in the form of Socrates devel-
oped the foundations of moral and social virtue, in the Czar Peter
possessed of supreme power and enjoying exalted felicity in im-
proving a rude people. I could show you the monad or spirit,
which with the organs of Newton displayed an intelligence al-
most above humanity, now in a higher and better state of plane-
tary existence drinking intellectual light from a purer source
and approaching nearer to the infinite and divine Mind. But
prepare your mind, and you shall at least catch a glimpse of
those states which the highest intellectual beings that have be-
longed to the earth enjoy after death in their transition to new
SIR HUMPHRY DAVY 12 73
and more exalted natures. '^ The voice ceased, and I appeared
in a dark, deep, and cold cave, of which the walls of the Colo-
sseum formed the boundary. From above a bright and rosy
light broke into this cave, so that whilst below all was dark,
above all was bright and illuminated with glory. I seemed pos-
sessed at this moment of a new sense, and felt that the light
brought with it a genial warmth; odors like those of the most
balmy flowers appeared to fill the air, and the sweetest sounds
of music absorbed my sense of hearing; my limbs had a new
lightness given to them, so that I seemed to rise from the earth,
and gradually mounted into the bright luminous air, leaving be-
hind me the dark and cold cavern, and the ruins with which it
was strewed. Language is inadequate to describe what I felt in
rising continually upwards through this bright and luminous
atmosphere. I had not, as is generally the case with persons in
dreams of this kind, imagined to myself wings; but I rose grad-
ually and securely as if I were myself a part of the ascending
column of light. By degrees this luminous atmosphere, which
was diiTused over the whole of space, became more circum-
scribed, and extended only to a limited spot around me. I saw
through it the bright blue sky, the moon and stars, and I passed
by them as if it were in my power to touch them with my hand.
I beheld Jupiter and Saturn as they appear through our best
telescopes, but still more magnified, all the moons and belts of
Jupiter being perfectly distinct, and the double ring of Saturn
appearing in that state in which I have heard Herschel often
express a wish he could see it. It seemed as if I was on the
verge of the solar system, and my moving sphere of light now
appeared to pause. I again heard the low and sweet voice of
the Genius, which said, ** You are nov/ on the verge of your own
system : will you go further, or return to the earth ? " I replied,
" I have left an abode which is damp, dreary, dark, and cold ; I
am now in a place where* all is life, light, and enjoyment; show
me, at least before I return, the glimpse which you promised me
of those superior intellectual natures and the modes of their be-
ing and their enjoyments." ^* There are creatures far superior,*
said the Genius, <<to any idea your imagination can form in that
part of the system now before you, comprehending Saturn, his
moons and rings. I will carry you to the verge of the immense
atmosphere of this planet. In that space you will see sufficient
to wonder at, and far more than with your present organization
1274 SIR HUMPHRY DAVY
it would be possible for me to make you understand.'^ I was
again in motion, and again almost as suddenly at rest. I saw
below me a surface infinitely diversified, something like that of
an immense glacier covered with large columnar masses, which
appeared as if formed of glass, and from which were suspended
rounded forms of various sizes, which, if they had not been trans-
parent, I might have supposed to be fruit. From what appeared
to me to be analogous to masses of bright blue ice, streams of
the richest tint of rose color or purple burst forth and flowed
into basins, forming lakes or seas of the same color. Looking
through the atmosphere towards the heavens, I saw brilliant
opaque clouds of an azure color that reflected the light of the
sun, which had to my eyes an entirely new aspect, and appeared
smaller, as if seen through a dense blue mist. I saw moving on
the surface below me immense masses, the forms of which I find
it impossible to describe; they had systems for locomotion simi-
lar to those of the morse or sea horse, but I saw with great sur-
prise that they moved from place to place by six extremely thin
membranes which they used as wings. Their colors were varied
and beautiful, but principally azure and rose color. I saw numer-
ous convolutions of tubes, more analogous to the trunk of the
elephant than to anything else I can imagine, occupying what I
supposed to be the upper parts of the body, and my feeling of
astonishment almost became one of disgust, from the peculiar
character of the organs of these singular beings; and it was with
a species of terror that I saw one of them mounting upwards,
apparently flying towards those opaque clouds which I have be-
fore mentioned. " I know what your feelings are,* said the
Genius; <^you want analogies and all the elements of knowledge
to comprehend the scene before you. You are in the same state
in which a fly would be whose microscopic eye was changed for
one similar to that of man; and you are wholly unable to asso-
ciate what you now see with your former knowledge. But those
beings who are before you, and who appear to you almost as
imperfect in their functions as the zoophytes of the Polar Sea,
to which they are not unlike in their apparent organization to
your eyes, have a sphere of sensibility and intellectual enjoyment
far superior to that of the inhabitants of your earth. Each of
those tubes which appears like the trunk of an elephant is an
organ of peculiar motion or sensation. They have many modes
if perception of which you are wholly ignorant, at the same
SIR HUMPHRY DAVY 1275
time that their sphere of vision is infinitely more extended than
yours, and their organs of touch far more perfect and exquisite.
It would be useless for me to attempt to explain their organiza-
tion, which you could never understand; but of their intellectual
objects of pursuit I may perhaps give you some notion. They
have used, modified, and applied the material world in a manner
analogous to man; but with far superior powers they have
gained superior results. Their atmosphere being much denser
than yours and the specific gravity of their planet less, they
have been enabled to determine the laws belonging to the solar
system with far more accuracy than you can possibly conceive,
and any one of those beings could show you what is now the
situation and appearance of your moon with a precision that
would induce you to believe that he saw it, though his knowl-
edge is merely the result of calculation. Their sources of plea-
sure are of the highest intellectual nature; with the magnificent
spectacle of their own rings and moons revolving round them,
with the various combinations required to understand and pre-
dict the relations of these wonderful phenomena their minds are
in unceasing activity and this activity is a perpetual source of
enjoyment. Your view of the solar system is bounded by Ura-
nus, and the laws of this planet form the ultimatum of your
mathematical results; but these beings catch a sight of planets
belonging to another system and even reason on the phenomena
presented by another sun. Those comets, of which your astro-
nomical history is so imperfect, are to them perfectly familiar,
and in their ephemerides their places are shown with as much
accurateness as those of Jupiter or Venus in your almanacs; the
parallax of the fixed stars nearest them is as well understood as
that of their own sun, and they possess a magnificent history of
the changes taking place in the heavens and which are governed
by laws that it would be vain for me to attempt to give you an
idea of. They are acquainted with the revolutions and uses of
comets; they understand the system of those meteoric forma-
tions of stones which have so much astonished you on earth;
and they have histories in which the gradual changes of nebulae
in their progress towards systems have been registered, so that
they can predict their future changes. And their astronomical
records are not like yours which go back only twenty centuries
to the time of Hipparchus; they embrace a period a hundred
times as long, and their civil history for the same time is as
1276 SIR HUMPHRY DAVY
correct as their astronomical one. As I cannot describe to you
the organs of these wonderful beings, so neither can I show to
you their modes of life ; but as their highest pleasures depend
upon intellectual pursuits, so you may conclude that those modes
of life bear the strictest analogy to that which on the earth you
would call exalted virtue. I will tell you, however, that they
have no wars, and that the objects of their ambition are entirely
those of fntellectual greatness, and that the only passion that
they feel in which comparisons with each other can be instituted
are those dependent upon a love of glory of the purest kind. If
I were to show you the diflferent parts of the surface of this
planet, you would see marvelous results of the powers possessed
by these highly intellectual beings and of the wonderful manner
in which they have applied and modified matter. Those colum-
nar masses, which seem to you as if arising out of a mass of
ice below, are results of art, and processes are going on in them
connected with the formation and perfection of their food. The
brilliant-colored fluids are the results of such operations as on
the earth would be performed in your laboratories, or more
properly in your refined culinaiy apparatus, for they are con-
nected with their system of nourishment. Those opaque azure
clouds, to which you saw a few minutes ago one of those beings
directing his course, are works of art and places in which they
move through different regions of their atmosphere and com-
mand the temperature and the quantity of light most fitted for
their philosophical researches, or most convenient for the pur-
poses of life. On the verge of the visible horizon which we per-
ceive around us, you may see in the east a very dark spot or
shadow, in which the light of the sun seems entirely absorbed;
this is the border of an immense mass of liquid analogous to
your ocean, but unlike your 'Sea it is inhabited by a race of in-
tellectual beings inferior indeed to those belonging to the atmos-
phere of Saturn, but yet possessed of an extensive range of
sensations and endowed with extraordinary power and intelli-
gence. I could transport you to the different planets and show
you in each peculiar intellectual beings bearing analogies to each
other, but yet all different in power and essence. In Jupiter
you would see creatures similar to those in Saturn, but with dif-
ferent powers of locomotion; in Mars and Venus you would find
races of created forms more analogous to those belonging to the
«arth; but in every part of the planetary system you would find
SIR HUMPHRY DAVY I277
one character peculiar to all intelligent natures, a sense of re-
ceiving impressions from light by various organs of vision, and
towards this result you cannot but perceive that all the arrange-
ments and motions of the planetary bodies, their satellites and
atmospheres are subservient. The spiritual natures therefore
that pass from system to system in progression towards power
and knowledge preserve at least this one invariable character,
and their intellectual life may be said to depend more or less
upon the influence of light. As far as my knowledge extends,
even in other parts of the universe the more perfect organized
systems still possess this source of sensation and enjoyment; but
with higher natures, finer and more ethereal kinds of matter are
employed in organization, substances that bear the same analogy
to common matter that the refined or most subtle gases do to
common solids and fluids. The universe is everywhere full of
life, but the modes of this life are infinitely diversified, and yet
every form of it must be enjoyed and known by every spiritual
nature before the consummation of all things. You have seen
the comet moving with its immense train of light through the
sky; this likewise has a system supplied with living beings, and
their existence derives its enjoyment from the diversity of cir-
cumstances to which they are exposed; passing as it were
through the infinity of space they are continually gratified by
the sight of new systems and worlds, and you can imagine the
unbounded nature of the circle of their knowledge. My power
extends so far as to afford you a glimpse of the nature of a
cometary world. '^ I was again in rapid motion, again passing
with the utmost velocity through the bright blue sky, and I saw
Jupiter and his satellites and Saturn and his ring behind me,
and before me the sun, no longer appearing as through a blue
mist, but in bright and unsupportable splendor, towards which I
seemed moving with the utmost velocity; in a limited sphere of
vision, in a kind of red, hazy light similar to that which first
broke in upon me in the Colosseum, I saw moving round me
globes which appeared composed of different kinds of flame and
of different colors. In some of these globes I recognized figures
which put me in mind of the human countenance, but the resem ■
blance was so awful and unnatural that I endeavored to with-
draw my view from them. "You are now,*^ said the Genius,
"in a cometary system; those globes of light surrounding j^ou are
material forms, such as in one of your systems of religious faith
1278 SIR HUMPHRY DAVY
have been attributed to seraphs; they live in that element which
to you would be destruction; they communicate by powers which
would convert your organized frame into ashes; they are now in
the height of their enjoyment, being about to enter into the blaze
of the solar atmosphere. These beings so grand, so glorious, with
functions to you incomprehensible, once belonged to the earth;
their spiritual natures have risen through different stages of plan-
etary life, leaving their dust behind them, carrying with them
only their intellectual power. You ask me if they have any
knowledge or reminiscence of their transitions; tell me of your
own recollections in the womb of your mother and I will answer
you. It is the law of divine wisdom that no spirit carries with
it into another state and being any habit or mental qualities ex-
cept those which may be connected with its new wants or enjoy-
ments; and knowledge relating to the earth would be no more
useful to these glorified beings than their earthly system of or-
ganized dust, which would be instantly resolved into its ultimate
atoms at such a temperature; even on the earth the butterfly
does not transport with it into the air the organs or the appe-
tites of the crawling worm from which it sprung. There is,
however, one sentiment or passion which the monad or spiritual
essence carries with it into all its stages of being, and which in
these happy and elevated creatures is continually exalted; the
love of knowledge or of intellectual power, which is, in fact, in its
ultimate and most perfect development, the love of infinite wis-
dom and unbounded power, or the love of God. Even in the
imperfect life that belongs to the earth this passion exists in a
considerable degree, increases even with age, outlives the pertec-
tion of the corporeal faculties, and at the moment of death is felt
by the conscious being, and its future destinies depend upon the
manner in which it has been exercised and exalted. When it
has been misapplied and assumed the forms of vague curiosity,
restless ambition, vainglory, pride, or oppression, the being is
degraded, it sinks in the scale of existence and still belongs to
the earth or an inferior system, till its errors are corrected by
painful discipline. When, on the contrary, the love of intellectual
power has been exercised on its noblest objects, in discovering
and in contemplating the properties of created forms and in ap-
plying them to useful and benevolent purposes, in developing
and admiring the laws of the eternal Intelligence, the destinies
of the sentient principle are of a nobler kind, it rises to a higher
SIR HUMPHRY DAVY 1279
planetary world. From the height to which you have been lifted
I could carry you downwards and show you intellectual natures
even inferior to those belonging to the earth, in your own moon
and in the lower planets, and I could demonstrate to you the
effects of pain or moral evil in assisting in the great plan of the
exaltation of spiritual natures; but I will not destroy the bright-
ness of your present idea of the scheme of the universe by de-
grading pictures of the effects of bad passions and of the manner
in which evil is corrected and destroyed. Your vision must end
with the glorious view of the inhabitants of the cometary worlds;
I cannot show you the beings of the system to which I, myself,
belong, that of the sun; your organs would perish before our
brightness, and I am only permitted to be present to you as a
sound or intellectual voice. We are likewise in progression, but
we see and know something of the plans of infinite wisdom; we
feel the personal presence of that supreme Deity which you only
imagine ; to you belongs faith, to us knowledge ; and our greatest
delight results from the conviction that we are lights kindled by
his light and that we belong to his substance. To obey, to love,
to wonder and adore, form our relations to the infinite Intelli-
gence. We feel his laws are those of eternal justice and that
they govern all things from the most glorious intellectual natures
belonging to the sun and fixed stars to the meanest spark of life
animating an atom crawling in the dust of your earth. We know
all things begin from and end in his everlasting essence, the
cause of causes, the power of powers.*^
From « Consolations in TraveL»
THOMAS DECKER
(c. 1 570-1 637)
jECKEr's prose, which is well illustrated by « The Seven Deadly
Sins of London*^ published in 1606, belongs to the curiosi-
ties of English literature. He represents the Seven Deadly
Sins as entering London in procession and devotes an essay to each
of them. Decker ( spelled also ^'- Dekker *> ) was born in London in or
about the year 1570. He belongs to the Shakespearean cycle of
dramatists and has the remarkable imaginative faculty which, as it
appears in the principal Elizabethan writers, differentiates that period
from all that went before or that has come after it in English lit-
erature.
APISHNESS
SLOTH was not so slow in his march when he entered the city,
but Apishness (that was to take his turn next) was as quick.
Do you not know him ? It cannot be read in any Chron-
icle that he was ever with Henry VIII. at Boulogne, or at the
winning of Turwin and Turnay: for (not to belie the sweet
Gentleman) he was neither in the shell then, no nor then when
Paules-steeple and the Weathercock were on fire; by which marks
(without looking in his mouth) you may safely swear that he is
but young, for he is a fierce, dapper fellow, more light headed
than a musician; as phantastically attired as a court jester; wan-
ton in discourse; lascivious in behavior; jocund in good company;
nice in his trencher, and yet he feeds very hungrily on scraps
of songs: he drinks in a Glass well, but vilely in a deep French-
bowl: yet much about the year when Monsieur came in, was he
begotten, between a French tailor and an English court seamster
This Signor Joculento (as the devil would have it) comes pranc-
ing in at Cripplegate, and he may well do it, for indeed all the
parts he plays are but con'd speeches stolen from others, whose
voices and actions he counterfeits, but so lamely, that all the
Cripples in ten Spittle-houses show not more halting. The graver
THOMAS DECKER 1 281
brows were bent against him, and by the awful charms of rev-
erend authority would have sent him down from whence he came,
for they knew how smooth soever his looks were, there was a
devil in his bosom. But he having the stronger faction on his
side, set them in a Mutiny, Scevitque animis ignobile vulgus, the
many-headed Monster fought as it had been against St. George,
won the gate, and then with shouts was the Gaveston of the
time brought in. But who brought him in ? None but rich
men's sons that were left well, and had more money given by
will than they had wit how to bestow it; none but Prentices al-
most out of their years, and all the Tailors, Haberdashers, and
Embroiderers that could be got for love or money, for these were
pressed secretly to the service, by the young and wanton dames
of the city, because they would not be seen to show their love
to him themselves.
Man is God's Ape, and an Ape is zany to a man, doing over
those tricks (especially if they be knavish) which he sees done
before him: so that Apishness is nothing but counterfeiting or
imitation; and this flower when it first came into the city had a
pretty scent, and a delightful color, hath been let to run so high
that it is now seeded, and where it falls there rises up a stinking
weed.
For as man is God's ape, striving to make artificial flowers,
birds, etc., like to the natural; so for the same reason are women
Men's she apes, for they will not be behind them the breadth of
a tailor's yard (which is nothing to speak of) in any new-fangled
upstart fashion. If men get up French standing collars, women will
have the French standing collar too; if doublets with little thick
skirts, so short that none are able to sit upon them, women's fore-
parts are thick skirted too; by surfeiting upon which kind of fan-
tastical Apishness in short time they fall into the disease of pride :
Pride is infectious, and breeds prodigality; Prodigality, after it has
run a little, closes up and festers, and then turns to Beggary.
Witty was that painter, therefore, that when he had limned one
of every Nation in their proper attires, and being at his wits' ends
how to draw an Englishman, at the last (to give him a quip for
his folly in apparel), drew him stark naked, with shears in his
hand and- cloth on his arm, because none could cut out his fash-
ions but himself.
For an Englishman's suit is like a traitor's body that hath
been hanged, drawn, and quartered, and is set up in several places:
12S2 THOMAS DECKER
the collar of his doublet is in France ; the wing and narrow sleeve
in Italy; the short waist hangs over a Dutch butcher's stall in
Utrich; his huge floppes speak Spanish; Polonia gives him the
boots: the block for his head alters faster than the feltmaker can
fit him, and thereupon we are called in scorn Blockheads. And
thus we that mock every Nation for keeping one fashion, yet
steal patches from every one of them to piece out our pride, are
now Laughingstocks to them, because their cut so scurvily be-
comes us.
This sin of Apishness, whether it be in apparel, or in diet, is
not of such long life as his fellows, and for seeing none but
women and fools keep him company, the one will be ashamed of
him when they begin to have wrinkles, the other when they feel
their purses light. The magistrate, the wealthy commoner, and
the ancient citizen disdain to come near him; we were best,
therefore, take note of such things as are about him, lest on a
sudden he slip out of sight.
Apishness rides in a chariot made of nothing but cages, in
which are all the strangest otitlandish Birds that can be gotten:
the cages are stuck full of parrots' feathers; the Coachman is an
Italian mountebank who drives a fawn and a lamb; for they
draw the gew-gaw in Winter, when such beasts are rarest to be
had; in summer, it goes alone by the motion of wheels; two
pages in light-colored suits, embroidered full of butterflies, with
wings that flutter up with the wind, run by him, the one being
a dancing boy, the other a tumbler. His attendants are Folly,
Laughter, Inconstancy, Riot, Niceness, and Vainglory: when his
Court removes, he is followed by Tobacconists, Shuttlecock-makers,
Feathermakers, Cobweb-lawn-weavers, Perfumers, young Country
Gentlemen, and Fools. In whose Ship whilst they all are sail-
ing, let us observe what other abuses the Verdimotes Inquest do
present on the land, albeit they be never reformed, till a second
Chaos is to be refined. In the meantime. In nova fert Animus.
Complete. From «The Seven Deadly
Sins of London.*
DANIEL DEFOE
(1661-1731)
'efoe's essay "Upon Projects'^ is a series of short essays on
topics whose sole connection with each other is that they
have some bearing direct or incidental on something or
other which Defoe thought should be done. He treats of " Banks ^*
"Court Merchants,'^ "Life Insurance," or "The Education of Women,'*
with equal facility, — a facility which suggests the habits of the mod-
ern journalist. Defoe is entitled, indeed, to rank as the first of the
great journalists of England. His paper, the London Review, pub-
lished from 1704 to 17 13, began as a weekly, but was issued finally
as a triweekly. While it was scarcely a newspaper in the modern
sense, Defoe certainly had the "journalistic instinct.** "State facts**
has been given as the single rule necessary for the complete educa-
tion of a journalist, and Defoe, if he did not govern himself by it in
his political writings, certainly accomplished the paradox of making
it the rule of his fiction. In all his novels, but especially in " Robin-
son Crusoe,** he seems to be concerned with nothing except making
a simple statement of unimpugnable facts which have come within
his personal knowledge. As a story-teller, he has hardly been sur-
passed, but as is usual with the Immortals, his popularity with pos-
terity became possible only after he had suffered almost, if not quite,
all his own generation could conveniently inflict on him. He was
well acquainted with the interior of debtors' prisons, and his vigor as
a political pamphleteer won him the honor of the pillory, where the
London mob, instead of covering him with filth, as was their habit,
protected him from insult and offered him flowers. Defoe was a
martyr, however, because his intellectual activity made him so by ac-
cident,— not because he had or professed to have a higher moral
standard than that of his generation. He failed as a merchant for
£\-j,ooo, and, after release by his creditors on a compromise, paid them
in full; but as a journalist opposing a Tory administration, it is said
that he did not find it incompatible with his principles to take a subsidy
to be earned by ^< omitting objectionable matter** and "toning down**
the vigor of his opposition. It is asserted, however, that he was, "ac-
cording to his lights, a perfectly honest man ... of unaffected re-
ligiosity ** He may be defined as a man of genius, with a defective
1284 DANIEL DEFOE
moral sense and an intellect of incessant activity. His minor novels re-
flect faithfully the manners and morals of people with whom it is not
well to be familiarly acquainted, — in or out of books, — and his own per-
fect familiarity with them goes far towards accounting for the fact that
his " religiosity ^^ failed to have a more decisive influence on his life.
This much must be said to qualify the praise due him as the author
of « Robinson Crusoe ^^ and the essay << Upon Projects, >^ — works made
permanently influential by the benevolence and philanthropy which,
in spite of his lack of governing principle, operated as Defoe's gov-
erning motives. He was born in London in 1661. His father James
Foe, was a butcher, wealthy enough to send him to <*a famous Dis-
senting academy >^ at Stoke Newington, where he seems to have es-
caped almost wholly the shackling influence of the orthodox English
scholastic tradition. He was twice married, and six of his seven
.children were living at his death, April 26th, 1731. In 1877 three of
his descendants were pensioned because of his merits, — merits which
were officially recognized during his lifetime only in ways which
made his sentence to the pillory the most honorable incident of his
relations with the government. W. V. B.
ON PROJECTS AND PROJECTORS
MAN is the worst of all God's creatures to shift for himself;
no other animal is ever starved to death; nature without
has provided them both food and clothes, and nature within
has placed an instinct that never fails to direct them to proper
means for a supply; but man must either work or starve, slave
or die. He has indeed reason given him to direct him, and few
who follow the dictates of that reason come to such unhappy
exigences; but when by the errors of a man's youth he has re-
duced himself to such a degree of distress as to be absolutely
without three things, — money, friends, and health, — he dies in a
ditch, or, in a worse place, a hospital.
Ten thousand ways there are to bring a man to this, and but
very few to bring him out again.
Death is the universal deliverer, and therefore some who want
courage to bear what they see before them, hang themselves for
fear; for certainly self-destruction is the effect of cowardice in
the highest extreme.
Others break the bounds of laws to satisfy that general law
of nature, and turn open thieves, housebreakers, highwaymen,
DANIEL DEFOE 1 285
clippers, coiners, etc., till they run the length of the gallows and
get a deliverance the nearest way at St. Tyburn.
Others, being masters of more cunning than their neighbors,
turn their thoughts to private methods of trick and cheat, a mod-
ern way of thieving, every jot as criminal, and in some degree
worse than the other, by which honest men are. gulled with fair
pretenses to part from their money, and then left to take their
course with the author, who skulks behind the curtain of a pro-
tection, or in the Mint or Friars, and bids defiance as well to
honesty as the law.
Others, yet urged by the same necessity, turn their thoughts
to honest invention, founded upon the platform of ingenuity and
integrity.
These two last sorts are those we call projectors; and as there
were always more geese than swans, the number of the latter
is very inconsiderable in comparison of the former; and as the
greater number denominates the less, the just contempt we have
of the former sort bespatters the other, who, like cuckolds, bear
the reproach of other people's crimes.
A mere projector, then, is a contemptible thing, driven by his
own desperate fortune to such a strait that he must be delivered
by a miracle, or starve; and when he has beat his brains for
some such miracle in vain, he finds no remedy but to paint up
some bauble or other, as players make puppets talk big, to show
like a strange thing, and then cry it up for a new invention, gets
a patent for it, divides it into shares, and they must be sold.
Ways and means are not wanting to swell the new whim to a
vast magnitude; thousands and hundreds of thousands are the
least of his discourse, and sometimes millions, till the ambition
of some honest coxcomb is wheedled to part with his money for
it, and then {nascitur ridiculus vius) the adventurer is left to
carry on the project, and the projector laughs at him. The diver
shall walk at the bottom of the Thames, the salpeter maker shall
build Tom T d's pond into houses, the engineers build models
and windmills to draw water, till fun^ls are raised to carry it on
by men who have more money than brains, and then good-night
patent and invention; the projector has done his business and is
gone.
But the honest projector is he who, having by fair and plain
principles of sense, honesty, and ingenuity brought any contriv-
Ifl86 DANIEL DEFOE
ance to a suitable perfection, makes out what he pretends to,
picks nobody's pocket, puts his project in execution, and pen-
tents himself with the real produce as the profit of his invention
Complete from essays «Upon Projects>
HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMEN
I HAVE often thought of it as one of the most barbarous cus-
toms in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Chris-
tian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to
women. We reproach the sex every day with folly and imperti-
nence, while I am confident, had they the advantages of educa-
tion equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves.
One would wonder indeed how it should happen that women
are conversable at all, since they are only beholding to natural
parts for all their knowledge. Their youth is spent to teach
them to stitch and sew, or make baubles. They are taught to
read indeed, and perhaps to write their names, or so, and that is
the height of a woman's education. And I would but ask any
who slight the sex for their understanding. What is a man (a
gentleman, I mean) good for that is taught no more ?
I need not give instances, or examine the character of a gen-
tleman with a good estate, and of a good family, and with
tolerable parts, and examine what figure he nlakes for want of
education.
The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and
must be polished, or the lustre of it will never appear. And it
is manifest that as the rational soul distinguishes us from brutes,
so education carries on the distinction, and makes some less
brutish than others. This is too evident to need any demonstra-
tion. But why, then, should women be denied the benefit of in-
struction ? If knowledge and understanding had been useless
additions to the sex, God Almighty would never have given them
capacities, for he made nothing needless: besides, I would ask
such what they can see in ignorance that they should think it a
necessary ornament to a woman. Or, How much worse is a wise
woman than a fool ? or, What has the woman done to forfeit
the privilege of being taught ? Does she plague us with her
pride and impertinence ? Why did we not let her learn, that she
DANIEL DEFOE I287
mignt nave had more wit ? Shall we upbraid women with folly,
when it is only the error of this inhuman custom that hindered
them being made wiser ?
The capacities of women are supposed to be greater and their
senses quicker than those of the men; and what they might be
capable of being bred to is plain from some instances of female
wit which this age is not without, which upbraids us with injus-
tice, and looks as if we denied women the advantages of educa-
tion for fear they should vie with the men in their improvements.
To remove this objection, and that women might have at
least a needful opportunity of education in all sorts of useful
learning, I propose the draft of an academy for that purpose.
I know it is dangerous to make public appearances of the
sex; they are not either to be confined or exposed: the first will
disagree with their inclinations, and the last with their reputa-
tions; and therefore it is somewhat difficult; and I doubt a
method proposed by an ingenious lady, in a little book called
^Advice to the Ladies,*^ would be found impracticable. For, sav-
ing my respect to the sex, the levity which perhaps is a little
peculiar to them (at least in their youth) will not bear the re-
straint; and I am satisfied nothing but the height of bigotry can
keep up a nunnery. Women are extravagantly desirous of going
to heaven, and will punish their pretty bodies to get thither; but
nothing else will do it, and even in that case sometimes it falls
out that nature will prevail.
When I talk therefore of an academy for women I mean both
the model, the teaching, and the government different from what
is proposed by that ingenious lady, for whose proposal I have a
very great esteem, and alro a great opinion of her wit; different,
too, from all sorts of religious confinement, and, above all, from
vows of celibacy.
Wherefore the academy I propose should differ but little from
public schools, wherein such ladies as were willing to study
should have all the advantages of learning suitable to their gen-
ius.
To such whose genius would lead them to it I would deny no
sort of learning: but the chief thing in general is to cultivate the
understandings of the sex, that they may be capable of all sorts
of conversation; that, their parts and judgments being improved,
they may be as profitable in their conversation as they are pleas-
ant.
I2S8 DANIEL DEFOE
Women, in my observation, have little or no difiEerence in them
but as they are, or are not, distinguished by education. Tempers
indeed may in some degree influence them, but the main distin-
guishing part is their breeding.
The whole sex are generally quick and sharp; I believe J, may
be allowed to say generally so; for you rarely see them lumpish
and heavy when they are children, as boys will often be. If a
woman be well bred, and taught the proper management of her
natural wit, she proves generally very sensible and retentive; and
without partiality, a woman of sense and manners is the finest
and most delicate part of God's creation, the glory of her Maker,
and the great instance of his singular regard to man (his darling
creature), to whom he gave the best gift either God could bestow
or man receive; and it is the most sordid piece of folly and in-
gratitude in the world to withhold from the sex the due lustre
which the advantages of education give to the natural beauty of
their minds.
A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the addi-
tional accomplishments of knowledge and behavior, is a creature
without comparison; her society is the emblem of sublimer en-
joyments; her person is angelic, and her conversation heavenly;
she is all softness and sweetness, peace, love, wit, and delight;
she is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and the man that
has such a one to his portion has nothing to do but to rejoice
in her, and be thankful. ,
On the other hand, suppose her to be the very same woman,
and rob her of the benefit of education, and it follows thus: —
If her temper be good, want of education makes her soft and
easy.
Her wit, for want of teaching, makes her impertinent and
talkative.
Her knowledge, for want of judgment and experience, makes
her fanciful and whimsical.
If her temper be bad, want of breeding makes her worse, and
she grows haughty, insolent, and loud.
If she be passionate, want of manners makes her termagant
and a scold, which is much at one with lunatic.
If she be proud, want of discretion (which still is breeding)
makes her conceited, fantastic, and ridiculous.
And from these she degenerates to be turbulent, clamorous,
noisy, nasty, and "the devil.**
DANIEL DEFOE 1 289
Methinks mankind for their own sakes (since say what we will
of the women, we all think fit one time or other to be concerned
with them) should take some care to breed them up to be suit-
able and serviceable, if they expected no such thing as delight
from them. Bless us! what care do we take to breed up a good
horse, and to break him well! And what a value do we put upon
him when it is done! — and all because he should be fit for our
use. And why not a woman ? — since all her ornaments and
beauty, without suitable behavior, is a cheat in nature, like the
false tradesman who puts the best of his goods uppermost, that
the buyer may think the rest are of the same goodness.
Beauty of the body, which is the women's glory, seems to be
now unequally bestowed, and nature (or rather Providence), to lie
under some scandal about it, as if it was given a woman for a
snare to men, and so make a kind of a she-devil of her; because,
they say, exquisite beauty is rarely given with wit, more rarely
with goodness of temper, and never at all with modesty. And
some, pretending to justify the equity of suoh a distribution, will
tell us it is the effect of the justice of Providence in dividing
particular excellences among all his creatures, ^^ Share and share
alike, as it were,'* that all might for something or other be ac-
ceptable to one another, else some would be despised. . . .
But to come closer to the business; the great distinguishing
difference which is seen in the world between men and women
is in their education; and this is manifested by comparing it with
the difference between one man or woman and another.
And herein it is that I take upon me to make such a bold
assertion, that all the world ire mistaken in their practice about
women: for I cannot think that God Almighty ever made them
so delicate, so glorious creatures, and furnished them with such
charms, so agreeable and so delightful to mankind, with souls
capable of the same accomplishments with men, and all to be
only stewards of our houses, cooks, and slaves.
Not that I am for exalting the female government in the
least: but, in short, I would have men take women for compan-
ions, and educate them to be fit for it. A woman of sense and
breeding will scorn as much to encroach upon the prerogative of
the man as a man of sense will scorn to oppress the weakness
of the woman. But if the women's souls were refined and im-
proved by teaching, that word would be lost; to say, "the weak-
ness of the sex/* as to judgment, would be nonsense: for
isgo DANIEL DEFOE
ignorance and folly would be no more to be found among women
than men. I remember a passage which I heard from a very-
fine woman; she had wit and capacity enough, an extraordinary
shape and face, and a great fortune, but had been cloistered up
all her time, and, for fear of being stolen, had not had the liberty
of being taught the common necessary knowledge of women's af-
fairs; and when she came to converse in the world her natural
wit made her so sensible of the want of education that she gave
this short reflection on herself: —
" I am ashamed to talk with my very maids, ** says she, ** for
don't know when they do right or wrong: I had more need go
to school than be married.**
I need not enlarge on the loss the defect of education is to
the sex, nor argue the benefit of the contrary practice; it is a
thing that will be more easily granted than remedied: this chap-
ter is but an essay at the thing, and I refer the practice to
those happy days, if ever they shall be, when men shall be wise
enough to mend it.
From essays «Upon Projects. »
JEAN LOUIS DELOLME
(1 740- 1 806)
^^^^9ean Louis DeLolme, was born at Geneva, Switzerland, uj
W^^i 1740. and educated for the bar. After beginning the practice
s!^^^ of his profession, he wrote a treatise, ** Examen des Trois
Points des Droits,^* for which he was driven into exile by the Swiss
authorities. To this fortunate circumstance the world is indebted for
his celebrated work on ^< The Constitution of England.*^ After leaving
Switzerland he spent many years in England, earning his livelihood
as a newspaper writer, and studying English institutions from the
standpoint of a lawyer and philosopher, uninfluenced by the preju-
dice, which almost necessarily governs much of what a publicist
writes of the institutions of his own country. When DeLolme had
an opportunity to return to Switzerland in 1775, his poverty was such
that he was obliged to accept aid from a charitable society for the
expenses of his journey. His ^^ La Constitution de I'Angleterre,'^ ap-
peared first in French at Amsterdam in 1771, but an ^^mproved '^
English edition followed in 1772. DeLolme wrote ^< A History of
the Flagellants^' and a number of other works, but is remembered
chiefly as the author of ^^The Constitution of England. >>
POWER OF PUBLIC OPINION
AS THE evils that may be complained of in a State do not
always arise merely from the defect of the laws, but also
from the nonexecution of them, — and this nonexecution
of such a kind, that it is often impossible to subject it to any
express punishment, or even to ascertain it by any previous defi-
nition,— men, in several States, have been led to seek for an
expedient that might supply the unavoidable deficiency of legis-
lative provisions, and begin to operate, as it were, from the point
at which the latter begun to fail. I mean here to speak of the
censorial power, — a power which may produce excellent effects,
but the exercise of which (contrary to that of the legislative
power) must be left to the people themselves.
1292 JEAN LOUIS DELOLME
As the proposed end of legislation is not, according to what
has been above observed, to have the particular intentions of in-
dividuals, upon every case, known and complied with, but solely
to have what is most conducive to the public good, on the occa-
sions that arise, found out and established, it is not an essential
requisite in legislative operations that every individual should be
called upon to deliver his opinion: and since this expedient,
which at first sight appears so natural, of seeking out by the ad-
vice of all that which concerns all, is found liable, when carried
into practice, to the greatest inconveniences, we must not hesitate
to lay it aside entirely. But as it is the opinion of individuals
alone which constitutes the check of a censorial power, this
power cannot produce its intended effect any further than this
public opinion is made known and declared: the sentiments of
the people are the only thing in question here: it is therefore
necessary that the people should speak for themselves, and mani-
fest those sentiments. A particular court of censure would essen-
tially frustrate its intended "purpose: it is attended, besides, with
very great inconveniences.
As the use of such a court is to determine upon those cases
which lie out of the reach of the laws, it cannot be tied down to
any precise regulations. As a further consequence of the arbi-
trary nature of its functions, it cannot even be subjected to any
constitutional check; and it continually presents to the eye the
view of a power entirely arbitrary, and which in its different ex-
ertions may affect, in the most cruel manner, the peace and hap-
piness of individuals. It is attended, besides, with this very
pernicious consequence, that, by dictating to the people their
judgments of men or measures, it takes from them that freedom
of thinking which is the noblest privilege as well as the firmest
support of liberty.
We may therefore look upon it as a further proof of the
soundness of the principles on which the English constitution is
founded, that it has allotted to the people themselves the prov-
ince of openly canvassing and arraigning the conduct of those
who are invested with any branch of public authority; and that
it has .thus delivered into the hands of the people at large the
exercise of the censorial power. Every subject in England has
not only a right to present petitions to the king, or to the houses
of parliament, but he has a right also to lay his complaints and
observations before the public, by means of an open press: a
JEAN LOUIS DELOLME 1293
formidable right this, to those who rule mankind; and which, con-
tinually dispelling the cloud of majesty by which they are sur-
rounded, brings them to a level with the rest of the people, and
strikes at the very being of their authority.
And indeed this privilege is that which has been obtained by
the English nation with the greatest difficulty, and latest in point
of time, at the expense of the executive power. Freedom was
in every other respect already established, when the English were
still, with regard to the public expression of their sentiments, un-
der restraints that may be called despotic. History abounds with
instances of the severity of the Court of Star-Chamber, against
those who presumed to write on political subjects. It had fixed
the number of printers and printing presses, and appointed a
licenser, without whose approbation no book could be published.
Besides, as this tribunal decided matters by its own single au-
thority, without the intervention of a jury, it was always ready
to find those persons guilty whom the court was pleased to look
upon as such: nor was it indeed without ground, that the Chief-
Justice Coke, whose notions of liberty were somewhat tainted
with the prejudices of the times in which he lived, concluded
the eulogiums he bestowed on this court, with saying that, " the
right institution and orders thereof being observed, it doth keep
all England in quiet.*
After the Court of Star-Chamber had been abolished, the Long
Parliament, whose conduct and assumed power were little better
qualified to bear a scrutiny, revived the regulations against the
freedom of the press. Charles II., and after him James II., pro-
cured further renewals of them. These latter acts having ex-
pired in the year 1692, were at this era, although posterior to
the Revolution, continued for two years longer; so that it was
not till the year 1694, that, in consequence of the Parliament's
refusal to prolong the prohibitions, the freedom of the press (a
privilege which the executive power could not, it seems, prevail
upon itself to yield up to the people) was finally established.
In what, then, does this liberty of the press precisely consist?
Is it a liberty left to every one to publish any thing that comes
into his head ? — to calumniate, to blacken, whomsoever he pleases ?
No; the same laws that protect the person and the property of
the individual do also protect his reputation; and they decree
against libels, when really so, punishments of much the same
kind as ar« established in other countrie«. But, on the other
fagj: jean louis delolme
haR^. tney do not allow, as in other States, that a man should be
deemed guilty of a crime for merely publishing something in
print; and they appoint a punishment only against him who has
printed things that are in their nature criminal, and who is de-
clared guilty of so doing by twelve of his equals, appointed to
determine upon his case, with the precautions we have before
described.
The liberty of the press, as established in England, consists,
therefore (to define it more precisely), in this, — that neither the
courts of justice, nor any other judges whatever, are authorized
to take notice of writings intended for the press, but are confined
to those which are actually printed, and must, in these cases,
proceed by the trial by jury.
It is even this latter circumstance which more particularly
constitutes the freedom of the press. If the magistrates, though
confined in their proceedings to cases of criminal publications,
were to be the sole judges of the criminal nature of the things
published, it might easily happen that with regard to a point
which, like this, so highly excites the jealousy of the governing
powers, they would exert themselves with so much spirit and
perseverance, that they might at length succeed in completely
striking off all the heads of the hydra.
But whether the authority of the judges be exerted at the
motion of a private individual, or whether it be at the instance
of the government itself, their sole office is to declare the punish-
ment established by the law: it is to the jury alone that it belongs
to determine on the matter of law, as well as on the matter of
fact; that is, to determine not only whether the writing which is
the subject of the charge has real-ly been composed by the man
charged with having done it, and whether it be really meant of
the person named in the indictment, — but also whether its con-
tents are criminal.
And though the law in England does not allow a man, prose-
cuted for having published a libel, to offer to support by evidence
the truth of the facts contained in it (a mode of proceeding which
would be attended with very mischievous consequences, and is
everywhere prohibited), yet, as the indictment is to express that
the facts are false, malicious, etc., and the jury at the same time
are sole masters of their verdict, — that is, may ground it upon
what considerations they please, — it is very probable that they
would acquit the accused party if the fact, asserted in the writ-
JEAN LOUIS DELOLMB 1295
ing- before them, were matter of undoubted truth, and of a gen-
eral evil tendency. They at least would certainly have it in their
power.
And it is still more likely that this would be the case, if tne
conduct of the government itself were arraigned; because, beside
this conviction, which we suppose in the jury, of the certainty of
the facts, they would also be influenced by their sense of a prin-
ciple generally admitted in England, and which, in a late cele-
brated cause, was strongly insisted upon, viz., that ^* though to
speak ill of individuals deserved reprehension, yet the public acts
of government ought to lie open to public examination, and that
it was a service done to the State to canvass them freely.**
And indeed this extreme security with which every man in
England is enabled to communicate his sentiments to the public,
and the general concern which matters relative to the govern-
ment are always sure to create, have wonderfully multiplied all
kinds of public papers. Besides those which, being published at
the end of every year, month, or week, present to the reader a
recapitulation of every thing interesting that may have been
done or said during their respective periods, there are several
others, which, making their appearance every day, or every other
day, communicate to the public the several measures taken by
the government, as well as the different causes of any import-
ance, whether civil or criminal, that occur in the courts of jus-
tice, and sketches from the speeches either of the advocates, or
the judges, concerned in the management and decision of them.
During the time the Parliament continues sitting, the votes or
resolutions of the House of Commons are daily published by au-
thority; and the most interesting speeches in both houses are taken
down in shorthand, and communicated to the public in print.
Lastly, the private anecdotes in the metropolis and the coun-
try concur also towards filling the collection; and as the several
public papers circulate, or are transcribed into others, in the dif-
ferent country towns, and even find their way into the villages,
where every man, down to the laborer, peruses them with a sort
of eagerness, every individual thus becomes acquainted with the
atate of the nation, from one end to the other; and by these
means the general intercourse is such, that the three kingdoms
seem as if they were one single town.
And it is this public notoriety of all things that constitutes
the supplemental power, or check, which we have above said is
1296 JEAN LOUIS DELOLME
SO useful to remedy the unavoidable insufficiency of the laws, and
keep within their respective bounds all those persons who enjoy
any share of public authority.
As they are thereby made sensible that all their actions are
exposed to public view, they dare not venture upon those acts of
partiality, those secret connivances at the iniquities of particular
persons, or those vexatious practices which the man in office is
but too apt to be guilty of, when, exercising his office at a dis-
tance from the public eye, and as it were in a corner, he is satis-
fied that, provided he be cautious, he may dispense with being
just. Whatever may be the kind of abuse in which persons in
power may, in such a state of things, be tempted to indulge
themselves, they are convinced that their irregularities will be
immediately divulged. The juryman, for example, knows that his
verdict — the judge, that his direction to the jury — will presently
be laid before the public: and there is no man in office but who
thus finds himself compelled, in almost every instance, to choose
between his duty and the surrender of all his former reputa-
tion.
It will, I am aware, be thought that I speak in too high terms
of the effects produced by the public newspapers. I indeed con-
fess that all the pieces contained in them are not patterns of
good reasoning, or of the truest Attic wit; but, on the other hand,
it scarcely ever happens that a subject, in which the laws, or in
general the public welfare, are really concerned, fails to call forth
some able writer, who, under some form or other, communicates
to the public his observations and complaints. I shall add here,
that, though an upright man, laboring for a while under a strong
popular prejudice, may, supported by the consciousness of his in-
nocence, endure with patience the severest imputations; the guilty
man, hearing nothing in the reproaches of the public but what
he knows to be true, and already upbraids himself with, is very
far from enjoying any such comfort; and that, when a man's
own conscience takes part against him, the most despicable weapon
is sufficient to wound him to the quick.
Even those persons whose greatness seems most to set them
above the reach of public censure are not those who least feel
its effects They have need of the suffrages of the vulgar whom
they affect to despise, and who are, after all, the dispensers of
that glory which is the real object of their ambitious cares.
Though all have not so much sincerity as Alexander, they have
JKAN LOUIS DELOLME 1297
equal reason to exclaim, — O people ! what toils do we not
undergo, in order to gain your applause!
I confess that in a state where the people dare not speak
their sentiments but with a view to please the ears of their rul-
ers, it is possible that either the prince, or those to whom he has
trusted his authority, may sometimes mistake the nature of the
public sentiments; or that, for want of that affection of which
they are denied all possible marks, they may rest contented with
inspiring terror, and make themselves amends in beholding the
overawed multitudes smother their complaints.
But when the law gives a full scope to the people for the
expression of their sentiments, those who govern cannot conceal
from themselves the disagreeable truths which resound from all
sides. They are obliged to put up even with ridicule; and the
coarsest jests are not always those which give them the least
uneasiness. Like the lion in the fable, they must bear the blows
of those enemies whom they despise the most; and they are, at
length, stopped short in their career, and compelled to give up
those unjust pursuits which, they find, draw upon them, instead
of that admiration which is the proposed end and reward of their
labors, nothing but mortification and disgust.
In short, whoever considers what it is that constitutes the
moving principle of what we call great affairs, and the invincible
sensibility of man to the opinion of his fellow-creatures, will not
hesitate to affirm that if it were possible for the liberty of the
press to exist in a despotic government, and (what is not less
difficult) for it to exist without changing the constitution, this
liberty would alone form a counterpoise to the power of the
prince. If, for example, in an empire of the East, a place could
be found which, rendered respectable by the ancient religion of
the people, might ensure safety to those who should bring thither
their observations of any kind, and from this sanctuary printed
papers should issue, which, under a certain seal, might be equally
respected, and which in their daily appearance should examine
and freely discuss the conduct of the cadis, the pashas, the vizir,
the divan, and the sultan himself, — that would immediately intro-
duce some degree of liberty.
Chapter xii. of «The Constitution of
England, >> complete.
IV — 82
JOSEPH DENNIE
(1768-1812)
/^^^^ARLiER American essayists have been so completely eclipsed
^Ff^^ by Washington Irving that, with one or two notable excep-
^^*!^^ tions, they are hardly remembered even by name. It is
almost, if not quite, true that the American prose which is entitled
to rank as ** literature," because of strong individuality and grace of
style, begins with Irving. But he was an evolution, rather than a sud-
den, isolated, and miraculous phenomenon. The school of Addison, in
which he was the first American ""honor-graduate," had many pupils in
the Colonies as well as after the Revolution. Among the more influen-
tial of the post-colonial periodical essayists was Joseph Dennie, born in
Boston, August 30th, 1768; died in Philadelphia, January 7th, 18 12.
In 1795 he published his first book, « The Farrago." From 1796 to
1798 he edited the Farmers' Weekly Museum, at Walpole, New
Hampshire, and began in it the publication of a series of essays from
"The Lay Preacher." At about the same time he published a collec-
tion in book form under the same title, and a second collection ap-
peared in 1817. In 1801 he founded the Portfolio in Philadelphia. He
was a man of vigorous intellect, and his failure to perpetuate himself
as one of the permanent forces of American literature is explained
by combative habits which, as they influence his essays, make them
valuable chiefly to antiquarians and students of history-making pre-
judices.
ON JEFFERSON AND FRENCH PHILOSOPHY
A PHILOSOPHER, in the modern sense of the word, I would de-
fine a presumptuous mortal, proudly spurning at old systems,
and promptly inventing new. Be the materials ever so
naught, be their connection ever so slight, be the whole ever so
''•sjointed and crazy, if it be new, these confident architects will
sw^ear that their building will accommodate you better than any
that you have previously used. To catch the eye and abuse the
credulity of wondering fools, the puppet-show philosopher exhibits
his scheme, gorgeously painted and gloriously illuminated, and
JOSEPH DENNIE Ia99
bellows all the time in praise of his varnished ware. The whole
is artfully calculated to captivate and charm all, except those few
who are not suddenly delighted with such representations, who
know of what stuff they are made, for what purposes they arc
intended, and in what they are sure invariably to end. Such
men gaze only to deride. But laugh as you please, the philoso-
phers find in human nature such a fund of credulity, that be
their draughts large as they may, no protest is anticipated. It is
a bank, not merely of discount but deposit, and bolstered up by
all the credit of the great body corporate of all the weakness in
the world The moment that a man arrives in this fairy and
chivalric land of French philosophy, he beholds at every creek
and corner something to dazzle and surprise, but nothing stead-
fast or secure. The surface is slippery, and giants, and dwarfs,
and wounded knights and distressed damsels abound. Nor are
enchanters wanting; and they are the philosophers themselves.
They will, in a twinkling, conjure away kingdoms, chain a
prince's daughter in a dungeon, and give to court pages, lackeys,
and all those *^ airy nothings *^ " a local habitation and a name. *
If the adventurer in this fantastic region be capriciously weary
of his old mansion, the philosophic enchanters will quickly fur-
nish a choice of castles, ^* roughly rushing to the skies." They
are unstable, it is true, and comfortless, and cold, and cemented
with blood, but show spaciously at a distance, with portcullis most
invitingly open for the free and equal admission of all mankind.
Those who have been professors of the new philosophy of
France, and their servile devotees in America, taint everything
they touch. Like the dead insect in the ointment, they cause
the whole to send forth an odious and putrid savor. Instead of
viewing man as he is, they are continually forming plans for
man as he should be. Nothing established, nothing common, is
admitted into their systems. They invert all the rules of adapta-
tion. They wish to fashion nature and society in their whimsical
mold, instead of regulating that mold according to the propor-
tions of society and nature.
To men of the complexion of Condorcet and his associates,
most of the miseries of France may be ascribed. Full of para-
dox, recent from wire-drawing in the schools, and with mind all
begrimed from the Cyclops cave of metaphysics, behold a Sieyes,
in the form of a politician, draughting, currente calamo, three
\undred constitutions in a day, and not one of them fit for use,
1300 JOSEPH DENNIE
but delusive as a mountebank's bill, and bloody as the habili-
ments of a Banquo.
Of this dangerous, deistical, and Utopian school, a great per-
sonage from Virginia is a favored pupil. His Gallic masters
stroke his head, and pronounce him forward and promising.
Those who sit in the same form cheerfully and reverently allow
him to be the head of his class. In allusion to the well mar-
shaled words of a great orator, him they worship; him they
emulate ; his * notes '^ they con over all the time they can spare
from the " Aurora ^^ of the morning, or French politics at night.
The man has talents, but they are of a dangerous and delu-
sive kind. He has read much, and can write plausibly. He is
a man of letters, and should be a retired one. His closet, and
not the cabinet, is his place. In the first he might harmlessly
examine the teeth of a nondescript monster, the secretions of an
African, or the Almanac of Banneker. At home he might catch
a standard of weight from the droppings of his eaves, and, seated
in his epicurean chair, laugh at Moses and the prophets, and
wink against the beams of the Sun of Righteousness. At the
seat of government his abstract, inapplicable, metaphysico-poHtics
are either nugatory or noxious. Besides, his principles relish so
strongly of Paris, and are seasoned with such a profusion of
French garlic that he offends the whole nation. Better for Ameri-
cans that on their extended plains « thistles should grow instead
of wheat, and cockle instead of barley, » than that a « philosopher »
should influence the councils of the country, and that his admira-
tion of the works of Voltaire and Helvetius should induce him
to wish a closer connection with Frenchmen. When a meta-
physical and Gallic government obtains in America, may the pen
drop from the hand and « the arm fall from the shoulder blade »
of The Lay Preacher.
From «The Lay Preacher* in the
Portfolio 1 801.
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
(1785-1859)
?E Quincey's essay on << The Pains of Opium >' gives him a
miique place among English essayists. In it he surpassed
himself as far as he did every other writer of luminous de-
scription. His longer critical essays are often prolix past the limits of
pardonable dullness, and in criticism he is not infrequently arrogant as
well as dull. But what may not be pardoned to the author of such a
masterpiece — unequaled and inimitable because it is so evidently an
attempt at g.enuine description of actual suffering! French ^^degen-
erates " who have eaten hashish or opium for the express purpose of
imitating it might have succeeded had they been equipped before-
hand with De Quincey's brain to be acted on by the drug. As they
were not, the essay remains unique — as it should remain, for one of
its class is certainly <* enough for nature and for glory.*^
In his essay on *^ Anecdotage '^ De Quincey is at his worst as well
as at his best, for in reviewing Miss Hawkins's book of ^* Anecdotes*
he borrows from her all the material he needs to make his own essay
interesting, and then, following a habit of the reviewers of the time,
he exhibits his own superiority at the expense of her faults, labori-
ously exhibited for that purpose. He is much happier in his Shakes-
pearean criticisms. The essay ^^On the Knocking at the Gate in
Macbeth >' stands at the head of its class, and in *The Loveliest
Sight for Woman's Eyes* he illustrates the tenderer mood of his
later years.
It is not easy to guess where the twentieth century at its close
will place De Quincey among the essay writers of the nineteenth.
He cannot rank with Macaulay or Taine as a master of style, but in
**The Pains of Opium* he surpasses without effort the highest re-
sults of Carlyle's attempts at phosphorescent prose, and none of the
mere strivers after the picturesque are to be cotnpared to him. He
lacked only one thing of greatness — nirtus!
He was born August 15th, 1785, near Manchester, England. His
father, a wealthy merchant, educated him at the best schools and
at Oxford, but he seems to have owed more to the peculiar physique
and temperament of genius than to his masters. As a child he was
** shy and sensitive,* — with a nervous organization so fine and sus-
ceptible that he learned difficult languages as children with "a musi^
i:},0) THOMAS DE QUINCEY
cal ear * learn music. At thirteen *' he wrote Greek with ease ; at
fifteen he not only composed Greek verses in lyric measures, but
could converse in Greek fluently and without embarrassment.'^ Per-
haps it may have been true of him as one of his masters said : << That
boy could harang-ue an Athenian mob better than you or I could ad-
dress an English one.* Almost every great poet, great orator, or
great writer of memorable prose, has had this faculty, It is not a
disease, as some have supposed who have called it "hyperaesthesia,*
but it is the natural condition of unspoiled nerves, co-related in poets
and writers with the musical ear in musicians, and capable, in its re-
actions against abuse, of producing such suffering as that De Quin-
cey describes in << The Pains of Opium.*' The blindness of Homer and
of Milton, the madness of Swift, the early death of Byron and of
Keats, — these are not symptoms of disease, but merely certain assur-
^nces that men born with the nervous system which belongs to uni-
versal human nature in its ultimate perfection cannot live on the
moral and intellectual plane of the generation into which they are
born, except at the expense of torture and the risk of death.
After leaving the university De Quincey was dependent on his
pen for a livelihood, and his ^* Confessions of an Opium Eater '' were
first published as contributions to the London Magazine. When re-
published in book form in 182 1, they gave him almost immediately
the high rank as a prose writer he has since held. He died De-
cember 8th, 1859, and some of his best essays were published post-
humously. W. V. B.
ON THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE IN «MACBETH»
FROM my boyish days I had always felt a great perplexity on
one point in "Macbeth." It was this: the knocking at the
gate, which succeeds to the murder of Duncan, produced to
my feelings an effect for which I never could account. The
effect was, that it reflected back upon the murderer a peculiar
awfulness and a depth of solemnity; yet however obstinately I
endeavored with my understanding to comprehend this, for many
years I never could see why it should produce such an effect.
Here I pause for one moment, to exhort the reader never to
pay any attention to his understanding, when it stands in oppo-
sition to any other faculty of his mind. The mere understanding,
however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the
human mind, and the most to be distrusted; and yet the great
majority of people trust to nothing else, which may do for
THOMAS DE QUINCBY 130^
ordinary life, but not for philosophical purposes. Of this out of
ten thousand instances that I might produce, I will cite one.
Ask of any person whatsoever, who is not previously prepared
for the demand by a knowledge of the perspective, to draw in
the rudest way the commonest appearance which depends upon
the laws of that science; as, for instance, to represent the effect
of two walls standing at right angles to each other, or the
appearance of the houses on each side of a street, as seen by a
person looking down the street from one extremity. Now in all
cases, unless the person has happened to observe in pictures how
it is that artists produce these effects, he will be utterly unable
to make the smallest approximation to it. Yet why ? For he has
actually seen the effect every day of his life. The reason is —
that he allows his understanding to overrule his eyes. His
understanding, which includes no intuitive knowledge of the laws
of vision, can furnish him with no reason why a line which is
known and can be proved to be a horizontal line, should not
appear a horizontal line ; a line that made any angle with the per-
pendicular, less than a right angle, would seem to him to indicate
that his houses were all tumbling down together. Accordingly,
he makes the line of his houses a horizontal line, and fails, of
course, to produce the effect demanded. Here, then, is one in-
stance out of many, in which not only the understanding is
allowed to overrule the eyes, but where the understanding is
positively allowed to obliterate the eyes, as it were; for not only
does the man believe the evidence of his understanding in oppo-
sition to that of his eyes, but (what is monstrous!) the idiot is
not aware that his eyes ever gave such evidence. He does not
know that he has seen (and therefore quoad his consciousness has
not seen) that which he has seen every day of his life.
But to return from this digression, my understanding could
furnish no reason why the knocking at the gate in ^^ Macbeth *
should produce any effect, direct or reflected. In fact, my under-
standing said positively that it could not produce any effect.
But I knew better: I felt that it did; and I waited and clung to
the problem until further knowledge should enable me to solve
it. At length, in 1812, Mr. Williams made his d6but on the stage
of Ratcliff Highway, and executed those unparalleled murders
which have procured for him. such a brilliant and unaymg repu-
tation. On which murders, by the way, I must observe, that in
>ne respect they have had an ill effect, by making the connoisseur
1304 THOMAS DE QUINCEY
in murder very fastidious in his taste, and dissatisfied by anything
that has been since done in that line. All other murders look
pale by the deep crimson of his; and, as an amateur once said to
me in a querulous tone, ^' There has been absolutely nothing doing
since his time, or nothing that's worth speaking of. '^ But this is
wrong; for it is unreasonable to expect all men to be great
artists, and born with the genius of Mr. Williams. Now it will
be remembered that in the first of these murders (that of the
Marrs), the same incident (of a knocking at the door, soon after
the work of extermination was complete) did actually occur,
which the genius of Shakespeare has invented; and all good
judges, and the most eminent dilettanti, acknowledged the felicity
of Shakespeare's suggestion, as soon as it was actually realized.
Here, then, was a fresh proof that I was right in relying on my
own feeling, in opposition to my understanding; and I again set
myself to study the problem; at length I solved it to my own
satisfaction, and my solution is this: Murder, in ordinary cases,
where the sympathy is wholly directed to the case of the mur-
dered person, is an incident of coarse and vulgar horror; and for
this reason that it flings the interest exclusively upon the natural
but ignoble instinct by which we cleave to life; an instinct which,
as being indispensable to the primal law of self-preservation, is
the same in kind (though different in degree) amongst all living
creatures: this instinct, therefore, because it annihilates all dis-
tinctions, and degrades the greatest of men to the level of ^* the
poor beetle that we tread upon,'^ exhibits human nature in its
most abject and humiliating attitude. Such an attitude would
little suit the purposes of the poet. What then must he do ? He
must throw the interest on the murderer. Our sympathy must
be with him (of course, I mean a sympathy of comprehension, a
sympathy by which we enter into his feelings, and are made to
understand them — not a sympathy of pity or approbation). In
the murdered person, all strife of thought, all flux and reflux of
passion and of purpose, are crushed by one overwhelming panic;
the fear of instant death smites him "with its petrific mace.*
But in d murderer, such a murderer as a poet will condescend to,
there must be raging some great storm of passion — jealousy,
ambition, vengeance, hatred — which will create a hell within
him; and into this hell we are to look.
In ^* Macbeth,'* for the sake of gratifying his own enormous and
teeming faculty of creation, Shakespeare has introduced two mur-
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 130^
aerers; and, as usual in his hands, they are remarkably discrimi-
nated; but, though in Macbeth the strife of mind is greater than
in his wife, the tiger spirit not so awake, and his feelings caught
chiefly by contagion from her — yet, as both were finally involved
in the guilt of murder, the murderous mind of necessity is finally
to be presumed in both. This was to be expressed; and on its
own account, as well as to make it a more proportionable antag-
onist to the unoffending nature of their victim, ^^ the gracious
Duncan,'^ and adequately to expound *^ the deep damnation of his
taking off,^^ this was to be expressed with peculiar energy. We
were to be made to feel that the human nature, i. e., the divine
nature of love and mercy, spread through the hearts of all crea-
tures, and seldom utterly withdrawn from man — was gone, van-
ished, extinct! and that the fiendish nature had taken its place.
And, as this effect is marvelously accomplished in the dialogues
and soliloquies themselves, so it is finally consummated by the
expedient under consideration : and it is to this that I now solicit
the reader's attention. If the reader has ever witnessed a wife,
daughter, or sister in a fainting fi.t, he may chance to have ob-
served that the most affecting moment in such a spectacle is that
in which a sigh and a stirring announce the recommencement of
suspended life. Or, if the reader has ever been present in a
vast metropolis on the day when some great national idol was
carried in funeral pomp to his grave, and chancing to walk near
the course through which it passed, has felt powerfully in the
silence and desertion of the streets, and in the stagnation of or-
dinary business, the deep interest which at that moment was
possessing the heart of man — if all at once he should hear the
deathlike stillness broken up by the sound of wheels rattling
away from the scene, and making known that the transitory vi-
sion was dissolved, he will be aware that at no moment was his
sense of the complete suspension and pause in ordinary human con-
cerns so full and affecting as at that moment when the suspension
ceases, and the goings-on of human life are suddenly resumed.
All action in any direction is best expounded, measured, and
made apprehensible by reaction. Now, apply this to the case in
" Macbeth. '^ Here, as I have said, the retiring of the human heart,
and the entrance of the fiendish heart was to be expressed and
made sensible. Another world has stepped in; and the murderers
are taken out of the region of human things, human purposes,
i3oG THOMAS DE QUINCE Y
human desires. They are transfigured: Lady Macbeth is "* un-
sexed*; Macbeth has forgot that he was born of woman; both
are conformed to the image of devils; and the world of devils is
suddenly revealed. But how shall this be conveyed and made
palpable ? In order that a new world may step in, this world
must for a time disappear. The murderers and the murder must
be insulated — cut off by an immeasurable gulf from the ordinary
tide and succession of human affairs — locked up and sequestered
in some deep recess; we must be made sensible that the world
of ordinary life is suddenly arrested — laid asleep — tranced — racked
into a dread armistice; time must be annihilated; relation to
things without abolished; and all must pass self- withdrawn into
a deep syncope and suspension of earthly passion. Hence it is,
that, when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is per-
fect, then the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in
the clouds: the knocking at the gate is heard; and it makes
known audibly that the reaction has commenced : the human has
made its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are begin-
ning to beat again; and the re-establishment of the goings-on of
the world in which we live first makes us profoundly sensible of
the awful parenthesis that had suspended them.
O mighty poet! Thy works are not as those of other men,
simply and merely great works of art: but are also like the phe-
nomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars and the
flowers; like frost and snow, rain and dew, hailstorm and thun-
der, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own
faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be no
too much or too little, nothing useless or inert — but that, the
further we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs
of design and self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye
had seen nothing but accident!
Complete.
THOMAS DE QUINCEY I307
THE PAINS OF OPIUM
as when some great painter dips
His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.
— Shelley's '•'-Revolt of Jslam."^
EADER, who have thus far accompanied me, I must requtst
your attention to a brief explanatory note on three points: —
I. For several reasons I have not been able to compose.
the notes for this part of my narrative into any regular and con-
nected shape. I give the notes disjointed as I find them, or have
now drawn them up from memory. Some of them point to theiir
own date; some I have dated; and some are undated. Whenever
it could answer my purpose to transplant them from the natural
or chronological order, I have not scrupled to do so. Sometimes
I speak in the present, sometimes in the past tense. Few of the
notes, perhaps, were written exactly at the period of time to
which they relate; but this can little affect their accuracy, as the
impressions were such that they can never fade from my mind.
Much has been omitted. I could not, without effort, constrain
myself to the task of either recalling, or constructing into a reg-
ular narrative, the whole burden of horrors which lies upon my
brain. This feeling, partly, I plead in excuse, and partly that \
am not in London, and am a helpless sort of person who cannot
even arrange his own papers without assistance; and I am sepa-
rated from the hands which are wont to perform for me the
offices of an amanuensis.
2. You will think, perhaps, that I am too confidential and
communicative of my own private history. It may be so. But my
way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own hai-
mors than much to consider who is listening to me; and if I
stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person,
I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.
The fact is, I place myself at a distance of fifteen or twenty
years ahead of this time, and suppose myself writing to those
who will be interested about me hereafter; and wishing to have
some record of a time, the entire history of which no one can
know but myself, I do it as fully as I am able vnth the efforts
I am now capable of making, because I know not whether I can
ever find time to do it again.
1308 THOMAS DE QUINCEY
3. It will occur to you often to ask why did I not release
myself from the horrors of opium, by leaving it off, or diminish-
ing it. To this I must answer briefly; it might be supposed
that I yielded to the fascinations of opium too easily; it cannot
be supposed that any man can be charmed by its terrors. The
reader may be sure, therefore, that I made attempts innumerable
to reduce the quantity. I add, that those who witnessed the
agonies of those attempts, and not myself, were the first to beg
me to desist. But could not I have reduced it a drop a day, or,
by adding water, have bisected or trisected a drop f A thousand
drops bisected would thus have taken nearly six years to reduce;
and that they would certainly not have answered. But this is a
common mistake of those who know nothing of opium experi-
mentally; I appeal to those who do, whether it is not always
found that down to a certain point it can be reduced with ease,
and even pleasure, but that, after that point, further reduction
causes intense suffering. Yes, say many thoughtless persons, who
know not what they are talking of, you will suffer a little low
spirits and dejection, for a few days. I answer, No; there is
nothing like low spirits; on the contrary, the mere animal spirits
are uncommonly raised, the pulse is improved, the health is bet-
ter. It is not there that the suffering lies. It has no resem-
blance to the sufferings caused by renouncing wine. It is a
state of unutterable irritation of stomach (which surely is not
much like dejection), accompanied by intense perspirations, and
feelings such as I shall not attempt to describe without more
space at my command.
I shall now enter in medias res^ and shall anticipate, from a
time when my opium pains might be said to be at their acme,
an account of their palsying effects on the intellectual faculties.
My studies have now been long interrupted. I cannot read
to myself with any pleasure, hardly with a moment's endurance.
Yet I read aloud sometimes for the pleasure of others; because
reading is an accomplishment of mine, and, in the slang use of
the word accomplishment as a superficial and ornamental attain-
ment, almost the only one I possess; and formerly, if I had any
vanity at all connected with any endowment or attainment of
mine, it was with this; for I had observed that no accomplish-
ment was so rare. Players are the worst readers of all:
reads vilely; and Mrs, , who is so celebrated, can read noth-
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 1309
tng well but dramatic compositions; Milton she cannot read suf-
ferably. People in general either read poetry without any
passion at all, or else overstep the modesty of nature, and read
not like scholars. Of late, if I have felt moved by anything in
books, it has been by the grand lamentations of Samson Agon-
istes, or the great harmonies of the Satanic speeches in " Paradise
Regained,* when read aloud by myself. A young lady sometimes
comes and drinks tea with us; at her request and M.'s, I now
and then read Wordsworth's poems to them. (W., by the by, is
the only poet I ever met who could read his own verses; often,
indeed, he reads admirably.)
For nearly two years I believe that I read no book but one;
and I owe it to the author, in discharge of a great debt of
gratitude, to mention what that was. The sublimer and more
passionate poets I still read, as I have said, by snatches, and oc-
casionally. But my proper vocation, as I well knew, was the
exercise of the analytic understanding. Now, for the most part,
analytic studies are continuous, and not to be pursued by fits
and starts, or fragmentary efforts. Mathematics, for instance,
intellectual philosophy, etc., were all become insupportable to
me; I shrunk from them with a sense of powerless and infantine
feebleness that, gave me an anguish the greater from remember-
ing the time when I grappled with them to my own hourly de-
light; and for this further reason, because I had devoted the
labor of my whole life, and had dedicated my intellect, blossoms,
and fruits, to the slow and elaborate toil of constructing one
single work, to which I had presumed to give the title of an un-
finished work of Spinoza's, namely, ^* De Emendatione Humani
Intellectus. * This was now lying locked up as by frost, like any
Spanish bridge or aqueduct, begun upon too great a scale for
the resources of the architect; and, instead of surviving me as a
monument of wishes at least, and aspirations, and a life of labor
dedicated to the exaltation of human nature in that way in which
God had best fitted me to promote so great an object, it was
likely to stand a memorial to my children of hopes defeated, of
baffled efforts, of materials uselessly accumulated, of foundations
laid that were never to support a superstructure, of the grief
and the ruin of the architect. In this state of imbecility, I had,
for amusement, turned my attention to political economy; my
understanding, which formerly had been as active and restless as
a hyena, could not, I suppose (so long as I lived at all), sink
13 lO THOMAS DE QUINCEY
into Utter lethargy; and political economy offers this advantage
to a person in my state, that though it is eminently an organic
science (no part, that is to say, but what acts on the whole, as
the whole again reacts on each part), yet the several parts maj^-
be detached and contemplated singly. Great as was the prostra-
tion of my powers at this time, yet I could not forget my knowl-
edge; and my understanding had been for too many years
intimate with severe thinkers, with logic, and the great masters
of knowledge, not to be aware of the utter feebleness of the
main herd of modem economists. I had been led in 1811 to
ook into loads of books and pamphlets on many branches of
economy; and, at my desire, M. sometimes read to me chapters
from more recent works, or parts of parliamentary debates. I
saw that these were generally the very dregs and rinsings of thie
human intellect; and that any man of sound head, and practiced
in wielding logic with scholastic adroitness, might take up the
whole academy of modern economists, and throttle them between
heaven and earth with his finger and thumb, or bray their fun-
gous heads to powder with a lady's fan. At length, in 1819, ^
friend in Edinburgh sent me down Mr. Ricardo's book; and, re-
curring to my own prophetic anticipation of the advent of some
legislator for this science, I said, before I had finished the first
chapter, ^* Thou art the man ! '' Wonder and curiosity were emo-
tions that had long been dead to me. Yet I wondered once
more: I wondered at myself that I could once again be stimu-
lated to the effort of reading; and much more I wondered at the
book. Had this profound work been really written in England
during the nineteenth century ? Was it possible ? I supposed
thinking had been extinct in England. Could it be that an
Englishman, and he not in academic bowers, but oppressed by
mercantile and senatorial cares, had accomplished what all the
universities of Europe, and a century of thought, had failed even
to advance by one hair's breadth ? All other writers had been
crushed and overlaid by the enormous weights of facts and docu-
ments; Mr. Ricardo had deduced, h priori^ from the understand-
ing itself, laws which first gave a ray of light into the unwieldy
chaos of materials, and had constructed what had been but a col-
lection of tentative discussions into a science of regular propor-
tions, now first standing on an eternal basis.
Thus did one simple work of a profound understanding avail
to give me a pleasure and an activity which I had not known
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 1311
for years; it roused me even to write, or at least to dictate what
M. wrote for me. It seemed to me that some important truths
had escaped even ** the inevitable eye '^ of Mr. Ricardo ; and as
these were for the most part of such a nature that I could ex-
press or illustrate them more briefly and elegantly by algebrai*
symbols than in the usual clumsy and loitering diction of econ-
omists, the whole would not have filled a pocketbook; and be-
ing so brief, with M. for my amanuensis, even at this time,
incapable as I was of all general exertion, I drew up my ^* Prole-
gomena to All Future Systems of Political Economy. » I hope it
will not be found redolent of opium; though, indeed, to most
people the subject itself is a sufficient opiate.
This exertion, however, was but a temporary flash, as the se-
quel showed; for I designed to publish my work. Arrangements
were made at a provincial press, about eighteen miles distant,
for printing it. An additional compositor was retained for some
days on this account. The work was even twice advertised; and
I was in a manner pledged to the fulfillment of my intention.
But I had a preface to write; and a dedication, which I wished
to make a splendid one, to Mr. Ricardo. I found myself quite
unable to accomplish all this. The arrangements were counter-
manded, the compositor dismissed, and my ** Prolegomena '' rested
peacefully by the side of its elder and more dignified brother.
I have thus described and illustrated my intellectual torpor in
terms that apply more or less to every part of the four years
during which I was under the Circean spells of opium. But for
misery and suffering, I might, indeed, be said to have existed in
a dormant state. I seldom could prevail on myself to write a
le^tter; an answer of a few words to any that I received was the
utmost that I could accomplish; and often that not until the let-
ter had lain weeks, or even months, on my writing table. With-
out the aid of M., all records of bills paid, or to be paid, must
have perished; and my whole domestic economy, whatever be-
came of political economy, must have gone into irretrievable con-
fusion. I shall not afterwards allude to this part of the case; it
is one, however, which the opium eater will find in the end as
oppressive and tormenting as any other, from the sense of inca-
pacity and feebleness, from the direct embarrassments incident
to the neglect or procrastination of each day's appropriate duties,
and from the remorse which must often exasperate the stings of
\hese evils to a reflective and conscientious mind. The opium
1312 THOMAS DE QUINCEY
eater loses none of his moral sensibilities or aspirations; he wishes
and longs as earnestly as ever to realize what he believes possi-
ble, and feels to be exacted by duty; but his intellectual appre-
hension of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of
execution only, but even of power to attempt. He lies under the
weight of incubus and nightmare; he lies in sight of all that he
would fain perform, just as a man forcibly confined to his bed
by the mortal languor of a relaxing disease who is compelled to
witness injury or outrage offered to some object of his tenderest
love: — he curses the spells which chain him down from motion;
he would lay down his life if he might but get up and walk; but
he is powerless as an infant, and cannot even attempt to rise.
I now pass to what is the main subject of these latter con-
fessions,— -'to the history and journal of what took place in my
dreams; for these were the immediate and proximate cause of
my acutest suffering.
The first notice I had of any important change going on in
this part of my physical economy was from the re-awaking of a
state of eye generally incident to childhood, or exalted states of
irritability. I know not whether my reader is aware that many
children, perhaps most, have a power of painting, as it were,
upon the darkness, all sorts of phantoms: in some that power is
simply a mechanic affection of the eye; others have a voluntary
or semi- voluntary power to dismiss or summon them; or as a
child once said to me when I questioned him on this matter, ^* I
can tell them to go, and they go; but sometimes they come when
I don't tell them to come.'^ Whereupon I told him that he had
almost as unlimited a command over apparitions as a Roman
centurion over his soldiers. In the middle of 1817, I think it
was that this faculty became positively distressing to me: at
night, when I lay awake in bed, vast processions passed along in
mournful pomp; friezes of never-ending stories, that to my feel-
ings were as sad and solemn as if they were stories drawn ffom
times before Gildipus or Priam, before Tyre, before Memphis.
And, at the same time, a corresponding change took place in my
dreams; a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within
my brain, which presented, nightly, spectacles of more than
earthly splendor. And the four following facts may be men-
tioned as noticeable at this time : —
I. That, as the creative state of the eye increased, a sympa-
thy seemed to arise between the waking and the dreaming states
THOMAS DE QUINCE Y 1313
of the brain in one point, — that whatsoever I happened to call
up and to trace by a voluntary act upon the darkness was very
apt to transfer itself to my dreams; so that I feared to exer-
cise this faculty; for, as Midas turned all things to gold, that
yet baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires, so
whatsoever things capable of being visually represented I did
but think of in the darkness immediately shaped themselves into
phantoms of the eye; and, by a process apparently no less in-
evitable, when thus once traced in faint and visionary colors,
like writings in sympathetic ink, they were drawn out, by the
fierce chemistry of my dreams, into insufferable splendor that
fretted my heart.
II. For this, and all other changes in my dreams, were ac-
companied by deep-seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such
as are wholly incommunicable by words. I seemed every night
to descend — not metaphorically, but literally to descend — into
chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it
seemed hopeless that I could ever reascend. Nor did I, by wak-
ing, feel that I had reascended. This I do not dwell upon; be-
cause the state of gloom which attended these gorgeous spectacles,
amounting at least to utter darkness, as of some suicidal despon-
dency, cannot be approached by words.
III. The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time,
were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, etc., were
exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to
receive. Space swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unut-
terable infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as
the vast expansion of time. I sometimes seemed to have lived
for seventy or one hundred years in one night; nay, sometimes
had feelings representative of a millennium, passed in that time;
or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human
experience.
IV. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten scenes
of later years, were often revived. I could not be said to recol-
lect them; for if I had been told of them when waking, I should
not have been able to acknowledge them as parts of my past ex-
perience. But placed as they were before me, in dreams like in-
tuitions, and clothed in all their evanescent circumstances and
accompanying feelings, I recognized them instantaneously. I was
once told by a near relative of mine, that having in her child-
hood fallen into a stupor, and being on the verge of death but
IV— 83
13 14 THOMAS DE QUINCEY
for the critical assistance which reached her, she saw in a mo-
ment her whole life, in its minutest incidents, arrayed before her
simultaneously as in a mirror; and she had a faculty developed
as suddenly for comprehending the whole and every part. This,
from some opium experiences of mine, I can believe; I have, in-
deed, seen the same thing asserted twice in modern books, and
accompanied by a remark which I am convinced is true, namely,
that the dread book of account, which the Scriptures speak of,
is, in fact, the mind itself of each individual. Of this, at least, I
feel assured, that there is no such thing as forgetting possible to
the mind; a thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil be-
tween our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on
the mind. Accidents of the same sort will also rend away this
veil ; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains
forever; just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common
light of day, whereas, in fact, we all know that it is the light
which is drawn over them as a veil; and that they are waiting
to be revealed, when the obscuring daylight shall have withdrawn.
Having noticed these four facts as memorably distinguishing
my dreams from those of health, I shall now cite a case illustra-
tive of the first fact; and shall then cite any others that I re-
member, either in their chronological order, or any other that
may give them more effect as pictures to the reader.
I had been in youth, and ever since, for occasional amuse-
ment, a great reader of Livy, whom I confess that I prefer, both
for style and matter, to any other of the Roman historians; and
I had often felt as most solemn and appalling sounds, and most
emphatically representative of the majesty of the Roman people,
the two words so often occurring in Livy — Consul Romanus ; es-
pecially when the consul is introduced in his military character.
I mean to say that the words king, sultan, regent, etc., or any
other titles of those who embody in their own persons the col-
lective majesty of a great people, had less power over my rever-
ential feelings. I had, also, though no great reader of history,
made myself minutely and critically familiar with one period of
English history, namely, the period of the Parliamentary War,
having been attracted by the moral grandeur of some who figured
in that day, and by the many interesting memoirs which survive
those unquiet times. Both these parts of my lighter reading,
having furnished me often with matter of reflection, now furnish
me with matter for my dreams. Often I used to see, after paint-
THOMAS DE QUINCEY . I315
ing upon the blank darkness a sort of rehearsal whilst waking, a
crowd of ladies, and perhaps a festival and dances. And I heard
it said, or I said to myself, ^< These are English ladies from the
unhappy times of Charles I. These are the wives and daughters
of those who met in peace, and sat at the same tables, and were
allied by marriage or by blood; and yet, after a certain day in
August, 1642, neyer smiled upon each other again, nor met but
in the field of battle; and at Marston Moor, at Newbury, or at
Naseby, cut asunder all ties of love by the cruel sabre, and
washed away in blood the memory of ancient friendship.*^ The
ladies danced, and looked as lovely as the court of George IV.
Yet I knew, even in my dream, that they had been in the grave
for nearly two centuries. This pageant would suddenly dissolve;
and, at a clapping of hands, would be heard the heart-quaking
sound of Consul Romanus and immediately came ^* sweeping by,'*
in gorgeous paludaments, Paulus or Marius, girt around by a
company of centurions, with the crimson tunic hoisted on a spear,
and followed by the alalagmos of the Roman legions.
Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's "Antiqui-
ties of Rome,** Mr. Coleridge, who was standing by, described to
me a set of plates by that artist, called his " Dreams, ** and which
record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a
fever. Some of them (I describe only from memory of Mr. Cole-
ridge's account) represented vast Gothic halls; on the floor of
which stood all sorts of engines and machinery, wheels, cables,
pulleys, levers, catapults, etc., expressive of enormous power put
forth and resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the
walls, you perceive a staircase; and upon it, groping his way
upwards, was Piranesi himself. Follow the stairs a little further,
and you perceive it to come to a sudden, abrupt termination,
without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him
who had reached the extremity, except into the depths below.
Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi ? You suppose, at least,
that his labors must in some way terminate here. But raise
your eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs still higher; on
which again Piranesi is perceived, by this time standing on the
very brink of the abyss. Again elevate your eye, and a still
more aerial flight of stairs is beheld; and again is poor Piranesi
busy on his aspiring labors; and so on, until the unfinished stairs
and Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall. With
the same power of endless growth and self-reproduction did my
T3l6 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y
architecture proceed in dreams. In the early stage of my malady,
the splendor of my dreams was indeed chiefly architectural; and
I beheld such pomp of cities and palaces as was never yet be-
held by the waking eye, unless in the clouds. From a great
modern poet I cite the part of a passage which describes, as an
appearance actually beheld in the clouds, what in many of its
circumstances I saw frequently in sleep : —
* The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,
Was of a mighty city — boldly say
A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth,
Far sinking into splendor — without end !
Fabric it seemed of diamond, and of gold,
With alabaster domes and silver spires.
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high
Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright.
In avenues disposed; there towers begirt
With battlements that on their restless fronts
Bore stars — illumination of all gems!
By earthly nature had the effect been wrought
Upon the dark materials of the storm
Now pacified; on them, and on the coves.
And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto
The vapors had receded — taking there
Their station under a cerulean sky.*>
The sublime circumstance — ^* battlements that on their rest-
less fronts bore stars'* — might have been copied from my archi-
tectural dreams, for it often occurred. We hear it reported of
Dryden, and of Fuseli in modern times, that they thought proper
to eat raw meat for the sake of obtaining splendid dreams: how
much better, for such a purpose, to have eaten opium, which yet
I do not remember that any poet is recorded to have done, ex-
cept the dramatist Shadwell; and in ancient days, Homer is, I
think, rightly reputed to have known the virtues of opium.
To my architecture succeeded dreams of lakes, and silvery
expanses of water; these haunted me so much that I feared
(though possibly it will appear ludicrous to a medical man) that
some dropsical state or tendency of the brain might thus be
making itself (to use a metaphysical word) objective, and the
sentient organ project itself as its own object. For two months
I suffered greatly in my head — a part of my bodily structure
THOMAS DE QUINCEY I317
which had hitherto been so clear from all touch or taint of weak-
ness (physically, I mean), that I used to say of it, as the last
Lord Orford said of his stomach, that it seemed likely to survive
the rest of my person. Till now I had never felt a headache
even, or any the slightest pain, except rheumatic pains caused by
my own folly. However, I got over this attack, though it must
have been verging on something very dangerous.
The waters now changed their character, — from translucent
lakes, shining like mirrors, they now became seas and oceans.
And now came a tremendous change, which, unfolding itself
slowly like a scroll, through many months, promised an abiding
torment; and, in fact, it never left me until the winding up of
my case. Hitherto the human face had often mixed in my
dreams, but not despotically, nor with any special power of tor-
menting. But now that which I have called the tyranny of the
human face began to unfold itself. Perhaps some part of my
London life might be answerable for this. Be that as it may,
now it was that upon the rocking waters of the ocean the human
face began to appear; the sea appeared paved with innumerable
faces, upturned to the heavens; faces, imploring, wrathful, de-
spairing, surged upwards by thousands, by myriads, by genera-
tions, by centuries; my agitation was infinite, my mind tossed
and swayed with the ocean.
May, 18 18. — The Malay had been a fearful enemy for months.
I have been every night, through his means, transported into
Asiatic scenes. I know not whether others share in my feelings
on this point; but I have often thought that if I were compelled
to forego England, and to live in China, and among Chinese
manners and modes of life and scenery, I should go mad. The
causes of my horror lie deep, and some of them must be com-
mon to others. Southern Asia, in general, is the seat of awful
images and associations. As the cradle of the human race, it
would alone have a dim and reverential feeling connected with
it. But there are other reasons. No man can pretend that the
wild, barbarous, and capricious superstitions of Africa, or of sav-
age tribes elsewhere, affect him in the way that he is affected by
the ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions of Indo-
stan, etc. The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institu-
tions, histories, modes of faith, etc., is so impressive, that to me
the vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth
in the individual. A young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian
I318 THOMAS DE QUINCEY
man renewed. Even Englishmen, though not bred in any knowl-
edge of such institutions, cannot but shudder at the mystic sub-
limity of castes that have flowed apart, and refused to mix,
through such immemorial tracts of time; nor can any man fail
to be awed by the names of the Ganges, or the Euphrates. It
contributes much to these feelings, that Southern Asia is, and
has been for thousands of years, the part of the earth most
swarming with human life, the great officina gentiiun. Man is a
weed in those regions. The vast empires, also, into which the
enormous population of Asia has always been cast, give a further
sublimity to the feelings associated with all Oriental names or
images. In China, over and above what it has in common with
the rest of Southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes of life, by
the manners, and the barrier of utter abhorrence, and want of
sympathy, placed between us by feelings deeper than I can ana-
lyze. I could sooner live with lunatics or brute animals. All
this, and much more than I can say, or have time to say, the
reader must enter into, before he can comprehend the unimagina-
ble horror which these dreams of Oriental imagery and mytho-
logical tortures impressed upon me. Under the connecting feeling
of tropical heat and vertical sunlights, I brought together all crea-
tures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and ap-
pearances, that are found in all tropical legions, and assembled
them together in China or Indostan. From kindred feelings I
soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I was
stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by paro-
quets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed, for cen-
turies, at the summit, or in secret rooms; I was the idol; I was
the priest; I was worshiped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the
wrath of Brahma through all the forests of Asia; Vishnu hated
me; Siva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris;
I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile
trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years, in stone coffins,
with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of
eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by croco-
diles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things,
amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.
