Table talk : essays on men and manners

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Motto's Classics

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WILLIAM HAZLITT.— I

TABLE-TALK

ESSAYS ON MEN AND MANNERS

TABLE TALK

TABLE-TALK

ESSAYS ON MEN AND MANNERS

BY

WILLIAM HAZLITT

HENRY FROWDE

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE

WILLIAM HAZLITT.

Bora : Maiclstone, April 10, 1778.
Died : London, September 18, 1830.

e Table Talk' was first published in two volumes,
the first of which appeared in 1821, and the
second the following year. In ' The World's
Classics' it was first published in one volume in
1901 and reprinted 1902, 1903, and 1910.

Wl 5 1 1941

Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.

CONTENTS

PAGE

x THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING ... 1

THE PAST AND FUTURE . . . . 25

J/ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE . . . . 38

CHARACTER OF COBBETT . . . . . 65

ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA . . . 78

ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED . . 92

THE INDIAN JUGGLERS ..... 103

ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF . . . . 120

ON THOUGHT AND ACTION .... 135

ON WILL-MAKING ...... 152

ON CERTAIN INCONSISTENCIES IN SIR JOSHUA

REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES .... 163

ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE . . .196
ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION . . .211

ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN . . 227

y ON MILTON'S SONNETS ..... 235

ON GOING A JOURNEY ..... 244

vi TABLE-TALK

PAGE

ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS . . 256

ON THE ARISTOCRACY OF LETTERS . . . 277

ON CRITICISM . 290

,ON GREAT AND LITTLE THINGS . 307
ON FAMILIAR STYLE ... .329

ON EFFEMINACY OF CHARACTER . . 337

WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE . . . 347

ON CORPORATE BODIES 359

WHETHER ACTORS OUGHT TO SIT IN THE BOXES ? 371

ON THE DISADVANTAGES OF INTELLECTUAL SUPE-
RIORITY . 381

ON PATRONAGE AND PUFFING .... 394

ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER . . 413

ON THE PICTURESQUE AND IDEAL • ,. ;>. ' . 433

jOw THE FEAR OF DEATH . . 439

TABLE-TALK

OR

ORIGINAL ESSAYS

ESSAY I

ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING

'THERE is a pleasure in painting which none but
painters know.' In writing, you have to contend with
the world ; in painting, you have only to carry on a
friendly strife with Nature. You sit down to your
task, and are happy. From the moment that you take
up the pencil, and look Nature in the face, you are at
peace with your own heart. No angry passions rise to
disturb the silent progress of the work, to shake the
hand, or dim the brow : no irritable humours are set
afloat : you have no absurd opinions to combat, no
point to strain, no adversary to crush, no fool to
annoy — you are actuated by fear or favour to no man.
There is ' no juggling here,' no sophistry, no intrigue,
no tampering with the evidence, no attempt to make
black white, or white black : but you resign yourself
into the hands of a greater power, that of. Nature, with
the simplicity of a child, and the devotion of an
enthusiast — ' study with joy her manner, and with
rapture taste her style.' The mind is calm, and full

B

2 TABLE-TALK

at the same time. The hand and eye are equally
employed. In tracing the commonest ohject, a plant
or the stump of a tree, you learn something every
moment. You perceive unexpected differences, and
discover likenesses where you looked for no such thing.
You try to set down what you see — find out your
error, and correct it. You need not play tricks, or
purposely mistake : with all your pains, you are still
far short of the mark. Patience grows out of the
endless pursuit, and turns it into a luxury. A streak
in a flower, a wrinkle in a leaf, a tinge in a cloud, a
stain in an old wall or ruin grey, are seized with
avidity as the spolia opima of this sort of mental war-
fare, and furnish out lahour for another half -day.
The hours pass away untold, without chagrin, and
without weariness ; nor would you ever wish to pass
them otherwise. Innocence is joined with industry,
pleasure with business ; and the mind is satisfied,
though it is not engaged in thinking or in doing any
mischief.1

i There is a passage in Werter which contains a very pleasing
illustration of this doctrine, and is as follows :—

1 About a league from the town is a place called Walheim. It ia
very agreeably situated on the side of a hill : from one of the paths
which leads out of the village, you have a view of the whole country ;
and there is a good old woman who sells wine, coffee, and tea there :
but better than all this are two lime-trees before the church, which
spread their branches over a little green, surrounded by barns and
cottages. I have seen few places more retired and peaceful. I send
for a chair and table from the old woman's, and there I drink my
coffee and read Homer. It was by accident that I discovered this
place one fine afternoon : all was perfect stillness ; everybody was in
the fields, except a little boy about four years old, who was sitting
on the ground, and holding between his knees a child of about six
months ; he pressed it to his bosom with liis little arms, which made
a sort of great chair for it; and notwithstanding the vivacity which
sparkled in his eyes, he sat perfectly still. Quite delighted with
the scene, I sat down on a plough opposite, and had great pleasure
in drawing this little picture of brotherly tenderness. I added a
bit of the hedge, the barn-door, and some broken cart-wheels, with-
out any order, just as they happened to lie ; and in about an hour I
found I had made a drawing of great expression and very correct
design, without having put in anything of my own. This confirmed
me in the resolution I had made before, only to copy Nature for the
future. Nature is inexhaustible, and alone forms the greatest masters.
Say what you will of rules, they alter the true features and the
natural expression.'

ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 3

I have not much pleasure in writing these Essays,
or in reading them afterwards ; though I own I now
and then meet with a phrase that I like, or a thought
that strikes me as a true one. But after I begin them,
I am only anxious to get to the end of them, which I
am not sure I shall do, for I seldom see my way a page
or even a sentence beforehand ; and when I have as by
a miracle escaped, I trouble myself little more about
them. I sometimes have to write them twice over :
then it is necessary to read the proof, to prevent
mistakes by the printer ; so that by the time they
appear in a tangible shape, and one can con them over
with a conscious, sidelong glance to the public ap-
probation, they have lost their gloss and relish, and
become 'more tedious than a twice-told tale.' For a
person to read his own works over with any great
delight, he ought first to forget that he ever wrote
them. Familiarity naturally breeds contempt. It is,
in fact, like poring fondly over a piece of blank paper :
from repetition, the words convey no distinct meaning
to the mind — are mere idle sounds, except that our
vanity claims an interest and property in them. I
have more satisfaction in my own thoughts than in
dictating them to others: words are necessary to
explain the impression of certain things upon me to
the reader, but they rather weaken and draw a veil
over than strengthen it to myself. However I might
say with the poet, 'My mind to me a kingdom is,'
yet I have little ambition ' to set a throne or chair of
state in the understandings of other men.' The ideas
we cherish most exist best in a kind of shadowy
abstraction,

Pure in the last recesses of the mind,

and derive neither force nor interest from being ex-
posed to public view. They are old familiar acquaint-
ance, and any change in them, arising from the
adventitious ornaments of style or dress, is little to
their advantage. After I have once written on a
subject, it goes out of my mind : my feelings about it

4 TABLE-TALK

have been melted down into words, and then I forget.
I have, as it were, discharged my memory of its old
habitual reckoning, and rubbed out the score of real
sentiment. For the future it exists only for the sake
of others. — But I cannot say, from my own experience,
that the same process takes place in transferring our
ideas to canvas ; they gain more than they lose in the
mechanical transformation. One is never tired of
painting, because you have to set down not what you
knew already, but what you have just discovered. In
the former case you translate feelings into words ; in
the latter, names into things. There is a continual
creation out of nothing going on. With every stroke
of the brush a new field of inquiry is laid open ; new
difficulties arise, and new triumphs are prepared over
them. By comparing the imitation with the original,
you see what you have done, and how much you have
still to do. The test of the senses is severer than that
of fancy, and an over-match even for the delusions of
our self-love. One part of a picture shames another,
and you determine to paint up to yourself^ if you
cannot come up to Nature. Every 'object becomes
lustrous from the light thrown back upon it by the
mirror of art : and by the aid of the pencil we may be
said to touch and handle the objects of sight The air-
drawn visions that hover on the verge of existence have
a bodily presence given them on the canvas : the form
of beauty is changed into a substance : the dream and
the glory of the universe is made ' palpable to feeling
as to sight.'— And see! a rainbow starts from the
canvas, with all its humid train of glory, as if it were
drawn from its cloudy arch in heaven. The spangled
landscape glitters with drops of dew after the shower.
The ' fleecy fools' show their coats in the gleams of
the setting sun. The shepherds pipe their farewell
notes in the fresh evening air. And is this bright
vision made from a dead, dull blank, like a bubble
reflecting the mighty fabric of the universe ? Who
would think this miracle of Rubens' pencil possible to
be performed ? Who, having seen it, would not spend

ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 5

his life to do the like ? See how the rich fallows, the
bare stubble-field, the scanty harvest -home, drag in
Rembrandt's landscapes ! How often have I looked
at them and nature, and tried to do the same, till the
very ' light thickened,' and there was an earthiness in
the feeling of the air ! There is no end of the refine-
ments of art and nature in this respect. One may
look at the misty glimmering horizon till the eye
dazzles and the imagination is lost, in hopes to transfer
the whole interminable expanse at one blow upon the
canvas. Wilson said, he used to try to paint the
effect of the motes dancing in the setting sun. At
another time, a friend, coming into his painting-room
when he was sitting on the ground in a melancholy
posture, observed that his picture looked like a land-
scape after a shower : he started up with the greatest
delight, and said, 'That is the effect I intended to
produce, but thought I had failed.' Wilson was
neglected ; and, by degrees, neglected his art to apply
himself to brandy. His hand became unsteady, so
that it was only by repeated attempts that he could
reach the place or produce the effect he aimed at ; and
when he had done a little to a picture, he would say to
any acquaintance who chanced to drop in, 'I have
painted enough for one day : come, let us go some-
where.' It was not so Claude left his pictures, or his
studies on the banks of the Tiber, to go in search of
other enjoyments, or ceased to gaze upon the glittering
sunny vales and distant hills ; and while his eye
drank in the clear sparkling hues and lovely forms of
nature, his hand stamped them on the lucid canvas to
last there for ever ! One of the most delightful parts
of my life was one fine summer, when I used to walk
out of an evening to catch the last light of the sun,
gemming the green slopes or russet lawns, and gilding
tower or tree, while the Mue sky, gradually turning to
purple and gold, or skirted with dusky grey, hung its
broad marble pavement over all, as we see it in the
great master of Italian landscape. But to come to a
more particular explanation of the subject : —