I thus give the reader some slight abstraction of my Oriental
dreams, which always filled me with such amazement at the mon-
strous scenery, that horror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer
astonishment. Sooner or later came a reflux of feeling that swal-
THOMAS DE QUINCEY I319
lowed up the astonishment, and left me, not so much in terror,
as in hatred and abomination of what I saw. Over every form,
and threat, and punishment, and dim, sightless, incarceration,
brooded a sense of eternity and infinity that drove me into an
oppression as of madness. Into these dreams only, it was, with
one or two slight exceptions, that any circumstances of physical
horror entered. All before had been moral and spiritual terrors.
But here the main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or croco-
diles, especially the last. The cursed crocodile became to me the
object of more horror than almost all the rest. I was compelled
to live with him; and (as was always the case, almost, in my
dreams) for centuries. I escaped sometimes, and found myself in
Chinese houses with cane tables, etc. All the feet of the tables,
sofas, etc., soon became instinct with life; the abominable head of
the crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out at me, multiplied
into a thousand repetitions; and I stood loathing and fascinated.
And so often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams, that many
times the very same dream was broken up in the very same
way: I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear everything
when I am sleeping), and instantly I awoke: it was broad noon,
and my children were standing, hand in hand, at my bedside;
come to show me their colored shoes, or new frocks, or to let me
see them dressed for going out. I protest that so awful was the
transition from the d d crocodile, and the other unutterable
monsters and abortions of my dreams, to the sighi of innocent
human natures and of infancy, that, in the mighty and sudden
revulsion of mind, I wept, and could not forbear it, as I kissed
their faces.
June, 1819. — I have had occasion to remark, at various periods
of my life, that the deaths of those whom we love, and, indeed,
the contemplation of death generally, is {cceteris paribus) more
affecting in summer than in any other season of the year. And
the reasons are these three, I think : first, that the visible heavens
in summer appear far higher, more distant, and (if such a sole-
cism may be excused) more infinite; the clouds by which chiefly
the eye expounds the distance of the blue pavilion stretched over
our heads are in summer more voluminous, massed, and accumu-
lated in far grander and more towering piles: secondly, the light
and the appearances of the declining and the setting sun are
much more fitted to be types and characters of the infinite; and
thirdly (which is the main reason), the exuberant and riotous
I320 THOMAS DE QUINCEY
prodigality of life naturally forces the mind more powerfully upon
the antagonistic thought of death, and the wintry sterility of the
grave. For it may be observed, generally, that wherever two
thoughts stand related to each other by a law of antagonism, and
exist, as it were, by mutual repulsion, they are apt to suggest
each other. On these accounts it is that I find it impossible to
banish the thought of death when I am walking alone in the
endless days of summer; and any particular death, if not more
affecting, at least haunts my mind more obstinately and besieg-
ingly in that season. Perhaps this cause, and a slight incident
which I omit might have been the immediate occasions of the
following dream, to which, however, a predisposition must always
have existed in my mind; but having been once roused, it never
left me, and split into a thousand fantastic varieties, which often
suddenly re-united, and comprised again the original dream.
I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May; that it was
Easter Sunday, and as yet very early in the morning. I was
standing, as it seemed to me, at the door of my own cottage.
Right before me lay the very scene which could really be com-
manded from that situation, but exalted, as was usual, and
solemnized by the power of dreams. There were the same
mountains, and the same lovely valley at their feet; but the
mountains were raised to a more than Alpine height, and there
was interspace far larger between them of meadows and forest
lawns; the hedges were rich with white roses; and no living
creature was to be seen, excepting that in the green churchyard
there were cattle tranquilly reposing upon the verdant graves,
and particularly round about the grave of a child whom I had
tenderly loved, just as I had really beheld them, a little before
sunrise, in the same summer, when that child died. I gazed
upon the well-known scene, and said aloud (as I thought) to
myself, "It yet wants much of sunrise; and it is Easter Sunday;
and that is the day on which they celebrate the first fruits of
rest:rrection. I will walk abroad; old griefs shall be forgotten
to-day; for the air is cool and still, and the hills are high, and
stretch away to heaven; and the forest glades are as quiet as the
churchyard; and with the dew I can wash the fever from my
forehead, and then I shall be unhappy no longer.*^ And I turned,
as if to open my garden gate; and I immediately saw upon the
left a scene far different; but which yet the power of dreams had
reconciled into harmony with the other. The scene was an Ori-
THOMAS UE QUINCEY t$ai
ental one; and there also it was Easter Sunday, and very early
in the morning. And at a vast distance were visible, as a stain
upon the horizon, the domes and cupolas of a great city — an
image of faint abstraction, caught, perhaps, in childhood, from
some picture of Jerusalem. And not a bowshot from me, upon
a stone, and shaded by Judean palms, there sat a woman; and I
looked, and it was — Ann! She fixed her eyes upon me earnestly;
and I said to her, at length, " So, then, I have found you, at
last. -^ I waited; but she answered me not a word. Her face was
the same as when I saw it last; and yet again, how different!
Seventeen years ago, when the lamplight fell upon her face, as
for the last time 1 kissed her lips (lips, Ann, that to me were
not polluted!), her eyes were streaming with tears; — her tears
were now wiped away; she seemed more beautiful than she was
at that time, but in all other points the same, and not older.
Her looks were tranquil, but with unusual solemnity of expres-
sion, and I now gazed upon her with some awe; but suddenly
her countenance grew dim, and, turning to the mountains, I per-
ceived vapors rolling between us; in a moment, all had vanished;
thick darkness came on, and in the twinkling of an eye I was
far away from mountains, and by lamplight, in Oxford Street,
walking again with Ann — just as we walked seventeen years
before, when we were both children.
As a final specimen, I cite one of a different character, from
1820: —
The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard
in dreams — a music of preparation and of awakening suspense;
a music like the opening of the Coronation Anthem, and which,
like that, gave the feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades
filing off, and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning
was come of a mighty day — a day of crisis and of final hope
for human nature, then suffering some mysterious eclipse, and
laboring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I knew not
where — somehow, I knew not how — by some beings, I knew
not whom — a battle, a strife, an agony, was conducting, — was
evolving like a great drama, or piece of music; with which my
sympathy was the more insupportable from my confusion as to
its place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I, as is
usual in dreams (where, of necessity, we make ourselves central
to every movement), had the power, and yet had not the power,
to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself, to will itj
1388 THOMAS DE QUINCEY
and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty
Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt.
* Deeper than ever plummet sounded," I lay inactive. Then,
like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater interest was
at stake; some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had
pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms;
hurryings to and fro; trepidations of innumerable fugitives. I
knew not whether from the good cause or the bad; darkness and
lights; tempest and human faces; and at last, with the sense that
all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all
the world to me, and but a moment allowed, — and clasped hands,
and heartbreaking partings, and then — everlasting farewells !
and, with a sigh, such as the caves of hell sighed when the in-
cestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of death, the sound
was reverberated — everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again
reverberated — everlasting farewells !
And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud — ^* I will sleep no
more ! *^
But I am now called upon to wind up a narrative which has
already extended to an unreasonable length. Within more spa-
cious limits, the materials which I have used might have been
better unfolded; and much which I have not used might have
been added with effect. Perhaps, however, enough has been
given. It now remains that I should say something of the way
in which this conflict of horrors was finally brought to its crisis.
The reader is already aware (from a passage near the beginning
of the introduction to the first part) that the opium eater has,
in some way or other, ^^ unwound, almost to its final links, the
accursed chain which bound him. ** By what means ? To have
narrated this, according to the original intention, would have far
exceeded the space which can now be allowed. It is fortunate,
as such a cogent reason exists for abridging it, that I should, on
a maturer view of the case, have been exceedingly unwilling to
injure, by any such unaffecting details, the impression of the his-
tory itself, as an appeal to the prudence and the conscience of
the yet unconfirmed opium eater, or even (though a very inferior
consideration) to injure its effect as a composition. The interest
of the judicious reader will not attach itself chiefly to the subject
of the fascinating spells, but to the fascinating power. Not the
opium eater, but the opium, is the true hero of the tale, and the
legitimate centre on which the interest revolves. The object was
THOMAS DE QUINCEY I323
to display the marvelous agency of opium, whether for pleasure
or for pain; if that is done, the action of the piece has closed.
However, as some people, in spite of all laws to the contrary,
will persist in asking what became of the opium eater, and in
what state he now is, I answer for him thus: The reader is
aware that opium had long ceased to found its empire on spells
of pleasure; it was solely by the tortures connected with the at-
tempt to abjure it, that it kept its hold. Yet, as other tortures,
no less, it may be thought, attended the nonabjuration of such a
tyrant, a choice only of evils was left; and that might as well
have been adopted, which, however terrific in itself, held out a
prospect of final restoration to happiness. This appears true; but
good logic gave the author no strength to act upon it. How-
ever, a crisis arrived for the author's life, and a crisis for other
objects still dearer to him, and which will always be far dearer
to him than his life, even now that it is again a happy one. I
saw that T must die if I continued the opium: I determined,
therefore, if that should be required, to die in throwing it off.
How much I was at that time taking, I cannot say; for the opium
which I used had been purchased for me by a friend, who after-
wards refused to let me pay him; so that I could not ascertain
even what quantity I had used within a year. I apprehend, how-
ever, that I took it very irregularly, and that I varied from about
fifty or sixty grains to one hundred and fifty a day. My first
task was to reduce it to forty, to thirty, and, as fast as I could,
to twelve grains.
I triumphed; but think not, reader, that therefore my suffer-
ings were ended; nor think of me as of one sitting in a dejected
state. Think of me as of one, even when four months had passed,
still agitated, writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered ; and much,
perhaps, in the situation of him who has been racked, as I col-
lect the torments of that state from the affecting account of them
left by the most innocent sufferer of the time of James I.
Meantime I derived no benefit from any medicine, except one
prescribed to me by an Edinburgh surgeon of great eminence,
namely, ammoniated tincture of valerian. Medical account, there-
fore, of my emancipation, I have not much to give; and even
that little, as managed by a man so ignorant of medicine as my-
self, would probably tend only to mislead. At all events, it would
be misplaced in this situation. The moral of the narrative is
addressed to the opium eater; and therefore, of necessity, limited
1324 THOMAS DE QUINCEY
in its application. If he is taught to fear and tremble, enough
has been effected. But he may say that the issue of my case is
at least a proof that opium, after a seventeen years' use, and an
eight years' abuse of its powers, may still be renotmced; and that
he may chance to bring to the task greater energy than I did,
or that, with a stronger constitution than mine, he may obtain
the same results with less. This may be true; I would not pre-
sume to measure the efforts of other men by my own. I heartily
wish him more energy; I wish him the same success. Never-
theless, I had motives external to myself which he may unfortu-
nately want; and these supplied me with conscientious supports,
which mere personal interests might fail to supply to a mind
debilitated by opium.
Jeremy Taylor conjectures that it may be as painful to be
born as to die. I think it probable; and, during the whole period
of diminishing the opium, I had the torments of a man passing
out of one mode of existence into another. The issue was not
death, but a sort of physical regeneration, and I may add that
ever since, at intervals, I have had a restoration of more than
youthful spirits, though under the pressure of difficulties, which,
in a less happy state of mind, I should have called misfortunes.
One memorial of my former condition still remains ; my dreams
are not yet perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the
storm have not wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in
them are drawing off, but not all departed; my sleep is tumultu-
ous, and, like the gates of Paradise to our first parents when look-
ing back from afar, it is still, in the tremendous line of Milton —
«With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.**
Complete. From «The Confessions of
an Opium Eater.*
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 1325
ANECDOTAGE
(On Miss Hawkins's « Anecdotes**)
THIS orange we mean to squeeze for the public use. Where an
author is poor, this is wrong; but Miss Hawkins being upon
her own acknowledgment rich (p. 125), keeping a "carriage,
to the propret^ of which she is not indifferent*^ (p. 253), and be-
ing able to give away manors worth more than ^1,000 per annum
(p. 140), it is most clear that her interests ought to bend to those
of the public; the public being really in very low circumstances,
and quite unable to buy books of luxury and anecdotage.
Who is the author, and what is the book ? The author has
descended to us from the last century, and has heard little that
has happened since the American war. She is the daughter of
Sir John Hawkins, known to the world : first, as the historian of
music; second, as the acquaintance and biographer of Dr. Johnson;
third, as the object of some vulgar gossip and calumnies made
current by Mr. Boswell. Her era being determined, the reader
can be at no loss to deduce the rest; her chronology known, all
is known. She belongs to the literati of those early ages who
saw Dr. Johnson in the body, and conversed in the flesh with
Goldsmith, Garrick, Bennet, Langton, Wilkes and liberty, Sir
Joshua Hawkesworth, etc., etc. All of these good people she
"found'* (to use her own lively expression) at her father's house:
that is, upon her earliest introduction to her father's drawing-
room at Twickenham, most of them were already in possession.
Amongst the "etc., etc.,** as we have classed them, were some who
really ought not to have been thus slurred over, such as Bishop
Percy, Tyrwhitt, Dean Tucker, and Hurd: but others absolutely
pose us. For instance, does the reader know anything of one
Israel Mauduit ? We profess to know nothing; no, nor at all the
more for his having been the author of " Considerations on the
German War '* (p. 7 ) : in fact, there have been so many German
wars since Mr. Mauduit's epoch, and the public have since then
been called on to "consider** so many "considerations,** that Miss
Hawkins must pardon us for declaring that the illustrious Mauduit
(though we remember his name in Lord Orford's " Memoirs ** ) is
*« Anecdotes, Biographical Sketches, and Memoirs, >> collected by Letitia
Matilda Hawkins. London 1823.
1326 THOMAS DE QUINCEY
now defunct, and that his works have followed him. Not less
defunct than Mauduit is the not less illustrious Brettell. Brettell!
What Brettell? What Brettell! Why, « Wonderful old Colonel
Brettell of the Middlesex Militia*^ (p. 10), who, on my requesting
him, at eighty-five years of age, to be careful in getting over a
five-barred gate replied. Take care of what ? Time was when I
could have jumped over it. ^^ Time was! *^ he says, was; but how
will that satisfy posterity ? What proof has the nineteenth cen-
tury that he did it, or could have done it ? So much for Brettell
and Mauduit. But last comes one who ^^ hight Costard*: and
here we are posed indeed. Can this be Shakespeare's Costard —
everybody's Costard — the Costard of ** Love's Labor's Lost'^? But
how is that possible ? says a grave and learned friend at our
elbow. I will affirm it to be impossible. How can any man cele-
brated by Shakespeare have visited at Twickenham with Dr.
Johnson ? That indeed, we answer, deserves consideration : yet,
if he can, where would Costard be more naturally found than at
Sir John Hawkins's house, who had himself annotated on Shakes-
peare, and lived in company with so many other annotators, as
Percy, Tyrwhitt, Stevens, etc.? Yet again, at p. 10, and at p. 24,
he is called ** the learned Costard. " Now this is an objection ; for
Shakespeare's Costard, the old Original Costard, is far from
learned. But what of that ? He had plenty of time to mend his
manners, and fit himself for the company of Dr. Johnson; and
at p. 80, where Miss Hawkins again affirms that his name was
" always preceded by the epithet learned, *^ she candidly admits
that " he was a feeble, ailing, emaciated man who had all the
appearance of having sacrificed his health to his studies,'* as well
he might, if he had studied from Shakespeare's time to Dr. John-
son's. With all his learning, however. Costard could make noth-
ing of a case which occurred in Sir John Hawkins's grounds;
and we confess that we can make no more of it than Costard.
** In a paddock,'* says Miss Hawkins, ** we had an oblong piece of
water supplied by a sluice. Keeping poultry, this was very con-
venient for ducks: on a sudden, a prodigious consternation w^as
perceived among the ducks: they were with great difficulty per-
suaded to take to the water; and, when there, shuddered, grew
wet, and were drowned. They were supposed diseased; others
were bought at other places; but in vain! none of our ducks
could swim. I remember the circumstance calling out much
thought and conjecture. The learned George Costard, Dr. Morton,
THOMAS DE QUINCEY I327
and the medical advisers of the neighborhood were consulted:
every one had a different supposition, and I well recollect my own
dissatisfaction with all I heard. It was told of course to Mr. and
Mrs. Garrick. Mrs. Garrick would not give credit to it; Garrick
himself was not incredulous, and after a discussion he turned to
my father with his jocose impetuosity, and said, ^ There's my wife,
who will not believe the story of these ducks, and yet she be-
lieves in the eleven thausand virgins.* Most probably the ducks
were descended from that * which Samuel Johnson trod on,* which,
* if it had lived and had not died, had surely been an odd one * ;
its posterity therefore would be odd ones. However, Costard
could make nothing of it; and to this hour the case is an un-
solved problem, like the longitude of the Northwest Passage.*
But enough of Costard.
Of Lord Orford, who like Costard was a neighbor and an
acquaintance of her father. Miss Hawkins gives us a very long
account, no less than thirty pages (pp. 87-117) being dedicated to
him on his first introduction. Amongst his eccentricities, she
mentions that ^^ he made no scruple of avowing his thorough
want of taste for Don Quixote.** This was already known from
the ^^ Walpoliana, ** where it may be seen that his objection was
singularly disingenuous, because built on an incident (the wind-
mill adventure), which, if it were as extravagant as it seems
(though it has been palliated by the peculiar appearance of Span-
ish mills), is yet of no weight, because not characteristic of the
work: it contradicts its general character. We shall extract her
account of Lord Orford's person and abord, his dress and his ad-
dress, which is remarkably lively and picturesque, as might have
been expected from the pen of a female observer, who was at
that time young : — ■
*^ His figure was, as every one knows, not merely tall, but
more properly long, and slender to excess; his complexion, and
particularly his hands, of a most unhealthy paleness. I speak of
him before the year 1772. His eyes were remarkably bright and
penetrating, very dark and lively; his voice was not strong; but
his tones were extremely pleasant, and, if I may so say, highly
gentlemanly, I do not remember his common gait: he always
entered a room in that style of affected delicacy which fashion
had then made almost natural; chapeau bras between his hands,
as if he wished to compress it, or under his arm; knees bent;
and feet on tiptoe, as if afraid of a wet floor. His dress in
1328 THOMAS DE QUINCEY
visiting was most usually (in summer when I most saw him) &
lavender suit; the waistcoat embroidered with a little silver, or of
white silk worked in the tambour; partridge silk stockings; and
gold buckles; ruffles and frill generally lace. I remember when
a child thinking him very much underdressed, if at any time, ex-
cept in mourning, he wore hemmed cambric. In summer, no pow-
der; but his wig combed straight, and showing his very smooth,
pale forehead, and queued behind; in winter, powder." What an
amusing old coxcomb!
Of Dr. Johnson we have but one anecdote; but it is very
good, and good in the best way — because characteristic; being,
in fact, somewhat brutal and very witty. " Miss Knight, the
author of *Dinarbas* and of ^Marcus Flaminius,' used to pay
him a farewell visit on quitting England for the Continent: this
lady (then a young lady) is remarkably large in person; so the
old savage dismisses her with the following memorial of his good-
nature : — * Go, go, my dear ; for you are too big for an island. * **
As may be supposed, the Doctor is no favorite with Miss Haw-
kins; but she is really too hard upon our old friend, for she de-
clares " that she never heard him say in any visit six words that
could compensate for the trouble of getting to his den, and the
disgust of seeing such squalidness as she saw nowhere else.*
One thing at least Miss Hawkins might have learned from Dr.
Johnson; and let her not suppose that we say it in ill-nature:
she might have learned to weed her pages of many barbarisms
of language which now disfigure them; for instance, the barbar-
ism of ^^ compensate for the trouble" — in the very sentence be-
fore us — instead of ^* compensate the trouble."
Dr. Farmer disappointed Miss Hawkins by " the homeliness of
his external." But surely when a man comes to that supper at
which he does not eat but is eaten, we have a deeper interest in
his wit, which may chance to survive him, than in his beauty,
which posterity cannot possibly enjoy any more than the petits
soupers which it adorned. Had the Doctor been a very Adonis,
he could not have done Miss Hawkins so much service as by two
of his propos which she records: One was, that on a report be-
ing mentioned, at her father's table, of Sir Joshua Reynolds hav-
ing shared the gains arising from the exhibition of his pictures
with his manservant, who was fortunately called Ralph, Dr.
Farmer quoted against Sir Joshua these two lines from ^* Hudi-
brae " ;
THOMAS DE QUINCEY * 1 329
<'A squire he had whose name was Ralph,
Who in the adventure went his half,*
The other was that, speaking of Dr. Parr, he said that "he
seemed to have been at a feast of learning [for learning, read
languages] from which he had carried off all the scraps.** Miss
Hawkins does not seem to be aware that this is taken from
Shakespeare: but, what is still more surprising, she declares her-
self " absolutely ignorant whether it be praise or censure. " All
we shall say on that question is that we most seriously advise
her not to ask Dr. Parr.
Of Paul Whitehead, we are told that his wife *^ was so nearly
idiotic, that she would call his attention in conversation to look
at a cow, not as one of singular beauty, but in the words — * Mr.
Whitehead, there's a cow.** On this Miss Hawkins moralizes in
a very eccentric way: "He took it," says she, "most patiently, as
he did all such trials of his temper.** Trials of his temper! why,
was he jealous of the cow ? Had he any personal animosity to
the cow ? Not only, however, was Paul very patient (at least
under his bovine afflictions, and his " trials ** in regard to horned
cattle), but also Paul was very devout; of which he gave this
pleasant assurance : " When I go, ** said he, " into St. Paul's, I
admire it as a very fine, grand, beautiful building; and when I
have contemplated its beauty, I come out: but if I go into West-
minster Abbey, me, I'm all devotion.** So, by his own ac-
count, Paul appears to have been a very pretty fellow;
patient and devout.
For practical purposes, we recommend to all physicians the
following anecdote, which Sir Richard Jebb used to tell of him-
self. As Miss Hawkins observes, it makes even rapacity comical,
and it suggests a very useful and practical hint. " He was at-
tending a nobleman, from whom he had a right to expect a fee
of five guineas; he received only three. Suspecting some trick
on the part of the steward, from whom he received it, he at the
next visit contrived to drop the three guineas. They were picked
up, and again deposited in his hand; but he still continued to
look on the carpet. His lordship asked if all the guineas were
found. ^ There must be two guineas still on the carpet,* replied
Sir Richard, *for I have but three.* The hint was taken as he
meant. **
But of all medical stratagems commend us to that practiced by
Dr. Munckley, who had lived with Sir J. Hawkins during his
IT— 84
1330 THOMAS DE QUINCEY
bachelor days in quality of ** chum® : and a chum he was, in
Miss Hawkins's words, * not at all calculated to render the chum
state happy." This Dr. Munckley, by the by, was so huge a
man-mountain, that Miss Hawkins supposes the blank in the well-
know epigram,
"When walks the streets, the paviors cry,
* God bless you, sir!* and lay their rammers by."
to have been originally filled up with his name, — but in this she
is mistaken. The epigram was written before he was born; and
for about one hundred and forty years has this empty epigram,
like other epigrams to be let, been occupied by a succession of big
men: we believe that the original tenant was Dr. Ralph Bathurst.
Munckley, however, might have been the original tenant, if it had
pleased God to let him be born eighty years sooner; for he was
quite as well qualified as Bathurst to draw down the blessings of
paviors, and to play the part of a "three-man beetle.** Of this
Miss Hawkins gives a proof which is droll enough : " accidently
encountering suddenly a stout manservant in a narrow passage
they literally stuck.* Each, like Horatius Codes, in the words of
Seneca, solus implevit pontis angustias. One of them, it is clear,
must have backed; unless, indeed, they are sticking there yet.
It would be curious to ascertain which of them backed. For the
dignity of science, one would hope it was not Munckley. Yet we
fear he was capable of any meanness, if Miss Hawkins reports
accurately his stratagems upon her father's purse; a direct at-
tack failing, he attacked it indirectly. But Miss Hawkins shall
tell her own tale : " He was extremely rapacious, and a very bad
economist; and, soon after my father's marriage, having been
foiled in his attempt to borrow money of him, he endeavored to
atone to himself for this disappointment by protracting the dura-
tion of a low fever in which he attended him; making unneces-
sary visits, and with his hand ever open for a fee.** Was there
ever such a fellow on this terraqueous globe ? Sir John's purse
not yielding to a storm, he approaches by mining and sapping,
under cover of a low fever. Did this Munckley really exist, or
is he but the coinage of Miss Hawkins's brain ? If the reader
wishes to know what became of this " great ** man, we will gratify
him. He was "foiled,* as we have seen, "in his attempt to bor-
row money ** of Sir J. H. ; he was also soon after " foiled ** in his
attempt to live. Munckley, big Munckley, being * too big for 2ui
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 1 33 1
island,* we suppose, was compelled to die; he gave up the ghost:
and what seems very absurd both to us and to Miss Hawkins, he
continued talking to the last, and went off in the very act of
uttering a most prosaic truism, which yet happened to be false in
his case; for his final words were, that it was ^*hard to be taken
off just then, when he was beginning to get into practice.'^ Not
at all, with such practices as his: where men enter into partner-
ships with low fevers, it is very fit that they should " back * out
of this world as fast as possible ; as fast as, in all probability, he
had backed down the narrow passage before the stout manserv-
ant. So much for Munckley — big Munckley.
It does not strike us as any ^'singular feature ^^ (p. 273), in the
history of Bartleman, the great singer, " that he lived to occupy
the identical house in Berners Street in which his first patron
resided.'^ Knowing the house, its pros and cons, its landlord, etc.,
surely it was very natural that he should avail himself of his
knowledge for his own convenience. But it is a very singular
fact (p. 160), that our government should, "merely for want of
caution, have sent the Culloden ship of war to convoy Cardinal
York from Naples.^* This we suppose Miss Hawkins looks upon
as ominous of some disaster; for she considers it "fortunate**
that his Eminence "had sailed before it arrived.** Of this same
Cardinal York, Miss Hawkins tells us further that a friend of
hers having been invited to dine with him, as all Englishmen
were while he kept a table, " found him, as all others did, a
good-natured, almost superannuated gentleman, who had his round
of civilities and jokes. He introduced some roast beef by saying
that it might not be as good as that in England; ^for,* said he,
* you know we are but pretenders. * ** Yes, the Cardinal was a
pretender; but his beef was "legitimate,** unless, indeed, his
bulls pretended to be oxen.
On the subject of the Pretender, by the way, we have (at p. 6;^)
as fine a bonmot as the celebrated toast of Dr. Byron, the Manches-
ter Jacobite. " The Marchioness (the Marchioness of Tweeddale)
had been Lady Frances Carteret, a daughter of the Earl of Gran-
ville, and had been brought up by her Jacobite aunt, Lady Worsley,
one of the most zealous of that party. The Marchioness herself
told my father that, on her aunt's upbraiding her when a child
with not attending prayers, she answered that she heard her lady-
ship did not pray for the king. * Not pray for the king ? * said
Lady Worsley; * who says this? I will have you and those who
r332 THOMAS DE QUINCEY
sent you know that I do pray for the king; but I do not think it
necessary to tell God Almighty who is king. * *^
This is naivete, which becomes wit to the bystander, though
simply the natural expression of the thought to him who utters
it. Another instance, no less lively, is the following, mentioned
at Strawberry Hill by ^* the sister of one of our first statesmen,
now deceased.*' ** She had heard a boy, humored to excess, tease
his mother for the remains of a favorite dish; mamma at length
replied, * Then do take it and have done teasing me.* He then
flew into a passion, roaring out, *■ What do you give it me for ? I
wanted to have snatched it. ' *'
The next passage we shall cite relates to a very eminent char-
acter, indeed, truly respectable, and entirely English, v:z., plum
pudding. The obstinate and inveterate ignorance of Frenchmen
on this subject is well known. Their errors are grievous, piti-
able, and matter of scorn and detestation to every enlightened
mind. In civilization, in trial by jury, and many other features
of social happiness, it has been affirmed that the French are two
centuries behind us. We believe it. But with regard to plum
pudding they are at least five centuries in arrear. In the ** Om-
niana,** we think it is, Mr. Southey has recorded one of their
insane attempts at constructing such a pudding: the monstrous
abortion which on that occasion issued to the light the reader
may imagine; and will be at no loss to understand that volley of
^^ Dmd/es,^^ ^^ S acres, ^^ and ^'^ Morbleus,^^ which it called forth, when
we mention that these deluded Frenchmen made cheese the basis
of their infernal preparation. Now, under these circumstances of
national infatuation, how admirable must have been the art of an
English party, who, in the very city of Paris (that centre of dark-
ness on this interesting subject), and in the very teeth of French-
men, did absolutely extort from French hands a real English
plum pudding: yes, compelled a French apothecary, unknowing
what he did, to produce an excellent plum pudding, and had the
luxury of a hoax into the bargain. Verily the ruse was mag-
nifique ; and though it was nearly terminating in bloodshed, yet,
doubtless, so superb a story would have been cheaply purchased
by one or two lives. Here it follows in Miss Hawkins's own
words: * Dr. Schonberg of Reading, in the early part of his life,
spent a Christmas at Paris with some English friends. They
were desirous to celebrate the season in the manner of their own
country, by having as one dish at their table an English plum
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 1 333
pudding; but no cook was found equal to the task of compound-
ing it. A clergyman of the party had indeed an old receipt book;
but this did not sufficiently explain the process. Dr. Schonberg,
however, supplied all that was wanting by throwing the recipe
into the form of a prescription, and sending it to an apothecary
to be made up. To prevent all possibility of error, he directed
that it should be boiled in a cloth, and sent in the same cloth to
be applied at an hour specified. At this hour it arrived, borne
by the apothecary's assistant and preceded'* (sweet heavens!) "by
the apothecary himself, dressed, according to the professional for-
mality of the time, with a sword. Seeing, when he entered the
apartment, instead of signs of sickness, a table well filled and
surrounded by very merry faces, he perceived that he was made
a party in a joke that turned on himself, and indignantly laid
his hand on his sword; but an invitation to taste his own cookery
appeased him, and all was well.®
This story we pronounce altogether unique: for as, on the one
hand, the art was divine by which the benefits of medical punc-
tuality and accuracy were pressed into the service of a Christmas
dinner; so, on the other hand, it is strictly and satirically prob-
able, when told of a French apothecary; for who but a Frenchman,
whose pharmacopoeia still teems with the monstrous compounds
of our ancestors, could have believed that such a preparation was
seriously designed for a cataplasm.
In our next extracts we come upon ground rather tender and
unsafe for obstinate skeptics. We have often heard of learned
doctors, from Shrewsbury, suppose, going by way of Birmingham
to Oxford; and at Birmingham, under the unfortunate ambiguity
of **the Oxford coach," getting into that from Oxford, which by
nightfall safely restores the astonished doctor to astonished Shrews-
bury. Such a case is sad and pitiful; but what is that to the
case (p. 164) of Wilkes the painter, who, being "anxious to get a
likeness* of "good Dr. Foster* (the same whom Pope has hon-
ored with the couplet: —
* Let modest Foster, if he will, excel
Ten metropolitans in preaching well.*),
"attended his meeting one Sunday evening*; and very naturally,
not being acquainted with Dr. Foster's person, sketched a like-
ness of the clergyman whom he found officiating; which clerg}'-
man happened unfortunately to be — not the Doctor — but Mr.
1334 THOMAS DE QUINCEY
Morris, an occasional substitute of his. The mistake remained
undiscovered: the sketch was elaborately copied in a regular pic-
ture; the picture was elaborately engraved in mezzotinto; and to
this day the picture of one Mr. Morris ^^ officiates ^^ for that of the
celebrated Dr. Foster. Living and dead he was Dr. Foster's sub-
stitute. Even this, however, is a trifle to what follows: the case
*^ of a Baronet, who must be nameless, who proposed to visit
Rome, and previously to learn the language; but by some mis-
take or imposition engaged a German, who taught only his own
language, and proceeded in the study of it vigorously for three
months before he discovered his error.** With all deference to
the authority of Horace Walpole, from whom the anecdote orig-
inally comes, we confess that we are staggered; and must take
leave, in the stoical phrase, to *^ suspend ** ; in fact, we must con-
sult our friends before we can contract for believing it: at pres-
ent all we shall say about it is that we greatly fear the Baronet
**must,** as Miss Hawkins observes, ^* be nameless.®
We must also consult our friends on the propriety of believing
the little incident which follows, though attributed to **a very
worthy, modest young man**; for it is remarkable that of this
very modest young man is recorded but one act, m^., the most
impudent in the book. ** He was walking in the mall of St.
James's Park, when they met two fine young women, dressed in
straw hats, and, at least to appearance, unattended. His friend
offered him a bet that he did not go up to one of those rustic
beauties, and salute her. He accepted the bet; and in a very
civil manner, and probably explaining the cause of his boldness,
he thought himself sure of success, when he became aware that
it was the Princess Caroline, daughter of George H., who, with
one of her sisters, was taking the refreshment of a walk in com-
plete disguise. In the utmost confusion he bowed, begged pardon,
and retreated; whilst their Royal Highnesses, with great good-
humor, laughed at his mistake.**
We shall conclude our extracts with the following story, as
likely to interest our fair readers: —
*^ Lady Lucy Meyrick was by birth the Lady Lucy Pitt,
daughter to the Earl of Londonderry, and sister to the last who
bore that title. She was, of course, nearly related to all the
great families of that name; and, losing her parents very early in
life, was left under the guardianship of an uncle, who lived in
James Street, Buckingham Gate. This house was a most singu-
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 1335
larly uncouth, dismal dwelling, in appearance very much of the
Vanburgh style of building; and the very sight of it would
justify almost any measure to get out of it. It excited every
one's curiosity to ask, What is this place ? What can it be for ?
It had a front of very dark, heavy brickwork; very small win-
dows, with sashes immensely thick. In this gay mansion, which
looked against the blank window side of the large house in St.
James's Park, twenty years ago Lord Milford's, but backwards into
a market gardener's ground, was Lady Lucy Meyrick to reside
with her uncle and his daughter, a girl a little older than her-
self. The young ladies, who had formed a strict friendship, were
kept under great restraint, which they bore as two lively girls
may be supposed to have done. Their endurances soon reached
the ears of two Westminster scholars of one of the Welsh fami-
lies of Meyrick, who, in the true spirit of Knight-errantry, con-
certed with them a plan for escaping, which they carried into
effect. Having gone thus far, there was nothing for the courteous
knights to do but to marry the fair damsels to whom they had
rendered this essential service; and for this purpose they took
them to the Fleet, or to May-Fair, in both which places marriages
were solemnized in the utmost privacy. Here the two couples
presented themselves, a baker's wife attending upon the ladies.
Lady Lucy was then, and to the end of her life, one of the
smallest women I ever saw: she was at the same time not more
than fourteen years of age; and, being in the dress of a child,
the person officiating objected to performing the ceremony for
her. This extraordinary scrupulosity was distressing; but her
ladyship met it by a lively reply — that her cousin might be mar-
ried first, and then lend her her gown, which would make her
look more womanly; but I suppose her right of precedence was
regarded, for she used to say herself that she was at last married
in the baker's wife's gown. Yet even now, if report be true, an
obstacle intervened: the young ladies turned fickle; not, indeed,
on the question * to be or not to be * married, but on their
choice of partners; and I was assured that they actually changed
— Lady Lucy taking to herself, or acquiescing in taking, the
elder brother. What their next step was to have been I know
not: the ladies, who had not been missed, returned to their place
of endurance; the young gentlemen to school, wheie they re-
mained, keeping the secret close. When the school next broke
up, they went kome: and, probably, whilst waiting for courage to
133^ THOMAS DE QUINCEY
avow, or opportunity to disclose, or accident to betray for them
the matter, a newly arrived guest fresh from London, in reply,
perhaps, to the usual question — What news from town ? reported
an odd story of two Westminster scholars, names unknown, who
had (it was said) married two girls in the neighborhood of the
school. The countenances of the two lads drew suspicions upon
them; and, confession being made. Lady Lucy was fetched to the
house of her father-in-law. His lady, seeing her so very much
of a child in appearance, said, on receiving her, in a tone of
vexation — ^ Why, child, what can we do with you ? Such a baby
as you are, what can you know ? > With equal humility and
frankness Lady Lucy replied — < It is very true. Madam, that I
am very young and very ignorant; but whatever you will teach
me I will learn.* All the good lady's prejudice was now over-
come; and Lady Lucy's conduct proved the sincerity of her
submission. She lived seven years in Wales under the tuition of
her mother-in-law, conforming to the manners, tempers, and
prejudices of her new relations.**
We have now ** squeezed ** a volume of three hundred and
fifty-one pages, according to our promise: we hope Miss Hawkins
will forgive us. She must also forgive us for gently blaming
her diction. She says (p. 277), "I read but little English." We
thought as much ; and wish she read more. The words ** duple **
(p. 145) and ** decadence ** (p. 123) point to another language than
English; as to *^ maux^^ (p. 254), we know not what language it
belongs to, unless it be Coptic.
It is certainly not ^* too big for an island ** ; but it will not do
for this island, and we beg it may be transported. Miss Hawkins
says a worse thing, however, of the English language than that
she reads it but little : ** Instead of admiring my native language, *
says she, "I feel fettered by it.** That may be: but her inability
to use it without difficulty and constraint is the very reason why
she ought not to pronounce upon its merits. We cannot allow of
any person's deciding on the value of an instrument until he has
shown himself master of its powers in their whole compass. For
some purposes (and these the highest), the English language is
a divine instrument; no language is so for all.
When Miss Hawkins says that she reads ** little English,** the
form of the expression implies that she reads a good deal of
some more favored language. May we take the liberty of asking
— what ? It is not Welsh, we hope ? nor Syriac ? nor Sungskrita ?
THOMAS DE QUINCE Y 1337
We say hope, for none of these will yield her anything for her
next volume: throughout the Asiatic Researches no soul has been
able to unearth a Sanskrit bonmot. Is it Latin ? or Greek ? Per-
haps both, for, besides some sprinklings of both throughout the
volume, she gives us at the end several copies of Latin and Greek
verses. These, she says, are her brother's: be they whose they
may, we must overhaul them. The Latin are chiefly Sapphics,
the Greek chiefly Iambics; the following is a specimen of the
Sapphics : —
<^One a penny, two a penny, hot cross-buns;
If your daughters will not eat them, give them to your sons.
But if you have none of those pretty little elves,
You cannot do better than eat them yourselves.^
*•'■ Idem Latine redditum a Viro Clariss?'* — Henrico Hawkins.
** Asse placentam cupiasne solam ?
Asse placentas cupiasne binas?
Ecce placentcB, te7ierce, tepentes,
Et cruce gratce.
'^^ Respuant nattz? data, quceso, natis:
Parvulos tales tibi si negdrint
Fata, tu tandem i^superest quid ultra?)
Sumito prasto est^*
Our opinion of this translation is that it is worthy of the orig-
inal. We hope this criticism will prove satisfactory. At the
same time without offense to Mr. Hawkins, may we suggest that
the baker's man has rather the advantage in delicacy of expres-
sion and structure of verse ? He has also distinguished clearly
the alternative of sons and daughters, which the unfortunate am-
biguity of na/z> has prevented Mr. Hawkins from doing. Per-
haps Mr. Hawkins will consider this against a future edition.
Another, viz. , a single hexameter, is entitled, ^^ De Amanda, clavi-
bus amissis. '* Here we must confess to a single mortification,
the table of " Contents '* having prepared us to look for some
sport; for the title is there printed (by mistake as it turns out),
" de Amanda, clavis amissis,** /. ^. , On Amanda, upon the loss of
her cudgels; whereas it ought to have been clavibiis ainissis, on
the loss of her keys. Shenstone used to thank God that his
name was not adapted to the vile designs of the punster: per-
haps some future punster may take the conceit out of him on
1338 THOMAS DE QUINCEY
that point by extracting a compound pun from his name com-
bined with some other word. The next best thing, however, to
having a name, or title, that is absolutely pun-proof, is the hav-
ing one which yields only to Greek puns, or Carthaginian {i.e.,
Funic) puns. Lady Moira has that felicity, on whom Mr. Haw-
kins has thus punned very seriously in a Greek hexameter: —
<< On the death of the Countess of Moira's newborn infant.*
* Moipa KaXy]^ fi erene^ /i ave^e? /lev, Moipa uparafq *
Of the Iambics we shall give one specimen: —
<' Impromptu returned with my lead pencil, which I had left on
his table.*
* BoTjffog £c/xt KaXXioj TzavT ef £[xoo
*Ek too fjLoXt^8ou i] vorjffig ep^srat **
The thought is pretty: some little errors there certainly are,
as in the contest with the baker's man; and in this, as in all his
iambics (especially in the three from the Arabic), some little
hiatuses in the metre, not adapted to the fastidious race of an
Athenian audience. But these little hiatuses, these "little enor-
mities '^ ( to borrow a phrase from the sermon of a country clergy-
man), will occur in the best-regulated verses. On the whole,
our opinion of Mr. Hawkins, as a Greek poet, is that in seven
hundred, or say seven hundred and fifty years, he may become
a pretty — yes, we will say a very pretty poet: as he cannot be
more than one-tenth of that age at present, we look upon his
performances as singularly promising. Tantce molis erat Romanam
condere gentetn.
To return to Miss Hawkins: there are some blunders in facts
up and down her book: such, for instance, as that of supposing
Sir Francis Drake to have commanded in the succession of en-
gagements with the Spanish Armada of 1588, which is the more
remarkable as her own ancestor was so distinguished a person in
those engagements. But, upon the whole, her work, if weeded
of some trifling tales ( as what relates to the young Marquis of
Tweeddale's dress, etc.), is creditable to her talents. Her oppor-
tunities of observation have been great; she has generally made
good iise of them; and her tact for the ludicrous is striking and
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 1339
useful in a book of this kind. We hope that she will soon favor
us with a second volume; and, in that case, we cannot doubt
that we shall again have an orange to squeeze for the public use.
Complete.
ON MADNESS
I AM persuaded myself that all madness, or nearly all, takes its
rise in some part of the apparatus connected with the diges-
tive organs, most probably in the liver. That the brain is
usually supposed to be the seat of madness has arisen from two
causes: first, because the brain is universally considered the organ
of thought; on which account, any disease which disturbs the
thinking principle is naturally held to be seated there: secondly,
because in dissections of lunatics some lesion or disorganization
of the brain has been generally found. Now, as to the first argu-
ment, I am of opinion that the brain has been considered the
organ of thought chiefly in consequence of the strong direction
of the attention to the head arising out of the circumstance that
four of the senses, but especially that the two most intellectual
of the senses, have their organs seated in that part of our struc-
ture. But if we must use the phrase " organ of thought * at all,
on many grounds I should be disposed to say that the brain and
the stomach apparatus through their reciprocal action and reaction
jointly make up the compound organ of thought. Secondly, as
to the post-mortem appearances in the brains of lunatics, no fact
is better ascertained in modern pathology than the metastasis, or
translation to some near or remote organ, of a disease which had
primarily affected the liver — generally from sympathy, as it is
called, but sometimes, in the case of neighboring organs, from
absolute pressure when the liver is enlarged. In such cases the
sympathetic disorder, which at first is only apparent, soon be-
comes real, and unrealizes the original one. The brain and the
lungs are in all cases of diseased liver, I believe, liable beyond
any other organs to this morbid sympathy; and supposing a pe-
culiar mode of diseased liver to be the origin of madness, this
particular mode we may assume to have as one part of its pecu-
liarity a more uniform determination than other modes to this
general tendency of the liver to generate a secondary disease in
the brain. Admitting all this, however, it will be alleged that it
134° THOMAS DE QUINCEY
merely weakens or destroys the objections to such a theory; but
what is the positive argument in its behalf? I answer — my own
long experience, and, latterly, my own experiments directed to
this very question, under the use of opium. For some years
opium had simply affected the tone of my stomach, but as this
went off, and the stomach, by medicine and exercise, etc., began
to recover its strength, I observed that the liver began to suffer.
Under the affection of this organ I was sensible that the genial
spirits decayed far more rapidly and deeply; and that with this
decay the intellectual faculties had a much closer sympathy.
Upon this I tried some scores of experiments, raising and lower-
ing alternately, for periods of forty-eight, sixty, seventy-two, or
eighty-four hours, the quantity of opium. The result I may
perhaps describe more particularly elsewhere — in substance it
amounted to this, that as the opium began to take effect, the
whole living principle of the intellectual motions began to lose its
elasticity, and, as it were, to petrify; I began to comprehend the
tendency of madness to eddy about one idea, and the loss of
power to abstract — to hold abstractions steadily before me — or
to exercise many other intellectual acts, was in due proportion to
the degree in which the biliary system seemed to suffer. It is
impossible in a short compass to describe all that took place; it
is sufficient to say that the power of the biliary functions to af-
fect and to modify the power of thinking according to the degree
in which they were themselves affected, and in a way far differ-
ent from the action of good or bad spirits, was prodigious, and
gave me a full revelation of the way in which insanity begins to
collect and form itself. During all this time my head was un.
affected. And I am now more than ever disposed to think that
some affection of the liver is in most cases the sole proximate
cause, or, if not, an indispensable previous condition of madness.
Complete.
ON ENGLISH PHYSIOLOGY
IN SPITE of our great advantages for prosecuting Physiology in
England, the whole science is yet in a languishing condition
amongst us; and purely for the want of first principles and
a more philosophic spirit of study. Perhaps at this moment the
best service which could be rendered to this subject would be to
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 1341
translate, and to exhibit in a very luminous aspect, all that Kant
has written on the question of teleology, or the doctrine of Final
Causes. Certainly the prima philosophta of the science must be
in a deplorable condition, when it could be supposed that Mr
Lawrence's book brought forward any new arguments in behalf
of materialism; or that in the old argument which he has used
(an argument proceeding everywhere on a metaphysical confusion
which I will notice in a separate paper) there was anything very
formidable. I have mentioned this book, however, not for the
purpose of criticizing it generally, but of ^pointing out one un-
philosophic remark of a practical tendency, which may serve to
strengthen prejudices that are already too strong. On examining
certain African skulls, Mr. Lawrence is disposed, with many other
physiologists, to find the indications of inferior intellectual facul-
ties in the bony structure as compared with that of the Caucasian
skull. In this conclusion I am disposed to coincide; for there is
nothing unphilosophic in supposing a scale of intellectual grada-
tions amongst different races of men, any more than in suppos-
ing such a gradation amongst the different individuals of the
same nation. But it is in a high degree unphilosophic to sup-
pose that nature ever varies her workmanship for the sake of
absolute degradation. Through all differences of degree she pur-
sues some difference of kind, which could not perhaps have co-
existed with a higher degree. If, therefore, the negro intellect
be in some of the higher qualities inferior to that of the Euro-
pean, we may reasonably presume that this inferiority exists for
the purpose of obtaining some compensatory excellence in lower
qualities that could not else have existed. This would be agree-
able to the analogy of nature's procedure in other instances: for,
by thus creating no absolute and entire superiority in any quar-
ter— but distributing her gifts in parts, and making the several
divisions of men the complements, as it were, of each other, she
would point to that same intermixture of all the races with each
other, which on other grounds, a priori as well as empirical, we
have reason to suppose one of her final purposes, and which the
course of human events is manifestly preparing.
Complete.
1342 THOMAS DE QUINCBY
ON SUPERFICIAL KNOWLEDGE
IT IS asserted that this is the age of superficial knowledge; and
amongst the proofs of this assertion we find encyclopaedias
and other popular abstracts of knowledge particularly insisted
on. But in this notion and in its alleged proofs there is equal
error : — wherever there is much diffusion of knowledge, there
must be a good deal of superficiality; prodigious extension im-
plies a due proportion of weak intension ; a sealike expansion of
knowledge will cover large shallows as well as large depths. But
in that quarter in which it is superficially cultivated, the intellect
of this age is properly opposed in any just comparison to an in-
tellect without any culture at all: — leaving the deep soils out of
the comparison, the shallow ones of the present day would in
any preceding one have been barren wastes. Of this our mod-
ern encyclopaedias are the best proof. For whom are they de-
signed, and by whom used ? — By those who in a former age
would have gone to the fountain heads ? No, but by those who
in any age preceding the present would have drunk at no waters
at all. Encyclopaedias are the growth of the last hundred years;
not because those who were formerly students of higher learning
have descended, but because those who were below encyclopaedias
have ascended. The greatness of the ascent is marked by the
style in which the more recent encyclopaedias are executed; at
first they were mere abstracts of existing books — well or ill ex-
ecuted; at present they contain many original articles of great
merit. As in the periodical literature of the age, so in the en-
cyclopaedias it has become a matter of ambition with the publish-
ers to retain the most eminent writers in each several department.
And hence it is that our encyclopaedias now display one char-
acteristic of this age — the very opposite of superficiality (and
which on other grounds we are well assured of) — viz. , its tend-
ency in science, no less than in other applications of industry, to
extreme subdivision. In all the employments which are depend-
ent in any degree upon the political economy of nations, this
tendency is too obvious to have been overlooked. Accordingly,
it has long been noticed for congratulation in manufactures and
the useful arts — and for censure in the learned professions. We
have now, it is alleged, no great and comprehensive lawyers like
Coke; and the study of medicine is subdividing itself into a dis-
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 1343
tinct ministry (as it were) not merely upon the several organs of
the body (oculists, aurists, dentists, chiropodists, etc.), but almost
upon the several diseases of the same organ; one man is distin
guished for the treatment of liver complaints of one class — a
second for those of another class: one man for asthma — another
for phthisis; and so on. As to the law, the evil (if it be one)
lies in the complex state of society, which of necessity makes the
laws complex: law itself is become unwieldy and beyond the
grasp of one man's term of life and possible range of experi-
ence; and will never again come within them. With respect to
medicine, the case is no evil, but a great benefit — so long as the
subdividing principle does not descend too low to allow of a per-
petual reascent into the generalizing principle (the to commune)
which secures the unity of the science. In ancient times all the
evil of such a subdivision was no doubt realized in Egypt : for there
a distinct body of professors took charge of each organ of the
body, not (as we may be assured) from any progress of the sci-
ence outgrowing the time and attention of the general professor,
but simply from an ignorance of the organic structure of the hu-
man body and the reciprocal action of the whole upon each part
and the parts upon the whole; an ignorance of the same kind
which has led sailors seriously (and not merely, as may some-
times have happened, by way of joke) to reserve one ulcerated
leg to their own management, whilst the other was given up
to the management of the surgeon. With respect to law and
medicine then, the difference between ourselves and our ances-
tors is not subjective but objective; not, /. e., in our faculties
who study them, but in the things themselves which are the ob-
jects of study: not we (the students) are grown less, but they
(the studies) are grown bigger; — and that our ancestors did not
subdivide as much as we do — was something of their luck, but
no part of their merit. Simply as subdividers therefore to the
extent which now prevails, we are less superficial than any for-
mer age. In all parts of science the same principle of subdi-
vision holds: here, therefore, no less than in those parts of
knowledge which are the subject of distinct civil professions, we
are of necessity more profound than our ancestors; but, for the
same reason, less comprehensive than they. Is it better to be a
profound student or a comprehensive one ? In some degree this
must depend upon the direction of the studies: but generally, I
think it is better for the interests of knowledge that the scholar
1344 THOMAS DE QUINCEY
should aim at profundity, and better for the interests of the in-
dividual that he should aim at comprehensiveness. A due bal-
ance and equilibrium of the mind is but preserved by a large
and multiform knowledge: but knowledge itself is but served by
an exclusive ( or at least paramount ) dedication of one mind to
one science. The first proposition is perhaps unconditionally
true: but the second with some limitations. There are such peo-
ple as Leibnitzes on this earth; and their office seems not that
of planets — to revolve within the limits of one system, but that
of comets (according to the theory of some speculators) — to con-
nect different systems together. No doubt there is much truth
in this: a few Leibnitzes in every age would be of much use:
but neither are many men fitted by nature for the part of Leib-
nitz; nor would the aspect of knowledge be better, if they were.
We should then have a state of Grecian life amongst us, in which
every man individually would attain in a moderate degree all
the purposes of the sane understanding — but in which all the
purposes of the sane understanding would be but moderately
attained. What I mean is this: — let all the objects of the un-
derstanding in civil life or in science be represented by the let-
ters of the alphabet; in Grecian life each man would separately
go through all the letters in a tolerable way; whereas at present
each letter is served by a distinct body of men. Consequently
the Grecian individual is superior to the modern ; but the Grecian
whole is inferior: for the whole is made up of the individuals;
and the Grecian individual repeats himself. Whereas in modern
life the whole derives its superiority from the very circumstances
which constitute the inferiority of the parts: for modern life is
cast dramatically; and the difference is as between an army con-
sisting of soldiers who should each individually be competent to
go through the duties of a dragoon — of a hussar — of a sharp-
shooter— of an artilleryman — of a pioneer, etc., and an army
on its present composition, where the very inferiority of the sol-
dier as an individual — his inferiority in compass and versatility
of power and knowledge — is the very ground from which the
army derives its superiority as a whole — viz. , because it is the
condition of the possibility of a total surrender of the individual
to one exclusive pursuit. In science, therefore, and ( to speak
more generally) in the whole evolution of the human faculties,
no less than in political economy, the progress of society brings
with it a necessity of sacrificing the ideal of what is excellent
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 1 345
for the individual to the ideal of what is excellent for the whole.
We need, therefore, not trouble ourselves (except as a speculative
question) with the comparison of the two states; because, as a
practical question, it is precluded by the overruling tendencies of
the age — which no man could counteract except in his own sin-
gle case, i. e., by refusing to adapt himself as a part to the whole,
and thus foregoing the advantages of either one state or the
other.
Complete.
THE LOVELIEST SIGHT FOR WOMAN'S EYES
THE loveliest sight that a woman's eye opens upon in this
world is her firstborn child; and the holiest sight upon
which the eyes of God settle in Almighty sanction and per-
fect blessing is the love which soon kindles between the mother
and her infant: mute and speechless on the one side, with no
language but tears and kisses and looks. Beautiful is the philos-
ophy . . . which arises out of that reflection or passion con-
nected with the transition that has produced it. First comes the
whole mighty drama of love, purified ever more and more, how
often from grosser feelings, yet of necessity through its very
elements, oscillating between the finite and infinite; the haughti-
ness of womanly pride, so dignified, yet not always free from
the near contagion of error; the romance so ennobling, yet not
always entirely reasonable ; the tender dawn of opening sentiments,
pointing to an idea in all this which it neither can reach nor
could long sustain. Think of the great storm of agitation and
fear and hope, through which, in her earliest days of woman-
hood, every woman must naturally pass, fulfilling a law of her
Creator, yet a law which rests upon her mixed constitution;
animal, though indefinitely ascending to what is nonanimal — as a
daughter of man, frail . . . and imperfect, yet also as a daugh-
ter of God, standing erect, with eyes to the heavens. Next,
when the great vernal passover of sexual tenderness and romance
has fulfilled its purpose, we see rising as a Phcenix from this
great mystery of ennobled instincts, another mystery, much more
profound, more affecting, more divine — not so much a rapture
as a blissful repose of a Sabbath, which swallows up the more
perishing story of the first; forcing the vast heart of female
nature through stages of ascent, forcing it to pursue the trans-
IV— 85
1546 THOMAS DE QUINCEY
migrations of the Psyche from the aurelic condition, so growing
in its color, into the winged creature which mixes with the mys-
tery of the dawn, and ascends to the altar of the infinite heavens,
rising by a ladder of light from tnat sympathy which God sur-
veys with approbation; and even more so as he beholds it self-
purifying under his Christianity to that sympathy which needs no
purification, but is the holiest of things on this earth, and that
in which God reveals himself through the nature of humanity.
Well it is for the glorification of human nature that through
these the vast majority of women must forever pass; well also that
by placing its sublime germs near to female youth, God thus turns
away by anticipation the divinest of disciplines from the rapa-
cious absoption of the grave. Time is found — how often — for
those who are early summoned into rendering back their glorious
privilege, who yet have tasted in its first fruits the paradise of
maternal love.
And pertaining also to this part of the subject, I will tell you
a result of my own observations of no light importance to
women.
It is this: nineteen times out of twenty I have remarked that
the true paradise of a female life in all ranks, not too elevated
for constant intercourse with the children, is by no means the
years of courtship, nor the earliest period of marriage, but that
sequestered chamber of her experience, in which a mother is left
alone through the day, with servants perhaps in a distant part of
the house, and (God be thanked!) chiefly where there are no serv-
ants at all, she is attended by one sole companion, her little first-
born angel, as yet clinging to her robe, imperfectly able to walk,
still more imperfect in its prattling and innocent thoughts, cling-
ing to her, haunting her wherever she goes as her shadow,
catching from her eye the total inspiration of its little palpitat-
ing heart, and sending to hers a thrill of secret pleasure so often
as its little fingers fasten on her owe. Left alone from morning
to night with this one companion, or even with three, still wear-
ing the graces of infancy; buds of various stages upon the self-
same tree, a woman, if she have the great blessing of approaching
such a luxury of paradise, is moving — too often not aware that
she is moving — through the divinest section of her life. As
evening sets in, the husband, through all walks of life, from the
highest professional down to that of common labor, returns home
to vary her modes of conversation by such thoughts and interests
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 1347
as are more consonant with his more extensive capacities of in-
tellect. But by that time her child (or her children) will be re-
posing on the little couch, and in the morning, duly as the sun
ascends in power, she sees before her a long, long day of perfect
pleasure in this society which evening will bring to her, but which
is interwoven with every fibre of her sensibilities. This condi-
tion of noiseless, quiet love is that, above all, which God blesses
and smiles upon.
From De Quincey's posthumous works.
GREAT FORGERS: CHATTERTON, WALPOLE, AND "JUNIUS »
I HAVE ever been disposed to regard as the most venial of de-
ceptions such impositions as Chatterton had practiced on the
public credulity.. Whom did he deceive ? Nobody but those
who well deserved to be deceived, viz., shallow antiquaries, who
pretended to a sort of knowledge which they had not so much
as tasted. And it always struck me as a judicial infatuation in
Horace Walpole, that he, who had so brutally pronounced the
death of this marvelous boy to be a matter of little consequence,
since otherwise he would have come to be hanged for forgery,
should himself, not as a boy under eighteen (and I think under
seventeen at the first issuing of the Rowley fraud), slaving for
a few guineas that he might procure the simplest food for him-
self, and then buy presents for the dear mother and sister whom
he had left in Bristol, but as an elderly man, with a clear six
thousand per annum, commit a far more deliberate and audacious
forgery than that imputed (if even accurately imputed) to Chat-
terton. I know of no published document, or none published
under Chatterton's sanction, in which he formally declared the
Rowley poems to have been the compositions of a priest living
in the days of Henry IV., viz., in or about the year 1400. Un-
doubtedly he suffered people to understand that he had found
MSS. of that period in the tower of St. Mary Redcliff at Bristol,
which he really had done ; and whether he simply tolerated them
in running off with the idea that these particular poems, written
on discolored parchments by way of coloring the hoax, were
amongst the St. Mary treasures, or positively said so, in either
view, considering the circumstances of the case, no man of kind
feelings will much condenin him
1348 THOMAS DE QUINCEY
But Horace Walpole roundly and audaciously affirmed in the
first sentence of his preface to the poor romance of ^*Otranto,'*
that it had been translated from the Italian of ^^Onuphrio Muralto,*
and that the MS. was still preserved in the library of an Eng-
lish Catholic family; circumstantiating his needless falsehood by
other most superfluous details. Needless, I say, because a book
with the Walpole name on the title-page was as sure of selling
as one with Chatterton's obscure name was at that time sure of
not selling. Possibly Horace Walpole did not care about selling,
but wished to measure his own intrinsic power as a novelist, for
which purpose it was a better course to preserve his incognito.
But this he might have preserved without telling a circumstantial
falsehood; whereas Chatterton knew that his only chance of
emerging from the obscure station of a gravedigger's son, and
canying into comfort the dear female relatives that had half-
starved themselves for him (I speak of things which have since
come to my knowledge thirty-five years after Chatterton and his
woes had been buried in a pauper's coffin), lay in bribing public
attention by some extrinsic attraction. Macpherson had recently
engaged the public gaze by his " Ossian *' — an abortion fathered
upon the fourth century after Christ. What so natural as to at-
tempt other abortions — ideas and refinements of the eighteenth
century — referring themselves to the fifteenth? Had this harm-
less hoax succeeded, he would have delivered those from poverty
who delivered him from ignorance; he would have raised those
from the dust who raised him to an aerial height — yes, to a
height from which (but it was after his death), like Ate or Eris,
come to cause another Trojan war, he threw down an apple of
discord amongst the leading scholars of England, and seemed to
say: * There, Dean of Exeter! there, Laureate! there, Tyrwhitt,
my man! Me you have murdered amongst you. Now fight to
death for the boy that living you would not have hired as a
shoeblack. My blood be upon you!'* Rise up, martyred blood!
rise to heaven for a testimony against these men and this gener-
ation, or else burrow in the earth, and from that spring up like
the stones thrown by Deucalion and Pyrrha into harvests of feud,
into armies of self-exterminating foes. Poor child! immortal
child! Slight were thy trespasses on this earth, heavy was thy
punishment, and it is to be hoped, nay, it is certain, that this
disproportion did not escape the eye which, in the algebra of
human actions, estimates both sides of the equation.
THOMAS DE QUINCEY »349
Lord Byron was of opinion that people abused Horace Wal-
pole for several sinister reasons, of which the first is represented
to be that he was a gentleman. Now, I, on the contrary, am of
opinion that he was not always a gentleman, as particularly seen
in his correspondence with Chatterton. On the other hand, it is
but just to recollect that in retaining Chatterton's MSS. (other-
wise an unfeeling act, yet chiefly imputable to indolence), the
worst aggravation of the case under the poor boy's construction,
viz., that if Walpole had not known his low rank <Mie would not
have dared to treat him in that way,^^ though a very natural feei-
ing, was really an unfounded one. Horace Walpole (I call him
so, because he was not then Lord Orford) certainly had not been
aware that Chatterton was other than a gentleman by birth and
station. The natural dignity of the boy, which had not conde-
scended to any degrading applications, misled this practiced man
of the world. But recurring to Lord Byron's insinuations as to
a systematic design of running Lord Orford down, I beg to say
that I am no party to any such design. It is not likely that a fu-
rious Conservative like myself, who has the misfortune also to be
the most bigoted of Tories, would be so. I disclaim all partici-
pation in any clamor against Lord Orford which may have arisen
on democratic feeling. Feeling the profoundest pity for the ^* mar-
velous boy^* of Bristol, and even love, if it be possible to feel
love for one who was in his unhonored grave before I was born,
I resent the conduct of Lord Orford, in this one instance, as
universally the English public has resented it. But generally,
as a writer, I admire Lord Orford in a very high degree. As a
letter writer, and as a brilliant sketcher of social aspects and sit-
uations, he is far superior to any French author who could pos-
sibly be named as a competitor. And as a writer of personal
or anecdotic history, let the reader turn to Voltaire's " Siecle de
Louis Quatorze ** in order to appreciate his extraordinary merit.
Next will occur to the reader the forgery of " Junius. ** Who
did that ? Oh, villains that have ever doubted since ^* * Junius *
Identified 'M Oh, scamps — oh, pitiful scamps! You reader,
perhaps, belong to this wretched corps. But, if so, understand
that you belong to it under false information. I have heard
myriads talk upon this subject. One man said to me, ^* My dear
friend, I sympathize with your furv. You are right. Righter a
man cannot be. Rightest of all men you are.** I was right —
righter — rightest] That had happened to few men. But again
1350 THOMAS DE QUINCEY
this flattering man went on, " Yes, my excellent friend, right you
are, and evidently Sir Philip Francis was the man. His backer
proved it. The day after his book appeared, if any man had
offered me exactly two thousand to one in guineas, that Sir Philip
was not the man, by Jupiter! I would have declined the bet.
So divine, so exquisite, so Grecian in its perfection, was the
demonstration, the apodeixis (or what do you call it in Greek ?),
that this brilliant Sir Philip — who, by the way, wore his order of
the Bath as universally as ever he taxed Sir William Draper with
doing — had been the author of * Junius.* But here lay the per-
plexity of the matter. At the least five-and-twenty excellent men
proved by posthumous friends that they, every mother's son of
them, had also perpetrated * Junius. *** "Then they were liars,** I
answered. ^* Oh no, my right friend, ** he interrupted, ^< not liars
at all; amiable men, some of whom confessed on their deathbeds
(three to my certain knowledge) that, alas ! they had erred against
the law of charity. ** " But how ? ** said the clergyman. * Why,
by that infernal magazine of sneers and all uncharitableness, the
' Letters of Junius.* ** " Let me understand you,** said the clergy-
man: ^^You wrote * Junius*?** ^^Alas! I did,** replied A. Two
years after another clergyman said to another penitent, ** And so
you wrote 'Junius*?** ''Too true, my dear sir. Alas! I did,**
replied B. One year later a third penitent was going off, and
upon the clergyman saying, " Bless me, is it possible ? Did you
write * Junius ? * ** he replied, " Ah, worshipful sir, you touch a
painful chord in my remembrances — I now wish I had not.
Alas! reverend sir, I did.** "Now you see,** went on my friend,
" so many men at the New Drop, as you may say, having with
tears and groans taxed themselves with ' Junius * as the climax
of their offenses, one begins to think that perhaps all men wrote
'Junius.*** Well, so far there was reason. But when my friend
contended also that the proofs arrayed in pamphlets proved the
whole alphabet to have written " Junius, ** I could not stand his
absurdities. Deathbed confessions, I admitted, were strong. But
as to these wretched pamphlets, some time or other I will muster
them all for a field day; I will brigade them, as if the general
of the district were coming to review them; and then, if I do
not mow them down to the last man by opening a treacherous
battery of grapeshot, may all my household die under a fiercer
" Junius ** ! The true reasons why any man fancies that " Junius **
is an open question must be these three: —
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 1351
Firstly, that they have never read the proofs arrayed against
Sir Philip Francis; this is the general case.
Secondly, that, according to Sancho's proverb, they want bet-
ter bread than is made of wheat. They are not content with
proofs or absolute demonstrations. They require you, like the
witch of Endor, to raise Sir Philip from the grave, that they may
cross-examine him.
Thirdly (and this is the fault of the able writer who un-
masked Sir Philip), there happened to be the strongest argument
that ever picked a Bramah lock against the unknown writer of
* Junius *^ ; apply this, and if it fits the wards, oh, Gemini ! my
dear friend, but you are right — righter — rightest; you have
caught *^ Junius ** in a rabbit snare.
Complete. From De Quincey's
posthumous works.
RENE DESCARTES
(1596-1650)
jEN]^ Descartes, one of the greatest philosophers and mathe-
maticians of Europe, was born at La Haye, France, March
31st, 1596. After graduating at the Jesuit College of La
Fleche, he spent five years in Paris and eleven years in traveling, or,
in the life of a soldier, witnessing the horrors of the wars with which
Europe was then being wasted as a result of the growth of power of
the people and the attempt to maintain the feudal system against it.
At thirty-three, Descartes, convinced of the pressing need of intellect
in the world to hold such brutality in check, retired to Holland deter-
mined to think out a way to higher civilization. ^'- Je petise — done je
suis^^* — "I think — hence I exist, >* is the basis of his system, and it
means much more than a mere statement of fact, for the system of
Descartes, logically interpreted, makes the reality of existence depend
on thought, and cease when thought ceases. Very early in life Des-
cartes had formed a habit of profound meditation, and he relied on
it for results rather than on scholarship. In the ordinary sense he
was not a scholar, for he did not seek knowledge through assimilat-
ing the thoughts of others, but through stimulating his own. The
deduction from his reasoning is that if real thought is actually per-
sisted in, it must lead to a knowledge of truth, no matter what the
starting point. << I think — therefore I exist >^ — by beginning to be-
come conscious, step by step, of everything in the universe. That is,
the individual mind in thinking takes hold on the universal mind
progressively, as it takes hold of the phenomena of nature in the
visible universe through which the universal mind manifests itself.
Hence the individual mind, existing because it thinks, exists in the
universal order, and the individual thought demonstrates the ur^-
versal. Descartes reasoned that under all complexities which resi.ic
from the attempt to group and define the infinite order of the
universe, there are primitive simplicities recognized by the mind as
self-evident, absolute truths, the keys of all the rest. His effort
was to teach a method of reaching these with certainty, and the
object of the « Meditations >* and <<The Discourse on Method" was ^*to
find a simple and indecomposable point or absolute element which
gives to the world and thought their order and systematization. » In
^< Cogito, ergo sum- >> *
RENE DESCARTES 1353
other words, he sought a scientific method of reaching an intellectual
knowledge of God, whom he recognized as the origin not merely of
knowledge, but of thought itself. What he attempted to prevent was
the perversion of thought by the reaction of the mind upon itself, its
refusal to take actual hold on the phenomena of nature, and its re-
lapse through such refusal into inertia and practical nonexistence —
/'. e., "thoughtlessness.^^
Descartes has been called *the founder of modern philosophy,^*
but in the nineteenth century it departed far from his postulate that
truth becomes knowable as God, its author, is knowable through
harmonizing the individual intellect with the universal thought of
creation. Descartes died at Stockholm, February nth, 1650. The
list of his metaphysical, mathematical, and scientific works is a long
one, but his "Meditations* are doubtlessly the most characteristic
illustration of his attempt to think his way to the central truth of
things. It should be remembered in reading them, however, that
Descartes was no believer in the power of mere abstraction. He be-
lieved in and assiduously practiced concrete experiment. He experi-
mented to test his preconceived ideas of truth — as it is the privilege
of every great intellect to do. It is humiliating to remember, how-
ever, that the most far-reaching discoveries are a result of the mere
object teaching of experiment, and that the greatest minds have done
most, not through the vindication of preconceived ideas, but through
what they have learned in spite of them. W. V. B.
THE FIFTH "MEDITATION » — « OF THE ESSENCE OF MATERIAL
THINGS; AND, AGAIN, OF GOD,— THAT HE EXISTS»
SEVERAL questions remain for consideration respecting the attri-
butes of God and my own nature or mind. I Vv'ill, however,
on some other occasion perhaps resume the investigation of
these. Meanwhile, as I have discovered what must be done and
what avoided to arrive at the knowledge of truth, what I have
chiefly to do is to essay to emerge from the state of doubt in
which I have for some time been, and to discover whether any-
thing can be known with certainty regarding material objects.
But before considering whether such objects as I conceive exist
without me, I must examine their ideas in so far as these are to
be found in my consciousness, and discover which of them are
distinct and which confused.
In the first place, I distinctly imagine that quantity which the
philosophers commonly call continuous, or the extension in length,
I3S4
RENfi DESCARTES
breadth, and depth that is in this quantity, or rather in the ob-
ject to which it is attributed. Further, I can enumerate in it
many diverse parts, and attribute to each of these all sorts of
sizes, figures, situations, and local motions; and, in fine, I can
assign to each of these motions all degrees of duration. And I
not only distinctly know these things when I thus consider them
in general; but besides, by a little attention, I discover innumer-
able particulars respecting figures, numbers, motion, and the like,
which are so evidently true, and so accordant with my nature,
that when I now discover them I do not so much appear to learn
anything new as to call to remembrance what I before knew,
or for the first time to remark what was before in my mind, but
to which I had not hitherto directed my attention. And what I
here find of most importance is, that I discover in my mind in-
numerable ideas of certain objects, which cannot be esteemed pure
negations, although perhaps they possess no reality beyond my
thought, and which are not framed by me, though it may be in
my power to think, or not to think them, but possess true and
immutable natures of their own. As, for example, when I im-
agine a triangle, although there is not perhaps and never was in
any place in the universe apart from my thought one such fig-
ure, it remains true, nevertheless, that this figure possesses a
certain determinate nature, form, or essence, which is immutable
and eternal, and not framed by me, nor in any degree dependent
on my thought; as appears from the circumstance, that diverse
properties of the triangle may be demonstrated, viz.^ that its
three angles are equal to two right, that its greatest side is sub-
tended by its greatest angle, and the like, which, whether I will
or not, I now clearly discern to belong to it, although before I
did not at all think of them, when, for the first time, I imagined
a triangle, and w^hich accordingly cannot be said to have been
invented by me. Nor is it a valid objection to allege that
perhaps this idea of a triangle came into my mind by the
medium of the senses, through my having seen bodies of a tri-
angular figure; for I am able to form in thought an innumer-
able variety of figures with regard to which it cannot be sup-
posed that they were ever objects of sense, and I can neverthe-
less demonstrate diverse properties of their nature no less than of
the triangle, all of which are assuredly true since I clearly con-
ceive them: and they are therefore something, and not mere
negations; for it is highly evident that all that is tru** is some-
RENE DESCARTES I355
thing (trutli being identical with existence) ; and I have already
fully shown the truth of the principle, that whatever is clearly
and distinctly known is true. And although this had not been
demonstrated, yet the nature of my mind is such as to compel
me to assent to what I clearly conceive while I so conceive it;
and I recollect that even when I still strongly adhered to the
objects of sense, I reckoned among the number of the most cer-
tain truths those I clearlj^ conceived relating to figures, numbers,
and other matters that pertain to arithmetic and geometry, and
in general to the pure mathematics.
But now if because I can draw from my thought the idea of
an object it follows that all I clearly and distinctly apprehend
to pertain to this object does in truth belong to it, may I not
from this derive an argument for the existence of God ? It is
certain that I no less find the idea of a God in my conscious-
ness, that is, the idea of a being supremely perfect, than that of
any figure or number whatever: and I know with not less clear-
ness and distinctness that an (actual and) eternal existence per-
tains to his nature than that all which is demonstrable of any
figure or number really belongs to the nature of that figure or
number; and, therefore, although all the conclusions of the pre-
ceding ** Meditations " were false, the existence of God would pass
with me for a truth at least as certain as I ever judged any truth
of mathematics to be, although indeed such a doctrine may at
first sight appear to contain more sophistry than truth. For, as
I have been accustomed in every other matter to distinguish be-
tween existence and essence, I easily believe that the existence
can be separated frona the essence of God, and that thus God may
be conceived as not actually existing. But, nevertheless, when I
think of it more attentively, it appears that the existence can no
more be separated from the essence of God than the idea of q
mountain from that of a valley, or the equality of its three
angles to two right angles, from the essence of a (rectilineal)
triangle; so that it is not less impossible to conceive a God, that
is, a being supremely perfect, to whom existence is wanting, or
who is devoid of a certain perfection, than to conceive a moun-
tain without a valley.
But though, in truth, I cannot conceive a God unless as exist-
ing, any more than I can a mountain without a valley, yet, just
as it does not follow that there is any mountain in the world
merely because I conceive a mountain with a valley, so likewise,
1356 RENE DESCARTES
though I conceive God as existing, it does not seem to follow on
that account that God exists; for my thought imposes no neces-
sity on things; and as I may imagine a winged horse, though
there be none such, so I could perhaps attribute existence to
God, though no God existed. But the cases are not analogous,
and a fallacy lurks under the semblance of this objection: for
because I cannot conceive a mountain without a valley, it does
not follow that there is any mountain or valley in existence, but
simply that the mountain or valley, whether they do or do not
exist, are inseparable from each other; whereas, on the other
hand, because I cannot conceive God unless as existing, it fol-
lows that existence is inseparable from him, and therefore that
he really exists: not that this is brought about by my thought,
or that it imposes any necessity on things, but, on the contrary,
the necessity which lies in the thing itself, that is, the necessity
of the existence of God, determines me to think in this way: for
it is not in my power to conceive a God without existence, that
is, a being supremely perfect, and yet devoid of an absolute per-
fection, as I am free to imagine a horse with or without wings.
Nor must it be alleged here as an objection, that it is in truth
necessary to admit that God exists, after having supposed him
to possess all perfections, since existence is one of them, but that
my original supposition was not necessary; just as it is not nec-
essary to think that all quadrilateral figures can be inscribed in
the circle, since, if I supposed this, I should be constrained to
admit that the rhombus, being a figure of four sides, can be
therein inscribed, which, however, is manifestly false. This ob-
jection is, I say, incompetent; for although it may not be neces-
sary that I shall at any time entertain the notion of Deity, yet
each time I happen to think of a first and sovereign being, and
to draw, so to speak, the idea of him from the storehouse of the
mind, I am necessitated to attribute to him all kinds of perfec-
tions, though I may not then enumerate them all, nor think of
each of them in particular. And this necessity is sufficient, as
soon as I discover that existence is a perfection, to cause me to
infer the existence of this first and sovereign being: just as it is
not necessary that I should ever imagine any triangle, but when-
ever I am desirous of considering a rectilineal figure composed
of only three angles, it is absolutely necessary to attribute those
properties to it from which it is correctly inferred that its three
angles are not greater than two right angles, although perhaps I
RENE DESCARTES 1357
may not then advert to this relation in particular. But when
I consider what figures are capable of being inscribed in the
circle, it is by no means necessary to hold that all quadrilateral
figures are of this number; on the contrary, I cannot even im-
agine such to be the case so long as I shall be unwilling to ac-
cept in thought aught that I do not clearly and distinctly conceive:
and consequently there is a vast difference between false supposi-
tions, as is the one in question, and the true ideas that were born
with me, the first and chief of which is the idea of God. For
indeed I discern on many grounds that this idea is not factitious,
depending simply on my thought, but that it is the representation
of a true and immutable nature: in the first place, because I can
conceive no other being, except God, to whose essence existence
(necessarily) pertains; in the second, because it is impossible to
conceive two or more gods of this kind; and it being supposed
that one such God exists, I clearly see that he must have existed
from all eternity, and will exist to all eternity; and finally, be-
cause I apprehend many other properties in God, none of which
I can either diminish or change.
But, indeed, whatever mode of probation I in the end adopt,
it always returns to this, that it is only the things I clearly and
distinctly conceive which have the power of completely persuad-
ing me. And, although, of the objects I conceive in this man-
ner, some, indeed, are obvious to every one, while others are only
discovered after close and careful investigation, nevertheless, after
they are once discovered, the latter are not esteemed less certain
than the former. Thus, for example, to take the case of a right-
angled triangle, although it is not so manifest at first that the
square of the base is equal to the squares of the other two sides,
as that the base is opposite to the greatest angle ; nevertheless,
after it is once apprehended, we are as firmly persuaded of the
truth of the former as of the latter. And, with respect to God,
if I were not preoccupied by prejudices, and my thought beset
on all sides by the continual presence of the images of sensible
objects, I should know nothing sooner or more easily than the
fact of his being. For is there any truth more clear than the
existence of a Supreme Being, or of God, seeing it is his essence
alone that (necessary and eternal) existence pertains ? And al-
though the right conception of this truth has cost me much close
thinking, nevertheless at present I feel not only as assured of it
as of what I deem most certain, but I remark further that the
1358 RENE DESCARTES
certitude of all other truths is so absolutely dependent on it, that
without this knowledge it is impossible ever to know anything
perfectly.
For although I am of such a nature as to be unable, while I
possess a very clear and distinct apprehension of a matter, to
resist the conviction of its truth, yet because my constitution is
also such as to incapacitate me from keeping my mind continu-
ally fixed on the same object, and as I frequently recollect a
past judgment without at the same time being able to recall the
grounds of it, it may happen meanwhile that other reasons are
presented to me which would readily cause me to change my
opinion, if I did not know that God existed; and thus I should
possess no true and certain knowledge, but merely vague and
vacillating opinions. Thus, for example, when I consider the na-
ture of the (rectilineal) triangle, it most clearly appears to me,
who have been instructed in the principles of geometry, that its
three angles are equal to two right angles, and I find it im-
possible to believe otherwise, while I apply my mind to the
demonstration; but as soon as I cease from attending to the proc-
ess of proof, although I still remember that I had a clear com-
prehension of it, yet I may readily come to doubt of the truth
demonstrated, if I do not know that there is a God: for I may
persuade myself that I have been so constituted by nature as to
be sometimes deceived, even in matters which I think I appre-
hend with the greatest evidence and certitude, especially when I
recollect that I frequently considered many things to be true
and certain which other reasons afterwards constrained me to
reckon as wholly false.
But after I have discovered that God exists, seeing I also at
the same time observed that all things ^epend on him, and that
he is no deceiver, and thence inferred that all which I clearly
and distinctly perceive is of necessity true: although I no longer
attend to the grounds of a judgment, no opposite reason can be
alleged sufficient to lead me to doubt of its truth, provided only
I remember that I once possessed a clear and distinct compre-
hension of it. My knowledge of it thus becomes true and certain.
And this same knowledge extends likewise to whatever I remem-
ber to have formerly demonstrated, as the truths of geometry
and the like: for what can be alleged against them to lead me to
doubt of them ? Will it be that my nature is such that I may
be frequently deceived ? But I already know that I cannot be
RENE DESCARTES 1359
deceived in judgments of the grounds of which I possess a clear
knowledge. Will it be that I formerly deemed things to be true
and certain which I afterwards discovered to be false ? But I
had no clear and distinct knowledge of any of those things, and,
being as yet ignorant of the rule by which I am assured of the
truth of a judgment, I was led to give my assent to them on
grounds which I afterwards discovered were less strong than at
the time I imagined them to be. What further objection, then,
is there ? Will it be said that perhaps I am dreaming (an ob-
jection I myself lately raised), or that all the thoughts of which
I am now conscious have no more truth than the reveries of my
dreams ? But, although, in truth, I should be dreaming, the rule
still holds that all which is clearly presented to my intellect is
indisputably true.
And thus I very clearly see that the certitude and truth of all
science depends on the knowledge alone of the true God, inso-
much that, before I knew him, I could have no perfect knowledge
of any other thing. And now that I know him, I possess the
means of acquiring a perfect knowledge respecting innumerable
matters, as well relative to God himself and other intellectual
objects as to corporeal nature, in so far as it is the object of
pure mathematics (which do not consider whether it exists or
not).
Meditation V. complete. From the « Meditations,*
translatea by John Veitch, LL. D.
THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN
(1776-1847)
siBDiN not only defined the symptoms of Bibliomania as a dis-
ease, but so systematized them that it may be said he re-
duced the disease to a science. He was born at Calcutta
in 1776, and was educated at Oxford for the bar; but not finding law
to his taste, he gave it up for the Church. From 1804 until his
death, November 18th, 1847, he was professionally a clergyman of
the Church of England, but his love for old and rare books made
him a <^ bibliomaniac,'' and perhaps the most celebrated of all bibliog-
raphers as well. His " Introduction to a Knowledge of the Rare and
Valuable Editions of the Latin and Greek Classics" appeared in 1803,
and in 1809 his ^^Bibliomania,'' — deservedly the most popular of his
works. He published also "The Library Companion" (1824), <^ Remi-
niscences of a Literary Life" (1836), and "Bibliographical, Antiquarian,
and Picturesque Tour in the Northern Counties of England and vScot-
land" (1838).
THE BIBLIOMANIA
(An Essay on the Disease by a Victim)
WHEN the poetical Epistle of Dr. Ferriar, under the popular
title of the ^^ Bibliomania, " was announced for publica-
tion, I honestly confess that, in common with many of
my book-loving acquaintance, a strong sensation of fear and oi
hope possessed me: of fear, that I might have been accused, how-
ever indirectly, of having contributed towards the increase of this
Mania; and of hope, that the true object of book collecting, and
literary pursuits, might have been fully and fairly developed.
The perusal of this elegant epistle dissipated alike my fears and
my hopes; for, instead of caustic verses and satirical notes, I
found a smooth, melodious, and persuasive panegyric, — unmixed,
however, with any rules for the choice of books, or the regula-
tion of study.
To say that I was not gratified by the perusal of it would be
a confession contrary to the truth; but to say how ardently i
THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN 1 36 1
anticipated an amplification of the subject, how eagerly I looked
forward to a number of curious, apposite, and amusing anecdotes
and found them not therein, is an avowal of which I need not
fear the rashness, when the known talents of the detector of
Sterne's plagiarisms are considered. I will not, however, disguise
to you that I read it with uniform delight, and that I rose from
the perusal with a keener appetite for —
The small, rare volume, black with tarnished gold.
— Dr. Ferriar. Epistle V. 138.
Whoever undertakes to write down the follies which grow out
of an excessive attachment to any particular pursuit, be that pur-
suit horses, hawks, dogs, guns, snuffboxes, old china, coins, or rusty
armor, may be thought to have little consulted the best means
of insuring success for his labors, when he adopts the dull ve-
hicle of Prose for the communication of his ideas, not consider-
ing that from Poetry ten thousand bright scintillations are struck
off, which please and convince while they attract and astonish-
Thus when Pope talks of allotting for —
* Pembroke statues, dirty Gods and Coins;
Rare monkish manuscripts for Hearne alone;
And books to Mead and butterflies to Sloane,*^
when he says that —
* These Aldus printed, those Du Sueil has bound '-^
moreover that —
"For Locke or Milton 'tis in vain to look;
These shelves admit not any modern book*;
he not only seems to illustrate the propriety of the foregoing re-
mark by showing the immense superiority of verse to prose, in
ridiculing reigning absurdities, but he seems to have had a pretty
strong foresight of the Bibliomania which rages at the present
day. However, as the Ancients tell us that a Poet cannot be a
manufactured creature, and as I have not the smallest preten-
sions to the "rhyming art** (although in former times I did ven-
ture to dabble with it), I must of necessity have recourse to
Prose; and, at the same time, to your candor and forbearance in
perusing the pages which ensue.
IV — 86
1362 THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN
If ever there was a country upon the face of the globe —
from the daj^s of Nimrod the beast to Bagford the book hunter
— distinguished for the variety, the justness, and magnanimity of
Its views; if ever there was a nation which really and unceas-
ingly ^* felt for another's woe * ( I call to witness our Infirmaries,
Hospitals, Asylums, and other public and private institutions of a
charitable nature, that, like so many belts of adamant, unite and
strengthen us in the great cause of Humanity) ; if ever there
was a country and a set of human beings pre-eminently distin-
guished for all the social virtues which soften and animate the
soul of man, surely Old England and Englishmen are they! The
common cant, it may be urged, of all writers in favor of the coun-
try where they chance to live! And what, you will say, has this
to do with Book Collectors and Books ? — Much, every way : a
nation thus glorious is, at this present eventful moment, afflicted
not only with the Dog, but the Book, disease —
<<Fire in each eye, and paper in each hand,
They rave, recite,'^
Let us inquire, therefore, into the origin and tendency of the
Bibliomania.
In this inquiry I purpose considering the subject under three
points of view: I. The History of the Disease, — or an account of
the eminent men who have fallen victims to it; II. The Nature
OR Symptoms of the Disease; and III. The Probable Means of
Its Cure. We are to consider, then,
I. The History of the Disease. — In treating of the history of
this disease, it will be found to have been attended with this re-
markable circumstance ; namely, that it has almost uniformly con-
fined its attacks to the male sex, and, among these, to people in
the higher and middling classes of society, while the artificer,
laborer, and peasant have escaped wholly uninjured. It has raged
chiefly in palaces, castles, halls, and gay mansions ; and those things
which in general are supposed not to be inimical to health, such
as cleanliness, spaciousness, and splendor, are only so many in-
ducements towards the introduction and propagation of the Bib-
liomania! What renders it particularly formidable is that it rages
in all seasons of the year and at all periods of human existence.
The emotions of friendship or of love are weakened or subdued
as old age advances; but the influence of this passion, or rather
thcl:..3 FROGNALL DIBDIN' 1363
disease, admits of no mitigation: <^it grows with our growth, and
strengthens with our strength '*; and is ofttimes —
The ruling passion strong in death. »
We will now, my dear sir, begin « Making out the catalogue »
or victims to the Bibliomania! The first eminent character who
appears to have been infected with this disease was Richard de
Bury, one of the tutors of Edward III., and afterwards Bishop of
Durham; a man who has been uniformly praised for the variety
of his erudition and the intenseness of his ardor in book collect-
ing. I discover no other notorious example of the fatality of the
Bibliomania until the time of Henry VII., when the monarch
himself may be considered as having added to the number. Al-
though our venerable typographer, Caxton, lauds and magnifies,
with equal sincerity, the whole line of British kings, from Ed-
ward IV. to Henry VII. (under whose patronage he would seem,
in some measure, to have carried on his printing business), yet, of
all these monarchs, the latter alone was so unfortunate as to fall
a victim to this disease. His library must have been a magnifi-
cent one, if we may judge from the splendid specimens of it
which now remain. It would appear too, that, about this time,
the Bibliomania was increased by the introduction of foreign
printed books; and it is not very improbable that a portion of
Henry's immense wealth was devoted towards the purchase of
vellum copies, which were now beginning to be published by the
great typographical triumvirate, Verard, Eustace, and Pigouchet.
During the reign of Henry VIII., I should suppose that the
Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt were a little attached to
'>ook collecting; and that Dean Colet and his friend Sir Thomas
More and Erasmus were downright Bibliomaniacs. There can be
little doubt but that neither the great Leland nor his biographer
Bale were able to escape the contagion ; and that, in the ensu-
ing period, Roger Ascham became notorious for the Book disease.
He purchased probably, during his travels abroad, many a fine
copy of the * Greek and Latin Classics,^* from which he read to his
illustrious pupils, Lady Jane Grey and Queen Elizabeth; but
whether he made use of an editio privceps^ or a large paper copy,
I have hitherto not been lucky enough to discover. This learned
character died in the vigor of life, and in the bloom of reputa-
tion; and, as I suspect, in consequence of the Bibliomania, — for
1364 THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN
he was always collecting books and always studying them. His
"Schoolmaster/* is a work which can only perish with our lan-
guage.
If we are to judge from the beautiful Missal lying open before
Lady Jane Grey, in Mr. Copley's elegant picture now exhibiting
at the British Institution, it would seem rational to infer that
this amiable and learned female was slightly attacked by the dis-
ease. It is to be taken for granted that Queen Elizabeth was
not exempt from it; and that her great secretary, Cecil, sympa-
thized with her! In regard to Elizabeth, her Prayer Book is quite
evidence sufhcient for me that she found the Bibliomania irre-
sistible! During her reign, how vast and how frightful were the
ravages of the Book madness! If we are to credit Laneham's
celebrated Letter, it had extended far into the country, and in-
fected some of the worthy inhabitants of Coventry; for one
** Captain Cox, by profession a mason, and that right skillful,'*
had " as fair a library of sciences, and as many goodly monu-
ments both in Prose and Poetry, and at afternoon could talk as
much without book, as any Innholder betwixt Brentford and Bag-
shot, what degree soever he be ! **
While the country was thus giving proofs of the prevalence
of this disorder, the two Harringtons (especially the younger) and
the illustrious Spenser were unfortunately seized with it in the
metropolis.
In the seventeenth century, from the death of Elizabeth to
the commencement of Anne's reign, it seems to have made con-
siderable havoc; yet, such was our blindness to it that we scru-
pled not to engage in overtures for the purchase of Isaac
Vossius's fine library, enriched with many treasures from the
Queen of Sweden's, which this versatile genius scrupled not to
pillage without confession or apology. During this century our
great reasoners and philosophers began to be in motion; and,
like the fumes of tobacco, which drive the concealed and clotted
insects from the interior to the extremity of the leaves, the in-
fectious particles of the Bibliomania set a thousand busy brains
a-thinking, and produced ten thousand capricious works, which,
overshadowed by the majestic remains of Bacon, Locke, and
Boyle, perished for want of air, and warmth, and moisture.
The reign of Queen Anne was not exempt from the influence
of this disease; for during this period, Maittaire began to lay the
foundation of his extensive library, and to publish some biblio-
THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN I365
graphical works which may be thought to have rather increased,
than diminished, its force. Meanwhile Harley, Earl of Oxford,
watched its progress with an anxious eye; and although he might
have learned experience from the fatal examples of R. Smith
and T. Baker, and the more recent ones of Thomas Rawlinson,
Bridges, and Collins, yet he seemed resolved to brave and to
baffle it; but, like his predecessors, he was suddenly crushed
within the gripe of the demon, and fell one of the most splendid
of his victims. Even the unrivaled medical skill of Mead could
save neither his friend nor himself. The Doctor survived his
Lordship about twelve years, dying of the complaint called the
Bibliomania! He left behind an illustrious character; sufficient to
flatter and soothe those who may tread in his footsteps, and fall
victims to a similar disorder.
The years 1755 and 1756 were singularly remarkable for the
mortality excited by the Bibliomania; and the well-known names
of Folkes and Rawlinson might have supplied a modern Holbein
a hint for the introduction of a new subject in the " Dance of
Death.'* The close of George the Second's reign witnessed an-
other instance of the fatality of this disease. Henley *^ bawled
till he was hoarse ** against the cruelty of its attack, while his
library has informed posterity how severely and how mortally
he suffered from it.
We are now, my dear sir, descending rapidly to our own times;
and, in a manner sufficiently rough, have traced the history of
the Bibliomania to the commencement of the present illustrious
reign: when we discover, among its victims, a General, who had
probably faced many a cannon and stormed many a rampart un-
injured. The name of Dormer will remind you of the small but
choice library which affords such a melancholy proof of its owner's
fate; while the more splendid examples of Smith and West serve
to show the increased ravages of a disease, which seemed to
threaten the lives of all, into whose ears (like those of " Visto '*)
some demon had whispered the sound of " Taste.** These three
striking instances of the fatality of the Bibliomania occurred, — the
first in the year 1764, and the latter in 1773. The following year
witnessed the sale of the Fletewode library; so that nothing but
despair and havoc appeared to move in the train of this pestifer-
ous malady. In the year 1775 died the famous Dr. Anthony
Askew, another illustrious victim to the Bibliomania. Those who
recollect the zeal and scholarship of this great book collector, and
1366 THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN
the precious gems with which his library was stored from the
cabinets of De Boze and Gaignat, as well as of Mead and Folkes,
cannot but sigh, with grief of heart, on the thought of such a
victim! How ardently, and how kindly (as I remember to have
heard his friend Dr. Burges say), would Askew unfold his glit-
tering stores — open the magnificent folio, or the shining duodec-
imo, upon vellum, embossed and fast held together with golden
knobs and silver clasps! How carefully would he unroll the
curious manuscript — decipher the half -effaced characters — and
then, casting an eye of ecstasy over the shelves upon which sim-
ilar treasures were lodged, exult in the glittering prospect before
him! But Death — who, as Horace tells us, raps equally at the
palaces of kings and cottages of peasants, made no scruple to ex-
ercise the knocker of the Doctor's door, and sent, as his avant-
courier, this Deplorable Mania! It appeared; and even Askew,
with all his skill in medicine and books, fell lifeless before it —
bewailed, as he was beloved and respected!
After this melancholy event, one would have thought that
future virtuosi would have barricaded their doors and fumigated
their chambers, to keep out such a pest: — but how few are they
who profit by experience, even when dearly obtained! The sub-
sequent history of the disease is a striking proof of the truth of
this remark; for the madness of book collecting rather increased
— and the work of death still went on. In the year 1776 died
John Ratcliffe, another, and a very singular, instance of the
fatality of the Bibliomania. If he had contented himself with his
former occupation, and frequented the butter and cheese, instead
of the book, market — if he could have fancied himself in a brown
peruke and Russian apron, instead of an embroidered waistcoat,
velvet breeches, and flowing periwig, he might, perhaps, have
enjoyed greater longevity; but, infatuated by the Caxtons and
Wynkin de Wordes of Fleetwood and of West, he fell into the
snare; and the more he struggled to disentangle himself the
more certainly did he become a prey to the disease.
Thirty years have been considered by Addison (somewhere in
his Spectator) as a pretty accurate period for the passing away
of one generation and the coming on of another. We have
brought down our researches to within a similar period of the
present times; but, as Addison has not made out the proofs of
such assertion, and as many of the relatives and friends of those
who have fallen victims to the Bibliomania, since the days of
THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN 1367
Ratclifife, may yet be alive; moreover, as it is the part of
humanity not to tear open wounds which have been just closed,
or awaken painful sensibilities which have been well nigh laid to
rest, so, my dear sir, in giving you a further account of this
fatal disorder, I deem it the most prudent method not to expati-
ate upon the subsequent examples of its mortality. We can only
mourn over such names as Beauclerk, Crofts, Pearson, Lort,
Mason, Farmer, Steevens, Woodhouse, Brand, and Reed, and
fondly hope that the list may not be increased by those of living
characters.
We are, in the second place, to describe the Symptoms of the
Disease.
The ingenious Peignot, in the first volume of his ^* Dictionnaire
Bibliologie, "p. 51, defines the Bibliomania to be ^* a passion for
possessing books; not so much to be instructed by them, as to
gratify the eye by looking on them. He who is affected by this
mania knows books only by their titles and dates, and is rather
seduced by the exterior than the interior.** This is, perhaps, too
general and vague a definition to be of much benefit in the
knowledge and consequent prevention of the disease; let us,
therefore, describe it more certainly and intelligibly.
Symptoms of this disease are instantly known by a passion for;
I. Large Paper Copies ; 2. Uncut Copies; 3. Illustrated Copies;
4. Unique Copies ; 5. Copies Printed upon Vellum; 6. First Edi-
tions; 7. True Editions ; 8. A General Desire for the Black Let-
ter. We will describe these symptoms more particularly: —
I. Large Paper Copies. — These are a certain set or limited
number of the work printed in a superior manner, both in regard
to ink and press work, on paper of a larger size, and better qual-
ity, than the ordinary copies. Their price is enhanced in propor-
tion to their beauty and rarity.
This symptom of the Bibliomania is, at the present day, both
general and violent, and threatens to extend still more widely.
Even modem publications are not exempt from its calamitous in-
fluence; and when Mr. Miller, the bookseller, told me with what
eagerness the large paper copies of Lord Valentia's *^ Travels '* were
bespoke, and Mr. Evans showed me that every similar copy of
his new edition of " Burnett's History of His Own Times ** was
disposed of, I could not help elevating my eyes and hands, in
token of commiseration at the prevalence of this symptom of the
Bibliomftnia.
1368 THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN
2. Uncut Copies. — Of all the symptoms of the Bibliomania,
this is probably the most extraordinary. It may be defined as a
passion to possess books of which the edges have never been
sheared by the binder's tools. And here, my dear sir, I find my-
self walking upon doubtful ground; — your uncut Heames rise
up in " rough majesty '* before me, and almost " push me from
my stool. ^^ Indeed, when I look around in my book-lined tub, I
cannot but be conscious that this symptom of the disorder has
reached my own threshold; but when it is known that a few of
my bibliographical books are left with the edges uncut merely
to please my friends (as one must sometimes study their tastes
and appetites as well as one's own), I trust that no very serious
conclusions will be drawn about the probable fatality of my own
case. As to uncut copies, although their inconvenience (an uncut
lexicon to v;it ! ) and deformity must be acknowledged, and al-
though a rational man can want for nothing better than a book
once well bound, yet we find that the extraordinary passion for
collecting them not only obtains with full force, but is attended
with very serious consequences to those qui n'ojtt point des pistoles
(to borrow the language of Clement, Vol. VI., p. 2>(i^. I dare say
an uncut first Shakespeare, as well as an uncut first Homer, would
produce a little annuity!
3. Illustrated Copies. — A passion for books illustrated or
adorned with numerous prints, representing characters or circum-
stances mentioned in the work, is a very general and violent
symptom of the Bibliomania, which has been known chiefly within
the last half-century. The origin, or first appearance, of this
symptom has been traced by some to the publication of Granger's
" Biographical History of England *^ ; but whoever will be at the
pains of reading the preface of this work will see that Granger
sheltered himself under the authorities of Evelyn, Ashmole, and
others; and that he alone is not to be considered as responsible
for all the mischief which passion for collecting prints has occa-
sioned. Granger, however, was the first who introduced it in
the form of a treatise, and surely *^ in an evil hour ^^ was this
treatise published — although its amiable author must be acquit-
ted of ** malice prepense. ^^ His <* History of England" seems to
have sounded the tocsin for a general rummage after, and
slaughter of, old prints; venerable philosophers and veteran
heroes, who had long reposed in unmolested dignity within the
magnificent folio volumes which recorded their achievements,
THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN 1369
were instantly dragged from their peaceful abodes to be inlaid
by the side of some spruce, modern engraving, within an Illus-
trated Granger! Nor did the madness stop here. Illustration
was the order of the day; and Shakespeare and Clarendon became
the next objects of its attack. From these it has glanced off in
a variety of directions, to adorn the pages of humbler wights;
and the passion, or rather this symptom of the Bibliomania, yet
rages with undiminished force. If judiciously treated, it is, of
all the symptoms, the least liable to mischief. To possess a series
of well-executed portraits of illustrious men at different periods
of their lives, from blooming boyhood to phlegmatic old age, is
sufficiently amusing; but to possess every portrait, bad, indiffer-
ent, and unlike, betrays such a dangerous and alarming symptom
as to render the case almost incurable !
There is another mode of illustrating copies by which this
symptom of the Bibliomania may be known: it consists in bring-
ing together, from different works (by means of the scissors, or
otherwise by transcription), every page or paragraph which has
any connection with the character or subject under discussion.
This is a useful and entertaining mode of illustrating a favorite
author; and copies of works of this nature, when executed by
skillful hands, should be preserved in public repositories. I almost
ridiculed the idea of an Illustrated Chatterton, in this way, till I
saw Mr. Haslewood's copy, in twenty-one volumes, which riveted
me to my seat!
4. Unique Copies. — A passion for a book which has any pe-
culiarity about it, by either or both of the foregoing methods of
illustration- — or which is remarkable for its size, beauty, and con-
dition— is indicative of a rage for unique copies and is iinques-
tionably a strong prevailing symptom of the Bibliomania. Let
me therefore urge every sober and cautious collector not to be
fascinated by the terms *^ Matchless and Unique *^ ; which, ^* in
slim Italicks'* (to copy Dr. Ferriar's happy expression) are studi-
ously introduced into booksellers' catalogues to lead the unwary
astray. Such a collector may fancy himself proof against the
temptation; and will, in consequence, call only to look at this
unique book or set of books; but, when he views the morocco
binding, silk water-tabby lining, blazing gilt edges — when he
turns over the white and spotless leaves — gazes on the ampli-
tude of margin — on a rare and lovely print introduced — and is
charmed with the soft and coaxing manner in which, by the skill
2370 THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN
of Herring or Mackinlay, ^Heaf succeeds to leaf* — he can no
longer bear up against the temptation — and, confessing himself
vanquished, purchases and retreats — exclaiming with Virgil's
shepherd —
*-''Ut vidi, ut peril — ut me mains abstulit error l^'*
5. Copies Printed on Vellum. — A desire for works printed in
this manner is an equally strong and general symptom of the
Bibliomania; but as these works are rarely to be obtained of
modern date, the collector is obliged to have recourse to speci-
mens executed three centuries ago in the printing offices of Al-
dus, Verard, and the Juntae. Although the Biblioth^que Imperiale
at Paris, and the library of Count Macarty at Toulouse, are said
to contain the greatest number of books printed upon vellumi,
yet those who have been fortunate enough to see copies of this
kind in the libraries of his Majesty, the Duke of Marlborough,
Earl Spencer, Mr. Johnes, and the late Mr. Cracherode (now in
the British Museum), need not travel on the Continent for the
sake of being convinced of their exquisite beauty and splendor.
Mr. Edward's unique copy (he will forgive the epithet) of the
first Livy upon vellum is a library of itself! — and the recent
discovery of a vellum copy of Wynkin de Worde's reprint of
Juliana Barnes's book, complete in every respect (to say nothing
of his Majesty's similar copy of Caxton's ^* Doctrinal of Sapience,'^
1489, in the finest preservation) are, to be sure, sufficient demon-
strations of the prevalence of this symptom of the Bibliomania in
the times of our forefathers; so that it cannot be said, as some
have asserted, to have appeared entirely within the last half-
century.
6. First Editions. — From the time of Ancillon to Askew, there
has been a very strong desire expressed for the possession of
original or first published editions of works, as they are in gen-
eral superintended and corrected by the author himself; and,
like the first impressions of prints, are considered more valuable.
Whoever is possessed with a passion for collecting books of this
kind may unquestionably be said to exhibit a strong symptom of
the Bibliomania; but such a case is not quite hopeless, nor is it
deserving of severe treatment or censure. All bibliographers
have dwelt on the importance of these editions, for the sake of
collation with subsequent ones, and detecting, as is frequently
the case, the carelessness displayed by future editors. Of such
THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN 1 37 1
importance is the first edition of Shakespeare considered, that a
facsimile reprint of it has been pubHshed with success. In re-
gard to the Greek and Latin classics, the possession of these
original editions is of the first consequence to editors who are
anxious to republish the legitimate text of an author. Wakefield,
I believe, always regretted that the first edition of Lucretius had
not been earlier inspected by him. When he began his edition,
the editio princeps was not ( as I have understood ) in the library
of Earl Spencer — the storehouse of almost everything that is ex-
quisite and rare in ancient classical literature!
It must not, however, be forgotten that if first editions are, in
some instances, of great importance, they are in many respects
superfluous, and an incumbrance to the shelves of a collector; in-
asmuch as the labors of subsequent editors have corrected their
errors, and superseded, by a great fund of additional matter, the
necessity of consulting them. Thus, not to mention other in-
stances ( which present themselves while noticing the present one) ,
all the fine things which Colomies and Remannus have said about
the rarity of La Croix du Maine's '-'- Bibliotheque," published in 1584,
are now unnecessary to be attended to, since the ample and ex-
cellent edition of this work by De La Monnoye and Juvigny, in
six quarto volumes, 1772, has appeared. Nor will any one be
tempted to hunt for Gesner's <* Bibliotheca '^ of 1545-48, whatever
may be its rarity, who has attended to Morhof's and Vogt's recom-
mendation of the last and best edition of 1583.
7. True Editions. — Some copies of a work are struck off with
deviations from the usually received ones, and, though these
deviations have neither sense nor beauty to recommend them
(and indeed are principally defects), yet copies of this description
are eagerly sought after by collectors of a certain class. This
particular pursuit may therefore be called another, or the seventh,
symptom of the Bibliomania.
8. Books Printed in the Black Letter. — Of all the symptoms
of the Bibliomania, this eighth symptom (and the last which I
shall notice) is at present the most powerful and prevailing.
Whether it was not imported into this country from Holland,
by the subtlety of Schelhorn (a knowing writer upon rare and
curious books) may be shrewdly suspected. Whatever be its
origin, certain it is, my dear sir, that books printed in the black
letter are now coveted with an eagerness unknown to our col-
lectors in the last century. If the spirits of West, Ratcliffe,
1372 THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN
Farmer, and Brand, have as yet held any intercourse with each
other, in that place ** from whose bourn no traveler returns, '*
what must be the surprise of the three former, on being told by
the latter, of the prices given for some of the books in his
library, as mentioned below!
A perusal of these articles may probably not impress the
reader with any lofty notions of the superiority of the black let-
ter; but this symptom of the Bibliomania is, nevertheless, not to
be considered as incurable, or wholly unproductive of good. Un-
der a proper spirit of modification it has done, and will continue
to do, essential service to the cause of English literature. It
guided the taste, and strengthened the judgment, of Tyrwhitt in
his researches after Chaucerian lore. It stimulated the studies of
Farmer and of Steevens, and enabled them to twine many a
beauteous flower round the brow of their beloved Shakespeare.
It has since operated, to the same effect, in the labors of Mr.
Douce, the Porson of old English and French literature; and in
the editions of Milton and Spenser by my amiable and excellent
friend Mr. Todd, the public have had a specimen of what the
black letter may perform, when temperately and skillfully ex-
ercised.
I could bring to your recollection other instances; but your
own copious reading and exact memory will better furnish you
with them. Let me not, however, omit remarking that the beau-
tiful pages of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and Sir
Trestrem, exhibit, in the notes (now and then thickly studded
with black-letter references), a proof that the author of ^* The
Lay ** and " Marmion * has not disdained to enrich his stores of
information by such intelligence as black-lettered books impart.
In short, though this be also a strong and general symptom of
the Bibliomania, it is certainly not attended with injurious effects
when regulated by prudence and discretion. An undistinguishable
voracious appetite to swallow everything printed in the black
letter can only bring on unconquerable disease, if not death, to
the patient.
Having in the two preceding divisions of this letter discoursed
somewhat largely upon the history and symptoms of the Biblio-
mania, it now remains, according to the original plan, to say a
few words upon the probable means of its cure. And, indeed,
I am driven to this view of the subject from every laudable
motive; for it would be highly censurable to leave any reflecting
THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN 1 37 3
mind impressed with melancholy emotions concerning the misery
and mortality that have been occasioned by the abuse of those
pursuits, to which the most soothing and important considerations
ought to be attached. Far from me and my friends be such a
cruel, if not criminal, conduct; let us then, my dear sir, seriously
discourse upon the —
III. Probable Means of the Cure of the Bibliomania. — He
will surely be numbered among the philanthropists of his day
who has, more successfully than myself, traced and described the
ravages of this disease, and fortified the sufferer with the means
of its cure. But as this is a disorder of quite a recent date, and
as its characteristics, in consequence, cannot be yet fully known
or described, great candor must be allowed that physician who
offers a prescription for so obscure and complicated a case. It is
in vain that you search the works (aye, even the best editions) of
Hippocrates and Galen for a description of this malady; nor will
you find it hinted at in the more philosophical treatises of Syd-
enham and Heberden. It had, till the medical skill of Dr. Ferriar
first noticed it to the public, escaped the observations of all our
pathologists. With a trembling hand and fearful apprehension,
therefore, I throw out the following suggestions for the cure, or
mitigation, of this disorder: In the first place, the disease of the
Bibliomania is materially softened, or rendered mild, by directing
our studies to useful and profitable works, — whether these be
printed upon small or large paper, in the Gothic, Roman, or Italic
type. To consider purely the intrinsic excellence, and not the
exterior splendor, or adventitious value, of any production, will
keep us perhaps wholly free from this disease. Let the midnight
lamp be burned to illuminate the stores of antiquity — whether
they be romances, or chronicles, or legends, and whether they be
printed by Aldus or by Caxton — if a brighter lustre can thence
be thrown upon the pages of modern learning. To trace genius
to its source, or to see how she has been influenced or modified
by ^ the lore of past times ** is both a pleasing and profitable
pursuit. To see how Shakespeare has here and there plucked a
flower from some old ballad or popular tale, to enrich his own
unperishable garland — to follow Spenser and Milton in their de-
lightful labyrinths 'midst the splendor of Italian literature — are
studies which stamp a dignity upon our intellectual characters.
But, in such a pursuit, let us not overlook the wisdom of modem
times, nor fancy that what is only ancient can be excellent. We
1374 THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN
must remember that Bacon, Boyle, Locke, Taylor, Chilling worth,
Robertson, Hume, Gibbon, and Paley are names which always
command attention from the wise, and remind us of the improved
state of reason and acquired knowledge during the two last cen-
turies.
In the second place, the reprinting of scarce intrinsically val-
uable works is another means of preventing the propagation of
this disorder. Amidst all our present sufferings under the Bib-
liomania, it is some consolation to find discerning and spirited
booksellers republishing the valuable ^* Chronicles " of Froissart,
Holinshed, and Hall, and the collections known by the names of
^* The Harleian Miscellany, ^^ and "Lord Somer's Tracts.*^ These
are noble efforts, and richly deserve the public patronage.
In the third place, the editing of our best ancient authors,
whether in prose or poetry, is another means of effectually coun-
teracting the progress of the Bibliomania, as it has been described
under its several symptoms.
In the fourth place, the erecting of public institutions is a
very powerful antidote against the prevalence of several symp-
toms of this disease.
In the fifth place, the encouragement of the study of Bibliog-
raphy, in its legitimate sense, and towards its true object, may
be numbered among the most efficacious cures for this destruc-
tive malady. To place competent librarians over the several
departments of a large public library, or to submit a library, on
a more confined scale, to one diligent, enthusiastic, well-informed,
well-bred, bibliographer or librarian (of which in this metropo-
lis we have so many examples), is doing a vast deal towards direct-
ing the channels of literature to flow in their proper courses.
Thus briefly and guardedly have I thrown out a few sugges-
tions, which may enable us to avoid, or mitigate the severity of,
the disease called the Biblicmania. Happy indeed shall I deem
myself, if, in the description of its symptoms, and in the recom-
mendation of the means of cure, I may have snatched any one
from a premature grave, or lightened the load of years that are
yet to come.
You, my dear sir, who, in your observations upon society, as
well as in your knowledge of ancient times, must have met with
numerous instances of the m_iseries which * flesh is heir to, ® may
be disposed perhaps to confess that, of all species of afflictions,
the present one under consideration has the least moral turpitude
THOMAS FROGNALL DIBDIN 1375
attached to it. True, it may be so: for, in the examples which
have been adduced, there will be found neither suicides, nor
gamesters, nor profligates. No woman's heart has been broken
from midnight debaucheries; no marriage vow has been violated;
no child has been compelled to pine in poverty or neglect; no
patrimony has been wasted; and no ancestor's fame tarnished.
If m-en have erred under the influence of this disease, their aber-
rations have been marked with an excess arising from intellectual
fever, and not from a desire of baser gratifications.
If, therefore, in the wide survey which a philosopher may
take of the * Miseries of Human Life" the prevalence of this
disorder may appear to be less mischievous than that of others,
and, if some of the most amiable and learned of mortals seemed
to have been both unwilling, as well as unable, to avoid its con-
tagion, you will probably feel the less alarmed if symptoms of it
should appear within the sequestered abode of Hodnet! Recol-
lecting that even in remoter situations its influence has been felt
— and that neither the pure atmosphere of Hafod nor of Sled-
mere has completely subdued its power — you will be disposed to
exclaim with violence, at the intrusion of Bibliomaniacs —
* What walls can guard me, or what shades can hide ?
They pierce my thickets, through my grot they glide!
By land, by water, they renew the charge;
They stop the chariot, and they board the barge.**
Upon the whole, therefore, attending closely to the symptoms
of this disorder as they have been described, and practicing such
means of cure as have been recommended, we may rationally
hope that its virulence may abate and the number of its victims
annually diminish. But if the more discerning part of the com-
munity anticipate a different result, and the preceding observa-
tions appear to have presented but a narrow and partial view of
the mischiefs of the Bibliomania, my only consolation is that to
advance something upon the subject is better than to preserve a
sullen and invincible silence. Let it be the task of more experi
enced bibliographers to correct and amplify the foregoing out-
line I
Complete. Origiual edition 1809.
CHARLES DICKENS
(1812-1870)
jT \s hard to find a true essay among the miscellanies and
sketches which Dickens left in such abundance. He is
essentially a story-teller and a descriptive writer, but his
« Child's Dream of a Star>* approximates the essay of that most pop-
ular type invented by Addison and Steele in which c plot is intro-
duced as a vehicle to carry the idea gratis to those who love to get
new ideas at the least possible expense of thought. "The Vision of
Mirza'* itself is scarcely a better example of its class than this mas-
terpiece by Dickens. His humor is well illustrated in " The Noble
Savage,** an essay interesting in itself and valuable for its bearing
on *Hhe problem of civilizing the inferior races."
A CHILD'S DREAM OF A STAR
THERE was once a child, and he strolled about a good deal, and
thought of a number of things. He had a sister, who was
a child too, and his constant companion. These two used
to wonder all day long. They wondered at the beauty of the
flowers: they wondered at the height and blueness of the sky;
they wondered at the depth of the bright water; they wondered
at the goodness and the power of God who made the lovely
world.
They used to say to one another sometimes, Supposing all the
children upon earth were to die, would the flowers, and the water,
and the sky be sorry ? They believed they would be sorry. For,
said they, the buds are the children of the flowers; and the little
playful streams that gambol down the hillsides are the children
of the water; and the smallest bright specks playing at hide and
seek in the sky all night must surely be the children of the stars;
and they would all be grieved to see their playmates, the chil-
dren of men, no more.
There was one clear, shining star that used to come out in
the sky before the rest, near the church spire, above the graves.
CHARLES DICKENS 1377
It was larger and more beautiful, they thought, than all the oth-
ers, and every night they watched for it, standing hand in hand
at a window. Whoever saw it first cried out, '^ I see the star ! '*
And often they cried out both together, knowing so well when it
would rise, and where. So they grew to be such friends with it,
that, before lying down in their beds, they always looked out
once again to bid it good-night; and when they were turning
round to sleep they used to say, ** God bless the star ! *^
But while she was still very young, oh very, very young, the
sister drooped, and came to be so very weak that she could no
longer stand in the window at night; and then the child looked
Sadly out by himself, and when he saw the star, turned round
and said to the patient, pale face on the bed, ^* 1 see the star ! **
and then a smile would come upon the face, and a little weak
voice used to say, " God bless my brother and the star ! **
And so the time came all too soon ! when the child looked out
alone, and when there was no face on the bed; and when there
was a little grave among the graves, not there before; and when
the star made long rays down toward him, as he saw it through
his tears.
Now, these rays were so bright, and they seemed to make
such a shining way from earth to heaven, that when the child
went to his solitary bed, he dreamed about the star; and dreamed
that, lying where he was, he saw a train of people taken up that
sparkling road by angels. And the star, opening, showed him a
great v/orld of light, where many more such angels waited to re-
ceive them.
All these angels, who were waiting, turned their beaming eyes
upon the people who were carried up into the star; and soon
came out from the long rows in which they stood, and fell upon
the people's necks, and kissed them tenderly, and went away
with them down avenues of light, and were so happy in their
company, that lying in his bed he wept for joy.
But there were many angels who did not go with them, and
among them one he knew. The patient face that once had lain
upon the bed was glorified and radiant, but his heart found out
his sister among all the host.
His sister's angel lingered near the entrance of the star, and
said to the leader among those who had brought the people
thither : —
® Is my brother come ? *
<v— 87
1378 CHARLES DICKENS
And he said «No.»
She was turning hopefully away, when the child stretched out
his arms and cried, " O sister, I am here ! Take me ! '^ and then
she turned her beaming eyes upon him, and it was night; and
the star was shining in the room, making long rays down toward
him as he saw it through his tears.
From that hour forth, the child looked out upon the star as
on the home he was to go to, when his time should come; and
he thought that he did not belong to the earth alone, but to the
star too, because of his sister's angel gone before.
There was a baby born to be a brother to the child; and
while he was so little that he never yet had spoken a word, he
stretched his tiny form out on his bed, and died.
Again the child dreamed of the open star, and of the com-
pany of angels, and the train of people, and the rows of angels
with their beaming eyes all turned upon those people's faces.
Said his sister's angel to the leader: —
" Is my brother come ? **
And he said, ** Not that one, but another. *
As the child beheld his brother's angel in her arms, he cried,
*0 sister, I am herel Take me!** And she turned and smiled
upon him, and the star was shining.
He grew to be a young man, and was busy at his books
when an old servant came to him and said : —
" Thy mother is no more. I bring her blessings on her dar-
ling son ! **
Again at night he saw the star, and all that former company.
Said his sister's angel to the leader: —
*^ Is my brother come ? *
And he said, ** Thy mother ! **
A mighty cry of joy went forth through all the star, because
the mother was re-united to her two children. And he stretched
out his arms and cried, " O mother, sister, and brother, I am
here! Take me!** And they answered him, ^^ Not yet,** and the
star was shining.
He grew to be a man, whose hair was turning gray, and he
was sitting in his chair by his fireside, heavy with grief, and
with his face bedewed with tears, when the star opened once
again.
Said his sister's angel to the leader: —
" Is my brother come ? **
CHARLES DICKENS 1379
And he said,^ " Nay, but his maiden daughter.**
And the man who had been the child saw his daughter, newly
lost to him, a celestial creature among those three, and he said,
** My daughter's head is on my sister's bosom, and her arm is
around my mother's neck, and at her feet there is the baby of
old time, and I can bear the parting from her, God be praised ! **
And the star was shining.
Thus the child came to be an old man, and his once smooth
face was wrinkled, and his steps were slow and feeble, and his
back was bent. And one night as he lay upon his bed, his
children standing round, he cried, as he had cried so long ago: —
*^ I see the star ! *'
They whispered one another, ^* He is dying.**
And he said, *^ I am. My age is falling from me like a gar-
ment, and I move toward the star as a child. And O my
Father, now I thank thee that it has so often opened, to receive
those dear ones who await me ! **
And the star was shining; and it shines upon his grave.
Complete. From « Reprinted Pieces.*
THE NOBLE SAVAGE
To COME to the point at once, I beg to say that I have not the
least belief in the Noble Savage. I consider him a prodi-
gious nuisance and an enormous superstition. His calling
rum fire-water, and me a pale face, wholly fail to reconcile me
to him. I don't care what he calls me. I call him a savage,
and I call a savage a something highly desirable to be civilized
off the face of the earth. I think a mere gent (which I take to
be the lowest form of civilization) better than a howling, whis-
tling, clucking, stamping, jumping, tearing savage. It is all one
to me whether he sticks a fish bone through his visage, or bits
of trees through the lobes of his ears, or birds' feathers in his
head; whether he flattens his hair between two boards, or spreads
his nose over the breadth of his face, or drags his lower lip down
by great weights, or blackens his teeth, or knocks them out, paints
one cheek red and the other blue, or tattoos himself, or oils him-
self, or rubs his body with fat, or crimps it with knives. Yield-
ing to whichsoever of these agreeable eccentricities, he is a
savage — cruel, false, thievish, murderous; addicted more or less
1380 CHARLES DICKENS
to grease, entrails, and beastly customs; a wild animal with the
questionable gift of boasting; a conceited, tiresome, bloodthirsty,
monotonous humbug.
Yet it is extraordinary to observe how some people will talk
about him, as they talk about the good old times; how they will
regret his disappearance, in the course of this world's development,
from such and such lands where his absence is a blessed relief and
an indispensable preparation for the sowing of the very first seeds
of any influence that can exalt humanity; how, even with the
evidence of himself before them, they will either be determined
to believe, or will suffer themselves to be persuaded into believ-
ing, that he is something which their five senses tell them he is
not.
There was Mr. Catlin, some few years ago, with his Ojibbe-
way Indians. Mr. Catlin was an energetic, earnest man, who
had lived among more tribes of Indians than I need reckon up
here, and who had written a picturesque and glowing book about
them. With his party of Indians squatting and spitting on the
table before him, or dancing their miserable jigs after their own
dreary manner, he called, in all good faith, upon his civilized
audience to take notice of their symmetry and grace, their per-
fect limbs, and the exquisite expression of their pantomime; and
his civilized audience, in all good faith, complied and admired.
Whereas, as mere animals, they were wretched creatures, very
low in the scale and very poorly formed; and as men and women
possessing any power of truthful dramatic expression by means
of action.^ they were no better than the chorus at an Italian
Opera in England — and would have been worse, if such a thing
were possible.
Mine are no new views of the noble savage. The greatest
writers on natural history found him out long ago. Buffon knew
what he . was, and showed why he is the sulky tyrant that he is
to his women, and how it happens (Heaven be praised!) that his
race is spare in numbers. For evidence of the quality of his
moral nature, pass himself for a moment and refer to his * faith-
ful dog." Has he ever improved a dog, or attached a dog, since
his nobility first ran wild in woods, and was brought down (at a
very long shot) by Pope ? Or does the animal that is the friend
of man always degenerate in his low society ?
It is not the miserable nature of the noble savage that is the
new thing; it is the whimpering over him with maudlin admira-
CHARLES DICKENS 1381
tion, and the affecting to regret him, and the drawing of any
comparison of advantage between the blemishes of civilization
and the tenor of his swinish life. There may have been a change
now and then in those diseased absurdities, but there is none in
him.
Think of the Bushmen. Think of the two men and the two
women who have been exhibited about England for some years.
Are the majority of persons — who remember the horrid little
leader of that party in his festering bundle of hides, with his
filth and his antipathy to water, and his straddled legs, and his
odious eyes shaded by his brutal hand, and his cry of " Qu-u-u-u-
aaa!*^ (Bosjesman for something desperately insulting I have no
doubt) — conscious of an affectionate yearning toward that noble
savage, or is it idiosyncratic in me to abhor, detest, abominate,
and abjure him ? I have no reserve on this subject, and will
frankly state that, setting aside that stage of the entertainment
when he counterfeited the death of some creature he had shot,
by laying his head on his hand and shaking his left leg — at
which time I think it would have been justifiable homicide to slay
him — I have never seen that group sleeping, smoking, and ex-
pectorating round their brazier, but I have sincerely desired that
something might happen to the charcoal smoldering therein which
would cause the immediate suffocation of the whole of the noble
strangers.
There is at present a party of Zulu Kaffirs exhibiting at the
St. George's Gallery, Hyde Park Corner, London. These noble
savages are represented in a most agreeable manner; they are
seen in an elegant theatre, fitted with appropriate scenery of
great beauty, and they are described in a very sensible and tin.
pretending lecture, delivered with a modesty which is quite a
pattern to all similar exponents. Though extremely ugly, they
are much better shaped than such of their predecessors as I have
referred to; and they are rather picturesque to the eye, though
far from odoriferous to the nose. What a visitor left to his own
interpretings and imaginings might suppose these noblemen to be
about, when they give vent to that pantomimic expression which
is quite settled to be the natural gift of the noble savage, I can-
not possibly conceive; for it is so much too luminous for my
personal civilization that it conveys no idea to my mind beyond
a general stamping, ramping, and raving, remarkable (as every-
thing in savage life is) for its dire uniformity. But let us —
1382 CHARLES DICKENS
with the interpreter's assistance, of which I for one stand so
much in need — see what the noble savage does in Zulu KaflSr-
land.
The noble savage sets a king to reign over him, to whom he
submits his life and limbs without a murmur or question, and
whose whole life is passed chin deep in a lake of blood; but
who, after killing incessantly, is in his turn killed by his rela-
tions and friends, the moment a gray hair appears on his head.
All the noble savage's wars with his fellow-savages (and he takes
no pleasure in anything else) are wars of extermination — which
is the best thing I know of him, and the most comfortable to my
mind when I look at him. He has no moral feelings of any
kind, sort, or description; and his ^* mission'^ may be summed up
as simply diabolical.
The ceremonies with which he faintly diversifies his life are,
of course, of a kindred nature. If he wants a wife he appears
before the kennel of the gentleman whom he has selected for his
father-in-law, attended by a party of male friends of a very
strong flavor, who screech and whistle and stamp an offer of so
many cows for the young lady's hand. The chosen father-in-law
— also supported by a high-flavored party of male friends —
screeches, whistles, and yells (being seated on the ground, he
can't stamp) that there never was sucii a daughter in the market
as his daughter, and that he must have six more cows. The
son-in-law and his select circle of backers, screech, whistle, stamp,
and yell in reply, that they will give three more cows. The
father-in-law (an old deluder, overpaid at the beginning) accepts
four, and rises to bind the bargain. The whole party, the young
lady included, then falling into epileptic convulsions, and screech-
ing, whistling, stamping, and yelling together — and nobody
taking any notice of the young lady (whose charms are not to
be thought of without a shudder) — the noble savage is considered
married, and his friends make demoniacal leaps at him by way
of congratulation.
When the noble savage finds himself a little unwell, and
mentions the circumstance to his friends, it is immediately per-
ceived that he is under the influence of witchcraft. A learned
personage, called an Imyanger or Witch Doctor, is immediately
sent for to Nooker the Umtargartie, or smell out the witch. The
male inhabitants of the kraal being seated on the ground, the
learned doctor, got up like a grizzly bear, appears, and adminis-
CHARLES DICKENS 1383
ters a lance of a most terrific nature, during the exhibition of
which remedy he incessantly gnashes his teeth, and howls : — "I
am the original physician to Nooker the Umtargartie. Yow yow
yow! No connection with any other establishment. Till till till!
All other Umtargarties are feigned Umtargarties, Boroo Boroo!
but I perceive here a genuine and real Umtargartie, Hoosh
Hoosh Hoosh! in whose blood I, the original Imyanger and
Nookerer, Blizzerum Boo! will wash these bear's claws of mine.
O yow yow yow ! '^ All this time the learned physician is look-
ing out among the attentive faces for some unfortunate man who
owes him a cow, or who has given him any small offense, or
against whom, without offense, he has conceived a spite. Him
he never fails to Nooker as the Umtargartie, and he is instantly
killed. In the absence of such an individual, the usual practice
is to Nooker the quietest and most gentlemanly person in com-
pany. But the Nookering is invariably followed on the spot by
the butchering.
Some of the noble savages in whom Mr. Catlin was so
strongly interested, and the diminution of whose numbers, by
rum and smallpox, greatly affected him, had a custom not unlike
this, though much more appalling and disgusting in its odious
details.
The women being at work in the fields, hoeing the Indian
corn, and the noble savage being asleep in the shade, the chief
has sometimes the condescension to come forth and lighten the
labor by looking at it. On these occasions he seats himself in
his own savage chair and is attended by his shield-bearer, who
holds over his head a shield of cowhide ^ — in shape like an im-
mense mussel shell — fearfully and wonderfully, after the manner
of a theatrical supernumerary. But lest the great man should
forget his greatness in the contemplation of the humble works of
agriculture, there suddenly rushes in a poet, retained for the pur-
pose, called a Praiser. This literary gentleman wears a leopard's
head over his own, and a dress of tigers' tails; he has the appear-
ance of having come express on his hind legs from the Zoologi-
cal Gardens; and he incontinently strikes up the chief's praises,
plunging and tearing all the while. There is a frantic wickedness
in this brute's manner of worrying the air, and gnashing out:
" O what a delightful chief he is ! O what a delicious quantity
of blood he sheds! O how majestically he laps it up! O how
charmingly cruel he is! O how he tears the flesh of his enemies
1384 CHARLES DICKENS
and crunches the bones! O how like the tiger and the leopard
and the wolf and the bear he is! O row row row row, how fond
I am of him ! * which might tempt the Society of Friends to
charge at a hand gallop into the Swartz-Kop location and exter-
minate the whole kraal.
When war is afoot among the noble savages — which is always
— the chief holds a council to ascertain whether it is the opinion
of his brothers and friends in general that the enemy shall be
exterminated. On this occasion, after the performance of an Um-
sebeuza or war song, — which is exactly like all the other songs,
— the chief makes a speech to his brothers and friends, arranged
in single file. No particular order is observed during the deliv-
ery of this address, but every gentleman who finds himself ex-
cited by the subject, instead of crying, " Hear, hear ! ** as is the
custom with us, darts from the rank and tramples out the life,
or crushes the skull, or mashes the face, or scoops out the eyes,
or breaks the limbs, or performs a whirlwind of atrocities on the
body, of an imaginary enemy. Several gentlemen becoming thus
excited at once, and pounding away without the least regard to
the orator, that illustrious person is rather in the position of an
orator in an Irish House of Commons. But several of these
scenes of savage life bear a strong generic resemblance to an
Irish election, and I think would be extremely well received and
understood at Cork.
In all these ceremonies the noble savage holds forth to the
utmost possible extent about himself; from which (to turn him
to some civilized account) we may learn, I think, that as egotism
is one of the most offensive and contemptible littlenesses a civ-
ilized man can exhibit, so it is really incompatible with the in-
terchange of ideas; inasmuch as if we all talked about ourselves
we should soon have no listeners, and must be all yelling and
screeching at once on our own separate accounts: making society
hideous. It is my opinion that if we retained in us anything of
the noble savage, we could not get rid of it too soon. But the
fact is clearly otherwise. Upon the wife and dowry question,
substituting coin for cows, we have assuredly nothing of the Zulu
Kaffir left. The endurance of despotism is one great distinguish-
ing mark of a savage always. The improving world has quite
got the better of that too. In like manner, Paris is a civilized
city, and the Theatre Frangais a highly civilized theatre; and
we shall never hear, and never have heard in these later days
CHARLES DICKENS 1385
(of course) of the Praiser there. No, no, civilized poets have
better work to dX). As to Nookering Umtargarties, there are no
pretended Umtargarties in Europe and no European powers to
Nooker them; that would be mere spydom, subornation, small
malice, superstition, and false pretense. And as to private Um-
targarties, are we not in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-
three, with spirits rapping at our doors ?
To conclude as I began. My position is, that if we have
anything to learn from the noble savage, it is what to avoid.
His virtues are a fable; his happiness is a delusion; his nobility,
nonsense. We have no greater justification for being cruel to
the miserable object than for being cruel to a William Shakes-
peare or an Isaac Newton; but he passes away before an im-
measurably better and higher power than ever ran wild in any
earthly woods, and the world will be all the better when his place
knows him no more.
Complete. From « Reprinted Pieces. ^>
DENIS DIDEROT
(1713-1784)
jENis Diderot, one of the thinkers whose pens overthrew the
Bourbon monarchy in France, was born at Langres, October
5th, 17 13. His father, who was a cutler by trade, gave him
a classical education and put him in a lawyer's office, where, instead
of studying law, Diderot perfected himself in the modern languages
and in literature. Quarreling with his father because of this, he was
forced into literature as a profession. His first work was translating;
but making the acquaintance of D'Alembert, they began together the
great French Encyclopedia, the publication of which occupied more
than twenty years. The Encyclopedia was chiefly his, and the most
important work of his life was done in this connection; but he was
also a voluminous writer of criticisms and essays. Catherine of Rus-
sia, who was fond of French philosophy until she saw that it threat-
ened royalty, patronized Diderot, and he spent a year (1773-74) at her
court. He died at Paris, July 30th, 1784.
COMPASSION A LAW OF THE SURVIVAL OF SPECIES
(Suggested by Rousseau's « Discourse on Inequality >>)
I BELIEVE I need fear no contradiction in granting to man that
unique natural virtue which the most outre detractors of hu-
man nature have been forced to accord him. I speak of
compassion, a state of mind suitable to beings weak and subject
as we are to so many misfortunes, — a virtue so universal and so
useful to man, that it precedes in him the use of all reflection, —
and so natural, that even animals sometimes give perceptible
signs of it. Without mentioning the tenderness of mothers for
their young, and the perils they face to protect them, we notice
every day the repugnance horses have to trample under foot a
living body. An animal does not pass without uneasiness a dead
animal of its own species; there are some even who give them
a kind of burial; and the mournful bellowing of cattle in enter-
ing the slaughterhouse shows the impression that is made on
DENIS DIDEROT I 387
them. One sees with pleasure that the author of ^* The Fable of
the Bees " (Mandeville) is obliged to acknowledge man as a sen-
sitive and compassionate being, and that he departs in the illus-
trations he gives in this connection from his cold and subtle
style, offering us the pathetic image of a man under lock and
key who sees in the open a ferocious beast tearing a child from
its mother's bosom, crushing with its murderous teeth its feeble
members, and tearing with its nails the child's palpitating vitals.
What dreadful agitation does not the witness of such an event
feel, although it is something in which he has no selfish interest;
— what anguish does he not suffer at such a sight, feeling him-
self unable to carry assistance to the mother lying in a faint, or
to the expiring child !
Such is the pure movement of nature anterior to any reflec-
tion, such is the force of a natural compassion, which the most
depraved morals have a hard task to destroy, that we can see
every day in our plays men become moved and shed tears who,
were they in the place of the tyrant they condemn, would still
aggravate the tortures of their enemies; — like the sanguinary
Sylla, who was so sensitive to misfortunes he himself had not
caused, or like the tyrant who could not be present at the rep-
resentation of any tragedy, for fear that he might be seen moan-
ing and weeping with Andromache and Priam, though he heard
without emotion the shrieks of so many citizens who were mur-
dered daily by his orders.
Mollissima corda
Humano generi dare se natura fatetur,
QucB lachrymas dedit. — Juvenal XV., v. 131.
Mandeville very properly felt that with all their morals men
would have been nothing but monsters, if nature had not given
them compassion to strengthen their reason; but he failed to see
that from that sole quality are derived all the social virtues
which he denies them. In reality, what is generosity, clemency,
humanity, if not compassion applied to the weak, to the guilty,
or to the human species in general ? Kindness and friendship
themselves, are, after all, the production of a constant compassion,
aimed at a particular object; for to wish that some one should
not suffer, what else is it than to wish that he should be happy ?
Were it true that commiseration were a mere sentiment that puts
us in the place of him that suffers (a sentiment obscure but alive
1388 DENIS DIDEROT
in the savage man, developed though weak in civilized man),
what difference would this idea make to the truth I am speaking
of, if not to give it more force ? In point of fact, compassion
will be so much more energetic as the animal spectator is able
to identify itself more intimately with the suffering animal. Now,
it is evident that this identification must have been infinitely
narrower in the state of reason. It is reason which begets self-
love, and reflection strengthens it; it is through reason that man
enters into himself; it is reason which separates him from every
thing that cramps or afflicts him. It is philosophy which iso-
lates him; it is through philosophy that at the sight of a sufferer,
he says secretly : *^ Perish if you wish ; I am in safety. *^ There
is nothing more than the dangers to society at large to trouble
the tranquil slumbers of the philosopher and tear him from his
bed. His neighbor may be murdered under his window ; he has
but to close his ears with his hands, and argue somewhat with
himself, to prevent the nature which revolts in him from identi-
fying him with the one who is being assassinated. The savage
man has none of this admirable talent; and, for want of wisdom
and reason, we see him rashly giving himself up to the first sen-
timent of humanity. In mobs, in street fights, the populace con-
gregate, the prudent man keeps at a distance; it is the street
mob, /a canaille^ it is the women of the slums who separate the
fighters, and prevent respectable people from cutting each other's
throat.
It is therefore quite certain that compassion is a natural sen-
timent, which, moderating in each individual the activity of self-
love, co-operates for the mutual preservation of the entire species.
It is through compassion that we are carried without reflection
to the assistance of those we see suffer; it is again compassion
which, in a state of nature, stands instead of laws, of morals,
and of virtue, with this advantage that none are tempted to dis-
obey her sweet voice. It is compassion which will turn the
robust savage from taking from a feeble child or from an infirm
old man their substance painfully acquired, if he himself expects
to be able to find his own elsewhere. It is compassion which,
in place of that sublime maxim of reasoned justice: ^* Do unto
others as you would have them do unto you," suggests to all
men that other maxim of natural goodness, much less perfect, but
more useful than the former: "Do thy good with the least possi-
ble evil to others."
DENIS DIDEROT 1389
It is, in one word, in natural sentiments more than in subtle
arguments that we have to look for the cause of that repugnance
which every man would feel in doing wrong even independently
of all the maxims of education. Although it may belong to Soc-
rates and to souls of his temper to acquire virtue by reason, the
human species would have ceased to exist long ago if its preser-
vation had depended on the reason of the individuals of whom
the race is composed.
THE PROPHETIC QUALITY OF GENIUS
THERE is in men of genius, poets, philosophers, painters, ora-
tors, musicians, I know not what special quality of the soul,
secret, indefinable, without which nothing very great or beau-
tiful is ever created. Is it the imagination ? No. I have seen
fine and strong imaginations which promised much, and fulfilled
nothing or very little. Is it judgment ? No. Nothing is more
common than men of good judgment, whose productions are
sluggish, tame, and cold. Is it the mind ? No. The mind speaks
of great things, but brings forth but small ones. Is it enthusi-
asm, vivacity, or even dash ? No. Enthusiastic people give them-
selves a deal of trouble to do things that are not good for
anything. Is it sensitiveness ? No. I have seen those whose
soul was promptly and deeply affected, who were unable to listen
to a recitation of a high order without getting beside themselves,
— transported, intoxicated, crazy; who could not read a pathetic
paragraph without shedding tears, and who stammered like chil-
dren when they spoke or when they wrote. Is it taste ? No. Taste
effaces defects rather than produces beauties; it is a gift which
one acquires more or less; it is not an endowment of nature. Is
it a certain conformation of the head and the viscera, a certain
constitution of the fancy ? I give my consent, but on the condi-
tion that it shall be acknowledged that neither I nor any one
has any precise notion of it, and that there be added to it an
observing mind. When I speak of the observing mind, I do not
mean that petty daily spying into words, acts, and looks, — that
tact so familiar to womenkind, who possess it in a greater degree
than the strongest minds, than the greatest wits, than the most
vigorous geniuses. The subtilty which I might well compare to
the art of passing millet seeds through the eye of a needle is a
I390 DENIS DIDEROT
miserable, petty, daily study whose entire utility is minute and
domestic, by means of which the valet deceives his master, and
the master deceives those whose valet he is, by outwitting them.
The observing mind of which I speak puts forth its energies
without effort, without contention; it does not look, — it sees; it
improves itself; it expands without studying; . . . it is a ma-
chine that says, "This is going to succeed,* and it will succeed;
" It is not going to succeed, '^ and it does not succeed ; * This is
true,'^ or "That is false,* and it turns out as it has told it would.
It is noticed both in great and small things. This kind of pro-
phetic mind is not the same in all conditions of life; each state
has its own. It is not always a safeguard against falls, but the
fall which it brings about never carries contempt with it.
SIR KENELM DIGBY
(1603-1665)
^^C^iR Kenelm Digby's "Observations upon Religio Medici,*^ aa-
5^^^^ dressed to the Earl of Dorset and published in 1643, is per-
T^E&S. haps the closest approximation made during the seventeenth
century to the critical review of the nineteenth. Though not an
original thinker, Digby has a clear and interesting style, and when
he writes it is from the fullness of a highly diversified experience.
Born in Buckinghamshire, England, in 1603, he had the disadvantage
of the ill repute attaching to his father's part in the Guy Fawkes
plot, but he overcame it and was in high favor with the Stuarts. Ban-
ished as a royalist in 1643, ^^^ returned after the Restoration, as
chancellor to Queen Henrietta Maria. He had traveled extensively
in Europe, visiting celebrated philosophers, and he seems to have
persuaded himself that he had occult powers such as were claimed
by the Rosicrucians. Besides the " Observations upon Religio Medici,'*
he wrote ^<A Treatise of the Nature of Bodies, '* " A Treatise Declar-
ing the Operation of Man's Soul,'' and "A Discourse Concerning the
Vegetation of Plants."
ON BROWNE'S RELIGIO MEDICI
IT FALLETH fit in tliis place to examine our author's apprehen-
sion of the end of such honest worthies and philosophers (as
he calleth them) that died before Christ's incarnation, whether
any of them could be saved, or no. Truly, my lord, I make no
doubt at all but if any followed in the whole tenor of their lives,
the dictamens of right reason, but that their journey was secure
to heaven. Out of the former discourse appeareth what temper
of mind is necessary to get thither. And that reason would dic-
tate such a temper to a perfectly judicious man (though but in
the state of nature), as the best and most rational for him, I
make no doubt at all. But it is most true, they are exceeding
few, if any, in whom reason worketh clearly, and is not over-
swayed by passion and terrene affections; they are few that can
discern what is reasonable to be done in every circumstance.
1392 SIR KENELM DIGBY
— ^* Pauci, quos (Equus amavit
Jupiter, aiit ardens evixit ad csthera virtus,
Diis geniii, potuere. * —
And fewer, that knowing what is best, can win of themselves
to do accordingly {video meliora proboqiie deteriora seqiior^ being
most men's cases); so that after all that can be expected at the
hands of nature and reason in their best habit, since the lapse
of them, we may conclude it would have been a most difficult
thing for any man, and a most impossible one for mankind, tc at-
tain unto beatitude, if Christ had not come to teach, and by his
example to show us the way.
And this was the reason of his incarnation, teaching life and
death. For being God, we could not doubt his veracity, when
he told us news of the other world; having all things in his
power, and yet enjoying none of the delights of this life, no man
should stick at foregoing them, since his example showeth all
men that such a course is best, whereas few are capable of the
reason of it: and for his last act, dying in such an afflicted man-
ner; he taught us how the securest way to step immediately into
perfect happiness is to be crucified to all the desires, delights,
and contentments of this world.
But to come back to our physician. Truly, my lord, I must
needs pay him, as a due, the acknowledging his pious discourses
to be excellent and pathetical ones, containing worthy motives to
incite one to virtue, and to deter one from vice; thereby to gain
heaven and to avoid hell. Assuredly he is owner of a solid
head and of a strong, generous heart. Where he employeth his
thoughts upon such things as resort to no higher or more ab-
struse principles than such as occur in ordinary conversation with
the world, or in the common track of study and learning, I know
no man would say better. But when he meeteth with such dif-
ficulties as his next, concerning the resurrection of the body,
wherein, after deep meditation upon the most abstracted princi-
ples and speculations of the metaphysics, one hath much ado to
solve the appearing contradictions in nature, there I do not at
all wonder he should tread a little awry, and go astray in the
dark: for I conceive his course of life hath not permitted him to
allow much time unto the unwinding of such entangled and ab-
stracted subtleties. But if it had, I believe his natural parts are
such, as he might have kept the chair from most men I know:
SIR i:enei,:i digby 1393
for even where he roveth widest, it is with so much wit and
sharpness, as putteth me in mind of a great man's censure upon
Joseph Scaliger's Cyclometrica, a matter he was not well versed
in; that he had rather err so ingeniously, as he did, than hit
upon truth in that heavy manner, as the Jesuit, his antagonist,
stuffeth his books. Most assuredly his wit and smartness in this
discourse is of the finest standard, and his insight into severer
learning will appear as piercing unto such as use not strictly
the touchstone and the test to examine every piece of glittering
coin he payeth his reader with. But to come to the resurrection,
methinks it is but a gross conception, to think that every atom
of the present individual matter of a body, every grain of ashes
of a burned cadaver, scattered by the wind throughout the world,
and, after numerous variations, changed peradventure into the
body of another man, should at the sounding of the last trumpet
be raked together again from all the corners of the earth, and be
made up anew into the same body it was before of the first man.
Yet if we will be Christians, and rely upon God's promises, we
must believe that we shall rise again with the same body that
walked about, did eat, drink, and live here on earth; and that
we shall see our Savior and Redeemer with the same, the very
same eyes, wherewith we now look upon the fading glories of
this contemptible world.
From a review of «Religio Medici » addressed
to the Earl of Dorset.
IV— 88
ISAAC DISRAELI
(1 766-1 848)
iHE man who is content to please while others insist on being
admired is so rare in literature that he is certain never to
^@ be forgotten. No one has .ever thought of calling the au-
thor of ^^ The Curiosities of Literature *^ a great writer, but who that
ever knew him would wish him to be great at the expense of ceas-
ing to be what he is ? He has not the delicate wit of Addison, the
humor of Lamb, or the brilliancy of De Quincey, but there are times
when he can make the reader forget that there is, or that there need
be, better writing than his. Like Robert Chambers, he is unobtru-
sively friendly; and at the same time he is wholly free from the vice
of the critical style, which avoids stating facts except by involution
and indirection. He writes as if he had an open book before him and
were modestly answering a friend's question of what had most inter-
ested him in it. This, indeed, is what he does do, except that the
open book is the literature of the world, in which he so immersed
himself that it was the only world he lived in.
He was born at Enfield, England, May, 1766, from a family of
Jewish origin. His father, who removed from Venice to England,
wished him to become a merchant, but his distaste for trade was so
great that one of his first literary attempts was a poem denouncing
it. His father finally consented to allow him to follow his own in-
clinations, and he passed his subsequent life almost wholly in libra-
ries. His son, the celebrated Earl of Beaconsfield, says that in the
country he scarcely ever left his room "but to saunter in abstraction
upon a terrace, muse over a chapter, or coin a sentence.** He died
January 19th, 1848. Among his works are ^^The Recreations of Au-
thors,** << The Calamities of Authors,** "The Quarrels of Authors,** and
"The Amenities of Literature,** all approximating the quality of "The
Curiosities of Literature,** but none of them equaling it. It was a
masterpiece of its kind which even its own author could produce but
once. Many of its essays are models worthy of imitation by all who,
when they have something to say. are willing to give up admiration
and be wholly forgotten by their hearers for the sake of saying it
and having it remembered rather than wondered at.
ISAAC D'ISRAELI 1395
THE MAN OF ONE BOOK
MR. Maurice, in his animated memoirs, has recently acquainted
us with a fact which may be deemed important in the life
of a literary man. He tells us, ^* We have just been in-
formed that Sir William Jones invariably read through every year
the works of Cicero, whose life indeed was the great exemplar
of his own.'' The same passion for the works of Cicero has been
participated in by others. When the best means of forming a
good style were inquired of the learned Arnauld, he advised the
daily study of Cicero; but it was observed that the object was
not to form a Latin, but a French style ; " In that case, '^ replied
Arnauld, "you must still read Cicero. '^
A predilection for some great author, among the vast number
which must transiently occupy our attention, seems to be the
happiest preservative for our taste; accustomed to that excellent
author whom we have chosen for our favorite, we may in this
intimacy possibly resemble him. It is to be feared that if we do
not form such a permanent attachment, we may be acquiring
knowledge, while our elevated taste becomes less and less lively.
Taste embalms the knowledge which otherwise cannot preserve
itself. He who has long been intimate with one great author
will always be found to be a formidable antagonist; he has satu-
rated his mind with the excellencies of genius; he has shaped
his faculties insensibly to himself by his model, and he is like a
man who even sleeps in armor, ready at a moment! The old
Latin proverb reminds us of this fact: Cave ab homine unius libri ;
be cautious of the man of one book!
Pliny and Seneca give very safe advice on reading; that we
should read much, but not very many books — but they had no
" monthly lists of new publications ! ** Since their days others
have favored us v/ith " Methods of study '^ and ** Catalogues of
books to be read.'* Vain attempts to circumscribe that invisible
circle of human knowledge which is perpetually enlarging itself!
The multiplicity of books is an evil for the many; for we now find
an helluo librorum, not only among the learned, but, with their
pardon, among the unlearned; for those who, even to the preju-
dice of their health, persist only in reading the incessant book
novelties of our own time, will after many years acquire a sort
of learned ignorance. We are now in want of an art to teach
how books are to be read, rather than not to read them; such
1396 ISAAC D'ISRAELI
an art is practicable. But amidst this vast multitude still let us
be "the man of one book,'^ and preserve an uninterrupted inter-
course with that great author with whose mode of thinking we
sympathize and whose charms of composition we can habitually
retain.
It is remarkable that every great writer appears to have a
predilection for some favorite author; and with Alexander, had
they possessed a golden casket, would have enshrined the works
they so constantly turned over. Demosthenes felt such delight
in the history of Thucydides, that to obtain a familiar and per-
fect mastery of his style, he recopied his history eight times;
while Brutus not only was constantly perusing Polybius even
amidst the most busy periods of his life, but was abridging a
copy of that author on the last awful night of his existence,
when on the following day he was to try his fate against Antony
and Octavius. Selim II. had the "Commentaries" of Csesar trans-
lated for his use; and it is recorded that his military ardor was
heightened by the perusal. We are told that Scipio Africanus
was made a hero by the writings of Xenophon. When Clar-
endon was employed in writing his history, he was in a constant
study of Livy and Tacitus, to acquire the full and flowing style
of the one and the portrait painting of the other; he records this
circumstance in a letter. Voltaire had usually on his table the
"Athalie ^^ of Racine, and the " Petit Careme >> of Massillon ; the trag-
edies of the one were the finest model of French verse, the ser-
mons of the other of French prose. " Were I obliged to sell my
library,*^ exclaimed Diderot, " I would keep back Moses, Homer,
and Richardson ^^ ; and by the 61oge which this enthusiastic writer
composed on our English novelist, it is doubtful, had the French-
man been obliged to have lost two of them, whether Richardson
had not been the elected favorite. Monsieur Thomas, a French
writer, who at times displays high eloquence and profound think-
ing, Herault de Sechelles tells us, studied chiefly one author, but
that author was Cicero; and never went into the country unac-
companied by some of his works. Fenelon was constantly em-
ployed on his Homer; he left a translation of the greater part
of the "Odyssey,'' without any design of publication, but merely
as an exercise for style. Montesquieu was a constant student of
Tacitus, of whom he must be considered a forcible imitator. He
has, in the manner of Tacitus, characterized Tacitus. "That
historian,'' he says, "who abridged everything, because he saw
ISAAC DISRAELI 1 39 7
every thing.'* The famous Bourdaloue reperused every year St.
Paul, St. Chrysostom, and Cicero. ^* These,'* says a French critic,
" were the sources of his masculine and solid eloquence. '* Grotius
had such a taste for Lucan, that he always carried a pocket edi-
tion about him, and has been seen to kiss his handbook with the
rapture of a true votary. If this anecdote be true, the elevated
sentiments of the stern Roman were probably the attraction witli
the Batavian republican. The diversified reading of Leibnitz is
well knov/n; but he still attached himself to one or two favorites;
Virgil was always in his hand when at leisure, and Leibnitz had
read Virgil so often, that even in his old age he could repeat
whole books by heart; Barclay's ^^Argenis'* was his model for
prose ; when he was found dead in his chair, the " Argenis '* had
fallen from his hands. Rabelais and Marot were the perpetual
favorites of La Fontaine; from one he borrowed his humor, and
from the other his style. Quevedo was so passionately fond of
the ^* Don Quixote ** of Cervantes, that often in reading that un-
rivaled work he felt an impulse to bum his own inferior compo-
sitions; to be a sincere admirer and a hopeless rival is a case of
authorship the hardest imaginable. Few writers can venture to
anticipate the award of posterity; yet perhaps Quevedo had not
even been what he was, without the perpetual excitement he
received from his great master. Horace was the friend of his
heart to Malherbe; he laid the Roman poet on his pillow, took
him in the fields, and called his Horace his breviary. Plutarch^
Montaigne, and Locke, were the three authors constantly in the
hands of Rosseau, and he has drawn from them the groundwork
of his ideas in his ^^Emilie.** The favorite author of the great
Earl of Chatham was Barrow; on his style he had formed his
eloquence, and had read his great master so constantly, as to be
able to repeat his elaborate sermons from memory. The great
Lord Burleigh always carried Tully's "Offices'* in his pocket;
Charles V. and Bonaparte had Machiavel frequently in their
hands; and Davila was the perpetual study of Hampden; he
seemed to have discovered in that historian of civil wars those
which he anticipated in the land of his fathers.
These facts sufficiently illustrate the recorded circumstance of
Sir William Jones's invariable habit of reading his Cicero through
every year, and exemplify the happy result for him, who, amidst
the multiplicity of his authors, still continues in this way to be
"the man of one book."
1398 ISAAC D'ISRAELI
ON THE POVERTY OF THE LEARNED
FORTUNE has rarely condescended to be the companion of Gen-
ius; others find a hundred byroads to her palace; there is
but one open, and that a very indifferent one, for men of
letters. Were we to erect an asylum for venerable genius, as we
do for the brave and the helpless part of our citizens, it might
be inscribed a Hospital for Incurables! When even Fame will
not protect the man of genius from famine, Charity ought. Nor
should such an act be considered as a debt incurred by the help-
less member, but a just tribute we pay in his person to Genius
itself. Even in these enlightened times such have lived in ob-
scurity while their reputation was widely spread; and have per-
ished in poverty, while their works were enriching the booksellers.
Of the heroes of modern literature the accounts are as copious
as they are melancholy.
Xylander sold his notes on Dion Cassius for a dinner. He
tells us that at the age of eighteen he studied to acquire glory,
but at twenty-five he studied to get bread.
Cervantes, the immortal genius of Spain, is supposed to have
wanted bread; Camoens, the solitary pride of Portugal, deprived
of the necessaries of life, perished in a hospital at Lisbon. This
fact has been accidentally preserved in an entry in a copy of the
first edition of the "Lusiad,* in the possession of Lord Holland —
in a note written by a friar, who must have been a witness of
the dying scene of the poet, and probably received the volume
which now preserves the sad memorial, and which recalled it to
his mind, from the hands of the unhappy poet: <*What a lamen-
table thing to see so great a genius so ill rewarded! I saw him
die in a hospital in Lisbon, without having a sheet or a shroud,
una sauana^ to cover him, after having triumphed in the East
Indies, and sailed five thousand five hundred leagues! What
good advice for those who weary themselves night and day in
study without profit.* Camoens, when some hidalgo complained
that he had not performed his promise in writing some verses
for him, replied, *When I wrote verses I was young, had suffi-
cient food, was a lover, and beloved by many friends, and by
the ladies; then I felt poetical ardor; now I have no spirits, no
peace of mind. See there my Javanese who asks me for two
pieces to purchase firing, and I have them not to ^ve him.'*
ISAAC D'ISRAELI 1 399
The Portuguese after his death bestowed on the man of genius
they had starved the appellation of Great! Vondel, the Dutch
Shakespeare, after composing a number of popular tragedies,
lived in great poverty and died at ninety years of age; then he
had his coffin carried by fourteen poets, who without his genius
probably partook of his wretchedness.
The great Tasso was reduced to such a dilemma, that he was
obliged to borrow a crown from a friend to subsist through the
week. He alludes to his dress in a pretty sonnet, which he ad-
dresses to his cat, entreating her to assist him, during the night,
with the lustre of her eyes — Non avendo candcle per iscrivere i
siioi versi! having no candle to see to write his verses!
When the liberality of Alphonso enabled Ariosto to build a
small house, it seems that it was but ill furnished. When told
that such a building was not fit for one who had raised so many
fine palaces in his writings, he answered that the structure of
words and that of stones was not the same thing. Che porvile
pietre, e porvi le parole^ non e il fnedesimo! At Ferrara this house
is still shown. Parva sed apta he calls it, but exults that it was
paid with his own money. This was in a moment of good humor,
which he did not always enjoy; for in his ^^ Satires** he bitterly
complains of the bondage of dependence and poverty. Little
thought the poet the commune would order this small house to
be purchased with their own funds, that it might be dedicated
to his immortal memory!
The illustrious Cardinal Bentivoglio, the ornament of Italy and
of literature, languished, in his old age, in the most distressful
poverty; and having sold his palace to satisfy his creditors, left
nothing behind him but his reputation. The learned Pomponius
Laetus lived in such a state of poverty, that his friend Platina,
who wrote the lives of the popes, and also a book of cookery,
introduces him into the cookery book by a facetious observa-
tion, that if Pomponius Laetus should be robbed of a couple of
eggs, he would not have wherewithal to purchase two other eggs.
The history of Aldrovandus is noble and pathetic; having ex-
pended a large fortune in forming his collections of natural his-
tory, and employing the first artists in Europe, he was suffered
to die in the hospital of that city, to whose fame he had eminently
contributed.
Du Ryer, a celebrated French poet, was constrained to labor
with rapidity, and to live in the cottage of an obscure village
I400 ISAAC DISRAELI
His booksellers bought his heroic verses for one hundred sols the
hundred lines, and the smaller ones for fifty sols. What an in-
teresting picture has a contemporary given of his reception by a
poor and ingenious author in a visit he paid to Du Ryer ! ^^ On
a fine summer day we went to him, at some distance from town.
He received us with joy, talked to us of his numerous projects,
and showed us several of his works. But what more interested
us was that, though dreading to show us his poverty, he contrived
to give us some refreshments. We seated ourselves under a wide
oak, the tablecloth was spread on the grass, his wife brought us
some milk, with fresh water and brown bread, and he picked a
basket of cherries. He welcomed us with gayety, but we could
not take leave of this amiable man, now grown old, without tears,
to see him so ill treated by fortune, and to have nothing left but
literary honor ! **
Vaugelas, the most polished writer of the French language,
who devoted thirty years to his translation of Quintus Curtius (a
circumstance which modern translators can have no conception
of), died possessed of nothing valuable but his precious manu-
scripts. This ingenious scholar left his corpse to the surgeons
for the benefit of his creditors!
Louis XIV. honored Racine and Boileau with a private monthly
audience. One day the king asked what there was new in the
literary world. Racine answered, that he had seen a melancholy
spectacle in the house of Corneille, whom he found dying, de-
prived even of a little broth! The king preserved a profound
silence, and sent the dying poet a sum of money.
Dryden for less than three hundred pounds sold Tonson ten
thousand verses, as may be seen by the agreement which has
been published.
Purchas, who, in the reign of our first James, had spent his
life in travels and study to form his ^* Relation of the World, *
when he gave it to the public, for the reward of his labors was
thrown into prison, at the suit of his printer. Yet this was the
book which, he informs us in his dedication to Charles the First,
his father read every night with great profit and satisfaction.
The Marquis of Worcester, in a petition to parliament, in the
reign of Charles II., offered to publish the hundred processes
and machines enumerated in his very curious " Centenary of In-
ventions,'^ on condition that money should be granted to extricate
him from the difficulties in which he had involved himself, by
ISAAC D'ISRAELI 1401
the prosecution of useful discoveries. The petition does not ap-
pear to have been attended to! Many of these admirable inven-
tions were lost. The steam engine and the telegraph may be
traced among them.
It appears by the Harleian MSS. 1524, that Rushworth, the
author of ^* Historical Collections, ^* passed the last years of his
life in jail, where, indeed, he died. After the Restoration, when
he presented to the king several of the privy council's books,
which he had preserved from ruin, he received for his only re-
ward the thanks of his Majesty.
Rymer, the collector of the ^^Foedera,^* must have been sadly
reduced, by the following letter I found addressed by Peter le
Neve, Norroy, to the Earl of Oxford : —
*^l am desired by Mr. Rymer, historiographer, to lay before your
lordship the circumstances of his affairs. He was forced some years
back to part with all his choice printed books to subsist himself; and
now, he says, he must be forced for subsistence to sell all his MSS.
collections to the best bidder, without your lordship will be pleased
to buy them for the queen's library. They are fifty volumes in folio,
of public affairs, which he hath collected, but not printed. The price
he asks is five hundred pounds.*
Simon Ockley, a learned student in Oriental literature, addresses
a letter to the same earl, in which he paints his distresses in
glowing colors. After having devoted his life to Asiatic re-
searches, then very uncommon, he had the mortification of dating
his preface to his great work from Cambridge Castle, where he
was confined for debt; and, with an air of triumph, feels a mar-
tyr's enthusiasm in the cause in which he perishes.
He published his first volume of the "History of the Saracens,"
in 1708; and ardently pursuing his Oriental studies, published his
second volume ten years afterwards without any patronage. Al-
luding to the encouragement necessary to bestow on youth, to
remove the obstacles to such studies, he observes, that "young
men will hardly come in on the prospect of finding leisure, in a
prison, to transcribe those papers for the press, which they have
collected with indefatigable labor, and oftentimes at the expense
of their rest, and all the other conveniences of life, for the serv-
ice of the public. No, though I were to assure them from my
own experience, that I have enjoyed more true liberty, more
I402 ISAAC D'ISRAELI
happy leisure and more solid repose, in six months here, than in
thrice the same number of years before. Evil is the condition
of that historian who undertakes to write the lives of others, be-
fore he knows how to live himself! Not that I speak thus as if
I thought I had any just cause to be angry with the world — I
did always in my judgment give the possession of wisdom the
preference to that of riches!'^ Spencer, the child of Fancy, lan-
guished out his life in misery. " Lord Burleigh," says Granger,
** who it is said prevented the queen giving him a hundred pounds,
seems to have thought the lowest clerk in his office a more de-
serving person." Mr. Malone attempts to show that Spencer has
a small pension; but the poet's querulous verses must not be
forgotten : —
« Full little knowest thou, that hast not try'd
What hell it is, in suing long to bide."
To lose good days — to waste long nights — and as he feelingly
exclaims,
*To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To speed, to give, to want, to be undone ! "
How affecting is the death of Sydenham, who had devoted his
life to a laborious version of Plato. He died in a sponging house,
and it was his death which appears to have given rise to the
Literary Fund * for the relief of distressed authors. "
Who shall pursue important labors when they read these
anecdotes ? Dr. Edmund Castell spent a great part of his life in
compiling his ** Lexicon Heptaglotten," on which he bestowed in-
credible pains, and expended on it no less than twelve thousand
pounds, and broke his constitution, and exhausted his fortune.
At length it was printed, but the copies remained unsold on hia
hands. He exhibits a curious picture of literary labor in his pref-
ace. "As for myself, I have been unceasingly occupied for such
a number of years in this mass ["Molendino" he calls them], that
that day seemed, as it were, a holiday in which I have not la-
bored so much as sixteen or eighteen hours in these enlarging
Lexicons and Polyglot Bibles."
Le Sage resided in a little cottage while he supplied the
world with their most agreeable novels, and appears to have de-
rived the sources of his existence in his old age from the filial
exertions of an excellent son, who was an actor of some genius.
ISAAC D'ISRAELI 1403
I wish, however, that every man of letters could apply to him-
self the epitaph of this delightful writer: —
" Sous ce tombeau git Le Sage abattu.
Par le ciseau de la Parqiie importune;
S'il ne fut pas ami de la foriu7ie,
II fut toujour s ami de la vertu.'*^
Complete. From « Curiosities of Literature.^
THE SIX FOLLIES OF SCIENCE
NOTHING is so capable of disordering the intellects as an in-
tense application to any one of these six things: the Quad-
rature of the Circle; the Multiplication of the Cube; the
Perpetual Motion; the Philosophical Stone; Magic; and Judicial
Astrology. In youth we may exercise our imagination on these
curious topics merely to con vice us of their impossibility; but it
shows a great defect in judgment to be occupied on them in an
advanced age. ^' It is proper, however, ^^ Fontenelle remarks, ^* to
apply oneself to these inquiries; because we find, as we proceed,
many valuable discoveries of which we were before ignorant.**
The same thought Cowley has applied, in an address to his mis-
tress, thus: —
* Although I think thou never wilt be found.
Yet I'm resolved to search for thee;
The search itself rewards the pains.
So though the chymist his great secret miss
(For neither it in art or nature is),
Yet things well worth his toil he gains;
And does his charge and labor pay
With good unsought experiments by the way.*
The same thought is in Donne. Perhaps Cowley did not sus-
pect that he was an imitator. Fontenelle could not have read
either; he struck out the thought b)^ his own reflection; it is very
just. Glauber searched long and deeply for the Philosopher's
Stone, which though he did not find, yet in his researches he dis-
covered a very useful purging salt, which bears his name.
Maupertuis, in a little volume of letters written by him, ob-
serves on the philosophical stone, that we cannot prove the im-
possibility of obtaining it, but we can easily see the folly of those
X404
ISAAC D'ISRAELI
who employ their time and money in seeking for it. This price
is too great to counterbalance the little probability of succeeding
in it. However, it is still a bantling of modern chemistry, who
has nodded very afEectionately on it! — Of the perpetual motion,
he shows the impossibility, at least in the sense of which it is
generally received. On the quadrature of the circle, he says he
cannot decide if this problem is resolvable or not; but he ob-
serves that it is very useless to search for it any more, since
we have arrived by approximation to such a point of accuracy,
that on a large circle, such as the orbit which the earth de-
scribes round the sun, the geometrician will not mistake by the
thickness of a hair. The quadrature of the circle is still, how-
ever, a favorite game of some visionaries, and several are still
imagining that they have discovered the perpetual motion; the
Italians nickname them mat to per pet no; and Bekker tells us of
the fate of one Hartmann, of Leipsic, who was in such despair
at having passed his life so vainly, in studying perpetual motion,
that at length he became himself one in the <* long letter ^' of
Erasmus, by means of the fatal triangle ; that is, he hanged him-
self; for the long letter of Erasmus is the Greek phi, which is
imagined to bear some resemblance to the suspension of an un-
lucky mortal.
Complete. From « Curiosities of Literature. »
EARLY PRINTING
THERE is some probability that this art originated in China,
where it was practiced long before it was known in Europe.
Some European traveler might have imported the hint.
That the Romans did not practice the art of printing cannot but
excite our astonishment, since they really possessed the art, and
may be said to have enjoyed it, unconscious of their rich posses-
sion. I have seen Roman stereotypes, or printing immovable
types, with which they stamped their pottery. How in daily prac-
ticing the art, though confined to this object, it did not occur to
so ingenious a people to print their literary works, is not easily
to be accounted for. Did the wise and grave senate dread those
inconveniences which attended its indiscriminate use ? Or, per-
haps, they did not care to deprive so large a body as their scribes
of their business. Not a hint of the art itself appears in their
writings.
ISAAC D'ISRAELI H^S
When first the art of printing was discovered, they only made
use of one side of a leaf; they had not yet found out the expe-
dient of impressing the other. Specimens of these early printed
books are in his Majesty's and Lord Spencer's libraries. After-
wards they thought of pasting the blank sides, which made them
appear like one leaf. Their blocks were made of soft woods, and
their letters were carved; but frequently breaking, the expense
and trouble of carving and gluing new letters suggested our
movable types, which have produced an almost miraculous ce-
lerity in this art. Our modern stereotype consists of entire pages
of solid blocks of metal, and not being liable to break like the
soft wood at first used, is profitably employed for works which re-
quire to be perpetually reprinted. Printing on carved blocks of
wood must have greatly retarded the progress of universal knowl-
edge; for one set of types could only have produced one work,
whereas it now serves for hundreds.
When their editions were intended to be curious, they omitted
to print the first letter of a chapter, for which they left a blank
space, that it might be painted or illuminated, to the fancy of a
purchaser. Several ancient volumes of these early times have
been found where these letters are wanting, as they neglected to
have them printed.
The initial carved letter, which is generally a fine woodcut,
among our printed books, is evidently a remains or imitation of
these ornaments. Among the very earliest books printed, v^^hich
were religious, the Poor Man's Bible has wooden cuts in a coarse
style, without the least shadowing or crossing of strokes, and these
they inelegantly daubed over with colors, which they termed il-
luminating, and sold at a cheap rate to those who could not afford
to purchase costly missals, elegantly written and painted in vel-
lum. Specimens of these rude efforts of illuminated prints may
be seen in Strutt's « Dictionary of Engravers. '' The Bodleian li-
brary possesses the originals.
In the productions of early printing may be distinguished the
various splendid editions they made of Primers or Prayer Books.
They were embellished with cuts finished in a most elegant taste ;
many of them were ludicrous, and several were obscene. In one
of them an angel is represented crowning the Virgin Mary, and
God the Father himself assisting at the ceremony. Sometimes
St. Michael is overcoming Satan; and sometimes St. Anthony Is
1406 ISAAC D'ISRAELI
attacked by various devils of the most clumsy forms — not of the
grotesque and limber family of Callot!
Printing was gradually practiced throughout Europe from the
year 1440 to 1500. Caxton and his successor Wynkin de Worde
were our earliest printers. Caxton was a wealthy merchant, who
in 1464, being sent by Edward IV. to negotiate a commercial
treaty with the Duke of Burgundy, returned to his country with
this invaluable art. Notwithstanding his mercantile habits, he
possessed a literary taste, and his first work was a translation
from a French historical miscellany.
The tradition of the Devil and Dr. Faustus was derived from
the odd circumstance in which the Bibles of the first printer,
Fust, appeared to the world. When he had discovered this new
art, and printed off a considerable number of copies of the Bible,
to imitate those which were commonly sold in MSS., he under-
took the sale of them at Paris. It was his interest to conceal
this discovery, and to pass off his printed copies for MSS. But as
he was enabled to sell his Bibles at sixty crowns, while the other
scribes demanded five hundred, this raised universal astonishment ;
and still more when he produced copies as fast as they were
wanted, and even lowered his price. The uniformity of the copies
increased wonder. Informations were given in to the magistrates
against him as a magician, and in searching his lodgings a great
number of copies were found. The red ink, — and Fust's red ink
is peculiarly brilliant, — which embellished his copies was said to
be his blood, and it was solemnly adjudged that he was in league
with the devil. Fust was at length obliged to save himself from
a bonfire, to reveal his art to the parliament at Paris, who dis-
charged him from all prosecution in consideration of this useful
invention.
When the art of printing was established, it became the glory
of the learned to be correctors of the press to eminent printers.
Physicians, lawyers, and bishops themselves, occupied this depart-
ment. The printers then added frequently to their names those
of the correctors of the press; and editions were then valued ac-
cording to the abilities of the corrector.
The prices of books in these times were considered as an ob-
ject worthy of the animadversions of the highest powers. This
anxiety in favor of the studious appears from a privilege of Pope
Leo X. to Aldus Manutius for printing Varro, dated 1553, signed
ISAAC DISRAELI 1 407
Cardinal Bembo. Aldus is exhorted to put a moderate price on
the work, lest the pope should withdraw the privilege and accord
it to others.
Robert Stephens, one of the early printers, surpassed in cor-
rectness those who exercised the same profession. It is said that
to render his editions immaculate, he hung up the proofs in pub-
lic places and generously recompensed those who were so fortu-
nate as to detect an errata.
Plantin, though a learned man, is more famous as a printer.
His printing office claims our admiration; it was one of the won-
ders of Europe. This grand building was the chief ornament of
the city of Antwerp. Magnificent in its structure, it presented
to the spectator a countless number of presses, characters of all
figures and all sizes, matrices to cast letters, and all other print-
ing m-aterials; which Baillet assures us amounted to immense
sums.
In Italy, the three Manutii were more solicitous of corrections
and illustrations than of the beauty of their printing. It was the
character of the scholar, not of the printer, of which they were
ambitious.
It is much to be regretted that our publishers are not literary
men. Among the learned printers formerly a book was valued
because it came from the presses of an Aldus or a Stephens, and
even in our time the names of Bowyer and Dodsley sanctioned a
work. Pellisson in his ^* History of the French Academy® tells us
that Camusat was selected as their bookseller from his reputation
for publishing only valuable works. He was a man of some lit-
erature and good sense, and rarely printed an indifferent work.
When we were young I recollect that we always made it a rule
to purchase his publications. His name was the test of the good-
ness of the work. A publisher of this character would be of the
greatest utility to the literary world; at home he would induce a
number of ingenious men to become authors, for it would be
honorable to be inscribed in his catalogue; and it would be a di-
rection for the continental reader.
So valuable a union of learning and printing did not, unfor-
tunately, last. The printers of the seventeenth century became
less charmed with glory than with gain. Their correctors and
their letters evinced as little delicacy of choice.