6 TABLE-TALK

The first head I ever tried to paint was an old woman
with the upper part of the face shaded by her bonnet,
and I certainly laboured [at] it with great perseverance.
It took me numberless sittings to do it. I have it by
me still, and sometimes look at it with surprise, to
think how much pains were thrown away to little
purpose, — yet not altogether in vain if it taught me
to see good in everything, and to know that there is
nothing vulgar in Nature seen with the eye of science
or of true art. Refinement creates beauty everywhere :
it is the grossness of the spectator that discovers
nothing but grossness in the object. Be this as it may,
I spared no pains to do my best. If art was long, I
thought that life was so too at that moment. I got in
the general effect the first day ; and pleased and sur-
prised enough I was at my success. The rest was a
work of time — of weeks and months (if need were), of
patient toil and careful finishing. I had seen an old
head by Rembrandt at Burleigh House, and if I could
produce a head at all like Rembrandt in a year, in my
lifetime, it would be glory and felicity and wealth and
fame enough for me ! The head I had seen at Burleigh
was an exact and wonderful facsimile of nature, and I
resolved to make mine (as nearly as I could) an exact
facsimile of nature. I did not then, nor do I now
believe, with Sir Joshua, that the perfection of art
consists in giving general appearances without individual
details, but in giving general appearances with in-
dividual details. Otherwise, I had done my work the
first day. But I saw something more in nature than
general effect, and I thought it worth my while to give
it in the picture. There was a gorgeous effect of light
and shade ; but there was a delicacy as well as depth
in the chiaroscuro which I was bound to follow into all
its dim and scarce perceptible variety of tone and
shadow. Then I had to make the transition from a
strong light to as dark a shade, preserving the masses,
but gradually softening off the intermediate parts. It
was so in nature ; the difficulty was to make it so in
the copy. I tried, and failed again and again ; I strove

ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 7

harder, and succeeded as I thought. The wrinkles
in Rembrandt were not hard lines, but broken and
irregular. I saw the same appearance in nature, and
strained every nerve to give it. If I could hit off this
edgy appearance, and insert the reflected light in the
furrows of old age in half a morning, I did not think I
had lost a day. Beneath the shrivelled yellow parch-
ment look of the skin, there was here and there a
streak of the blood-colour tinging the face ; this I
made a point of conveying, and did not cease to
compare what I saw with what I did (with jealous,
lynx-eyed watchfulness) till I succeeded to the best
of my ability and judgment. How many revisions
were there ! How many attempts to catch an ex-
pression which I had seen the day before ! How often
did we try to get the old position, and wait for the
return of the same light ! There was a puckering up
of the lips, a cautious introversion of the eye under the
shadow of the bonnet, indicative of the feebleness and
suspicion of old age, which at last we managed, after
many trials and some quarrels, to a tolerable nicety.
The picture was never finished, and I might have gone
on with it to the present hour. 1 I used to set it on the
ground when my day's work was done, and saw revealed
to me with swimming eyes the birth of new hopes and
of a new world of objects. The painter thus learns to
look at Nature with different eyes. He before saw her
f as in a glass darkly, but now face to face.' He under-
stands the texture and meaning of the visible universe,
arid ' sees into the life of things,' not by the help of
mechanical instruments, but of the improved exercise
of his faculties, and an intimate sympathy with Nature.
The meanest thing is not lost upon him, for he looks
at it with an eye to itself, not merely to his own vanity
or interest, or the opinion of the world. Even where
there is neither beauty nor use — if that ever were —
still there is truth, and a sufficient source of gratifica-

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

8 TABLE-TALK

tion in the indulgence of curiosity and activity of mind.
The humblest painter is a true scholar ; and the best
of scholars — the scholar of Nature. For myself, and
for the real comfort and satisfaction of the thing, I had
rather have been Jan Steen, or Gerard Dow, than the
greatest casuist or philologer that ever lived. The
painter does not view things in clouds or *' mist, the
common gloss of theologians/ but applies the same
standard of truth and disinterested spirit of inquiry,
that influence his daily practice, to other subjects.
He perceives form, he distinguishes character. He
reads men and books with an intuitive eye. He is
a critic as well as a connoisseur. The conclusions
he draws are clear and convincing, because they are
taken from the things themselves. He is not a fanatic,
a dupe, or a slave ; for the habit of seeing for himself
also disposes him to judge for himself. The most
sensible men I know (taken as a class) are painters ;
that is, they are the most lively observers of what
passes in the world about them, and the closest
observers of what passes in their own minds. From
their profession they in general mix more with the
world than authors ; and if they have not the same
fund of acquired knowledge, are obliged to rely more
on individual sagacity. I might mention the names of
Opie, Fuseli, Northcote, as persons distinguished for
striking description and acquaintance with the subtle
traits of character.1 Painters in ordinary society, or
in obscure situations where their value is not known,
and they are treated with neglect and indifference,
have sometimes a forward self-sufficiency of manner ;
but this is not so much their fault as that of others.
Perhaps their want of regular education may also be in
fault in such cases. Richardson, who is very tenacious

i Men in business, who are answerable with their fortunes for the
consequences of their opinions, and are therefore accustomed to
ascertain pretty accurately the grounds on which they act, before
they commit themselves on the event, are often men of remarkably
quick and sound judgments. Artists in like manner must know
tolerably well what they are about, before they can bring the result
of their observations to the test of ocular demonstration.

ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 9

of the respect in which the profession ought to be held,
tells a story of Michael Angelo, that after a quarrel
between him and Pope Julius II., ' upon account of a
slight the artist conceived the pontiff had put upon
him, Michael Angelo was introduced by a bishop, who,
thinking to serve the artist by it, made it an argument
that the Pope should be reconciled to him, because
men of his profession were commonly ignorant, and of
no consequence otherwise ; his holiness, enraged at the
bishop, struck him with his staff, and told him, it was
he that was the blockhead, and affronted the man
himself would not offend : the prelate was driven out
of the chamber, and Michael Angelo had the Pope's
benediction, accompanied with presents. This bishop
had fallen into the vulgar error, and was rebuked
accordingly.'

Besides the exercise of the mind, painting exercises
the body. It is a mechanical as well as a liberal art.
To do anything, to dig a hole in the ground, to plant a
cabbage, to hit a mark, to move a shuttle, to work
a pattern, — in a word, to attempt to produce any effect,
and to succeed, has something in it that gratifies the
love of power, and carries off the restless activity of
the mind of man. Indolence is a delightful but "dis-
tressing state ; we must be doing something to he
happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to
the instinctive tendencies of the human frame ; and
painting combines them both incessantly.1 The hand
furnishes a practical test of the correctness of the eye ;
and the eye, thus admonished, imposes fresh tasks of
skill and industry upon the hand. Every stroke tells
as the verifying of a new truth ; and every new obser-
vation, the instant it is made, passes into an act and
emanation of the will. Every step is nearer what we
wish, and yet there is always more to do. In spite
of the facility, the fluttering grace, the evanescent
hues, that play round the pencil of Rubens and Van-

1 The famous Schiller used to say, that he found the great happi-
ness of life, after all. to consist in the discharge of some mechanical
duty.

10 TABLE-TALK

dyke, however I may admire, I do not envy them thia
power so much as I do the slow, patient, laborious
execution of Correggio, Leonardo da Vinci, and Andrea
del Sarto, where every touch appears conscious of its
charge, emulous of truth, and where the painful artist
has so distinctly wrought,

That you might almost say his picture thought.

In the one case the colours seem breathed on the
canvas as if by magic, the work and the wonder of
a moment ; in the other they seem inlaid in the body
of the work, and as if it took the artist years of
unremitting labour, and of delightful never-ending
progress to perfection.1 Who would wish ever to
come to the close of such works, — not to dwell on
them, to return to them, to be wedded to them to the
last ? Rubens, with his florid, rapid style, complained
that when he had just learned his art, he should be
forced to die. Leonardo, in the slow advances of his,
had lived long enough !

Painting is not, like writing, what is properly under-
stood by a sedentary employment. It requires not
indeed a strong, but a continued and steady exertion
of muscular power. The precision and delicacy of the
manual operation, makes up for the want of vehemence,
— as to balance himself for any time in the same posi-
tion the rope-dancer must strain every nerve. Painting
for a whole morning gives one as excellent an appetite
for one's dinner as old Abraham Tucker acquired for
his by riding over Banstead Downs. It is related of
Sir Joshua Reynolds, that ' he took no other exercise
than what he used in his painting-room,' — the writer
means, in walking backwards and forwards to look at
his picture ; but the act of painting itself, of laying on
the colours in the proper place and proper quantity,
was a much harder exercise than this alternate receding
from and returning to the picture. This last would be

* The rich impasting of Titian and Giorgione combines something
of the advantages of both these styles, the felicity of the one with
the carefulness of the other, and is perhaps to be preferred to either.

ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 11

rather a relaxation and relief than an effort It is not
to be wondered at, that an artist like Sir Joshua, who
delighted so much in the sensual and practical part of
his art, should have found himself at a considerable
loss when the decay of his sight precluded him, for the
last year or two of his life, from the following up of his
profession, — ' the source/ according to his own remark,
( of thirty years' uninterrupted enjoyment and prosperity
to him.' It is only those who never think at all, or
else who have accustomed themselves to brood in-
cessantly on abstract ideas, that never feel ennui.

To give one instance more, and then I will have done
with this rambling discourse. One of my first attempts
was a picture of my father, who was then in a green
old age, with strong-marked features, and scarred with
the smallpox. I drew it out with a broad light cross-
ing the face, looking down, with spectacles on, reading.
The book was Shaftesbury's Characteristics, in a fine old
binding, with Gribelin's etchings. My father would as
lieve it had been any other book ; but for him to read
was to be content, was 'riches fineless.' The sketch
promised well ; and I set to work to finish it, deter-
mined to spare no time nor pains. My father was
willing to sit as long as I pleased ; for there is a natural
desire in the mind of man to sit for one's picture, to be
the object of continued attention, to have one's likeness
multiplied ; and besides his satisfaction in the picture,
he had some pride in the artist, though he would rather
I should have written a sermon than painted like Rem-
brandt or like Raphael. Those winter days, with the
gleams of sunshine coming through the chapel-windows,
and cheered by the notes of the robin-redbreast in our
garden (that ' ever in the haunch of winter sings '), —
as my afternoon's work drew to a close, — were among
the happiest of my life. When I gave the effect I
intended to any part of the picture for which I had
prepared my colours ; when I imitated the roughness
of the skin by a lucky stroke of the pencil ; when I hit
the clear, pearly tone of a vein ; when I gave the ruddy
complexion of health, the blood circulating under the

12 TABLE-TALK

broad shadows of one side of the face, I thought my
fortune made ; or rather it was already more than
made, in my fancying that I might one day be able to
say with Correggio, ' / also am a painter ! ' It was an
idle thought, a boy's conceit ; but it did not make me
less happy at the time. I used regularly to set my
work in the chair to look at it through the long even-
ings ; and many a time did I return to take leave of it
before I could go to bed at night. I remember sending
it with a throbbing heart to the Exhibition, and seeing
it hung up there by the side of one of the Honourable
Mr. Skeffington (now Sir George). There was nothing
in common between them, but that they were the por-
traits of two very good-natured men. I think, but am
not sure, that I finished this portrait (or another after-
wards) on the same day that the news of the battle of
Austerlitz came ; I walked out in the afternoon, and,
as I returned, saw the evening star set over a poor
man's cottage with other thoughts and feelings than
I shall ever have again. Oh for the revolution of the
great Platonic year, that those times might come over
again ! I could sleep out the three hundred and sixty-
five thousand intervening years very contentedly ! — The
picture is left : the table, the chair, the window where
I learned to construe Livy, the chapel where my father
preached, remain where they were ; but he himself is
gone to rest, full of years, of faith, of hope, and charity!

ESSAY II

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

THE painter not only takes a delight in nature, he has
a new and exquisite source of pleasure opened to him
in the study and contemplation of works of art —

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

He turns aside to view a country gentleman's seat with
eager looks, thinking it may contain some of the rich
products of art. There is an air round Lord Radnor's
park, for there hang the two Claudes, the Morning and
Evening of the Roman Empire — round Wilton House,
for there is Vandyke's picture of the Pembroke family
— round Blenheim, for there is his picture of the Duke
of Buckingham's children, and the most magnificent
collection of Rubenses in the world — at Knowsley, for
there is Rembrandt's Handwriting on the Wall — and
at Burleigh, for there are some of Guide's angelic heads.
The young artist makes a pilgrimage to each of these
places, eyes them wistfully at a distance, ' bosomed high
in tufted trees,' and feels an interest in them of which
the owner is scarce conscious : he enters the well-swept
walks and echoing archways, passes the threshold, is
led through wainscoted rooms, is shown the furniture,
the rich hangings, the tapestry, the massy services of
plate — and, at last, is ushered into the room where hig
treasure is, the idol of his vows — some speaking face or
bright landscape ! It is stamped on his brain, and lives
there thenceforward, a tally for nature, and a test of

14 TABLE-TALK

art. He furnishes out the chambers of the mind from
the spoils of time, picks and chooses which shall have
the best places — nearest his heart. He goes away
richer than he came, richer than the possessor ; and
thinks that he may one day return, when he perhaps
shall have done something like them, or even from
failure shall have learned to admire truth and genius
more.

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

with trees upon't

That nod unto the world, and mock our eyes with air.

Old Time had unlocked his treasures, and Fame stood
portress at the door. We had all heard of the names
of Titian, Raphael, Guido, Domenichino, the Caracci
— but to see them face to face, to be in the same room
with their deathless productions, was like breaking
some mighty spell — was almost an effect of necromancy !
From that time I lived in a world of pictures. Battles,
sieges, speeches in parliament seemed mere idle noise
and fury, ' signifying nothing,' compared with those
mighty works and dreaded names that spoke to me in
the eternal silence of thought. This was the more
remarkable, as it was but a short time before that I
was not only totally ignorant of, but insensible to the
beauties of art. As an instance, I remember that one
afternoon I was reading The Provoked Husband with
the highest relish, with a green woody landscape of
Ruysdael or Hobbima just before me, at which I looked
off the book now and then, and wondered what there

ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 15

could be in that sort of work to satisfy or delight
the mind — at the same time asking myself, as a
speculative question, whether I should ever feel an
interest in it like what 1 took in reading Vanbrugh and
Cibber?

I had made some progress in painting when I went
to the Louvre to study, and I never did anything after-
wards. I never shall forget conning over the Catalogue
which a friend lent me just before I set out The pic-
tures, the names of the painters, seemed to relish in
the mouth. There was one of Titian's Mistress at her
toilette. Even the colours with which the painter had
adorned her hair were not more golden, more amiable
to sight, than those which played round and tantalised
my fancy ere I saw the picture. There were two por-
traits by the same hand — ' A young Nobleman with a
glove' — Another, 'a companion to it.' I read the
description over and over with fond expectancy, and
filled up the imaginary outline with whatever 1 could
conceive of grace, and dignity, and an antique gusto —
all but equal to the original. There was the Trans-
figuration too. With what awe I saw it in my mind's
eye, and was overshadowed with the spirit of the artist !
Not to have been disappointed with these works after-
wards, was the highest compliment I can pay to their
transcendent merits. Indeed, it was from seeing other
works of the same great masters that I had formed a
vague, but no disparaging idea of these. The first day
1 got there, I was kept for some time in the French
Exhibition Room, and thought I should not be able to
get a sight of the old masters. I just caught a peep
at them through the door (vile hindrance !) like looking
out of purgatory into paradise — from Poussin's noble,
mellow-looking landscapes to where Rubens hung out
his gaudy banner, and down the glimmering vista to
the rich jewels of Titian and the Italian school. At
last, by much importunity, I was admitted, and lost
not an instant in making use of my new privilege.
It was un beau jour to me. I marched delighted
through a quarter of a mile of the proudest efforts

16 TABLE-TALK

of the mind of man, a whole creation of genius, a
universe of art ! I ran the gauntlet of all the schools
from the bottom to the top ; and in the end got
admitted into the inner room, where they had been
repairing some of their greatest works. Here the
Transfiguration, the St. Peter Martyr, and the St.
Jerome of Domenichino stood on the floor, as if they
had bent their knees, like camels stooping, to unlade
their riches to the spectator. On one side, on an easel,
stood Hippolito de Medici (a portrait by Titian), with
a boar-spear in his hand, looking through those he saw,
till you turned away from the keen glance ; and thrown
together in heaps were landscapes of the same hand,
green pastoral hills and vales, and shepherds piping
to their mild mistresses underneath the flowering shade.
Reader, 'if thou hast not seen the Louvre thou art
damned ! ' — for thou hast not seen the choicest remains
of the works of art ; or thou hast not seen all these
together, with their mutually reflected glories. I say
nothing of the statues ; for I know but little of sculp-
ture, and never liked any till I saw the Elgin Marbles.
. . . Here, for four months together, I strolled and
studied, and daily heard the warning sound — ' Quatres
heures passees, il fautfermer, Citoyens' — (Ah ! why did
they ever change their style ?) muttered in coarse pro-
vincial French ; and brought away with me some loose
draughts and fragments, which I have been forced to
part with, like drops of life-blood, for 'hard money.'
How often, thou tenantless mansion of godlike magni-
ficence— how often has my heart since gone a pilgrimage
to thee !

It has been made a question, whether the artist, or
the mere man of taste and natural sensibility, receives
most pleasure from the contemplation of works of art ;
and I think this question might be answered by another
as a sort of eocperimentum crucis, namely, whether any
one out of that ' number numberless ' of mere gentle-
men and amateurs, who visited Paris at the period here
spoken of, felt as much interest, as much pride or
pleasure in this display of the most striking monuments.

ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 17

of art as the humblest student would? The first
entrance into the Louvre would be only one of the
events of his journey, not an event in his life, re-
membered ever after with thankfulness and regret.
He would explore it with the same unmeaning curiosity
and idle wonder as he would the Regalia in the Tower,
or the Botanic Garden in the Tuileries, but not with
the fond enthusiasm of an artist. How should he?
His is ' casual fruition, joyless, unend eared.' But the
painter is wedded to his art — the mistress, queen, and
idol of his soul. He has embarked his all in it, fame,
time, fortune, peace of mind — his hopes in youth, his
consolation in age : and shall he not feel a more
intense interest in whatever relates to it than the mere
indolent trifler? Natural sensibility alone, without
the entire application of the mind to that one object,
will not enable the possessor to sympathise with all the
degrees of beauty and power in the conceptions of a
Titian or a Correggio ; but it is he only who does this,
who follows them into all their force and matchless
grace, that does or can feel their full value. Know-
ledge is pleasure as well as power. No one but the
artist who has studied nature and contended with the
difficulties of art, can be aware of the beauties, or [be]
intoxicated with a passion for painting. No one who
has not devoted his life and soul to the pursuit of art
can feel the same exultation in its brightest ornaments
and loftiest triumphs which an artist does. Where the
treasure is, there the heart is also. It is now seventeen
years since I was studying in the Louvre (and I have
long since given up all thoughts of the art as a
profession), but long after I returned, and even still, I
sometimes dream of being there again — of asking for
the old pictures — and not finding them, or finding
them changed or faded from what they were, 1 cry
myself awake ! What gentleman -amateur ever does
this at such a distance of time, — that is, ever received
pleasure or took interest enough in them to produce so
tasting an impression ?

But it is said that if a person had the same natural

18 TABLE-TALK

taste, and the same acquired knowledge as an artist,
without the petty interests and technical notions, he
would derive a purer pleasure from seeing a fine
portrait, a fine landscape, and so on. This, however, is
not so much begging the question as asking an im-
possibility : he cannot have the same insight into the
end without having studied the means ; nor the same
love of art without the same habitual and exclusive
attachment to it. Painters are, no doubt, often
actuated by jealousy, partiality, and a sordid attention
to that only which they find useful to themselves in
painting. Wilson has been seen poring over the
texture of a Dutch cabinet-picture, so that he could
not see the picture itself. But this is the perversion
and pedantry of the profession, not its true or genuine
spirit. If Wilson had never looked at anything but
megilps and handling, he never would have put the
soul of life and manners into his pictures, as he has
done. Another objection is, that the instrumental
parts of the art, the means, the first rudiments, paints,
oils, and brushes, are painful and disgusting ; and that
the consciousness of the difficulty and anxiety with
which perfection has been attained must take away
from the pleasure of the finest performance. This,
however, is only an additional proof of the greater
pleasure derived by the artist from his profession ; for
these things which are said to interfere with and destroy
the common interest in works of art do not disturb
him ; he never once thinks of them, he is absorbed in
the pursuit of a higher object ; he is intent, not on the
means, but the end ; he is taken up, not with the
difficulties, but with the triumph over them. As in
the case of the anatomist, who overlooks many things
in the eagerness of his search after abstract truth ; or
the alchemist who, while he is raking into his soot and
furnaces, lives in a golden dream ; a lesser gives way
to a greater object. But it is pretended that the
painter may be supposed to submit to the unpleasant
part of the process only for the sake of the fame or
profit in view. So far is this from being a true state

ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 19

of the case, that I will venture to say, in the instance
of a friend of mine who has lately succeeded in an
important undertaking in his art, that not all the fame
he has acquired, not all the money he has received
from thousands of admiring spectators, not all the
newspaper puffs, — nor even the praise of the Edinburgh
Review, — not all these put together ever gave him at
any time the same genuine, undoubted satisfaction as
any one half-hour employed in the ardent and propitious
pursuit of his art — in finishing to his heart's content a
foot, a hand, or even a piece of drapery. What is
the state of mind of an artist while he is at work.'*
He is then in the act of realising the highest idea
he can form of beauty or grandeur: he conceives,
he embodies that which he understands and loves
best : that is, he is in full and perfect possession
of that which is to him the source of the highest
happiness and intellectual excitement which he can
enjoy.

In short, as a conclusion to this argument, I will
mention a circumstance which fell under my know-
ledge the other day. A friend had bought a print of
Titian's Mistress, the same to which I have alluded
above. He was anxious to show it me on this account.
I told him it was a spirited engraving, but it had not
the look of the original. I believe he thought this
fastidious, till I offered to show him a rough sketch of
it, which I had by me. Having seen this, he said he
perceived exactly what I meant, and could not bear to
look at the print afterwards. He had good sense
enough to see the difference in the individual instance ;
but a person better acquainted with Titian's manner
and with art in general — that is, of a more cultivated
and refined taste — would know that it was a bad print,
without having any immediate model to compare it
with. He would perceive with a glance of the eye,
with a sort of instinctive feeling, that it was hard, and
without that bland, expansive, and nameless expression
which always distinguished Titian's most famous works.
Any one who is accustomed to a head in a picture can

20 TABLE-TALK

never reconcile himself to a print from it ; but to the
ignorant they are both the same. To a vulgar eye
there is no difference between a Guido and a daub —
between a penny print, or the vilest scrawl, and the
most finished performance. In other words, all that
excellence which lies between these two extremes, — all,
at least, that marks the excess above mediocrity,— all
that constitutes true beauty, harmony, refinement,
grandeur, is lost upon the common observer. But it
is from this point that the delight, the glowing raptures
of the true adept commence. An uninformed spectator
may like an ordinary drawing better than the ablest
connoisseur ; but for that very reason he cannot like
the highest specimens of art so well. The refinements
not only of execution but of truth and nature are
inaccessible to unpractised eyes. The exquisite grada-
tions in a sky of Claude's are not perceived by such
persons, and consequently the harmony cannot be felt.
Where there is no conscious apprehension, there can
be no conscious pleasure. Wonder at the first sights
of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and
novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight
in them are the growth of taste and knowledge. ' 1
would not wish to have your eyes,' said a good-natured
man to a critic who was finding fault with a picture in
which the other saw no blemish. WTiy so ? The idea
which prevented him from admiring this inferior
production was a higher idea of truth and beauty which
was ever present with him, and a continual source of
pleasing and lofty contemplations. It may be different
in a taste for outward luxuries and the privations of
mere sense ; but the idea of perfection, which acts as
an intellectual foil, is always an addition, a support,
and a proud consolation !

Richardson, in his Essays, which ought to be better
known, has left some striking examples of the felicity
and infelicity of artists, both as it relates to their
external fortune and to the practice of their art. In
speaking of the knowledge of hands, he exclaims : ' When
one is considering a picture or a drawing, ono at the

ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 21

same time thinks this was done by him l who had many
extraordinary endowments of body and mind, but was
withal very capricious ; who was honoured in life and
death, expiring in the arms of one of the greatest
princes of that age, Francis I., King of France, who
loved him as a friend. Another is of him 2 who lived a
long and happy life, beloved of Charles V. emperor ;
and many others of the first princes of Europe. When
one has another in hand, we think this was done by
one3 who so excelled in three arts as that any of
them in that degree had rendered him worthy of
immortality ; and one moreover that durst contend
with his sovereign (one of the haughtiest popes that
ever was) upon a slight offered to him, and extricated
himself with honour. Another is the work of him*
who, without any one exterior advantage but mere
strength of genius, had the most sublime imaginations,
and executed them accordingly, yet lived and died
obscurely. Another we shall consider as the work of
him 6 who restored Painting when it had almost sunk ;
of him whom art made honourable, but who, neglecting
and despising greatness with a sort of cynical pride,
was treated suitably to the figure he gave himself, not
his intrinsic worth ; which, [he] not having philosophy
enough to bear it, broke his heart. Another is done
by one 6 who (on the coutrar)') was a fine gentleman
and lived in great magnificence, and was much honoured
by his own and foreign princes ; who was a courtier, a
statesman, and a painter ; and so much all these, that
when he acted in either character, thai seemed to be
his business, and the others his diversion. 1 say when
one thus reflects, besides the pleasure arising from the
beauties and excellences of the work, the fine ideas it
gives us of natural things, the noble way of thinking it
may suggest to us, an additional pleasure results from
the above considerations. But, oh ! the pleasure,
when a connoisseur and lover of art has before him a

Leonardo da VincL 2 Titian. * Michael Angelo.

Correggio, B Annibal Caracci. 6 Rubens.

22 TABLE-TALK

picture or drawing of which he can say this is the
hand, these are the thoughts of him 1 who was one of
the politest, best-natured gentlemen that ever was ;
and beloved and assisted by the greatest wits and the
greatest men then in Rome : of him who lived in great
fame, honour, and magnificence, and died extremely
lamented ; and missed a Cardinal's hat only by dying a
few months too soon ; but was particularly esteemed
and favoured by two Popes, the only ones who filled
the chair of St. Peter in his time, and as great men as
ever sat there since that apostle, if at least he ever did :
one, in short, who could have been a Leonardo, a
Michael Angelo, a Titian, a Correggio, a Parmegiano,
an Annibal, a Rubens, or any other whom he pleased,
but none of them could ever have been a Raffaelle."

The same writer speaks feelingly of the change in
the style of different artists from their change of
fortune, and as the circumstances are little known I
will quote the passage relating to two of them : —

' Guide Reni, from a prince-like affluence of fortune
(the just reward of his angelic works), fell to a condition
like that of a hired servant to one who supplied him
with money for what he did at a fixed rate ; and that
by his being bewitched with a passion for gaming,
whereby he lost vast sums of money ; and even what
he got in this his state of servitude by day, he commonly
lost at night: nor could he ever be cured of this cursed
madness. Those of his works, therefore, which he did
in this unhappy part of his life may easily be conceived
to be in a different style to what he did before, which
in some things, that is, in the airs of his heads (in the
gracious kind) had a delicacy in them peculiar to him-
self, and almost more than human. But 1 must not
multiply instances. Parmegiano is one that alone
takes in all the several kinds of variation, and all the
degrees of goodness, from the lowest of the indifferent
up to the sublime. I can produce evident proofs of
this in so easy a gradation, that one cannot deny but
that he that did this might do that, and very probably

ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 23

did so ; and thus one may ascend and descend, like the
angels on Jacob's ladder, whose foot was upon the
earth, but its top reached to Heaven.