The invention of what is now called the Italic letter in print-
ing was made by Aldus Manutius, to whom learning owes much.
1408 ISAAC D'ISRAELI
He observed the many inconveniences resulting from the vast
number of abbreviations which were then so frequent among the
printers, that a book was difficult to understand; a treatise was
actually written on the art of reading a printed book, and this
addressed to the learned! He contrived an expedient by which
these abbreviations might be entirely got rid of and yet books
suffer little increase in bulk. This he effected by introducing
what is now called Italic letter, though it formerly was distin-
guished by the name of the inventor, hence called the Aldine.
Complete. From « Curiosities of Literature. »
HOW MERIT HAS BEEN REWARDED
IT MAY perhaps be some satisfaction to show the young writer
that the most celebrated Ancients have been as rudely sub-
jected to the tyranny of criticism as the Moderns. Detraction
has ever poured the " waters of bitterness. ^^
It was given out, that Homer had stolen from anterior poets
whatever was most remarkable in the '■'■ Iliad ^^ and ^^ Odyssey. *^ Nau-
crates even points out the source, in the library at Memphis in
a temple of Vulcan, which, according to him, the blind bard
completely pillaged. Undoubtedly there were good poets before
Homer; how absurd to conceive that a finished and elaborate
poem could be the first. We have, indeed, accounts of anterior
poets, and apparently of epics, before Homer; their names have
come down to us. ^lian notices Syagrus, who composed a poem
on the siege of Troy; and Suidas the poem of Corinnus, from
which it is said Homer greatly borrowed. Why did Plato so
severely condemn the great bard, and imitate him ?
Sophocles was brought to trial by his children as a lunatic;
and some, who censured the inequalities of this poet, have also
condemned the vanity of Pindar; the rough verses of ^schylus;
and Euripides, for the conduct of his plots.
Socrates, considered as the wisest and the most moral of men,
Cicero treated as an usurer, and the pedant, Athenseus, as illit-
erate; the latter points out as a Socratic folly, our philosopher
disserting on the nature of justice before his judges, who were so
many thieves. The malignant buffoonery of Aristophanes, who,
as Jortin says, was a great wit, but a great rascal, treats him
much worse; but though some would revive this calumny such
ISAAC D'ISRAELI 1409
modern witnesses may have their evidence impeached in the
awful court of history.
Plato, who has been called by Clement of Alexandria the
Moses of Athens; the philosopher of the Christians by Arnobius;
and the god of philosophers by Cicero, Athenseus accuses of
envy; Theopompus of lying; Suidas of avarice; Aulus Gellius
of robbery; Porphyry of incontinence; and Aristophanes of im-
piety.
Aristotle, whose industry composed more than four hundred
volumes, has not been less spared by the critics; Diogenes, Laer-
tius, Cicero, and Plutarch, have forgotten nothing that can tend
to show his ignorance, his ambition, and his vanity.
It has been said that Plato was so envious of the celebrity of
Democritus that he proposed burning all his works; but that
Amydis and Clinias prevented it by remonstrating that there
were copies of them everywhere; and Aristotle was agitated by
the same passion against all the philosophers his predecessors!
Virgil is destitute of invention, if we are to give credit to
Pliny., Carbilius, and Seneca. Caligula has absolutely denied him
even mediocrity; Herennus has marked his faults; and Perilius
Faustinus has furnished a thick volume with his plagiarisms.
Even the author of his "Apology*^ has confessed that he has
stolen from Homer his greatest beauties; from Apollonius Rho-
dius many of his pathetic passages; from Nicander hints from
his " Georgics ** ; and this does not terminate the catalogue.
Horace censures the coarse humor of Plauttis; and Horace, in
his turn, has been blamed for the free use he made of the Greek
minor poets.
The majority of the critics regard Pliny's <* Natural History"
only as a heap of fables; and seem to have quite as little respect
for Quintus Curtius, who indeed seems to have composed little
more than an elegant romance.
Pliny cannot bear Diodorus and Vopiscus; and in one compre-
hensive criticism treats all the historians as narrators of fables.
Livy has been reproached for his aversion to the Gauls; Dion,
for his hatred of the republic; Velleius Paterculus, for speaking
too kindly of the vices of Tiberius; and Herodotus and Plutarch,
for their excessive partiality to their own country; while the lat-
ter has written an entire treatise on the malignity of Herodotus.
Xenophon and Quintus Curtius have been considered rather as
novelists than historians; and Tacitus has been censured tor his
IV — 8g
I4IO ISAAC D'ISRAELl
audacity in pretending to discover the political springs and secret
causes of events. Dionysius of Halicarnassus has made an elab-
orate attack on Thucydides for the unskillful choice of his sub-
jects and his manner of treating it. Dionysius would have
nothing written but what tended to the glory of his country and
the pleasure of the reader; as if history were a song! adds
Hobbes; while he also shows that there was a personal motive
in this attack. The same Dionysius severely criticizes the style
of Xenophon, who, he says, whenever he attempts to elevate his
style, shows he is incapable of supporting it. Polybius has been
blamed for hi? frequent introduction of moral reflections, which
interrupt the thread of his narrative ; and Sallust has been blamed
by Cato for indulging his own private passions, and studiously
concealing many of the glorious actions of Cicero. The Jewish
historian Josephus is accused of not having designed His history
for his own people so much as for the Greeks and Romans,
whom he takes the utmost care never to offend. Josephus as-
sumes a Roman name, Flavius; and considering his nation as
entirely subjugated, he only varies his story to make them ap-
pear venerable and dignified to their conquerors, and for this
purpose alters what he himself calls the Holy Books. It is well
known how widely he differs from the Scriptural accounts. Some
have said of Cicero . that there is no connection, and, to adopt
their own figures, no blood and nerves, in what his admirers so
warmly extol. Cold in his extemporaneous effusions, artificial in
his exordiums, trifling in his strained raillery, and tiresome in his
digressions. This is saying a good deal about Cicero!
Quintilian does not spare Seneca; and Demosthenes, called by
Cicero the Prince of Orators, has according to Hermippus, more
of art than of nature. To Demades, his orations appear too
much labored; others have thought him too dry; and, if we may
trust -^schines, his language is by no means pure.
The ^< Attic Nights *^ of Aulus Gellius and the " Deipnosophists *
of Athenaeus, while they have been extolled by one party, have
been degraded by another. They have been considered as botch-
ers of rags and remnants; their diligence has not been accom-
panied by judgment; and their taste inclined more to the frivo-
lous than to the useful. Compilers, indeed, are liable to a hard
fate, for little distinction is made in their ranks; a disagreeable
situation, in which honest Burton seems to have been placed; for
he says of his work, that some will cry out, *This is a thinge
ISAAC D' ISRAELI »4"
of mere Industrie; a collection without wit or invention; a very
toy! So men are valued! Their labors vilified by fellows of no
worth themselves, as things of naught. Who could not have
done as much ? Some understand too little, and some too much. *
Should we proceed with the list to our own country, and to
our own times, it might be currently augmented, and show the
world what men the critics are! but, perhaps, enough has been
said to soothe irritated genius, and to shame fastidious criticism.
" I would beg the critics to remember, '^ the Earl of Roscommon
writes in his preface to Horace's ** Art of Poetry,'* "that Horace
owed his favor and his fortune to the character given of him by
Virgil and Varius; that Fundanius and Pollio are still valued by
what Horace said of them; and that in their golden age, there
was a good understanding among the ingenious, and those who
were the most esteemed were the best natured."
Complete. From « Curiosities of Literature.*
FEMALE BEAUTY AND ORNAMENT
THE ladies in Japan gild their teeth, and those of the Indies
paint them red. The pearl of teeth must be dyed black to
be beautiful in Guzurat. In Greenland the women color
their faces with blue and yellow. However fresh the complex-
ion of a Muscovite may be, she would think herself very ugly if
she was not plastered over with paint. The Chinese must have
their feet as diminutive as those of the she goats; and to render
them thus, their youth is passed in tortures. In ancient Persia
an aquiline nose was often thought worthy of the crown; and ir
there was any contention between two princes, the people gen-
erally went by this criterion of majesty. In some countries the
mothers break the noses of their children; and in others press
the head between two boards, that it may become square. The
modern Persians have a strong aversion to red hair; the Turks,
on the contrary, are warm admirers of it. The female Hottentot
receives from the hand of her lover, not silk or wreaths of
flowers, but warm guts and reeking tripe, to dress herself with
enviable ornaments.
In China small round eyes are liked; and the girls are con-
tinually plucking their eyebrows that they may be thin and long.
The Turkish women dip a gold brush in the tincture of a black
141 2 ISAAC D'ISRAELI
drug, which they pass over their eyebrows. It is too visible by
day, but looks shining- by night. They tinge their nails with a
rose color. An African beauty must have small eyes, thick lips,
a large flat nose, and a skin beautifully black. The Emperor of
Monomotapa would not change his amiable negress for the most
brilliant European beauty.
An ornament for the nose appears to us perfectly unnecessary.
The Peruvians, however, think otherwise; and they hang on it a
weighty ring, the thickness of which is proportioned by the rank
of their husbands. The custom of boring it, as our ladies do
their ears, is very common in sev^eral nations. Through the per-
foration are hung various materials; such as green crystal, gold
stones, a single and sometimes a great number of gold rings.
This is rather troublesome to them in blowing their noses; and
the fact is, some have informed us that the Indian ladies never
perform this very useful operation.
The female headdress is carried in some countries to singular
extravagance. The Chinese fair carries on her head the figure of
a certain bird. This bird is composed of copper, or of gold, ac-
cording to the quality of the person; the wings spread out, fall
over the front of the headdress, and conceal the temples. The
tail, long and open, forms a beautiful tuft of feathers. The beak
covers the top of the nose; the neck is fastened to the body of
the artificial animal by a spring, that it may the more freely play,
and tremble at the slightest motion.
The extravagance of the Myantses is far more ridiculous than
the above. They carry on their heads a slight board, rather
longer than a foot, and about six inches broad; with this they
cover their hair, and seal it with wax. They cannot lie down,
nor lean, without keeping the neck straight; and the country be-
ing very woody, it is not uncommon to find them with their
headdress entangled in the trees. Whenever they comb their
hair, they pass an hour by the fire in melting the wax; but this
combing is only performed once or twice a year.
The inhabitants of the land of Natal wear caps, or bonnets,
six to ten inches high composed of the fat of oxen. They then
gradually anoint the head with a purer grease, which, mixing with
the hair, fastens the bonnets for their lives.
Complete. From « Curiosities of Literature. »
ISAAC D'lSRAELI 1413
THE CHINESE LANGUAGE
THE Chinese language is like no other on the globe; it is said
to contain not more than about three hundred and thirty
words, but it is by no means monotonous, for it has four
accents, the even, the raised, the lessened^ and the returning,
which multiply every word into four; as difficult, says Mr. Astle,
for a European to understand, as it is for a Chinese to compre-
hend the six pronunciations of the French E. In fact they can
so diversify their monosyllabic words by the different tones which
they give them, that the same character differently accented
signifies ten or more different things.
From the twenty-ninth volume of the ^* Lettres Edifiantes et
Curieuses '^ I take the present critically humorous account of this
language.
P. Bourgeois, one of the missionaries, attempted after ten
months residence at Pekin, to preach in the Chinese language.
These are the words of the good father, " God knows how much
this first Chinese sermon cost me! I can assure you, this language
resembles no other. The same word has never but one termina-
tion ; and then adieu to all that in our declensions distinguishes
the gender, and the number of things we would speak; adieu, in
the verbs to all which might explain the active person how and
in what time it acts, if it acts alone or with others; in a word
with the Chinese the same word is the substantive, adjective,
verb, singular, plural, masculine, feminine, etc. It is the person
who hears who must arrange the circumstances, and guess them.
Add to all this, that all the words of this language are reduced
to three hundred and a few more; that they are pronounced in
so many different ways, that they signify eighty thousand differ-
ent things, which are expressed by as many different characters.
This is not all; the arrangement of all these monosyllables ap-
pears to be under no general rule; so that to know the language
after having learned the words, we must learn every particular
phrase; the least inversion would make you unintelligible to
three parts of the Chinese.
** I will give you an example of their words. They told me that
chou signifies book; so that I thought that whenever the word
chou was pronounced a book was the subject. Not at all! Chou,
the next time I heard it, I found signified a tree. Now I was
1414 ISAAC DISRAELI
to recollect chou was a book or a tree. But this amounted to
nothing; chou^ I found, expressed also great heats; cJioii is to re-
late; choii is the Aurora; cJioii means to be accustomed; choii
expresses the loss of a wager, etc. I should not finish were I to
attempt to give you all its significations.
** Notwithstanding these singular difficulties, could one but find
a help in the perusal of their books I should not complain. But
this is impossible ! Their language is quite different from that of
simple conversation. What will ever be an insurmountable diffi-
culty to every European, is the pronunciation; every word may
be pronounced in five different tones, yet every tone is not so
distinct that an unpracticed ear can easily distinguish it.
"These monosyllables fly with amazing rapidity; then they are
continually disguised by elisions, which sometimes hardly leave
anything of two monosyllables. From an aspirated tone, you
must pass immediately to an even one; from a whistling note to
an inward one; sometimes your voice must proceed from the
palate; sometimes it must be guttural, and almost always nasal.
I recited my sermon at least fifty times to my servant before I
spoke it in public; and yet I am told, though he continually cor-
rected me, that of the ten parts of the sermon (as the Chinese
express themselves), they hardly understood three. Fortunately,
the Chinese are wonderfully patient, and they are astonished that
any ignorant stranger should be able to learn two words of their
language. '*
It is not less curious to be informed, as Dr. Hager tells us
in his ^< Elementary Characters of the Chinese, '' that " Satires are
often composed in China, which, if you attend to the characters,
their import is pure and sublime; but if you regard the tone only,
they contain a meaning ludicrous or obscene. ** He adds, " In the
Chinese one word sometimes corresponds to three or four thou-
sand characters ; a property quite opposite to that of our language,
in which myriads of different words are expressed by the same
letters. *
Complete. Prom « Curiosities of Literature.*
ISAAC D'ISRAELI 1415
METEMPSYCHOSIS
IF WE accept the belief of a future remuneration beyond this
life for suffering virtue, and retribution for successful crimes,
there is no system so simple, and so little repugnant to our
understanding, as that of the metempsychosis. The pains and the
pleasures of this life are by this system considered as the recom-
pense or the punishment of our actions in an anterior state; so
that, says St. Foix, we cease to wonder that among men and ani-
mals some enjoy an easy and agreeable life, while others seem
born to suffer all kinds of miseries. Preposterous as this system
may appear, it has not wanted for advocates in the present age,
which indeed has revived every kind of fanciful theories. Mer-
cier, in " L'An Deux Mille Quatre Cents Quarante,*^ seriously main-
tains the present one.
If we seek for the origin of the opinion of the metempsycho-
sis, or the transmigration of souls into other bodies, we must plunge
into the remotest antiquity; and even then we shall find it im-
possible to fix the epoch of its first author. The notion was long
extant in Greece before the time of Pythagoras. Herodotus as-
sures us that the Egyptian priests taught it; but he does not
inform us of the time it began to spread. It probably followed
the opinion of the immortality of the soul. As soon as the first
philosophers had established this dogma, they thought they could
not maintain this immortality without a transmigation of souls.
The opinion of the metempsychosis spread in almost every region
of the earth; and it continues, even to the present time, in all its
force among those nations who have not yet embraced Christian-
ity. The people of Arracan, Peru, Siam, Camboya, Tonquin,
Cochin China, Japan, Java, and Ceylon still entertain that fancy,
which also forms the chief article of the Chinese religion. The
Druids believed in transmigration. The bardic triads of the
Welsh are full of this belief; and a Welsh antiquary insists that
by an emigration which formerly took place, it was conveyed to
the Brahmins of India from Wales! The Welsh bard tells us that
the souls of men transmigrate into the bodies of those animals
whose habits and characters they most resemble, till, after a cir-
cuit of such chastizing miseries, they are rendered more pure for
the celestial presence; for man may be converted into a pig or a
wolf, till at length he assumes the inoffensiveness of the dove.
I4lS ISAAC D'ISRAELI
My learned friend Sharon Turner, the accurate and philosoph-
ical historian of our Saxon ancestors, has explained in his ^' Vindi-
cation of the Ancient British Poems,* p. 231, the Welsh system of
the metempsychosis. Their bards mention three circles of exis-
tence. The circle of the all-inclosing circle holds nothing alive or
dead but God. The second circle, that of felicity, is that which
men are to pervade after they have passed through their terres-
trial changes. The circle of evil is that in which human nature
passes through varying stages of existence, which it must undergo
before it is qualified to inhabit the circle of felicity.
The progression of man through the circle of evil is marked
by three infelicities: necessity, oblivion, and deaths. The deaths
which follow our changes are so many escapes from their power.
Man is a free agent, and has the liberty of choosing; his suffer-
ings and changes cannot be foreseen. By his misconduct he may
happen to fall retrograde into the lowest state from which he has
emerged. If his conduct in any one state, instead of improving
his being, had made it worse, he fell back into a worse condi-
tion to commence again his purifying revolutions. Humanity
was the limit of the degraded transmigrations. All the changes
above humanity produced felicity. Humanity is the scene of the
contest, and after man has traversed every state of animated ex-
istence and can remember all that he has passed through, that
consummation follows which he attains in the circle of felicity.
It is on this system of transmigration that Taliessin, the Welsh
bard, who wrote in the sixth century, gives a recital of his pre-
tended transmigration. He tells how he had been a serpent, a
wild ass, a buck, or a crane, etc. ; and this kind of reminiscence
of his former state, this recovery of memory, was a proof of the
mortal's advances to the happier circle. For to forget what we
have been was one of the curses of the circle of evil. Taliessin
therefore, adds Mr. Turner, as profusely boasts of his recovered
reminiscence as any modern sectary can do of his state of grace
and election.
In all these wild reveries there seems to be a moral fable in
the notion that the clearer a man recollects what a brute he has
been, it is certain proof that he is in an improved state!
According to the authentic Clavigero, in his ^^ History of Mex
ico, ® we find the Pythagorean transmigration carried on in the West,
and not less fancifully than in the countries of the East. The
people of Tlascala believe that the souls of persons of rank went
ISAAC D'ISRAELI 1417
after their death to inhabit the bodies of beautiful and sweet
singing birds, and those of the nobler quadrupeds; while the
souls of inferior persons were supposed to pass into weasels, bee-
tles, and such other meaner animals.
There is something not a little ludicrous in the description
Plutarch gives at the close of his treatise on ^^ The Delay of Heav-
enly Justice.'* Thespesius saw at length the souls of those who
were condemned to return to life, and whom they violently forced
to take the form of all kinds of animals. The laborers charged
with this transformation forge with their instruments certain parts;
others, a new form; and made some totally disappear; that these
souls might be rendered proper for another kind of life and other
habits. Among these he perceived the soul of Nero, which had
already suffered long torments, and which stuck to the body by
nails red from the fire. The workmen seized on him to make a
viper of, under which form he was now to live, after having de-
voured the breast that had carried him, — But in this Plutarch
only copies the fine reveries of Plato.
Complete. From « Curiosities of Literature. >>
ON GOOD LUCK IN SNEEZING
IT IS probable that this custom, so universally prevalent, origi-
nated in some ancient superstition; it seems to have excited
inquiry among all nations.
Some Catholics, says Father Feyjoo, have attributed the ori-
gin of this custom to the ordinance of a pope, St. Gregory —
who is said to have instituted a short benediction to be used on
such occasions, at a time when, during a pestilence, the crisis
was attended by sneezing, and in most cases followed by death.
But the Rabbins, who have a story for everything, say that
before Jacob men never sneezed but once, and then immediately
died. They assure us that that patriarch was the first who died
by natural disease ; before him all men died by sneezing, — the
memory of which was ordered to be preserved in all nations by
a command of every prince to his subjects to employ some salu-
tary exclamation after the act of sneezing. But these are Tal-
mudical dreams, and only serve to prove that so familiar a
custom has always created inquiry.
I4l8 ISAAC D'ISRAELI
Even Aristotle has delivered some considerable nonsense on
this custom; he says it is an honorable acknowledgment of the
seat of good sense and genius — the head. . . The custom
at all events existed long prior to Pope Gregory. The lover in
Apuleius, Gyton in Petronius, and allusions to it in Pliny, prove
its antiquity; and a memoir of the French Academy notices the
practice in the New World on the first discovery of America
Everywhere man is saluted for sneezing.
An amusing account of the ceremonies which attend the
sneezing of the king of Menomotapa shows what a national con-
cern may be the sneeze of despotism. Those who are near his
person when this happens salute him in so loud a tone that
persons in the antechamber hear it and join in the acclamation;
in the adjoining apartments they do the same, till the noise
reaches the street, and becomes propagated throughout the city;
so that at each sneeze of his Majesty results a most horrid cry
from the salutations of many thousands of his vassals.
When the king of Sennaar sneezes, his courtiers immediately
turn their backs on him, and give a loud slap on their right
thigh.
With the Ancients sneezing was ominous; from the right it
was considered suspicious; and Plutarch, in his <* Life of Themis-
tocles,^^ says that before a naval battle it was a sign of conquest!
Catullus, in his pleasing poem of "Acme and Septimus, ^^ makes
this action from the deity of Love from the left the source of his
fiction. The passage has been elegantly versified by a poetical
friend, who finds authority that the gods' sneezing on the right in
heaven is supposed to come to us on earth on the left.
* Cupid sneezing in his flight
Once was heard upon the right,
Boding wo to lovers true ;
But now upon the left he flew,
And with sportive sneeze divine,
Gave of joy the sacred sign.
Acme bent her lovely face,
Flush'd with rapture's rosy grace,
And those eyes that swam in bliss,
Prest with many a breathing kiss;
Breathing, murmuring, soft, and low.
Thus might life forever flow!
ISAAC DISRAELI I419
* Love of my life, and life of love,*
Cupid rtales our fates above,
Ever let us vow to join
In homage at his happy shrine.
Cupid heard the lovers true,
And upon the left he flew.
And with sportive sneeze divine, '
Renew'd of joy the sacred sign.>*
Complete. From « Curiosities of Literature.*
AUSTIN DOBSON
(1840-)
Justin Dobson, one of the most pleasing writers of English
vers de socie'te, has given the world essays as charming as his
poems. In prose he is at his best in his studies of Swift,
Addison, and the worthies of Queen Anne's reign. He was born at
Plymouth, England, January i8th, 1840, and educated for a civil engi-
neer, but the prosaic work of his life has been done chiefly in a
position under the Board of Trade. His ^^ Vignettes in Rhyme,®
"Proverbs in Porcelain,* and << Old World Idyls, * are admirable ex-
amples of his delicate treatment of subjects which belong to the
lighter moods of poetry. His rhymes are always perfect, and he has
written nothing but what will help to make the world better than he
found it.
SWIFT AND HIS STELLA
A DIM light was burning in the back room of a first floor in
Bury Street, St. James's. The apartment it illumined was
not a spacious one ; and the furniture, adequate rather than
luxurious, had that indefinable lack of physiognomy which only
lodging-house furniture seems to acquire. There was no fire-
place; but in the adjoining parlor, partly visible through the
open door, the last embers were dying in a grate from which the
larger pieces of coal had been lifted away and carefully ranged
in order on the hobs. Across the heavy, high-backed chairs in
the bedroom lay various neatly-folded garments, one of which
was the black gown with pudding sleeves usually worn in public
by the eighteenth -century clergyman, while at the bottom of the
bed hung a clerical-looking periwig. In the bed itself, and lean-
ing toward a tall wax candle at his side (which, from a faint
smell of burnt woolen still lingering about the chamber, must
have recently come into contact with the now tucked-back bed
curtain) was a gentleman of forty or thereabouts, writing in a
very small hand upon a very large sheet of paper, folded, for
greater convenience, into one long horizontal slip. He had dark,
AUSTIN DOBSON 1 42 1
fierce-looking eyebrows; a slightly aquiline nose; full -lidded and
rather prominent clear blue eyes; a firmly-cut, handsome mouth;
and a wide, massive forehead, the extent of which for the mo-
ment was abnormally exaggerated by the fact that, in the energy
of composition, the fur-lined cap he had substituted for his wig
had been slightly tilted backward. As his task proceeded his ex-
pression altered from time to time, now growing grave and stern,
now inexpressibly soft and tender. Occasionally, the look almost
passed into a kind of grimace, resembling nothing so much as
the imitative motion of the lips which one makes in speaking to
a pet bird. He continued writing until in the distance the step
of the watchman, first pausing deliberately, then passing slowly
forward for a few paces, was heard in the street below. " Past
twelve o'clock ! '* came a wheezy cry at the window. " P-a-a-a-a-ast
twelve o'clock ! ** followed the writer, dragging out his letters so
as to produce the speaker's drawl. After this he rapidly set
down a string of words in what looked like some unknown tongue,
ending off with a trail of seeming hieroglyphics. ** Nite, noun,
deelest sollahs. Nite dee litt MD, Pdfr's MD. Rove Pdfr, poo
Pdfr, MD MD MD TW TW TW. Lele Lele Lele Lele michar
MD.* Then, tucking his paper under his pillow, he popped out
the guttering candle, and, turning round upon his side with a
smile of exceeding sweetness, settled himself to sleep.
The personage thus depicted was Jonathan Swift, Doctor of
Divinity, Vicar of Laracor by Trim, in the diocese of Heath, in
the kingdom of Ireland, and Prebendary of Dunlaven in St.
Patrick's Cathedral. He had not been long in London, having
but recently come over at the suggestion of Dr. William King,
Archbishop of Dublin, to endeavor to obtain for the Irish clergy
the remission (already conceded to their English brethren) of the
first fruits payable to the crown; and he was writing off, or up,
his daily records of his doings to Mrs. Rebecca Dingley and Mrs.
Esther Johnson, two maiden ladies, who, in his absence from the
Irish capital, were temporarily occupying his lodgings in Capel
Street. At this date he must have been looking his best, for he
had just been sitting to Pope's friend, Charles Jervas, who, hav-
ing painted him two years earlier, had found him grown so much
fatter and better for his sojourn in Ireland that he had volun-
teered to retouch the portrait. He had given it * quite another
turn," Swift tells his correspondents, ''and now approves it
T42 2 AUSTIN DOBSON
entirely.'* Nearly twenty years later Alderman Barber presented
this very picture to the Bodleian, where it is still to be seen;
and it is, besides, familiar to the collector in George Vertue's
fine engraving. But even more interesting than the similitude of
Swift in the fullness of his ungrateful ambition are the letters we
have seen him writing. With one exception, those of them which
were printed, and garbled, by his fatuous namesake, Mrs. White<
way's son-in-law, are destroyed or lost; but all the latter portion,
again, with the exception of one, which Hawkesworth, a more con-
scientious, though by no means an irreproachable editor, gave to
the world in 1766, are preserved in the MSS. Department of the
British Museum, having fortunately been consigned in the same
year, by their confederated publishers, to the safe-keeping of that
institution.
They still bear, in many cases, the little seal (a classic female
head) with which, after addressing them in laboriously legible
fashion, ** To Mrs. Dingley, at Mr. Curry's House, over against
the Ram in Capel Street, Dublin, Ireland,'* Swift was wont to
fasten up his periodical dispatches. Several of them are written
on quarto paper with faint gilding at the edges, — the ^* pretty
small gilt sheet " to which he somewhere refers ; but the majority
are on a wide folio page crowded from top to bottom with an ex-
tremely minute and often abbreviated script, which must have
tried other eyes besides those of Esther Johnson. ^^ I looked over
a bit of my last letter," he says himself on one occasion, *^ and
could hardly read it"; elsewhere, in one of the letters now lost,
he counts up no fewer than one hundred and ninety -nine lines;
and in another of those that remain, taken at a venture, there
are on the first side sixty-nine lines, making, in the type of Scot's
edition, rather ' more than five octavo pages. As for the ^' little
language " which produced the facial contortions above referred
to ( " When I am writing in our language I make up my mouth,
just as if I were speaking"), it has been sadly mutilated by
Hawkesworth's relentless pen. Many of the passages which he
struck through were, with great ingenuity, restored by the late
John Forster, from whom, in the little picture at the beginning
of this paper, we borrowed a few of those recovered hieroglyphics.
But the bulk of their ^^huge babyisms" and ^^ dear diminutives"
are almost too intimate and particular for the rude publicities of
type. Dans ce ravissant op^ra qu'on appelle I'amour, says Vic-
AUSTIN DOBSON 1423
tor Hugo, le libretto n'est presque rien ; and if for amour we
read amitie\ the aphorism, it must be admitted, is not untrue of
Swift's famous " special code '^ to Stella.
There can, however, be no doubt of the pleasure with which
Swift's communications must have been welcomed by the two
ladies at Capel Street, not occupied, as was the -writer, with the
ceaseless bustle of an unusually busy world, but restricted to
such minor dissipations as a little horse exercise, or a quiet
game of ombre at Dean Sterne's, to the modest accompaniment
of claret and oranges. Swift's unique and wonderful command
of his mother tongue has never been shown to such advantage
as in these familiar records, bristling with proverbs and folklore,
invented ad hoc, with puns good and bad, with humor, irony,
common sense, and playfulness. One can imagine with what
eagerness the large sheet must have been unfolded, and read —
not all at once, but in easy stages — by Mrs. Dingley to the im-
patient Mrs. Johnson, for whom it was primarily intended, but
whose eyes were too weak to read it. Yet to the modern stu-
dent, the ** Journal to Stella, *^ taken as a whole, scarcely achieves
the success which its peculiar attributes lead one to anticipate.
It remains, as must always be remembered, strictly a journal
with a journal's defects. There is a lack of connected interest;
there is also a superfluity of detail. Regarded in the light of a
historical picture, it is like Hogarth's " March to Finchley '^ : the
crowd in the foreground obscures the central action. It treats,
indeed, of a stirring and momentous time, for power was chang-
ing hands. The Whigs had given place to the Tories; adroit
Mrs. Masham had supplanted " Mrs. Freeman " ; the great Cap-
tain himself was falling with a crash. Abroad, the long Conti-
nental war was dwindling to its close; at home, the treaty of
Utrecht was preparing. Of all this, however, one rather over-
hears than hears. In Swift's gallery there are no portraits ct la
Cameron with sweeping robes; at best they are but thumb-nail
sketches. Nowhere have we such a finished full length as that of
Bolingbroke in the *^ Inquiry into the Behavior of the Ministry " ;
nowhere a scathing satire like the ^* Verres ^* kitcat of Whar-
ton in the seventeenth Examiner. Nor are there anywhere ac-
counts of occurrences which loom much larger than the stabbing
of Harley by Guiscard, or the duel of Hamilton and Mohun.
Not the less does the canvas swarm with figures, many of whom
bear famous names. Now it is Anna Augusta herself, driving
1.12 4 AU.^riN DOBSON
red-faced to hounds in her one-horse chaise, or yawning behind
her fan sticks at a tedious reception; now it is that "pure trifier*
Harley, dawdling and temporizing as he does in Prior: —
"Yea, quoth the Erie, but not to-day,^* or spelling out the
inn signs between Kew and London; now it is Peterborough,
"the rambling^t lying rogue on earth, ^* talking deep politics at
a barber's preparatory to starting for the world's end with the
morrow; now it is Mrs. St. John, on her way to the Bath, be-
seeching Swift to watch over her illustrious husband, who (like
Stella!) is not to be governed, and will certainly make himself ill
between business and Burgundy. Many others pass and repass —
Congreve {quantum miitatus /) a broken man, but cheerful, though
" almost blind with cataracts growing on his eyes *^ ; Prior with
hollow cheeks, sitting solemnly at the Smyrna, receiving visits of
ceremony, or walking in the park to make himself fat, or disap-
pearing mysteriously on diplomatic expeditions to Paris; grave
Addison rehearsing "Cato,'* and sometimes un-Catonically fud-
dled; Steele bustling over Tatlers and Spectators, and "governed
by his wdfe most abominably, as bad as Marlborough *^ ; " pas-
toral Phillips (with his red stockings), just arrived from Den-
mark; clever, kindly Dr. Arbuthnot, "the queen's favorite physi-
cian, *^ meditating new " bites * for the maids of honor, or fresh
chapters in " John Bull ^^ ; young Mr. Berkeley of Kilkenny with
his " Dialogues against Atheism '^ in his pocket, and burning " to
make acquaintance with men of merit ^* ; Atterbury, finessing for
his Christ Church deanery. Then there are the great ladies —
Mrs. Masham, who has a red nose, but is Swift's friend; Lady
Somerset, the " Carrots of the Wind or Prophecy,* who has red
hair, and is his enemy; sensible and spirited Lady Betty Ger-
maine; the Duchess of Grafton (in a fontange of the last reign);
Newton's niece, pretty Mrs. Barton; good-tempered Lady Harley;
hapless Mrs. Ann Long; and a host of others. And among them
all, "unhasting, unresting," filling the scene like Coquelin in
"L'Etourdi," comes and goes the figure of "Parson Swift* him-
self, now striding full blown down St. James's Street in his cas-
sock, gown, and three-guinea periwig; now riding through
Windsor Forest in a borrowed suit of " light camlet, faced w4th
red velvet, and silver buttons.* Sometimes he is feasting royally
at Oznida's or the Thatched House with the society of " Brothers *;
sometimes dining moderately in the city with Barber, his printer,
K>r Will Pate, the "learned woolen draper*; sometimes scurvily
AUSTIN DOBSON 1 42 5
at a blind tavern "upon gill ale, bad broth, and three chops of
mutton * You may follow him wherever he goes, whether it be
to Greenwich with the Dean of Carlisle, or to Hampton with
* Lord Treasurer," or to hear the nightingales at Vaux Hall with
my Lady Kerry. He tells you when he buys books at Bateman's
in Little Britain, or spectacles for Stella on Ludgate Hill, or
Brazil tobacco, which Mrs. Dingley will rasp into snuff, at Charles
Lillie the perfumer's in Beaufort Buildings. He sets down every-
thing— his maladies (very specifically), his misadventures, econo-
mies, extravagances, dreams, disappointments — his votmn^ timor,
ira, voluptas. The timor is chiefly for those dogs the Mohocks
(^* Who has not trembled at the Mohock's name ? ") the ira^ to a
considerable extent, for that most exasperating of retainers, his
manservant Patrick.
It has been said that the * Journal to Stella*^ contains no fin-
ished character sketches; but so many entries are involved by the
peccadillos of Patrick, that after a time he begins, from sheer
force of reappearance, to assume the lineaments of a personage.
At first he is merely a wheedling, good-looking Irish boy — an
obvious ** Teaguelander, *^ as Sir Thomas Mansel calls him. He
makes his d^but in the third letter, with the remark that ** the rab-
ble here \i. e.^ in London] are much more inquisitive in politics
than in Ireland, * an utterance having all the air of a philosophic
reflection. Being, however, endowed with fine natural aptitudes,
he is speedily demoralized by those rakes, the London footmen.
*' Patrick is drunk about three times a week,^^ says the next rec-
ord, " and I bear it, and he has got the better of me ; but one of
these days I will positively turn him off to the wide world, when
none of you are by to intercede for him,** from which we must
infer that Patrick was, or had been, a favorite with the ladies at
Dublin. He has another vice in Swift's eyes: he is extravagant.
Coals cost twelve pence a week, yet he piles up the fires so
recklessly that his economical master has laboriously to pick
them to pieces again. Still, he has a good heart, for he buys a
linnet for Mrs. Dingley, at a personal sacrifice of sixpence, and
in direct opposition to his master's advice. ® I laid before him
the greatness of the sum, and the rashness of the attempt;
showed how impossible it would be to carry him safe over the
salt sea; but he would not take my counsel, and he will repent
it.** A month later the unhappy bird is still alive, though grown
very wild. It lives in a closet, where it makes a terrible litter.
IV — 90
1426 AUSTIN DOBSON
*But I say nothing; I am as tame as a clout." This restraint is
the more notable in that Patrick himself has been for ten days
out of favor. ^* I talk dry and cross to him, and have called him
^friend' three or four times. *^ Then, having been drunk again,
he is all but discharged, and Mrs. Vanhomrigh (a near neighbor)
has to make the peace. He is certainly trying; he loses keys,
forgets messages, locks up clothes at critical moments, and so
forth. But he is accustomed to Swift's ways, and the next we
hear of him is that, ^* intolerable rascal *^ though he be, he is
going to have a livery which will cost four pounds, and that he
has offered to pay for the lace on his hat out of his own wages.
Yet his behavior is still so bad that his master is afraid to give
him his new clothes, though he has not the heart to withhold
them. *I wish MD were here to entreat for him — just here
at the bed's side.'* Then there is a vivid little study of Swift
bathing in the Thames at Chelsea, with Patrick on guard — of
course, quite perfunctorily — to prevent his master being disturbed
by boats. "That puppy, Patrick, standing ashore, would let
them come within a yard or two, and then call sneakingly to
them.** After this he takes to the study of Congreve, goes to
the play, fights in his cups with another gentleman, by whom he
is dragged along the floor upon his face, " which looked for a
week after as if he had the leprosy; and,** adds the diarist, grimly,
* I was glad enough to see it. ** Later on he enrages his master
so much by keeping him waiting, that Swift is provoked into
giving him "two or three swinging cuffs on the ear,** spraining
his own thumb thereby, though Arbuthnot thinks it may be
gout. "He [Patrick] was plaguily afraid and humbled.** That
he was more frightened than repentant, the sequel shows. " I
gave him half a crown for his Christmas box, on condition he
would be good,** says Swift, whose forbearance is certainly ex-
traordinary, "and he came home drunk at midnight.** Worse
than this, he sometimes never comes home at all. At last arrives
the inevitable hour when he is "turned off to the wide world,**
and he never seems to have succeeded in coaxing himself back
again. Yet one fancies that Swift must have secretly regretted
his loss; and it would, no doubt, have been edifying to hear
Patrick upon his master.
There is one person, however, for fuller details respecting
whom one would willingly surrender the entire " Patrickead, ** and
that is the lady in whose interest the journal was written, since
AUSTIN DOBSON I42 7
Mrs. Rebecca Dingley, notwithstanding the many conventional
references to her, does no more than play the mute and self-
denying part of propriety. But of Esther Johnson (as she signs
herself) we get in reality little beyond the fact that her health
was at this time already a source of atixiety to her friends. The
journal is full of injunctions to her to take exercise, especially
horse exercise, and not to attempt to read ^^ Pdfr's '* ^^ ugly, small
hand," but to let Dingley read it to her. "Preserve your eyes,
if you be wise,'* says a distich manufactured for the occasion,
nor is she to write until she is " mighty, mighty, mighty, mighty,
mighty well,'* in her sight and is sure it will not do her the least
hurt. * Or come, I will tell you what; you. Mistress Ppt, shall
write your share at five or six sittings, one sitting a day; and
then comes DD altogether, and then Ppt a little crumb towards
the end, to let us see she remembers Pdfr; and then conclude
with something handsome and genteel, as ^your most humble
cumdumble,' or etc." A favorite subject of raillery is Mrs. John^
son's spelling, which was not her strong point, though she was
not nearly so bad as Lady Wentworth. " * Rediculous,* madame ?
I suppose you mean ridiculous. Let me have no more of that;
it is the author of the * Atlantis's * spelling. I have mended it in
your letter.** Elsewhere there are lists of her lapses; bussiness
for business, immagin, merrit, phamphlets, etc. But the letters
seldom end without their playful greeting to his " dearest Sir-
vahs,** his "dear foolish Rogues,** his "pretty, saucy MD,** and the
like. As his mood changes in its intensity, they change also.
"Farewell, my dearest lives and delights; I love you better than
ever, if possible. . . . God Almighty bless you ever, and make
us happy together. I pray for this twice every day, and I hope
God will hear my poor, hearty prayers.** In another place it is:
" God send poor Ppt her health, and keep MD happy. Farewell,
and love Pdfr, who loves MD above all things ten million of
times.** And again: "Farewell, dearest rogues; I am never happy
but when I think or write of MD. I have enough of courts and
ministers, and wish I were at Laracor.** It is to Laracor, with
its holly and its cherry trees, and the wnllow walk he had planted
by the canal he had made, and Stella riding past with Joe " to
the Hill of Bree, and round by Scurlock's Town,** that he turns
regretfully when the perfidies of those in power have vexed his
soul, with the conviction that for all they ®call him nothing but
Jonathan,** he "can serve everybody but himself.** * If I had not
1428 AUSTIN DOBSON
a spirit naturally cheerful, ^^ he says in his second year of resi-
dence, * I should be very much discontented at a thousand things.
Pray God preserve MD's health, and Pdfr's, and that I may live
far from the envy and discontent that attends those who are
thought to have more favor at court than they really possess.
Love Pdfr, who loves MD above all things. ^^ And then the let-
ter winds off into those cryptic epistolary caresses of which a
specimen has been already quoted.
Upon Stella's reputed rival, and Swift's relations with her, the
scope of this paper dispenses us from dwelling. Indeed, though
Swift's visits to Miss Vanhomrigh's mother are repeatedly referred
to, Esther Vanhomrigh herself ( from motives which the reader
will no doubt interpret according to his personal predilections in
the famous Vanessa-frage ) is mentioned but twice or thrice in
the entire journal, and then not by name. But we are of those
who hold with Mr. Henry Craik that, whatever the relations in
question may have been, they never seriously affected or even
materially interrupted Swift's lifelong attachment to the lady to
whom a year or two later, he was or was not ( according as we
elect to side with Sir Walter Scott or Mr. Forster) married by
the Bishop of Clogher in the garden of Sir Patrick's Deanery.
For one thing which is detachable from the network of tittle-
tattle and conjecture encumbering a question already sufficiently
perplexed in its origin is that Swift's expressions of esteem and
admiration for Stella are as emphatic at the end as at the be-
ginning. Some of those in the journal have already been repro-
duced. But his letters during her last lingering illness, and a
phrase in the Holyhead diary of 1727, are, if anything, even more
poignant in the sincerity of their utterance. " We have been per-
fect friends these thirty-five years, '' he tells Mr. Worrall, his vicar,
of Mrs. Johnson; and he goes on to describe her as one whom
he ^ most esteemed upon the score of every good quality that can
possibly commend a human creature. . . . ever since I left
you my heart has been so sunk that I have not been the same
man, nor ever shall be again, but drag on a wretched life, till it
shall please God to call me away.* To another correspondent,
speaking of Stella's then hourly-expected death, he says, ^^as I
vaUie life very little, so the poor casual remains of it, after such
a loss, would be a burden that I beg God Almighty to enable
me to bear; and I think there is not a greater folly than that of
entering into too strict and particular a friendship, with the loss
AUSTIN DOBSON 1 429
of which a man must be absolutely miserable. . . . Besides,
this was a person of my own rearing- and instructing- from child-
hood, who excelled in every good quality that can possibly accom-
plish a human creature.'^ The date of this letter is July, 1726;
but it was not until the beginning of 1728 that the blow came
which deprived him of his *^ dearest friend. ** Then, on a Sunday in
January, at eleven at night, he sits down to compile that (in the
circumstances ) extraordinary " character *' of " the truest, most vir-
tuous, and valuable friend that I, or perhaps any other person, was
ever blessed with.** A few passages from this strange finis to a
strange story began while Stella was lying dead, and continued
after her funeral (in a room to which he had not moved in order
to avoid the sight of the light in the church), may be copied here.
** Never, ** he says, ** was any of her sex born with better gifts of
the mind, or who more improved them by reading and conversa-
tion. , . . Her advice was always the best, and with the greatest
freedom, mixed with the greatest decency. She had a gracefulness
somewhat more than human in every motion, word, and action.
Never was so happy a conjunction of civility, freedom, easiness, and
sincerity. . . . She never mistook the understanding of others;
nor ever said a severe word, but where a much severer was de-
served. . . . She never had the least absence of mind in
conversation, nor was given to interruption, nor appeared eager
to put in her word, by waiting impatiently till another had done.
She spoke in a most agreeable voice, in the plainest words, never
hesitating, except out of modesty before new faces, where she
was somewhat reserved; nor among her nearest friends, ever
spoke much at a time. . . . Although her knowledge from
books and company was much more extensive than usually falls
to the share of her sex, yet she was so far from making a parade
of it that her female visitants, on their first acquaintance, who
expected to discover it by what they call words and deep dis-
course, would be sometimes disappointed, and say they found she
was like other women. But wise men, through all her modesty,
whatever they discoursed on, could easily observe that she under-
stood them very well, by the judgment shown in her observa-
tions as well as in her questions.**
In the foregoing retrospect, as in the final birthday poems to
Stella, Swift, it will be gathered, dwells upon the intellectual
rather than the physical charms of this celebrated woman. To
her mental qualities, indeed, he had always given the foremost
I430 AUSTIN DOBSON
place. But time, in 1728, had long since silvered those locks
once ^* blacker than a raven, '^ while years of failing health had
sadly altered the perfect figure, and dimmed the lustre of the
beautiful eyes. What she had been is not quite easy for a mod-
ern admirer to realize from the dubious Delville medallion, or
the inadequate engraving by Engleheart of the picture at Ballin-
ter, which forms the frontispiece to Sir William Wilde's deeply
interesting ^^ Closing Years of Dean Swift's Life. *^ The more ac-
curate photogravure of the latter given in Mr. Gerald Moriarty's
recent book is much more satisfactory, and so markedly to Esther
Johnson's advantage as to suggest the further reproduction of the
portrait in some separate and accessible form.
Complete. From Longman's Magazine 1893.
PHILIP DODDRIDGE
(1702-1751)
[hilip Doddridge, one of the most celebrated theologians of
the eighteenth century, was born in 1702, the youngest of
a family of twenty children. His father, a London mer-
chant, educated him at the best private schools, and he studied for
the ministry under the impulse of a fondness for the Bible derived
from stories told him by his mother in explanation of the meaning
of the Scriptural scenes in Dutch tiles, which had attracted his atten-
tion.^ His principal prose work is ^^ The Rise and Progress of Religion
in the Soul.'^ His hymns are still favorites wherever English is
spoken.
CN THE POWER AND BEAUTY OP THE NEW TESTAMENT
THE New Testament is a book written with the most consum-
mate knowledge of human nature; and though there are a
thousand latent beauties in it, which it is the business and
glory of true criticism to place in a strong point of light, the
general sense and design of it is plain to every honest reader, even
at the very first perusal. It is evidently intended to bring us to
God through Christ, in a humble dependence on the communica-
tion of his sanctifying and quickening Spirit; and to engage us
to a course of faithful and universal obedience, chiefly from a
grateful sense of the riches of Divine grace, manifested to us in
the Gospel. And though this scheme is indeed liable to abuse, as
everything else is, it appears to me plain in fact, that it has been,
and still is, the grand instrument of reforming a very degenerate
world; and, according to the best observations I have been able to
make on what has passed about me, or within my own breast, I
have found that, in proportion to the degree in which this evan-
gelical scheme is received and relished, the interest of true virtue
and holiness flourished, and the mind is formed to manly devo-
tion, diffusive benevolence, steady fortitude, and. in short, made
ready to every good word and work.
1432 PHILIP DODDRIDGE
We have here the authentic records of that Gospel which was
intended as the great medicine for our souls! of that character
which is our pattern; of that death which is our ransom; of him,
in short, whose name we bear, as we are professed Christians;
and before whose tribunal we are all shortly to appear, that our
eternal existence may be determined, blissful or miserable, accord-
ing to our regard for what he has taught and done and endured.
Let not the greatest, therefore, think it beneath their notice; nor
the meanest imagine that amidst all the most necessary cares
and labors they can find any excuse for neglecting or for even
postponing it. . . .
The account which the New Testament gives us of the tem-
per and character of our Divine Redeemer is a topic of argu-
ment by no means to be forgotten. We do not, indeed, there
meet with any studied encomiums upon the subject. The authors
deal not in such sort of productions; but, which is a thousand
times better, they show us the character itself. The sight of
what is great and beautiful has another kind of effect than the
most eloquent description of it. And here we behold the actions
of Christ; we attend his discourses, and have a plain and open
view of his behavior. In consequence of this we see in him
everything venerable, everything amiable. We see a perfection
of goodness nowhere in the world to be seen or to be heard ;
and numberless arguments plead at once to persuade the heart
that it is absolutely impossible such a person should be engaged
in a design founded in known falsehood, and tending only to
mislead and ruin his followers.
And though it is true the character of his Apostles does not
fully come up to the standard of their Master, nor is entirely
free from some small blemishes; yet we see so little of that kind
in them, and, on the contrary, such an assemblage of the human,
divine, and social virtues, that we cannot, if we thoroughly know
them, if we form an intiinate acquaintance with them, entertain
with patience the least suspicion that they were capable of a part
so detestable as theirs must have been, if they knew Jesus to
have been an impostor, and the Gospel a fable; with which they
must be chargeable, if Christianity were not indeed authentic
and divine.
The series of sufferings which they endured; the gentle, hum-
ble patience with which they bore them; the steady perseverance
and invincible fortitude with which they pursued their scheme,
PHILIP DODDRIDGE I433
in the midst of them all, and with no earthly prospect but that
of continued hardship and persecutioUj till it should end in death,
furnish out an important branch of this argument; which the
Book of Acts, especially taken in connection with the Epistles,
does almost continually illustrate, in the most artless, and there-
fore the most forcible, manner.
To conclude this head, the historj^ before us represents, in the
most clear and convincing- light, the genius of that doctrine
which Christ taught, and of the religion which he came to settle
in the world. When we view it as exhibited in human writings
we may mistake; for it is too often tinctured with the channel
through w^hich it has passed. Men of bad dispositions have
warped it, to make it comply with the corruptions of their own
hearts, and to subserve, in many instances, the schemes of their
ambitious and worldly interests. Good men, insensibly influenced
by a variety of prejudices, which, under fair and plausible forms,
have insinuated themselves into their breasts, have frequently
mistaken, not the essentials of Christianity (for no good man can
mistake them), but the circumstantials of it; and have propagated
their various and frequently contradictory mistakes, with a zeal
which nothing but an apprehension that they were its funda-
mentals could have inspired: and thus its original purity and
beauty have been debased and obscured. But here we drink this
water of life at its fountain head, untainted and unmixed, and
with that peculiar spirit, which, at a distance from it, is so apt
to evaporate. Here we plainly perceive there is nothing in the
scheme but what is most worthy of God to reveal, and of his Son
to publish — to publish to the world. Here we see, not, as in
the heathen writers, some detached sentiment, finely heightened
with the beauty of expression and pomp of words, like a scattered
fragment, with the partial traces of impaired elegance and mag-
nificence; but the elevation of a complete temple, worthy of the
Deity to whom it is consecrated: so harmonious a system of un-
mingled truth, so complete a plan of universal duty, so amiable
a representation of true morality in all its parts, without redun-
dancy, and without defect, that the more capable we are of judg-
ing of real excellence, the more we shall be prepossessed in its
favor. And if we have a capacity and opportunity of examining
together with it the books which the followers of other religions
have esteemed sacred, and the system of doctrines and manners
which their respective founders have published to the world, we
1434 PHILIP DODDRIDGE
shall find how much the Gospel is credited by the comparison — -
shall indeed find the difference much like that of a coarse picture
of sunshine, from the original beams of that celestial luminary.
This I have so deeply felt in mine own heart, while reading
these books, and especially while commenting upon them, that it
has been matter of astonishment, as well as grief, to me, that
there should be any mind capable of resisting evidence so vari-
ous, so powerful, and so sweet.
JOHN DONNE
(1573-1631)
^OHN Donne, poet and theologian, belongs to a literary period
which piodttced so many great writers that everything which
belongs to it is studied with interest in the hope of explairi-
ing them. He was born in London in 1573, and educated at Oxford.
He was for a time Secretary to the Keeper of the Great Seal, Sir
Thomas Egerton, whose niece he married in opposition to her uncle's
wishes. He became a favorite of James I., and on taking orders was
made the royal chaplain. Among his prose works are "Pseudo-
Martyr,* "Essays on Divinity,* and "Letters to Several Persons of
Honor.* Some of his poems were greatly admired by De Quincey,
but as a poet he falls under the sweeping condemnation of Taine for
affectation, which characterizes the minor poets of his age.
THE ARITHMETIC OF SIN
THE pureness and cleanness of heart which we must love was
evidently represented in the old law, and in the practice of
the Jews, who took knowledge of so many uncleannesse:3;
they reckon almost fifty sorts of uncleannesses, to which there be-
longed particular expiations; of which some were hardly to be
avoided in ordinary conversation: as to enter into the courts of
justice; for the Jews that led Christ into the common hall would
not enter, lest they should be defiled. Yea, some things defiled
them, which it had been unnatural to have left undone; as for
the son to assist at his father's funeral; and yet even these re-
quired an expiation; for these, though they had not the nature
ol: sin, but might be expiated (without any inward sorrow or
repentance) by outward abhitions, by ceremonial washings, within
a certain time prescribed by the law, yet if that time were neg-
ligently and inconsiderately overslipped, then they became sins,
and then they could not be expiated, but by a more solemn, and
a more costly way, by sacrifice. And even before they came to
that, whilst they were but uncleannesses and not sins, yet even
I43<5 JOHN DONNE
then they made them incapable of eating the Paschal Lamb. So
careful was God in the law, and the Jews in their practice (for
these outward things) to preserve this pureness, this cleanness,
even in things which were not fully sins. So also must he that
affects this pureness of heart, and studies the preserving of it,
sweep down every cobweb that hangs about it. Scurrile and ob-
scene language: yea, misinterpretable words, such as may bear
an ill sense; pleasurable conversation and all such little entang-
lings, which though he think too weak to hold him, yet they foul
him. And let him that is subject to these smaller sins remem-
ber that as a spider builds always where he knows there is most
access and haunt of flies, so the devil that hath cast these light
cobwebs into thy heart, knows that that heart is made of vani-
ties and levities; and he that gathers into his treasure whatsoever
thou wasteth out of thine, how negligent soever thou be, he keeps
thy reckoning exactly, and will produce against thee at last as
many lascivious glances as shall make up an adultery, as many
covetous wishes as shall make up a robbery, as many angry words
as shall make up a murder; and thou shalt have dropped and
crumbled away thy soul, with as much irrecoverableness, as if
thou hadst poured it out all at once; and thy merry sins, thy
laughing sins, shall grow to be crying sins, even in the ears of
God; and though thou drown thy soul here, drop after drop, it
shall not burn spark after spark, but have all the fire, and all
at once, and all eternally, in one entire and intense torment.
For as God, for our capacity, is content to be described as one
of us, and to take our passions upon him, and be called angry,
and sorry, and the like; so is he in this also like us, that he
takes it worse to be slighted, to be neglected, to be left out, than
to be actually injured. Our inconsideration, our not thinking of
God in our actions, offends him more than our sins. We know
that in nature and in art the strongest bodies are compact of the
leact particles, because they shut best, and lie closest together; so
be the strongest habits of sin compact of sins which in themselves
are least; because they are least perceived, they grow upon us
insensibly, and they cleave unto lis inseparably. And I should
make no doubt of recovering him sooner that had sinned long
against his conscience, though in a great sin, than him that had
sinned less sins, without any sense or conscience of those sins;
for I should sooner bring the other to a detestation of his sin
than bring this man to «, kr,ow]ed.ge that that he did was sin.
JOHN DONNL I437
But if thou couldst consider that every sin is a crucifying of
Christ, and every sin is a precipitation of thyself from a pinnacle:
were it a convenient phrase to say, in every little sin, that thou
wouldst crucify Christ a little, or break thy neck a little.
From « Sermon to the Lords of the Council."
DEATH
Now this which is so singularly pec"-'liar to him, that his flesh
should not see corruption, at his second coming, his coming
to judgment shall be extended to all that are then alive,
their flesh shall not see corruption; because (as the Apostle says,
and says as a secret, as a mystery : * Behold I show you a mys-
tery ; we shall not all sleep '^) ; that is, not continue in the state
of the dead, in the grave ; but ^* we shall all be changed. ** In an
instant we shall have a dissolution, and in the same instant a re-
dintegration, a recompacting of body and soul; and that shall be
truly a death, and truly a resurrection, but no sleeping, no cor-
ruption. But for us who die now, and sleep in the state of the
dead, we must all pass this posthume death, this death after
death, nay, this death after burial, this dissolution after dissolu-
tion, this death of corruption and putrefaction, of vermiculation
and incineration, of dissolution and dispersion, in and from the
grave. When those bodies which have been the children of royal
parents, and the parents of royal children, must say with Job:
*^ To corruption. Thou art my father; and to the worm, Thou art
my mother and my sister." Miserable riddle, when the same
worm must be my mother and my sister and myself. Miserable
incest, when I m_ust be married to mine own mother and sis-
ter, and be both father and mother to mine own mother and
sister, beget and bear that worm which is all that miserable pen-
ury, when my mouth shall be filled with dust, and the worm shall
feed, and feed sweetly, upon me. When the ambitious man shall
have no satisfaction if the poorest alive tread upon him, nor the
poorest receive any contentment in being made equal to princes,
for they shall be equal but in dust. One dieth at 1 is full strength,
being wholly at ease and in quiet, and another dies in the bitter-
ness of his soul, and never eats with pleasure; but they lie down
alike in the dust, and the worm covers them. The worm covers
them in Job and in Esaj"; it covers them and is spread under them
(** The worm is spread under thee and the worm covers thee").
1438 JOHN DONNE
There are the mats and the carpet that lie under; and there are the
state and the canopy that hangs over the greatest sons of men.
Even those bodies that were the temples of the Holy Ghost come
to this dilapidation, to ruin, to rubbish, to dust:, even the Israel of
the Lord, and Jacob himself, had no other specification, no other
denomination but that. Vermis Jacob (Thou worm Jacob). Truly,
the consideration of this posthume death, this death after burial,
that after God, with whom are the issues of death, hath delivered
me from the death of the womb, by bringing me into the world,
and from the manifold deaths of the world, by laying me in the
grave, I must die again, in an incineration of this flesh, and in a
dispersion of that dust; that all that monarch that spread over
many nations alive, must in his dust He in a corner of that sheet
of lead, and there but so long as the lead will last: and that pri-
vate and retired man, that thought himself his ov/n forever, and
never came forth, must in his dust of the grave be published, and
(such are the revolutions of graves) be mingled in his dust with the
dust of every highway, and of every dunghill, and swallowed in
every puddle and pond; this is the most inglorious and contemptible
vilification, the most deadly and peremptory nullification of man,
that we can consider. God seems to have carried the declaration of
his power to a great height when he sets the prophet Ezekiel in
the valley of dry bones, and says, ^^ Son of man^ can these bones
live ? *^ as though it ha^^ been impossible; and yet they did; the
Lord laid sinews upon them, and flesh, and breathed into them,
and they did live. But in that case there were bones to be seen;
something visible, of which it might be said, Can this, this live ?
but in this death of incineration and dispersion of dust, we see
nothing that we can call that man's. If we say. Can this dust
live ? perchance it cannot. It may be the mere dust of the
earth which never did live, nor shall; it may be the dust of that
man's worms which did live, but shall no more; it may be the
dust of another man that concerns not him of whom it is asked.
This death of incineration and dispersion is to natural reason the
most irrevocable death of all; and yet Domini Dei sunt exitus
mortis (Unto God the Lord belong the issues of death), and by
recompacting this dust into the same body, and reanimating the
same body with the same soul, he shall in a blessed and glorious
resurrection give me such an issue from this death as shall never
pass into any other death, but establish me in a life that shall
last as long as the Lord of life himself.
From Donne's last sermon.
JOHN DORAN
(1807-1878)
^s AN essayist Doran belongs to the school of Disraeli. His
"Knights and Their Days>> and « Table Traits » are always
entertaining, and they are often made instructive by curious
detail, which even the widest reading may not have included. He
was born in London about 1807, and died there January 25th, 1878. In
addition to the works mentioned above, he wrote a « History of Court
Fools » and «New Pictures in Old Panels. »
SOME REALITIES OF CHIVALRY
THERE was a knight who was known by the title of ** The
White Knight,** whose name was De la Tour Landay, who
was a contemporary of Edward the Black Prince, and who
is supposed to have fought at Poitiers. He is, however, best
known, or at least equally well known, as the author of a work
entitled " Le Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landay. " This book
was written, or dictated by him, for the especial benefit of his
two daughters, and for the guidance of young ladies generally.
It is extremely indelicate in parts, and in such wise gives no
very favorable idea of the young ladies who could bear such in-
struction as is here imparted. The Chevalier performed his
authorship after a very free and easy fashion. He engaged four
clerical gentlemen, strictly designated as " two priests and tv.^o
clerks,'* whose task it was to procure for him all the necessary
illustrative materials, such as anecdotes, apophthegms, and such
like. These were collected from all sources, sacred and profane
— from the Bible down to any volume, legendary or historical,
that would suit his purpose. These he worked mosaically together,
adding such wise saws, moral counsel, or sentiment, as he
deemed the case most especially required, — with a sprinkling of
stories of his own collecting. A critic in the Athenaeum, com-
menting upon this curious volume, says with great truth, that it
affords good materials for an examination into the morals and
i440 JOHN DORAN
manners of the times. ^'Nothing,* says the reviewer, "is urged
for adoption upon the sensible grounds of right or wrong, or as
being in accordance with any admitted moral standard, but because
it has been sanctified by long usage, been confirmed by pretended
miracle, or been approved by some superstition which outrages
common sense.''
In illustration of these remarks it is shown how the Chevalier
recommends a strict observation of the '■'■ Meagre Days, '* upon the
ground that the dissevered head of a soldier was once enabled to
call for a priest, confess, and listen to the absolution, because
the owner of the head had never transgressed the Wednesday
and Friday's fasts throughout his lifetime. Avoidance of the
seven capital sins is enjoyed upon much the same grounds. Glut-
tony, for instance, is to be avoided, for the good reason that a
prattling magpie once betrayed a lady who had eaten a dish of
eels, which her lord had intended for some guests whom he
wished particularly to honor. Charity is enjoined, not because
the practice thereof is placed by the great teacher not merely
above Hope, but before Faith, but because a lady who, in spite
of priestly warning gave the broken victuals of her household to
her dogs rather than to the poor, being on her deathbed was
leaped upon by a couple of black dogs, and that these having
approached her lips, the latter became as black as coal. The
knight the more insists upon the proper exercise of charity, see-
ing that he has unquestionable authority in support of the truth
of the story. That is, he knew a lady that had known the de-
funct, and who said she had seen the dogs. Implicit obedience
of wives to husbands is insisted on, with a forcibly illustrative
argument. A burgher's wife had answered her lord sharply, in
place of silently listening to reproof, and meekly obeying his
command. The husband, thereupon, dealt his wife a blow with
his clenched fist, which smashed her nose and felled her to the
ground. "It is reason and right,'' says the mailed Mrs. Ellis of
his time, "that the husband should have the word of command,
and it is an honor to the good wife to hear him, and hold her
peace, and leave all high talking to her lord; and so, on the
contrary, it is a great shame to hear a woman strive with her
husband, whether right or wrong, and especially before other
people." Publius Syrus says that a good wife commands by
obeying, but the Chevalier evidently had no idea of illustrating
the Latin maxim, gt rvscommending the end which it contem'
JOHN DORAN I441
plates. The knight places the husband as absolute lord; and his
doing so, in conjunction with the servility which he demands on
the part of the wife, reminds me of the saying of Toulotte,
which is as true as anything enjoined by the moralizing knight,
namely, that L'obeissance mix volontes d'un chef absolu assimile
VJiomme a la brute. This with a verbal alteration may be ap-
plied as expressive of the effect of the knight's teaching in the
matter of feminine obedience. The latter is indeed in consonance
with the old heathen ideas. Euripides asserts that the most in-
tolerable wife in the world is a wife who philosophizes, or sup-
ports her own opinion. We are astonished to find a Christian
knight thus agreed with a heathen poet — particularly as it was
in Christian times that the maxim was first published, which
says, Ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut!
From « Knights and Their Days.*
IV— -91
RENE DOUMIC
(i860-)
jEN^ DouMic, one of the most brilliant of the contemporary
essayists of France, was born in Paris in i860, and educated
at the College Condorcet, where, it is said, ^*he carried off
the most brilliant scholastic honors.*^ For ten years he held the chair
of Rhetoric in the College Stanislas in Paris; but in 1884 he began
the career of a journalist, which has drawn him from academic work
and given him a celebrity he might not have otherwise attained.
He has been one of the leading contributors to the Revue des Deux
Mondes and to the Journal des Debats, and several volumes of his
essays on literature and the drama have been collected and published
in permanent form. His admirer M. Theodore Bentzon writes that
" M. Doumic is a Christian, a somewhat austere one both as to faith
and morals, >* and adds that "he acknowledges it frankly.'*
WOMEN DURING THE RENAISSANCE
DURING the Middle Ages woman had no personal identity
whatever. She existed merely as the member of a family,
where it was her place to administer the household and
perpetuate the race. She was married when scarcely more than
a child, and soon learned to look upon her husband as a master
possessed of unlimited power, including the right to beat her,
and who often had a heavy hand. Her children were taken from
her at an early age; and neither as a young girl nor as a matron
had she any life in the sense in which we understand the word
to-day.
Did she realize the emptiness of her lot and repine at it ?
Probably not; for ennui is one of the maladies of a sophisticated
period; nor is it likely that she indulged in many dreams; for il
is we who people with our own melancholy yearnings those castles
of the olden time, where the pressure of practical duties was
severe enough to exclude chimeras. Did she suffer ? Our worst
sufferings are the residue of vanished hopes and disappointed
RENE DOUMIC 1443
fancies; and if — as we must suppose, she was occasionally very
unhappy, at least she did not complain of being misunderstood.
She was extremely busy. She had to rise with the dawn, over-
see the pages and the maids, regulate the household expenditure
for town or country; and she passed a large part of her time at
church. She was married to a coarse husband, but, being little
more ethereal than he, she did not consider herself a martyr on
that account. She did not mind deceiving her lord, being as
susceptible as another to the pleasures of sense ; but there was no
malice in her little diversions, and she was not vain of her con-
quests. Her place in society was distinctly that of an inferior.
Certain poems and romances were beginning to inculcate reverence
for women, but all this was mere poetry and romance. The epic,
whether heroic or familiar, the chanson de geste and the fabliau
all alike betray the prevailing sentiment — that of the subordina-
tion of women. We detect it even in those writers of the six-
teenth century whose views are broadest. We should have no
doubt about Rabelais's estimate of woman, even if he had not
expressed himself clearly upon this point. " When I say woman,
I allude to a sex so fragile, so variable, so inconstant and imper-
fect, that Nature seems to me (speaking with all due reverence),
to have departed somewhat from her usual good sense when she
made the feminine creature. I have pondered this point hundreds
and hundreds of times, and can come to no other conclusion than
this: that Nature, in devising woman, had regard to the social
delectation of man, and the propagation of the species, rather
than to the perfection of muliebrity in the individual. *^ Montaigne
is quite of the same mind, though he takes pains to express him-
self a little less crudely. He does not think that ^* our women
should be maintained in idleness by the sweat of our toil ^^ ; but,
on the other hand, while Mile, de Montaigne keeps the accounts,
oversees the farm and directs the masons, he moralizes, pero-
rates, travels, and amuses himself generally; not merely without
a shadow of compunction, but in the full assurance that he is
neither exceeding the privileges of his sex, nor transgressing its
rights. The bourgeois of Moli^re conceive the role of woman
after an identical fashion; and a good many of the bourgeois of
our own day agree with Moli^re's. It is a matter of tradition.
The ideas which were destined to modify, for a time, the con-
dition of woman, had their origin in Italy, being, in fact, an es-
sential part of the spirit of the Renaissance. One of these was
1444 RENE DOUMIC
the notion of the rights of the individual, who had been, up to
that period, absorbed in the community, whether civil, religious.
or domestic, but who now began to be restive under the yoke
and boldly to claim his independence. Men wanted to be them-
selves; to be distinguished from others; fully and freely to develop
their own proper faculties and fulfill their own separate destinies.
Each one of us has his own special worth, a treasure of latent
energy which it behooves us to render active. This is what ^* vir-
tue ^^ means. Let the virtue which is within us burn so bright
that it will leave a luminous memory behind us in the minds of
men. Everywhere there woke the same impassioned desire for
personal renown. Another leading motive was the revival of an-
tique ideas concerning the worship of beauty. For centuries,
tinder the Christian dispensation, man had been preoccupied by
an ideal of abstinence and sacrifice. He had looked upon life
with distrust, and wearily shunned the snare of its seductions.
Now he went forth to meet it, in confidence and joy. ^^ Every-
thing,*^ says Tasso, in his *^ Dialogue on Virtue,** ^* everything as-
sists virtue to the attainment of true happiness ; — riches, honors,
offices, armies, and all those emoluments which enable virtue to
act with greater freedom and splendor. Virtue can make subserv-
ient to her ends armor and steeds, rich furnishings, paintings and
statues, all the fine armaments of prosperity, no less than the joys
of friendship and of brilliant society; — she finds her account in
them all.** Why, indeed, should we refuse to hear that call to
happiness, that stifled cry which breaks from the entire creation ?
Has not God himself adorned nature with manifold charms ? And
if he has also made us susceptible to them, is not this a sign of
his will ? Let us, then, cease to be our own executioners, living
like paupers amid the wealth so profusely lavished to beguile our
short journey across the hospitable earth ! Let us unseal the
sources of delight, and restore equilibrium among those forces of
nature, no one of which is to be despised! Let us put ourselves
to school once more, with the Greeks, and re-learn from their
teachings and example the secret of a truly harmonious activity.
The Middle Ages has cowered under the sway of Aristotle.
Modern Italy appealed from Aristotle to Plato. From the close
of the fifteenth century onv/ard, we can see the theory of neo-
platonism taking shape. Plato taught that ideas — that is to say,
the eternal types of visible things, constitute the only true reality.
The soul, entangled in matter, can discern appearances only; but'
RENE DOUMIC 1445
in proportion as it casts off its material bonds, it ascends toward
the ideas themselves, beholds them in all their beauty, and springs
to embrace them in a transport of love. Hence through meta-
morphoses unsuspected by the Ancients, arose the doctrine of the
two loves; the love of the senses which is by nature coarse and
base, and goes out only to base things; and that of the soul,
which is noble and ethereal, which is, in a word, true love. This
true love comes from God, and leads us back to him, but it is
woman who inspires it. Thus Bembo, in a celebrated passage:
^* That earthly beauty which enkindles love is but an influx of
the Divine beauty which irradiates all creation. Over sweet, reg-
ular, and harmonious features, it plays like light. It adorns the
coimtenance; its glamor attracts the eye and penetrates the soul,
thrilling, enthralling, giving birth to desire. Love, then, is really
born of a beam of the divine beauty, transmitted through the
medium of a woman's face. But the senses, alas! will have their
word. We forget that the source of beauty is other than corpo-
real. We make haste to gratify mere appetite, and so arrive by
a short road at satiety, weariness, — sometimes even at aversion.'*
Nothing could have amazed Plato more than to be told that
he was preparing the way for the ^^ regiment ** of woman. It was
the last thing probably that he intended. But doctrines become
transmuted by their passage through the ages. They meet and
get mixed with others, and take on the most unexpected hues.
Dante impregnated the souls of men with his peculiar mysticism;
Petrarch preached the cult of woman, and confounded religion
with love. The sentiment of chivalry flamed v/ildly up before it
disappeared in a final blaze of glory, to which the universal pop-
ularity of the pastoral lay, and the immense vogue, in all Europe,
of such poems as ^^ Amadis of Gaul ** bear sufficient witness. The
average French mind, ever prone to simplicity and good sense,
revolted against the vague doctrines of neoplatonism and its
double-distilled refinements; but Margaret of Navarre undertook
to introduce them among ourselves, and she it is who in the nine-
teenth novel of the " Heptameron '* supplies us with the following
definition: '* Perfect lovers are those who ever demand in the
object of their love a certain perfection of beauty, grace, and
goodness. They tend always toward virtue, and have hearts so
brave and true that they would die sooner than decline upon
aught that is repugnant to honor and conscience. The sole end
and aim of our creation is a return to the Supreme Good; and
1446 RENfi DOUMIC
even while imprisoned in the body we are striving thitherward.
But the senses are our enforced medium of communication, and
these are clogged and obscured by the sin of our first parents,'^
etc., etc. Here we have Platonism joining hands with Catholi-
cism, and such were the elements which woman, ever prone to
seize upon any advantage, was about to make subservient to her
own glorification at Rome, at Florence, in the courts of Orbino
and Ferrara, no less than at those of Francis I. and Henry H.
in France. Society felt the working of a novel power.
For woman, it will be observed, no longer admits that she is
called to humility and self-sacrifice. She, too, is an individual,
and has the right to develop her ego. She takes her place be-
side man, as his equal, and her destiny is not to be confounded
with his. Henceforth she has her own role, and that role con-
sists in extracting from all things whatever essence of beauty
they may contain; in the spiritualization of matter and the intro-
duction of art into life.
To begin with, — life must be suitably adorned. The massive
castle, built to sustain the assault of hostile armies, is trans-
formed, illuminated, enlivened, by all the caprices of fancy. Na-
ture is called in to aid the artist; and beautiful sites, and the
graces of park or garden enhance the effect of elegant architec-
ture. Sculptors, painters, and goldsmiths vie with one another in
decking the luxurious dwelling of the new era with the products
of their taste and skill; while the statue of goddesses and the
portraits of nymphs, in all their dazzling perfection of form,
cause woman to be confronted on every hand by her own ideal-
ized image. The hieratical stiffness of the old-fashioned chair
has given place to all manner of curious and complicated fur-
nishings; and clothes, formerly arranged with a view to the con-
cealment of bodily charms, are now worn with a special view to
their display. Golden tresses are uncovered, the neck is bared,
the female figure becomes tall and supple. Long meals com-
posed of heavy viands give place to gay banquets graced by con-
versation and music. Life resolves itself into a succession of
festivals, which are no longer mere brilliant episodes, but the
natural and the consummate form of contemporary existence.
All these beautiful things constitute a fitting frame for the
beauty of woman; or perhaps it is her beauty which is reflected
in them, and so makes them fair. For there is endless discus-
sion about the theory of beauty — which is so elusive the moment
REKfi; DOUMIC 1447
one tries to grasp and define it. It is no paradox to describe a
landscape, a work of art, or life itself as beautiful, when the
landscape, the work, the life, is transfigured for us by the pres-
ence of a woman!
High mental culture having been pronounced the greatest
good, — that which most enhances the value of life, women were
resolved to compass it. It is not enough to say that the women
of the Renaissance were accomplished; they were learned. In
Italy they received precisely the same education as the men.
Boys and girls studied the same things. Had not Bembo himself
said, in so many words : *^ A little girl ought by all means to
learn Latin. It puts the finishing touch upon her charms.** No
one dreamed of questioning this, and accordingly maidens of ex-
alted birth were early set to study the classics. Mary Stuart
wrote Latin at twelve, Margaret of Navarre knew Greek enough
to read Plato. Queen Elizabeth at fourteen translated a work of
Margaret's own, entitled the " Mirror of the Sinful Soul. * The
passion for knowledge was at that time universal; but the women
of the Renaissance differed from the men of that period, and
also, perhaps, from the women of ours, in that they did not learn
everything indiscriminately, and for the mere pleasure of learn-
ing; they neglected everything which did no*" appeal to their im-
agination or their sensibilities. They neglected science and reveled
in literature and music. Or rather, from the moment that women
began to read, their favorite books were those which spoke to
them of themselves. Philosophy subtilizes the question of love,
and hence women are philosophers. In the poem, the novel, the
rom.ance, love is still the paramount theme; and hence these are
the forms of literature that always flourish when feminine influ-
ence is in the ascendant.
Spirituality and sensuality flourished side by side without mu-
tual inconvenience. The instances are numerous and striking of
intellectual attachments as ardent and more lasting than any mere
loves of the flesh. Vittoria Colonna is equally renowned for the
passions which she inspired and the purity which she preserved.
Michael Angelo fell in love, at fifty, with Marchesa di Pescara,
who was then thirty-six, — and whom he never even saw until
twelve years later. He loved her neither for her beauty nor for
her mental gifts, but simply, — because he loved her. His passion
found expression in glowing sonnets and enthusiastic letters, which
the timorous great man wrote and rewrote, and did not dare to
1448 ren6 doumic
send. He asks nothing of the woman he worships. He simply
devotes his Hfe to her. She dies; and not even the inviolable
chastity of death will permit him to touch her forehead with his
lips. Young Lescum, terribly wounded at the battle of Paria, has
himself carried to the house of ^' his lady and guardian angel, "
and dies happy in her arms. The love of Marot for Margaret of
Navarre is of the same nature, or even, perhaps, a little less cor-
poreal and more intellectual. Purity is a constant characteristic
of the love inspired by princesses. We can hardly reckon Diane
de Poitiers among the Platonic mistresses of men. And yet,
when we behold a prince and king of France, like Henry II.,
sincerely and faithfully devoted to a woman twenty years older
than himself, where shall we look for a more satisfactory expla-
nation of the " case ^^ than is to be found in those romantic ideas
which were derived, in the first instance from books, but gradu-
ally imposed themselves upon real life.
This love, purified of all material taint, and appealing only to
the soul, has never been in spite of the instances which we have
named without caring to discuss them, — of very frequent occur-
rence, even in aristocratic circles. But it offers incomparable op-
portunities for conversation, since the least Platonic of men must
needs borrow the vocabulary of Platonism when they make love
in a drawing-room. We are, therefore, assisting at the birth of
conversation. A new type has been evolved. Castiglione studies
it, in a treatise . which becomes famous; and manuals of polite be-
havior multiply. The person who was then called courtier would
now be called a man of the world. To be skilled in all athletic
exercises, especially in such as develop grace rather than strength
of body, to know a little of everything, and not too much of any-
thing, to be able to talk agreeably upon any subject, to be refined
in language, reserved in manner, and gracious to all, both men and
women — is not this the whole duty of the worldling? It is uni-
versally acknowledged that conversation flourishes only so long as
there is a woman of wit and taste to direct it. In those lettered
courts, to which rank alone no longer gave access, but where
writers and artists were made welcome and gathered in a group
about some royal lady, the power to converse became the earnest
of a brilliant career, for social relations had already developed
into an art.
Such was the seductive exterior of the * feminism *^ of the
Renaissance It was exclusively aristocratic, never going beyond
RENfi DOUMIC 1449
the narrow court circle. Within these restricted hmits, it cer-
tainly seems, at the first glance, as though the women had gained
their cause and succeeded in their attempt to purify sentiment
and soften the brutality of manners. But the truth, unhappily,
is that there never was a period more utterly perverted and cor-
rupt than this same sixteenth century, and that, too, in the very
circles where the women were conducting their crusade. . .
The sixteenth century began with an outburst of sensualism,
and ended in an outburst of violence, during which feminism went
to utter shipwreck. The women could not, of course, have fore-
seen the religious wars; nor was it their fault that their fragile
empire was submerged in blood. Yet the rough manner in which
the men regained possession of the world's stage is not without
its lesson. The arquebus had an eloquence of its own, after so
much philosophism and dilettanteism and aestheticism. It had
been lustily asserted that life ought, above all things, to be joy-
ous; that nature is good, and we have but to yield ourselves to
her attractions; and a certain number of distinguished and emanci-
pated spirits had repaired to the Abbey of Thelema and erected
themselves into an order under the rule of their own good pleas-
ure. Events undertook to give them their answer; proving be-
yond a peradventure that human nature is savage at bottom, and
that beauty is indeed *' vain '^ to bridle its instincts.
The fact is that the principle on which the feminism of the
Renaissance rested is fundamentally false. The women of that
era wrought only for themselves, and their end and aim was the
gratification of their own vanity. They reveled in the general
concert of praise, and in the incense burned upon their altars by
crowds of adorers. They were flattered when men made believe
that they were ready to die for them, and to bless the hand that
dealt the fatal blow. All their nice insight did not enable them
to detect the essential element of falsity in homage of this de-
scription. In their energetic revolt from the time-honored teach-
ings of religion, they declared the age to be ripe, and the moment
come, for proclaiming an era for enjoyment. They did not know
that to seek pleasure systematically is the surest way to miss it.
What madness indeed to regard happiness as the object of life !
Since the life of man upon this earth began, who has ever at-
tained it ? And if it has escaped the most resolute search, eluded
the most passionate pursuit, is not the reason plain — that happi-
ness does not exist ? It is only an intellectual conception, an
1450 RENE DOUMIC
illusion of our own sensibility, and the most chimerical of all.
Those who have taken this chimera for the guide of their con-
duct have paid for their blunder by going- furthest astray. They
sought to attain happiness by loading life with the adornments
of external elegance, only to find themselves fooled by appear-
ances;— the dupes of the merely accessory. The frame was gor-
geous, but it was empty.
From the Revue des Deux Mondes. Translated for the Living Age. January
2 1 St, 1899.
EDWARD DOWDEN
(1 84 3-)
DWARD DowDEN, One of the best-informed and most apprecia-
tive Shakespearean critics of the nineteenth century, was
born in Cork, Ireland, May 3d. 1843. and educated at Trinity
College, Dublin, where he is now professor of English Literature.
Among his published works are: " Poems"; ^* Shakespeare : Ki: Mind
and Art,»> 1872; «Southey.» 1879; « Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley.»
1886; "Studies in Literature," 1887; ^* Introduction to Shakespeare.'*
1897: and various "Literature Primers," which are models of com-
pact and lucid statement.
ENGLAND IN SHAKESPEARE'S YOUTH
IK THE closing years of the sixteenth century the life of England
ran high. The revival of learning had enriched the national
mind with a store of new ideas and images, the reformation
of religfion had been accomplished, and its fruits were now secure;
three conspiracies against the Queen's life had recently been
foiled, and her rival, the Queen of Scots, had perished on the
scaffold ; the huge attempt of Spain against the independence of
England had been defeated by the gallantry of English seamen,
aided by the winds of heaven. English adventurers were explor-
ing untraveled lands and distant oceans; ^English citizens were
growing in wealth and importance; the farmers made the soil
give up twice its former yield; the nobility, however fierce their
private feuds and rivalries might be, gathered around the Queen
as their centre. It was felt that England was a power in the
continent of Europe. Men were in a temper to think human life,
with its action and its passions, a very important and interesting
thing. They did not turn away from this world, and despise it
in comparison with a heavenly country, as did many of the fin-
est souls in the Middle Ages; they did not, like the writers of
the age of Queen Anne, care only for " the town " ; it was man
they cared for, and the whole of manhood — its good and evil, itiS
greatness and grotesqueness, its laughter and its tears.
1452 EDWARD DOWDEN
When men cared thus about human life, their imagination
craved hving pictures and visions of it. They liked to represent
to themselves men and women in all passionate and mirthful as-
pects and circumstances of life. Sculpture which the Greeks so
loved would not have satisfied them, for it is too simple and too
calm; music would not have been sufficient, for it is too purely
an expression of feelings, and says too little about actions and
events. The art which suited the temper of their imagination
was the drama. In the drama they saw men and women, alive in
action, in suffering, changing forever from mood to mood, from
attitude to attitude; they saw these men and women solitary,
conversing with their own hearts — in pairs and in groups, acting
one upon another; in multitudes, swayed hither and thither by
their leaders.
Complete.
SHAKESPEARE'S DEER-STEALING
THE immediate cause of Shakespeare's departure from Stratford
is thus told circumstantially by Rowe, his first biographer:
" He had, by a misfortune common enough to young fel-
lows, fallen into ill company; and amongst them some that made
a frequent practice of deer-stealing engaged him more than once
in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charle-
cote, near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentle-
man, as he thought, somewhat too severely; and in order to
revenge the ill usage, he made a ballad upon him. And though
this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said
to have been so very bitter that it redoubled the prosecution
against him to that degree that he was obliged to leave his busi-
ness and family in Warwickshire for some time, and shelter himself
in London.^* Some of the details of this story are undoubtedly
incorrect, but there is good reason to believe that a foundation
of truth underlies the tradition. Sir T. Lucy was an important
person in the neighborhood — a member of parliament, one of the
Puritan party (with which our dramatist could never have been
In sympathy), and about the time of this alleged deer-stealing
frolic was concerned in framing a bill in parliament for the
preservation of game. Although he did not possess what is prop-
erly a park at Charlecote, he had deer; Shakespeare and his com-
panions may have had a struggle with Sir T. Lucy's men. A
EDWARD DOWDEN 1453
verse of the ballad ascribed to the young poacher has been tra-
ditionally handed down, and in it the writer puns upon the name
Lucy — ^* O lowsie Lucy ^^ — in a way sufficiently insulting. It is
noteworthy that in the first scene of the " Merry Wives of Wind-
sor/* Justice Shallow is introduced as highly incensed against Sir
John Falstaff, who has beaten his men, killed his deer, and broken
open his lodge; the Shallows, like Shakespeare's old antagonist,
have "luces'* in their coat of arms, and the Welsh parson admir-
ably misunderstands the word — "the dozen white louses do be-
come an old coat well. *^ It can hardly be doubted that when this
scene was written Shakespeare had some grudge against the Lucy
family, and in making them ridiculous before the Queen he may
have had an amused sense that he. was now obtaining a success
for his boyish lampoon, little dreamed of when it was originally
put into circulation among the good folk of Stratford.
Complete.
ROMEO AND JULIET
THE Story of the unhappy lovers of Verona, as a supposed his-
torical occurrence, is referred to the year 1303; but no ac-
count of it exists of an earlier date than that of Luigi da
Porto, about 1530. A tale in some respects similar is set forth
in the " Ephesiaca ** of Xenophon of Ephesus, a mediaeval Greek ro-
mance writer; and one essentially the same, narrating the adven-
tures of Mariotto and Gianozza of Siena, is found in a collection
of tales by Masuccio of Salerno, 1476; but Da Porto first names
Romeo and Giulietta, and makes them children of the rival Ver-
onese houses. The story quickly acquired a European celebrity.
Altering the name and some particulars, Adrian Sevin related it
(about 1542) for his French patroness; Gherardo Boldiero turns
it into verse for his readers at Venice. Bandello, partly recast-
ing the narrative, recounts it once more in his Italian collection
of novels, 1554; and five years later Pierre Boisteau, probably as-
sisted by Belleforest, translates Bandello's Italian into French, and
again recasts the story (1559). In three years more it touches Eng-
lish soil. Arthur Brooke in 1562 produced his long metrical
version, founded upon Boisteau's novel; and a prose translation
of Boisteau's " Histoire de Deux Amans,** appeared in Paynter's
"Palace of Pleasure,** 1567. We have here reached Shakespeare's
sources; Paynter, he probably consulted; in nearly all essentials
1454
EDWARE^ DOWDEN
he follows the * Romeus and Juliet * of Brooke. It must be
noted, however, that Brooke speaks of having seen ^Hhe same ar-
gument lately set forth on stage ^^ — probably the English stage ;
it is therefore possible that Shakespeare may have had before
iiim an old English tragedy of « Romeo and Juliet," of which no
fragment remains with us. Resemblances between passages of
Shakespeare's tragedy and passages of Groto's Italian tragedy of
^* Hadraina " are probably due to accident.