' And this great man had his unlucky circumstance ;
he became mad after the philosopher's stone, and did
but very little in painting or drawing afterwards.
Judge what that was, and whether there was not an
alteration of style from what he had done before this
devil possessed him. His creditors endeavoured to
exorcise him, and did him some good, for he set him-
self to work again in his own way ; but if a drawing I
have of a Lucretia be that he made for his last picture^
as it probably is (Vasari says that was the subject of it),
it is an evident proof of his decay ; it is good indeed,
but it wants much of the delicacy which is commonly
seen in his works ; and so 1 always thought before
I knew or imagined it to be done in this his ebb of
genius.'

We have had two artists of our own country whose
fate has been as singular as it was hard : Gaudy was a
portrait-painter in the beginning of the last century,
whose heads were said to have come near to Rembrandt's,
and he was the undoubted prototype of Sir Joshua
Reyuolds's style. Yet his name has scarcely been heard
of; and his reputation, like his works, never extended
beyond his own country. What did he think of himself
and of a fame so bounded? Did he ever dream he was
indeed an artist ? Or how did this feeling in him differ
from the vulgar conceit of the lowest pretender ? The
best known of his works is a portrait of an alderman of
Exeter, in some public building in that city.

Poor Dan. Stringer ! Forty years ago he had the
finest hand and the clearest eye of any artist of his
time, and produced heads and drawings that would not
have disgraced a brighter period in the art. But he
fell a martyr (like Burns) to the society of country
gentlemen, and then of those whom they would con-
sider as more his equals. 1 saw him many years ago
when he treated the masterly sketches he had by him
(one in particular of the group of citizens in Shakespeare

24 TABLE-TALK

'swallowing the tailor's news') as 'bastards of his
genius, not his children/ and seemed to have given up
all thoughts of his art. Whether he is since dead,
I cannot say ; the world do not so much as know that
he ever lived !

ESSAY III

ON THE PAST AND FUTURE

I HAVE naturally but little imagination, and am not of
a very sanguine turn of mind. I have some desire
to enjoy the present good, and some fondness for the
past ; but I am not at all given to building castles in
the air, nor to look forward with much confidence
or hope to the brilliant illusions held out by the future.
Hence I have perhaps been led to form a theory, which
is very contrary to the common notions and feelings on
the subject, and which I will here try to explain as
well as I can. When Sterne in the Sentimental Journey
told the French Minister, that if the French people
had a fault, it was that they were too serious, the latter
replied that if that was his opinion, he must defend it
with all his might, for he would have all the world
against him ; so I shall have enough to do to get well
through the present argument.

I cannot see, then, any rational or logical ground for
that mighty difference in the value which mankind
generally set upon the past and future, as if the one
was everything, and the other nothing — of no con-
sequence whatever. On the other hand, I conceive
that the past is as real and substantial a part of our
being, that it is as much a bonafide, undeniable con-
sideration in the estimate of human life, as the future
can possibly be. To say that the past is of no import-
ance, unworthy of a moment's regard, because it has
gone by, and is no longer anything, is an argument

26 TABLE-TALK

that cannot be held to any purpose ; for if the past has
ceased to be, and is therefore to be accounted nothing
in the scale of good or evil, the future is yet to come,
and has never been anything. Should any one choose
to assert that the present only is of any value in a strict
and positive sense, because that alone has a real exist-
ence, that we should seize the instant good, and give
all else to the winds, I can understand what he means
(though perhaps he does not himself) ; l but I cannot
comprehend how this distinction between that which
has a downright and sensible, and that which has only
a remote and airy existence, can be applied to establish
the preference of the future over the past ; for both
are in this point of view equally ideal, absolutely
' nothing, except as they are conceived of by the mind's
eye, and are thus rendered present to the thoughts
and feelings. Nay, the one is even more imaginary, a
more fantastic creature of the brain than the other, and
the interest we take in it more shadowy and gratuitous ;
for the future, on which we lay so much stress, may
never come to pass at all, that is, may never be
embodied into actual existence in the whole course of
events, whereas the past has certainly existed once, has
received the stamp of truth, and left an image of itself
behind. It is so far then placed beyond the possibility
of doubt, or as the poet has it,

Those joys are lodg'd beyond the reach of fate.

It is not, however, attempted to be denied that though
the future is nothing at present, and has no immediate
interest while we are speaking, yet it is of the utmost
consequence in itself, and of the utmost interest to the
individual, because it will have a real existence, and we
have an idea of it as existing in time to come. Well,

1 If we take away from the present the moment that is just gone
\ by and the moment that is next to come, how much of it will be left
for this plain, practical theory to rest upon? Their solid basis of
sense and reality will reduce itself to a pin's point, a hair line, on
which our moral balance-masters will have some difficulty to maintain
their footing without falling over on either side.

ON THE PAST AND FUTURE 27

then, the past also has no real existence; the actual
sensation and the interest belonging to it are both fled ;
but it has had a real existence, and we can still call up
a vivid recollection of it as having once been ; and
therefore, by parity of reasoning, it is not a thing
perfectly insignificant in itself, nor wholly indifferent
to the mind whether it ever was or not. Oh no !
Far from it ! Let us not rashly quit our hold upon the
past, when perhaps there may be little else left to bind
us to existence. Is it nothing to have been, and to
have been happy or miserable ? Or is it a matter of no
moment to think whether I have been one or the other?
Do I delude myself, do I build upon a shadow or a
dream, do I dress up in the gaudy garb of idleness and
folly a pure fiction, with nothing answering to it in the
universe of things and the records of truth, when I
look back with fond delight or with tender regret to
that which was at one time to me my all, when I revive
the glowing image of some bright reality,

The thoughts of which can never from my heart?

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

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever vanish'd from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flow'r—

yet am I mocked with a lie when I venture to think of
it ? Or do I not drink in and breathe again the air of
heavenly truth when I but 'retrace its footsteps, and
its skirts far off adore ' ? I cannot say with the same
poet—-
And see how dark the backward stream,
A little moment past ao smiling—

28 TABLE-TALK

for it is the past that gives me most delight and most
assurance of reality. What to me constitutes the great
charm of the Confessions of Rousseau is their turning
so much upon this feeling. He seems to gather up the
past moments of his heing like drops of honey-dew to
distil a precious liquor from them ; his alternate
pleasures and pains are the bead-roll that he tells over,
and piously worships ; he makes a rosary of the flowers
of hope and fancy that strewed his earliest years.
When he begins the last of the Reveries of a Solitary
Walker, ' II y a aujourd'hui, jour des Paques Fleuris,
cinquante ans depuis que j'ai premier vu Madame
Warens/ what a yearning of the soul is implied in that
short sentence ! Was all that had happened to him,
all that he had thought and felt in that sad interval of
time, to be accounted nothing ? Was that long, dim,
faded retrospect of years happy or miserable — a blank
that was not to make his eyes fail and his heart faint
within him in trying to grasp all that had once filled
it and that had since vanished, because it was not a
prospect into futurity ? Was he wrong in finding more
to interest him in it than in the next fifty years — which
he did not live to seer Or if he had, what then?
Would they have been worth thinking of, compared
with the times of his youth, of his first meeting with
Madame Warens, with those times which he has traced
with such truth and pure delight 'in our heart's
tables'? When 'all the life of life was flown/ was
he not to live the first and best part of it over again,
and once more be all that he then was? — Ye woods
that crown the clear lone brow of Norman Court, why
do I revisit ye so oft, and feel a soothing consciousness
of your presence, but that your high tops waving in
the wind recall to me the hours and years that are for
ever fled ; that ye renew in ceaseless murmurs the
story of long-cherished hopes and bitter disappoint-
ment ; that in your solitudes and tangled wilds I can
wander and lose myself as I wander on and am lost in
the solitude of my own heart ; and that as your rustling
branches give the loud blast to the waste below — borne

ON THE PAST AND FUTURE 20

on the thoughts of other years, I can look down with
patient anguish at the cheerless desolation which I feel
within ! Without that face pale as the primrose with
hyacinthine locks, for ever shunning and for ever
haunting me, mocking my waking thoughts as in a
dream ; without that smile which my heart could never
turn to scorn ; without those eyes dark with their own
lustre, still bent on mine, and drawing the soul into
their liquid mazes like a sea of love ; without that
name trembling in fancy's ear ; without that form
gliding before me like Oread or Dryad in fabled groves,
what should I do ? how pass away the listless, leaden-
footed hours? Then wave, wave on, ye woods of
Tuderley, and lift your high tops in the air ; my sighs
and vows uttered by your mystic voice breathe into me
my former being, and enable me to bear the thing I
am ! — The objects that we have known in better days
are the main props that sustain the weight of our
affections, and give us strength to await our future lot.
The future is like a dead wall or a thick mist hiding
all objects from our view ; the past is alive and stirring
with objects, bright or solemn, and of unfading interest.
What is it in fact that we recur to oftenest? What
subjects do we think or talk of? Not the ignorant
future, but the well-stored past. Othello, the Moor of
Venice, amused himself and his hearers at the house of
Signor Brabantio by ( running through the story of his
life even from his boyish days ' ; and oft ' beguiled
them of their tears, when he did speak of some
disastrous stroke which his youth suffered. ' This plan of
ingratiating himself would not have answered if the past
had been, like the contents of an old almanac, of no use
but to be thrown aside and forgotten. What a blank,
for instance, does the history of the world for the next
six thousand years present to the mind, compared with
that of the last ! All that strikes the imagination or ex-
cites any interest in the mighty scene is what has been I I