The precise date of Shakespeare's play is uncertain. In 1597
it was published in quarto, *^ as it hath been often (with great
applause) played publicly by the Right Honorable the L(ord) of
Hunsdon his servants." Now the Lord Chamberlain, Henry Lord
Hunsdon, died July 226., 1596; his son, George Lord Hunsdon^
was appointed Chamberlain in April, 1597. Before July, 1596, or
after April, 1597, the theatrical company would have been styled
by the more honorable designation, ^* the Lord Chamberlain's
servants " ; but during the interval they would be described as on
the title-page of the quarto. The Nurse's mention of the earth-
quake (Act I., Sc. III., 1. 23), " 'Tis since the earthquake now
eleven years," has been referred to as giving the date, 1591, a
memorable earthquake, felt in London, having occurred eleven
years previously, in 1580; but, while professing an infallibly ac-
curate recollection, the garrulous old woman blunders sadly about
her dates, so that even if an actual English earthquake were al-
luded to, the point of the jest may have been in the inaccuracy
of the reference. Several lines in Romeo's speech in presence
of Juliet in the tomb (Act V., Sc. iii.. Is. 74-120) seem written
with a haunting recollection of passages in Daniel's <^ Complaints
of Rosamunde " (1592). The internal evidence favors the opinion
that this tragedy was an early work of the poet, and thai it was
subsequently revised and enlarged. There is much rhyme, and
much of this is in the form of alternate rhyme, the forced play-
ing upon words, and the overstrained conceits (see, for example.
Act I., Sc. III., Is. 81-92) point to an early date. If, however,
rhymed verse be present in large quantity, the quality of the
scenes chiefly written in blank verse is far higher than that of
the rhyming passages. We may perhaps accept the opinion that
Romeo and Juliet was begun, and in part written, as early as
1 59 1, and that it assumed its final form about 1597. The first
quarto, already mentioned (1597), is a pirated edition, ^* made up
partly from copies of portions of the original play, partly from
EDWARD DOWDEN 1455
recollection and from notes taken during the performance,* The
second quarto, 1599, is described on the title-page as "newly-
corrected, augmented, and amended.'* This perhaps exaggerates
the fact; but here we obtain a true representation of the play,
and comparing this with the earlier text, it appears that the
play "underwent revision, received some slight augmentation, and
in some few places must have been entirely rewritten.**
"Romeo and Juliet,** apart from its intrinsic beauty, is of deep
interest when viewed as Shakespeare's first tragedy, and as a
work which probably occupied his thoughts, from time to time,
during a series of years. It is a young man's tragedy, in which
Youth and Love are brought face to face with Hatred and
Death There are some lines in "A Midsummer Night's Dream **
in which the poet compares " the course of true love ** to that of
lightning in midnight: —
"And ere a man hath power to say, Behold,
The jaws of darkness do devour it up;
So quick bright things come to confusion.**
It is thus that love is conceived in " Romeo and Juliet** — it is
sudden, it is intensely bright for a moment, and then it is swal-
lowed up in darkness. The action is accelerated by Shakespeare
to the utmost, the four or five months of Brooke's poem being
reduced to as many days. On Sunday the lovers meet, next day
they are made one in marriage, on Tuesday morning at dawn
they part, and they are finally reunited in the tomb on the night
of Thursday. Shakespeare does not close the tragedy with Juliet's
death; as he has shown in the first scene the hatred of the houses
through the comic quarrel of the servants, thereby introducing the
causes which produce the tragic issue ; so in the last scene he
shows us the houses sorrowfully reconciled over the dead bodies
of a son and a daughter.
Romeo's nature is prone to enthusiastic feeling, and, as it
were, vaguely trembling in the direction of love before he sees
Juliet; to meet her gives form and fixity to his vague emotion.
Shakespeare, following Brooke's poem, has introduced Romeo as
yielding himself to a fanciful boy's love of the disdainful beauty,
Rosaline ; and some of the love conceits and love hyperbole of the
first act are intended as the conventional amorous dialect of the
period To Juliet — a girl of fourteen — love comes as a thing
previously unknown; it is at once terrible and blissful (see Act II,,
EDWARD DOWDEN
Sc. II., Is. 1 1 6-1 20); she rises, through love, and sorrow, and trial,
from a child into a heroic woman. After Shakespeare has exalted
their enthusiastic joy and rapture to the highest point, he sud-
denly casts it down. Romeo is at first completely unmanned,
hut Juliet exhibits a noble fortitude and self-command. The
scene of the parting of husband and wife at dawn is a fitting
pendant to the scene in the moonlit garden, where the confession
of their love is made; the one scene wrought out of divinely
mingled love and joy, the other of divinely mingled love and
sorrow. When Romeo leaves his young wife, the marriage v/ith
Paris is pressed upon her by the hot-tempered old Capulet, by
her mother, and by her gross-hearted nurse. Juliet is henceforth
in a solitude almost as deep as that of her tomb The circum-
stance of bringing Paris across Romeo in the churchyard, with
his death before the tomb, is of Shakespeare's invention. Paris
comes strewing flowers for the lost Juliet; Romeo comes to find
her and to die. Paris scatters his blossoms with one of those
graceful love speeches, in the form of a rhymed sextet, which
flowed from Romeo's lips in Act I, Romeo's speech is in earnest
and plain blank verse, for he has now dropped all unrealities and
prettinesses. In Luigi da Porto, in Bandello, and in a modern
version of Shakespeare's play by Garrick, Juliet awakes from her
sleep while Romeo still lives; Shakespeare's treatment of this
scene as to this particular is the same as that of Brooke and
Paynter.
Mercutio and the Nurse are almost creations of Shakespeare.
Brooke has described Mercutio as *a lion among mafdens,^^ and
speaks of his ® ice-cold hand * ; but it was the dramatist who drew
at full length the figure of this brilliant being, who, though with
wit running beyond what is becoming, and effervescent animal
spirits, yet acts as a guardian of Romeo, and is always a gallant
gentleman. He dies forcing a jest through his bodily anguish,
but he dies on Romeo's behalf; the scene darkens as his figure
disappears. The Nurse is a coarse, kindly, garrulous, consequen-
tial old body, with vulgar feelings and a vulgarized air of rank,
she is on terms of long-standing familiarity with her master, her
mistress, her Juliet, and takes all manner of liberties with them,
but love has made Juliet a woman, and independent of her old
foster mother. Friar Lawrence, gathering his simples and moral-
izing to himself, is a centre of tranquillity in the midst of turmoil
and passion; but it mav be doubted that his counsels of modera-
EDWAIJD DOWDEN 1 45 7
tion, and amiable scheming to reconcile the houses through
Romeo's marriage with Juliet, contain more real wisdom than do
the passionate dictates of the lovers' hearts.
The scene is essentially Italian ; the burning noons of July in
the Italian city inflame the blood of the street quarrelers; the
voluptuous moonlit nights are only like a softer day. And the
characters are Italian, with their lyrical ardor, their southern im-
petuosity of passion, and the southern forms and color of their
speech.
Complete.
« HAMLET »
« I I AMLET '* represents the mid period of the growth of Shakes-
|~j[ peare's genius, when comedy and history ceased to be
adequate for the expression of his deeper thoughts and
sadder feelings about life, and when he was entering upon his
great series of tragic writings. In July, 1602, the printer Roberts
entered in the Stationers' register, " The Revenge of Hamlett,
Prince of Denmark, as y* latelie was acted by the Lord Cham-
berlain his servantes,'* and in the next year the play was printed.
The true relation of this first quarto of " Hamlet *^ to the second
quarto, published in 1604 — "newly imprinted, and enlarged to
almost as much againe as it was** — is a matter in dispute. It
is believed by some critics that the quarto of 1603 is merely an
imperfect report of the play as we find it in the edition of the
year after; but there are some material differences which cannot
thus be explained. In the earlier quarto, instead of Polonius and
Reynaldo, we find the names Corambis and Montano; the order
of certain scenes varies from that of the later quarto ; * the mad-
ness of Hamlet is much more pronounced, and the Queen's in-
nocence of her husband's murder much more explicitly stated.**
We are forced to believe either that the earlier quarto contains
portions of an old play by some other writer than Shakespeare, —
an opinion adopted on apparently insufficient grounds by some
recent editors, — or that it represents imperfectly Shakespeare's
first draught of the play, and that the difference between it and
the second quarto is due to Shakespeare's revision of his own
work. This last opinion seems to be the true one, but the value
of any comparison between the two quartos, with a view to un-
derstand Shakespeare's manner of rehandling his work, is greatly
IV — 92
1458 EDWARD DOWDEN
diminished by the fact that numerous gaps of the imperfect re-
port given in the earlier quarto seem to have been filled in by
a stupid stage back. That an old play on the subject of Hamlet
existed there can be no doubt; it is referred to in 1589 (perhaps
in 1587) by Nash, in his Epistle prefixed to Greene's « Menaphon, "
and again in 1596, by Lodge ("Wit's Miserie and the World's
Madnesse '^), where he alludes to ** the visard of the Ghost which
cried so miserably at the Theator, like an oister wife, *■ Hamlet,
revenge.^'* A German play on the subject of " Hamlet ^^ exists,
which is supposed to have been acted by English players in
Germany in 1603; the name Coral nbus appears in it; and it is
possible that portions of the old pre-Shakespearean drama are
contained in the German "Hamlet." The old play may have
been one of the bloody tragedies of revenge among which we
find " Titus Andronicus " and the " Spanish Tragedy, » and it would
be characteristic of Shakespeare that he should refine the motives
and spirit of the drama, so as to make the duty of vengeance laid
upon Hamlet a painful burden which he is hardly able to support.
One additional point must be noted with reference to the date
Df the play. In Act II., Sc. 11., 1. 346, Rosencrantz explains
that the tragedians of the city are compelled to travel on account
of an "inhibition* which is caused by "the late innovation."
What does this mean ? Does it allude to the Order in Council
of June, 1600, limiting the number of playhouses about London
to two, an order not carried out until the duty of enforcing it
was urged upon the justices of Middlesex and Surrey, December
31st, 1601? Or shall we understand "the innovation" as refer-
ring to the license given January, 1 603-1 604, to the children of
the Queen's Revels, to play at the Blackfriars Theatre — a build-
ing belonging to the company of which Shakespeare was a mem-
ber ? The license to the children (of whom Rosencrantz speaks
depreciatingly) would act as an inhibition to the company of adult
actors whose place they occupied.
Beside the old play of "Hamlet," Shakespeare had probably
before him the prose " Hystorie of Hamlet " (though no edition
exists earlier than 1608), translated from Belleforest's "Histories
Tragiques." The story had been told some hundreds of years
previously, in the " Historia Danica " of Saxo Grammaticus (ab.
1 180-1208). The Hamlet of the " Historie," after a fierce revenge,
becomes King of Denmark, marries two wives, and finally dies in
battle.
EDWARD DOWDEN 1459
No play of Shakespeare has had a greater power of interest-
ing spectators and readers, and none has given rise to a greater
variety of conflicting interpretations. It has been rightly named
a tragedy of thought, and in this respect as well as others takes
its place beside ^* Julius Caesar.'^ Neither Brutus nor Hamlet is
the victim of an overmastering passion as are the chief persons
of the later tragedies — eg., "Othello,^* ^^ Macbeth," ^* Coriolanus. *'
The burden of a terrible duty is laid upon each of them, and
neither is fitted for bearing such a burden. Brutus is disqualified
for action by his moral idealism, his student-like habits, his capac-
ity for dealing with abstractions rather than with men and things.
Hamlet is disqualified for action by his excess of the reflective
tendency, and by his unstable will, which alternates between com-
plete inactivity and fits of excited energy. Naturally sensitive,
he receives a painful shock from the hasty second marriage of
his mother; already the springs of faith and joy in his nature are
embittered; then follows the terrible discovery of his father's
murder with the injunction laid upon him to revenge the crime;
upon this again follow the repulses which he receives from Ophe-
lia. A deep melancholy lays hold of his spirit, and all of life
grows dark and sad to his vision. Although hating his father's
murderer, he has little heart to push on his revenge. He is
aware that he is suspected and surrounded by spies. Partly to
baffle them, partly to create a veil behind which to seclude his
true self, partly because his whole moral nature is indeed deeply
disordered, he assumes the part of one whose wits have gone
astray. Except for one loyal friend, he is alone among enemies
or supposed traitors. Ophelia he regards as no more loyal or
honest to him than his mother had been to her dead husband.
The ascertainment of Claudius's guilt by means of the play still
leaves him incapable of the last decisive act of vengeance. Not
so, however, with the King, who now recognizing his foe in Ham-
let, does not delay to dispatch him to a bloody death in England.
But there is in Hamlet a terrible power of sudden and desperate
action. From the melancholy which broods over him after the
burial of Ophelia, he rouses himself to the play of swords with
Laertes, and at the last, with strength which leaps up before its
final extinction, he accomplishes the punishment of the malefactor.
Horatio, with his fortitude, his self-possession, his strong equa-
nimity, is a contrast to the Prince. And Laertes, who takes vio-
lent measures at the shortest notice to revenge his father's
1460 EDWARD DOWDEN
murder, is in another way a contrast; but Laertes is the young-
gfallant of the period, and his capacity for action arises in part
from the absence of those moral checks of which Hamlet is sen-
sible. Polonius is owner of the shallow wisdom of this world,
and exhibits this grotesquely while now on the brink of dotage ;
he sees, but cannot see through Hamlet's ironical mockery of
him. Ophelia is tender, sensitive, affectionate, but the reverse
of heroic; she fails Hamlet in his need, and then in her turn be-
coming the sufferer, gives way under the pressure of her afflic-
tions. We do not honor, we commiserate her.
The play is hardly consistent with respect to Hamlet's age.
In Act v., Sc. I., Is. 155-191, it is stated that he is thirty years
old, while in Act I. he is spoken of as still quite youthful; yet
only a few months, at most, can have elapsed in the interval of
time between the beginning and the end of the action. His
profoundly reflective soliloquies point to an age certainly past
early youth.
Complete. All from Dowden's ^< Shakespeare, >^ London 1879. MacMillan & Co.
JOHN VV. DRAPER
(1811-1882)
?NE of the best essays of the nineteenth century was read to
the students of Hampden=Sidney College, Virginia, in 1837,
by John W. Draper, at that time professor of Chemistry and
Natural Philosophy in that institution. It gave what is, no doubt, the
first recorded definition of the idea he afterward developed in his
^* History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, >* 1862. The ex-
traordinary faculty he had of comprehending seemingly isolated facts
in their relation to a general intellectual movement is illustrated in
it by such a massing of the phenomena of progress as it would be
hard to find elsewhere.
He was born near Liverpool, England, May 5th, 181 1. Coming to
the United States in his twenty-third year, he took his degree in
medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1836, and soon after-
wards became professor of Chemistry, Natural Philosophy, and Phys-
ics, in Hampden-Sidney College. In 1839 he began a connection with
the University of New York, which lasted until 1881. During this
period of over forty years of scientific and literary activity, he made
notable discoveries in physics, wrote a number of scientific text-books
and ^' The History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, » — a
work which gave him the international reputation in literature his
discoveries had given him in science. He died January 4th, 1882.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE
(Read before the students of Hampden-Sidney College, Virginia, in 1837)
Gentlemen : —
BEFORE we part, I am anxious to give you a brief historical
sketch of the subjects we have studied during the past
year, previous to awarding to the successful candidate the
prize for which you have all contended with such emulation.
Of the science of those ages appropriately and emphatically
called the dark, I need hardly speak. The fanatical spirit of the
times brought its own destruction; the invasion of the west of
i46z JOHN W. DRAPER
Europe by the Mohammedans and the Saracenic conquests ended
in the intrusions of the Crusaders. But if these infidels had
brought the Koran, they had brought too their books of astron-
omy and algebr::. How true it is that the dispensations of an
ever -watchful Providence accompany evil with good, and cause
light to spring out of darkness. The sword of Charles Martel
saved Europe from the persecutions of the prophet; but tlie
Franks and Saxons had insensibly imbibed a taste for the more
solid learning of the Spanish Moo:..s. A great change too had
taken place in the social relations cf domestic life, and the dls-
enthrallment of the fair sex from the degrading bondage in which
it was held contributed in no small measure to the advancement
to which the moral world v:as progressing. The right of inherit-
ance of property, and the possession of lands, a right first given
in the later Roman Empire, was of less importance to che eleva-
tion of woman than the chivalrous feeling which began to infect
the soldiers of every country. The change thus commencing was
felt in every department of life. In England parents were for-
bidden any longer to expo>e their own children for public sale,
— a degrading piactice, which heretofore had been lawful. The
introduction of silk into the southern provinces of Europe brought
with it luxury in dress; and the invention of a new system of
music by Aretin, aided in no small degree to develop those finer
feelings of the heart — those feelings which music alone can
touch. Nor was the improvement confined to the refinements of
life; the Saracen had brought with him the arithmetic of Arabia,
ttnd had taught the Spaniards the use of the Eastern notation.
As if too, to prepare the way for the grandest of all human in-
ventions, a discovery was brought from the East that the papyrus
of Egypt and the parchment of Europe might be replaced by a
substance made from cotton,; and shortly after, paper was made
from linen rags.
Looking back to this period of intellectual infancy, there are
many amusing incidents to be met with. Even the language
which we speak was so poor and barren that the composition of
the commonest surnames was uninvented; for it was not until
the beginning of the thirteenth century that surnames were gen-
erally used as distinctive appellations. Improvement, which every-
where was germinating, was cherished by many of the crowned
heads of Europe. Alphonso, King of Castile, imitating the ex-
ample of some of the monarchs of Asia, was not only a zealous
JOHN W. DRAPER 1 463
Btudent of nature, but was even the author of the famous astro-
nomical tables which bear his name.
At the close of the thirteenth century the human intellect
awoke from its sleep. The Monk of Pisa who invented specta-
cles— a most divine invention which gave sight to the blind —
may be said, without any exaggeration, to have furnished eyes to
the soul as well as the body. Shall we ascribe too much im-
portance to this invention, if we impute to it the effect of drawing
men's thoughts from the crudities of the metaphysical dogmas of
the schools, to an investigation of the eternal truths of nature ?
It led the way to the bright career of discovery and invention.
The magnetic needle came into common use, and the mariner,
trusting to this mysterious guide, boldly crossed the broadest
seas, the ships of the enterprising Venetians, passing beyond the
utmost boundary of geographical knowledge, brought home the
strange story of the discovery of Greenland and its desolate in-
habitants. The lucubrations of the alchemists, ^'^o, were about to
develop a capital result, not, indeed, the making of gold, but a
result whose effect was to destroy forever the distinction of phys-
ical power: the savage was no longer to triumph over the civi-
lized man, nor were the works of art or of science ever again to
be endangered by an irruption of ignorant barbarians. The
power of man, his mere physical power, was indefinitely exalted,
and the force which nature had denied him in making him one
of the weakest of creatures was compensated by science more
than a thousandfold when she gave him gunpowder. To this
period, too, we are to refer another invention of vast benefit, —
the mode of consuming pit coal, — an invention which has exer-
cised an immense influence over the condition of nations, and to
which the country from whence we all draw our descent mainly
owes her position in arts and arms.
Next came the "Great Epoch.'' Gunpowder had given to man
a. kind of earthly omnipotence; printing was to give his works
immortality, to diffuse throughout all the ramifications of society
the knowledge that had been hoarded up by a few No more
might the philosopher fear lest his labors, in the conflicting in-
terests of nations or passions of party, should be lost. Civilized
man could spread out and perpetuate his intellectual productions.
If there be any great landmark in the history of the earth —
anything that points out the distinctive character of one age from
another, surely it is to be met with in these great discoveries.
1464 JOHN W. DRAPER
We are not to suppose that men now possess more ability than
at earlier ages. At a remote period, the Chaldeans had discov
ered the true system of the world and had built up theories
which are now being confirmed. They wanted, however, the
physical powers to disseminate their knowledge, and to protect
themselves from the destruction that menaced them from more
ignorant nations. Before the invention of printing and gunpow-
der, the world's history was a perpetual squabble of one prince
with another, one nation with its rival. With a few exceptions,
its philosophy was a vain show, a thing not applicable to the
comforts or purposes of life. Notions of military glory made con-
quest the end of human ambition and of human happiness, and
he who had murdered most, and burned most, and ruined most,
and pillaged most, was the greatest man; it was a conquest of
man over his fellow, a conquest not less disgraceful to the van-
quished than to the victor. Instead of subduing nature, and
thereby raising the standard of power and wisdom, all the bad
passions that can be engendered in the breast of mortals bore
sway, and rapine and murder required no apology, provided the
scale on which they were carried was sufficiently large. How
greatly changed was the world at the epoch of which I speak;
men began to find out that there were ways to be powerful
without the destruction of their rivals, and that to conquer Na-
ture with her own weapons was the only mode to be truly great.
And now for awhile the results of successful experiment followed
each other with rapidity, not only in those giant discoveries
which had regenerated the world, but also in the arts of peace,
— the arts that adorn civilized life. The construction of maps
and charts v/hich was introduced tended in no small degree to
hasten the discovery of America. Engraving on copper gave a
new impulse to painting, and secured faithful representations of
natural objects where words and printing might fail to describe
them Navigation felt the great improvements that astronomy,
magnetism, geography, and printing had bestowed. Vasco de
Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope and anchored his ships
in the Indian seas; and to Castile and Leon, Columbus gave a
new world
The posterity of men who had thus signalized and adorned
their age did them no disgrace Magellan, a Portuguese aspiring
to the fame of Columbus, sailed through the straits that still bear
his name, and Europe saw with astonishment ships which had
JOHN W DRAPER 1465
circumnavigated the world. THe telescope was produced — watches
were first made — the variation of the compass assigned — and
improvement extended even to the minor arts; skewers which
had been used by ladies were banished, and the common brass
pin substituted in their stead. It is a truth that whatever improve-
ments take place in the condition of men originate with them-
selves; and all governments have been found either to oppose, or
only to yield slowly to them. For teaching the true system of
the world — for the discovery of the secondary planets, the moons
of Jupiter — for showing spots on the sun, the holy inquisition
laid violent hands on Galileo, an immortal man, and the same
government that was forced by the times to establish in England
by act of Parliament the « Book of Common Prayer," caused to be
burned by the common hangman the books of astronomy and
geography, because they were ^* infected with magic." But the
persecutions which were endured by philosophers from the malice
of princes could neither rein nor stop the progress of knowledge.
Decimal arithmetic with all its advantages was promulgated, and
soon after a Scotch baron invented logarithms; the thermometer
made its appearance in Holland; and that maritime spirit which
had doubled the capes of South Africa and South America al-
ready sought a northwest passage to India and projected a visit
to the North Pole. Harvey discovered the circulation of the
blood, — a discovery that has done more for the advancement of
medical science than almost all that preceded it. Torricelli in-
vented the barometer, and proved that air possessed weight;
Huygens invented the pendulum clock; Otto Guerick constructed
the first air pump, and exposed bodies to a vacuum. The current
of discovery was now fairly in motion — scientific associations were
springing up in every country; and had things still gone on
even in their usual channel, the accumiilation of knowledge would
have been great. But a propitious event occurred — for at the
close of 1642 Isaac Newton was born, — a man whom God made
to comprehend his works.
I might here expatiate at length on the consequent develop-
ment of all parts of natural science, — not only those cultivated
by this great man, but those too surveyed by his disciples. I
might point your attention to the discovery they made of the
system of the universe; how they weighed worlds, and told their
distances and magnitudes. I might describe how they effected
the analysis of light, and gave us the reflecting and achromatic
1466 JOHN W. DRAPER
telescopes; but time would fail me. I come, therefore, to confine
myself more strictly to the limits I have proposed, to examine
whether the legacy of knowledge handed down has been im-
proved. Science should neither stand still nor be on the decline,
but progress forward, and push her conquests in the unexplored
region of knowledge. How much greater are our inducements
than those of our earlier philosophers! We have learned from
their experience how vast a treasure we are the guardians of, —
a treasure obtained by years of anxiety, thought, and pain. Let
us recollect how short the span of life, and let us gather from
what Vie are now to consider a fresh determination to do our
duty to the future. Man is born but to die; he comes forward
on the stage of life and has his day. Every moment the ele-
ments that are around him contend with him for mastery and
solicit his destruction. Should he escape the repeated irruptions
of disease, the years that pass slowly over him wear him away;
one by one, all his faculties leave him ; his animal life decays,
and at last becomes extinct; his remaining functions are slowly
and imperfectly performed. Nature, always provident, takes from
him the knowledge of his end, or even makes that end desirable.
The ties of his youth are broken, the endearments of other times
have ceased to exist, and the terrors that youth and health have
planted over the tomb are forgotten; the tranquil slumber of
death comes calmly to close the troubles of life, and the old man
sinks down in the lap of his mother earth and quietly sleeps in
her bosom. Then, seeing these things are so, let us resolve to
discharge our duty to the future, — to transmit what we have re-
ceived, not only unimpaired, but with an honorable increase.
An examination into the history of science during the last
century is a theme of deep interest. That moral revolution
v\Ahich is shaking the world is the legitimate offspring of the
physical changes which philosophers have brought about — the
lineal descendant of thosf capital discoveries of which I have been
speaking. We are the witnesses of that grand political drama
which is passing in the world, producing both evil and good.
Opening with a declaration of the independence of the North
American States, it has shown us the ruin of ancient monarchies
on the other continent. We know not what may be the catas-
trophe. The low murmur of a coming tempest is heard all over
the world — a prelude of the conflict of intellect with power. Polit-
ical systems, which have braved the storm and <)?■? battle for a
JOHN W. DRAPER 1467
thousand years, and which their founders expected would last for-
ever, are fast changing. The Anglo-Saxon, the son of Freedom,
has secured himself in his island fortress on the west of Europe;
he has brought his language, his laws, and his science, and
driven the red man from these forests; he has planted himself in
the remote islands of the great Pacific, and is there founding
future empires; he has seized on the happy plains of India, ana
is there lord of the soil; his enterprise h^s colonized the burning
climates of Africa; his ships cover the ocean, what region on
earth has not seen the flag of St. George and the banner with
the stars ? Born the champion of freedom — the protector ot
science — from all points on the surface of the earth he is exer-
cising a silent, but a prodigious influen( e on the destinies of man;
his commercial relations bind men of every country, of every
color, and every faith to him. He is, as it were, the heart of
the universe; and if anything affect his condition, the disorder
will be felt to the extremest parts of the body.
The history of the last century is full of discovery — discovery
applied to the purposes of life , it is characterized by capital inven-
tions which will rival those of all remoter periods, and raise man
higher in point of power and wisdom. Shall I be blamed if I
say that some of these discoveries are godlike ? If they do not
confer immortality, they prolong the duration of life, and increase
the sum of human happiness by banishing disease; they confer
power only limited by will; they destroy distance; and if they
cannot increase time they crowd the works of a century into a
few days — they reveal to us what has occurred thousands of
years before our ov/n existence, and enable us, with the sure faith
of a prophet, to divulge events that shall happen thousands of
years to come.
There was a disease which made terrific eruptions at irregular
periods throughout the world ; without respect of person, or color,
or age, its course was marked with desolation. The smallpox, a
sound of ominous import, made the wise tremble, and the giddy
pause. During the period of which I speak, vaccination has been
introduced, and this pestilence almost banished from the face of
the earth Had Jenner lived in the days of the Greeks, he vs'-ould
have shared the honors of Hercules and ^sculapius. The sul-
phate of quinia, a substance which has been discovered during
the present century, has rendered regions where the white man
could not live, habitable and healthy. The sulphate of morphia
1468 JOHN W. DRAPER
gives him relief from pain in the hour of sickness and anguish
on the bed of death. Nor has the philosopher's success been
confined to the cure; it has gained a nobler end — the prevention
of disease. A ship could not sail a distant voyage without the
certainty of losing a large part of her crew by the sea scurvy:
Admiral Hosier, a century ago, sailed to the West Indies with seven
ships of the line: *^ He buried his crews twice, and died himself
of a broken heart. *^ A preventive of this devastation has been
found, and vessels circumnavigate the world, and stay years from
home without a solitary case of sickness from this cause.
And speaking of ships on the seas brings to my mind how
difficult it was but a short time ago to assign their place; or
for the sailor to know distinctly where he was; without a guide,
save his compass, he was alone on a deep and trackless element.
The rapid improvements of astronomy have enabled us to give
rules for finding the position of a ship, by observations made on
the moon. How strange to the ignorant man is this, to know
one's position on a boundless sea, by making observations on the
moon, and drawing conclusions on the faith of some distant
astronomer's calculations in his study. ^^ Yet the alternative of
life and death, wealth and ruin, are daily and hourly staked with
perfect confidence on these marvelous computations, which might
almost seem to have been devised to show how closely the ex-
tremes of speculative refinement and practical utility can be
brought to approximate.*
Connected with this is the invention of the chronometer, an
instrument which emulates in accuracy of the division of time —
the revolutions of the heavens. This capital instrument has been
brought, in the period of which I speak, to a great degree of
perfection. A similar improvement has taken place in all kinds
of mechanical combinations. Babbage's calculating engine is an
example in point; it is engaged in performing intricate computa-
tions for mathematical tables — its results coming out with rigor-
ous precision. Not only does this system of wheels calculate, as
though it were a living and a reasoning thing, but even writes
down and prints off its labors. Consider for a moment how
much we are in advance of former generations, in the arrange-
ment of materials that have been known time out of mind.
Would Archimedes have believed it possible to produce a ma-
. chine that could perform computations with more accuracy than
the most skillful geometer ?
JOHN W. DRAPER 1469
We have made ourselves, too, masters of another element.
Chemistry has shown us the method of elevating ourselves above
the highest mountains, and to float in the air where the clouds
are beneath our feet, and an everlasting sunshine above us. The
gas balloon has yet to assume that importance to which as a
great invention it will assuredly attain.
Nature knows no distinction of great and small; these are
terms invented by man and to which he can scarcely assign a
meaning. In the mechanism of this universe, the sudden transi-
tion from what is immensely great to what is infinitely small
meets him at every step, and in the extremes he is utterly lost.
By rapidity of motion the most enormous distances are traversed.
It takes but little over eight minutes for light to pass from the
sun to the earth; the forest oak requires a thousand years to
raise its branches a few feet above the soil. And man, too, has
taught himself a way almost to annihilate geographical distances.
A single hour is enough to carry him over a degree on the earth's
surface; yet the railroad and its locomotive are but the invention
of yesterda^^ Will not they have a moral effect, rivaling that of
the press? — an effect, too, far more general; for, to feel the
benefit of printing, a long course of previous education is re-
quired which the civilized man alone possesses; but the steam-
boat and the locomotive bring the same blessing to the savage
and the civilized, to the ignorant and the wise.
If the invention of printing was an epoch in our history, the
invention of steam engines was hardly less important; they give
us an unlimited power which we wield at pleasure, and yet are
faithful slaves.
In the telegraph and semaphore we possess the means of in-
stantaneous communication. The distance from London to the
Navy Yard at Portsmouth is seventy-two miles; yet, years ago,
when the semaphore was a recent invention, a message could be
sent and an answer returned in fifty-six seconds. In the art of
printing itself, — that art which seemed to lack nothing of per-
fection,— important additions have been made. Lithography, or
printing from stone, whilst it unites the finish of copperplate
engraving and mezzotinto, enables us to give autograph copies,
or printed pages at pleasure. It is unquestionably one of the
most elegant of modem inventions, and one of the greatest
P'"omise.
1470 JOHN W. DRAPER
The safety lamp of Davy will forever stand forth a bright
Cionument of this era; the fate of the miner is shut up in that
little cage of wire gauze; the lives of hundreds, and the happi-
ness of thousands, are due to this philanthropic invention. The
lifeboat too, that cannot sink — that has saved many from a wa
tery grave, should surely not pass unnoticed.
I might here speak of the computation of the chances of mor
tality and the foundation of policies of assurance. These enable
us from distress and death to draw comfort and support for the
living, and that upon no gambling or other unrighteous principle
I might speak of the invention of bleaching by chlorine, — an art
which gives to the fabrics of Europe their widespread celebrity
I might speak of the manufacture of sugar from linen rags, or
shreds of paper, or enlarge on the impossibility of famine ever
occurring, since a mode has been found of converting common
sawdust into wholesome, nutritious bread. To these and many
other such inventions and discoveries I have already called youi
attention in this course of lectures: I hasten, therefore, to a con
elusion
Permit me to offer you a few words of advice by way of
closing these remarks. All our measures of time and space are
fitted for our own condition, and bear with them the frail marks
of humanity. Created to inherit a beautiful world, but only the
tenants of a few days, we are prone to look upon all things as
mortal as ourselves. The rising and setting of the sun, the
blooming and fading of flowers, these are things that daily re-
mind us of the shortness of our own time; nor do we ever cast
aside the impression they make^ — and we persuade ourselves that
a day must very soon come that shall see all this order and har-
m.ony of the world finished. There is, too, a mournful pleasure
in tiiese contemplations- — a pleasure that we all feel in thinking
that everything around us must perish like ourselves. We try to
forget that this vast machine, whose wheels have been working
thousands of years, shows no marks of disarrangement. We have
existed for some six thousand years; but "because that appears to
us long, has decrepitude come upon the world ? In that time
the double star y, Leonis, has only performed five of its revolu-
tions, and y, Virginis, little more than nine. Is it a supposition
at all warranted by what we see of the perfect structure of the
universe, to conclude that its parts cannot hang together till some
JOHN W. DRAPER 1471
©f them have performed half a dozen revolutions ? The universe
is not so crazy a machine. Remember, then, we are only the
possessors of the present moment. We owe a great duty to the
future: let us perform it.
"Who that surveys the speck of earth we press.
This span of life in time's vast wilderness,
This narrow isthmus twixt two boundless seas.
The past and future, — two eternities, —
Would sully the bright spot or leave it bare.
When he might build him a proud temple there;
And when he dies, might leave a glorious name,
A light, a landmark, on the cliffs of fame ? >^
— Thomas Moore. **Lalla Rookh.*
Gifted as we are with hands to effect our wishes, and the
means of transporting ourselves superior to a great many of the
brutes, those hands and all those appliances have not made us
what we are; they have not taught us to grasp the heavens, and
enumerate distances that defy imagination; they have not given
us the power of prophecy, nor have they granted us that omni-
presence v/hich the mind of the astronomer almost possesses.
We may be creatures of passion and pain, like our inferiors; nay,
even like them, the very mode and manner of our existence may
be the result of simple and uniform laws: but yet there is a some-
thing in us that guides us in passion; a something that takes the
sting from sorrow, and bids us pursue the great end of existence
here and hereafter — happiness. And on a calm evening, when
we look into the blue vault above us, there is a quiet sensation
that comes upon us all. The stars that roll on eternally in the
sky — the infinity of space before us — the speck on which we
stand, an island in the abyss — the mere atom that we are: and
yet we claim kindred with all that is great and vast, and know
that we have a communion and fellowship with them, and are a
part of the gigantic scheme. Nor will the stillness of death end
the part that we have to perform — all around us is in motion
and change ; and beyond us, in worlds whose existence the tele-
scope alone reveals, where we might look for silence and repose,
the first evidence we have of existence is the proof of life. Star
revolving around star in new and unusual modes — systems, with
double, triple, and many suns, that beam with party-colored rays;
all these things prepare us to know that death is not an utter
1472 JOHN W. DRAPER
destruction. The voice of nature tells us that the mind is not a
result of any system of corporeal organization, — in its own state
every creature is as highly and as perfectly organized as we, and
the sensory organs of many are even more developed than ours,
— the informing principle that is in us is a thing distinct — not a
mere secretion of medullary matter — not the product of a conflict
of voltaic currents, — it is a something that knows its own exist-
ence, that shudders at the word annihilation, and proudly claims
kindred with infinitude and eternity.
Whatever may be our lot in life, and what the true purpose
of our existence, an inevitable fate attends us — a fate which
bears with it all the marks of eventuating as a result of a law
of nature; and these are laws, which unlike those framed by hu*
man legislators, it is impossible for us to break. Though we
may be powerful, and possessed of a reason capable of making
us acquainted with the universe, there is not one of these regu-
lations which we can infringe. ** Thou shalt not change or de-
stroy it, " is written on every material atom — " Thou shalt be
born and die,** — these are decrees against which we would strug-
gle in vain. Over the destinies of our own race the)'' have given
us a power; and though we are suffered to be spectators of the
existence of other worlds, they restrain us to our own. These
eternal decrees show us the limits of our condition; nor should
we repine. Do not the sunshine and the storm, and spring, and
summer, and autumn, and winter, come as they did a thousand
years ago ? Do not the same stars shine afar in the night, and
the same suns ripen the fruits of the earth ? * There is something
in the calm regularity of these laws that persuades us to commit
ourselves unreservedly to their operation.*
I have thus endeavored to trace the road by which we have
become possessed of the only human knowledge which is really
valuable; it is an imperfect sketch. Of the material constitution
of the world, what do we know ? We are infants in science ; yet
how wide is the difference between the student of nature and the
ignorant man. Can he believe that the particles of the bodies
around us are so small that the distance between those which
are nearest is infinitely great compared with their own size ? We
may, perhaps, make him learn that a gnat, when flying, beats the
air with its wing a hundred times in a second; but what will
he say when we tell him that a wave of red light trembles fom
hundred eighty-two millions of millions of times in a second, or
JOHN W. DRAPER 1 47 3
a wave of violet light seven hundred seven millions of millions
of times in a second. Yet these are things of which he may-
satisfy himself; and surely to cultivate these pursuits will tend
to make him not only a wiser, but a better man.
Finally, therefore, let me urge the pursuit of these objects
upon you; there is no mystery around them — but then there is
no royal road to them. From the experience of a few short
years I can recommend them to you as a pleasure in prosperity
— a comfort in affliction. You owe to the future a debt — pre-
pare to pay it. Cultivate the intellect heaven has lent you, re-
membering it is also the property of posterity. Knowledge ofEers
you wealth and power. Choose then whether you will accept
them.
Complete. From the text published in the Southern Literary Messenger for
November, 1837.
IV— 93
HENRY DRUMMOND
(1851-1897)
;he <* Conflict between Religion and Science, *> which was much
discussed after the appearance of Darwin's <* Origin of Spe-
cies,'* ceased to be considered a topic of engrossing interest
after the appearance of Professor Henry Drummond's ^* Natural Law
in the Spiritual World.** Being an advanced Darwinian and at the
same time a Christian evangelist of the school of Dwight L. Moody,
Professor Drummond calmly assumed the impossibility of such a con-
flict having a real existence ; and though it cannot be said that he
demonstrated or attempted to demonstrate anything, his great learn-
ing and the calmness of his well-assured convictions had a decided
effect. He was born at Stirling, Scotland, in 185 1, and his scientific
work was done chiefly while professor of Natural History and Science
in the Free Church College, Glasgow. His religious addresses have
had an extraordinary popular circulation both in England and Amer-
ica. One of them, << The Greatest Thing in the World,** has been de-
scribed as the ^* Oration on the Crown ** of the modern pulpit.
NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD
THE Spiritual World as it stands is full of perplexity. One can
escape doubt only by escaping thought. With regard to
many important articles of religion, perhaps the best and
the worse course at present open to a doubter is simply credulity.
Who is to answer for this state of things ? It comes as a neces-
sary tax for improvement on the age in which we live. The old
ground of faith, Authority, is given up; the new, Science, has not
yet taken its place. Men did not require to see truth before;
they only needed to believe it. Truth, therefore, had not been
put by Theology in a seeing form — which, however, was its orig-
inal form. But now they ask to see it. And when it is shown
them, they start back in despair. We shall not say what they
see. But we shall say what they might see. If the Natural Laws
were run through the Spiritual World, they might see the great
HENRY DRUMMOIND 14*71^
lines ot religious truth as clearly and simply as the broad lines
of science. As they gazed into that Natural- Spiritual World they
would say to themselves, ^^ We have seen something like this be-
fore. This order is known to us. It is not arbitrary. This Law
here is that old Law there; and this Phenomenon here, what can
it be but that which stood in precisely the same relation to that
Law yonder ? *^ And so gradually from the new form everything
assumes new meaning. So the Spiritual World becomes slowly
Natural; and v/hat is of all but equal moment, the Natural World
becomes slowly Spiritual. Nature is not a mere image or em-
blem of the Spiritual. It is a working model of the Spiritual.
In the Spiritual World the same wheels revolve — but without
the iron. The same figures flit across the stage, the same proc-
esses of growth go on, the same functions are discharged, the
same biological laws prevail — only with a different quality of
Bio<;. Plato's prisoner, if not out of the Cave, has at least his face
to the light.
* The earth is cram'd with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God."
How much of the Spiritual world is covered by Natural law
we do not propose at present to inquire. It is certain, at least,
that the whole is not covered. And nothing more lends confi-
dence to the method than this. For one thing, room is still left
for mystery. Had no place remained for mystery it had proved
itself both unscientific and irreligious. A Science without mys-
tery is unknown; a Religion without mystery is absurd. This is
no attempt to reduce Religion to a question of mathematics, or
demonstrate God in biological formulae. The elimination of mys-
tery from the universe is the elimination of Religion. However
far the scientific method may penetrate the Spiritual World, there
will always remain a region to be explored by a scientific faith.
^' I shall never rise to the point of view which wishes to '■ raise *
faith to knowledge. To me, the way of truth is to come through
the knowledge of my ignorance to the submissiveness of faith,
and then, making that my starting place, to raise my knowledge
into faith.**
Lest this proclamation of mystery should seem alarming, let
us add that this mystery also is scientific. The one subject on
which all scientific men are agreed, the one theme on which aU
1476 HENRY DRUMMOND
alike become eloquent, the one strain of pathos in all their writ-
ing and speaking and thinking concerns that final uncertainty,
that utter blackness of darkness bounding their work on every
side. If the light of Nature is to illuminate for us the Spiritual
Sphere, there may well be a black Unknown, corresponding, at
least at some points, to this zone of darkness round the Natural
World.
But the final gain would appear in the department of Theol-
ogy. The establishment of the Spiritual Laws on " the solid
ground of Nature," to which the mind trusts ^^ which builds for
aye,*' would offer a new basis for certainty in Religion. It has
been indicated that the authority of Authority is waning. This
is a plain fact. And it was inevitable. Authority — man's Au-
thority that is — is for children. And there necessarily comes a •
time when they add to the question, What shall I do ? or. What
shall I believe ? the adult's interrogation — Why ? Now this ques-
tion is sacred, and must be answered.
It is impossible to believe that the amazing succession of rev-
elations in the domain of Nature during the last few centuries,
at which the world has all but grown tired w^ondering, are to
yield nothing for the higher life. If the development of doctrine
is to have any meaning for the future, Theology must draw upon
the further revelation of the seen for the further revelation of the
unseen. It need, and can, add nothing to fact; but as the vision of
Newton rested on a clearer and richer world than that of Plato,
so, though seeing the same things in the Spiritual World as our
fathers, we may see them clearer and richer. With the work of the
centuries upon it, the mental eye is a finer instrument, and demands
a more ordered world. Had the revelation of Law been given
sooner, it had been unintelligible. Revelation never volunteers
anything that man could discover for himself — on the principle,
probably, that it is only when he is capable of discovering it
that he is capable of appreciating it. Besides, children do not
need Laws, except Laws in the sense of commandments. They
repose with simplicity on authority, and ask no questions. But
there comes a time, as the world reaches its manhood, when they
will ask questions, and stake, moreover, everything on the answers.
That time is now. Hence we must exhibit our doctrines, not
lying athwart the lines of the world's thinking, in a place re-
served, and therefore shunned, for the Great Exception; but in
HENRY DRUMMOND 1477
their kinship to all truth and in their Law-relation to the whole of
Nature. This is, indeed, simply following out the system of teach-
ing begun by Christ Himself. And what is the search for spir-
itual truth in the Laws of Nature but an attempt to utter the
parables which have been hid so long in the world around with-
out a preacher, and to tell men once more that the Kingdom of
Heaven is like unto this and to that ?
From the introductory essay to « Natural
Law in the Spiritual World. »
WILLIAM DRUMMOND
(1 585-1649)
William Drummond, «of Hawthornden, >' the most noted Scottish
poet of the Shakespearean age, was born at Hawthornden,
near Edinburgh, December 13th, 1585. He was one of the
most highly educated literary men of his day, having graduated at
the University of Edinburgh in 1605, and spent several years study-
ing on the continent. He corresponded with Drayton and Ben Jonson,
and the esteem in which he was held is suggested by the fact that
in 1619 Jonson made the journey to Scotland to visit him — the visit
being the occasion of the celebrated impromptus exchanged be-
tween them on meeting : ** Welcome, welcome, royal Ben ! ^^ " Thank
ye, thank ye, Hawthornden!** Drummond died December 4th, 1649,
after having been involved in the troubled politics of the struggle
between Charles I. and the Puritans. His best poems are no doubt
his sonnets, which keep their place in every representative collection.
His "Cypress Grove,** a series of essays on Death, has been called
"one of the noblest prose poems in literature.**
A REVERIE ON DEATH
HAVING often and diverse times, when I had given myself
to rest in the quiet solitariness of the night, found my
imagination troubled with a confused fear, or sorrow, or
horror, which, interrupting sleep, did astonish my senses, and
rouse me all appalled, and transported in a sudden agony and
amazedness; of such an unaccustomed perturbation not knowing,
not being able to dive into any apparent cause, carried away with
the stream of my then doubting thoughts, I began to ascribe it
to that secret foreknowledge and presaging power of the prophetic
mind, and to interpret such an agony to be to the spirit, as a
sudden faintness and universal weariness useth to be to the body,
a sign of following sickness; or as winter lightnings, earthquakes,
and monsters are to commonwealths and great cities, harbingers
of wretched events, and emblems of their sudden destinies.
WILLIAM DRUMMOND 1479
Hereupon, not thinking it strange, if whatsoever is human
should befall me, knowing how Providence overcomes grief and
discountenances crosses; and that, as we should not despair in
evils which may happen to us, we should not be too confident,
nor lean much to those goods we enjoy; I began to turn over in
my remembrance all that could afflict miserable mortality, and to
forecast everything which could beget gloomy and sad apprehen-
sions, and with a mask of horror show itself to human eyes: till
in the end, as by unities and points mathematicians are brought
to great numbers and huge greatness, after many fantastical
glances of the woes of mankind, and those incumbrances which
follow upon life, I was brought to think, and with amazement,
on the last of human terrors, or (as one termed it) the last of
all dreadful and terrible evils, Death.
For to easy censure it would appear that the soul, if it can
foresee that divorcement which it is to have from the body, should
not without great reason be thus over-grieved, and plunged in
inconsolable and unaccustomed sorrow; considering their near
union, long familiarity and love, with the great change, pain, and
ugliness, which are apprehended to be the inseparable attendants
of Death.
They had their being together, parts they are of one reason-
able creature, the harming of the one is the weakening of the
working of the other. What sweet contentments doth the soul
enjoy by the senses! They are the gates and windows of its
knowledge, the organs of its delight. If it be tedious to an ex-
cellent player on the lute to abide but a few months the want
of one, how much more the being without such noble tools and
engines be painful to the soul. And if two pilgrims which have
wandered some few miles together have a heart's grief when
they are near to part, what must the sorrow be at parting of
two so loving friends and never-loathing lovers as are the body
and soul ?
Death is the violent estranger of acquaintance, the eternal
divorcer of marriage, the ra\'isher of the children from the par-
ents, the stealer of parents from their children, the interrer of
fame, the sole cause of forgetfulness, by which the living talk of
those gone away as of so many shadows or age-worn stories.
All strength by it is enfeebled, beauty turned into deformity and
rottenness, honor into contempt, glory into baseness. It is the
reasonless breaker off of all actions, by which we enjoy no more
1480 WILLIAM DRUMMOND
the sweet pleasures of earth, nor contemplate the stately revolu-
tions of the heavens. The sun perpetually setteth, stars never
rise unto us. It in one moment robbeth us of what with so great
toil and care in many years we have heaped together. By this
are succession of lineages cut short, kingdoms left heirless, and
greatest states orphaned. It is not overcome by pride, soothed
by flattery, tamed by entreaties, bribed by benefits, softened by
lamentations, nor diverted by time. Wisdom, save this, can pre-
vent and help everything. By Death we are exiled from this
fair city of the world: it is no more a world unto us, nor we any
more a people unto it. The ruins of fanes, palaces, and other
magnificent frames yield a sad prospect to the soul; and how
should it without horror view the wreck of such a wonderful
masterpiece as is the body ? . . .
But that, perhaps, which anguisheth thee most is to have this
glorious pageant of the world removed from thee in the spring
and most delicious season of thy life; for though to die be usual,
to die young may appear extraordinary. If the present fruition
of these things be unprofitable and vain, what can a long con-
tinuance of them be ? If God had made life happier, he had also
made it longer. Stranger and new halcyon, why would thou longer
nestle amidst these unconstant and stormy waves ? Hast thou
not already suffered enough of this world, but thou must yet
endure more ? To live long, is it not to be long troubled ? But
number thy years, which are now , and thou shalt find that
whereas ten have outlived thee, thousands have not attained this
age. One year is sufficient to behold all the magnificence of na-
ture, nay, even one day and night; for more is but the same
brought again. This sun, that moon, these stars, the varying
dance of the spring, summer, autumn, winter, is that very same
which the Golden Age did see. They which have the longest
time lent them to live in, have almost no part of it at all, meas-
uring it either by the space of time which is past, when they
were not, or by that which is to come. Why shouldst thou then
care whether thy days be many or few, which, when prolonged
to the uttermost, prove, paralleled with eternity, as a tear is to
the ocean ? To die young, is to do that soon, and in some fewer
days, which once thou must do; it is but the giving over of a
game, that after never so many hazards must be lost. When
thou hast lived to that age thou desirest, or one of Plato's years,
so soon as the last of thy days riseth above thy horizon, thou
WILLIAM DRUMMOND 1 48 1
wilt then, as now, demand longer respite, and expect more to
come. The oldest are most unwilling to die. It is hope of long
life that maketh life seem short. Who will behold, and with the
eye of judgment behold, the many changes attending human
affairs, with the after-claps of fortune, shall never lament to die
young. Who knows what alterations and sudden disasters in
outward estate or inward contentments, in this wilderness of the
world, might have befallen him who dieth young, if he had lived
to be old ? Heaven foreknowing imminent harms, taketh those
which it loves to itself before they fall forth. Death in youth is
like the leaving a superfluous feast before the drunken cups be
presented. Pure, and (if we may so say) virgin souls carry their
bodies with no small agonies, and delight not to remain long in
the dregs of human corruption, still burning with a desire to turn
back to the place of their rest; for this world is their inn, and
not their home. That which may fall forth every hour, cannot
fall out of time. Life is a journey on a dusty way; the furthest
rest is Death; in this some go more heavily burdened than others.
Swift and active pilgrims come to the end of it in the morning
or at noon, which tortoise-paced wretches, clogged with the frag-
mentary rubbish of this world, scarce with great travail crawl
unto at midnight. Days are not to be esteemed after the num-
ber of them, but after the goodness. More compass maketh not
a sphere more complete, but as round is a little as a large ring;
nor is that musician most praiseworthy who hath longest played,
but he in measured accents who hath made sweetest melody.
To live long hath often been a let to live well. Muse not how
many years thou mightest have enjoyed life, but how sooner
thou mightest have losed it; neither grudge so much that it is no
better, as comfort thyself that it hath been no worse. Let it
suffice that thou hast lived till this day, and (after the course of
this world) not for naught thou hast had some smiles of fortune,
favors of the worthiest, some friends, and thou hast never been
disfavored of heaven.
Prom «A Cypress Grove.*
JOHN DRYDEN
(1631-1700)
JOHN Dryden was born August 9th, 1631, in Northamptonshire
His father, Sir Erasmus Dryden, was a Republican who went
l^^^^iB^ to prison rather than pay Charles I. an illegal tax. His moth-
er's family were stanch Puritans, and it is probable that Dryden was
sincere in the admiration he expressed for Cromwell. His education at
Cambridge had made him a master of stenciled heroics and elegiacs,
but even had he learned from Ovid the utmost grace of the Augustan
age, it would have poorly compensated him for the loss of that which
the unpolished Harrison showed as he explained to the spectators around
the gallows that the shaking of his hands was due to hardship in the
wars — not to fear of dying for his cause. But such things were dis-
missed with a jest in the literary circles of London when Dryden
began his career as a court poet. Having demonstrated his wit to
the satisfaction of Nell Gwyn and other arbiters of the elegancies,
he was made laureate with a pension of ^^300 a year and a butt of
Canary wine. Under James H. he changed his religion and held the
laureateship ; but when under William and Mary another change took
place in the quality of court piety, it is always to be remembered
that he sacrificed the laureateship, pension, Canary wine, wreath of
bays, and all, rather than abjure again. When William and Mary
named the ignominious Shadwell in his stead as the greatest poet of
England, Dryden surely had revenge upon them so ample that posterity
could add nothing to it to make justice complete against them. From
that time until his death, May ist, 1700, Dryden, neglected by the
great and thrown on his own resources, earned a manly living as **a
publisher's hack,'^ but adversity overtook him too late to change him
from the greatest wit, satirist, and critic, to the greatest poet of his
generation.
Dryden was professionally a poet, but he is really at his best in his
satires and prefaces. He has been called the inventor of modern
English prose; and though this is too much to say of him, it is cer-
tainly true that he did much to perfect prose-rhythm, and to make it
clear that the writing of good prose is scarcely less a fine art than
the writing of good verse. Although his prose consists so largely of
prefaces and such other casual productions as generally fall stillborn
if only for the lack of a vitalizing purpose, his strength as a prose
.nebii.
bnj3 t
ndo[
Dryden was bom
er's family were stanch Puritans, and ii
si ■
SHAKESPEARE. AN,CKxiI{& aOMTEMFORARIE^mstaxi
'.' • -omp-^nsated hiiTi for i.r:r_ :':;^s or dxaX which
A/Ur the Painting by- Jgh^,^£'ae4,^^ftg,f:AW^,k}''?,^^i^^ around
irdship in the
ne'i were dis-
Jhe standing figure on Shakespear.els left ^s t^at,of Sir Walter Raleigh.
He leans on the shoulder of the Earl of Southampton. Seated , in
the right foreground with his back to the spectator is Sir Robert C^ot-
ton, with Decker on his right. The figures seated immediately behind Shakes-
peare are Ben Jonson, Donne, and Daniel. The figure seated at th^ rear
of the table is Bacon, and with him are seated Fletcher, Dorset, and Camden.
In the rear of the seated group stands Beaumont with his hand e'xtended kife
Qext to him stands Selden with Sylvester on the spectator's extreM^^eftJ '^^(9mi
x*faed, the painter of this group, was bom in Scotland in^ iSiSd'- W-<iath of
^pv' :-,••<:' ■ "''"I'' 'A'r.l ,,jrn sv<' Mary
Cf
that
From
/ the
as *a
ange him
eutest poet of his
!. ' ■" _■ !
VV'ULIiji'j \Jl
the w
good Terse
prefa
ich other c
' ■' 1 • n
laf'Tf of A*
eally at his best in his
;rie inventor of modem
h to say of him, it is cer-
.m, and to make it
i^ciy less a fine art than
rose consists so lanjely of
JOHN DRYDEN 1483
writer was recognized at once, and as far back as 1733 we find Swift
giving such advice as is still gfiven to those who are in training for a
career of criticism. —
«Get scraps of Horace from your friends,
And have them at your fingers' ends;
Learn Aristotle's rules by rote.
And at all hazards boldly quote;
Judicious Rymer oft review,
Wise Dennis and profound Bossu;
Read all the prefaces of Dryden, —
For these the critics much confide in,
Though merely writ at first for filling
To raise the volume's price a shilling !»
ON EPIC POETRY
(Addressed to John, Earl of Mulgrave)
AN HEROIC poem (truly sucli) is undoubtedly the greatest work
w^hich the soul of man is capable to perform. The design
of it is to form the mind to heroic virtue by example; it
is conveyed in verse that it may delight while it instructs. The
action of it is always one, entire, and great. The least and most
trivial episodes or underactions which are interwoven in it are
parts either necessary or convenient to carry on the main design
— either so necessary that without them the poem must be im-
perfect, or so convenient that no others can be imagined more
suitable to the place in which they are. There is nothing to be
left void in a firm building; even the cavities ought not to be
filled with rubbish which is of a perishable kind, — destructive to
the strength, — but with brick or stone (though of less pieces, yet
of the same nature), and fitted to the crannies. Even the least
portions of them must be of the epic kind; all things must be
grave, majestical, and sublime; nothing of a foreign nature, like
the trifling novels which Ariosto and others have inserted in
their poems, by which the reader is misled into another sort of
pleasure, opposite to that which is designed in an epic poem.
One raises the soul and hardens it to virtue; the other softens it
again and unbends it into vice. One conduces to the poet's aim
(the completing of his work), which he is driving on, laboring,
and hastening in every line; the other slackens his pace, diverts
1484 JOHN DRYDEN
him from his way, and locks him up like a knight-errant in an
enchanted castle when he should be pursuing his first adventure.
Statins (as Bossu has well observed) was ambitious of trying his
strength with his master, Virgil, as Virgil had before tried his
with Homer. The Grecian gave the two Romans an example in
the games which were celebrated at the funerals of Patroclus.
Virgil imitated the invention of Homer, but changed the sports.
But both the Greek and Latin poet took their occasions from
the subject, though (to confess the truth) they were both orna-
mental, or, at best, convenient parts of it, rather than of neces-
sity arising from it. Statius (who through his whole poem is
noted for want of conduct and judgment), instead of sta5nng, as
he might have done, for the death of Capaneus, Hippomedon,
Tydeus, or some other of his Seven Champions (who are heroes
all alike), or more properly for the tragical end of the two
brothers whose exequies the next successor had leisure to per-
form when the siege was raised, and in the interval betwixt the
poet's first action and his second, went out of his way — as it
were, on prepense malice — to commit a fault; for he took his
opportunity to kill a royal infant by the means of a serpent
(that author of all evil) to make way for those funeral honors
which he intended for him. Now if this innocent had been of
any relation to his Thebais, if he had either furthered or hindered
the taking of the town, the poet might have found some sorry
excuse at least for detaining the reader from the promised siege.
On these terms this Capaneus of a poet engaged his two immor-
tal predecessors, and his success was answerable to his enterprise.
If this economy must be observed in the minutest parts of an
epic poem, which to a common reader seem to be detached from
the body and almost independent of it, what soul, though sent
into the world with great advantages of nature, cultivated with
the liberal arts and sciences, conversant with histories of the
dead, and enriched with observations on the living, can be suffi-
cient to inform the whole body of so great a work ? I touch
here but transiently, without any strict method, on some few of
those many rules of imitating nature which Aristotle drew from
Homer's ^* Iliads ^* and " Odysseys, *^ and which he fitted to the
drama — furnishing himself also with observations from the prac-
tice of the theatre when it flourished under ^schylus, Euripides,
and Sophocles (for the original of the stage was from the epic
poem). Narration, doubtless, preceded acting, and gave laws to
JOHN DRYDEN 1 4 85
it. What at first was told artfully was in process of time repre-
sented gracefully to the sight and hearing. Those episodes of
Homer which were proper for the stage, the poets amplified each
into an action. Out of his limbs they formed their bodies; what
he had contracted, they enlarged; out of one Hercules were made
infinity of pigmies, yet all endued with human souls; for from
him, their great creator, they have each of them the divincB par-
ticulam aurce. They flowed from him at first, and are at last
resolved into him. Nor were they only animated by him, but
their measure and symmetry were owing to him. His one, en-
tire, and great action was copied by them, according to the pro-
portions of the drama. If he finished his orb within the year, it
sufficed to teach them that their action being less, and being also
less diversified with incidents, their orb, of consequence, must be
circumscribed in a less compass, which they reduced within the
limits either of a natural or an artificial day. So that, as he
taught them to amplify what he had shortened, by the same rule
applied the contrary way he taught them to shorten what he had
amplified. Tragedy is the miniature of human life; an epic poem
is the draft at length. Here, my lord, I must contract also, for
before I was aware I was almost running into a long digression
to prove that there is no such absolute necessity that the time
of a stage action should so strictly be confined to twenty-four
hours as never to exceed them (for which Aristotle contends, and
the Grecian stage has practiced). Some longer space on some
occasions, I think, may be allowed, especially for the English
theatre, which requires more variety of incidents than the French.
Corneille himself, after long practice, was inclined to think that
the time allotted by the Ancients was too short to raise and finish
a great action; and better a mechanic rule were stretched or
broken than a great beauty were omitted. To raise, and after-
wards to calm, the passions; to purge the soul from pride by the
examples of human miseries which befall the greatest; in few
words, to expel arrogance and introduce compassion, are the great
e£Eects of tragedy — great, I must confess, if they were altogether
as true as they are pompous. But are habits to be introduced at
three hours' warning ? Are radical diseases so suddenly removed ?
A mountebank may promise such a cure, but a skillful physician
will not undertake it. An epic poem is not in so much haste; it
works leisurely; the changes which it makes are slow, but the
cure is likely to be more perfect. The effects of tragedy, as I
i486 JOHN DRYDEN
said, are too violent to be lasting. If it be answered, that for
this reason tragedies are often to be seen, and the dose to be
repeated, this is tacitly to confess that there is more virtue in
one heroic poem than in many tragedies. A man is humbled
one day, and his pride returns the next. Chemical medicines are
observed to relieve oftener than to cure; for it is the nature of
spirits to make swift impressions, but not deep. Galenical decoc-
tions, to which I may properly compare an epic poem, have more
of body in them; they work by their substance and their weight.
It is one reason of Aristotle to prove that tragedy is the
more noble, because it turns in a shorter compass — the whole
action being circumscribed within the space of four and twenty
hours. He might prove as well that a mushroom is to be pre-
ferred before a peach, because it shoots up in the compass of a
night. A chariot may be driven round the pillar in less space
than a large machine, because the bulk is not so great. Is the
moon a more noble planet than Saturn, because she makes her
revolution in less than thirty days, and he in little less than thirty
years? Both their orbs are in proportion to their several magni-
tudes; and consequently the quickness or slowness of their motion,
and the time of their circumvolutions, is no argument of the
greater or less perfection. And besides, what virtue is there in
a tragedy which is not contained in an epic poem, where pride
is humbled, virtue rewarded, and vice punished, and those more
amply treated than the narrowness of the drama can admit ?
The shining quality of an epic hero, his magnanimity, his con-
stancy, his patience, his piety, or whatever characteristical virtue
his poet gives him, raises first our admiration; we are naturally
prone to imitate what we admire, and frequent acts produce a
habit. If the hero's chief quality be vicious — as, for example,
the choler and obstinate desire of vengeance in Achilles — yet the
moral is instructive; and, besides, we are informed in the very
proposition of the * Iliads ^* that this anger was pernicious, that it
brought a thousand ills on the Grecian camp. The courage of
Achilles is proposed to imitation, not his pride and disobedience
to his general, nor his brutal cruelty to his dead enemy, nor the
selling his body to his father. We abhor these actions while
we read them, and what we abhor we never imitate; the poet
only shows them, like rocks 01 quicksands to be shunned.
By this example the critics have concluded that it is not
necessary the manners of the hero should be virtuous (they are
JOHN DRYDEN 14^7
poetically good if tbey are of a piece) ; though where a character
of perfect virtue is set before us it is more lovely; for there the
whole hero is to be imitated. This is the -^neas of our author;
this is that idea of perfection in an epic poem which painters
and statuaries have only in their minds, and which no hands are
able to express. These are the beauties of a God in a human
body. When the picture of Achilles is drawn in tragedy, he is
taken with those warts and moles and hard features by those
who represent him on the stage, or he is no more Achilles; for
his creator, Homer, has so described him. Yet even thus he ap-
pears a perfect hero, though an imperfect character of virtue.
Horace paints him after Homer, and delivers him to be copied
on the stage with all those imperfections. Therefore they are
either not faults in an heroic poem, or faults common to the
drama.
After all, on the whole merits of the cause, it must be
acknowledged that the epic poem is more for the manners, and
tragedy for the passions. The passions, as I have said, are
violent; and acute distempers require medicines of a strong and
speedy operation. Ill habits of the mind are, like chronical
diseases, to be corrected by degrees, and cured by alteratives;
wherein, though purges are sometimes necessary, yet diet, good
air, and moderate exercise have the greatest part. The matter
being thus stated, it will appear that both sorts of poetry are of
use for their proper ends. The stage is more active, the epic poem
works at greater leisure; yet is active, too, when need requires,
for dialogue is imitated by the drama from the more active parts
of it. One puts off a fit, like the quinquina, and relieves us only
for a time ; the other roots out the distemper, and gives a health-
ful habit. The sun enlightens and cheers lis, dispels fogs, and
warms the ground with his daily beams; but the corn is sowed,
increases, is ripened, and is reaped for use in process of time
and in its proper season.
I proceed from the greatness of this action to the dignity of
the actors — I mean to the persons employed in both poems.
There likewise tragedy will be seen to borrow from the epopee;
and that which borrows is always of less dignity, because it has
not of its own. A subject, it is true, may lend to his sovereign;
but the act of borrowing makes the king inferior, because he
wants and the subject supplies. And suppose the persons of the
drama wholly fabulous, or of the poet's invention, yet heroic
1488 JOHN DRYDEN
poetry gave him the examples of that invention, because it was
first and Homer the common father of the stage. I know not of
any one advantage which tragedy can boast above heroic poetry,
but that it is represented to the view as well as read, and in-
structs in the closet as well as on the theatre. This is an un-
contended excellence, and a chief branch of its prerogative; yet
I may be allowed to say without partiality that herein the actors
share the poet's praise. Your lordship knows some modern trage-
dies which are beautiful on the stage, and yet I am confident
you would not read them. Tryphon the stationer complains they
are seldom asked for in his shop. The poet who flourished in
the scene is damned in the ruelle; nay, more, he is not esteemed
a good poet by those who see and hear his extravagances with
delight. They are a sort of stately fustian and lofty childishness.
Nothing but nature can give a sincere pleasure; where that is
not imitated, it is grotesque painting; the fine woman ends in a
fish's tail.
I might also add that many things which not only please, but
are real beauties in the reading, would appear absurd upon the
stage; and those not only the speciosa mir acuta, as Horace calls
them, of transformations of Scylla, Antiphates, and the Laestry-
gons (which cannot be represented even in operas), but the
prowess of Achilles or ^neas would appear ridiculous in our
dwarf heroes of the theatre. We can believe they routed armies
in Homer or in Virgil, but ne Hercules contra duos in the drama.
I forbear to instance in many things which the stage cannot or
ought not to represent; for I have said already more than I in-
tended on this subject, and should fear it might be turned against
me that I plead for the pre-eminence of epic poetry because I
have taken some pains in translating Virgil, if this were the first
time that I had delivered my opinion in this dispute ; but I have
more than once already maintained the rights of my two masters
against their rivals of the scene, even while I wrote tragedies
myself and had no thoughts of this present undertaking. I sub-
mit my opinion to your judgment, who are better qualified than
any man I know to decide this controversy. You come, my lord,
instructed in the cause, and needed not that I should open it.
Your** Essay of Poetry,* which was published without a name, and
of which I was not honored with the confidence, I read over and
over with much delight and as much instruction, and without
flattering you, or making myself more moral than I am. not
JOHN DRYDEN 1489
without some envy. I was loth to be informed how an epic poem
should be written, or how a tragedy should be contrived and
managed, in better verse and with more judgment than I could
teach others. A native of Parnassus, and bred up in the studies
of its fundamental laws, may receive new lights from his contem-
poraries; but it is a grudging kind of praise which he gives his
benefactors. He is more obliged than he is willing to acknowl-
edge; there is a tincture of malice in his commendations: for
where I own I am taught, I confess my want of knowledge. A
judge upon the bench may, out of good nature, or, at least, in-
terest, encourage the pleadings of a puny counselor, but he does
not willingly commend his brother sergeant at the bar, especially
when he controls his law and exposes that ignorance which is
made sacred by his place. I gave the unknown author his due
commendation, I must confess; but who can answer for me, and
for the rest of the poets who heard me read the poem, whether
we should not have been better pleased, to have seen our own
names at the bottom of the title-page ? Perhaps we commended
it the more that we might seem to be above the censure. We
are naturally displeased with an unknown critic, as the ladies
are with a lampooner, because we are bitten in the dark, and
know not where to fasten our revenge; but great excellences
will work their way through all sorts of opposition. I applauded
rather out of decency than affection; and was ambitious, as some
yet can witness, to be acquainted with a man with whom I had
the honor to converse, and that almost daily, for so many years
together. Heaven knows if I have heartily forgiven you this
deceit. You extorted a praise, which I should willingly have
given had I known you. Nothing had been more easy than to
commend a patron of a long standing. The world would join
with me if the encomiums were just, and if unjust would excuse
a grateful flatterer. But to come anonymous upon me, and force
me to commend you against my interest, was not altogether so
fair, give me leave to say, as it was politic; for by concealing
your quality you might clearly understand how your work suc-
ceeded, and that the general approbation was given to your
merit, not your titles. Thus, like Apelles, yoii stood unseen be-
hind your own Venus, and received the praises of the passing
multitude. The work was commended, not the author; and I
doubt not, this was one of the most pleasing adventures of your
life.
IV-94
149° JOHN DRYDEN
I have detained your lordship longer than I intended in this
dispute of preference betwixt the epic poem and the drama, and
yet have not formally answered any of the arguments which are
brought by Aristotle on the other side, and set in the fairest
light by Dacier. But I suppose, without looking on the book, I
may have touched on some of the objections; for in this address
to your lordship I design not a treatise ■ of heroic poetry, but
write in a loose epistolary way somewhat tending to that sub-
ject, after the example of Horace in his first epistle of the second
book to Augustus Caesar, and of that to the Pisos, which we call
his " Art of Poetry, ** in both of which he observes no. method
that I can trace, whatever Scaliger the father, or Heinsius may
have seen, or rather think they had seen. I have taken up, laid
down, and resumed, as often as I pleased, the same subject, and
this loose proceeding I shall use through all this prefatory dedi-
cation. Yet all this while I have been sailing with some side
wind or other toward the point I proposed in the beginning, —
the greatness and excellence of an heroic poem, with some of
the difficulties which attend that work. The comparison, therefore,
which I made betwixt the epopee and the tragedy was not alto-
gether a digression, for it is concluded on all hands that they are
both the masterpieces of human wit.
In the meantime I may be bold to draw this corollary from
what has been already said, — that the file of heroic poets is very
short; all are not such who have assumed that lofty title in an-
cient or modern ages, or have been so esteemed by their partial
and ignorant admirers.
There have been but one great <<Ilias" and one «^neis" in
so many ages; the next (but the next with a long interval be-
twixt) was the « Jerusalem * — I mean not so much in distance of
time as in excellence. After these three are entered, some Lord
Chamberlain should be appointed, some critic of authority should
be set before the door to keep out a crowd of little poets who
press for admission, and are not of quality. Maevius would be
deafening your lordship's ears with his
<* Fortunam Pj-iami caniabo, et nobile bellum?'*
Mere fnstian (as Horace would tell you from behind, without
pressing forward), and more smoke than fire. Pulci, Boiardo, and
Ariosto would cry out, ^^ Make room for the Italian poets, the de-
scendants of Virgil in a right line.^^ Father Le Moine, with his
JOHN DRYDEN 1491
<' Saint Louis, ^* and Scudery with his ^* Alaric '* (for a godly king
and a Gothic conqueror) ; and Chapelain would take it ill that
his "Maid*' should be refused a place with Helen and Lavinia.
Spenser has a better plea for his " Faerie Queene, ** had his action
been finished, or had been one; and Milton, if the devil had not
been his hero instead of Adam; if the giant had not foiled the
knight, and driven him out of his stronghold to wander through
the world with his lady-errant; and if there had not been more
machining persons than human in his poem. After these the
rest of our English poets shall not be mentioned; I have that
honor for them which I ought to have; but if they are worthies,
they are not to be ranked amongst the three whom I have
named, and who are established in their reputation.
Introduction to the << Discourse on
Epic Poetry. »
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
To BEGIN then with Shakespeare. He was the man who of all
modern and perhaps ancient poets had the largest and most
comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still
present to him, and he drew them not laboriously but luckily:
when he describes anything you more than see it, you feel it too.
Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the
greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not
the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and
found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he
so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of
mankind. He is many times flat, insipid ; his comic wit degener-
ating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is
always great when some great occasion is presented to him: no
man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not
then raise himself as high above the rest of poets
^Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.*
The consideration of this made Mr. Hales of Eton say that there
was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would pro-
duce it much better done in Shakespeare; and however others
are now generally preferred before him, yet the age wherein he
lived, which had contemporaries with him, Fletcher and Jonson,
never equaled them to him in their esteem; and in the last
1492 JOHN DRYDEN
king's court, when Ben's reputation was at the highest, Sir John
Suckling, and with him the greater part of the courtiers, set our
Shakespeare far above him.
Beaumont and Fletcher, of whom I am next to speak, had, with
the advantage of Shakespeare's wit, which was their precedent,
great natural gifts, improved by study, — Beaumont, especially,
being so accurate a judge of plays, that Ben Jonson, while he
lived, submitted all his writings to his censure, and 'tis thought,
used his judgment in correcting, if not contriving, all his plots.
What value he had for him appears by the verses he writ to
him; and therefore I need speak no further of it. The first play
that brought Fletcher and him in esteem was their <* Philaster, ^>
for before that they had written two or three very unsuccessfully ;
as the like is reported of Ben Jonson, before he writ " Every
Man in His Humor.'* Their plots were generally more regular
than Shakespeare's, especially those which were made before
Beaumont's death; and they understood and imitated the conver-
sation of gentlemen much better; whose wild debaucheries, and
quickness of wit in repartees, no poet before them could paint as
they have done. Humor, which Ben Jonson derived from par-
ticular persons, they made it not their business to describe; they
represented all the passions very lively, but above all, love. I
am apt to believe the English language in them arrived to its
highest perfection ; what words have since been taken in are
rather superfluous than ornamental. Their plays are now the
most pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage; two of
theirs being acted through the year for one of Shakespeare's or
Jonson's: the reason is because there is a certain gayety in their
comedies, and pathos in their more serious plays, which suits gen-
erally with all men's humors. Shakespeare's language is likewise
a little obsolete, and Ben Jonson's wit comes short of theirs.
As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived, if we
look upon him while he was himself (for his last plays were but
his dotages), I think him the most learned and judicious writer
which any theatre ever h?d. He was a most severe judge of
himself, as well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but
rather that he was frugal of it. In his works you find little to
retrench or alter. Wit and language, and humor also in some
measure, we had before him; but something of art was wanting
to the drama till he came. He managed his strength to more
advantage than any who preceded him. You seldom find him
making love in any cf his scenes, or endeavoring to move the
JOHN DRYDEN 1493
passions; his genius was too sullen and saturnine to do it grace-
fully, especially when he knew he came after those who had per-
formed both to such a height Humor was his proper sphere;
and in that he delightea "Host to represent mechanic people He
was deeply conversant in the Ancients, both Greek and Latin,
and he borrowed boldly from them; there is scarce a poet or
historian among the Roman authors of those times whom he has
not translated in ** Sejanus '* and ^* Catiline. '^ But he has done
his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be
taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what
would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him. With the
spoils of these writers he so represents old Rome to us, in its
rites, ceremonies, and customs, that if one of their poets had writ-
ten either of his tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him.
If there was any fault in his language, it was, that he weaved it
too closely and laboriously, in his comedies especially: perhaps^
too, he did a little too much Romanize our tongue, leaving the
words which he translated almost as much Latin as he found
them, wherein though he learnedly followed their language, he
did not enough comply with the idiom of ours. If I would com-
pare him with Shakespeare^ I must acknowledge him the most
correct poet, but Shakespeare the gi eater wit. Shakespeare was
the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets; Jonson was the Vir-
gil, the pattern of elaborate writing: I admire him, but I love
Shakespeare. To conclude of him: as he has given us the most
correct plays, so in the precepts which he has laid down in his
** Discoveries '^ we have as many and profitable rules for perfect-
ing the stage as any wherewith the French can furnish us.
Prom the essay on « Dramatic Poesy.**
«NITOR IN ADVERSUM*
WHAT Virgil wrote in the vigor of his age, in plenty and its
ease, I have undertaken to translate in my declining
years; struggling with wants, oppressed with sickness,
curbed in my genius, liable to be misconstrued in all I write;
and my judges, if they are not very equitable, already prejudiced
against me by the lying character which has been given them of
my morals. Yet, steady to my principles, and not dispirited with
my afflictions, I have, by the blessing of God in my endeavors,
overcome all difficulties, and in some measure acquitted myself
1494 JOHN DRYDEN
of the debt which I owed the public when I undertook this work
In the first place, therefore, I thankfully acknowledge to the Al*
mighty Power the assistance he has given me in the beginning,
the prosecution, and conclusion of my present studies, which are
more happily performed than I could have promised to myself,
when I labored under such discouragements For what I have
done, imperfect as it is for want of health and leisure to correct
it, will be judged in after ages, and possibly in the present, to
be no dishonor to my native country, whose language and poetry
would be more esteemed abroad if they were better understood.
Somewhat (give me leave to say) I have added to both of them
in the choice of words and harmony of numbers, which were
wanting (especially the last) m all our poets, even in those who,
being endued with genius, yet nave not cultivated their mother
tongue with sufficient care, or, relying on the beauty of their
thoughts, have judged the ornament of woids^ and sweetness of
sound unnecessary. One is for raking m Chaucer (our English
Ennius) for antiquated words which are never to be revived but
when sound or significancy is wanting in the present language.
But many of his crowds of men who daily die, or are slain for
sixpence m a battle, merit to be restored to life if a wish could
restore them. Others have no ear for verse, nor choice of words,
nor distinction of thoughts; but mingle farthings with their gold
to make up the sum. Here is a field of satire open to me; but
since the Revolution I have wholly renounced that talent; for
who would give physic to the great, when he is uncalled — to do
his patient no good, and endanger himself for his prescription ?
Neither am I ignorant but I may justly be condemned for many
of those faults, of which I have too liberally arraigned others.
. . . '•^Cynthius aurem
Vellit et admonuiP^ . . «
It is enough for me if the government will let me pass unques-
tioned. In the meantime, i am 'obliged in gratitude to return
my thanks to many of them, who have not only distinguished me
from others of the same party by a particular exception of grace,
but, without considering the man, have been bountiful to thf^ poet,
have encouraged Virgil to speak such English as I could teach
him, and rewarded his interpreter for the pains he has taken in
bringing him over into Britain, by defraying the charges of his
voyage.
From his postscript to the <^iEneis.*
SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY
(1816-)
^R Charles Gavan Duffy was bom at Monaghan, Ireland,
April 12th, 1 8 16, and educated at the Monaghan Public
School and the ^* Belfast Institution.** In 1842 he threw
himself with ardor into the movement inaugurated by O'Counell,
whom he supported in the Nation, a newspaper founded by him and
published in Dublin. He was prosecuted in 1843 with O'Connell, and
again in 1848. The charge in 1848 was "treason felony,'* but after
an imprisonment of ten months he was released. He had founded
the Irish Confederation of 1846 and the Tenant League; but in 1856,
despairing of accomplishing anything for Ireland, he resigned his
place in parliament and went to Australia, where in 187 1 he became
Prime Minister. In 1880 he returned to Europe and took up his resi-
dence at Nice. Among his miscellaneous works are ^'- The Ballad Po-
etry of Ireland," "Conversations with Carlyle,'* " Bird's-Eye View of
Irish Histoi-y,* and * Lif e in Two Hemispheres.'*
A DISPUTE WITH CARLYLE
IN ALL our intercourse for more than a generation I had only
one quarrel with Carlyle, which occurred about this time, and
I wish to record it, because, in my opinion, he behaved gen-
erously and even magnanimously. Commenting on some trans-
action of the day, I spoke with indignation of the treatment of
Ireland by her stronger sister. Carlyle replied that if he must
say the whole truth, it was his opinion that Ireland had brought
all her misfortunes on herself. She had committed a great sin
in refusing and resisting the Reformation. In England, and es-
pecially in Scotland, certain men who had grown altogether in-
tolerant of the condition of the world arose and swore that this
thing should not continue, though the earth and the devil united
to uphold it; and their vehement protest was heard by the whole
universe, and whatever had been done for human liberty from
that time forth, in the English Commonwealth, in the French
Revolution, and the like, was the product of this protest.
I49<5 SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY
It was a great sin for nations to darken their eyes against
light like this, and Ireland, which had persistently done so, was
punished accordingly. It was hard to say how far England was
blamable in trying by trenchant laws to compel her into the
right course, till in later times it was found the attempt was
wholly useless, and then properly given up. He found, and any
one might see who looked into the matter a little, that countries
had prospered or fallen into helpless ruin in exact proportion as
they had helped or resisted this message. The most peaceful,
hopeful nations in the world just now were the descendants of
the men who had said, <* Away with all your trash ; we will be-
lieve in none of it; we scorn your threats of damnation; on the
whole we prefer going down to hell with a true story in our
mouths to gaining heaven by any holy legerdemain.*' Ireland
refused to believe and must take the consequences, one of which,
he would venture to point out, was a population pretematurally
ignorant and lazy.
I was very angry, and I replied vehemently that the upshot
of his homily was that Ireland was rightly trampled upon, and
plundered for three centuries, for not believing in the Thirty-nine
Articles; but did he believe in a tittle of them himself? If he
did believe them, what was the meaning of his exhortations to
get rid of Hebrew old clothes, and put off Hebrew spectacles ?
If he did not believe them, it seemed to me that he might, on
his own showing, be trampled upon, and robbed as properly as
Ireland for rejecting what he called the manifest truth. Queen
Elizabeth, or her father, or any of the Englishmen or Scotchmen
who rose for the deliverance of the world, and so forth, would
have made as short work of him as they did of popish recusants.
Ireland was ignorant, he said, but did he take the trouble of
considering that for three generations to seek education was an
offense strictly prohibited and punished by law. Down to the
time of the Reform Act, and the coming into power of the Re-
formers, the only education tendered to the Irish people was
mixed with the soot of hypocrisy and profanation. When I was
a boy, in search of education, there was not in a whole province,
where the successors of these English and Scotch prophets had
had their own way, a single school for Catholic boys above the
condition of a Poor School. My guardian had to determine
whether I should do without education, or seek it in a Protestant
school, where I was regarded as an intruderv — not an agreeable
SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFPY X497
experiment in the province of Ulster, I could assure him. This
was what I, for my part, owed to these missionaries of light and
civilization. The Irish people were lazy, he said, taking no ac-
count of the fact that the fruits of their labor were not protected
by law, but left a prey to their landlords, who plundered them with-
out shame or mercy. Peasants were not industrious, under such
conditions, nor would philosophers be for that matter I fancied.
If the people of Ireland found the doctrines of the Reformation
incredible three hundred years ago, why were they not as well
entitled to reject them then as he was to reject them to-day ? In
my opinion they were better entitled. A nation which had been
the school of the West, a people who had sent missionaries
throughout Europe to win barbarous races to Christianity, who
interpreted in its obvious sense God's promise to be always with
his Church, suddenly heard that a king of unbridled and unlaw-
ful passions undertook to modify the laws of God for his own
convenience, and that his ministers and courtiers were bribed
into acquiescence by the plunder of monasteries and churches:
what wonder that they declared that they would die rather than
be partners in such a transaction. It might be worth remember-
ing that the pretensions of Anne Boleyn's husband to found a
new religion seemed as absurd and profane to these Irishmen as
the similar pretensions of Joe Smith seemed to all of us at present.
After all they had endured, the people of Ireland might compare
with any in the world for the only virtues they were permitted
to cultivate: piety, chastity, simplicity, hospitality to the stranger,
fidelity to friends, and the magnanimity of self-sacrifice for truth
and justice. When we were touring in Ireland together twenty
years before, with the phenomena under our eyes, he himself
declared that after a trial of three centuries there was more
vitality in Catholicism than in this saving light to which the
people had blinded their eyes.
Mrs. Carlyle and John Forster, who were present, looked at
each other in consternation, as if a catastrophe were imminent;
but Carlyle replied placidly, ^^ That there was no great life, he
apprehended, in either of these systems at present; men looked
to something quite diiTerent to that for their guidance just now.*
I could not refrain from returning to the subject. Countries
which had refused to relinquish their faith were less prosperous,
he insisted, than those who placidly followed the ro3'al Reformers
in Germany and England. Perhaps they were; but worldly pros-
1498 SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY
perity was the last test I expected to hear him apply to the
merits of a people. If this was to be a test, the Jews left the
Reformers a long way in the rear.
When nations were habitually peaceful and prosperous, he re-
plied, it might be inferred that they dealt honestly with the rest
of mankind, for this was the necessary basis of any prosperity
that was not altogether ephemeral; and, as conduct was the fruit
of conviction, it might be further inferred, with perfect safety,
that they had had honest teaching, which was the manifest fact
in the cases he specified.
I was much heated, and I took myself off as soon as I could
discreetly do so. The same evening I met Carlyle at dinner at
John Forster's; I sat beside him and had a pleasant talk, and
neither then nor at any future time did he resent my brusque
criticism by the slightest sign of displeasure. This is a fact, I
think, which a generous reader will recognize to be altogether
incompatible with the recent estimate of Carlyle as a man of
impatient temper and arrogant, overbearing self-will.
From « Reminiscences of Carlyle » 1892.
JOHN DUNCOMBE
(1729-1786)
[oHN Buncombe, Bishop of Peterborough, owes his place among
classical English essayists chiefly to his contributions to the
Connoisseur. His essays have a moral purpose, but it is well
sugar-coated by his lively and entertaining style. He was born in
London, September 29th, 1729. After graduating from Cambridge he
was chosen Fellow of his college (Corpus Christi). His essays in the
Connoisseur were among his earliest ventures in literature. His ^^ His-
torical Description of Canterbury CathedraP^ was published in 1772,
and his ^'- Antiquities of Richborough and Reculver >^ two years later.
For twenty years he was one of the favorite contributors to the Geri-
tleman's Magazine, and he edited the letters of Hughes and of John
Boyle, Earl of Cork. He died January 19th, 1786.
CONCERNING ROUGE, WHIST, AND FEMALE BEAUTY
Fades non omnibus una.
Nee diver sa tanien-
— Ovid.
<* Where borrow'd tints bestow a lifeless grace,
None wear the same, yet none a different face.'*
TO MR. TOWN
Sir : —
IT IS whimsical to observe the mistakes that we country gentle-
men are led into at our first coming to tov/n. We are in
duced to think, and indeed truly, that your fine ladies are
composed of different materials from our rural ones; since, though
they sleep all day and rake all night, they still remain as fresh
and ruddy as a parson's daughter or a farmer's wife. At other
times we are apt to wonder that such delicate creatures as they
appear should yet be so much proof against cold as to look as
rosy in January as in June, and even in the sharpest weather to
be very unwilling to approach the fire. I was at a loss to ac-
count for this unalterable hue of their complexions, but I soon
I50O JOHN BUNCOMBE
found that beauty was not more peculiar to the air of St. James's
than of York; and that this perpetual bloom was not native, but
imported from abroad. Not content with that red and white
which nature gave, your belles are reduced (as they pretend) to
the necessity of supplying the flush of health with the rouge of
vermilion, and giving us Spanish wool for English beauty.
The very reason alleged for this fashionable practice is such
as (if they seriously considered it) the ladies would be ashamed
to mention. ** The late hours they are obliged to keep render
them such perfect frights that they would be as loath to appear
abroad without paint as without clothes.'^ This, it must be ac-
knowledged, is too true; but would they suffer their fathers or
their husbands to wheel them down for one month to the old
mansion house, they would soon be sensible of the change, and
soon perceive how much the early walk exceeds the late assem-
bly. The vigils of the card table have spoiled many a good face;
and I have known a beauty stick to the midnight rubbers, till
she has grown as homely as the queen of spades. There is noth-
ing more certain in all Hoyle's cases, than that whist and late
hours will ruin the finest set of features; but if the ladies would
give up their routs for the healthy amusements of the country, I
will venture to say their carmine would be then as useless as
their artificial nosegays.
A m.oralist might talk to them of the heinousness of the prac-
tice; since all deceit is criminal, and painting is no better than
looking a lie. And should they urge that nobody is deceived
by it, he might add that the plea for admitting it is then at an
end; since few are yet arrived at that height of French polite-
ness, as to dress their cheeks in public, and to profess wearing
vermilion as openly as powder. But I shall content myself with
using an argument more likely to prevail; and such, I trust, will
be the assurance that this practice is highly disagreeable to the
men. What must be the mortification, and what the disgust of
the lover, who goes to bed to a bride as blooming as an angel,
and finds her in the morning as wan and as yellow as a corpse ?
For marriage soon takes off the mask; and all the resources of
art, all the mysteries of the toilet, are then at an end. He that
is thus wedded to a cloud instead of a Juno may well be allowed
to complain, but without relief; for this is a custom, which, once
admitted, so tarnishes the skin that it is next to impossible ever
to retrieve it. Let me, therefore, caution these young beginners,
JOHN BUNCOMBE 150I
who are not yet discolored past redemption, to leave it ofF in
time, and endeavor to procure and preserve by early hours that
unaffected bloom, which art cannot give, and which only age or
sickness can take away.
Our beauties were formerly above making use of so poor an
artifice', they trusted to the lively coloring of nature, which was
heightened by temperance and exercise; but our modern belles
are obliged to retouch their cheeks every day, to keep them in
repair. We were then as superior to the French in the assem-
bly as in the field; but since a trip to France has been thought
a requisite in the education of our ladies as well as gentlemen,
our polite females have thought fit to dress their faces, as well
as their heads, a la mode de Paris. I am told that when an
English lady is at Paris, she is so surrounded with false faces
that she is herself obliged (if she would not appear singular) to
put on the mask. But who would exchange the brilliancy of the
diamond for the faint lustre of French paste ? And for my part,
I would as soon expect that an English beauty at Morocco would
japan her face with lampblack, in complaisance to the sable
beauties of that country. Let the French ladies whitewash and
plaster their fronts, and lay on their colors with a trowel; but
these daubings of art are no more to be compared to the gen-
uine glow of a British cheek than the coarse strokes of the
painter's brush can resemble the native veins of the marble.
This contrast is placed in a proper light in Mr. Addison's fine
epigram on Lady Manchester, which will serve to convince us of
the force of undissembled beauty : —
® When haughty Gallia's dames, that spread
O'er their pale cheeks a lifeless red,
Beheld this beauteous stranger there.
In native charms divinely fair.
Confusion in their looks they show'd,
And with unborrow'd blushes glow'd.*
I think, Mr. Town, you might easily prevail • on your fair
readers to leave off this unnatural practice, if you could once thor-
oughly convince them that it impairs their beauty instead of im-
proving it. A lady's face, like the coats in the ** Tale of a Tub,"
if left to itself, will wear well; but if you offer to load it with
foreign ornaments, you destroy the original ground.
1502 JOHN DUNCOMBE
Among other matter of wonder on my first coming to town,
I was much surprised at the general appearance of youth among
the ladies. At present there is no distinction in their complex-
ions between a beauty in her teens and a lady in her grand
climacteric: yet, at the same time, I could not but take notice of
the wonderful variety in the face of the same lady. I have
known an olive beauty on Monday grow very ruddy and bloom-
ing on Tuesday; turn pale on Wednesday; come round to the
olive hue again on Thursday; and, in a word, change her com-
plexion as often as her gown. I was amazed to find no old
aunts in this town, except a few unfashionable people, whom no-
body knows; the rest still continuing in the zenith of their youth
and health, and falling off, like timely fruit, without any previous
decay. All this was a mystery that I could not unriddle, till on
being introduced to some ladies I unluckily improved the hue
of my lips at the expense of a fair one, who unthinkingly had
turned her cheek; and found that my kisses were given (as is
observed in the epigram), like those of Pyramus, through the
wall. I then discovered that this surprising youth and beauty
was all counterfeit ; and that (as Hamlet says) '* God had given
them one face, and they had themselves another. ^^
I have mentioned the accident of my carrying off half a lady's
face by a salute, that your courtly dames may learn to put on
their faces a little tighter; but as for my own daughters, while
such fashions prevail they shall still remain in Yorkshire. There
I think they are pretty safe; for this unnatural fashion will
hardly make its way into the country, as this vamped complex-
ion would not stand against the rays of the sun, and would in-
evitably melt away in a country dance. The ladies have, indeed,
been always the greatest enemies to their own beauty, and seem
to have a design against their own faces. At one time the whole
countenance was eclipsed in a black velvet mask; at another it
was blotted with patches; and at present it is crusted over with
plaster of Paris. In those battered belles, who still aim at con-
quest, this practice is in some sort excusable; but it is surely as
ridiculous in a young lady to give up beauty for paint as it
would be to draw a good set of teeth merely to fill their places
with a row of ivory.
Indeed, so common is this fashion among the young as well
as the old, that when I am in a group of beauties I consider
them as so many pretty pictures, — looking about me with as little
JOHN DUNCOMBE 1503
emotion as I do at Hudson's; and if anything fills me with ad-
miration, it is the judicious arrangement of the tints and the
delicate touches of the painter. Art very often seems almost to
vie with nature: but my attention is too frequently diverted by
considering the texture and hue of the skin beneath; and the
picture fails to charm, while my thoughts are engrossed by the
wood and canvas. I am, sir,
Your humble servant,
RUSTICUS.
Number 46 of the Connoisseur complete
JOHN EARLE
{c. 1 601-1665)
s^
LARENDON says that Earle was *^ of a conversation so pleasant
and delightful, so very innocent, and so very facetious, that
no man's company was more desired and loved. *> Those
who read " Microcosmography : or, A Piece of the World Discovered in
Essays and Characters,*^ written by Earle in imitation of Theophras-
tus, will know for themselves that all Clarendon says, and more, is
justified by the facts. Earle is one of those very rare and always
delightful essayists who, when they have told all they really know of
one subject, know how to stop and take up another. The title of his
essays any one may translate from " Microcosmography '* into ** A De-
scription of the Microcosm,** but it is not every one, perhaps, who will
remember that according to Hermes Trismegistus and others of equally
venerable authority, the mind and soul of man will give those who
really understand them a microscopic view of the mind and soul of
<*the great universe,** — <Hhe Macrocosm.** This theory of man's relation
to the universe Earle has always in view, but it does not make him
too serious, nor could any theory make him dull. His essays are the
best of their class in English, and they are not surpassed in French,
not even by La Bruyere, who, if he is often more witty, lacks the ad-
mirable sense of proportion which gives Earle his place with Bacon
at the head of the list of essayists who know how to be brief with-
out becoming either disconnected or obscure.
Born at York about the year 1601, Earle was educated at Oxford
for the Church. After his graduation he became proctor of the uni-
versity, and in 1642 he was elected to the celebrated Westminster
Assembly. Being a strong Royalist, he declined to sit, and after the
defeat of the Stuarts at Worcester he went into exile with them.
After the Restoration he was chaplain to the king, who made him a
bishop in 1662. He died November 17th, 1665, leaving a reputation
for good-nature and kindness of heart, which is fully borne out by
even the most satirical of his essays. It may fairly be said that his
is the best and least Ciceronian English prose of the reign of Charles
11.. for in spite of his classical learning he uses the genuine English
syntax of King Alfred, — short sentences with few and short dependent
JOHN EARLE 1505
clauses. His essay on ^< A Child ^* is a work of genius both in thought
and in expression. Perhaps it is the deepest as it is the simplest of
all his * pieces of the world characterized/^ but they are all works of
genius. W. V. B.
ON A CHILD
A CHILD is a man in a small letter, yet the best copy of Adam
before he tasted of Eve or the apple; and he is happy whose
small practice in the world can only write his character.
He is Nature's fresh picture newly drawn in oil, which time and
much handling dims and defaces. His soul is yet a white paper
unscribbled with observations of the world, wherewith, at length,
it becomes a blurred notebook. He is purely happy because he
knows no evil, nor hath made means by sin to be acquainted
with misery. He arrives not at the mischief of being wise, nor
endures evils to come by foreseeing them. He kisses and loves
all, and, when the smart of the rod is past, smiles on his beater.
Nature and his parents alike dandle him, and tice him on with a
bait of sugar to a draught of wormwood. He plays yet, like a
young prentice the first day, and is not come to his task of
melancholy. His hardest labor is his tongue, as if he were loath
to use so deceitful an organ; and he is best company with it
when he can but prattle. We laugh at his foolish sports, but
his game is our earnest; and his drums, rattles, and hobbyhorses,
but the emblems and mocking of man's business. His father hath
writ him as his own little story, wherein he reads those days of
his life that he cannot remember, and sighs to see what inno-
cence he hath outlived. The elder he grows, he is a stair lower
from God; and, like his first father, much worse in his breeches.
He is the Christian's example, and the old man's relapse; the
one imitates his pureness, and the other falls into his simplicity.
Could he put off his body with his little coat, he had got eternity
without a burden, and exchanged but one heaven for another.
Complete. Number 1. of «MicrocosmogTaphy.»
IV— 95
iqoO JOHN EARLE
ON A YOUNG RAW PREACHER
A YOUNG raw preacher is a bird not yet fledged, that hath
hopped out of his nest to be chirping on a hedge, and will
be straggling abroad at what peril soever. His backward-
ness in the university hath set him thus forward; for had he not
truanted there, he had not been so hasty a divine. His small
standing, and time, hath made him a proficient only in boldness,
out of which, and his tablebook, he is furnished for a preacher
His collections of study are the notes of sermons, which, taken up
at St. Mary's, he utters in the country; and if he write brachyg-
raphy, his stock is so much the better. His writing is more
than his reading, for he reads only what he gets without book.
Thus accomplished he comes down to his friends, and his first
salutation is grace and peace out of the pulpit. His prayer is
conceited, and no man remembers his college more at large. The
pace of his sermon is a full career, and he runs wildly over hill
and dale till the clock stop him. The labor of it is chiefly in
his lungs; and the only thing he has made in it himself, is the
faces. He takes on against the pope without mercy, and has a
jest still in lavender for Bellarmine; yet he preaches heresy, if
it comes in his way, though with a mind, I must needs say, very
orthodox. His action is all passion, and his speech interjections.
He has an excellent faculty in bemoaning the people, and spits
with a very good grace. [His style is compounded of twenty sev-
eral men's, only his body imitates some one extraordinary.] He
will not draw his handkercher out of his place, nor blow his nose
without discretion. His commendation is that he never looks
upon book; and indeed he was never used to it. He preaches
but once a year, though twice on Sunday; for the stuff is still
the same, only the dressing a little altered: he has more tricks
with a sermon than a tailor with an old cloak, to turn it, and
piece it, and at last quite disguise it with a new preface. If he
have waded further in his profession, and would show reading of
his own, his authors are postils, and his school divinity a cate-
chism. His fashion and demure habit get him in with some
town precisian, and makes him a guest on Friday nights. You
shall know him by his narrow velvet cape, and serge facing; and
his ruff, next his hair, the shortest thing about him. The com-
panion of his walk is some zealous tradesman, whom he astonishes
with strange points, which they both understand alike. His friends
JOHN EARLE 1507
and much painfulness may prefer him to thirty pounds a year,
and this means to a chambermaid; with whom we leave him now
in the bonds of wedlock: next Sunday you shall have him again.
Complete. Number II. of «Microcosmog^aphy.>*
ON THE SELF-CONCEITED MAN
A SELF-CONCEITED man is one that knows himself so well, that
he does not know himself. Two ^* excellent well-dones " have
undone him, and he is guilty of it that first commended
him to madness. He is now become his own book, which he
pores on continually, yet like a truant reader skips over the harsh
places, and surveys only that which is pleasant. In the specula-
tion of his own good parts, his eyes, like a drunkard's, see all
double, and his fancy, like an old man's spectacles, make a
great letter in a small print. He imagines every place where he
comes his theatre, and not a look stirring but his spectator; and
conceives men's thoughts to be very idle, that is [only] busy
about him. His walk is still in the fashion of a march, and like
his opinion unaccompanied, with his eyes most fixed upon his own
person, or on others with reflection to himself. If he have done
anything that has passed with applause, he is always re-acting it
alone, and conceits the ecstasy his hearers were in at every period.
His discourse is all positions and definitive decrees, with ^^ thus it
must be '"' and *^ thus it is, '^ and he will not humble his authority
to prove it. His tenet is always singular and aloof from the vul-
gar as he can, from which you must not hope to wrest him. He
has an excellent humor for an heretic, and in these days made the
first Arminian. He prefers Ramus before Aristotle, and Paracel-
sus before Galen [and whosoever with most paradox is com-
mended]. He much pities the world that has no more insight
in his parts, when he is too well discovered even to this very
thought. A flatterer is a dunce to him, for he can tell him noth-
ing but what he knows before; and yet he loves him too, because
he is like himself. Men are merciful to him, and let him alone,
for if he be once driven from his humor, he is like two inward
friends fallen out: his own bitter enemy and discontent presently
makes a murder. In sum, he is a bladder blown up with wind,
which the least flaw crushes to nothing.
Complete. Number XI. of « Microcosmography. *
I50S JOHN EARLE
ON THE TOO IDLY RESERVED MAN
A TOO idly reserved man is one that is a fool with discretion,
or a strange piece of politician that manages the state of
himself. His actions are his privy council, wherein no man
must partake beside. He speaks under rule and prescription, and
dares not show his teeth without Machiavel. He converses with
his neighbors as he would in Spain, and fears an inquisitive man
as much as the Inquisition. He suspects all questions for exami-
nations, and thinks you would pick something out of him, and
avoids you. His breast is like a gentlewoman's closet, which locks
up every toy or trifle, or some bragging mountebank that makes
every stinking thing a secret. He delivers you common matters
with great conjuration of silence, and whispers you in the ear
acts of parliament. You may as soon wrest a tooth from him as
a paper, and whatsoever he reads is letters. He dares not talk
of great men for fear of bad comments, and he knows not how
his words may be misapplied. Ask his opinion, and he tells you
his doubt; and he never hears anything more astonishedly than
what he knows before. His words are like the cards at primivist,
where six is eighteen, and seven, one and twenty; for they never
signify what they sound; but if he tell you he will do a thing,
it is as much as if he swore he would not. He is one, indeed,
that takes all men to be craftier than they are, and puts himself
to a great deal of affliction to hinder their plots and designs,
where they mean freely. He has been long a riddle himself, but
at last finds OEdipuses; for his over-acted dissimulation discovers
him, and men do with him as they would with Hebrew letters,
spell him backwards and read him.
Complete. Number XII. of «Microcosmography.»
ON THE YOUNG MAN
HE IS now out of nature's protection, though not yet able to
guide himself, but left loose to the world and fortune, from
which the weakness of his childhood preserved him ; and
now his strength exposes him. He is, indeed, just of age to be
miserable, yet in his own conceit first begins to be happy; and
he is happier in this imagination, and his misery not felt is less.
JOHN EARLE 1509
He sees yet but the outside of the world and men, and conceives
them according to their appearing, glister, and out of this igno-
rance believes them. He pursues all vanities for happiness, and
[enjoys them best in this fancy]. His reason serves not to curb,
but understand his appetite, and prosecute the motions thereof
with a more eager earnestness. Himself is his own temptation,
and needs not Satan, and the world will come hereafter. He
leaves repentance for gray hairs, and performs it in being cov-
etous. He is mingled with the vices of the age as the fashion
and custom, with which he longs to be acquainted, and sins to
better his understanding. He conceives his youth as the season
of his lust, and the hour wherein he ought to be bad; and be-
cause he would not lose his time, spends it. He distastes reli-
gion as a sad thing, and is six years older for a thought of heaven.
He scorns and fears, and yet hopes for old age, but dares not
imagine it with wrinkles. He loves and hates with the same in-
flammation, and when the heat is over is cool alike to friends
and enemies. His friendship is seldom so steadfast but that lust,
drink, or anger may overturn it. He offers you his blood to-day
in kindness, and is ready to take yours to-morrow. He does sel-
dom anything which he wishes not to do again, and is only wise
after a misfortune. He suffers much for his knowledge, and a
great deal of folly it is makes him a wise man. He is free from
many vices, by being not grown to the performance, and is only
more virtuous out of weakness. Every action is his danger, and
every man his ambush. He is a ship without pilot or tackling,
and only good fortune may steer him. If he scape this age, he
has scaped a tempest, and may live to be a man.
Complete. Number XVI. of « Microcosmogfraphy.®
ON DETRACTORS
A DETRACTOR is ouc of a moTc cunning and active envy, where-
with he gnaws not foolishly himself, but throws it abroad
and would have it blister others. He is commonly some
weak-parted fellow, and worse minded, yet is strangely ambitious
to match others, not by mounting their worth, but bringing them
down with his tongue to his own poorness. He is indeed like
the red dragon that pursued the woman, for when he cannot
overreach another, he opens his mouth and throws a flood after
IglO JOHN EARLE
to drown him. You cannot anger him worse than to do well,
and he hates you more bitterly for this than if you had cheated
him of his patrimony with your own discredit. He is always
slighting the general opinion, and wondering why such and such
men should be applauded. Commend a good divine, he cries
Postilling; a philologer, Pedantry; a poet, Rhyming; a schoolman,
Dull wrangling; a sharp conceit, Boyishness; an honest man.
Plausibility. He comes to public things not to learn, but to
catch, and if there be but one solecism, that is all he carries
away. He looks on all things with a prepared sourness, and is
still furnished with a pish beforehand, or some musty proverb
that disrelishes all things whatsoever. If fear of the company
make him second a commendation, it is like a law writ, always
with a clause of exception, or to smooth his way to some greater
scandal. He will grant you something, and bate more; and this
bating shall in conclusion take away all he granted. His speech
concludes still with an Oh! but, — and I could wish one thing
amended; and this one thing shall be enough to deface all his
former commendations. He will be very inward with a man to
fish some bad out of him, and make his slanders hereafter more
authentic, when it is said a friend reported it. He will inveigle
you to naughtiness to get your good name into his clutches; he
will be your pander to have you on the hip for a whoremaster,
and make you drunk to show you reeling. He passes the more
plausibly because all men have a smatch of his humor, and it is
thought freeness which is malice. If he can say nothing of a
man, he will seem to speak riddles, as if he could tell strange
stories if he would; and when he has racked his invention to the
utmost, he ends, — but I wish him well, and therefore must hold
my peace. He is always listening and inquiring after men, and
suffers not a cloak to pass by him unexamined. In brief, he is
one that has lost all good himself, and is loath to find it in another.
Complete. Number XXIV. of «Microcosmography.*
ON THE « COLLEGE MAN»
A YOUNG gentleman of the university is one that comes there
to wear a gown, and to say hereafter he has been at the
university. His father sent him thither because he heard
there were the best fencing and dancing schools; from these he
JOHN EARLE 151I
has his edncaticn, from his tutor the oversight. The first ele-
ment of his knowledge is to be shown the colleges, and initiated
in a tavern by the way, which hereafter he will learn of himself.
The two marks of his seniority is the bare velvet of his gown
and his proficiency at tennis, where when he can once play a set,
he is a freshman no more. His study has commonly handsome
shelves, his books neat silk strings, which he shows to his father's
man, and is loath to untie or take down for fear of misplacing.
Upon foul days for recreation he retires thither, and looks over
the pretty book his tutor reads to him, which is commonly some
short history, or a piece of Euphormio; for which his tutor gives
him money to spend next day. His main loitering is at the li-
brary, where he studies arms and books of honor, and turns a
gentleman critic in pedigrees. Of all things he endures not to
be mistaken for a scholar, and hates a black suit, though it be
made of satin. His companion is ordinarily some stale fellow,
that has been notorious for an ingle to gold hatbands, whom he
admires at first, afterward scorns. If he have spirit or wit he
may light of better company, and may learn some flashes of wit,
which may do him knight's service in the country hereafter.
But he is now gone to the inns-of-court, where he studies to for-
get what he learned before, his acquaintance and the fashion.
Complete. Number XXV. of « Microcosm ography.*
ON THE WEAK MAN
A WEAK man is a child at man's estate, one whom nature hud-
dled up in haste, and left his best part unfinished. The
rest of him is grown to be a man, only his brain stays be-
hind. He is one that has not improved his first rudiments, nor
attained any proficiency by his stay in the world; but we may
speak of him yet as when he was in the bud, a good, harmless
nature, a well-meaning mind [and no more]. It is his misery
that he now wants a tutor, and is too old to have one. He is two
steps above a fool, and a great many more below a wise man; yet
the fool is oft given him, and by those whom he esteems most.
Some tokens of him are: — he loves men better upon relation
than experience, for he is exceedingly enamored of strangers, and
none quicklier aweary of his friend. He charges you at first
meeting with all his secrets, and on better acquaintance grows
1511 JOHN EARLE
more reserved. Indeed, lie is one that mistakes much his abusers
for friends, and his friends for enemies, and he apprehends your
hate in nothing so much as in good counsel. One that is flexible
with anything but reason, and then only perverse. A great af-
fecter of wits and such prettinesses; and his company is costly to
him, for he seldom has it but invited. His friendship commonly
is begun in a supper, and lost in lending money. The tavern is
a dangerous place to him, for to drink and be drunk is with him
all one, and his brain is sooner quenched than his thirst. He is
drawn into naughtiness with company, but suffers alone, and the
bastard commonly laid to his charge. One that will be patiently
abused, and take exception a month after when he understands
it, and then be abused again into a reconcilement; and you can-
not endear him more than by cozening him, and it is a tempta-
tion to those that would not. One discoverable in all silliness to
all men but himself, and you may take any man's knowledge of
him better than his own. He will promise the same thing to
twenty, and rather than deny one break with all. One that has
no power over himself, over his business, over his friends, but a
prey and pity to all; and if his fortunes once sink, men quickly
cry, Alas! — and forget him.
Complete. Number XXVI. of « Microcosmography. »
ON THE CONTEMPLATIVE MAN
A CONTEMPLATIVE man is a scholar in this great university the
world; and the same his book and study. He cloisters not
his meditations in the narrow darkness of a room, but sends
them abroad with his eyes, and his brain travels with his feet.
He looks upon man from a high tower, and sees him trulier at
this distance in his infirmities and poorness. He scorns to mix
himself in men's actions, as he would to act upon a stage; but
sits aloft on the scaffold a censuring spectator. He will not lose
his time by being busy, or make so poor a use of the world as
to hug and embrace it. Nature admits him as a partaker of her
sports, and asks his approbation as it were of her own works
and variety. He comes not in company, because he would not
be solitary, but finds discourse enough with himself; and his own
thoughts are his excellent playfellows. He looks not upon a
thing as a yawning stranger at novelties, but his search is more
JOHN EARLE 1513
mysterious and inward, and he spells heaven out of earth. He
knits his observations together, and makes a ladder of them all
to climb to God. He is free from vice, because he has no occa-
sion to employ it, and is above those ends that make man wicked.
He has learnt all can here be taught him, and comes now to
heaven to see more.
Complete. Number XXXIII. of «Microcosmography.»
ON A VULGAR-SPIRITED MAN
A VULGAR-SPIRITED man is one of the herd of the world. One
that follows merely the common cry, and makes it louder
by one. A man that loves none but who are publicly af-
fected, and he will not be wiser than the rest of the town. That
never owns a friend after an ill name, or some general imputation,
though he knows it most unworthy. That opposes to reason,
*^ Thus men say *^ ; and " Thus most do '* ; and ^* Thus the world
goes '^ ; and thinks this enough to poise the other. That worships
men in place, and those only; and thinks all a great man speaks
oracles. Much taken with my lord's jest, and repeats you it all
to a syllable. One that justifies nothing out of fashion, nor any
opinion out of the applauded way. That thinks certainly all Span-
iards and Jesuits very villains, and is still cursing the pope and
Spinola. One that thinks the gravest cassock the best scholar;
and the best clothes the finest man. That is taken only with
broad and obscene wit, and hisses anything too deep for him.
That cries, Chaucer for his money above all our English poets,
because the voice has gone so, and he has read none. That is
much ravished with such a nobleman's courtesy and would ven-
ture his life for him because he put off his hat. One that is
foremost still to kiss the king's hand, and cries, *' God bless his
Majesty!*^ loudest. That rails on all men condemned and out of
favor, and the first that says, « Away with the traitors ! ^ — yet
struck with much ruth at executions, and for pity to see a man
die could kill the hangman. That comes to London to see it,
and the pretty things in it, and, the chief cause of his journey,
the bears. That measures the happiness of the kingdom by the
cheapness of com, and conceives no harm of state but ill trad-
ing. Within this compass, too, come those that are too much
wedged into the world, and have no lifting thoughts above those
1514 JOHN EARLE
things; that call to thrive to do well; and preferment only the
grace of God. That aim all studies at this mark, and show you
poor scholars as an example to take heed by. That think the
prison and want a judgment for some sin, and never like well
hereafter of a jailbird. That know no other content but wealth,
bravery, and the town pleasures; that think all else but idle spec-
ulation, and the philosophers madmen. In short, men that are
carried away with all outwardnesses, shows, appearances, the
stream, the people; for there is no man of worth but has a piece
of singularity, and scorns something.
Complete. Number XXXIX. of «Microcosmography.»
ON PRETENDERS TO LEARNING
A PRETENDER to learning is one that would make all others
more fools than himself; for thoiigh he know nothing, he
would not have the world know so much. He conceits
nothing in learning but the opinion, which he seeks to purchase
without it, though he might with less labor cure his ignorance
than hide it. He is indeed a kind of scholar mountebank, and
his art our delusion. He is tricked out in all the accoutrements
of learning, and at the first encounter none passes better. He is
oftener in his study than at his book, and you cannot pleasure
him better than to deprehend him; yet he hears you not till the
third knock, and then comes out very angry as interrupted. You
find him in his slippers and a pen in his ear, in which formahty
he was asleep. His table is spread wide with some classic folio,
which is as constant to it as the carpet, and hath lain open in
the same page this half year. His candle is always a longer sit-
ter up than himself, and the boast of his window at midnight.
He walks much alone in the posture of meditation, and has a
book still before his face in the fields. His pocket is seldom
without a Greek Testament or Hebrew Bible which he opens only
in the church, and that when some stander-by looks over. He
has sentences for company, some scatterings of Seneca and Taci-
tus, which are good upon all occasions. If he reads anything in
the morning, it comes up all at dinner; and as long as that lasts,
the discourse is his. He is a great plagiary of tavern wit, and
comes to sermons only that he may talk of Austin. His parcels
are the mere scrapings from company, yet he complains at part-
JOHN EARLE 1515
ing what time he has lost. He is wondrously capricious to seem
a judgment, and listens with a sour attention to what he under-
stands not. He talks much of Scaliger, and Casaubon, and the
Jesuits, and prefers some unheard-of Dutch name before them
all. He has verses to bring in upon these and these hints, and
it shall go hard but he will wind in his opportunity. He is crit-
ical in a language he cannot conster, and speaks seldom under
Arminius in divinity. His business and retirement and caller
away is his study, and he protests no delight to it comparable.
He is a great nomenclator of authors, which he has read in gen-
eral in the catalogue, and in particular in the title, and goes sel-
dom so far as the dedication. He never talks of anything but
learning, and learns all from talking. Three encounters with the
same men pump him, and then he only puts in or gravely says
nothing. He has taken pains to be an ass, though not to be a
scholar, and is at length discovered and laughed at.
Complete. Number XLV. of <<Microcosmography.*
T"
ON CHURCH CHOIRS
<HE common singing-men in cathedral churches are a bad so-
I ciety, and yet a company of good fellows that roar deep in
the choir, deeper in the tavern. They are the eight parts of
speech which go to the syntaxis of service, and are distinguished
by their noises much like bells, for they make not a concert, but
a peal. Their pastime or recreation is prayers, their exercise
drinking, yet herein so religiously addicted that they serve God
oftest when they are drunk. Their humanity is a leg to the
residencer, their learning a chapter, for they learn it commonly
before they read it; yet the old Hebrew names are little beholden
to them, for they miscall them worse than one another. Though
they never expound the Scripture, they handle it much, and pol-
lute the Gospel with two things, their conversation and their
thumbs. Upon workydays they behave themselves at prayers as
at their pots, for they swallow them down in an instant. Their
gowns are laced commonly with streamings of ale, the superflui-
ties of a cup or throat above measure. Their skill in melody
makes them the better companions abroad, and their anthems
abler to sing catches. Long lived for the most part they are not,
especially the bass, they overflow their bank so often to drown
1516 JOHN EARLE
the organs. Briefly, if they escape arresting, they die constantly
in God's service; and to take their death with more patience,
they have wine and cakes at their funeral, and now they keep the
church a great deal better, and help to fill it with their bones as
before with their noise.
Complete. Number XLVII. of « Microcosmography. »
ON A SHOP-KEEPER
HIS shop is his well-stuffed book, and himself the title-page of
it, or index. He utters much to all men, though he sells but
to a few, and entreats for his own necessities by asking
others what they lack. No man speaks more and no more, for
his words are like his wares, twenty of one sort, and he goes
over them alike to all comers. He is an arrogant commender of
his own things; for whatsoever he shows you is the best in the
town, though the worst in his shop. His conscience was a thing
that would have laid upon his hands, and he was forced to put
it off, and makes great use of honesty to profess upon. He tells
you lies by rote, and not minding, as the phrase to sell in, and
the language he spent most of his years to learn. He never
speaks so truly as when he says he would use you as his brother;
for he would abuse his brother, and in his shop thinks it lawful.
His religion is much in the nature of his customers, and indeed
the pander to it; and by a misinterpreted sense of Scripture
makes a gain of his godliness. He is your slave while you pay
him ready money, but if he once befriend you, your tyrant, and
you had better deserve his hate than his trust.
Complete. Number XLVIII. of ^Microcosmog^aphy.**
ON THE BLUNT MAN
A BLUNT man is one whose wit is better pointed than his be-
havior, and that coarse and unpolished, not out of ignorance
so much as humor. He is a great enemy to the fine gen-
tleman, and these things of compliment, and hates ceremony in
conversation as the Puritan in religion. He distinguishes not
betwixt fair and double dealing, and suspects all smoothness for
the dress of knavery He starts at the encounter of a salutation
JOHN EARLE T517
as an assault, and beseeches you in choler to forbear your cour-
tesy. He loves not anything in discourse that comes before the
purpose, and is always suspicious of a preface. Himself falls
rudely still on his matter without any circumstance, except he
use an old proverb for an introduction. He swears old out-of-
date innocent oaths, as, By the mass! By our lady! and such
like, and though there be lords present, he cries, My masters!
He is exceedingly in love with his humor, which makes him al
ways profess and proclaim it, and you must take what he says
patiently, because he is a plain man. His nature is his excuse
still, and other men's tyrant; for he must speak his mind, and
that is his worst, and craves your pardon most injuriously for
not pardoning you. His jests best become him, because they
come from him rudely and unaffected; and he has the luck com-
monly to have them famous. He is one that will do more than
he will speak, and yet speak more than he will hear; for though
he love to touch others, he is touchy himself, and seldom to his
own abuses replies but with his fists. He is as squeasy of his
commendations as his courtesy, and his good word is like a eu-
logy in a satire. He is generally better favored than he favors,
as being commonly well expounded in his bitterness, and no man
speaks treason more securely. He chides great men with most
boldness, and is counted for it an honest fellow. He is grumbling
much in the behalf of the commonwealth, and is in prison oft for
it with credit. He is generally honest, but more generally thought
so, and his downrightness credits him, as a man not well bended
and crookened to the times. In conclusion, he is not easily bad,
in whorrx this quality is nature; but the counterfeit is most dan-
gerous, since he is disguised in a humor that professes not to
disguise.
Complete. Number XLIX. of «Microcosmography.>>
ON A CRITIC
A CRITIC is one that has spelled over a great many books, and
his observation is the orthography. He is the surgeon of old
authors, and heals the wounds of dust and ignorance. He
converses much in fragments and desunt multa's, and if he piece
it up with two line's he is more proud of that book than the au-
thor. He runs over all sciences to peruse their svntaxis, and
15 iS JOHN EARLE
thinks all learning comprised in writing Latin. He tastes styles
as some discreeter palates do wine; and tells you which is genu-
ine, which sophisticate and bastard. His own phrase is a miscel-
lany of old words, deceased long before the Caesars, and entombed
by Varro, and the modernest man he follows is Plautus. He
writes omneis at length, and quicquid^ and his gerund is most in-
conformable. He is a troublesome vexer of the dead, which after
3o long sparing must rise up to the judgment of his castigations.
He is one that makes all books sell dearer, whilst he swells them
into folios with his comments.
Complete. Number LI. of «MicrocosmogTaphy.»
ON THE MODEST MAN
A MODEST man is a far finer man than he knows of, one that
shews better to all men than himself, and so much the bet-
ter to all men, as less to himself; for no quality sets a man
off like this, and commends him more against his will: and he
can put up any injury sooner than this (as he calls it) your irony.
You shall hear him confute his commenders, and giving reasons
how much they are mistaken, and is angry almost if they do not
believe him. Nothing threatens him so much as great expecta-
tion, which he thinks more prejudicial than your under-opinion,
because it is easier to make that false than this true. He is one
that sneaks from a good action as one that had pilfered, and
dare not justify it; and is more blushingly reprehended in this
than others in sin: that counts all public declarings of himself
but so many penances before the people; and the more you ap-
plaud him the more you abash him, and he recovers not his face
a month after. One that is easy to like anything of another man's,
and thinks all he knows not of him better than that he knows.
He excuses that to you which another would impute ; and if you
pardon him is satisfied. One that stands in no opinion because
it is his own, but suspects it rather, because it is his own, and is
confuted and thanks you. He sees nothing more willingly than
his errors, and it is his error sometimes to be too soon persuaded.
He is content to be auditor where he only can speak, and con-
tent to go away and think himself instructed. No man is so
weak that he is ashamed to learn of, and is less ashamed to con-
fess it; and he finds many times even in the dust what others
JOHN EaRLE 15 1 9
overlook and lose. Every man's presence is a kind of bridle to
him, to stop the roving of his tongue and passions; and even im-
pudent men look for this reverence from him, and distaste that
in him which they suffer in themselves, as one in whom vice is
ill favored and shows more scurvily than another A bawdy
jest shall shame him more than a bastard another man, and he
that got it shall censure him among the rest. And he is coward
to nothing more than an ill tongue, and whosoever dare lie on
him hath power over him ; and if you take him by his look he is .
guilty. The main ambition of his life is not to be discredited,
and for other things, his desires are more limited than his for-
tunes, which he thinks preferment, though never so mean, and
that he is to do something to deserve this. He is too tender to
venture on great places, and would not hurt a dignity to help
himself. If he do, it was the violence of his friends constrained
him; how hardly soever he obtain it, he was harder persuaded to
seek it
Complete. Number LV. of <<Microcosmography.»
ON THE INSOLENT MAN
AN INSOLENT man is a fellow newly great and newly proud;
one that hath put himself into another face upon his pre-
ferment, for his own was not bred to it. One whom for-
tune hath shot up to some office or authority, and he shoots up
his neck to his fortune, and will not bate you an inch of either.
His very countenance and gesture bespeak how much he is, and
if you understand him not, he tells you, and concludes every period
with his place, which you must and shall know. He is one that
looks on all men as if he were angry, but especially on those of
his acquaintance, whom he beats off with a surlier distance, as
men apt to mistake him, because they have known him: and for
this cause he knows not you till you have told him your name,
which he thinks he has heard, but forgot, and with much ado
seems to recover. If you have anything to use him in, you are
his vassal for that time, and must give him the patience of any
injury, which he does only to show what he may do. He snaps
you up bitterly, because he will be offended, and tells you you
are saucy and troublesome, and sometimes takes your money in
thjs language. His very courtesies are intolerable, they are done
r520 JOHN EARLE
with such an arrogance and imputation; and he is the only man
you may hate after a good turn, and not be ungrateful; and
men reckon it among their calamities to be beholden unto him
No vice draws with it a more general hostility, and makes men
readier to search into his faults, and of them, his beginning; and
no tale so unlikely but is willingly heard of him and believed.
And commonly such men are of no merit at all, but make out
in pride what they want in worth, and fence themselves with a
stately kind of behavior from that contempt which would pursue
them. They are men whose preferment does us a great deal of
wrong; and when they are down, we may laugh at them without
breach of good-nature.
Complete. Ntimber LX. of «Microcosmography.»
ON THE HONORABLE OLD MAN
A GOOD old man is the best antiquity, and which we may with
least vanity admire. One whom time hath been thus long
a working, and, like winter fruit, ripened when others are
shaken down. He hath taken out as many lessons of the world
as days, and learned the best thing in it: the vanity of it He
looks o'er his former life as a danger well past, and would not
hazard himself to begin again. His lust was long broken before
his body; yet he is glad this temptation is broke too, and that
he is fortified from it by this weakness. The next door of death
sads him not, but he expects it calmly as his turn in nature ; and
fears more his recoiling back to childishness than dust. All men
look on him as a common father, and on old age, for his sake,
as a reverent thing. His very presence and face puts vice out
of countenance, and makes it an indecorum in a vicious man.
He practices his experience on youth without the harshness of
reproof, and in his counsel his good company. He has some old
stories still of his own seeing to confirm what he says, and makes
them better in the telling; yet is not troublesome neither with
the same tale again, but remembers with them how oft he has
told them. His old sayings and morals seem proper to his beard;
and the poetry of Cato does well out of his mouth, and he speaks
it as if he were the author. He is not apt to put the boy on a
younger man, nor the fool on a boy, but can distinguish gravity
from a sour look, and the less testy he is, the more regarded.
JOHN EARLE 15 2 I
You must pardon him if he like his own times better than these,
because those things are follies to him now that were wisdom
then; yet he makes us of that opinion too when we see him, and
conjecture those times by so good a relic. He is a man capable
of a dearness with the youngest men, yet he not youthfuUer for
them, but they older for him; and no man credits more his
acquaintance. He goes away at last too soon whensoever, with
all men's sorrow but his own; and his memory is fresh, when it
is twice as old.
Complete. Number LXV. of «Microcosmography.»
ON HIGH-SPIRITED MEN
A HIGH-SPIRITED man is one that looks like a proud man, but
is not; you may forgive him his looks for his worth's sake,
for they are only too proud to be base. One whom no
rate can buy off from the least piece of his freedom, and make
him digest an unworthy thought an hour. He cannot crouch to
a great man to possess him, nor fall low to the earth to rebound
never so high again. He stands taller on his own bottom than
others on the advantage ground of fortune, as having solidly that
honor of which title is but the pomp. He does homage to no
man for his great style's sake, but is strictly just in the exaction
of respect again, and will not bate you a compliment. He is
more sensible of a neglect than an undoing, and scorns no man
so much as his surly threatener. A man quickly fired, and
quickly laid down with satisfaction, but remits any injury sooner
than words: only to himself he is irreconcilable, whom he never
forgives a disgrace, but is still stabbing himself with the thought
of it, and no disease that he dies of sooner. He is one had
rather perish than be beholding for his life, and strives more to
be quit with his friend than his enemy. Fortune may kill him
biit not deject him, nor make him fall into an humbler key than
before, but he is now loftier than ever in his own defense; you
shall hear him talk still after thousands, and he becomes it better
than those that have it. One that is above the world and its
drudgerj'-, and cannot pull down his thoughts to the pelting busi-
nesses of life. He would sooner accept the gallows than a mean
trade, or anything that might disparage the height of man in
him, and yet thinks no death comparably base to hanging neither
rv — 96
1522 JOHN EARLE
One that will do nothing upon command, though he would do it
otherwise; and if ever he do evil, it ^s when he is dared to it.
He is one that if fortune equal his worth puts a lustre in all
preferment; but if otherwise he be too much crossed, turns des-
perately melancholy and scorns mankind.
Complete. Number LXVII. of «Microcosmography.»
ON RASH MEN
A RASH man is a man too quick for himself; one whose actions
put a leg still before his judgment, and outrun it. Every
hot fancy or passion is the signal that sets him forward,
and his reason comes still in the rear. One that has brain
enough, but not patience to digest a business, and stay the leis-
ure of a second thought. All deliberation is to him a kind of sloth
and freezing of action, and it shall burn him rather than take
cold. He is always resolved at first thinking, and the ground he
goes upon is, "hap what may. '^ Thus he enters not, but throws
himself violently upon all things, and for the most part is as
violently upon all off again ; and as an obstinate " I will '^ was the
preface to his undertaking, so his conclusion is commonly * I
would* I had not ** ; for such men seldom do anything that they
are not forced to take in pieces again, and are so much furder
off from doing it, as they have done already. His friends are
with him as his physician, sought to only in his sickness and ex-
tremity and to help him out of that mire he has plunged him-
self into; for in the suddenness of his passions he would hear
nothing, and now his ill success has allayed him he hears too
late. He is a man still swayed with the first reports, and no
man more in the power of a pick-thank than he. He is one will
fight first, and then expostulate ; condemn first, and then examine.
He loses his friend in a fit of quarreling, and in a fit of kind-
ness imdoes himself; and then curses the occasion drew this mis-
chief upon him, and cries God mercy for it, and curses again.
His repentance is merely a rage against himself, and he does
something in itself to be repented again. He is a man whom
fortune must go against much to make him happy, for had he
been suffered his own way he had been undone.
Complete. Number LXX. of "Microcosmographv-"
JOHN EARLE 1593
ON PROFANE MEN
A PROFANE man is one that denies God as far as the law gives
him leave; that is, only does not say so in downright terms,
for so far he may go. A man that does the greatest sins
calmly, and as the ordinary actions of life, and as calmly dis-
courses of it again. He will tell you his business is to break
such a commandment, and the breaking of the commandment
shall tempt him to it. His v/ords are but so many vomitings
cast up to the loathsomeness of the hearers, only those of his
company loathe it not. He will take upon him with oaths to
pelt some tenderer man out of his company, and makes good
sport at his conquest over the Puritan fool. The Scripture sup-
plies him for jests, and he reads it on purpose to be thus merry;
he will prove you his sin out of the Bible, and then ask if you
will not take that authority. He never sees the church but of
purpose to sleep in it, or when some silly man preaches, v/ith
whom he means to make sport; and is most jocund in the church.
One that nicknames clergymen with all the terms of reproach, as
"rat, black coat," and the like; which he will be sure to keep
up, and never calls them by other: that sings psalms when he is
drunk, and cries God mercy in mockery, for he must do it. He
is one seems to dare God in all his actions, but indeed would
outdare the opinion of him, which would else turn him desper-
ate; for atheism is the refuge of such sinners, whose repentance
would be only to hang themselves.
Complete. Number LXXII. of « Microcosmog^aphy.»
ON SORDID RICH MEN
A SORDID rich man is a beggar of a fair estate, of whose wealth
we may say as of other men's unthriftiness, that it has
brought him to this: when he had nothing he lived in an-
other kind of fashion. He is a man whom men hate in his own
behalf for using himself thus, and yet, being upon himself, it is
but justice, for he deserves it. Every accession of a fresh heap
bates him so much of his allowance, and brings him a degree
nearer starving His body had been long since desperate, but
for the reparation of other men's tables, where be hoards meats
1524 JOHN EARLE
in his belly for a month, to maintain him in hunger so long.
His clothes were never young in our memory; you might make
long epochas from them, and put them into the almanac with
the dear year and the great frost, and he is known by them
longer than his face. He is one never gave alms in his life, and
yet is as charitable to his neighbor as himself. He will redeem a
penny with his reputation, and lose all his friends to boot; and
his reason is, he will not be undone. He never pays anything
but with strictness of law, for fear of which only he steals not.
He loves to pay short a shilling or two in a great sum, and ia
glad to gain that when he can no more. He never sees friend
but in a journey to save the charges of an inn, and then only is
not sick; and his friends never see him but to abuse him. He
is a fellow indeed of a kind of frantic thrift, and one of the
strangest things that wealth can work.
Complete. Number LXXIV. of « Microcosmography. »
ON A MERE GREAT MAN
A MERE great man is so much heraldry without honor, himself
less real than his title. His virtue is, that he was his
father's son, and all the expectation of him to beget an-
other. A man that lives merely to preserve another's memory,
and let us know who died so many years ago. One of just as
much use as his images, only he differs in this, that he can speak
himself, and save the fellow of Westminster a labor: and he re-
members nothing better than what was out of his life. His
grandfathers and their acts are his discourse, and he tells them
with more glory than they did them: and it is well they did
enough, or else he had wanted matter. His other studies are his
sports and those vices that are fit for great men. Every vanity
of his has his officer, and is a serious employment for his serv-
ants. He talks loud, and bawdily, and scurvily as a part of state,
and they hear him with reverence. All good qualities are below
him, and especially learning, except some parcels of the chronicle
and the writing of his name, which he learns to write not to be
read. He is merely of his servants' faction, and their instrument
for their friends and enemies, and is always least thanked for his
own courtesies. They that fool him most do most with him, and
be little thinks how many laugh at him bare-head. No man is
JOHN EARLE 1 5 25
kept in ignorance more of himself and men, for he hears naught
but flattery; and what is fit to be spoken, truth with so much
preface that it loses itself. Thus he lives till his tomb be made
ready, and is then a grave statue to posterity.
Complete. Number LXXV. of « Microcosmography.®
ON AN ORDINARY HONEST FELLOW
AN ORDINARY honcst fcllow is One whom it concerns to be called
honest, for if he were not this, he Vv-ere nothing: and yet
he is not this neither, but a good, dull, vicious fellow, that
complies well with the deboshments of the time, and is fit for it.
One that has no good part in him to offend his company, or
make him to be suspected a proud fellow, but is sociably a dunce,
and sociably a drinker. That does it fair and above board with-
out legerdemain, and neither sharks for a cup or a reckoning;
that is kind over his beer, and protests he loves you, and begins
to you again, and loves you again. One that quarrels with no
man, but for not pledging him, but takes all absurdities and
commits as many, and is no telltale next morning, though he
remember it. One that will fight for his friend if he hear him
abused, and his friend commonly is he that is most likely, and
he lifts up many a jug in his defense. He rails against none but
censurers, against whom he thinks he rails lawfully, and censures
all those that are better than himself. These good properties
qualify him for honesty enough, and raise him high in the ale-
house commendation, who, if he had any other good quality,
would be named by that. But now for refuge he is an honest
man, and hereafter a sot; only those that commend him think
him not so, and those that commend him are honest fellows.
Complete. Number LXXVIL of «Microcosmography.»
MARIA EDGEWORTH
(1767-1849)
jiss Edgeworth's essay on <* Irish Bulls'* is really a collection
of essays and sketches, the joint work of Miss Edgeworth
and her father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth. In writing his
biography, she says that though she does not clearly remember which
parts are entirely her own, those which contain classical allusions
must be his, as she was << entirely ignorant of the learned languages.'*
This seems to transfer to her father the celebrated sketch of the
quarrel between Dublin shoeblacks, which Saintsbury attributes to
her. It is well enough she should be relieved of it, for there is some-
thing unfeminine and uncharacteristic of her in the classical jesting
on the use of the shoe knife in a street quarrel. Taking the essay
on " Irish Bulls '* as a whole, it had a narrow escape from the great-
ness as an essay, which Miss Edgeworth achieved as a novelist. She
was born in Oxfordshire, England, in 1767, but she belongs of right
to Ireland, where she went when only twelve years old. <^ The Ab-
sentee," one of the many powerful novels in which she rallied the
forces of fiction to the aid of good morals, is a plea for justice for
the Irish peasantry against nonresident landlords. She died in 1849,
after having written eighteen volumes of the best fiction of modern
times. Nearly always she is a good artist as well as a good woman
and a good preacher; and if sometimes she stops the story too long
in the interest of the sermon, it ought to be forgiven her for the
sake of her entire unlikeness to the Sapphos of ^* end-of-the-century **
fiction.
THE ORIGINALITY OF IRISH BULLS EXAMINED
THE difficulty of selecting from the vulgar herd of Irish bulls
one that shall be entitled to the prize, from the united
merits of pre-eminent absurdity and indisputable originality,
is greater than hasty judges may imagine. Many bulls, reputed
to be bred and born in Ireland, are of foreign extraction; and
many more, supposed to be unrivaled in their kind, may be
matched in all their capital points: for instance, there is not a
H
(1767- I 849)
Edgeworth's essay on ^< Irish Bui! "ction
ssays and sketches, the joir rh
■ lard Lovell iid^ as
gh she does not -h
r own, those which contair
« „„4-:j.gjy ignorant of the
T father the celebr
Saintsbury attributes to
■■-'^'^ ^t, for there is some-
he classical jesting
MARIA EDGE WORTH. the essay
the great-
A/ter th< PainttHfr by Ci-t*A< novelist. She
- --.-ht
By Permiaaion of
J. B. l,yon Co., Albeny, N. Y.
th.-
and a eood
fiction.
IX the
atury *
THE OF
HE difficulty of s
that shall be
is g-
to be bre.'i and bo
EXAMINED
Irish bulib
rize, from the united
) I indisputable originality,
hie. Many bulls, reputed
-f foreign extraction; and
i in their ' ' ' "be
r instance, a
^m^'''^^-^Wi^^'^^^'''^m:'^^^^^Si^^
MARIA EDGEWORTH 1527
more celebrated bull than Paddy Blake's. When Paddy heard an
English gentleman speaking of the fine echo at the lake of Kil-
larney, which repeats the sound forty times, he very promptly
observed: ^* Faith, that's nothing at all to the echo in my father's
garden, in the county of Galway : if you say to it, *■ How do you
do, Paddy Blake ? ' it will answer, < Pretty well, I thank you,
sir.>»
Now this echo of Paddy Blake, which has long been the ad-
miration of the world, is not a prodigy unique in its kind; it can
be matched by one recorded in the immortal works of the great
Lord Verulam.
** I remember well,'^ says this father of philosophy, **that when
I went to the echo at Port Charenton^ there was an old Parisian
that took it to be the work of spirits, and of good spirits; ^for,*
said he, *call Satan, and the echo will not deliver back the devil's
name, but will say Va-t-en. * **
The Parisian echo is surely superior to the Hibernian! Paddy
Blake's simply understood and practiced the common rules of
good breeding ; but the Port Charenton echo is " instinct with
spirit,'* and endowed with a nice moral sense.
Among the famous bulls recorded by the illustrious Joe Miller,
there is one which has been continually quoted as an example of
original Irish genius. An English gentleman was writing a letter
in a coffeehouse, and perceiving that an Irishman stationed be-
hind him was taking that liberty which Hephaestion used with
his friend Alexander, instead of putting his seal upon the lips of
the curious impertinent, the Englishman thought proper to re-
prove the Hibernian, if not with delicacy, at least with poetical
justice ; he concluded writing his letter in these words : " I would
say more, but a tal\ Irishman is reading over my shoulder
every word I write.**
* You lie, you scoundrel ! *' said the self-convicted Hibernian.
This blunder is unquestionably excellent; but it is not origi-
nally Irish- it comes, with other riches, from the East, as the
reader may find by looking into a book by M. Galland, entitled,
"The Remarkable Sayings of the Eastern Nations.'*
* A learned man was writing to a friend; a troublesome fellow
was beside him, who was looking over his shoulder at what he
was writing. The learned man, who perceived this, continued
writing in these words, < If an impertinent chap, who stands
beside me, were not looking at what I write, I would write
-[52S MARIA EDGEWORTH
many other things to you which should be known only to you
and to me.*
" The troublesome fellow, who was reading on, now thought it
incumbent upon him to speak, and said, ^ I swear to you that I
have not read or looked at what you are writing.*
^* The learned man replied, ^ Blockhead, as you are, why then
do you say to me what you are now saying ? * **
Making allowance for the difference of manners in eastern
and northern nations, there is certainly such a similarity be-
tween this Oriental anecdote and Joe Miller's story, that we may
conclude the latter is stolen from the former. Now an Irish bull
must be a species of blunder peculiar to Ireland; those that we
have hitherto examined, though they may be called Irish bulls
by the ignorant vulgar, have no right title or claim to such a
distinction. We should invariably exclude from that class all
blunders which can be found in another country. For instance,
a speech of the celebrated Irish beauty, Lady C has been
called a bull; but as a parallel can be produced, in the speech
of an English nobleman, it tells for nothing. When her ladyship
was presented at court, his Majesty George II. politely hoped
<* that, since her arrival in England, she had been entertained
with the gayeties of London.**
** O yes, please your Majesty, I have seen every sight in Lon-
don worth seeing, except a coronation.**
This naivete is certainly not equal to that of the English earl
marshal, who, when his king found fault with some arrangement
at his coronation, said, " Please your Majesty I hope it will be
better the next time.**
A naivete of the same species entailed a heavy tax upon the
inhabitants of Beaune, in France. Beaune is famous for Bur-
gundy; and Henry IV. passing through his kingdom, stopped
there, and was well entertained by his loyal subjects. His Maj-
esty praised the Burgundy which they set before him — <* It was
excellent ! it was admirable ! **
" O sire ! ** cried they, ^* do you think this excellent ? we have
much finer Burgundy than this.**
" Have you so ? then you can afford to pay for it,** cried Henry
IV. ; and he laid a double tax thenceforward upon the Burgundy
of Beaune.
Of the same class of blunders is the following speech, which
we actually heard not long ago from an Irishman: —
MARIA EDGEWORTH 1529
" Please your worship, he sent me to the devil, and I came
straight to your honor.*
We thought this an original Irish blunder, till we recollected
its prototype in Marmontel's ^^ Annette and Lubin. ** Lubin con-
cludes his harangue with, ''■ The bailiff sent us to the devil, and
we came to put ourselves under your protection, my lord.*
The French, at least in former times, were celebrated for
politeness; yet we meet with a naive compliment of a French-
m.an which would have been accounted a bull if it had been
found in Ireland : —
A gentleman was complimenting Madame Denis on the man-
ner in which she had just acted Zara. <* To act that part,* said
she, **a person should be young and handsome.* ^*Ah, madam!*
replied the complimenter na'ivetnent, ^^ you are a complete proof of
the contrary.*
We know not any original Irish blunder superior to this, un-
less it be that which Lord Orford pronounced to be the best
bull that he had ever heard : —
'*f hate that woman,* said a gentleman, looking at one who
had been his nurse, ** I hate that woman, for she changed me at
nurse.*
Lord Orford particularly admires this bull, because in the con-
fusion of the blunderer's ideas he is not clear even of his per-
sonal identity- Philosophers will not perhaps be so ready as his
lordship has been to call this a blunder of the first magnitude.
Those who have never been initiated into the mysteries of meta-
physics may have the presumptuous ignorance to fancy that they
understand what is meant by the common words I or me; but
the able metaphysician knows better than Lord Orford's change-
ling how to prove, to our satisfaction, that we know nothing of
the matter.
*-'• Personal identity, * says Locke, "^ consists not in the identity
of substance, but in the identity of consciousness, wherein Socrates
and the present Mayor of Quinborough agree they are the same
person; if the same Socrates sleeping and waking do not partake
of the same consciousness, Socrates waking and sleeping is not
the same person; and to punish Socrates waking for what sleep-
ing Socrates thought, and waking Socrates was never conscious
of, would be no more right than to punish one twin for what his
brother twin did, whereof he knew nothing, because their out-
1530 MARIA EDGEWORTH
sides are so like that they could not be distinguished; for such
twins have been seen.'*
We may presume that our Hibernian's consciousness could
not retrograde to the time when he was changed at nurse; con-
sequently there was no continuity of identity between the infant
and the man who expressed his hatred of the nurse for perpe-
trating the fraud. At all events, the confusion of identity which
excited Lord Orford's admiration in our Hibernian is by no
means unprecedented in France, England, or ancient Greece, and
consequently it cannot be an instance of national idiosyncrasy, or
an Irish bull. We find a similar blunder in Spain, in the time
of Cervantes: —
"Pray tell me, Squire,** says the duchess, in "Don Quixote,"
" is not your master the person whose history is printed under the
name of the sage Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, who pro-
fesses himself the admirer of one Dulcinea del Toboso ? **
"The very same, my lady," answ^ered Sancho; "and I myself
am that very squire of his who is mentioned, or ought to be
mentioned, in that history, unless they have changed me in the
cradle. "
In Moliere's "Amphitryon " there is a dialogue between Mercure
and Sosie evidently taken from the Attic Lucian. Sosie, being
completely puzzled out of his personal identity, if not out of his
senses, says literally, " Of my being myself I begin to doubt in
good earnest; yet when I feel myself, and when I recollect my-
self, it seems to me that I am I."
We see that the puzzle about identity proves at last to be of
Grecian origin. It is really edifying to observe how those things
which have long been objects of popular admiration shrink and
fade when exposed to the light of strict examination. An ex-
perienced critic proposed that a work should be written to in-
quire into the pretensions of modern writers to original invention,
to trace their thefts, and to restore the property to the ancient
owners. Such a work would require powers and erudition be-
yond what can be expected from any ordinary individual; the
labor must be shared among numbers, and we are proud to assist
in ascertaining the rightful property even of bulls and blunders;
though without pretending, like some literary bloodhounds, to
follow up a plagiarism where common sagacity is at a fault.
Chapter I. of « Irish Bulls >* complete.
MARIA EDGEWORTH 1 531
« HEADS OR TAILS » IN DUBLIN
(This sketch is probably by Miss Edgeworth's father)
A QUARREL happened between two shoeblacks, who were play-
ing- at what in England is called ^^ pitch-farthing'* or ^* heads
and tails/* and in Ireland '^head or harp.** One of the com-
batants threw a small paving stone at his opponent, who drew
out the knife with which he used to scrape shoes, and plunged
it up to the hilt in his companion's breast. It is necessary for
our story to say that near the hilt of this knife was stamped the
name of Lamprey, an eminent cutler in Dublin. The shoeblack
was brought to trial. With a number of insignificant gestures,
which on his audience had all the powers that Demosthenes as-
cribes to action, he, in a language not purely Attic, gave the fol-
lowing account of the affair to his judge: —
* Why, my lard, as I was going past the Royal Exchange, I
meets Billy. * Billy,* says I, ^ will you sky a copper?* 'Done,*
say he, *Done,* says I; and done and done's enough between two
gantlemen. With that I ranged them fair and even with my
hook-em-snivey — up they go. * Music! * says he; — ^ Sculls! * says
I; and down they come, three brown mazards. * By the holy! you
flesh'd 'em,* says he. 'You lie,* says I. With that he ups with
a lump of a two year-old, and lets drive at me. I outs with my
bread-earner, and gives it him up to Lamprey in the bread-
basket. **
To make this intelligible to the English, some comments are
necessary. Let us follow the text, step by step, and it will afford
our readers, as Lord Kames says of Blair's <^ Dissertation on Os-
sian,** a delicious morsel of criticism.
"As I was going past the Royal Exchange, I meets Billy."
In this apparently simple exordium, the scene and the meet-
ing with Billy are brought before the eye by the judicious use of
the present tense.
" Billy, says I, will you sky a copper ? **
" A copper ! ** genus pro specie ! the generit name of copper
for the base individual halfpenny.
*^ Sky a copper. **
To * sky ** is a new verb, which none but a master hand could
have coined. A more splendid metonymy could not be . applied
1532 MARIA EDGEWORTH
upon a more trivial occasion. The lofty idea of raising a metal to
the skies is substituted for the mean thought of tossing up a half-
penny. Our orator compresses his hyperbole into a single word.
* Up they go, ** continues our orator.
<* Music ! '^ says he ; ** Sculls ! *^ says I.
Metaphor continually: on one side of an Irish halfpenny there
is a harp ; this is expressed by the general term " music, ® which
is finely contrasted with the word ** scull,*
*^ Down they come, three brown mazards. "
*^ Mazards ! '^ how the diction of our orator is enriched from
the vocabulary of Shakespeare! The word "head,* instead of being
changed for a more general term, is here brought distinctly to
the eye by the term ** mazard * or " face, * which is more appro-
priate to his Majesty's profile than the word * scull* or **head.*
* By the holy! you flesh'd 'em,* says he.
" By the holy ! * is an oath in which more is meant than meets
the ear; it is an ellipsis — an abridgment of an oath. The full
formula runs thus — By the holy poker of hell ! This instrur
ment is of Irish invention or imagination. It seems a useful
piece of furniture in the place for which it is intended, to stir
the devouring flames, and thus to increase the torments of the
damned. Great judgment is necessary to direct an orator how
to suit his terms to his auditors, so as not to shock their feelings
either by what is too much above or too much below common
life. In the use of oaths, where the passions are warm, this
must be particularly attended to, else they lose their effect, and
seem more the result of the head than of the heart. But to pro-
ceed.
« By the holy! you flesh'd 'em.*
" To flesh * is another verb of Irish coinage ; it means, in shoe-
black dialect, to touch a halfpenny, as it goes up into the air,
with the fleshy part of the thumb, so as to turn it which way
you please, and thus to cheat your opponent. What an intricate
explanation saved by one word!
* * You lie,* says I.*
Here no periphrasis would do the business.
" With that he ups with a lump of a two-year-old, and lets drive
at me.*
*He ups with.* A verb is here formed with two prepositions
— a novelty in grammar. Conjunctions, we all know, are cor-
MARIA EDGEWORTH 1533
rupted Anglo-Saxon verbs; but prepositions, according to Home
Tooke, derive only from Anglo-Saxon nouns.
All this time it is possible that the mere English reader may
not be able to guess what it is that our orator ups with or takes
up. He should be apprised that a " lump of a two-year-old '' is a
middle-sized stone. This is a metaphor, borrowed partly from
the grazier's vocabulary, and partly from the arithmeticians' vade
mecum. A stone, to come under the denomination of a " lump of
a two-year-old,** must be to a less stone as a two-year-old calf is
to a yearling; or it must be to a larger stone than itself as a
two-year-old calf is to an ox. Here the scholar sees that there
must be two statements, — one in the rule of three direct, and one in
the rule of three inverse, — to obtain precisely the thing required;
yet the untutored Irishman, without suspecting the necessity of
this operose process, arrives at the solution of the problem by
some short cut of his own, as he clearly evinces by the propriety
of his metaphor. To be sure, there seems some incongruity in
his throwing this ** lump of a two-year-old ** calf at his adversary.
No man but that of Milo could be strong enough for such a feat.
Upon recollection, however, bold as this figure may seem, there
are precedents for its use.
^^We read in a certain author,'* says Beattie, **of a giant, who,
in his wrath, tore off the Lop of the promontory, and flung it at
the enemy; and so huge was the mass, that you might, says he,
have seen goats browsing on it as it flew through the air.**
Compared with this our orator's figure is cold and tame.
" I outs with my bread-earner, * continues he.
We forbear to comment on ** outs with,** because the intelligent
critic immediately perceives that it has the same sort of merit
ascribed to ^*ups with.*^ Wnat our hero dignifies with the name of
his bread-earner is the knife with which, by scraping shoes, he
earned his bread. Pope's ingenious critic, Mr. Warton, bestows
judicious praise upon the art with which this poet, in the ** Rape
of the Lock,** has used many ^^periphrases and uncommon ex-
pressions ** to avoid mentioning the name of scissors, which would
sound too vulgar for epic dignity — fatal engine, forfex, meeting
points, etc. Though the metonymy of * bread-earner ** for a shoe-
black's knife may not equal these in elegance, it perhaps surpasses
them in ingenuity.
* I gives it him up to Lamprey in the bread-basket. **
T534 MARIA EDGEWORTH
Homer is happy in his description of wounds, but this sur-
passes him in the characteristic choice of circumstance. " Up to
Lamprey** gives us at once a complete idea of the length, breadth,
and thickness of the wound, without the assistance of the coroner.
It reminds us of a passage in Virgil —
*-*^Cervice orantis capulo tenus abdidit ensem?^
**Up to the hilt his shining falchion sheathed.**
From « Irish Bulls. »
JONATHAN EDWARDS
(1703-1758)
Jonathan Edwards, the first great metaphysical writer born in
America, says of himself that he *^ possessed a constitution
^ in many respects peculiarly unhappy, attended with flaccid
solids, vapid, sizy, and scarce fluids, and a low tide of spirits, often
occasioning a kind of childish weakness and contemptibleness of
speech, presence, and demeanor. '^ Perhaps it was the reaction of his
extraordinary intellect against this physical organization which made
possible for him the pitch of eloquence illustrated in his sermons on
the sufferings of the lost in hell. While his celebrity is due chiefly
to these, the permanent place which he holds in English literature is
due to writings on metaphysical subjects to which he was inspired
by Locke.
He was born at East Windsor, Connecticut, October 5th, 1703. His
father was Rev. Timothy Edwards, and as his mother was the daugh-
ter of a clergyman, it may have been partly a result of such hered-
ity that in his eighth or ninth year he <^ experienced two remarkable
seasons of awakening,** — he being even then engaged with the at-
tempt to solve « problems of God's sovereignty,** which led him after--
wards to write his treatise on «The Freedom of the Will** (i754)- He
had begun the study of Latin at the age of six, and the six years
he spent at Yale, including two years after his graduation, made him
a scholar of extraordinary attainments. He began preaching in 1722,
spending eight months in New York, and returning to New England
to continue his studies. In 1723 he became a tutor in Yale College,
remaining there until 1726, when he returned to the pulpit, preaching
at Northampton from 1727 until 1750, when he retired on account of
a disagreement with his congregation over the propriety of prohibit-
ing the younger members from reading books which he regarded as
immoral. Becoming a missionary among the Housatonic Indians in
Berkshire County, Massachusetts, he found leisure among them for
completing four metaphysical works, including that on " The Freedom
of the Will,** which made him famous. As a result he was chosen
president of Princeton College, and installed February i6th, 1758.
The smallpox was then prevalent in New Jersey, and as it was be-
fore the introduction of vaccination he was ^< inoculated ** with the
disease in its virulent form- His death resulted March 22d, 1758.
1536 JONATHAN EDWARDS
Among his works are "A Treatise Concerning the Religious Affec-
tions," 1746; ^*An Essay on the Freedom of the Will," 1754; and <*The
Doctrine of Original Sin Defended," 1758. His writings suggest his
power, but it is only when his imagination has free play in such ser-
mons as ** Wrath upon the Wicked to the Uttermost" that he reaches
his climaxes. The << Transcendentalist " and « Come Outer " move-
m.ents in New England, which made Emerson and Thoreau possible,
are generally attributed to the reaction against the dreadful pictures
drawn by the highly poetical imagination which inspired these ser-
mons.
ON ORDER, BEAUTY, AND HARMONY
THAT consent, agreement, or union of Being to Being, which
has been spoken of, vis., the union or propensity of minds
to mental or spiritual existence, may be called the highest,
and first, or primary beauty that is to be found among things
that exist; being the proper and peculiar beauty of spiritual and
moral Beings, which are the highest and first part of the uni-
versal system, for whose sake all the rest has existence. Yet
there is another inferior, secondary beauty, v/hich is some image
of this, and which is not peculiar to spiritual Beings, but is
found even in inanimate things; which consists in a mutual con-
sent and agreement of different things in form, manner, quantity,
and visible end or design; called by the various names of regu-
larity, order, uniformity, symmetry, proportion, harmony. Such
is the mutual agreement of the various sides of a square, or
equilateral triangle, or of a regular polygon. Such is, as it were,
the mutual consent of the different parts of the periphery of a
circle, or surface of a sphere, and of the corresponding parts of
an ellipsis. Such is the agreement of the colors, figures, dimen-
sions, and distances of the different spots on the chessboard.
Such is the beauty of the figures on a piece of chintz or brocade.
Such is the beautiful proportion of the various parts of a human
body or countenance. And such is the sweet, mutual consent
and agreement of the various notes of a melodious tune. This is
the same that Mr. Hutcheson, in his ** Treatise on Beauty,'^ ex-
presses by uniformity in the midst of variety; which is no other
than the consent or agreement of different things, in form, quan-
tity, etc. He observes that the greater the variety is, in equal
uniformity the greater the beauty; which is no more than to
JONATHAN EDWARDS 1537
say, the more there are of different mutually agreeing things, the
greater is the beauty. And the reason of that is because it is
more considerable to have many things consent one with another
than a few only.
The beauty which consists in the visible fitness of a thing to
its use and unity of design is not a distinct sort of beauty from
this. For it is to be observed that one thing which contributes
to the beauty of the agreement and proportion of various things
is their relation one to another; which connects them, and intro-
duces them together into view and consideration, and whereby
one suggests the other to the mind, and the mind is led to com-
pare them, and so to expect and desire agreement. Thus the
uniformity of two or more pillars, as they may happen to be
found in different places, is not an equal degree of beauty, as
that uniformity in so many pillars in the corresponding parts of the
same building. So means and an intended effect are related one
to another. The answerableness of a thing to its use is only the
proportion, fitness, and agreeing of a cause or means to a visibly
designed effect, and so an effect suggested to the mind by the
idea of the means. This kind of beauty is not entirely different
from that beauty which there is in fitting a mortise to its tenon.
Only when the beauty consists in unity of design, or the adapt-
edness of a variety of things to promote one intended effect, in
which all conspire, as the various parts of an ingenious compli-
cated machine, there is a double beauty, as there is a twofold
agreement and conformity. First, there is the agreement of the
various parts to the designed end. Second, through this, viz.,
the designed end or effect, all the various particulars agree one
with another, as the general medium of their union, whereby
being united in this third, they thereby are all united one to an-
other.
The reason, or at least one reason, why God has made this
kind of mutual consent and agreement of things beautiful and
grateful to those intelligent Beings that perceive it, probably is
that there is in it some image of the true, spiritual, original
beauty which has been spoken of; consisting in Being's consent
to Being, or the union of minds or spiritual Beings in a mutual
propensity and affection of heart. The other is an image of this,
because by that uniformity diverse things become as it were one,
as it is in this cordial union. And it pleases God to observe
IV— 97
1538 JONATHAN EDWARDS
analogy in his works, as is manifest in fact in innumerable in-
stances; and especially to establish inferior things in an analogy
to superior. Thus, in how many instances has he formed brutes
in analogy to the nature of mankind! And plants in analo^-y to
animals with respect to the manner of their generation and nu-
trition! And so he has constituted the external world in an anal-
ogy to things in the spiritual world, in numberless instances;
as might be shown, if it were necessary, and here were proper
place and room for it. Why such analogy in God's works pleases
him, it is not needful now to inquire. It is sufficient that he
makes an agreement or consent of different things, in their form,
manner, measure, to appear beautiful, because here is some image
of a higher kind of agreement and consent of spiritual Beings.
It has pleased him to establish a law of nature, by virtue of
which the uniformity and mutual correspondence of a beautiful
plant, and the respect which the various parts of a regular build-
ing seem to have one to another, and their agreement and union,
and the consent or concord of the various notes of a melodious
tune, should appear beautiful; because therein is some image of
the consent of mind, of the different members of a society or
system of intelligent Beings sweetly united in a benevolent agree-
ment of heart. And here, by the way, I would further observe,
probably it is with regard to this image or resemblance which
secondary beauty has of true spiritual beauty, that God has so
constituted nature that the presenting of this inferior beauty, es-
pecially in those kinds of it which have the greatest resemblance
of the primary beauty, as the harmony of sounds and the beau-
ties of nature, have a tendency to assist those whose hearts are
under the influence of a truly virtuous temper to dispose them
to the exercises of divine love, and enliven in them a sense of
spiritual beauty.
This secondary kind of beauty, consisting in uniformity and
proportion, not only takes place in material and external things,
but also in things immaterial; and is, in very many things, plain
and sensible in the latter as well as the former; and when it is
so, there is no reason why it should not be grateful to them that
behold it, in these as well as the other, by virtue of the same
sense, or the same determination of mind to be gratified with
uniformity and proportion. If uniformity and proportion be the
things that affect and appear agreeable to this sense of beauty
JONATHAN EDWARDS 1 5 39
then why should not uniformity and proportion affect the same
sense in immaterial things as well as material, if there be equal
capacity of discerning it in both ? And indeed more in spiritual
things {c ceteris paribus) as these are more important than things
merely external and material.
This is not only reasonable to be supposed, but it is evident
in fact, in numberless instances. There is a beauty of order in
society, besides what consists in benevolence, or can be referred
to it, which is of the secondary kind. As when the different
members of society have all their appointed office, place, and sta-
tion, according to their several capacities and talents, and every
one keeps his place and continues in his proper business. In this
there is a beauty, not of a different kind from the regularity of
a beautiful building, or piece of skillful architecture, where the
strong pillars are set in their proper place, the pilasters in a
place fit for them, the square pieces of marble in the pavement,
in a place suitable for them, the panels in the walls and parti-
tions in their proper places, the cornices in places proper for
them, etc. As the agreement of a variety in one common design
of the parts of a building, or complicated machine, is one in-
stance of that regularity, which belongs to the secondary kind of
beauty, so there is the same kind of beauty in immaterial things,
in what is called wisdom, consisting in the united tendency of
thoughts, ideas, and particular volitions, to one general purpose;
which is a distinct thing from the goodness of that general pur-
pose, as being useful and benevolent.
So there is a beauty in the virtue called justice, which con-
sists in the agreement of different things, that have relation to
one another, in nature, manner, and measure, and therefore is
the very same sort of beauty with that uniformity and propor-
tion, which is observable in those external and material things
that are esteemed beautiful. There is a natural agreement and
adaptedness of things that have relation one to another, and a
harmonious corresponding of one thing to another; that he who
from his will does evil to others should receive evil from the
will of others, or from the will of him or them whose business it
is to take care of the injured, and to act in their behalf; and
that he should suffer evil in proportion to the evil of his doings.
Things are in natural regularity and mutual agreement, not in a
metaphorical but literal sense, when he whose heart opposes the
1 54© JONATHAN EDWARDS
general system should have the hearts of that system, or the
heart of the head and ruler of the system, against him; and that,
in consequence, he should receive evil in proportion to the evil
tendency of the opposition of his heart. So there is a like
agreement in nature and measure, when he that loves has the
r-roper returns of love, when he that from his heart promotes
the good of another has his good promoted by the other; as
there is a kind of justice in a becoming gratitude.
From a « Dissertation on the Nature
of True Virtue. »
« GEORGE ELIOT"
(Mary Ann Evans)
(1819-1J
Ihe Impressions of Theophrastus Such'^ appeared in 1879; and
as ^'George Eliot *^ was then in her sixtieth year, it may be
assumed that the essays in sequence which compose the
volume represent her matured views of life and morals. Those who
remember the great influence over her life exerted by George Henry
Lewes may be surprised at the conservatism, both of style and thought,
which controls, if it does not characterize, her writings as an essayist.
In <* The Impressions of Theophrastus Such,^^ as in the ^< Leaves from
a Note Book, *^ and in her essays contributed to English reviews, she
shows that unconsciously she is at bottom a *^ Low-Church ^^ English-
woman, governed by all the virtues which belong to good women in
England through the heredity of a hundred generations of clean and
virtuous lives.
In the literary history of England and of civilization she belongs
to a period of storm and stress when great contending forces met in
a struggle which seemed full of promise or of menace, as those who
viewed it were inspired by courage or depressed by timidity. In
England, in 1849, when the death of her father threw her on her own
resources, the intellectual development of the century, as it influenced
men of such varying activities as Darwin, Carlyle, Cobden. and Bright,
was being met by the marshaling- of the great forces which were to
precipitate the Empire in France and fne Crimean War after it, as
means of postponing the millennium of popular tr.ir^nchiseinent an-
nounced by the Hugos, the Mazzinis, and the Heckers, — Idealists who
believed in progress at any cost of the profits of that inertia which cal-
culates percentages upon the status quo, no matter what it is. In such
periods of disturbance, visionaries, whose disorderly imagination frees
itself from the restraints of judgment, set up as prophets of a new
and fantastic social order, and the air grows thick with the ezwes of their
vaticination. Society is to be taken apart as a child takes apart its
doll after discovering that its faculty of crying depends on pieces of
pine and pheepskin and that it is stuffed with a very unsightly article
of sawdust. The analytical faculty threatens the constructive — or at
least seems to do so, until every abuse which the world was about
1542 « GEORGE ELIOT"
to get rid of throucjh the imperceptible processes of progress, is turned
into a sacrosanct part of the Established Order and given sanc-
tuary in whatever Holy of Holies orthodoxy has to offer. With Car-
lyle preaching Goethe's <* Elective Affinities,'^ and half a hundred
aspiring prophets of a new dispensation of phalanxes and agapemones,
announcing a " new order >' under which virtue is to consist in having
the largest number of passions and the greatest possible means of
gratifying them, it is no wonder that English conservatism was able
to shift its ground and take the aggressive. George Henry Lewes,
who among English men of letters sympathized most strongly with
Fourier's theory that morals and the repressive philosophy founded
on morals are a mistake, came into the life of Mary Ann Evans,
then leading the life of a literary woman in London, and his influ-
ence over her was in one sense decisive.
But Lewes himself was fundamentally a man of good impulses, and,
in spite of the great intellectual disturbance of her time and of her
own life, George Eliot retained // ben del mtelletto, — that moral sound-
ness which alone gives intellectual strength its value, — which in
Dante's hell is lost irretrievably not by those who err most, but by
those who venture nothing. Born on an English farm, the daughter
of an English middle-class family ambitious enough to educate her
above the average of the time, she had ingrained into her in her
girlhood the tradition of goodness for which the virtuous English-
woman has stood ever since the study of her character made Shakes-
peare great. The accident of her acquaintance with a family which
was impregnated with the German ^transcendentalism, '^ then fashion-
able, turned her intellectually into ^*an extreme Radical, >' but her rad-
icalism was never that of a disordered intellect. She rose superior
to her mistakes by force of the inherent nobility of character which
enabled her to write " The Choir Invisible, '^ — without doubt, the no-
blest blank verse of the nineteenth century. Her <* Scenes of Clerical
Life,'' which appeared in 1857, were written at the suggestion of
Lewes with whom she had formed an association in 1854. She had
begun her literary career in London as assistant editor of the West-
minster Review, and her first work was that of an essayist; but Lewes
discovered her talent as a novelist and persuaded her to develop it.
"Adam Bede," in which it is said she used her father as ^* a prototype
of her hero," followed <^ Scenes of Clerical Life" and established her
place as one of the greatest novelists of the century. Her subse-
quent novels merely confirmed her title to the rank she had so easily
taken, and at her death, December 22d, 1880, she had won for herself
the approval not merely of English aristocratic conservatism, but of
Puritanism itself. Her faults of judgment — and they were grave;
her follies — and they were hers by infection from some of the most
« GEORGE ELIOT » 1543
dangerous of all intellectual insanities — were wiped out by the
strength of her sympathy for mankind. Much was given and for-
given her because she had loved much — with a love possible only
for those who crucify passion that they may
<<Live again
«In hearts made better by their presence. >>
W. V. B.
MORAL SWINDLERS
IT IS a familiar example of irony in the degradation of words
that *' what a man is worth ** has come to mean how much
money he possesses; but there seems a deeper and more mel-
ancholy irony in the shrunken meaning that popular or polite
speech assigns to " morality *^ and " morals. '* The poor part these
words are made to play recalls the fate of those pagan divinities
who, after being understood to rule the powers of the air and
the destinies of men, came down to the level of insignificant de-
mons, or were even made a farcical show for the amusement of
the multitude.
Talking to Melissa in a time of commercial trouble, I found
her disposed to speak pathetically of the disgrace which had
fallen on Sir Gavial Mantrap, because of his conduct in relation
to the Eocene Mines, and to other companies ingeniously devised
by him for the punishment of ignorance in people of small means :
a disgrace by which the poor titled gentleman was actually re-
duced to live in comparative obscurity on his wife's settlement of
one or two hundred thousand in the consols.
** Surely your pity is misapplied, ** said I, rather dubiously, for
I like the comfort of trusting that correct moral judgment is the
strong point in woman (seeing that she has a majority of about
a million in our island), and I imagined that Melissa might have
some unexpressed grounds for her opinion. " I should have
thought you would rather be sorry for Mantrap's victims — the
widows, spinsters, and hard-working fathers whom his unscrupu-
lous haste to make himself rich has cheated of all their savings,
while he is eating well, lying softly, and after impudently justi-
fying himself before the public, is perhaps joining in the General
Confession with a sense that he is an acceptable object in the
?ight of God, though decent men refuse to meet him,*
1544
« GEORGE ELIOT '^
« Oh, all that about the Companies, I know, was most un-
fortunate. In commerce people are led to do so many things,
and he might not know exactly how everything would turn out.
But Sir Gavial made a good use of his money, and he is a thor-
oughly moral man."
** What do you mean by a thoroughly moral man ? *^ said I.
** Oh, I suppose every one means the same by that,* said Me-
lissa, with a slight air of rebuke. " Sir Gavial is an excellent
family man — quite blameless there; and so charitable round his
place at Tip-Top. Very difEerent from Mr. Barabbas, whose life,
my husband tells me, is most objectionable, with actresses and
that sort of thing. I think a man's morals should make a differ-
ence to us. I'm not sorry for Mr. Barabbas, but I am sorry for
Sir Gavial Mantrap. *
I will not repeat my answer to Melissa, for I fear it was of-
fensively brusque, my opinion being that Sir Gavial was the more
pernicious scoundrel of the two, since his name for virtue served
as an effective part of a swindling apparatus; and perhaps I
hinted that to call such a man moral showed rather a silly notion
of human affairs. In fact, I had an angry wish to be instructive,
and Melissa, as will sometimes happen, noticed my anger without
appropriating my instruction; for I have since heard that she
speaks of me as rather violent tempered, and not overstrict in
my views of morality.
I wish that this narrow use of words which are wanted in
their full meaning were confined to women like Melissa. Seeing
that Morality and Morals under their alias of Ethics are the sub-
ject of voluminous discussion, and their true basis a pressing
matter of dispute, — seeing that the most famous book ever writ-
ten on Ethics, and forming a chief study in our colleges, allies
ethical with political science, or that which treats of the consti-
tution and prosperity of States, one might expect that educated
men would find reason to avoid a perversion of language which
lends itself to no wider view of life than that of village gossips.
Yet I find even respectable historians of our own and of foreign
countries, after showing that a king was treacherous, rapacious,
and ready to sanction gross breaches in the administration of jus-
tice, end by praising him for his pure moral character, by which
one must suppose them to mean that he was not lewd or de-
bauched, not the European twin of the typical Indian potentate
whom Macaulay describes as passing his life in chewing bcTig and
''GEORG-E ELIOT » 154S
fondling dancing girls. And since we are sometimes told of such
maleficent kings that they were religious, we arrive at the curious
result that the most serious wide-reaching duties of man lie quite
outside both Morality and Religion, — the one of these consisting
in not keeping mistresses (and perhaps not drinking too much),
and the other in certain ritual and spiritual transactions with God,
which can be carried on equally well side by side with the basest
conduct toward men.
With such a classification as this, it is no wonder, considering
the strong reaction of language on thought, that many minds,
dizzy with indigestion of recent science and philosophy, are far
to seek for the grounds of social duty, and without entertaining
any private intention of commiting a perjury which would ruin
an innocent man, or seeking gain by supplying bad preserved
meats to our navy, feel themselves speculatively obliged to in-
quire why they should not do so, and are inclined to measure
their intellectual subtlety by their dissatisfaction with all answers
to this " Why ? ^^ It is of little use to theorize in ethics, while our
habitual phraseology stamps the larger part of our social duties
as something that lies aloof from the deepest needs and affec-
tions of our nature. The informal definitions of popular language
are the only medium through which theory really affects the
mass of minds even among the nominally educated; and when a
man whose business hours — the solid part of every day — are
spent in an unscrupulous course of public or private action which
has every calculable chance of causing widespread injury and
misery, can be called moral because he comes home to dine with
his wife and children, and cherishes the happiness of his own
hearth, the augury is not good for the use of high ethical and
theological disputation.
Not for one moment would one willingly lose sight of the
truth that the relation of the sexes and the primary ties of kin-
ship are the deepest roots of human well-being, but to make them
by themselves the equivalent of morality is verbally to cut off
the channels of feeling through which they are the feeders of that
well-being. They are the original fountains of a sensibility to
the claims of others which is the bond of societies; but being
necessarily in the first instance a private good, there is always
the danger that individual selfishness will see in them only the
best part of its own gain; just as knowledge, navigation, com-
merce, and all the conditions which are of a nature to awaken
1546 « GEORGE ELIOT »
men's consciousness of their mutual dependence and to make the
world one great society, are the occasions of selfish, unfair action,
of war and oppression, so long as the public conscience or chief
force of feeling and opinion is not uniform and strong enough
in its insistence on what is demanded by the general welfare.