1 A treatise on the Millennium is dull ; but who was ever weary of
reading the fables of the Golden Age? On ray once observing I
should like to have been Claude, a person said, ' they should not,

30 TABLE-TALK

Neither in itself, then, nor as a subject of general
contemplation, has the future any advantage over the
past But with respect to our grosser passions and
pursuits it has. As far as regards the appeal to the
understanding or the imagination, the past is just as
good, as real, of as much intrinsic and ostensible value
as the future ; but there is another principle in the
human mind, the principle of action or will ; and of
this the past has no hold, the future engrosses it en-
tirely to itself. It is this strong lever of the affections
that gives so powerful a bias to our sentiments on this
subject, and violently transposes the natural order of
our associations. We regret the pleasures we have
Ipjt, and eagerly anticipate those which are to come :
we dwell with satisfaction on the evils from which we
have escaped (Pqsthaec meminisse iuvabit) — and dread
future pain. The good that is past is in this sense like
money that is spent, which is of no further use, and
about which we give ourselves little concern. The
good we expect is like a store yet untouched, and in
the enjoyment of which we promise ourselves infinite
gratification. What has happened to us we think of
no consequence : what is to happen to us, of the greatest,
Why so ? Simply because the one is still in our power,
and the other not — because the efforts of the will to
bring any object to pass or to prevent it strengthen our
attachment or aversion to that object — because the pains
and attention bestowed upon anything add to our inter-
est in it — and because the habitual and earnest pursuit
of any end redoubles the ardour of our expectations,
and converts the speculative and indolent satisfaction
we might otherwise feel in it into real passion. Our
regrets, anxiety, and wishes are thrown away upon the

rt ; but the insisting on the importance of the future
of the utmost use in aiding our resolutions and

for that then by this tirae it would have been all over with them.
As if it could possibly signify when we live (save and excepting the
present minute), or as if the value of human life decreased or in-
creased with successive centuries. At that rate, we had better have
our life still to come at some future period, and so postpone our
existence century after century ad infinitum.

ON THE PAST AND FUTURE 31

stimulating our exertions. If the future were no more t
amenable to our wills than the past ; if our precautions,
our sanguine schemes, our hopes and fears were of as
little avail in the one case as the other ; if we could
neither soften our minds to pleasure, nor steel our
fortitude to the resistance of pain beforehand ; if all
objects drifted along by us like straws or pieces of wood
in a river, the will being purely passive, and as little
able to avert the future as to arrest the past, we should
in that case be equally indifferent to both ; that is, we
should consider each as they affected the thoughts and
imagination with certain sentiments of approbation or
regret, but without the importunity of action, the irrita-
tion of the will, throwing the whole weight of passion
and prejudice into one scale, and leaving the other
quite empty. While the blow is coming, we prepare
to meet it, we think to ward off or break its force, we
arm ourselves with patience to endure what cannot be
avoided, we agitate ourselves with fifty needless alarms
about it; but when the blow is struck, the pang is over,
the struggle is no longer necessary, and we cease to
harass or torment ourselves about it more than we can
help. It is not that the one belongs to the future and
the other to time past ; but that the one is a subject of
action, of uneasy apprehension, of strong passion, and
that the other has passed wholly out of the sphere of
action into the region of

Calm contemplation and majestic pains.1

It would not give a man more concern to know that he
should be put to the rack a year hence, than to 'recollect
that he had been put to it a year ago, but that he hopes
to avoid the one, whereas he must sit down patiently

i In like manner, though we know that an event must have taken
place at a distance, long before we can hear the result, yet as long as
we remain in ignorance of it, we irritate ourselves about it, and suffer
all the agonies of suspense, as if it was still to come ; but as soon as
our uncertainty is removed, our fretful impatience vanishes, we resign
ourselves to fate, and make up our minds to what has happened ao
well as we can.

32 TABLE-TALK

under the consciousness of the other. In this hope he

wears himself out in vain struggles with fate, and puts

himself to the rack of his imagination every day he has

to live in the meanwhile. When the event is so remote

or so independent of the will as to set aside the necessity

of immediate action, or to baffle all attempts to defeat

it, it gives us little more disturbance or emotion than

if it had already taken place, or were something to

happen in another state of being, or to an indifferent

person. Criminals are observed to grow more anxious

} as their trial approaches ; but after their sentence is

] passed, they become tolerably resigned, and generally

1 sleep sound the night before its execution.

It in some measure confirms this theory, that men
attach more or less importance to past and future
events according as they are more or less engaged in
action and the busy scenes of life. Those who have a
fortune to make, or are in pursuit of rank and power,
think little of the past, for it does not contribute greatly
to their views : those who have nothing to do but to
think, take nearly the same interest in the past as in
the future. The contemplation of the one is as delight-
ful and real as that of the other. The season of hope
has an end ; but the remembrance of it is left. The
past still lives in the memory of those who have leisure
to look back upon the way that they have trod, and can
f from it ' catch glimpses that may make them less for-
lorn.' The turbulence of action, and uneasiness of
desire, must point to the future : it is only in the quiet
iimocence of shepherds, in the simplicity of pastoral
ages, that a tomb was found with this inscription —

' I ALSO WAS AN ARCADIAN ! '

Though I by no means think that our habitual attach-
ment to life is in exact proportion to the value of the
gift, yet I am not one of those splenetic persons who
affect to think it of no value at all. Que pen de chose
est la vie humaine, is an exclamation in the mouths of
moralists and philosophers, to which I cannot agree.
It is little, it is short, it is not worth having, if we take^
the last hour, and leave out all that has gone before,

ON THE PAST AND FUTURE 33

which has been one way of looking at the subject.
Such calculators seem to say that life is nothing when
it is over, and that may in their sense be true. If the
old rule — Respice finem — were to be made absolute, and
no one could be pronounced fortunate till the day of
his death, there are few among us whose existence
would, upon those conditions, be much to be envied.
JSut this is not a fair view of the case. A man's life is
his whole life, not the last glimmering snuff of the
caudle ; and this, I say, is considerable, and not a little
matter, whether we regard its pleasures or its pains.
To draw a peevish conclusion to the contrary from our
own superannuated desires or forgetful indifference is
about as reasonable as to say, a man never was young
because he has grown old, or never lived because he is
now dead. The length or agreeableness of a journey j
does not depend on the few last steps of it, nor is the '
size of a building to be judged of from the last stone
that is added to it. It is neither the first nor last hour
of our existence, but the space that parts these two —
not our exit nor our entrance upon the stage, but what
we do, feel, and think while there— that we are to
attend to in pronouncing sentence upon it. Indeed it
would be easy to show that it is the very extent of
human life, the infinite number of things contained in
it, its contradictory and fluctuating interests, the tran-
sition from one situation to another, the hours, months,
years spent in one fond pursuit after another ; that it
is, in a word, the length of our common journey and
the quantity of events crowded into it, that, baffling
the grasp of our actual perception, make it slide from
our memory, and dwindle into nothing in its own per-
spective. It is too mighty for us, and we say it is
nothing ! It is a speck in our fancy, and yet what
canvas would be big enough to hold its striking groups,
its endless subjects ! It is light as vanity, and yet if
all its weary moments, if all its head and heart aches
were compressed into one, what fortitude \vould not be
overwhelmed with the blow ! What a huge heap, a
'huge, dumb heap,' of wishes, thoughts, feelings,

34 TABLE-TALK

anxious cares, soothing hopes, loves, joys, friendships,
it is composed of ! How many ideas and trains of
sentiment, long and deep and intense, often pass
through the mind in only one day's thinking or read-
ing, for instance ! How many such days are there in
a year, how many years in a" long life, still occupied
with something interesting, still recalling some old
impression, still recurring to some difficult question
and making progress in it, every step accompanied
with a sense of power, and every moment cousciolis
of ' the high endeavour or the glad success ' ; for the
mind seizes only on that which keeps it employed, and
is wound up to a certain pitch of pleasurable excitement
or lively solicitude, by the necessity of its own nature.
The division of the map of life into its component parts
is beautifully made by King Henry VI. : —

Oh God ! methinks it were a happy life

To be no better than a homely swain,

To sit upon a hill as I do now,

To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,

Thereby to see the minutes how they run ;

How many make the hour full complete,

How many hours bring about the day,

How many days will finish up the year,

How many years a mortal man may live :

When this is known, then to divide the times ;

So many hours must I tend my flock,

So many hours must I take my rest,

So many hours must I contemplate,

So many hours must I sport myself ;

So many days my ewes have been with young,

So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean,

So many months ere I shall shear the fleece :

So many minutes, hours, weeks, months, and years

(Past over to the end they were created,
Would bring grey hairs unto a quiet grave.

I myself am neither a king nor a shepherd : books have
been my fleecy charge, and my thoughts have been my
subjects. But these have found me sufficient employ-
ment at the time, and enough to think of for the time
to come.