And among the influences that must retard a right public
judgment, the degradation of words which involve praise and
blame will be reckoned worth protesting against by every mature
observer. To rob words of half their meaning, while they retain
their dignity as qualifications, is like allowing to men who have
lost half their faculties the same high and perilous command
which they won in their time of vigor; or like selling food and
seeds after fraudulently abstracting theii best virtues: in each
case what ought to be beneficently strong, is fatally enfeebled, if
not empoisoned. Until we have altered oui dictionaries, and have
found some other word than morality to sti Ad in popular use for
the duties of man to man, let us refuse to Accept as moral the
contractor who enriches himself by using large .Machinery to make
pasteboard soles pass as leather for the feet of i: chappy conscripts
fighting at miserable odds against invaders; let uo vather call him
a miscreant, though he were the tenderest, most faithful of hus-
bands, and contend that his own experience of home happiness
makes his reckless infliction of suffering on others all the more
atrocious. Let us refuse to accept as moral any political leader
who should allow his conduct in relation to great issues t,-> be
determined by egoistic passion, and boldly say that he would bi'
less immoral, even though he were as lax in his personal habiU'
as Sir Robert Walpole, if at the same time his sense of the pub-
lic welfare were supreme in his mind, quelling all pettier im-
pulses beneath a magnanimous impartiality. And though we
were to find among that class of journalists who live by reck-
lessly reporting injurious rumors, insinuating the blackest motives
in opponents, descanting at large, and with an air of infallibility,
on dreams which they both find and interpret, and stimulating
bad feeling between nations by abusive writing, which is as empty
of real conviction as the rage of a pantomime king, and would
be ludicrous if its effects did not make it appear diabolical, —
though we were to find among these a man who was benignancy
itself in his own circle, a healer of private differences, a soother
in private calamities, let us pronounce him, nevertheless, fla-
grantly immoral, a root of hideous cancer in the commonwealth,
« GEORGE ELIOT)) 1 547
turning the channels of instruction into feeders of social and po-
litical disease.
In opposite ways one sees bad effects likely to be encouraged
by this narrow use of the word morals, shutting out from its
meaning half those actions of a man's life which tell momen-
tously on the well-being of his fellow-citizens, and on the prepara-
tion of a future for the children growing up around him.
Thoroughness of workmanship, care in the execution of every
task undertaken, as if it were the acceptance of a trust which it
would be a breach of faith not to discharge well, is a form of
duty so momentous that if it were to die out from the feeling
and practice of a people, all reforms of institutions would be
helpless to create national prosperity and national happiness. Do
we desire to see public spirit penetrating all classes of the com-
munity and affecting every man's conduct, so that he shall make
neither the saving of his soul nor any other private saving an
excuse for indifference to the general welfare ? Well and good.
But the sort of public spirit that scamps its bread-winning work,
whether with the trowel, the pen, or the overseeing brain, that it
may hurry to scenes of political or social agitation, would be as
baleful a gift to our people as any malignant demon could devise.
One best part of educational training is that which comes through
special knowledge and manipulative or other skill, with its usual
accompaniment of delight in relation to work which is the daily
bread-winning occupation — which is a man's contribution to the
effective wealth of society in return for what he takes as his own
share. But this duty of doing one's proper work w^ell, and tak-
ing care that every product of one's labor shall be genuinely
what it pretends to be, is not only left out of morals in popular
speech, it is very little insisted on by public teachers, at least in
the only effective way — by tracing the continuous effects of ill-
done work. Some of them seem to be still hopeful that it will
follow as a necessary consequence from week-day services, eccle-
siastical decoration, and improved hymn books; others apparently
trust to descanting on self -culture m general, or to raising a gen-
eral sense of faulty circumstances; and meanwhile lax, makeshift
work, from the high conspicuous kind to the average and ob-
scure, is allowed to pass unstamped with the disgrace of immor-
ality, though there is not a member of society who is not daily
suffering from it materially and spiritually, and though it is the
fatal cause that must degrade our national rank and our com-
154? "GEORGE ELIOT »
merce, in spite of all open markets and discovery of available
coal seams.
I suppose one may take the popular misuse of the words
Morality and Morals as some excuse for certain absurdities which
are occasional fashions in speech and writing — certain old lay
figures, as ugly as the queerest Asiatic idol, which at different
periods get propped into loftiness, and attired in magnificent
Venetian drapery, so that whether they have a human face or
not is of little consequence. One is the notion that there is a
radical, irreconcilable opposition between intellect and morality.
I do not mean the simple statement of fact, which everybody
knows, that remarkably able men have had very faulty morals,
and have outraged public feeling even at its ordinary standard;
but the supposition that the ablest intellect, the highest genius,
will see through morality as a sort of twaddle for bibs and tuck-
ers, a doctrine of dullness, a mere incident in human stupidity.
We begin to understand the acceptance of this foolishness by con-
sidering that we live in a society where we may hear a treach-
erous monarch, or a malignant and lying politician, or a man
who uses either official or literary power as an instrument of his
private partiality or hatred, or a manufacturer who devises the
falsification of wares, or a trader who deals in virtueless seed-
grains, praised or compassionated because of his excellent morals.
Clearly, if morality meant no more than such decencies as are
practiced by these poisonous members of society, it would be
possible to say, without suspicion of light-headedness, that moral-
ity lay aloof from the grand stream of human affairs, as a small
channel fed by the stream and not missed from it. While this
form of nonsense is conveyed in the popular use of words, there
must be plenty of well-dressed ignorance at leisure to run through
a box of books, which will feel itself initiated in the freemasonry
of intellect by a view of life which might take for a Shakespear-
ean motto: —
*Fair is foul and foul is fair,
Hover through the fog and filthy air " —
and will find itself easily provided with striking conversation by
the rule of reversing all the judgments on good and evil which
have come to be the calendar and clockwork of society. But let
our habitual talk gfive morals their full meaning as the conduct
which, in every human relation, would follow from the fullest
« GEORGE ET.IOT» 1549
knowledge and the fullest sympathy — a meaningf perpetually cor-
rected and enriched by a more thorough appreciation of depend-
ence in things, and a finer sensibility to both physical and spiritual
fact — and this ridiculous ascription of superlative power to minds
which have no effective awe-inspiring vision of the human lot, no
response of understanding to the connection between duty and
the material processes by which the world is kept habitable for
cultivated man, will be tacitly discredited without any need to
cite the immortal names that all are obliged to take as the meas-
ure of intellectual rank and highly-charged genius.
Suppose a Frenchman — I mean no disrespect to the . great
French nation, for all nations are afflicted with their peculiar
parasitic growths, which are lazy, hungry forms, usually charac-
terized by a disproportionate swallowing apparatus; suppose a
Parisian who should shuffle down the Boulevard with a soul ig-
norant of the gravest cares and the deepest tenderness of man-
hood, and a frame more or less fevered by debauchery, mentally
polishing into utmost refinement of phrase and rhythm verses
which were an enlargement on that Shakespearean motto, and
worthy of the most expensive title to be furnished by the ven-
dors of such antithetic ware as Les Marguerites de /' Enfer, or
Les d^liccs de B^elzibuth. This supposed personage might prob-
ably enough regard his negation of those moral sensibilities which
make half the warp and woof of human history, his indifference
to the hard thinking and hard handiwork of life, to which he
owed even his own gauzy mental garments with their spangles
of poor paradox, as the royalty of genius, for we are used to
witness such self-crowning in many forms of mental alienation;
but he would not, I think, be taken, even by his own generation,
as a living proof that there can exist such a combination as that
of moral stupidity and trivial emphasis of personal indulgence
with the large yet finely discriminating vision which marks the
intellectual masters of our kind. Doubtless there are many sorts
of transfiguration, and a man who has come to be worthy of all
gratitude and reverence may have had his swinish period, wal-
lowing in ugly places; but suppose it had been handed down
to us that Sophocles or Virgil had at one time made himself
scandalous in this way: the works which have consecrated their
memory for our admiration and gratitude are not a glorifying of
swinishness, but an artistic incorporation of the highest sentiment
known to their age.
1550 « GEORGE ELIOT »
All these may seem to be wide reasons for objecting to Me-
lissa's pity for Sir Gavial Mantrap on the ground of his good
morals; but their connection will not be obscure to any one who
has taken pains to observe the links uniting the scattered signs
of our social development.
Complete. From «The Impressions of
Theophrastus Such.»
JUDGMENTS ON AUTHORS
IN ENDEAVORING to estimate a remarkable writer who aimed at
more than temporar}'- influence, we have first to consider
what was his individual contribution to the spiritual wealth
of mankind. Had he a new conception ? Did he animate long-
known but neglected truths with new vigor, and cast fresh light
on their relation to other admitted truths ? Did he impregnate
any ideas with a fresh store of emotion, and in this way enlarge
the area of moral sentiment ? Did he, by a wise emphasis here,
and a wise disregard there, give a more useful or beautiful pro-
portion to aims or motives ? And even where his thinking was
most mixed with the sort of mistake which is obvious to the
majority, as well as that which can only be discerned by the
instructed, or made manifest by the progress of things, has it
that salt of a noble enthusiasm which should rebuke our critical
discrimination if its correctness is inspired with a less admirable
habit of feeling ?
This is not the common or easy course to take in estimating
a modern writer. It requires considerable knowledge of what he
has himself done, as well as of what others had done before him,
or what they were doing contemporaneously; it requires deliberate
reflection as to the degree in which our own prejudices may
hinder us from appreciating the intellectual or moral bearing of
what, on a first view, offends tis. An easier course is to notice
some salient mistakes, and take them as decisive of the writer's
incompetence; or to find out that something apparently much the
same as what he has said in some connection not clearly ascer^
tained had been said by somebody else, though without great
effect, until this new effect of discrediting the other's originality
had shown itself as an adequate final cause; or to pronounce from
the point of view of individual taste that this writer for whom.
« GEORGE ELIOT » 1551
regard is claimed is repulsive, wearisome, not to be borne, except
by those dull persons who are of a different opinion.
Elder writers who have passed into classics were doubtless
treated in this easy way when they were still under the misfor-
tune of being recent, — nay, are still dismissed with the same ra-
pidity of judgment by daring ignorance. But people who think
that they have a reputation to lose in the matter of knowledge
have looked into cyclopaedias and histories of philosophy or liter-
ature, and possessed themselves of the duly balanced epithets
concerning the immortals. They are not left to their own un-
guided rashness, or their own unguided pusillanimity. And it is
this sheep-like flock who have no direct impressions, no spontane-
ous delight, no genuine objection or self-confessed neutrality in
relation to the writers become classic; it is these who are incapa-
ble of passing a genuine judgment on the living. Necessarily.
The susceptibility they have kept active is a susceptibility to
their own reputation for passing the right judgment, not the sus-
ceptibility to qualities in the object of judgment. Who learns
to discriminate shades of color by considering what is expected
of him ? The habit of expressing borrowed judgments stupefies
the sensibilities, which are the only foundation of genuine judg-
ments, just as the constant reading and retailing of results from
other men's observations through the microscope, without ever
looking through the lens oneself, is an instruction in some truths
and some prejudices, but is no instruction in observant suscepti-
bility; on the contrary, it breeds a habit of inward seeing accord-
ing to verbal statement, which dulls the power of outward seeing
according to visual evidence.
On this subject, as on so many others, it is difficult to strike
the balance between the educational needs of passivity or recep-
tivity and independent selection. We should learn nothing with-
out the tendency to implicit acceptance; but there must clearly
be a limit to such mental submission, else we should come to a
standstill. The human mind would be no better than a dried
specimen, representing an unchangeable type. When the assimi-
lation of new matter ceases, decay must begin. In a reasoned
self-restraining deference there is as much energy as in rebel-
lion; but among the less capable, one must admit that the su-
perior energy is on the side of the rebels. And certainly a man
who dares to say that he finds an eminent classic feeble here,
extravagant there, and in general overrated, may chance to give
1552 « GEORGE ELIOT »
an opinion which has some genuine discrimination in it concern-
ing a new work or a living thinker, — an opinion such as can
hardly ever be got from the reputed judge, who is a correct
echo of the most approved phrases concerning those who have
been already canonized.
Complete. From « Leaves from
a Note Book.''
«A FINE EXCESS »— FEELING IS ENERGY
ONE can hardly insist too much, in the present stage of think-
ing, on the efficacy of feeling in stimulating to ardent
co-operation, quite apart from the conviction that such
co-operation is needed for the achievement of the end in view.
Just as hatred will vent itself in private curses no longer be-
lieved to have any potency, and joy in private singing far out
among the woods and fields, so sympathetic feeling can only be
satisfied by joining in the action which expresses it, though the
added "Bravo!" the added push, the added penny, is no more
than a grain of dust on a rolling mass. When students take
the horses out of a political hero's carriage, and draw him home
by the force of their own muscles, the struggle in each is simply
to draw or push, without consideration whether his place would
not be as well filled by somebody else, or whether his one arm
be really needful to the effect. It is imder the same inspiration
that abundant help rushes towards the scene of a fire, rescuing
imperiled lives, and laboring with generous rivalry in carryinf,'-
buckets. So the old blind King John of Bohemia at the battle
of Crecy begged his vassals to lead him into the fight that he
might strike a good blow, though his own stroke, possibly fatal
to himself, could not turn by a hair's breadth the imperious
course of victory.
The question, * Of what use is it for me to work towards an
end confessedly good ? '* comes from that sapless kind of reason-
ing which is falsely taken for a sign of supreme mental activity,
but is really due to languor, or incapability of that mental grasp
which makes objects strongly present, and to a lack of sympa-
thetic emotion. In the "Spanish Gipsy'* Fedalma says: —
*The grandest death! to die in vain — for Love
Greater than sways the forces of the world,*' —
"GEORGE ELIOT » IS53
referring- to the image of the disciples throwing themselves, con-
sciously in vain, on the Roman spears. I really believe and
mean this, — not as a rule of general action, but as a possible
grand instance of determining energy in human sympathy, which
even in particular cases, where it has only a magnificent futility,
is more adorable, or as we say divine, than unpitying force, or
than a prudent calculation of results. Perhaps it is an implicit
joy in the resources of our human nature which has stimulated
admiration for acts of self-sacrifice which are vain as to their
immediate end. Marcus Curtius was probably not imagined as
concluding to himself that he and his horse would so fill up the
gap as to make a smooth terra fir ma. The impulse and act
made the heroism, not the correctness of adaptation. No doubt
the passionate inspiration which prompts and sustains a course
of self-sacrificing labor in the light of soberly-estimated results
gathers the highest title to our veneration, and makes the su-
preme heroism. But the generous leap of impulse is needed
too, to swell the flood of sympathy in us beholders, that we may
not fall completely under the mastery of calculation, which in its
turn may fail of ends for want of energy got from ardor. We
have need to keep the sluices open for possible influxes of the
rarer sort.
Complete. From « Leaves from a Note Book.»
THE HISTORIC IMAGINATION
THE exercise of a veracious imagination in historical picturing
seems to be capable of a development that might help the
judgment greatly with regard to present and future events.
By veracious imagination, I mean the working out in detail of
the various steps by which a political or social change was reached,
using all extant evidence and supplying deficiencies by careful
analogical creation. How triumphant opinions originally spread;
how institutions arose; what were the conditions of great inven-
tions, discoveries, or theoretic conceptions; what circumstances
affecting individual lots are attendant on the decay of long-
established systems, — all these grand elements of history require
the illumination of special imaginative treatment. But effective
truth in this application of art requires freedom from the vulgar
coercion of conventional plot, which is become hardly of higher
IV — 98
1554 « GEORGE ELIOT »
influence on imaginative representation than a detailed ^* order "
for a picture sent by a rich grocer to an eminent painter, — allot-
ting a certain portion of the canvas to a rural scene, another to
a fashionable group, with a request for a murder in the middle
distance, and a little comedy to relieve it. A slight approxima-
tion to the veracious glimpses of history artistically presented,
which I am indicating, but applied only to an incident of con-
temporary life, is ^'- Un Paquet de Lettres, ^^ by Gustave Droz. For
want of such real, minute vision of how changes come about in
the past, we fall into ridiculously inconsistent estimates of actual
movements, condemning in the present what we belaud in the
past, and pronouncing impossible processes that have been re-
peated again and again in the historical preparation of the very
system under which we live. A false kind of idealization dulls
our perception of the meaning of words when they relate to past
events which have had a glorious issue; for lack of comparison
no warning image rises to check scorn of the very phrases which
in other associations are consecrated.
Utopian pictures help the reception of ideas as to constructive
results, but hardly so much as a vivid presentation of how results
have been actually brought, especially in religious and social
change. And there is pathos, the heroism, often accompanying
the decay and final struggle of old systems, which has not had
its share of tragic commemoration. What really took place in
and around Constantine before, upon, and immediately after his
declared conversion ? Could a momentary flash be thrown on
Eusebius in his sayings and doings as an ordinary man in bishop's
garments? Or on Julian and Libanius ? There has been abun-
dant writing on such great turning points, but not such as serves
to instruct the imagination in true comparison. I want some-
thing different from the abstract treatment which belongs to
grave history from a doctrinal point of view, and something dif-
ferent from the schemed picturesqueness of ordinary historical
fiction. I want brief, severely conscientious reproductions, in their
concrete incidents, of movements in the past.
Complete. From « Leaves from a Note Book."
« GEORGE ELIOT » 1555
VALUE IN ORIGINALITY
THE supremacy given in European cultures to the literatures
of Greece and Rome has had an effect almost equal to that
of a common religion in binding the Western nations to-
gether. It is foolish to be forever complaining of the consequent
uniformity, as if there were an endless power of originality in
the human mind. Great and precious origination must always
be comparatively rare, and can only exist on condition of a wide,
massive uniformity. When a multitude of men have learned to
use the same language in speech and writing, then and then
only can the greatest masters of language arise. For in what
does their mastery consist ? They use words which are already
a familiar medium of understanding and sympathy in such a way
as greatly to enlarge the understanding and sympathy. Origi-
nality of this order changes the wild grasses into world-feeding
grain. Idiosyncrasies are pepper and spices of questionable
aroma.
Complete. From « Leaves from a Note Book.*
DEBASING THE MORAL CURRENCY
^' 7"/ ne faut pas mettre un ridicule oic il n'y en a point: c'est se gdter U
JL goAt, c'est corrompre son Jugement et celui des autres. Mais le ridi-
cule qui est quelque part, il faut I'y voir, I 'en tirer avec grace et
d'une manih'e qui plaise et qui instruise.^^
I am fond of quoting this passage from La Bruy^re, because
the subject is one where I like to show a Frenchman on my
side, to save my sentiments from being set down to my peculiar
dullness and deficient sense of the ludicrous, and also that they
may profit by that enchantment of ideas when presented in a
foreign tongue, that glamor of unfamiliarity conferring a dig-
nity on the foreign names of very common things, of which even
a philosopher like Dugald Stewart confesses the influence. I re-
member hearing a fervid woman attempt to recite in English the
narrative of a begging Frenchman who described the violent
death of his father in the July days. The narrative had im-
pressed her, through the mists of her flushed anxiety to under-
1556
« GEORGE ELIOT))
stand it, as something quite grandly pathetic; but finding the
facts turn out meagre, and her audience cold, she broke off, say-
ing, " It sounded so much finer in French — j' ai vu le sang de
mo?i pere, and so on — I wish I could repeat it in French.^* This
was a pardonable illusion in an old-fashioned lady who had not
received the polyglot education of the present day; but I observe
that even now much nonsense and bad taste win admiring ac-
ceptance solely by virtue of the French language, and one may
fairly desire that what seems just discrimination should profit by
the fashionable prejudice in favor of La Bruyere's idiom. But I
wish he had added that the habit of dragging the ludicrous into
topics where the chief interest is of a different or even opposite
kind is a sign not of endowment, but of deficiency. The art of
spoiling is within reach of the dullest faculty; the coarsest clown,
with a hammer in his hand, might chip the nose off every statue
and bust in the Vatican, and stand grinning at the effect of his
work. Because wit is an exquisite product of high powers, we
are not therefore forced to admit the sadly confused inference of
the monotonous jester, that he is establishing his superiority over
every less facetious person, and over every topic on which he is
ignorant or insensible, by being uneasy until he has distorted it
in the small cracked mirror which he carries about with him as
a joking apparatus. Some high authority is needed to ^ve many
worthy and timid persons the freedom of muscular repose, under
the growing demand on them to laugh when they have no other
reason than the peril of being taken for dullards; still more to
inspire them with the courage to say that they object to the
theatrical spoiling for themselves and their children of all affect-
ing themes, all the grander deeds and aims of men, by bur-
lesque associations adapted to the taste of rich fishmongers in
the stalls and their assistants in the gallery. The English peo-
ple in the present generation are falsely reputed to know Shakes-
peare (as by some innocent persons the Florentine mule driv^ers
are believed to have known the ^^ Divina Commedia,* not, per-
haps, excluding all the subtle discourses in the <* Purgatorio * and
*Paradiso"); but there seems a clear prospect that in the coming
generation he will be known to them through burlesques, and
that his plays will find a new life as pantomines. A bottlo-
nosed Lear will come on with a monstrous corpulence, from which
he will frantically dance himself free during the midnight storm:
Rosalind and Celia will join in a grotesque ballet with shepherds
« GEORGE ELIOT » 1 5 57
and shepherdesses; Ophelia, in fleshings and a voluminous brevity
of grenadine, will dance through the mad scene, finishing with the
famous " attitude of the scissors *^ in the arms of Laertes ; and all
the speeches in *^ Hamlet ^' will be so ingeniously parodied that
the originals will be reduced to a mere memoria tec/mica of the
improver's puns — premonitory signs of a hideous millennium, in
which the lion will have to lie down with the lascivious monkeys
whom (if we may trust Pliny) his soul naturally abhors.
I have been amazed to find that some artists, whose own
works have the ideal stamp, are quite insensible to the damaging
tendency of the burlesquing spirit which ranges to and fro and
up and down, on the earth, seeing no reasons (except a precari-
ous censorship) why it should not appropriate every sacred, he-
roic, and pathetic theme which serves to make up the treasure
of human admiration, hope, and love. One would have thought
that their own half-despairing efforts to invest in worthy outward
shape the vague inward impressions of sublimity, and the con-
sciousness of an implicit ideal in the commonest scenes, might
have made them susceptible of some disgust or ""arm at the
species of burlesque which is likely to render their compositions
no better than a dissolving view, where every noble form is seen
melting into its preposterous caricature. It used to be imagined
of the unhappy mediseval Jews that they parodied Calvary by
crucifying dogs; if they had been guilty, they would at least
have had the excuse of the hatred and rage begotten by persecu-
tion. Are we on the way to a parody which shall have no other
excuse than the reckless search after fodder for degraded ap-
petites,— after the pay to be earned by pasturing Circe's herd
where they may defile every monument of that growing life
which should have kept them human ?
The world seems to me well supplied with what is genuinely
ridiculous: wit and humor may play as harmlessly or benefi-
cently round the changing facts of egoism, absurdity, and vice, as
the sunshine over the rippling sea or the dewy meadows. Why
should we make our delicious sense of the ludicrous, with its in-
vigorating shocks of laughter and its irrepressible smiles, which
are the outglow of an inward radiation as gentle and cheering
as the warmth of morning, flourish like a brigand on the rob-
bery of our mental wealth ? or let it take its exercise as a mad-
man might, if allowed a free nightly promenade by drawing the
populace with bonfires which leave some venerable structure a
1558 « GEORGE ELIOT »
blackened ruin, or send a scorching smoke across the portraits of
the past at which we once looked with a loving recognition of
fellowship, and disfigure them into butts of mockery? — nay,
worse — use it to degrade the healthy appetites and afEections of
our nature as they are seen to be degraded in insane patients
whose system, all out of joint, finds matter for screaming laugh-
ter in mere topsy-turvy, makes every passion preposterous or ob-
scene, and turns the hard-won order of life into a second chaos,
hideous enough to make one wail that the first was ever thrilled
with light ?
This is what I call debasing the moral currency; lowering the
value of every inspiring fact and tradition so that it will com-
mand less and less of the spiritual products, the generous motives
which sustain the charm and elevation of our social existence,
— the something besides bread by which man saves his soul alive.
The bread winner of the family may demand more and more
coppery shillings, or assignats, or greenbacks for his day's work,
and so get the needful quantum of food; but let that moral cur-
rency be emptied of its value — let a greedy buffoonery debase
all historic beauty, majesty, and pathos, and the more you heap
up the desecrated symbols the greater will be the lack of the
ennobling emotions which subdue the tyranny of suffering, and
make ambition one with social virtue.
And yet, it seems, parents will put into the hands of their
children ridiculous parodies (perhaps with more ridiculous ^* illus-
trations * ) of the poems which stirred their own tenderness or
filial piety, and carry them to make their first acquaintance with
great men, great works, or solemn crises through the medium of
some miscellaneous burlesque, which, with its idiotic puns and
farcial attitudes, will remain among their primary associations,
and reduce them, throughout their time of studious preparation
for life, to the moral imbecility of an inward giggle at what
might have stimulated their high emulation, or fed the fountains
of compassion, trust, and constancy. One wonders where these
parents have deposited that stock of morally educating stimuli
which is to be independent of poetic tradition, and to subsist in
spite of the finest images being degraded, and the finest words
of genius being poisoned as with some befooling drug.
Will fine wit, will exquisite humor prosper the more through
this turning of all things indiscriminately into food for a glutton-
ous laughter, an idle craving without sense of flavors ? On the
« GEORGE ELIOT » 1559
contrary. That delig-htful power which La Bruy^re points to — ■
" /£" ridicule qui est quclque part, il faut Vy voir, Ven tirer avec
grdce et d'une tnaniere qui plaise et qui instruise''^ — depends on a
discrimination only compatible with the varied sensibilities which
give sympathetic insight, and with the justice of perception which
is another name for grave knowledge. Such a result is no more
to be expected from faculties on the strain to find some small
hook by which they may attach the lowest incongruity to the
most momentous subject than it is to be expected of a sharper
watching for gulls in a great political assemblage, that he will
notice the blundering logic of partisan speakers, or season his
observation with the salt of historical parallels. But after all our
psychological teaching, and in the midst of our zeal for educa-
tion, we are still, most of us, at the stage of believing that men-
tal powers and habits have somehow, not perhaps in the general
statement, but in any particular case, a kind of spiritual glaze
against conditions which we are continually applying to them. We
soak our children in habits of contempt and exultant gibing, and
yet are confident that, as Clarissa one day said to me, — "We
can always teach them to be reverent in the right place, you
know. *^ And doubtless if she were to take her boys to see a
burlesque Socrates, with swollen legs, dying in the utterance of
cockney puns, and were to hang up a sketch of this comic scene
among their bedroom prints, she would think this preparation
not at all to the prejudice of their emotions on hearing their
tutor read that narrative of the "Apology,'^ which has been con-
secrated by the reverent gratitude of ages. This is the impov-
erishment that threatens our posterity; a new Famine, a meagre
fiend with lewd grin and clumsy hoof, is breathing a moral mil-
dew over the harvest of our human sentiments. These are the
most delicate elements of our too easily perishable civilization.
And here again I like to quote a French testimony. Sainte-
Beuve, referring to a time of insurrectionary disturbance, says: —
" Rien de plus prompt cl baisser que la civilization dans les crises comme
celled; on perd en trois semaines le r^sultat de plusieiirs sihles. La civiliza-
tion, la vie est une chose apprise et invent ^e, qu'on le sac he Men : * Inventas
aut qui vitam excolucre per artes? Les ho7nmes apr^s quelques ann^es de
paix oublient trope cette verity : ils arrivent a croire que la culture est chose
inn^e, qu'elle est la mime chose que la nature. La sauvagerie est toujours Id, d
deux pas, et, d^s qu 'on Idche pied, elk recommence. *
1560 « GEORGE ELIOT »
We have been severely enough taught (if we were willing to
learn) that our civilization, considered as a splendid material fab-
ric, is helplessly in peril without the spiritual police of sentiments
or ideal feelings. And it is this invisible police which we had
need, as a community, strive to maintain in efficient force.
How if a dangerous " Swing *' were sometimes disguised in a
versatile entertainer, devoted to the amusement of mixed audi-
ences ? And I confess that sometimes when I see a certain style
of a young lady, who checks our tender admiration with rouge and
henna and all the blazonry of an extravagant expenditure, with
slang and bold brusquerie intended to signify her emancipated
view of things, and the cynical mockery which she mistakes for
penetration, I am sorely tempted to hiss out ^^ Petroleuse! *^ It is a
small matter to have our palaces set aflame compared with the
misery of having our sense of a noble womanhood, which is the
inspiration of a purifying shame, the promise of life-penetrating
affection, stained and blotted out by images of repulsiveness.
These things come, not of higher education, but — of dull igno-
rance, fostered into pertness by the greedy vulgarity which re-
verses Peter's visionary lesson, and learns to call all things common
and unclean. It comes of debasing the moral currency.
The Tirynthians, according to an ancient story reported by
Athenseus, becoming conscious that their trick of laughter at
everything and nothing was making them unfit for the conduct
of serious affairs, appealed to the Delphic oracle for some means
of cure. The god prescribed a peculiar form of sacrifice, which
would be effective if they could carry it through without laughing.
They did their best; but the flimsy joke of a boy upset their un-
accustomed gravity, and in this way the oracle taught them that
even the gods could not prescribe a quick cure for a long vitia-
tion, or give power and dignity to a people who in a crisis of
the public well-being were at the mercy of a poor jest.
Complete. From "The Impressions of
Theophrastus Such.'*
« GEORGE ELIOT » 156 1
STORY-TELLING
WHAT is the best way of telling a story ? Since the standard
must be the interest of the audience, there must be sev-
eral or many good ways rather than one best, for we
get interested in the stories life presents to us through divers
orders and modes of presentation. Very commonly our first
awakening to a desire of knowing a man's past or future comes
from our seeing him as a stranger in some unusual or pathetic
or humorous situation, or manifesting some remarkable charac-
teristics. We make inquiries in consequence, or we become ob-
servant and attentive whenever opportunities of knowing more
may happen to present themselves without our search. You
have seen a refined face among the prisoners picking tow in
jail; you afterwards see the same unforgetful face in a pulpit 1
he must be of dull fibre who would not care to know more
about a life which showed such contrasts, though he might gather
his knowledge in a fragmentary and unchronological way.
Again, we have heard much, or at least something not quite
common, about a man whom we have never seen, and hence we
look round with curiosity when we are told that he is present;
whatever he says or does before us is charged with a meaning
due to our previous hearsay knowledge about him, gathered
either from dialogue of which he was expressly and emphatically
the subject, or from incidental remark, or from general report
either in or out of print.
These indirect ways of arriving at knowledge are always the
most stirring even in relation to impersonal subjects. To see a
chemical experiment gives an attractiveness to a definition of
chemistry, and fills it with a significance which it would never
have had without the pleasant shock of an unusual sequence,
such as the transformation of a solid into gas, and vice versa.
To see a word for the first time either as a substantive or adjec-
tive in a connection where we care about knowing its complete
meaning, is the way to vivify its meaning in our recollection.
Curiosity becomes the more eager from the incompleteness of
the first information. Moreover, it is in this way that memory
works in its incidental revival of events: some salient experience
appears in inward vision, and in consequence the antecedent facts
are retraced from what is regarded as the beginning of the epi-
1562 « GEORGE ELIOT»
sode in which that experience made a more or less strikingly
memorable part. "Ah! I remember addressing the mob from
the hustings at Westminster — you wouldn't have thought that I
could ever have been in such a position. Well, how I came
there was in this way ; ^' and then follows a retrospective
narration.
The modes of telling a story founded on these processes of
outward and inward life derive their effectiveness from the su-
perior mastery of images and pictures in grasping the attention,
— or, one might say with more fundamental accuracy, from tha
fact that our earliest, strongest impressions, our most intimate
convictions, are simply images added to more or less of sensa-
tion. These are the primitive instruments of thought. Hence it
is not surprising that early poetry took this way, — telling a dar-
ing deed, a glorious achievement, without caring for what went
before. The desire for orderly narration is a later, more reflect
ive birth. The presence of the Jack in the box affects every
child: it is the more reflective lad, the miniature philosopher,
who wants to know how he got there.
The only stories life presents to us in an orderly way are
those of our autobiography, or the career of our companions
from our childhood upwards, or perhaps of our own children.
But it is a great art to make a connected strictly relevant narra-
tive of such careers as we can recount from the beginning. In
these cases the sequence of associations is almost sure to over-
master the sense of proportion. Such narratives ab ovo are
summer's day stories for happy loungers; not the cup of self-
forgetting excitement to the busy who can snatch an hour of
entertainment.
But the simple opening of a story with a date and necessary
account of places and people, passing on quietly towards the
more rousing elements of narrative and dramatic presentation,
without need of retrospect, has its advantages, which have to be
measured by the nature of the story. Spirited narrative, without
more than a touch of dialogue here and there, may be made
eminently interesting, and is suited to the novelette. Examples
of its charm are seen in the short tales in which the French
have a mastery never reached by the English, who usually de-
mand coarser flavors than are given by that delightful gayety
which is well described by La Fontaine as not anything that
provokes fits of laughter, but a certain charm, an agreeable mode
• GEORGE ELIOT » 1563
of handling, which lends attractiveness to all subjects, even the
most serious. And it is this sort of gayety which plays around
the best French novelettes. But the opening chapters of the
** Vicar of Wakefield*^ are as fine as anything that can be done
in this way.
Why should a story not be told in the most irregular fashion
that an author's idiosyncrasy may prompt, provided that he give
us what we can enjoy ? The objections to Sterne's wild way of
telling « Tristram Shandy'* lie more solidly in the quality of the
interrupting matter than in the fact of interruption. The dear
public would do well to reflect that they are often bored from
the want of flexibility in their own minds. They are like the
topers of "one liquor."
Complete. From << Leaves from a Note Book.*
ON THE CHARACTER OF SPIKE — A POLITICAL MOLECULE
THE most arrant denier must admit that a man often furthers
larger ends than he is conscious of, and that while he is
transacting his particular affairs with the narrow pertinacity
of a respectable ant, he subserves an economy larger than any
purpose of his own. Society is happily not dependent for the
growth of fellowship on the small minority already endowed with
comprehensive sympathy. Any molecule of the body politic work-
ing toward his own interest in an orderly way gets his under-
standing more or less penetrated with the fact that his interest
is included in that of a large number. I have watched several
political molecules being educated in this way by the nature of
things into a faint feeling of fraternity But at this moment I
am thinking of Spike, an elector who voted on the side of Prog-
ress, though he was not inwardly attached to it under that name.
For abstractions are deities having many specific names, local
habitations, and forms of activity, and so get a multitude of de-
vout servants who care no more for them under their highest
titles than the celebrated person who, putting with forcible brev-
ity a view of human motives now much insisted on, asked what
Posterity had done for him that he should care for Posterity ?
To many minds, even among the Ancients (thought by some to
have been invariably poetical), the goddess of wisdom was doubt-
less worshiped simply as the patroness of spinning and weaving.
I5-J4
« GEORGE ELIOT »
Now Spinning and weaving from a manufacturing, wholesale point
of view, was the chief form under which Spike from early years
had unconsciously been a devotee of Progress.
He was a political molecule of the most gentleman-like ap-
pearance, not less than six feet high, and showing the utmost
nicety in the care of his person and equipment. His umbrella
was especially remarkable for its neatness, though perhaps he
swung it unduly in walking. His complexion was fresh; his eyes
small, bright, and twinkling. He was seen to great advantage in
a hat and greatcoat, — garments frequently fatal to the impres-
siveness of shorter figures; but when he was uncovered in the
drawing-room, it was impossible not to observe that his head
shelved off too rapidly from the eyebrows toward the crown, and
that his length of limb seemed to have used up his mind so as
to cause an air of abstraction from conversational topics. He
appeared, indeed, to be preoccupied with a sense of his exquisite
cleanliness, clapped his hands together and rubbed them fre-
quently, straightened his back, and even opened his mouth and
closed it again with a slight snap, apparently for no other pur-
pose than the confirmation to himself of his own powers in that
line. These are innocent exercises, but they are not such as give
weight to a man's personality. Sometimes Spike's mind, emerg-
ing from its preoccupations, burst forth in a remark delivered with
smiling zest; as that he did like to see gravel walks well rolled,
or that a lady should always wear the best jewelry, or that a
bride was a most interesting object; but finding these ideas re-
ceived rather coldly, he would relapse into abstraction, draw up
his back, wrinkle his brows longitudinally, and seem to regard
society, even including gravel walks, jewelry and brides, as essen-
tially a poor affair. Indeed, his habit of mind was desponding,
and he took melancholy views as to the possible extent of human
pleasure and the value of existence. Especially after he had
made his fortune in the cotton manufacture, and had thus attained ^
the chief object of his ambition, — the object which had engaged
his talent for order and persevering application. For his easy
leisure caused him much ennui. He was abstemious, and had
none of those temptations to sensual excess which fill up a man's
time, first with indulgence, and then with the process of getting
well from its effects. He had not, indeed, exhausted the sources
of knowledge, but here again his notions of human pleasure were
narrowed by his want of appetite ; for though he seemed rather
« GEORGE ELIOT» ^5^5
surprised at the consideration that Alfred the Great was a Catho-
lic, or that, apart from the Ten Commandments, any conception
of moral conduct had occurred to mankind, he was not stimulated
to further inquiries on these remote matters. Yet he aspired to
what he regarded as intellectual society, willingly entertained
beneficed clergymen, and bought the books he heard spoken of,
arranging them carefully on the shelves of what he called his
library, and occasionally sitting alone in the same room with
them. But some minds seem well glazed by nature against the
admission of knowledge, and Spike's was one of them. It was not,
however, entirely so with regard to politics. He had had a strong
opinion about the Reform Bill, and saw clearly that the large
trading towns ought to send members. Portraits of the Reform
heroes hung framed and glazed in his library; he prided himself
on being a Liberal. In this last particular, as well as in not
giving benefactions and not making loans without interest, he
showed unquestionable firmness. On the Repeal of the Com
Laws, again, he was thoroughly convinced. His mind was ex-
pansive toward foreign markets, and his imagination could see
that the people from whom we took corn might be able to take
the cotton goods which they had hitherto dispensed with. On
his conduct in these political concerns his wife, otherwise influen-
tial as a woman who belonged to a family with a title in it, and
who had condescended in marrying him, could gain no hold: she
had to blush a little at what was called her husband's * radical-
ism,**— an epithet which was a very unfair impeachment of Spike,
who never went to the root of anything. But he understood his
own trading affairs, and in this way became a genuine, constant
political element. If he had been born a little later he could
have been accepted as an eligible member of Parliament, and if
he had belonged to a high family he might have done for a
member of the Government. Perhaps his indifference to ^Wiews "
would have passed for administrative judiciousness, and he would
have been so generally silent that he must often have been si-
lent in the right place. But this is empty speculation; there is
no warrant for saying what Spike would have been and known,
so as to have made a calculable political element, if he had not
been educated by having to manage his trade. A small mind
trained to useful occupation for the satisfying of private need
becomes a representative of genuine class-needs. Spike objected
to certain items of legislation because they hampered his own
1566 « GEORGE ELIOT »
trade, but his neighbor's trade was hampered by the same causes;
and though he would have been simply selfish, in a question of
light or water between himself and a fellow-townsman, his need
for a change in legislation, being shared by all his neighbors in
trade, ceased to be simply selfish, and raised him to a sense of
common injury and common benefit True, if the law could have
been changed for the benefit of his particular business, leaving
the cotton trade in general in a sorry condition while he pros-
pered, Spike might not have thought that result intolerably un-
just; but the nature of things did not allow of such a result being
contemplated as possible; it allowed of an enlarged market for
Spike only through the enlargement of his neighbor's market,
and the Possible is always the ultimate master of our efforts and
desires. Spike was obliged to contemplate a general benefit,
and thus became public-spirited in spite of himself. Or, rather,
the nature of things transmuted his active egoism into a demand
for a public benefit.
Certainly, if Spike had been born a marquis, he could not
have had the same chance of being useful as a political element.
But he might have had the same appearance, have been equally
null in conversation, skeptical as to the reality of pleasure, and
destitute of historical knowledge; perhaps even dimly disliking
Jesuitism as a quality in Catholic minds, or regarding Bacon as
the inventor of physical science. The depths of middle-aged gen-
tlemen's ignorance will never be known, for want of public ex-
aminations in this branch.
Complete. From «The Impressions of
Theophrastus Such.»
« LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK»
Divine Grace a Real Emanation
THERE is no such thing as an impotent or neutral deity, if the
deity be really believed in, and contemplated either in
prayer or meditation. Every object of thought reacts on
the mind that conceives it, still more on that which habitually
contemplates it. In this we may be said to solicit help from a
generalization or abstraction. Wordsworth had this truth in his
consciousness when he wrote (in the * Prelude ®) : —
«GEORGE ELIOT» 1567
" Nor general truths, which are themselves a sort
Of elements and agents, Under-powers,
Subordinate helpers of the living mind,'* —
not indeed precisely in the same relation, but with a meaning
which involves that wider moral influence.
Complete.
Felix Qui Non Potuit
MANY feel themselves very confidently on safe ground when
they say: It must be good for man to know the Truth.
But it is clearly not good for a particular man to know
some particular truth, as irremediable treachery in one whom he
cherishes — better that he should die without knowing it.
Of scientific truth, is it not conceivable that some facts as to
the tendency of things affecting the final destination of the race
might be more hurtful when they had entered into the human
consciousness than they would have been if they had remained
purely external in their activity ?
Complete.
«Dear Religious Love»
WE GET our knowledge of perfect Love by glimpses and in
fragments chiefly, — the rarest only among us knowing
what it is to worship and caress, reverence and cherish,
divide our bread and mingle our thoughts at one and the same
time, under inspiration of the same object. Finest aromas will
so often leave the fruits to which they are native and cling else-
where, leaving the fruit empty of all but its coarser structure!
Complete.
We Make Our Own Precedents
IN THE times of national mixture when modem Europe was, as
one may say, a-brewing, it was open to a man who did not
like to be judged by the Roman law to choose which of cer-
tain other codes he would be tried by. So, in our own times,
they who openly adopt a higher rule than their neighbors do
thereby make act of choice as to the laws and precedents by
156S "GEORGE ELIOT »
which they shall be approved or condemned, and thus it may
happen that we see a man morally pilloried for a very customary
deed, and yet having no right to complain, inasmuch as in his
foregoing deliberative course of life he had referred himself to the
tribunal of those higher conceptions, before which such a deed is
without question condemnable.
Complete.
To THE Prosaic All Things Are Prosaic
I
s THE time we live in prosaic?^* "That depends: it must cer-
tainly le prosaic to one whose mind takes a prosaic stand in
contemplating it. '* * But it is precisely the most poetic minds
that most groan over the vulgarity of the present, its degenerate
sensibility to beauty, eagerness for materialistic explanation, noisy
triviality. "* "Perhaps they would have had the same complaint
to make about the age of Elizabeth, if, living then, they had
fixed thelv attention on its more sordid elements, or had been
subject to Ihe grating influence of its every-day meannesses, and
had srught refuge from them in the contemplation of whatever
fvitari their taste in a former age.*
Complete.
SIR THOMAS ELYOT
{C. 1 490- 1 546)
|he spirit of Dante came into England with Chaucer in the
fourteenth century; and through the writers inspired by
Chaucer's spirit, Italian poetry became a great civilizing
force, making the ways straight for Shakespeare and the Elizabethan
age. But that age, the most remarkable phenomenon in modern lit-
erary history, would not have been possible as a result of Latin in-
spiration alone. As Chaucer was inspired by Dante, as Dante was
taught by Virgil, so Virgil was made possible by Homer; and before
England could be prepared to do its great work in leading the Gothic
nations of northern Europe, it was necessary that it should have the
direct inspiration of the first great prophet of European civilization, —
of Homer himself. Sir Thomas Elyot, born ninety years after the
death of Chaucer, seems to be the first notable English writer whom
the greatness of Homer's mind had inspired with a due reverence
for the supernatural forces which have worked such miraculous
results through the deathless music of his verse. ** I could rehearse
divers other poets which for matter and eloquence be very neces-
sary, ** writes Elyot ;^< but I fear me to be too long from noble Homer,
from whom as from a fountain proceeded all eloquence and learning.
For in his books be contained, and most perfectly expressed, not only
the documents martial and discipline of arms, but also incomparable
wisdoms, and instructions for politic governance of people : with the
worthy commendation and laud of noble princes: wherewith the read-
ers shall be so all inflamed, that they most fervently shall desire and
covet, by the imitation of their virtues, to acquire semblable glory. >'
Constantinople fell in 1453, and learned Greeks, the last custodi-
ans of the Homeric traditions, had scattered over Europe as far north
as England. It was as a result of their teaching that Elyot could
write this simple and noble tribute to the simple and noble idealism
which made Homer at once the greatest musician, the greatest poet,
the greatest prophet of Europe. When Homer came thus to a peo-
ple who already had Dante, Virgil, and Chaucer, they acquired the
one thing they still needed to make the Shakespearean cycle possi-
ble,— the constructive intellect which can so compel the sententious-
ness natural to the Gothic peoples, that the idea of unity incident to
a definite and fully determined purpose will govern throughout every
IV— 99
1570 SIR THOMAS ELYOT
work that is attempted. This the Greeks had as no other people
ever did. The sublimity of Hebrew poetry is greater than that of
Homer or ^schylus, but no Hebrew poem is unified by such a pur-
pose resulting from predetermined poetic conception as runs through
the <* Odyssey/* as it does through the plan of the Parthenon.
When in England we find not only Shakespeare, but a hundred
poets, named and nameless, of whose abilities his are the sum, pro-
ducing works of the highest lyrical value; when we compare such
works with the ^^Ormulum** and the "Vision of Piers Plowman, >*
they seem a miraculous result, beyond the power of any evolution
possible for the race intellect. But a dozen lines of Elyot's tribute
to Homer make it clear that long-separated peoples of a common
stock are at last reunited by the intellectual and spiritual power of
their poets. Modem England was promised when Chaucer learned
Italian and when Elyot learned Greek, all after times were given
assurance that the promise must necessarily be fulfilled.
Elyot, who was one of the most accomplished scholars of the
reign of Henry VIII. is claimed by both Oxford and Cambridge. He
wrote a Latin Dictionary, a "Defense of Good Women,'* "The Knowl-
edge which Maketh a Wise Man,** and other essays and treatises, in-
cluding "The Boke Named the Governour,** an essay on education,
for which he is best remembered. He died in 1546 and was buried
at Carleton in Cambridgeshire. W. V. B.
ON A CLASSICAL EDUCATION
GRAMMAR being but an introduction to the understanding of
authors, if it be made too long or exquisite to the learner,
it in a manner mortifieth his courage: and by that time he
Cometh to the most sweet and pleasant reading of old authors,
the sparks of fervent desire of learning is extinct with the bur-
den of grammar, like as a little fire is soon quenched with a.
great heap of small sticks: so that it can never come to the prin-
cipal logs where it should long burn in a great pleasant fire.
Now to follow my purpose: after a few and quick rules of
grammar, immediately, or interlacing it therewith, would be read
to the child ^sop's " Fables** in Greek: in which argument children
much do delight. And surely it is a much pleasant lesson and
also profitable, as well for that it is elegant and brief (and not-
withstanding it hath much variety in words, and therewith much
helpeth to the understanding of Greek), as also in those fables
SIR THOMAS ELYOT I571
is included much moral and politic wisdom. Wherefore, in the
teaching of them, the master diligently must gather together
those fables, which may be most accommodate to the advancement
of some virtue, whereto he perceiveth the child inclined: or to
the rebuke of some vice, whereto he findeth his nature disposed.
And therein the master ought to exercise his wit, as well to make
the child plainly to understand the fable, as also declaring the
signification thereof compendiously and to the purpose, foreseen
alway, that, as well this lesson, as all other authors which the
child shall learn, either Greek or Latin, verse or prose, be per-
fectly had without the book: whereby he shall not only attain
plenty of the tongues called Copie, but also increase and nourish
remembrance wonderfully.
The next lesson would be some quick and merry dialogues,
elect out of Lucian, which would be without ribaldry, or too much
scorning, for either of them is exactly to be eschewed, specially for
a noble man, the one annoying the soul, the other his estimation
concerning his gravity. The comedies of Aristophanes may be
in the place of Lucian, and by reason that they be in metre they
be the sooner learned by heart. I dare make none other com-
parison between them for offending the friends of them both: but
thus much dare I say, that it were better that a child should
never read any part of Lucian than all Lucian.
I could rehearse divers other poets which for matter and
eloquence be very necessary, biit I fear me to be too long from
noble Homer, from whom as from a fountain proceeded all elo-
quence and learning. For in his books be contained, and most
perfectly expressed, not only the documents martial and discipline
of arms, but also incomparable wisdoms, and instructions for
politic governance of people: with the worthy commendation and
laud of noble princes: wherewith the readers shall be so all in-
flamed, that they most fervently shall desire and covet, by the
imitation of their virtues, to acquire semblable glory. For the
which occasion, Aristotle, most sharpest witted and excellent
learned philosopher, as soon as he had received Alexander from
King Philip his father, he before any other thing taught him the
most noble works of Homer: wherein Alexander found such sweet-
ness and fruit, that ever after he had Homer not only with him in
all his journeys, but also laid him imder his pillow when he went
to rest, and oftentimes would purposely wake some hours of the
night, to take as it were his pastime with that most noble poet.
1572 SIR THOMAS ELYOT
For by the reading of his work called ^* Iliados, '^ where the as-
sembly of the most noble Greeks against Troy is recited with
their affairs, he gathered courage and strength against his ene-
mies, wisdom, and eloquence, for consultations, and persuasions to
his people and army. And by the other work called ^^Odissea,*
which recounteth the sundry adventures of the wise Ulysses, he,
by the example of Ulysses, apprehended many noble virtues, and
also learned to escape the fraud and deceitful imaginations of
sundry and subtle crafty wits. Also there shall he learn to en-
search and perceive the manners and conditions of them that be
his familiars, sifting out (as I mought say) the best from the
worst, whereby he may surely commit his affairs, and trust to
every person after his virtues. Therefore I now conclude that
there is no lesson for a young gentleman to be compared with
Homer, if he be plainly and substantially expounded and declared
by the master.
From <<The Governour."
THE TRUE SIGNIFICATION OF TEMPERANCE AS A MORAL
VIRTUE
ARISTOTLE defineth this virtue to be a mediocrity in the pleasures
of the body, specially in taste and touching. Therefore he
that is temperate fleeth pleasures voluptuous, and with the
absence of them is not discontented, and from the presence oi
them he willingly abstaineth. But in mine opinion, Plotinus, the
wonderful philosopher, maketh an excellent definition of temper-
ance, saying that the property or office thereof is to covet noth-
ing which may be repented, also not to exceed the bounds of
mediocrity, and to keep desire under the yoke of reason. He
that practiceth this virtue is called a temperate man, and he that
doeth contrary thereto is named intemperate. Between whom
and a person incontinent Aristotle maketh this diversity; that he
is intemperate which by his own election is led, supposing that
the pleasure that is present, or, as I might say, in use should
always be followed. But the person incontinent supposeth not
so, and yet he, notwithstanding, doth follow it. The same author
also maketh a diversity between him that is temperate and him
that is continent; saying that the continent man is such, one
that nothing will do for bodily pleasure which shall stand against
SIR THOMAS ELYOT 1573
reason. The same is he which is temperate, saving that the
other hath corrupt desires, which this man lacketh. Also the
temperate man delighteth in nothing contrary to reason. But
he that is continent dehghteth, yet he will not be led against
reason. Finally, to declare it in a few words, we may well call
him a temperate man that desireth the thing which he ought to
desire, and as he ought to desire, and when he ought to desire.
Notwithstanding there be divers other virtues which do seem to
be as it were companions with temperance. Of whom, for the
eschewing of tediousness, I will speak now only of two, modera-
tion and soberness, which no man, I suppose, doubteth to be of
such efficacy that without them no man may attain imto wisdom,
and by them wisdom is soonest espied.
From <^The Governour.>'
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
(1 803- 1 882)
^j^^t^iMF.RSO'S was <<the eighth in succession of a line of Puritan
ministers. >> He was born May 25th, 1803, in Boston, where
his father, Rev. William Emerson, was pastor of the "First
Church. ^> Emerson himself was educated at Harvard for the ministry,
and from 1829 to 1832 he filled a Unitarian pulpit in Boston; but he
found the pulpit uncongenial because of its restrictions, and gave it
up to preach in a field where his intellect could create for itself the
largest possible liberty of expression. In 1833 he began the work as
a lecturer and platform-teacher, which lasted until his death, April
27th, 1882. It was work for which he was in every way fitted; and
as an incident of it, he became one of the greatest essayists of the
nineteenth century. Primarily and fundamentally he is a poet, who
failed to become the greatest American poet of the century because
no one can be at once a great poet and a great preacher. The poet
is a picture maker. He must give his thoughts harmonious images,
and make them move before us to concordant music. He must make
us forget that they are the thoughts of his mind and convince us
that they are living things, or he fails as a poet. But the preacher
must compel us to recognize his thought as valid; to think it our-
selves and to enter with it into his own relations with the great
universe of thought to which it belongs. This faculty Emerson has
above any other American essayist. It is part of his nature and his
creed that he should have it. He felt that the supreme necessity of
his existence was intellectual activity, that he might enter into closer
relations with the ceaseless intellectual activity of which all nature
is a result. " Behold there in the wood the fine madman. He is a
palace of sweet sounds and sights; he dilates; he is twice a man;
he walks with arms akimbo; he soliloquizes; he accosts the grass and
the trees; he feels the blood of the violet, the clover, and the lily in
his veins; . . . He does not longer appertain to his family and
society. He is somewhat. He is a person. He is a soul.^* — This is
his own account of himself and of how he grew into possession of
the high courage necessary to give expression to such an individuality
as his, in spite of scoffs, which were hard to bear, and of neglect,
which was harder still. It is said that it took twelve years to sell
five hundred copies of the first edition of *' Nature *' — the volume in
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1575
which he first defined his purposes. But he had something higher
than self-confidence to sustain him. He had faith. He believed that
all truth is a direct inspiration from God, and that this inspiration
will go on increasing as long as love and faith are left on earth.
This was his creed. He did not hesitate to believe himself inspired
by God with all the truth his mind was capable of receiving; and in
his lectures, his poems, and his essays, he attempted to so express
truth as to make it appear to all others as beautiful and desirable as
it did to him. It was a high and noble ambition, and it has given
his work an immortality of high and noble usefulness.
W. V. B
CHARACTER
I HAVE read that those who listened to Lord Chatham felt that
there was something finer in the man than anything which
he said. It has been complained of our brilliant English
historian of the French Revolution, that when he has told all
his facts about Mirabeau, they do not justify his estimate of his
genius. The Gracchi, Agis, Cleomenes, and others of Plutarch's
heroes, do not in the record of facts equal their own fame. Sir
Philip Sidney, the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh, are men
of great figure and of few deeds. We cannot find the smallest
part of the personal weight of Washington, in the narrative of
his exploits. The authority of the name of Schiller is too great
for his books. This inequality of the reputation to the works or
the anecdotes is not accounted for by saying that the reverbera-
tion is longer than the thunderclap; but somewhat resided in
these men w^hich begot an expectation that outran all their per-
formance. The largest part of their power was latent. This is
that which we call Character, — a reserved force which acts di-
rectly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a
certain undemonstrable force, a Familiar or Genius, by whose
impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot im-
part; which is company for him, so that such men are often
solitary, or if they chance to be social, do not need society, but
can entertain themselves very well alone. The purest literary
talent appears at one time great, at another time small; but
character is of a stellar and undiminishable greatness. What
others effect by talent or by eloquence, this man accomplishes
by some magnetism. ^ Half his strength he put not forth, '^ Kis
1576 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
victories are by demonstration of superiority, and not by crossing
of bayonets. He conquers, because his arrival alters the face of
affairs. " O lole ! how did you know that Hercules was a god ? **
<* Because, '^ answered lole, *I was content the moment my eyes
fell on him. When I beheld Theseus, I desired that I might see
him offer battle, or at least guide his horses in the chariot race;
but Hercules did not wait for a contest; he conquered whether
he stood, or walked, or sat, or whatever thing he did.^* Man, or-
dinarily a pendant to events, only half attached, and that awk-
wardly, to the world he lives in, in these examples appears to
share the life of things, and to be an expression of the same
laws which control the tides and the sun, numbers, and quan-
tities.
But to use a more modest illustration, and nearer home, I
observe that in otir political elections, where this element, if it
appears at all, can onl}- occur in its coarsest form, we sufficiently
understand its incomparable rate. The people know that they
need in their representative much more than talent, namely, the
power to make his talent trusted. They cannot come at their
ends by sending to Congress a learned, acute, and fluent speaker,
if he be not one who, before he was appointed by the people to
represent them, was appointed by Almighty God to stand for a
fact, — invincibly persuaded of that fact in himself, — so that the
most confident and the most violent persons learn that here is
resistance on which both impudence and terror are wasted,
namely, faith in a fact. The men who carry their points do not
need to inquire of their constituents what they should say, but
are themselves the country which they represent: nowhere are
its emotions or opinions so instant and true as in them; no-
where so pure from a selfish infusion. The constituency at
home hearkens to their words, watches the color of their cheek,
and therein, as in a glass, dresses its own. Our public assem-
blies are pretty good tests of manly force. Our frank country-
men of the west and south have a taste for character, and like
to know whether the New Englander is a substantial man, or
whether the hand can pass through him.
The same motive force appears in trade. There are geniuses
in trade, as well as in war, or the state, or letters; and the rea-
son why this or that man is fortunate is not to be told. It lies
in the man: that is all anybody can tell you about it. See him,
and you will know as easily why he succeeds, as, if you saw Na-
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1577
poleon, you would comprehend his fortune. In the new objects
we recognize the old game, the habit of fronting the fact, and
not dealing with it at second hand, through the perceptions of
somebody else. Nature seems to authorize trade, as soon as you
see the natural merchant, who appears not so much a private
agent as her factor and minister of commerce. His natural prob
ity combines with his insight into the fabric of society to put him
above tricks, and he communicates to all his own faith that con-
tracts are of no private interpretation. The habit of his mind is
a reference to standards of natural equity and public advantage;
and he inspires respect, and the wish to deal with him, both for
the quiet spirit of honor which attends him, and for the intel-
lectual pastime which the spectacle of so much ability affords.
This immensely stretched trade, which makes the capes of the
Southern Ocean his wharves, and the Atlantic Sea his familiar
port, centres in his brain only; and nobody in the universe can
make his place good. In his parlor I see very well that he has
been at hard work this morning, with that knitted brow, and
that settled humor, which all his desire to be courteous cannot
shake off. I see plainly how many firm acts have been done;
now many valiant noes have this day been spoken, when others
would have uttered ruinous yeas. I see, with the pride of art,
and skill of masterly arithmetic and power of remote combina-
tion, the consciousness of being an agent and playfellow of the
original laws of the world. He too believes that none can sup-
ply him, and that a man must be born to trade, or he cannot
learn it.
This virtue draws the mind more when it appears in action
to ends not so mixed. It works with most energy in the smallest
companies and in private relations. In all cases it is an extraor-
dinary and incomputable agent. The excess of physical strength
is paralyzed by it. Higher natures overpower lower ones by
affecting them with a certain sleep. The faculties are locked
up, and offer no resistance. Perhaps that is the universal law.
When the high cannot bring up the low to itself, it ben*imbs it,
as man charms down the resistance of the lower animals. Men
exert on each other a similar occult power. How often has the
influence of a true master realized all the tales of magic! A
river of command seemed to run down from his eyes into all
those who beheld him, a torrent of strong sad light, like an Ohio
or Danube, which pervaded them with his thoughts, and colored
1578 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
all events with the hue of his mind. " What means did you em-
ploy ? * was the question asked of the wife of Concini, in regard
to her treatment of Mary of Medici; and the answer was, ^*Only
that influence which every strong mind has over a weak one.*'
Cannot Caesar in irons shuffle off the irons, and transfer them to
the person of Hippo or Thraso tlie turnkey ? Is an iron hand-
cuff so immutable a bond ? Suppose a slaver on the coast of
Guinea should take on board a gang of negroes, which should
contain persons of the stamp of Toussaint L'Ouverture; or let
us fancy under these swarthy masks he has a gang of Washing-
tons in chains. When they arrive at Cuba, will the relative order
of the ship's company be the same ? Is there nothing but rope
and iron ? Is there no love, no reverence ? Is there never a
glimpse of right in a poor slave captain's mind; and cannot these
be supposed available to break, or elude, or in any manner over-
match the tension of an inch or two of iron ring ?
This is a natural power, like light and heat, and all nature
co-operates with it. The reason why we feel one man's presence,
and do not feel another's, is as simple as gravity. Truth is the
summit of being: justice is the application of it to affairs. All
individual natures stand in a scale, according to the purity of
this element in them. The will of the pure runs down from them
into other natures, as water runs down from a higher into a
lower vessel. This natural force is no more to be withstood than
any other natural force. We can drive a stone upward for a
moment into the air, but it is yet true that all stones will for-
ever fall; and whatever instances can be quoted of unpunished
theft, or of a lie which somebody credited, justice must prevail,
and it is the privilege of truth to make itself believed. Charac-
ter is this moral order seen through the medium of an individual
nature. An individual is an inclosure. Time and space, liberty
and necessity, truth and thought, are left at large no longer.
Now, the universe is a close or pound. All things exist in the
man tinged with the manners of his soul. With what quality is
in him he infuses all nature that he can reach; nor does he tend
to lose himself in vastness, but, at how long a curve soever,
all his regards return into his own good at last. He animates all
he can, and he sees only what he animates. He incloses the
world as the patriot does his country, as a material basis for his
character, and a theatre for action. A healthy soul stands united
with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1579
the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent ob-
ject betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the
sun journeys towards that person. He is thus the medium of
the highest influence to all who are not on the same level. Thus,
men of character are the conscience of the society to which they
belong.
The natural measure of this power is the resistance of circum-
stances. Impure men consider life as it is reflected in opinions,
events, and persons. They cannot see the action, until it is done.
Yet its moral element pre-existed in the actor, and its quality as
right or wrong it was easy to predict. Everything in nature is
bipolar, or has a positive and negative pole. There is a male
and a female, a spirit and a fact, a north and a south. Spirit is
the positive, the event is the negative. Will is the north, action
the south pole. Character may be ranked as having its natural
place in the north. It shares the magnetic currents of the sys-
tem. The feeble souls are drawn to the south or negative pole.
They look at the profit or hurt of the action. They never behold
a principle until it is lodged in a person. They do not wish to
be lovely, but to be loved. The class of character like to hear of
their faults; the other class do not like to hear of faults; they
worship events; secure to them a fact, a connection, a certain
chain of circumstances, and they will ask no more. The hero
sees that the event is ancillary; it must follow him. A given
order of events has no power to secure to him the satisfaction
which the imagination attaches to it; the soul of goodness es-
capes from any set of circumstances, whilst prosperity belongs to
a certain mind, and will introduce that power and victory which
is its natural fruit, into any order of events. No change of cir-
cumstances can repair a defect of character. We boast our eman-
cipation from many superstitions; but if we have broken any
idols, it is through a transfer of the idolatry. What have I
gained, that I no longer immolate a bull to Jove, or to Neptune,
or a mouse to Hecate ; that I do not tremble before the Eumen-
ides, or the Catholic Purgatory, or the Calvinistic Judgment Day,
• — if I quake at opinion, the public opinion, as we call it; or at
the threat of assault, or contumely, or bad neighbors, or poverty,
or mutilation, or at the rumor of revolution, or of murder ? If
I quake, what matters it what I quake at ? Our proper vice takes
form in one or another shape, according to the sex, age, or tem-
perament of the person, and, if we are capable of fear, will
1 5 So RALPH WALDO EMERSON
readily find terrors. The covetousness or the maHgnity which
saddens me, when I ascribe it to society is my own. I am always
environed by myself. On the other part, rectitude is a perpetual
victory, celebrated not by cries of joy, but by serenity, which is
joy fixed or habitual. It is disgraceful to fly to events for con-
firmation of our truth and worth. The capitalist does not run
every hour to the broker, to coin his advances into current money
of the realm; he is satisfied to read in the quotations of the mar-
ket that his stocks have risen. The same transport which the
occurrence of the best events in the best order would occasion
me I must learn to taste purer in the perception that my posi-
tion is every hour meliorated, and does already command those
events I desire. That exultation is only to be checked by the
foresight of an order of things so excellent as to throw all our
prosperities into the deepest shade.
The face which character wears to me is self-sufficingness. I
revere the person who is riches; so that I cannot think of him
as alone, or poor, or exiled, or unhappy, or a client, but as per-
petual patron, benefactor, and beatified man. Character is cen-
trality, the impossibility of being displaced or overset. A man
should give us a sense of mass. Society is frivolous, and shreds
its day into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies and escapes.
But if I go to see an ingenious man, I shall think myself poorly
entertained if he give me nimble pieces of benevolence and eti-
quette; rather he shall stand stoutly in his place, and let me
apprehend, if it were only his resistance; know that I have en-
countered a new and positive quality; — great refreshment for both
of us. It is much, that he does not accept the conventional opin-
ions and practices. That nonconformity will remain a goad and
remembrancer, and every inquirer will have to dispose of him in
the first place. There is nothing real or useful that is not a seat
of war. Our houses ring with laughter and personal and critical
gossip, but it helps little. But the uncivil, unavailable man, who
is a problem and a threat to society, whom it cannot let pass in
silence, but must either worship or hate, — and to whom all
parties feel related, both the leaders of opinion, and the obscure
and eccentric, — he helps ; he puts America and Europe in the
wrong, and destroys the skepticism which says, " man is a doll,
let us eat and drink, 'tis the best we can do," by illuminating
the untried and unknown. Acquiescence in the establishment,
and appeal to the public, indicate infirm faith, heads which are
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1581
not clear, and which must see a house built before they can
comprehend the plan of it. The wise man not only leaves out
of his thought the many, but leaves out the few. Fountains,
fountains, the self-moved, the absorbed, the commander because
he is commanded, the assured, the primary, — they are good; for
these announce the instant presence of supreme power.
Our action should rest mathematically on our substance. In
nature, there are no false valuations. A pound of water in the
ocean tempest has no more gravity than in a midsummer pond.
All things work exactly according to their quality, and according
to their quantity; attempt nothing they cannot do, except man
only. He has pretension; he wishes and attempts things beyond
his force. I read in a book of English memoirs, ^^ Mr. Fox [af-
terwards Lord Holland] said he must have the Treasury; he had
served up to it, and would have it.** Xenophon and His Thou-
sand were quite equal to what they attempted, and did it; so
equal, that it was not suspected to be a grand and inimitable ex-
ploit. Yet there stands that fact unrepeated, a high-water mark
in military history. Many have attempted it since, and not been
equal to it. It is only on reality that any power of action can
be based. No institution will be better than the institutor. I
knew an amiable and accomplished person who undertook a prac-
tical reform, yet I was never able to find in him the enterprise
of love he took in hand. He adopted it by ear and by the un-
derstanding from the books he had been reading. All his action
was tentative, a piece of the city carried out into the fields, and
was the city still, and no new fact, and could not inspire enthu-
siasm. Had there been something latent in the man, a terrible
undemonstrated genius agitating and embarrassing his demeanor,
we had watched for its advent. It is not enough that the intel-
lect should see the evils and their remedy. We shall still post-
pone our existence, nor take the ground to which we are entitled,
whilst it is only a thought, and not a spirit that incites us. We
have not yet served up to it.
These are properties of life, and another trait is the notice of
incessant growth. Men should be intelligent and earnest. They
must also make us feel that they have a controlling happy future
opening before them, which sheds a splendor on the passing
hour. The hero is misconceived and misreported; he cannot
therefore wait to unravel any man's blunders; he is again on his
road, adding new powers and Hnnors *-o his domain- and new
1582 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
claims on your heart, which will bankrupt you, if you have
loitered about the old things, and have not kept your relation to
him, by adding to your wealth. New actions are the only apol-
ogies and explanations of old ones, which the noble can bear to
offer or to receive. If your friend has displeased you, you shall
not sit down to consider it, for he has already lost all memory
of the passage, and has doubled his power to serve you, and, ere
you can rise up again, will burden you with blessings.
We have no pleasure in thinking of a benevolence that is
only measured by its works. Love is inexhaustible, and if its
estate is wasted, its granary emptied, still cheers and enriches;
and the man, though he sleep, seems to purify the air, and his
house to adorn the landscape and strengthen the laws. People
always recognize this difference We know who is benevolent,
by quite other means than the amount of subscription to soup
societies. It is only low merits that can be enumerated. Fear,
when your friends say to you that you have done well, and say
it through; but when they stand with uncertain timid looks of
respect and half-dislike, and must suspend their judgment for
years to come, you may begin to hope. Those who live to the
future must always appear selfish to those v/ho live to the pres-
ent. Therefore it was droll in the good Riemer, who has written
memoirs of Goethe, to make out a list of his donations and good
deeds, as so many hundred thalers given to Stilling, to Hegel,
to Tischbein; a lucrative place found for Professor Voss, a post
under the grand duke for Herder, a pension for Meyer, two
professors recommended to foreign universities, etc., etc. The
longest list of specifications of benefit would look very short. A
man is a poor creature, if he is to be micasured so. For all
these, of course, are exceptions; and the rule and hodiernal life
of a good man is benefaction. The true charity of Goethe is to
be inferred from the account he gave Dr. Eckermann of the
way in which he had spent his fortune. " Each bonmot of mine
has cost a purse of gold. Half a million of my own money, the
fortune I inherited, my salary, and the large income derived
from my writings for fifty years back, have been expended to
instruct me in what I now know. I have besides seen,'* etc.
I own it is but poor chat and gossip to go to enumerate
traits of this simple and rapid power, and we are painting the
lightning with charcoal; but in these long nights and vacations,
I like to console myself so. Nothing but itself can copy it. A
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1583
word warm from the heart enriches me. I surrender at discre-
tion. How death-cold is literary genius before this fire of life!
These are the touches that reanimate my heavy soul, and give it
eyes to pierce the dark of nature. I find, where I thought my-
self poor, there was I most rich. Thence comes a new intellect-
ual exaltation, to be again rebuked by some new exhibition of
character. Strange alternation of attraction and repulsion ! Char-
acter repudiates intellect, yet excites it; and character passes into
thought, is published so, and then is ashamed before new flashes
of moral worth.
Character is nature in the highest form. It is of no use to
ape it, or to contend with it. Somewhat is possible of resistance,
and of persistence, and of creation, to this power, which will foil
all emulation.
This masterpiece is best where no hands but Nature's have
been laid on it. Care is taken that the greatly destined shall slip
up into life in the shade, with no thousand-eyed Athens to watch
and blazon every new thought, every blushing emotion of young
genius. Two persons lately, — very young children of the most
high God, — have given me occasion for thought. When I explored
the source of their sanctity, and charm for the imagination, it
seemed as if each answered, "From my nonconformity: I never
listened to your people's law, or to what they call their gospel,
and wasted my time. I was content with the simple rural pov-
erty of my own: hence this sweetness: my work never reminds
you of that; — is pure of that.** And Nature advertises me in such
persons, that in democratic America she will not be democratized.
How cloistered and constitutionally sequestered from the market
and from scandal! It was only this morning that I sent away
some wild flowers of these wood gods. They are a relief from
literature, — these fresh draughts from the sources of thought and
sentiment; as we read, in an age of polish and criticism, the first
lines of written prose and verse of a nation. How captivating is
their devotion to their favorite books, whether ^schylus, Dante,
Shakespeare, or Scott, as feeling that they have a stake in that
book : who touches that touches them ; — and especially the total
solitude of the critic, the Patmos of thought from which he writes,
m unconsciousness of any eyes that shall ever read this writing.
Could they dream on still, as angels, and not wake to compari-
sons, and to be flattered! Yet some natures are too good to be
spoiled by praise, and wherever the vein of thought reaches down
[584 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
into the profound, there is no danger from vanity. Solemn
friends will warn them of the danger of the head's being turned
by the flourish of trumpets, but they can afford to smile. I re-
member the indignation of an eloquent Methodist, at the kind
admonitions of a doctor of divinity, — ^* My friend, a man can
neither be praised nor insulted. ^^ But forgive the counsels; they
are very natural. I remember the thought which occurred to
me when some ingenious and spiritual foreigners came to Amer-
ica was, Have you been victimized in being brought hither? —
or, prior to that, answer me this', '^ Are you victimizable ? *'
As I have said. Nature keeps these sovereignties in her own
hands, and however pertly our sermons and disciplines would di-
vide some share of credit, and teach that the laws fashion the
citizen, she goes her own gait, and puts the wisest in the wrong.
She makes very light of Gospel and prophets, as one who has a
great many more to produce, and no excess of time to spare on
any one. There is a class of men, individuals of which appear
at long intervals, so eminently endowed with insight and virtue,
that they have been unanimously saluted as divine, and who seem
to be an accumulation of that power we consider. Divine per-
sons are character born, or, to borrow a phrase from Napoleon,
they are victory organized. They are usually received with ill
will, because they are new, and because they set a bound to the
exaggeration that has been made of the personality of the last
divine person. Nature never rhymes her children, nor makes
two men alike. When we see a great man we fancy a resem-
blance to some historical person, and predict the sequel of his
character and fortune, — a result which he is sure to disappoint.
None will ever solve the problem of his character according to
our prejudice, but only in his own high unprecedented way.
Character wants room; must not be crowded on by persons, nor
be judged from glimpses got in the press of affairs or on few
occasions. It needs perspective, as a great building. It may
not, probably does not, form relations rapidly; and we should not
require rash explanation, either on the popular ethics, or on our
own, of its action.
I look on sculpture as history. I do not think the Apollo
and the Jove impossible in flesh and blood. Every trait which
the artist recorded in stone he had seen in life, and better than
his copy. We have seen many counterfeits, but we are born be-
lievers in great men. How easily we read in old books, when
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 585
men were few, of the smallest action of the patriarchs. We re-
quire that a man should be so large and columnar in the land-
scape that it should deserve to he recorded that he arose, and
girded up his loins, and departed to such a place. The most
credible pictures are those of majestic men who prevailed at their
entrance, and convinced the senses; as happened to the Eastern
magian who was sent to test the merits of Zertusht or Zoroaster.
When the Yunani sage arrived at Balkh, the Persians tell us,
Gushtasp appointed a day on which the Mobeds of every country
should assemble, and a golden chair was placed for the Yunani
sage. Then the beloved of Yezdam, the prophet Zertusht, ad-
vanced into the midst of the assembly. The Yunani sage, on
seeing that chief, said, ^* This form and this gait cannot lie, and
nothing but truth can proceed from them.'* Plato said it was
impossible not to believe in the children of the gods, " though
they should speak without probable or necessary arguments. ** I
should think myself very unhappy in my associates, if I could
not credit the best things in history. "John Bradshaw,'* says
Milton, " appears like a consul, from whom the fasces are not to
depart with the year; so that not on the tribunal only, but through-
out his life, you would regard him as sitting in judgment upon
kings.'* I find it more credible, since it is anterior information,
that one man should know heaven, as the Chinese say, than that
so many men should know the world. " The virtuous prince
confronts the gods, without any misgiving. He waits a hundred
ages till a sage comes, and does not doubt. He who confronts
the gods, without any misgiving, knows heaven; he who waits a
hundred ages until a sage comes, without doubting, knows men
Hence the virtuous prince moves, and for ages shows empire the
way." But there is no need to seek remote examples. He is a
dull observer whose experience has not taught him the reality
and force of magic, as well as of chemistry. The coldest preci-
sian cannot go abroad without encountering inexplicable influ-
ences. One man fastens an eye on him, and the graves of the
memory render up their dead ; the secrets that make him wretched
either to keep or to betray must be yielded; — another, and he
cannot speak, and the bones of his body seem to lose their carti-
lages; the entrance of a friend adds grace, boldness, and eloquence
to him; and there are persons, he cannot choose but remember,
who gave a transcendent expansion to his thought, and kindled
another life in his bosom.
1586 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
What is so excellent as strict relations of amity, when they
spring from this deep root? The sufficient reply to the skeptic,
who doubts the power and the furniture of man, is in that possi-
bility of joyful intercourse with persons which makes the faith
and practice of all reasonable men. I know nothing which life
has to offer so satisfying as the profound good understanding
which can subsist, after much exchange of good offices, between
two virtuous men, each of whom is sure of himself, and sure of
his friend. It is a happiness which postpones all other gratifica-
tions, and makes politics, and commerce, and churches cheap.
For when men shall meet as they ought, each a benefactor, a
shower of stars, clothed with thoughts, with deeds, with accom-
plishments, it should be the festival of nature which all things
announce. Of such friendship, love in the sexes is the first sym-
bol, as all other things are symbols of love. Those relations to
the best men, which, at one time, we reckoned the romances of
youth, become, in the progress of the character, the most solid
enjoyment.
If it were possible to live in right relations with men! — if we
could abstain from asking anything of them, from asking their
praise, or help, or pity, and content us with compelling them
through the virtue of the eldest laws! Could we not deal with a
few persons, — with one person, — after the unwritten statutes, and
make an experiment of their efficacy ? Could we not pay our
friend the compliment of truth, of silence, of forbearing ? Need
we be so eager to seek him ? If we are related we shall meet.
It was a tradition of the ancient world that no metamorphosis
could hide a god from a god; and there is a Greek verse which
runs: —
^*The gods are to each other not unknown.*
Friends also follow the laws of divine necessity; they gravitate
to each other, and cannot otherwise: —
* When each the other shall avoid,
Shall each by each be most enjoyed.*
Their relation is not made, but allowed. The gods must seat
themselves without seneschal in our Olympus, and as they can
install themselves by seniority divine. Society is spoiled, if pains
are taken, if the associates are brought a mile to meet. And if
it be not society, it is a mischievous, low, degrading jangle.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON X587
though made tip of the best. All the greatness of each is kept
back, and every foible in painful activity, as if the Olympians
should meet to exchange snuffboxes.
Life goes headlong. We chase some flying scheme, or we are
hunted by some fear or command behind us. But if suddenly
we encounter a friend we pause; or heat and hurry look foolish
enough; now pause, now possession, is required, and the power
to swell the moment from the resources of the heart. The mo-
ment is all, in all noble relations.
A divine person is the prophecy of the mind; a friend is the
hope of the heart. Our beatitude waits for the fulfillment of
these two in one. The ages are opening this moral force. All
force is the shadow or symbol of that. Poetry is joyful and
strong, as it draws its inspiration thence Men write their names
on the world, as they are filled with this. History has been
mean; our nations have been mobs; we have never seen a man:
that divine form we do not yet know, but only the dream and
prophecy of such: we do not know the majestic manners which
belong to him, which appease and exalt the beholder. We shall
one day see that the most private is the most public energy, that
quality atones for quantity, and grandeur of character acts in the
dark, and succors them who never saw it. What greatness has
yet appeared, is beginnings and encouragements to us in this
direction. The history of those gods and saints which the world
has written, and then worshiped, are documents of character.
The ages have exulted in the manners of a youth who owed
nothing to fortune, and who was hanged at the Tyburn of his
nation, who, by the pure quality of his nature, shed an epic
splendor around the facts of his death, which has transfigured
every particular into a universal symbol for the eyes of man-
kind. This great defeat is hitherto our highest fact. But the
mind requires a victory to the senses, a force of character which
will convert judge, jury, soldier, and king; which will rule ani-
mal and mineral virtues, and blend with the courses of sap, of
rivers, of winds, of stars, and of moral agents.
If we cannot attain at a bound to these grandeurs, at least
let us do them homage. In society high advantages are set down
to the possessor as disadvantages. It requires the more wariness
in our private estimates. I do not forgive in my friends the fail-
ure to know a fine character, and to entertain it with thankful
hospitality. When at last that which we have always longed for is
1588 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
arrived, and shines on us with glad rays out of that far celestial
land, then to be coarse, then to be critical, and treat such a visi-
tant with the jabber and suspicion of the streets, argues a vul-
garity that seems to shut the doors of heaven. This is confusion,
this the right insanity, when the soul no longer knows its own,
nor where its allegiance, its religion, are due. Is there any re-
ligion but this, to know that wherever in the wide desert of be-
ing the holy sentiment we cherish has opened into a flower, it
blooms for me ? If none sees it, I see it; I am aware, if I alone,
of the greatness of the fact. Whilst it blooms, I will keep Sab-
bath or holy time, and suspend my gloom and my folly and jokes.
Nature is indulged by the presence of this guest. There are
many eyes that can detect and honor the prudent and household
virtues; there are many that can discern Genius on his starry
track, though the mob is incapable; but when that love which is
all- suffering, all-abstaining, all-aspiring; v/hich has vowed to itself
that it will be a wretch and also a fool in this world, sooner than
soil its white hands by any compliances, comes into our streets
and houses, — only the pure and aspiring can know its face, and
the only compliment they can pay it is to own it.
Complete.
INTELLECT
EVERY substance is negatively electric to that which stands
above it in the chemical tables, positively to that which
stands below it. Water dissolves wood and stone and salt;
air dissolves water; electric fire dissolves air; but the intellect
dissolves fire, gravity, laws, method, and the subtlest unnamed
relations of nature in its resistless menstruum. Intellect lies be-
hind genius, which is intellect constructive. Intellect is the sim-
ple power anterior to all action or construction. Gladly would I
unfold in calm degrees a natural history of the intellect, but
what man has yet been able to mark the steps and boundaries
of that transparent essence ? The first questions are always to be
asked, and the wisest doctor is graveled by the inquisitiveness of
a child. How can we speak of the action of the mind under any
divisions, as of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so
forth, since it melts will into perception, knowledge into act ?
Each becomes the other. Itself alone is. Its vision is not like
the vision of the eye, but is union with the things known.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 5 89
Intellect and intellection signify, to the common ear, consider-
ation of abstract truth. The consideration of time and place, of
you and me, of profit and hurt, tyrannize over most men's minds.
Intellect separates the fact considered from you, from all local
and personal reference, and discerns it as if it existed for its own
sake. Heraclitus looked upon the affections as dense and colored
mists. In the fog of good and evil affections, it is hard for man
to walk forward in a straight line. Intellect is void of affection,
and sees an object as it stands in the light of science, cool and
disengaged. The intellect goes out of the individual, floats over
its own personality, and regards it as a fact, and not as I and
mine. He who is immersed in what concerns person or place
cannot see the problem of existence. This the intellect always pon-
ders. Nature shows all things formed and bound. The intellect
pierces the form, overleaps the wall, detects intrinsic likeness be-
tween remote things, and reduces all things into a few principles.
The making a fact the subject of thought raises it. All that
mass of mental and moral phenomena which we do not make ob-
jects of voluntary thought comes within the power of fortune;
they constitute the circumstance of daily life; they are subject
to change, to fear, and hope. Every man beholds his human con-
dition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is bat-
tered by the waves, so man, imprisoned in mortal life, lies open
to the mercy of coming events. But a truth separated by the
intellect is no longer a subject of destiny. We behold it as a
god upraised above care and fear. And so any fact in our life,
or any record of our fancies or reflections, disentangled from the
web of our unconsciousness, becomes an object impersonal and
immortal. It is the past restored, but embalmed. A better art
than that of Egypt has taken fear and corruption out of it. It is
eviscerated of care. It is offered for science. What is addressed
to us for contemplation does not threaten us, but makes us intel-
lectual beings.
The growth of the intellect is spontaneous in every step. The
mind that grows could not predict the times, the means, the mode
of that spontaneity. God enters by a private door into every in-
dividual. Long prior to the age of reflection is the thinking of
the mind. Out of darkness, it came insensibly into the marvel-
ous light of to-day. Over it always reigned a firm law. In the
period of infancy it accepted and disposed of all impressions from
the surrounding creation after its own way. Whatever any mind
1590 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
doth or saith, is after a law. It has no random act or word.
And this native law remains over it after it has come to reflec-
tion or conscious thought. In the most worn, pedantic, intro-
verted, self -tormentor's life, the greatest part is incalculable by
him, unforeseen, unimaginable, and must be, until he can take
himself up by his own ears. What am I ? What has my will
done to make me that I am? Nothing. I have been floated into
this thought, this hour, this connection of events, by might and
mind sublime, and my ingenuity and willfulness have not thwarted,
have not aided to an appreciable degree.
Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot, with
your best deliberation and heed, come so close to any question as
your spontaneous glance shall bring you, whilst you rise from your
bed or walk abroad in the morning, after meditating the matter
before sleep on the previous night. Always our thinking is a
pious reception. Our truth of thought is therefore vitiated as
much by too violent direction given by our will, as by too great
negligence. We do not determine what we will think. We only
open our senses, clear away as we can all obstruction from the
fact, and suffer the intellect to see. We have little control over
our thoughts. We are the prisoners of ideas. They catch us up
for moments into their heaven, and so fully engage us that we
take no thought for the morrow, gaze like children, without an
effort to make them our own. By and by we fall out of that
rapture, bethink us where we have been, what we have seen, and
repeat as truly as we can what we have beheld. As far as we
can recall these ecstasies we carry away in the ineffaceable mem-
ory the result, and all men and all the ages confirm it. It is called
Truth. But the moment we cease to report, and attempt to cor-
rect and contrive, it is not truth.
If we consider what persons have stimulated and profited us,
we shall perceive the superiority of the spontaneous or intuitive
principle over the arithmetical or logical. The first always con-
tains the second, but virtual and latent. We want, in every man,
a long logic; we cannot pardon the absence of it, but it must
not be spoken. Logic is the procession or proportionate unfold-
ing of the intuition; but its virtue is as silent method; the mo-
ment it would appear as propositions and have a separate value,
it is worthless.
In every man's mind some images, words, and facts remain,
without effort on his part to imprint them, which others for^fet,
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 591
and afterwards these illustrate to him important laws. All our
progress is an unfolding-, like the vegetable bud. You have first
an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as the plant has
root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you
can render no reason. It is vain to hurry it. By trusting it to
the end it shall ripen into truth, and you shall know why you
believe.
Each mind has its own method. A true man never acquires
after college rules. What you have aggregated in a natural man-
ner surprises and delights when it is produced. For we cannot
oversee each other's secret. And hence the differences between
men in natural endowment are insignificant in comparison with
their common wealth. Do you think the porter and the cook have
no anecdotes, no experiences, no wonders for you ? Everybody
knows as much as the savant. The walls of rude minds are
scrawled all over with facts, with thoughts. They shall one day
bring a lantern and read the inscriptions. Every man, in the
degree in which he has wit and culture, finds his curiosity inflamed
concerning the modes of living- and thinking of other men, and
especially of those classes whose minds have not been subdued
by the drill of school education.
This instinctive action never ceases in a healthy mind, but
becomes richer and more frequent in its informations through
all states of culture. At last comes the era of reflection, when
we not only observe, but take pains to observe; when we of set
purpose sit down to consider an abstract truth; when we keep
the mind's eye open whilst we converse, whilst we read, whilst
we act, intent to learn the secret law of some class of facts.
What is the hardest task in the world ? To think. I would
put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth,
and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side and on that.
I seem to know what he meant who said, No man can see God
face to face and live. For example, a man explores the basis of
civil government. Let him intend his mind without respite, with-
out rest, m one direction. His best heed long time avails him
nothing. Yet thoughts are flitting before him. We all but ap-
prehend, we dimly forbode the truth. We say, I will walk abroad,
and the truth will take form and clearness to me. We go forth,
but cannot find it. It seems as if we needed only the stillness
and composed attitude of the library to seize the thought. But
we come in, and are as far from it as at first. Then, in a
1592
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
moment, and unannounced, the truth appears. A certain, wander-
ing light appears, and is the distinction, the principle we wanted.