The passions contract and warp the natural progress
of life. They paralyse all of it that is not devoted to
their tyranny and caprice. This makes the difference

ON THE PAST AND FUTURE 35

between the laughing innocence of childhood, the
pleasantness of youth, and the crabbedness of age.
A load of cares lies like a weight of guilt upon the
mind : so that a man of business often has all the air,
the distraction and restlessness and hurry of feeling
o£..a criminal. A knowledge of the world takes away
the freecTom and simplicity of thought as effectually as
the contagion of its example. The artlessness and
candour of our early years are open to all impressions
Mike, because the mind is not clogged and preoccupied
with other objects. Our pleasures and our pains come
single, make room for one another, and the spring of
the mind is fresh and unbroken, its aspect clear and
unsullied. Hence 'the tear forgot as soon as shed,
the sunshine of the breast' But as we advance farther,
the will gets greater head. We form violent antipathies
and indulge exclusive preferences. We make up our
minds to some one thing, and if we cannot have that,
will have nothing. We are wedded to opinion, to
fancy, to prejudice ; which destroys the soundness of
our judgments, and the serenity and buoyancy of our
feelings. The chain of habit coils itself round the
heart, like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it. It grows
rigid and callous ; and for the softness and elasticity
of childhood, full of proud flesh and obstinate tumours.
The violence and perversity of our passions come in
more and more to overlay our natural sensibility and
well-grounded affections ; and we screw ourselves up
to aim only at those things which are neither desirable
nor practicable. Thus life passes away in the feverish
irritation of pursuit and the certainty of disappoint-
ment. By degrees, nothing but this morbid state of
feeling satisfies us : and all ^common pleasures and
cheap amusements are sacrificed to the demon of am-
bition, avarice, or dissipation. The machine is over-
wrought : the parching heat of the veins dries up and
withers the flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy ; and any
pause, any release from the rack of ecstasy on which
we are stretched, seems more insupportable than the
pangs which we endure. We are suspended between

36 TABLE-TALK

*Oi tormenting desires and the horrors of ennui. The
impulse of the will, like the wheels of a carriage going
down hill, becomes too strong for the driver, Reason,
and cannot be stopped nor kept within bounds. Some
idea, some fancy, takes possession of the brain ; and
however ridiculous, however distressing, however ruin-
ous, haunts us by a sort of fascination through life.

Not only is this principle of excessive irritability to
be seen at work in our more turbulent passions and
pursuits, but even in the formal study of arts and
sciences, the same thing takes place, and undermines
the repose and happiness of life. The eagerness of
pursuit overcomes the satisfaction to result from the
accomplishment. The mind is overstrained to attain
its purpose; and when it is attained, the ease and
alacrity necessary to enjoy it are gone. The irritation
of action does not cease and go down with the occasion
for it ; but we are first uneasy to get to the end of our
work, and then uneasy for want of something to do.
The ferment of the brain does not of itself subside into
pleasure and soft repose. Hence the disposition to
strong stimuli observable in persons of much intel-
lectual exertion to allay and carry off the over-excite-
ment. The improvisatori poets (it is recorded by Spence
in his Anecdotes of Pope) cannot sleep after an evening's
continued display of their singular and difficult art.
The rhymes keep running in their head in spite of
themselves, and will not let them rest. Mechanics
and labouring people never know what to do with
themselves on a Sunday, though they return to their
work with greater spirit for the relief, and look forward
to it with pleasure all the week. Sir Joshua Reynolds
was never comfortable out of his painting-room, and
died of chagrin and regret because he could not paint
on to the last moment of his life. He used to say that
he could go on retouching a picture for ever, as long
as it stood on his easel ; but as soon as it was once
fairly out of the house, he never wished to see it again.
An ingenious artist of our own time has been heard to
declare, that if ever the Devil got him into his clutches.

ON THE PAST AND FUTURE 37

he would set him to copy his own pictures. Thus the
secure, self-complacent retrospect to what is done is
nothing, while the anxious, uneasy looking forward to
what is to come is everything. We are afraid to dwell
upon the past, lest it should retard our future progress ;
the indulgence of ease is fatal to excellence ; arid to
succeed in life, we lose the ends of being !

ESSAY IV

ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE

WE hear it maintained by people of more gravity than
understanding, that genius and taste are strictly
reducible to rules, and that there is a rule for every-
thing. So far is it from being true that the finest
breath of fancy is a definable thing, that the plainest
common sense is only what Mr. Locke would have
called a mixed mode, subject to a particular sort of
acquired and undefinable tact. It is asked, " If you
do not know the rule by which a thing is done, how
can you be sure of doing it a second time ? " And the
answer is, " If you do not know the muscles by the help
of which you walk, how is it you do not fall down at
every step you take?" In art, in taste, in life, in
speech, you decide from feeling, and not from reason ;
that is, from the impression of a number of things on
the mind, which impression is true and well founded,
though you may not be able to analyse or account for
it in the. several particulars. In a gesture you use, in
a look you see, in a tone you hear, you judge of the
expression, propriety, and meaning from habit, not
from reason or rules ; that is to say, from innumerable
instances of like gestures, looks, and tones, in innumer-
able other circumstances, variously modified, which are
too many and too refined to be all distinctly recollected,
but which do not therefore operate the less powerfully
upon the mind and eye of taste. Shall we say that
these impressions (the immediate stamp of nature) do
not operate in a given manner till they are classified

ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE 39

and reduced to rules, or is not the rule itself grounded,
upon the truth and certainty of that natural operation ?
How then can the distinction of the understanding as
to the manner in which they operate be necessary to
their producing their due and uniform effect upon the
mind ? If certain effects did not regularly arise out of
certain causes in mind as well as matter, there could
be no rule given for them : nature does not follow the
rule, but suggests it. Reason is the interpreter and
critic of nature and genius, not their law-giver and
judge. He must be a poor creature indeed whose
practical convictions do not in almost all cases outrun
his deliberate understanding, or who does not feel and
know much more than he can give a reason for. Hence
the distinction between eloquence and wisdom, between
ingenuity and common sense. A man may be dexterous
and able in explaining the grounds of his opinions,
and yet may be a mere sophist, because he only sees
one-half of a subject. Another may feel the whole
weight of a question, nothing relating to it may be lost
upon him, and yet he may be able to give no account
of the manner in which it affects him, or to drag his
reasons from their silent lurking-places. This last will
be a wise man, though neither a logician nor rhetorician.
Goldsmith was a fool to Dr. Johnson in argument ;
that is, in assigning the specific grounds of his opinions :
Dr. Johnson was a fool to Goldsmith in the fine tact,
the airy, intuitive faculty with which he skimmed the
surfaces of things, and unconsciously formed his
opinions. Common sense is the just result of the sum-
total of such unconscious impressions in the ordinary
occurrences of life, as they are treasured up in the
memory, and called out by the occasion. Genius and
taste depend much upon the same principle exercised
on loftier ground and in more unusual combinations.

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

40 TABLE-TALK

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

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

'There is in the commerce of life, as in Art, a
sagacity which is far from being contradictory to right
reason, and is superior to any occasional exercise of
that faculty which supersedes it, and does not wait for
the slow progress of deduction, but goes at once, by
what appears a kind of intuition, to the conclusion. A
man endowed with this faculty feels and acknowledges
the truth, though it is not always in his power, perhaps,
to give a reason for it ; because he cannot recollect and
bring before him all the materials that gave birth to
his opinion ; for very many and very intricate considera-
tions may unite to form the principle, even of small
and minute parts, involved in, or dependent on, a great
system of things : — though these in process of time are
forgotten, the right impression still remains fixed in
his mind.

'This impression is the result of the accumulated
experience of our whole life, and has been collected,
we do not always know how or when. But this mass
of collective observation, however acquired, ought to
prevail over that reason, which, however powerfully
exerted on any particular occasion, will probably
comprehend but a partial view of the subject ; and our
conduct in life, as well as in the arts, is or ought to be

ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE 41

generally governed by this habitual reason : it is our
happiness that we are enabled to draw on such funds.
If we were obliged to enter into a theoretical delibera-
tion on every occasion before we act, life would be at a
stand, and Art would be impracticable.

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

'This is sometimes the effect of what 1 mean to
caution you against ; that is to say, an unfounded
distrust of the imagination and feeling, in favour of
narrow, partial, confined, argumentative theories, and
of principles that seem to apply to the design in hand,
without considering those general impressions on the
fancy in which real principles of sound reason, and of
much more weight and importance, are involved, and,
as it were, lie hid under the appearance of a sort of
vulgar sentiment. Reason, without doubt, must ulti-
mately determine everything ; at this minute it is re-
quired to inform us when that very reason is to give
way to feeling.'1

Mr. Burke, by whom the foregoing train of thinking
was probably suggested, has insisted on the same thing,
and made rather a perverse use of it in several parts of
his Reflections on the French Revolution; and Wind-
ham in one of his Speeches has clenched it into an
i Discourse XIII. vol. ii. pp. 115-11 T

42 TABLE-TALK

aphorism — 'There is nothing so true as habit/ Once
more I would say, common sense is tacit reason.
Conscience is the same tacit sense of right and wrong,
or the impression of our moral experience and moral
apprehensions on the mind, which, because it works
unseen, yet certainly, we suppose to be an instinct,
implanted in the mind ; as we sometimes attribute the
violent operations of our passions, of which we can
neither trace the source nor assign the reason, to the
instigation of the Devil !