But the oracle comes, because we had previously laid siege to the
shrine. It seems as if the law of the intellect resembled that
law of nature by which we now inspire, now expire, the breath;
by which the heart now draws in, then hurls out, the blood, — the
law of undulation. So now you must labor with your brains, and
now you must forbear your activity, and see what the great Soul
showeth.
Our intellections are mainly prospective. The immortality of
man is as legitimately preached from the intellections as from
the moral volitions. Every intellection is mainly prospective. Its
present value is its least. It is a little seed. Inspect what de-
lights you in Plutarch, in Shakespeare, in Cervantes. Each truth
that a writer acquires is a lantern which he instantly turns full
on what facts and thoughts lay already in his mind, and behold,
all the mats and rubbish which had littered his garret become
precious. Every trivial fact in his private biography becomes an
illustration of this new principle, revisits the day, and delights
all men by its piquancy and new charm. Men say, where did he
get this ? and think there was something divine in his life. But
no; they have myriads of facts just as good, would they only get
a lamp to ransack their attics withal.
We are all wise. The difference between persons is not in
wisdom, but in art. I knew, in an academical club, a person who
always deferred to me, who, seeing my whim for writing, fancied
that my experiences had somewhat superior; whilst I sav/ that
his experiences were as good as mine. Give them to me, and I
would make the same use of them. He held the old; he holds
the new; I had the habit of tacking together the old and the
new, which he did not use to exercise. This may hold in the
great examples. Perhaps if we should meet Shakespeare, we
should not be conscious of any steep inferiority; no, but of a
great equality, — only that he possessed a strange skill of using,
of classifying his facts, which we lacked. For, notwithstanding our
utter incapacity to produce anything like <^ Hamlet '* and ^^ Othello, *
see the perfect reception this wit, and immense knowledge of
life, and liquid eloquence find in us all.
If you gather apples in the sunshine, or make hay, or hoe
corn, and then retire within doors, and shut your eyes, and press
them with your hand, you shall still see apples hanging in the
RALPH WALDO EMERSON .1593
bright light, with boughs and leaves thereto, or the tasseled
grass, or the corn flags, and this for five or six hours afterwards.
There lie the impressions on the retentive organ, though you
knew it not. So lies the whole series of natural images with
which your life has made you acquainted, in your memory, though
you know it not, and a thrill of passion flashes light on their
dark chamber, and the active power seizes instantly the fit image,
as the word of its momentary thought.
It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we
are sure, is quite tame. We have nothing to write, nothing to
infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recol-
lections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some won-
derful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to
suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know,
is, in realty, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the
hundred volumes of the ^^ Universal History. ^^
In the intellect constructive, which we popularly designate by
the word Genius, we observe the same balance of two elements
as in intellect receptive. The constructive intellect produces
thoughts, sentences, poems, plans, designs, systems. It is the
generation of the mind, the marriage of thought with nature.
To genius must always go two gifts, the thought and the publi-
cation. The first is revelation, always a miracle, which no fre-
quency of occurrence or incessant study can ever familiarize, but
which must always leave the inquirer stupid with wonder. It is
the advent of truth into the world; a form of thought now, for
the first time, bursting into the universe; a child of the old eter-
nal soul; a piece of genuine and immeasurable greatness. It
seems, for the time, to inherit all that has yet existed, and to
dictate to the unborn. It affects every thought of man, and goes
to fashion every institution. But to make it available, it needs a
vehicle or art by which it is conveyed to men. To be communi-
cable, it must become picture or sensible object. We must learn
the language of facts. The most wonderful inspirations die with
their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses. The
ray of light passes invisible through space, and only when it falls
on an object is it seen. When the spiritual energy is directed
on something outward, then is it a thought. The relation be-
tween it and you first makes you, the value of you, apparent to
me. The rich, inventive genius of the painter must be smothered
and lost for want of the power of drawing, and in our happy
1594
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
hours we should be inexhaustible poets, if once we could break
through the silence into adequate rhyme. As all men have some
access to primary truth, so all have some art or power of com-
munication in their heads, but only in the artist does it descend
into the hand. There is an inequality whose laws we do not yet
know, between two men and between two moments of the same
man in respect to this faculty. In common hours we have the
same facts as in the uncommon or inspired; but they do not sit
for their portraits; they are not detached, but lie in a web. The
thought of genius is spontaneous ; but the power of picture or
expression in the most enriched and flowing nature implies a
mixture of will, a certain control over the spontaneous states,
without which no production is possible. It is a conversion of
all nature into the rhetoric of thought, under the eye of judg-
ment, with a strenuous exercise of choice. And yet the imagi-
native vocabulary seems to be spontaneous also. It does not flow
from experience only or mainly, but from a richer source. Not
by any conscious imitation of particular forms are the grand
strokes of the painter executed, but by repairing to the fountain
head of all forms in his mind. Who is the first drawing master?
"Without instruction we know very well the ideal of the human
form. A child knows if an arm or leg be distorted in a picture,
if the attitude be natural, or grand, or mean, though he has
never received any instruction in drawing, nor heard any conver-
sation on the subject, nor can himself draw with correctness a
single feature. A good form strikes all eyes pleasantly long be-
fore they have any science on the subject, and a beautiful face
sets twenty hearts in palpitation, prior to all consideration of the
mechanical proportions of the features and head. We may owe
to dreams some light on the fountain of this skill; for, as soon
as we let our will go, and let the unconscious states ensue, see
what cunning draughtsmen we are! We entertain ourselves with
wonderful forms of men, of women, of animals, of gardens, of
woods, and of monsters, and the mystic pencil wherewith we then
draw has no awkwardness or inexperience, no meagreness or
poverty; it can design well and group well; its composition is
full of art, its colors are well laid on, and the whole canvas
which it paints is lifelike and apt to touch us with terror, with
tenderness, with desire, and with grief. Neither are the artist's
copies from experience ever mere copies, but always touched and
softened by tints from this ideal domain.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 595
The conditions essential to a constructive mind do not appear
to be so often combined but that a good sentence or verse re-
mains fresh and memorable for a long time. Yet when we write
with ease, and come out into the free air of thought, we seem
to be assured that nothing is easier than to continue this com-
munication at pleasure. Up, down, around, the kingdom of
thought has no inclosures, but the Muse makes us free of her
city. Well, the world has a million writers. One would think,
then,, that good thought would be as familiar as air and water,
and the gifts of each new hour would exclude the last. Yet we
can count all our good books; nay, I remember any beautiful
verse for twenty years. It is true that the discerning intellect of
the world is always greatly in advance of the creative, so that
always there are many competent judges of the best book, and
few writers of the best books. But some of the conditions of in-
tellectual construction are of rare occurrence. The intellect is a
whole, and demands integrity in every work. This is resisted
equally by a man's devotion to a single thought, and by his am-
bition to combine too many.
Truth is our element, or life; yet if a man fasten his atten-
tion on a single aspect of truth, and apply himself to that alone
for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself, but
falsehood; herein resembling the air, which is our natural ele-
ment, and the breath of our nostrils; but if a stream of the same
be directed on the body for a time, it causes cold, fever, and
even death. How wearisome the grammarian, the phrenologist,
the political or religious fanatic, or, indeed, any possessed mortal,
whose balance is lost by the exaggeration of a single topic. It
is incipient insanity. Every thought is a prison also. I cannot
see what you see, because I am caught up by a strong wind and
blown so far in one direction that I am out of the hoop of your
horizon.
Is it any better if the student, to avoid this offense and to
liberalize himself, aims to make a mechanical whole, of history,
or science, or philosophy, by a numerical addition of all the facts
that fall within his vision? The world refuses to be analyzed by
addition and subtraction. When we are young we spend much
time and pains in filling our notebooks with all definitions of re-
ligion, love, poetry, politics, art, in the hope that in the course
of a few years we shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia
the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet
I59<5 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
arrived. But year after year our tables get no completeness,
and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs
will never meet.
Neither by detachment, neither by aggregation, is the integ-
rity of the intellect transmitted to its works, but by a vigilance
which brings the intellect in its greatness and best state to oper-
ate every moment. It must have the same wholeness which na-
ture has. Although no diligence can rebuild the universe in a
model, by the best accumulation or disposition of details, yet does
the world reappear in miniature in every event, so that all the
laws of nature may be read in the smallest fact. The intellect
must have the like perfection in its apprehension and in its works.
For this reason an index or mercury of intellectual proficiency is
the perception of identity. We talk with accomplished persons who
appear to be strangers in nature. The cloud, the tree, the turf,
the bird are not theirs, have nothing of them; the world is only
their lodging and table. But the poet whose verses are to be
spheral and complete is one whom Nature cannot deceive, what-
soever face of strangeness she may put on. He feels a strict
consanguinity, and detects more likeness than variety in all her
changes. We are stung by the desire for new thought; but when
we receive a new thought, it is only the old thought v/ith a new
face; and though we make it our own, we instantly crave an-
other; we are not really enriched. For the truth was in us, be-
fore it was reflected to us from natural objects; and the profound
genius will cast the likeness of all creatures into every product
of his wit.
But if the constructive powers are rare, and it is given to few
men to be poets, yet every man is a receiver of this descending
Holy Ghost, and may well study the laws of its influx. Exactly
parallel is the whole rule of intellectual duty to the rule of moral
duty. A self-denial, no less austere than the saint's, is demanded
of the scholar. He must worship truth and forego all things for
that, and choose defeat and pain so that his treasure in thought
is thereby augmented.
God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose.
Take which you please, — you can never have both. Between
these, as a pendulum, man oscillates ever. He in whom the love
of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first phi-
losophy, the first political party he meets, — most likely his fa-
ther's. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1597
the door of truth. He in whom the love of truth predominates
will keep himself aloof from all moorings, and afloat. He will
abstain from dogmatism and recognize all the opposite negations
between which, as walls, his being is swung. He submits to the
inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion, but he is a
candidate for truth, as the other is not, and respects the highest
law of his being.
The circle of the green earth he must measure with his shoes
to find the man who can yield him truth. He shall then know
that there is somev^rhat more blessed and great in hearing than
in speaking. Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking
man. As long as I hear truth, I am bathed by a beautiful ele-
ment, and am not conscious of any limits to my nature. The
suggestions are thousandfold that I hear and see. The waters
of the great deep have ingress and egress to the soul. But if I
speak, I define, I confine, and am less. When Socrates speaks.
Lysis and Menexenus are afflicted by no shame that they do not
speak. They also are good. He likewise defers to them., loves
them, whilst he speaks. Because a true and natural man con-
tains and is the same truth which an eloquent man articulates;
but in the eloquent man, because he can articulate it, it seems
something the less to reside, and he turns to these — silent, beauti-
ful, with the more inclination and respect. The ancient sentence
said. Let us be silent, for so are the gods. Silence is a solvent
that destroys personality, and gives us leave to be great and
universal. Every man's progress is through a succession of
teachers, each of whom seems at the time to have a superlative
influence; but it at last gives place to a new. Frankly let hirn
accept it all. Jesus says, Leave father, mother, house, and lands,
and follow me. Who leaves all, receives more. This is as true*
intellectually as morally. Each new mind we approach seems to
require an abdication of all our past and present possessions. A
new doctrine seems, at first, a subversion of all our opinions,
tastes, and manner of living. Such has Swedenborg, such haa
Kant, such has Coleridge, such has Cousin seemed to many
young men in this country. Take thankfully and heartily all
they can give. Exhaust them, wrestle with them, let them not
go until their blessing be won, and, after a short season, the dis-
may will be over past, the excess of influence withdrawn, and
they will be no longer an alarming meteor, but one more bright
1598 RALPH WALDO EMERSOU
Star shining serenely in your heaven, and blending its light with
all your day.
But whilst he gives himself up unreservedly to that which
draws him, because that is his own, he is to refuse himself to
that which draws him not, whatsoever fame and authority may
attend it, because it is not his own. Entire self-reliance belongs
to the intellect. One soul is a counterpoise of all souls, as a
capillary column of water is a balance for the sea. It must
treat things and books and sovereign genius, as itself also a sov-
ereign. If ^schylus be that man he is taken for, he has not
yet done his office, when he has educated the learned of Europe
for a thousand years. He is now to approve himself a master
of delight to me also. If he cannot do that, all his fame shall
avail him nothing with me. I were a fool not to sacrifice a
thousand ^schyluses to my intellectual integrity. Especially
take the same ground in regard to abstract truth, the science of
the mind. The Bacon, the Spinoza, the Hume, Schelling, Kant,
or whosoever propounds to you a philosophy of the mind, is only
a more or less awkward translator of things in your conscious-
ness, which you have also your way of seeing, perhaps of de-
nominating. Say then, instead of too timidly poring into his
obscure sense, that he has not succeeded in rendering back to
you your consciousness. He has not succeeded; now let another
try. If Plato cannot, perhaps Spinoza will. If Spinoza cannot,
then perhaps Kant. Anyhow, when at last it is done, you will
find it is no recondite, but a simple, natural, common state, which
the writer restores to you.
But let us end these didactics. I will not, though the subject
might provoke it, speak to the open question between Truth and
Love. I shall not presume to interfere in the old politics of the
skies : ** The cherubim know most ; the seraphim love most. " The
gods shall settle their own quarrels. But I cannot recite, even
thus rudely, laws of the intellect, without remembering that lofty
and sequestered class of men who have been its prophets and
oracles, the high priesthood of the pure reason, the Trismegisti,
the expounders of the principles of thought from age to age.
When at long intervals we turn over their abstruse pages, won-
derful seems the calm and grand air of these few, these great
spiritual lords, who have walked in the world, — these of the old
religion, — dwelling in a worship which makes the sanctities of
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1599
Christianity look parvenues and popular ; for " persuasion is in
soul, but necessity is in intellect. " This band of grandees, Hermes,
Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato, Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Proclus,
Synesius, and the rest, have somewhat so vast in their logic, so
primary in their thinking, that it seems antecedent to all the
ordinary distinctions of rhetoric and literature, and to be at once
poetry, and music, and dancing, and astronomy, and mathematics.
I am present at the sowing of the seed of the world. With a
geometry of sunbeams, the soul lays the foundations of nature.
The truth and grandeur of their thought is proved by its scope
and applicability, for it commands the entire schedule and in-
ventory of things for its illustration. But what marks its eleva-
tion, and has even a comic look to us, is the innocent serenity
with which these babe-like Jupiters sit in their clouds, and from
age to age prattle to each other, and to no contemporary. Well
assured that their speech is intelligible, and the most natural
thing in the world, they add thesis to thesis, without a moment's
heed of the universal astonishment of the human race below, who
do not comprehend their plainest argument; nor do they ever re-
lent so much as to insert a popular or explaining sentence; nor
testify the least displeasure or petulance at the dullness of their
amazed auditory. The angels are so enamored of the language
that is spoken in heaven that they will not distort their lips with
the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own,
whether there be any who understand it or not.
Complete.
ART
BECAUSE the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats itself,
but in every act attempts the production of a new and
fairer whole. This appears in works both of the useful
and the fine arts, if we employ the popular distinction of works
according to their aim, either at use or beauty. Thus in our
fine arts, not imitation, but creation, is the aim. In landscapes,
the painter should give the suggestion of a fairer creation than
we know. The details, the prose of nature he should omit, and
give us only the spirit and splendor. He should know that
the landscape has beauty for his eye, because it expresses a
thought which is to him good; and this because the same power
»6oo RALPH WALDO EMERSON
which sees through his eyes is seen in that spectacle; and he
will come to value the expression of nature, and not nature itself,
and so exalt in his copy the features that please him. He will
give the gloom of gloom, and the sunshine of sunshine. In a
portrait, he must inscribe the character, and not the features, and
must esteem the man who sits to him as himself only an imper-
fect picture or likeness of the aspiring original within.
What is that abridgment and selection we observe in all spir-
itual activity, but itself the creative impulse ? For it is the inlet
of that higher illumination which teaches to convey a larger
sense by simpler symbols. What is a man but nature's finer suc-
cess in self- explication ? What is a man but a finer and com-
pacter landscape than the horizon figures ; nature's eclecticism ?
And what is his speech, his love of painting, love of nature, but
a still finer success ? All the weary miles and tons of space and
bulk left out, and the spirit or moral of it contracted into a
musical word, or the most cunning stroke of the pencil ? But the
artist must employ the symbols in use in his day and nation to
convey his enlarged sense to his fellowmen. Thus the new in
art is always formed out of the old. The genius of the hour
always sets his ineffaceable seal on the work, and gives it an in-
expressible charm for the imagination. As far as the spiritual
character of the period overpowers the artist, and finds expression
in his work, so far it will always retain a certain grandeur, and
will represent to future beholders the unknown, the inevitable,
the divine. No man can quite exclude this element of necessity
from his labor. No man can quite emancipate himself from his
age and coimtry; or produce a model in which the education, the
religion, the politics, usages, and arts, of his times shall have no
share. Though he were never so original, never so willful and
fantastic, he cannot wipe out of his work every trace of the
thoughts amidst which it grew. The very avoidance betrays the
usage he avoids. Above his will, and out of his sight, he is
necessitated, by the air he breathes, and the idea on which he
and his contemporaries live and toil, to share the manner of his
times, without knowing what that manner is. Now that which is
inevitable in the work has a higher charm than individual talent
can ever give, inasmuch as the artist's pen or chisel seems to
have been held and guided by a gigantic hand to inscribe a line
in the history of the human race. This circumstance gives a
value to the Egyptian hieroglyphics, to the Indian, Chinese, and
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1601
Mexican idols, however gross and shapeless. They denote the
height of the human soul in that hour, and were not fantastic,
but sprung from a necessity as deep as the world. Shall I now
add that the whole extant product of the plastic arts has herein
its highest value, as history: — as a stroke drawn in the portrait of
that fate, perfect and beautiful, according to whose ordinations all
beings advance to their beatitude ?
Thus, historically viewed, it has been the office of art to edu-
cate the perception of beauty. We are immersed in beauty, but
our eyes have no clear vision. It needs, by the exhibition of
single traits, to assist and lead the dormant taste. We carve and
paint, or we behold what is carved and painted, as students of
the mystery of Form. The virtue of art lies in detachment, in
sequestering one object from the embarrassing variety. Until
one thing comes out from the connection of things, there can be
enjoyment, contemplation, but no thought. Our happiness and
unhappiness are unproductive. The infant lies in a pleasing
trance; but his individual character and his practical power de-
pend on his daily progress in the separation of things, and deal-
ing with one at a time. Love and all the passions concentrate
all existence around a single form. It is the habit of certain
minds to give an all-excluding fullness to the object, the thought,
the word, they alight upon, and to make that for the time the
deputy of the world. These are the artists, the orators, the lead-
ers of society. The power to detach, and to magnify by detach-
ing, is the essence of rhetoric in the hands of the orator and the
poet. This rhetoric, or power to fix the momentary eminency of
an object, so remarkable in Burke, in Byron, in Carlyle, — the
painter and sculptor exhibit in color and in stone. The power
depends on the depth of the artist's insight of that object he
contemplates. For every object has its roots in central nature,
and may, of course, be so exhibited to us as to represent the
world. Therefore, each work of genius is the tyrant of the hour,
and concentrates attention on itself. For the time, it is the only
thing worth naming, to do that, — be it a sonnet, an opera, a
landscape, a statue, an oration, the plan of a temple, of a cam-
paign, or of a voyage of discover5^ Presently we pass to some
other object, which rounds itself into a whole, as did the first;
for example, a well-laid garden; and nothing seems worth doing
but the laying out of gardens. I should think fire the best thing
in the world, if I were not acquainted with air, and water, and
IV — lOI
1602 " RALPH WALDO EMERSON
earth ; for it is the right and property of all natural objects, of all
genuine talents, of all native properties whatsoever, to be for their
moment the top of the world. A squirrel leaping from bough to
bough, and making the wood but one wide tree for his pleasure,
fills the eye not less than a lion, is beautiful, self-sufficing, and
stands then and there for nature. A good ballad draws my ear
and heart whilst I listen, as much as an epic has done before.
A dog, drawn by a master, or a litter of pigs, satisfies, and is a
reality not less than the frescoes of Angelo. From this succes-
sion of excellent objects, learn we at last the immensity of the
world, the opulence of human nature, which can run out to in-
finitude in any direction. But I also learn that what astonished
and fascinated me in the first work astonished me in the second
work also, that excellence of all things is one.
The office of painting and sculpture seems to be merely ini-
tial. The best pictures can easily tell us their last secret. The
best pictures are rude draughts of a few of the miraculous dots
and lines and dyes which make up the ever-changing ^Handscape
with figures ** amidst which we dwell. Painting seems to be to
the eye what dancing is to the limbs. When that has educated
the frame to self-possession, to nimbleness, to grace, the steps
of the dancing master are better forgotten; so painting teaches
me the splendor of color and the expression of form, and, as I
see many pictures and higher genius in the art, I see the bound-
less opulence of the pencil, the indifferency in which the artist
stands free to choose out of the possible forms. If he can draw
everything, why draw anything ? and then is my eye opened to
the eternal picture which nature paints in the street with moving
men and children, beggars, and fine ladies, draped in red, and
green, and blue, and gray; long-haired, grizzled, white-faced,
black-faced, wrinkled, giant, dwarf, expanded, elfish, — capped and
based by heaven, earth, and sea.
A gallery of sculpture teaches more austerely the same lesson.
As picture teaches the coloring, so sculpture the anatomy of
form. When I have seen fine statues, and afterwards enter a
public assembly, I understand well what he meant who said,
**When I have been reading Homer, all men look like giants.**
I, too, see that painting and sculpture are gymnastics of the eye,
its training to the niceties and curiosities of its function. There
is no statue like this living man, with his infinite advantage over
all ideal sculpture, of perpetual variety. What a gallery of art
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1603
have I here! No mannerist made these varied groups and di-
verse original single figures. Here is the artist himself impro-
vising, grim and glad, at his block. Now one thought strikes him,
now another, and with each moment he alters the whole air, atti-
tude, and expression of his clay. Away with your nonsense of
oil and easels, of marble and chisels; except to open your eyes
to the witchcraft of eternal art, they are hypocritical rubbish.
The reference of all production at last to an Aboriginal
Power explains the traits common to all works of the highest
art, that they are universally intelligible; that they restore to us
the simplest states of mind, and are religious. Since what skill
is therein shown is the reappearance of the original soul, a jet
of pure light, it should produce a similar impression to that
made by natural objects. In happy hours nature appears to us
one with art; art perfected, — the work of genius. And the in-
dividual in whom simple tastes and susceptibility to all the great
human influences overpowers the accidents of a local and special
culture is the best critic of art. Though we travel the world
over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find
it not. The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in sur-
faces, in outlines, or rules of art can ever teach, namely, a
radiation from the work of art, of human character, — a won-
derful expression through stone, or canvas, or musical sound of
the deepest and simplest attributes of our nature, and therefore
most intelligible at last to those souls which have these attri-
butes. In the sculptures of the Greeks, in the masonry of the
Romans, and in the pictures of the Tuscan and Venetian mas-
ters, the highest charm is the universal language they speak.
A confession of moral nature, of purity, love, and hope breathes
from them all. That which we carry to them, the same we
bring back more fairly illustrated in the memory. The traveler
who visits the Vatican, and passes from chamber to chamber
through galleries of statues, vases, sarcophagi, and candelabra,
through all forms of beauty, cut in the richest materials, is in
danger of forgetting the simplicity of the principles out of which
they all sprung, and that they had their origin from thoughts
and laws in his own breast. He studies the technical rules on
these wonderful remains, but forgets that these works were not
always thus constellated; that they are the contributions of
many ages and many countries; that each came out of the soli-
tary workshoD of one artist, who toiled perhaps in ignorance of
l6o4 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
the existence of other sculpture, created his work without other
model., save life, household life, and the sweet and smart of per-
sonal relations, of beating hearts, and meeting eyes, of poverty,
and necessity, and hope, and fear. These were his inspirations,
and these are the effects he carries home to your heart and
mind. In proportion to his force, the artist will find in his work
an outlet for his proper character. He must not be in any
manner pinched or hindered by his material; but through his
necessity of imparting himself, the adamant will be wax in his
hands, and will allow an adequate communication of himself in
his full stature and proportion. Not a conventional nature and
culture need he cumber himself with, nor ask what is the mode
in Rome or in Paris; but that house and weather and manner of
living, which poverty and the fate of birth have made at once
so odious and so dear, in the gray, unpainted wood cabin, on the
corner of a New Hampshire farm, or in the log hut of the back-
woods, or in the narrow lodging where he has endured the con-
straints and seeming of a city poverty, — will serve as well as any
other condition, as the symbol of a thought which pours itself
indifferently through all.
I remember, when in my younger days I had heard of the
wonders of Italian painting, I fancied the great pictures would
be great strangers; some surprising combination of color and
form; a foreign wonder, barbaric pearl and gold, like the spon-
toons and standards of the militia, which play such pranks in
the eyes and imaginations of schoolboys. I was to see and ac-
quire I knew not what. When I came at last to Rome, and
saw with eyes the pictures, I found that genius left to novices
the gay and fantastic and ostentatious, and itself pierced directly
to the simple and true; that it was familiar and sincere; that it
was the old, eternal fact I had met already in so many forms;
unto which I lived; that it was the plain you and me I knew
so well, — had left at home in so many conversations. I had the
same experience already in a church at Naples. There I saw
that nothing was changed with me but the place, and said to
myself, — '^ Thou foolish child, hast thou come out hither, over
four thousand miles of salt water, to find that which was perfect
to thee, there at home?** — that fact I saw again in the Academ-
mia at Naples, in the chambers of sculpture, and yet again when
I came to Rome, and to the paintings of Raphael, Angelo, Sac-
chi, Titian, and Leonardo da Vinci. *What old mole! workest
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1605
thou in the earth so fast?" It had traveled by my side; that
which I fancied I had left in Boston was here in the Vatican,
and again at Milan, and at Paris, and made all traveling ridicu-
lous as a treadmill. I now require this of all pictures, that they
domesticate me, not that they dazzle me. Pictures must not be
too picturesque. Nothing astonishes men so much as common
sense and plain dealing. All great actions have been simple,
and all great pictures are.
The ^* Transfiguration *^ by Raphael is an eminent example of
this peculiar merit. A calm, benignant beauty shines over all
this picture, and goes directly to the heart. It seems almost to
call you by name. The sweet and sublime face of Jesus is be-
yond praise, yet how it disappoints all florid expectations! This
familiar, simple, home-speaking countenance is as if one should
meet a friend. The knowledge of picture dealers has its value,
but listen not to their criticism when your heart is touched by
genius. It was not painted for them, it was painted for you;
for such as had eyes capable of being touched by simplicity and
lofty emotions.
Yet when we have said all our fine things about the arts, we
must end with a frank confession, that the arts, as we know
them, are but initial. Our best praise is given to what they
aimed and promised, not to the actual result. He has conceived
meanly of the resources of man, vAio believes that the best age of
production is past. The real value of the " Iliad, '^ or the *^ Trans-
figuration," is as sigfns of power; billows or ripples they are of the
great stream of tendency; tokens of the everlasting effort to pro-
duce, which, even in its worst estate, the soul betrays. Art has
not yet come to its maturity, if it do not put itself abreast with
the most potent influences of the world; if it is not practical and
moral; if it do not stand in connection with the conscience; if it
do not make the poor and uncultivated feel that it addresses
them with a voice of lofty cheer. There is higher work for Art
than the arts. They are abortive births of an imperfect or viti-
ated instinct. Art is the need to create; but in its essence, im-
mense and universal, it is impatient of working with lame or tied
hands, and of making cripples and monsters, such as all pictures
and statues are. Nothing less than the creation of man and na-
ture is its end. A, man should find in it an outlet for his whole
energy. He may paint and carve only as long as he can do
that. Art should exhilarate, and throw down the walls of circum-
l6o6 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Stance on every side, awakening in the beholder the same sense
of universal relation and power which the work evinced in the
artist, and its highest effect is to make new artists.
Already history is old enough to witness the old age and dis-
appearance of particular arts. The art of sculpture is long ago
perished to any real effect. It was originally a useful art, a
mode of writing, a savage's record of gratitude or devotion; and
among a people possessed of a wonderful perception of form, this
childish carving was refined to the utmost splendor of effect.
But it is the game of a rude and youthful people, and not the
manly labor of a wise and spiritual nation. Under an oak tree
loaded with leaves and nuts, under a sky full of eternal eyes,
I stand in a thoroughfare; but in the works of our plastic arts,
and especially of sculpture, creation is driven into a corner. I
cannot hide from myself that there is a certain appearance of
paltriness, as of toys, and the trumpery of a theatre in sculpture.
Nature transcends all our moods of thought, and its secret we do
not yet find. But the gallery stands at the mercy of our moods,
and there is a moment when it becomes frivolous. I do not
wonder that Newton, with an attention habitually engaged on the
path of planets and suns, should have wondered what the Earl
of Pembroke found to admire in <* stone dolls.** Sculpture may
serve to teach the pupil how deep is the secret of form, how
purely the spirit can translate its meanings into that eloquent
dialect. But the statue will look cold and false before that new
activity which needs to roll through all things, and is impatient
of counterfeits, and things not alive. Picture and sculpture are
the celebrations and festivities of form. But true art is never
fixed, but alv/ays flowing. The sweetest music is not in the ora-
torio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant
life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage. The oratorio has al-
ready lost its relation to the morning, to the sun, and the earth,
but that persuading voice is in tune with these. All works of
art should not be detached, but extempore performances. A
great man is a new statue in every attitude and action. A beau-
tiful woman is a picture which drives all beholders nobly mad.
Life may be lyric or epic, as well as a poem or a romance.
A true announcement of the law of creation, if -a man were
found worthy to declare it, would carry art up into the kingdom
of nature, and destroy its separate and contrasted existence. The
fountains of mvention and beauty in modern society are all but
RALPH WALDO EMERSON X607
dried up. A popular novel, a theatre, or a ballroom makes us
feel that we are all paupers in the almshouse of this world, with-
out dignity, without skill, or industry. Art is as poor and low.
The old tragic necessity, which lowers on the brows even of the
Venuses and the Cupids of the antique, and furnishes the sole
apology for the intrusion of such anomalous figures into nature,
namely, that they were inevitable; that the artist was drunk
with a passion for form which he could not resist, and which
vented itself in these fine extravagancies, — no longer dignifies
the chisel or the pencil. But the artist and the connoisseur now
seek in art the exhibition of their talent, or an asylum from the
evils of life. Men are not well pleased with the figure they make
in their own imagination, and they flee to art, and convey their
better sense in an oratorio, a statue, or a picture. Art makes
the same efEort which a sensual prosperity makes, namely, to de-
tach the beautiful from the useful, to do up the work as una-
voidable, and, hating it, pass on to enjoyment. These solaces and
compensations, this division of beauty from use, the laws of na-
ture do not permit. As soon as beauty is sought not from reli-
gion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. High
beauty is no longer attainable by him in canvas or in stone, in
sound, or in lyrical construction; an effeminate, prudent, sickly
beauty, which is not beauty, is all that can be formed; for the
hand can never execute anything higher than the character can
inspire.
The art that thus separates is itself first separated. Art must
not be a superficial talent, but must begin further back in man.
Now men do not see nature to be beautiful, and they go to make
a statue which shall be. They abhor men as tasteless, dull, and
inconvertible, and console themselves with color bags and blocks
of marble. They reject life as prosaic, and create a death which
they call poetic. They dispatch the day's weary chores, and fly
to voluptuous reveries. They eat and drink, that they may after-
wards execute the ideal. Thus is art vilified; the name conveys
to the mind its secondary and bad senses; it stands in the imag-
ination as somewhat contrary to nature, and struck with death
from the first. Would it not be better to begin higher up, — to
serve the ideal before they eat and drink; to serve the ideal in
eating and drinking, in drawing the breath, and in the functions
of life ? Beauty must come back to the useful arts, and the dis-
tinction between the fine and the useful arts be forgotten. If
1608 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
history were truly told, if life were nobly spent, it would be • no
longer easy or possible to distingnish the one from the other. In
nature all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful,
because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful,
because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the
call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America
its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and
spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men. It is in
vain that we look for genius to reiterate its miracles in the old
arts; it is its instinct to find beauty and holiness in new and
necessary facts, in the field and roadside, in the shop and mill.
Proceeding from a religious heart, it will raise to a divine use
the railroad, the insurance office, the joint-stock company, our
law, our primary assemblies, our commerce, the galvanic battery,
the electric jar, the prism, and the chemist's retort, in which we
seek now only an economical use. Is not the selfish, and even
cruel aspect which belongs to our great mechanical works, to
mills, railways, and machinery, the effect of the mercenary im-
pulses which these works obey ? When its errands are noble and
adequate, a steamboat bridging the Atlantic between Old and
New England, and arriving at its ports with the punctuality of a
planet, — is a step of man into harmony with nature. The boat
at St. Petersburg, which plies along the Lena by magnetism, needs
little to make it sublime. When science is learned in love, and
its powers are wielded by love, they will appear the supplements
and continuations of the material creation.
Complete
LOVE
EVERY soul is a celestial Venus to every other soul. The heart
has its Sabbaths and jubilees in which the world appears
as a hymeneal feast, and all natural sounds and the circle
of the seasons are erotic odes and dances. Love is omnipresent
in nature as motive and reward. Love is our highest word and
the synonym of God.
Every promise of the soul has innumerable fulfillments; each
of its joys ripens into a new want. Nature, uncontainable, flow-
ing, forelooking, in the first sentiment of kindness anticipates al-
ready a benevolence which shall lose all particular regards in its
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1609
general light. The introduction to this felicity is in a private
and tender relation of one to one, which is the enchantment of
human life; which, like a certain divine rage and enthusiasm,
seizes on man at one period and works a revolution in his mind
and body; unites him to his race, pledges him to the domestic
and civic relations, carries him with new sympathy into nature,
enhances the power of the senses, opens the imagination, adds
to his character heroic and sacred attributes, establishes marriage
and gives permanence to human society.
The natural association of the sentiment of love with the hey-
dey of the blood seems to require that in order to portray it in
vivid tints, which every youth and maid should confess to be
true to their throbbing experience, one must not be too old.
The delicious fancies of youth reject the least savor of a mature
philosophy, as chilling with age and pedantry their purple bloom.
And therefore I know I incur the imputation of unnecessary
hardness and stoicism from those who compose the court and
parliament of Love. But from these formidable censors I shall
appeal to my seniors. For it is to be considered that this pas-
sion of which we speak, though it begin with the young, yet for-
sakes not the old, or rather suffers no one who is truly its servant
to grow old, but makes the aged participators of it not less than
the tender maiden, though in a different and nobler sort. For it
is a fire that, kindling its first embers in the narrow nook of a
private bosom, caught from a wandering spark out of another
private heart, glows and enlarges until it warms and beams upon
multitudes of men and women, upon the universal heart of all,
and so lights up the whole world and all nature with its gener-
ous flame. It matters not, therefore, whether we attempt to de-
scribe the passion at tv/enty, at thirty, or at eighty years. He who
paints it at the first period will lose some of its later, he who
paints it at the last, some of its earlier traits. Only it is to be
hoped that by patience and the Muses' aid we may attain to that
inward view of the law which shall describe a truth ever young,
ever beautiful, so central that it shall commend itself to the eye
at whatever angle beholden.
And the first condition is that we must leave a too close and
lingering adherence to the actual, to facts, and study the senti-
ment as it appeared in hope, and not in history. For each man
sees his own life defaced and disfigured, as the life of man is
nat to his imagination Each man sees over his own experience
t6io RALPH WALDO EMERSON
a certain slime of error, whilst that of other men looks fair and
ideal. Let any man go back to those delicious relations which
make the beauty of his life, which have given him sincerest in-
struction and nourishment, he will shrink and writhe. Alas! I
know not why, but infinite compunctions embitter in mature life
all the remembrances of budding sentiment, and cover every be-
loved name. Everything is beautiful seen from the point of the
intellect, or as truth. But all is sour if seen as experience. De-
tails are always melancholy; the plan is seemly and noble. It is
strange how painful is the actual world, — the painful kingdom of
time and place. There dwells care and canker and fear. With
thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy.
Round it all the muses sing. But with names and persons and
the partial interests of to-day and yesterday is grief.
The strong bent of nature is seen in the proportion which
this topic of personal relations usurps in the conversation of so-
ciety. What do we wish to know of any worthy person so much
as how he has sped in the history of this sentiment ? What books
in the circulating libraries circulate ? How we glow over these
novels of passion, when the story is told with any spark of truth
and nature! And what fastens attention, in the intercourse of
life, like any passage betraying affection between two parties ?
Perhaps we never saw them before and never shall meet them
again. But we see them exchange a glance or betray a deep
emotion, and we are no longer strangers. We understand them
and take the warmest interest in the development of the romance.
All mankind love a lover. The earliest demonstrations of com-
placency and kindness are nature's most winning pictures. It is
the dawn of civility and grace in the coarse and rustic. The
rude village boy teases the girls about the schoolhouse door; —
but to-day he comes running into the entry and meets one fair
child arranging her satchel; he holds her books to help her, and
instantly it seems to him as if she removed herself from him
infinitely, and was a sacred precinct. Among the throng of girls
he runs rudely enough, but one alone distances him; and these
two little neighbors that were so close just now have learned to
respect each other's personality. Or who can avert his eyes from
the engaging, half -artful, half-artless ways of schoolgirls who go
into the country shops to buy a skein of silk or a sheet of paper,
and talk half an hour about nothing with the broad -faced, good-
natured shopboy. In the village they are on a perfect equality,
RALPH WALDO EMERSON l6n
which love delights in, and without any coquetry the happy, affec-
tionate nature of woman flows out in this pretty gossip. The girls
may have little beauty, yet plainly do they establish between them
and the good boy the most agreeable, confiding relations; what
with their fun and their earnest about Edgar and Jonas and A1-.
mira, and who was invited to the party, and who danced at the
dancing school, and when the singing school would begin, and
other nothings concerning which the parties cooed. By and by
that boy wants a wife, and very truly and heartily will he know
where to find a sincere and sweet mate, without any risk such
as Milton deplores as incident to scholars and great men.
I have been told that my philosophy is unsocial, and that in
public discourses my reverence for the intellect makes me un-
justly cold to the personal relations. But now I almost shrink
at the remembrance of such disparaging words. For persons are
love's world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt
of the young soul wandering here in nature to the power of love
without being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught
derogatory to the social instincts. For though the celestial rap-
ture falling out of heaven seizes only upon those of tender age,
and although a beauty overpowering all analysis or comparison,
and putting us quite beside ourselves, we can seldom see after
thirty years, yet the remembrance of these visions outlasts all
other remembrances, and is a wreath of flowers on the oldest
brows. But here is a strange fact; it may seem to many men,
in revising their experience, that they have no fairer page in
their life's book than the delicious memory of some passages
wherein affection contrived to give a witchcraft, surpassing the
deep attraction of its own truth, to a parcel of accidental and
trivial circumstances. In looking backward they may find that
several things which were not the charm have more reality to this
groping memory than the charm itself which embalmed them.
But be our experience in particulars what it may, no man ever
forgot the visitations of that power to his heart and brain which
created all things new; which was the dawn in him of music,
poetry, and art; which made the face of nature radiant with pur-
ple light, the morning and the night varied enchantments; when
a single tone of one voice could make the heart beat, and the
most trivial circumstance associated with one form is put in
the amber of memory; when he became all eye when one was
present, and all memory when one was gone; when the youth
l6l2 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
becomes a watcher of windows and studious of a glove, a veil, a
ribbon, or the wheels of a carriage; when no place is too solitary
and none too silent for him who has richer company and sweeter
conversation in his new thoughts than any old friends, though
best and purest, can give him; for the figures, the motions, the
words of the beloved object are not, like other images, written
in water, 15ut as Plutarch said, "enameled in fire,** and make the
study of midnight : —
"Thou art not gone being gone, where'er thou art,
Thou leav'st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy loving heart.**
In the noon and the afternoon of life we still throb at the rec-
ollection of days when happiness was not happy enough, but must
be drugged with the relish of pain and fear; for he touched the
secret of the matter who said of love, —
"All other pleasures are not worth its pains**;
and when the day was not long enough, but the night too must
be consumed in keen recollections; when the head boiled all
night on the pillow with the generous deed it resolved on; when
the moonlight was a pleasing fever, and the stars were letters,
and the flowers ciphers, and the air was coined into song; when
all business seemed an impertinence, and all the men and women
running to and fro in the streets mere pictures.
The passion remakes the world for the youth. It makes all
things alive and significant. Nature grows conscious. Every bird
on the boughs of the tree sings now to his heart and soul. Al-
most the notes are articulate. The clouds have faces as he looks
on them. The trees of the forest, the waving grass and the peep--
ing flowers have grown intelligent; and almost he fears to trust
them with the secret which they seem to invite. Yet nature
soothes and sympathizes. In the green solitude he finds a dearer
home than with men : —
" Fountain heads and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves,
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls
Are safely housed, save bats and owls,
A midnight bell, a passing groan.
These are the sounds we feed upon.**
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1613
Behold there in the wood the fine madman! He is a palace
of sweet sounds and sights; he dilates; he is twice a man; he
walks with arms akimbo; he soliloquizes; he accosts the grass and
the trees; he feels the blood of the violet, the clover, and the
lily in his veins; and he talks with the brook that wets his foot.
The causes that have sharpened his perceptions of natural
beauty have made him love music and verse. It is a fact often
observed, that men have written good verses under the inspira-
tion of passion, who cannot write well under any other circum-
stances.
The like force has the passion over all his nature. It expands
the sentiment, it makes the clown gentle, and gives the coward
heart. Into the most pitiful and abject it will infuse a heart
and courage to defy the world, so only it have the countenance
of the beloved object. In giving him to another it still more
gives him to himself. He is a new man, with new perceptions,
new and keener purposes, and a religious solemnity of character
and aims. He does not longer appertain to his family and so-
ciety. He is somewhat. He is a person. He is a soul.
And here let us examine a little nearer the nature of that
influence which is thus potent over the human youth. Let us
approach and admire Beauty, whose revelation to man we now
celebrate, — Beauty, welcome as the sun wherever it pleases to
shine, which pleases everybody with it and with themselves.
Wonderful is its charm. It seems sufficient to itself. The lover
cannot paint his maiden to his fancy poor and solitary. Like a
tree in flower, so much soft, budding, informing loveliness is so-
ciety for itself; and she teaches his eye why Beauty was ever
painted with Loves and Graces attending her steps. Her exist-
ence makes the world rich. Though she extrudes all other per-
sons from his attention as cheap and unworthy, she indemnifies
him by carrying out her own being into somewhat impersonal,
large, mundane, so that the maiden stands to him for a repre-
sentative of all select things and virtues. For that reason the
lover sees never personal resemblances in his mistress to her
kindred or to others. His friends find in her a likeness to her
mother, or her sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The
lover sees no resemblance except to summer evenings and dia-
mond mornings, to rainbows and the song of birds.
Beauty is ever that divine thing the ancients esteemed it. It
is, they said, the flowering of virtue. Who can analyze the name-
l6l4 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
less charm which glances from one and another face and form ?
We are touched with emotions of tenderness and complacency, but
we cannot find whereat this dainty emotion, this wandering gleam,
point. It is destroyed for the imagination by any attempt to re-
fer it to organization. Nor does it point to any relations of
friendship or love that society knows and has, but, as it seems to
me, to a quite other and unattainable sphere, to relations of tran-
scendent delicacy and sweetness, a true fairy land; to what roses
and violets hint and foreshow. We cannot get at beauty. Its
nature is like opaline doves'-neck lustres, hovering and evanes-
cent. Herein it resembles the most excellent things, which all
have this rainbow character, defying all attempts at appropriation
and use. What else did Jean Paul Richter signify when he said
to music : " Away ! away ! thou speakest to me of things which in
all my endless life I have not found and shall not find '* ? The
same fact may be observed in every work of the plastic arts.
The statue is then beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensi-
ble, when it is passing out of criticism and can no longer be de-
fined by compass and measuring wand, but demands an active
imagination to go with it and to say what it is in the act of do-
ing. The god or hero of the sculptor is always represented in a
transition from that which is representable to the senses to that
which is not. Then first it ceases to be a stone. The same re-
mark holds of painting. And of poetry the success is not attained
when it lulls and satisfies, but when it astonishes and fires us
with new endeavors after the unattainable. Concerning it Lan-
dor inquires " whether it is not to be referred to some purer state
of sensation and existence.*
So must it be with personal beauty which love worships.
Then first is it charming and itself when it dissatisfies us with
any end; when it becomes a story without an end; when it sug-
gests gleams and visions and not earthly satisfactions; when it
seems
*too bright and srood.
For human nature's daily food*;
when it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness; when he can-
not feel his right to it, though he were Caesar; he cannot feel
more rig-ht to it than to the firmament and the splendors of a
sunset.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1615
Hence arose the saying, " If I love you, what is that to you ? **
We say so, because we feel that what we love is not in your
will, but above it. It is the radiance of you and not you. It is
that which you know not in yourself and can never know.
This agrees well with that high philosophy of beuuty which
the ancient writers delighted in; for they said that the soul of
man, embodied here on earth, went roaming up and down in
quest of that other world of its own, out of which it came into
this, but was soon stupefied by the light of the natural sun, and
unable to see any other objects than those of this world, which
are but shadows of real things. Therefore the Deity sends the
glory of youth before the soul, that it may avail itself of beau-
tiful bodies as aids to its recollection of the celestial good and
fair; and the man beholding such a person in the female sex
runs to her and finds the highest joy in contemplating the form,
movement, and intelligence of this person, because it suggests to
him the presence of that which indeed is within the beauty, and
the cause of the beauty.
If, however, from too much conversing with material objects,
the soul was gross, and misplaced its satisfaction in the body, it
reaped nothing but sorrow; body being unable to fulfill the
promise which beauty holds out; but if, accepting the hint of
these visions and suggestions which beauty makes to his mind,
the soul passes through the body and falls to admire strokes of
character^ and the lovers contemplate one another in their dis-
courses and their actions, then they pass ' to the true palace of
beauty, more and more inflame their love of it, and by this love
extinguishing the base affection, as the sun puts out the fire by
shining on the hearth, they become pure and hallowed. By con-
versation with that which is in itself excellent, magnanimous,
lowly, and just, the lover comes to a warmer love of these nobil-
ities, and a quicker apprehension of them. Then he passes from
loving them in one to loving them in all, and so is the one
beautiful soul only the door through which he enters to the
society of all true and pure souls. In the particular society of
his mate he attains a clearer sight of any spot, any taint which
her beauty has contracted from this world, and is able to point
it out, and this with mutual joy that they are now able, without
offense, to indicate blemishes and hindrances in each other, and
give to each all help and comfort in curing the same. And, be-
holding in many souls the traits of the divine beauty, and sepa-
1616 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
rating in each soul that which is divine from the taint which it
has contracted in the world, the lover ascends to the highest
beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, by steps on
this ladder of created souls.
Somewhat like this have the truly wise told us of love in all
ages. The doctrine is not old, nor is it new. If Plato, Plutarch,
and Apuleius taught it, so have Petrarch, Angelo, and Milton.
It awaits a truer unfolding in opposition and rebuke to that sub-
terranean prudence which presides at marriages with words that
take hold of the upper world, whilst one eye is eternally boring
down into the cellar; so that its gravest discourse has ever a
slight savor of hams and powdering tubs. Worst, when the snout
of this sensualism intrudes into the education of young women,
and withers the hope and affection of human nature by teaching
that marriage signifies nothing but a housewife's thrift, and that
woman's life has no other aim.
But this dream of love, though beautiful, is only one scene in
our play. In the procession of the soul from within outward, it
enlarges its circles ever, like the pebble thrown into the pond, or
the light proceeding from an orb. The rays of the soul alight
first on things nearest, on every utensil and toy, on nurses and
domestics, on the house and yard and passengers, on the circle
of household acquaintance, on politics and geography and history.
But by the necessity of our constitution things are ever grouping
themselves according to higher or more interior laws. Neighbor-
hood, size, numbers, habits, persons, lose by degrees their power
over us. Cause and effect, real affinities, the longing for har-
mony between the soul and the circumstance, the high progres-
sive, idealizing instinct, these predominate later, and ever the
step backward from the higher to the lower relations is impossi-
ble. Thus even love, which is the deification of persons, must
become more impersonal ever)^ day. Of this at first it gives no
hint. Little think the youth and maiden who are glancing at
each other across crowded rooms with eyes so full of mutual in-
telligence, — of the precious fruit long hereafter to proceed from
this new, quite external ^imulus. The work of vegetation be-
gins first in the irritability of the bark and leaf-buds. From ex-
changing glances, they advance to acts of courtesy, of gallantry,
then to fiery passion, to plighting troth and marriage. Passion
beholds its object as a perfect unit. The soul is wholly em*
bodied, and the body is wholly ensouled: —
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1617
*Her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks; and so distinctly wrought.
That one might almost say her body thought.**
Romeo, if dead, should be cut up into little stars to make the
heavens fine. Life with this pair has no other aim, asks no naore,
than Juliet, — than Romeo. Night, day, studies, talents, kingdoms,
religion, are all contained in this form full of soul, in this soul
which is all form. The lovers delight in endearments, in avowals
of love, in comparisons of their regards. When alone, they sol-
ace themselves with the remembered image of the other. Does
that other see the same star, the same melting cloud, — read the
game book, feel the same emotion, that now delight me ? They
try and weigh their affection, and adding up all costly advan-
tages, friends, opportunities, properties, exult in discovering that
willingly, joyfully, they would give all as a ransom for the beau-
tiful, the beloved head, not one hair of which shall be harmed.
But the lot of humanity is on these children. Danger, sorrow,
and pain arrive to them as to all. Love prays. It makes cove-
nants with Eternal Power in behalf of this dear mate. The union
which is thus effected and which adds a new value to every atom
in nature, for it transmutes every thread throughout the whole
web of relation into a golden ray, and bathes the soul in a new
and sweeter element, is yet a temporary state. Not always can
flowers, pearls, poetry, protestations, nor even home in another
heart, content the awful soul that dwells in clay. It arouses itself
at last from these endearments, as toys, and puts on the harness
and aspires to vast and universal aims. The soul which is in the
soul of each, craving for a perfect beatitude, detects incongru-
ities, defects, and disproportion in the behavior of the other.
Hence arise surprise, expostulation, and pain. Yet that which
drew them to each other was signs of loveliness, signs of virtue;
and these virtues are there, however eclipsed. They appear and
reappear and continue to attract; but the regard changes, quits
the sign, and attaches to the substance. This repairs the wounded
affection. Meantime, as life wears on, it proves a game of per-
mutation and combination of all possible positions of the parties,
to extort all the resources of each and acquaint each with the
whole strength and weakness of the other. For it is the nature
and end of this relation that they should represent the human
race to each other. All that is in the world which is or ought
IV — 102
I6l8 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
to be known is cunningly wrought into the texture of man, of
woman : —
<* The person love does to us fit,
Like manna, has the taste of all in it.''
The world rolls; the circumstances vary every hour. All the
angels that inhabit this temple of the body appear at the win-
dows, and all the gnomes and vices also. By all the virtues they
are united. If there be virtue, all the vices are known as such;
they confess and flee. Their once flaming regard is sobered by
time in either breast, and losing in violence what it gains in ex-
tent, it becomes a thorough good understanding. They resign
each other without complaint to the good offices which man and
woman are severally appointed to discharge in time, and exchange
the passion which once could not lose sight of its object, for a
cheerful, disengaged furtherance, whether present or absent, of
each other's designs. At last they discover that all which at first
drew them together, — those once sacred features, that magical
play of charms, — was deciduous, had a prospective end, like the
scaffolding by which the house was built; and the purification of
the intellect and the heart from year to year is the real mar-
riage, foreseen and prepared from the first, and wholly above
their consciousness. Looking at these aims with which two per-
sons, a man and a woman, so variously and correlatively gifted,
are shut up in one house to spend in the nuptial society forty or
fifty years, I do not wonder at the emphasis with which the heart
prophesies this crisis from early infancy, at the profuse beauty
with which the instincts deck the nuptial bower, and nature and
intellect and art emulate each other in the gifts and the melody
they bring to the epithalamium.
Thus are we put in training for a love which knows not sex,
nor person, nor partiality, but which seeketh virtue and wisdom
everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue and wisdom. We
are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our per-
manent state. But we are often made to feel that our affections
are but tents of a night. Though slowly and with pain, the ob-
jects of the affections change, as the objects of thought do.
There are moments when the affections rule and absorb the
man and make his happiness dependent on a person or persons.
But in health the mind is presently seen again, — its overarching
vault, bright with galaxies of immutable lights, and the warm
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 6 19
loves and fears that swept over us as clouds must lose their finite
character and blend with God, to attain their own perfection.
But we need not fear that we can lose anything by the progress
of the soul. The soul may be trusted to the end. That which
is so beautiful and attractive as these relations, must be suc-
ceeded and supplanted only by what is more beautiful, and so
on forever.
Complete.
SELF-RELIANCE
INSIST on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can pre-
sent every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's
cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have
only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can
do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows
what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is
the master who could have taught Shakespeare ? Where is the
master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or
Bacon, or Newton ? Every great man is a unique. The Scipio-
nism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. If
anybody will tell me whom the great man imitates in the orig-
inal crisis when he performs a great act, I will tell him w^ho else
than himself can teach him. Shakespeare will never be made by
the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned thee, and
thou canst not hope too much or dare too much. There is at
this moment, there is for me an utterance bare and grand as that
of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or
the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these. Not
possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven
tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if I can hear what these patri-
archs say, surely I can reply to them in the same pitch of voice,
for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Dwell
up there in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy
heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again.
As our religion, our education, our art look abroad, so does
our spirit of society. All men plume themselves 'on the improve-
ment of society, and no man improves.
Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it
gains on the other. Its progress is only apparent, like the work-
ers of a treadmill. It undergoes continual changes: it is barbae
l620 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
rous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific;
but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given
something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old in-
stincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing,
thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of ex-
change in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose prop-
erty is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a
shed to sleep under. But compare the health of the two men,
and you shall see that his aboriginal strength the white man has
lost. If the traveler tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad
ax, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you
struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the
white to his grave.
The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of
his feet. He is supported on crutches, but loses so much sup-
port of muscle. He has got a fine Geneva watch, but he has lost
the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical al-
manac he has, and so being sure of the information when he
wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky.
The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little;
and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his
mind. His notebooks impare his memory; his libraries overload
his wit; the insurance office increases the number of accidents:
and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber;
whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Chris-
tianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of
wild virtue. For every stoic was a stoic; but in Christendom
where is the Christian ?
There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the
standard of height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever
were. A singular equality may be observed between the great
men of the first and of the last ages, nor can all the science,
art, religion, and philosophy of the nineteenth century avail to
educate greater men than Plutarch's heroes, three or four and
twenty centuries ago. Not in time is the race progressive,
Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they
leave no class. He who is really of their class will not be called
by their name, but be wholly his own man, and, in his turn, the
founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of each period are
only its costume, and do not invigorate men. The harm of the
improved machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1621
Bering accomplished so much in their fishing boats as to aston-
ish Parry and FrankHn, whose equipment exhausted the resources
of science and art. GaHleo, with an opera glass, discovered a
more splendid series of facts than any one since. Columbus
found the New World in an undecked boat. It is curious to see
the periodical disuse and perishing of means and machinery
which were introduced with loud laudation a few years or cen-
turies before. The great" genius returns to essential man. We
reckoned the improvements of the art of war among the tri-
umphs of science, and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the
Bivouac, which consisted of falling back on naked valor, and dis-
encumbering it of all aids. The emperor held it impossible to
make a perfect army, says Las Casas, ^Svithout abolishing our
arms, magazines, commissaries, and carriages, until in imitation
of the Roman custom, the soldier should receive his supply of
corn, grind it in his hand mill, and bake his bread himself.'^
Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water
of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not
rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal.
The persons who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and
their experience with them.
And so the reliance on property, including the reliance on
governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men
have looked away from themselves and at things so long, that
they have come to esteem what they call the soul's progress,
namely, the religious, learned, and civil institutions, as guards of
property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel
them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of
each other by what each has, and not by what each is. But a
cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, ashamed of
what he has, out of new respect for his being. Especially he
hates what he has, if he see that it is accidental, — came to him
by inheritance or gift or crime; then he feels that it is not hav-
ing; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely
lies there, because no revolution or no robber takes it away.
But that which a man is does always by necessity acquire, and
what the man acquires is permanent and living property, which
does not wait the beck of rulers or mobs or revolutions or fire
or storm or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever
the man is put. ** Thy lot or portion of life,'* said the Caliph Ali,
*is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after
1^82 RALPH Waldo emerson
it.'' Our dependence on these foreign goods leads us to our slav-
ish respect for numbers. The political parties meet in numerous
conventions; the greater the concourse, and with each new up-
roar of announcement, The delegation from Essex! The Demo-
crats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! the young
patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new thousand of
eyes and arms. In like manner the reformers summon conven-
tions, and vote and resolve in multitude. But not so, O friends!
will the God deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method
precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts off from himself
all external support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong
and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner.
Is not a man better than a town ? Ask nothing of men, and in
the endless mutation, thou only firm column must presently ap-
pear the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows
that power is in the soul, that he is weak only because he has
looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving,
throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights
himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works
miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than
a man who stands on his head.
So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with
her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou
leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with cause and ef-
fect, the chancellors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and
thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt always drag
her after thee. A political victory, a rise of rent, the recovery
of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other
quite external event, raises your spirits, and you think good days
are preparing for you. Do not b>elieve it. It can never be so.
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring
you peace but the triumph of principles.
From the essay on «Self-Reliance.*
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1623
THE MIND IN HISTORY
THERE is one mind common to all individual men. Every man
is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is
once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of
the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what
a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any
man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal
mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only
and sovereign agent.
Of the works of this mind history is the record. Its genius
is illustrated by the entire series of days. Man is explicable by
nothing less than all his history. Without hurry, without rest,
the human spirit goes forth from the beginning to embody every
faculty, every thought, every emotion, which belongs to it in ap-
propriate events. But always the thought is prior to the fact;
all the facts of history pre-exist in the mind as laws. Each law
in turn is made by circumstances predominant, and the limits of
nature give power to but one at a time. A man is the whole
encyclopaedia of facts. The creation of a thousand forests is in
one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie
folded already in the first man. Epoch after epoch, camp, king-
dom, empire, republic, democracy, are merely the application of
his manifold spirit to the manifold world.
This human mind wrote history, and this must read it. The
Sphinx must solve her own riddle. If the whole of history is in
one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience.
There is a relation between the hours of our life and the cen-
turies of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great
repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a
star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body
depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces,
so the hours should be instructed by the ages, and the ages ex-
plained by the hours. Of the universal mind each individual
man is one more incarnation. All its properties consist in him.
Every step in his private experience flashes a light on what
great bodies of men have done, and the crises of his life refer
to national crises. Every revolution was first a thought in one
man's mind; and when the same thought occurs to another man,
it is the key to that era. Every reform was once a private
opinion; and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will
1624 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
solve the problem of the age. The fact narrated must corre-
spond to something in me to be credible or intelligible. We as
we read must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest, and king,
martyr and executioner, must fasten these images to some reality
in our secret experience, or we shall see nothing, learn nothing,
keep nothing. What befell Asdrubal or Caesar Borgia is as much
an illustration of the mind's powders and depravations as what
has befallen us. Each new law and political movement has mean-
ing for you. Stand before each of its tablets and say, ^^ Here is
one of my coverings. Under this fantastic, or odious, or grace-
ful mask, did my Proteus nature hide itself.'^ This remedies the
defect of our too great nearness to ourselves. This throws our
own actions into perspective; and as crabs, goats, scorpions, the
balance and the waterpot, lose all their meanness when hung as
signs in the zodiac, so I can see my own vices without heat in
the distant persons of Solomon, Alcibiades, and Catiline,
It is this universal nature which gives worth to particular
men and things. Hiiman lite as containing this is mysterious
and inviolable, and we hedge it round with penalties and laws.
All laws derive hence their ultimate reason, all express at last
reverence for some command of this supreme illimitable essence.
Property also holds of the soul, covers great spiritual facts, and
instinctively we at first hold to it with swords and laws, and
■wide and complex combinations. The obscure consciousness of
this fact is the light of all our day, the claim of claims; the
plea for education, for justice, for charity, the foundation of
friendship and love, and of the heroism and grandeur which be-
longs to acts of self-reliance. It is remarkable that involuntarily
we always read as superior beings. Universal history, the poets,
the romancers, do not in their stateliest pictures, — in the sacer-
dotal, the imperial palaces, in the triumphs of will, or of genius,
anywhere lose our ear, anywhere make us feel that we intrude,
that this is for our betters, but rather is it true that in their
grandest strokes, there w^e feel most at home. All that Shakes-
peare says of the king, yonder slip of a boy that reads in the
corner feels to be true of himself. We sympathize in the great
moments of history, in the great discoveries, the great resist-
ances, the great prosperities of men; — because there law was en-
acted, the sea was searched, the land was found, or the blow was
struck for us, as we ourselves in that place would have done or
applauded.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1625
So is it in respect to condition and character. We honor the
rich because they have externally the freedom, power, and grace
which we feel to be proper to man, proper to us. So all that is
said of the wise man by stoic, or Oriental, or modern essayist,
describes to each man his own idea, describes his unattained but
attainable self. All literature writes the character of the wise
man. All books, monuments, pictures, conversation, are portraits
in which the wise man finds the lineaments he is forming. The
silent and the loud praise him, and accost him, and he is stimu-
lated wherever he moves as by personal allusions. A wise and
good soul, therefore, never need look for allusions personal and
laudatory in discourse. He hears the commendation, not of him-
self, but more sweet, of that character he seeks, in every word
that is said concerning character, yea, further, in every fact that
befalls, — in the running river and the rustling corn. Praise is
looked, homage tendered, love flows from mute nature, from the
mountains and the lights of the firmament.
These hints, dropped as it were from sleep and night, let us
use in broad day. The student is to read history actively and
not passively; to esteem his own life the text, and books the
commentary. Thus compelled, the muse of history will utter
oracles, as never to those who do not respect themselves. I have
no expectation that any man will read history aright, who thinks
that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names have
resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing to-day.
From the essay on <<History.»
COMPENSATION
IN THE nature of the soul is the compensation for the inequal-
ities of condition. The radical tragedy of nature seems to be
the distinction of More and Less. How can Less not feel the
pain ; how not feel indignation or malevolence towards More ?
Look at those who have less faculty, and one feels sad and
knows not well what to make of it. Almost he shuns their eye;
he fears they will upbraid God. What should they do ? It seems
a great injustice. But see the facts nearly and these mountain-
ous inequalities vanish. Love reduces them as the sun melts the
iceberg in the sea. The heart and soul of all men being one,
this bitterness of His and Mine ceases. His is mine. I am my
1626 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
brother and my brother is me. If I feel overshadowed and out-
done by great neighbors, I can yet love; I can still receive; and
he that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves. Thereby
I make the discovery that my brother is my guardian, acting for
me with the friendliest designs, and the estate I so admired and
envied is my own. It is the eternal nature of the soul to ap-
propriate and make all things its own. Jesus and Shakespeare
are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate
them in my own conscious domain. His virtue, — is not that
mine ? His wit, — if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit.
Such also is the natural history of calamity. The changes
which break up at short intervals the prosperity of men are ad-
vertisements of a nature whose law is growth. Evermore it is the
order of nature to grow, and every soul is by this intrinsic neces-
sity quitting its whole system of things, its friends and home
and laws and faith, as the shellfish crawls out of its beautiful but
stony case, because it no longer, admits of its growth, and slowly
forms a new house. In proportion to the vigor of the individual
these revolutions are frequent, until in some happier mind they
are incessant and all worldly relations hang very loosely about
him, becoming, as it were, a transparent fluid membrane through
which the living form is always seen, and not, as in most men,
an indurated heterogeneous fabric of many dates and of no settled
character, in which the man is imprisoned. Then there can be
enlargement, and the man of to-day scarcely recognizes the man
of yesterday. And such should be the outward biography of
man in time, a putting off of dead circumstances day by day, as
he renews his raiment day by day. But to us, in our lapsed es-
tate, resting, not advancing, resisting, ^ot co-operating with the
divine expansion, this growth comes by shocks.
We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels
go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels may
come in. We are idolators of the old. We do not believe in the
riches of the soul in its proper eternity and omnipresence. We
do not believe there is any force in to-day to rival or re-create
that beautiful yesterday. We linger in the ruins of the old tent
where once we had bread and shelter and organs, nor believe
that the spirit can feed, cover, and nerve us again. We cannot
again find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and
weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, ** Up and onward
forevermore ! ** We cannot stay amid the ruins. Neither will we
Ralph waldo emerson 16*7
rely on the New; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, like
those monsters who look backwards.
And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to
the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a
mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of
friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But
the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all
facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which
seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect
of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our
way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which
was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a
household, or style of living, and allov/s the formation of new
ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or
constrains the formation of new acquaintances and the reception
of new influences that prove of the first importance to the next
years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny
garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine
for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the
gardener is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and
fruit to wide neighborhoods of men.
From the essay on << Compensation. *
MANNERS
I HAVE just been reading, in Mr. Hazlitt's translation, Montaigne's
account of his journey into Italy, and am struck with nothing
more agreeably than the self-respecting fashions of the time.
His arrival in each place, the arrival of a gentleman of France,
is an event of some consequence. Wherever he goes he pays a
visit to whatever prince or gentleman of note resides upon his
road, as a duty to himself and to civilization. When he leaves
any house in which he has lodged for a few weeks, he causes his
arms to be painted and hung up as a perpetual sign to the house,
as was the custom of gentlemen.
The complement of this graceful self-respect, and that of all
the points of good breeding I most require and insist upon, is
deference. I like that every chair should be a throne, and hold
a king. I prefer a tendency to stateliness, to an excess of fellow-
ship. Let the incommunicable objects of nature and the meta-
physical isolation of man teach us independence. Let us not
1628 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
be too much acquainted. I would have a man enter his house
through a hall filled with heroic and sacred sculptures, that he
might not want the hint of tranquillity and self-poise. We should
meet each morning, as from foreign countries, and spending the
day together, should depart at night as into foreign countries.
In all things I would have the island of a man inviolate. Let
us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all round
Olympus. No degree of affection need invade this religion. This
is myrrh and rosemary to keep the other sweet. Lovers should
guard their strangeness. If they forgive too much, all slides into
confusion and meanness. It is easy to push this deference to a
Chinese etiquette; but coolness and absence of heat and haste
indicate fine qualities. A gentleman makes no noise; a lady is
serene. Proportionate is our disgust at those invaders who fill a
studious house with blast and running to secure some paltry con-
venience. Not less I dislike a low sympathy of each with his
neighbor's needs. Must we have a good understanding with one
another's palates, as foolish people who have lived long together
know when each wants salt or sugar ? I pray my companion if
he wish for bread to ask me for bread, and if he wish for sas-
safras or arsenic to^ask me for them, and not to hold out his
plate as if I knew already. Every natural function can be digni-
fied by deliberation and privacy. Let us leave hurry to slaves.
The compliments and ceremonies of our breeding should signify,
however remotely, the recollection of the grandeur of our destiny.
The flower of courtesy does not very well bide handling, but
if we dare to open another leaf, and explore what parts go to its
conformation, we shall find also an intellectual quality. To the
leaders of men, the brain as well as the flesh and the heart must
furnish a proportion. Defect in manners is usually the defect of
fine perceptions. Men are too coarsely made for the delicacy of
beautiful carriage and customs. It is not quite sufficient to good
breeding, a union of kindness and independence. We imperatively
require a perception of, and a homage to beauty in our com-
panions. Other virtues are in request in the field and workyard,
but a certain degree of taste is not to be spared in those we sit
with. I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth
or the laws, than with a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral
qualities rule the world, but at short distances; the senses are
despotic. The same discrimination of fit and fair runs out, if
with less rigor, into all parts of life. The average spirit of the
energetic class is good sense, acting under certain limitations and
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1629
to certain ends. It entertains every natural gift. Social in its
nature, it respects everything which tends to unite men. It de-
lights in measure. The love of beauty is mainly the love of
measure or proportion. The person who screams, or uses the
superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts whole drawing-
rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love measure. You
must have genius, or a prodigious usefulness if you will hide the
want of measure. This perception comes in to polish and per-
fect the parts of the social instrument. Society will pardon much
to genius and special gifts, but, being in its nature a convention,
it loves what is conventional, or what belongs t'o coming together.
That makes the good and bad of manners, namely, what helps
or hinders fellowship. For fashion is not good sense absolute,
but relative; not good sense private, but good sense entertaining
company. It hates corners and sharp points of character, hates
quarrelsome, egotistical, solitary, and gloomy people; hates what-
ever can interfere with total blending of parties; whilst it values
all peculiarities as in the highest degree refreshing, which can
consist with good fellowship. And besides the general infusion
of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual
power is ever welcome in fine society as the costliest addition to
its rule and its credit.
The dry light must shine in to adorn our festival, but it must
be tempered and shaded, or that will also offend. Accuracy is
essential to beauty, and quick perceptions to politeness, but not
too quick perceptions. One may be too punctual and too precise.
He must leave the omniscience of business at the door, when he
comes into the palace of beauty. Society loves creole natures,
and sleepy, languishing manners, so that they cover sense, grace,
and good-will; the air of drowsy strength, which disarms criti-
cism; perhaps, because such a person seems to reserve himself for
the best of the game, and not spend himself on surfaces; an ig-
noring eye, which does not see the annoyances, shifts, and incon-
veniences that cloud the brow and smother the voice of the
sensitive.
The forms of politeness universally express benevolence in
superlative degrees. What if they are in the mouths of selfish
men, and used as means of selfishness? What if the false gen-
tleman almost bows the true out of the world ? What if the false
gentleman contrives so to address his companion, as civilly to ex-
clude all others from his discourse, and also to make them feel
excluded ? Real service will not lose its nobleness. All gener-
1630 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
osity is not merely French and sentimental; nor is it to be con-
cealed that living blood and a passion of kindness does at last
distinguish God's gentleman from Fashion's. The epitaph of Sir
Jenkin Grout is not wholly unintelligible to the present age:
<* Here lies Sir Jenkin Grout, who loved his friend, and persuaded
his enemy: what his mouth ate, his hand paid for: what his serv-
ants robbed, he restored: if a woman gave him pleasure, he sup-
ported her in pain: he never forgot his children: and whoso
touched his finger, drew after it his whole body.*^ Even the line
of heroes is not utterly extinct. There is still ever some admir-
able person in plain clothes, standing on the wharf, who jumps
in to rescue a drowning man ; there is still some absurd inventor
of charities; some guide and comforter of runaway slaves; some
friend of Poland ; some Philhellene ; some fanatic who plants shade
trees for the second and third generations, and orchards when he
is grown old; some well-concealed piety; some just man happy
in an ill fame; some youth ashamed of the favors of fortune,
and impatiently casting them on other shoulders. And these are
the centres of society, on which it returns for fresh impulses.
These are the creators of fashion, which is an attempt to organ-
ize beauty of behavior. The beautiful and the generous are, in
the theory,^ the doctors and apostles of this church; Scipio, and
the Cid, and Sir Philip Sidney, and Washington, and every pure
and valiant heart, who worshiped beauty by word and by deed.
The persons who constitute the natural aristocracy are not found
in the actual aristocracy, or only on its edge; as the chemical
energy of the spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of
the spectrum. Yet that is the infirmity of the seneschals, who
do not know their sovereign when he appears. The theory of
society supposes the existence and sovereignty of these. It di-
vines afar off their coming. It says with the elder gods: —
*As Heaven and Earth are fairer far
Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs;
And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth,
In form and shape compact and beautiful;
So on our heels a fresh perfection treads;
A power, more strong in beauty, born of us.
And fated to excel us, as we pass
In glory that old Darkness:
for, 'tis the eternal law.
That first in beauty shall be first in might.*
From the essay on « Manners. >>
kALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 63 1
MONTAIGNE; OR, THE SKEPTIC
MONTAIGNE is the frankest and honestest of all writers. His
French freedom runs into grossness, but he has anticipated
all censures by the bounty of his own confessions. In his
times, books were written to one sex only, and almost all were
written in Latin; so that, in a humorist, a certain nakedness of
statement was permitted, which our manners, of a literature ad-
dressed equally to both sexes, do not allow. But, though a bibli-
cal plainness, coupled with a most uncanonical levity, may shut
his pages to many sensitive readers, yet the offense is superficial.
He parades it: he makes the most of it; nobody can think or say
worse of him than he does. He pretends to most of the vices;
and, if there be any virtue in him, he says it got in by stealth.
There is no man, in his opinion, who has not deserved hanging
five or six times, and he pretends no exception in his own be-
half. ^^ Five or six as ridiculous stories, ^^ too, he says, *^ can be
told of me, as of any man living.'* But, with all this really su-
perfluous frankness, the opinion of an invincible probity grows
into every reader's mind.
^^ When I the most strictly and religiously confess myself, I
find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice;
and I am afraid that Plato, in his purest virtue (I, who am as
sincere and perfect a lover of virtue of that stamp as any other
whatever), if he had listened, and laid his ear close to himself,
would have heard some jarring sound of human mixture; but
faint and remote, and only to be perceived by himself.'*
Here is an impatience and fastidiousness at color or pretense
of any kind. He has been in courts so long as to have conceived
a furious disgust at appearances; he will indulge himself with a
little cursing and swearing; he will talk with sailors and gipsies,
use flash and street ballads; he has stayed indoors till he is
deadly sick; he will to the open air, though it rain bullets. He
has seen too much of gentlemen of the long robe, until he wishes
for cannibals; and is so nervous, by factitious life, that he thinks,
the more barbarous a man is, the better he is. He likes his
saddle. You may read theology, and grammar, and metaphysics
elsewhere. Whatever you get here, shall smack of the earth and
of real life, sweet, or smart, or stinging. He makes no hesitation
to entertain you with the records of his disease; and his journey
1632 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
to Italy is quite full of that matter. He took and kept this po-
sition of equilibrium. Over his name, he drew an emblematic
pair of scales, and wrote Que scats je ? under it. As I look at
his effigy opposite the title-page, I seem to hear him say, " You
may play old Poz, if you will; you may rail and exaggerate, — T
stand here for truth, and will not, for all the states, and churches,
and revenues, and personal reputations of Europe, overstate the
dry fact, as I see it; I will rather mumble and prose about what
I certainly know, — my house and barns; my father, my wife,
and my tenants; my old lean bald pate; my knives and forks;
what meats I eat, and what drinks I prefer; and a hundred straws
just as ridiculous, — than I will write, with a fine crow-quill, a
fine romance. I like gray days, and autumn and winter weather.
I am gray and autumnal myself, and think an undress, and old
shoes that do not pinch my feet, and old friends who do not con-
strain me, and plain topics v/here I do not need to strain myself
and pump my brains, the most suitable. Our condition as men
is risky and ticklish enough. One cannot be sure of himself and
his fortune an hour, but he may be whisked off into some pitiable
or ridiculous plight. Why should I vapor and play the philoso-
pher, instead of ballasting, the best I can, this dancing balloon ?
So, at least, I live within compass, keep myself ready for action,
and can shoot the gulf, at last, with decency. If there be any-
thing farcical in such a life, the blame is not mine: let it lie at
Fate's and Nature's door."
The Essays, therefore, are an entertaining soliloquy on every
random topic that comes into his head; treating everything with-
out ceremony, yet with masculine sense. There have been men
with deeper insight; but, one would say, never a man with such
abundance of thoughts: he is never dull, never insincere, and has
the genius to make the reader care for all that he cares for.
The sincerity and marrow of the man reach to his sentences.
I know not anywhere the book that seems less written. It is
the language of conversation transferred to a book. Cut these
words, and they would bleed: they are vascular and alive. One
has the same pleasure in it that we have in listening to the nec-
essary speech of men about their work, when any unusual cir-
cumstance gives momentary importance to the dialogue. For
blacksmiths and teamsters do not trip in their speech; it is a
shower of bullets.
From the essay on Montaigne in
« Representative Men.»
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1633
ON MEN, COMMON AND UNCOMMON
WE NEED not fear excessive influence. A more generous trust
is permitted. Serve the great. Stick at no humiliation.
Grudge no office thou canst render. Be the limb of their
body, the breath of their mouth. Compromise thy egotism. Who
cares for that, so thou gain aught wider and nobler ? Never
mind the taunt of Boswellism; the devotion may easily be greater
than the wretched pride which is guarding its own skirts. Be
another: not thyself, but a Platonist; not a soul, but a Christian;
not a naturalist, but a Cartesian ; not a poet, but a Shakespearean.
In vain the wheels of tendency will not stop, nor will all the
forces of inertia, fear, or of love itself, hold thee there. On, and
forever onward! The microscope observes a monad or wheel
insect among the infusories circulating in water. Presently, a
dot appears on the animal, which enlarges to a slit, and it be-
comes two perfect animals. The ever-proceeding detachment ap-
pears not less in all thought, and in society. Children think they
cannot live without their parents. But long before they are aware
of it, the black dot has appeared, and the detachment taken place.
Any accident will now reveal to them their independence.
But great men : — the word is injurious. Is there caste ? Is
there fate ? What becomes of the promise to virtue ? The thought-
ful youth laments the superfetation of nature. ^* Generous and
handsome,* he says, "is your hero; but look at yonder poor
Paddy, whose country is his wheelbarrow; look at his whole na-
tion of Paddies. * Why are the masses, from the dawn of history
down, food for knives and powder ? The idea dignifies a few
leaders, who have sentiment, opinion, love, self-devotion; and they
make war and death sacred; — but what for the wretches whom
they hire and kill ? The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy.
It is as real a loss that others should be low, as that we should
be low; for we must have society.
Is it a reply to these suggestions to say society is a Pestaloz-
aian school? All are teachers and pupils in turn. We are equally
served by receiving and by imparting. Men who know the same
things are not long the best company for each other. But bring
to each an intelligent person of another experience, and it is as
if you let off water from a lake, by cutting a lower basin. It
seems a mechanical advantage, and great benefit it is to each
IV— 103
1634 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
speaker, as he can now paint out his thought to himself. We
pass very fast, in our personal moods, from dignity to dependence.
And if any appear never to assume the chair, but always to stand
and serve, it is because we do not see the company in a suf-
ficiently long period for the whole rotation of parts to come about.
As to what we call the masses, and common men; — there are
no common men. All men are at last of a size; and true art is
only possible on the conviction that every talent has its apotheosis
somewhere. Fair play, and an open field, and freshest laurels to
all who have won them! But heaven reserves an equal scope for
every creature. Each is uneasy until he has produced his private
ray unto the concave sphere, and beheld his talent also in its
last nobility and exaltation.
From «The Uses of Great Mea»
ARISTOCRACY IN ENGLAND
CASTLES are proud things, but 'tis safest to be outside of them.
War is a foul game, and yet war is not the worst part of
aristocratic history. In later times, when the baron, edu-
cated only for war, with his brains paralyzed by his stomach,
found himself idle at home, he grew fat and wanton, and a
sorry brute. Grammont, Pepys, and Evelyn show the kennels to
which the king and court went in quest of pleasure. Prostitutes
taken from the theatres were made duchesses, their bastards
dukes and earls, **The young men sat uppermost, the old seri-
ous lords were out of favor. ^ The discourse that the king's
companions had with him was "poor and frothy.** No man who
valued his head might do what these pot companions familiarly
did with the king. In logical sequence of these dignified revels,
Pepys can tell the beggarly shifts to which the king was re-
duced, who could not find paper at his council table, and "no
handkerchers * in his wardrobe, "and but three bands to his
neck,'* and the linen draper and the stationer were out of pocket,
and refusing to trust him, and the baker will not bring bread
any longer. Meantime, the English Channel was swept, and
London threatened by the Dutch fleet, manned too by English
sailors, who, having been cheated of their pay for years by the
king, enlisted with the enemy.
The Selwyn correspondence in the reign of George III. dis-
closes a rottenness in the aristocracy which threatened to decom-
RALPH WALDO EMERSON iS^S
pose the state. The sycophancy and sale of votes and honor for
place and title; lewdness, g-aming, smuggling, bribery, and cheat-
ing; the sneer at the childish indiscretion of quarreling with ten
thousand a year; the want of ideas; the splendor of the titles,
and the apathy of the nation, are instructive, and make the
reader pause and explore the firm bounds which confined these
vices to a handful of rich men. In the reign of George IV.
things do not seem to have mended, and the rotten debauchee
let down from a window by an inclined plane into his coach to
take the air was a scandal to Europe which the ill fame of
his queen and of his family did nothing to retrieve.
Under the present reign, the perfect decorum of the Court is
thought to have put a check on the gross vices of the aristoc-
racy; yet gaming, racing, drinking, and mistresses bring them
down, and the democrat can still gather scandals, if he will.
Dismal anecdotes abound, verifying the gossip of the last gener-
ation of dukes served by bailiffs, with all their plate in pawn;
of great lords living by the showing of their houses; and of an
old man wheeled in his chair from room to room, whilst his
chambers are exhibited to the visitor for money; of ruined dukes
and earls living in exile for debt. The historic names of the
Buckinghams, Beauforts, Marlboroughs, and Hertfords have
gained no new lustre, and now and then darker scandals break
out, ominous as the new chapters added under the Orleans
dynasty to the causes cdebres in France. Even peers, who are
men of worth and public spirit, are overtaken and embarrassed
by their vast expense. The respectable Duke of Devonshire,
willing to be the Mecaenas and Lucullus of his island, is reported
to have said that he can live at Chatsworth but one month
in the year. Their many houses eat them up. They cannot
sell them because they are entailed. They will not let them for
pride's sake, but keep them empty, aired, and the grounds mown
and dressed, at a cost of four or five thousand pounds a year.
The spending is for a great part in servants, in many houses
exceeding a hundred.
Most of them are only chargeable with idleness, which because
it squanders such vast power of benefit, has the mischief of
crime. **They might be little Providences on earth," said my
friend, ^*and they are, for the most part, jockeys and fops.'*
From « English Traits.*
1636 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
NORSEMEN AND NORMANS
THE Norsemen are excellent persons in the main, with good
sense, steadiness, wise speech, and prompt action. But they
have a singular turn for homicide; their chief end of man
is to murder, or to be murdered; oars, scythes, harpoons, crow-
bars, peat knives, and hayforks, are tools valued by them all the
more for their charming aptitude for assassinations. A pair of
kings, after dinner, will divert themselves by thrusting each his
sword through .the other's body, as did Yngve and Alf. Another
pair ride out on a morning for a frolic, and, finding no weapon
near, will take the bits out of their horses' mouths, and crush
each other's heads with them, as did Alric and Eric. The sight
of a tent cord or a cloak string puts them on hanging somebody,
a wife, or a husband, or, best of all, a king. If a farmer has so
much as a hayfork, he sticks it into a King Dag. King Ingiald
finds it vastly amusing to burn up half a dozen kings in a hall,
after getting them drunk. Never was poor gentleman so sur-
feited with life, so furious to be rid of it, as the Northman. If
he cannot pick any other quarrel, he will get himself comfortably
gored by a bull's horns, like Egil, or slain by a landslide, like
the agricultural King Onund. Odin died in his bed, in Sweden;
but it was a proverb of ill condition, to die the death of old age.
King Hake of Sweden cuts and slashes in battle as long as he
can stand, then orders his war ship, loaded with his dead men
and their weapons, to be taken out to sea, the tiller shipped, and
the sails spread; being left alone, he sets fire to some tar wood,
and lies down contented on deck. The wind blew off the land,
the ship flew burning in clear flame, out between the islets into
the ocean, and there was the right end of King Hake.
The early Sagas are sanguinary and piratical; the later are of
a noble strain. History rarely yields us better passages than the
conversation between King Sigurd the Crusader and King Eys-
tein, his brother, on their respective merits, — one, the soldier, and
the other, a lover of the arts of peace.
But the reader of the Norman history must steel himself by
holding fast the remote compensations which result from animal
▼igor. As the old fossil world shows that the first steps of
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1637
reducing the chaos were confided to saurians and other huge and
horrible animals, so the foundations of the new civility were to
be laid by the most savage men.
The Normans came out of France into England worse men
than they went into it, one hundred and sixty years before.
They had lost their own language, and learned the Romance or
barbarous Latin of the Gauls; and had acquired, with the lan-
guage, all the vices it had names for. The conquest has obtained
in the chronicles the name of the " memory of sorrow. *' Twenty
thousand thieves landed at Hastings. These founders of the
House of Lords were greedy and ferocious dragoons, sons of
greedy and ferocious pirates. They were all alike, they took
everything they could carry, they burned, harried, violated, tor-
tured, and killed, until everything English was brought to the
verge of ruin. Such, however, is the illusion of antiquity and
wealth, that decent and dignified men now existing boast their
descent from these filthy thieves, who showed a far juster con-
viction of their own merits, by assuming for their types the
swine, goat, jackal, leopard, wolf, and snake, which they severally
resembled.
England yielded to the Danes and Northmen in the tenth
and eleventh centuries, and was the receptacle into which all the
mettle of that strenuous population was poured. The continued
draught of the best men in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, to
these piratical expeditions, exhausted those countries, like a tree
which bears much fruit when young, and these have been second-
rate powers ever since. The power of the race migrated, and
left Norway void. King Olaf said, ** When King Harold, my
father, went westward to England, the chosen men in Norway
followed him: but Norway was so emptied then, that such men
have not since been to find in the country, nor especially such a
leader as King Harold was for wisdom and bravery.*^
It was a tardy recoil of these invasions, when, in i8oi, the
British government sent Nelson to bombard the Danish forts in
the Sound; and, in 1807, Lord Cathcart, at Copenhagen, took the
entire Danish fleet, as it lay in the basins, and all the equip-
ments from the Arsenal, and carried them to England. Kong-
helle, the town where the kings of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark
were wont to meet, is now rented to a private English gentle-
man for a hunting ground.
1638 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
It took many generations to trim, and comb, and perfume the
first boatload of Norse pirates into royal highnesses and most
noble Knights of the Garter; but every sparkle of ornament
dates back to the Norse boat. There will be time enough to
mellow this strength into civility and religion. It is a medical
fact, that the children of the blind see; the children of felons
have a healthy conscience. Many a mean, dastardly boy is, at
the age of puberty, transformed into a serious and generous
youth.
From "English Traits. »
DATE DUE
GAYLORD
3 1970 00412 3326
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