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

One of the persons who had rendered themselves
obnoxious to Government and been included in a charge
for high treason in the year 1794, had retired soon after
into Wales to write an epic poem and enjoy the luxuries
of a rural life. In his peregrinations through that
beautiful scenery, he had arrived one fine morning at the
inn at Llangollen, in the romantic valley of that name.
He had ordered his breakfast, and was sitting at the
window in all the dalliance of expectation when a face
passed, of which he took no notice at the instant — but
when his breakfast was brought in presently after, he
found his appetite for it gone — the day had lost its
freshness in his eye — he was uneasy and spiritless ; and
without any cause that he could discover, a total change
had taken place in his feelings. While he was trying to
account for this odd circumstance, the same face passed
again — it was the face of Taylor the spy ; and he was
no longer at a loss to explain the difficulty. He had
before caught only a transient glimpse, a passing side-
view of the face; but though this was not sufficient
to awaken a distinct idea in his memory, his feelings,
quicker and surer, had taken the alarm ; a string had
been touched that gave a jar to his whole frame, and
would not let him rest, though he could not at all tell
what was the matter with him. To the flitting, shadowy,
half-distinguished profile that had glided by his window
was linked unconsciously and mysteriously, but insepar-

ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE 43

ably, the impression of the trains that had been laid for
him by this person ; — in this brief moment, in this dim,
illegible short-hand of the mind he had just escaped the
speeches of the Attorney and Solicitor-General over
again ; the gaunt figure of Mr. Pitt glared by him ; the
walls of a prison enclosed him ; and he felt the hands
of th^. executioner near him, without knowing it till the
tremor and disorder of his nerves gave information to
his reasoning faculties that all was not well within.
That is, the same state of mind was recalled by one
circumstance in the series of association that had been
produced by the whole set of circumstances at the time,
though thfc manner in which this was done was not
immediately perceptible. In other words, the feeling
of pleasure or pain, of good or evil, is revived, and acts
instantaneously upon the mind, before we have time to
recollect the precise objects which have originally given
birth to it. l The incident here mentioned was merely,
then, one case of what the learned understand by the
association of ideas: but all that is meant by feeling or
common sense is nothing but the different cases of the
association of ideas, more or less true to the impression
of the original circumstances, as reason begins with the
more formal development of those circumstances, or
pretends to account for the different cases of the associa-
tion of ideas. But it does not follow that the dumb
and silent pleading of the former (though sometimes,
nay often, mistaken) is less true than that of its babbling
interpreter, or that we are never to trust its dictates
without consulting the express authority of reason.

i Sentiment has the same source as that here pointed out. Thus
the Ram des Vaches, which has such an effect on the minds of the
Swiss peasantry, when its well-known sound is heard, does not merely
recall to them the idea of their country, but has associated with it a
thousand nameless ideas, numberless touches of private affection, of
early hope, romantic adventure and national pride, all which rush in
(with mingled currents) to swell the tide of fond remembrance, and
make them languish or die for home. What a fine instrument the
human heart is ! Who shall touch it? Who shall fathom it? Who
shall ' sound it from its lowest note to the top of its compass ? ' Who
shall put his hand among the strings, and explain their wayward
music ? The heart alone, when touched by sympathy, trembles and
responds to their hidden meaning !

44 TABLE-TALK

Both are imperfect, both are useful in their way, and
therefore both are best together, to correct or to confirm
one another. It does not appear that in the singular
instance above mentioned, the sudden impression ou
the mind was superstition or fancy, though it might
have been thought so, had it not been proved by the
event to have a real physical and moral cause. Had
not the same face returned again, the doubt would never
have been properly cleared up, but would have remained
a puzzle ever after, or perhaps have been soon forgot —
By the law of association as laid down by physiologists,
any impression in a series can recall any other impression
in that series without going through the whole in order ;
so that the mind drops the intermediate links, and passes
on rapidly and by stealth to the more striking effects of
pleasure or pain which have naturally taken the strong-
est hold of ;it. By doing this habitually and skilfully
with respect to the various impressions and circum-
stances with which our experience makes us acquainted,
it forms a series of unpremeditated conclusions on
almost all subjects that can be brought before it, as
just as they are of ready application to human life ; and
common sense is the name of this body of unassuming
but practical wisdom. Common sense, however, is an
impartial, instinctive result of truth and nature, and
will therefore bear the test and abide the scrutiny of
the most severe and patient reasoning. It is indeed
incomplete without it. By ingrafting reason on feeling,
we ( make assurance double sure.'

'Tis the last key-stone that makes up the arch . . .
Then stands it a triumphal mark 1 Then men
Observe the strength, the height, the why and when
It was erected ; and still walking under,
Meet some new matter to look up, and wonder.

But reason, not employed to interpret nature, and
to improve and perfect common sense and experience,
is, for the most part, a building without a foundation.
The criticism exercised by reason, then, on common
sense may be as severe as it pleases, but it must Le as
patient as it is severe. Hasty, dogmatical, self-satisfied

ON' GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE 45

reason is worse than idle fancy or bigoted prejudice.
It is systematic, ostentatious in error, closes up the
avenues of knowledge, and * shuts the gates of wisdom
on mankind.' It is not enough to show that there is
no reason for a thing that we do not see the reason of
it : if the common feeling, if the involuntary prejudice
sets fti •strong in favour of it, if, in spite of aU we can
do, there is a lurking suspicion on the side of our first
impressions, we must try again, and believe that truth
is mightier than we. So, in offering a definition of any
subject, if we feel a misgiving that there is any fact or
circumstance emitted, but of which we have only a
vague apprehension, like a name we cannot recollect,
we must ask for more time, and not cut the matter
short by an arrogant assumption of the point in dispute.
Common sense thus acts as a check-weight on sophistry,
and suspends our rash and superficial judgments. On
the other hand, if not only no reason can be given for
a thing, but every reason is clear against it, and we can
account from ignorance, from authority, from interest,
from different causes, for the prevalence of an opinion
or sentiment, then we have a right to conclude that we
have mistaken a prejudice for an instinct, or have con-
founded a false and partial impression with the fair and
unavoidable inference from general observation. Mr.
Burke said that we ought not to reject every prejudice,
but should separate the husk of prejudice from the truth
it encloses, and so try to get at the kernel within ;
and thus far he was right But he was wrong in insist-
ing that we are to cherish our prejudices 'because
they are prejudices': for if all are well founded, there
is no occasion to inquire into their origin or use ; and
he who sets out to philosophise upon them, or make
the separation Mr. Burke talks of in this spirit and
with this previous determination, will be very likely to
mistake a mascot or a rotten canker for the precious
kernel of truth, as was indeed the case with our political
sophist.

There is nothing more distinct than common sense
and vulgar opinion. Common sense is only a judtrc o*

46 TABLE-TALK

things that fall under common observation, or
immediately come home to the business and bosoms of
men. This is of the very essence of its principle, the
basis of its pretensions. It rests upon the simple process
of feeling, — it anchors in experience. It is not, nor it
cannot be, the test of abstract, speculative opinions.
But half the opinions and prejudices of mankind, those
which they hold in the most unqualified approbation
and which have been instilled into them under the
strongest sanctions, are of this latter kind, that is,
opinions not which they have ever thought, known, or
felt one tittle about, but which they have taken up on
trust from others, which have been palmed on their
understandings by fraud or force, and which they con-
tinue to hold at the peril of life, limb, property, and
character, with as little warrant from common sense in
the first instance as appeal to reason in the last The
ultima ratio regum proceeds upon a very different plea.
Common sense is neither priestcraft nor state-policy.
Yet 'there's the rub that makes absurdity of so long
life/ and, at the same time, gives the sceptical philo-
sophers the advantage over us. Till nature has fair
play allowed it, and is not adulterated by political and
polemical quacks (as it so often has been), it is
impossible to appeal to it as a defence against the
errors and extravagances of mere reason. If we talk
of common sense, we are twitted with vulgar prejudice,
and asked how we distinguish the one from the other ;
but common and received opinion is indeed ' a compost
heap ' of crude notions, got together by the pride and
passions of individuals, and reason is itself the thrall or
manumitted slave of the same lordly and besotted
masters, dragging its servile chain, or committing all
sorts of Saturualian licenses, the moment it feels itself
freed from it. — If ten millions of Englishmen are furious
in thinking themselves right in making war upon thirty
millions of Frenchmen, and if the last are equally bent
upon thinking the others always in the wrong, though
it is a common and national prejudice, both opinions
cannot be the dictate of good sense ; but it may be the

ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE 47

infatuated policy of one or both governments to keep
their subjects always at variance. If a few centuries
ago all Europe believed in the infallibility of the Pope,
this was not an opinion derived from the proper exercise
or erroneous direction of the common sense of the
people ; common sense had nothing to do with it — they
believed whatever their priests told them. England at
presents divided into Whigs and Tories, Churchmen
and Dissenters ; both parties have numbers on their
side; but common sense and party spirit are two
different things. Sects and heresies are upheld partly
by sympathy, and partly by the love of contradiction ;
if there was nobody of a different way of thinking, they
would fall to pieces of themselves. If a whole court
say the same thing, this is no proof that they think it,
but that the individual at the head of the court has said
it ; if a mob agree for a while in shouting the same
watchword, this is not to me an example of the sensus
communis, they only repeat what they have heard
repeated by others. If indeed a large proportion of
the people are in want of food, of clothing, of shelter —
if they are sick, miserable, scorned, oppressed — and if
each feeling it in himself, they all say so with one voice
and one heart, and lift up their hands to second their
appeal, this I should say was but the dictate of common
sense, the cry of nature. But to waive this part of the
argument, which it is needless to push farther, — I
believe that the best way to instruct mankind is not by
pointing out to them their mutual errors, but by teach-
ing them to think rightly on indifferent matters, where
they will listen with patience in order to be amused,
and where they do not consider a definition or a
syllogism as the greatest injury you can offer them.

There is no rule for expression. It is got at solely
by feeling, that is, on the principle of the association of
ideas, and by transferring what has been found to hold
good in one case (with the necessary modifications) to
others. A certain look has been remarked strongly
indicative of a certain passion or trait of character, and
we attach the same meaning to it or are affected in the

48 TABLE-TALK

same pleasurable or painful manner by it, where it
exists in a less degree, though we can define neither
the look itself nor the modification of it. Having got
the general clue, the exact result may be left to the
imagination to vary, to extenuate or aggravate it
according to circumstances. In the admirable profile

of Oliver Cromwell after , the drooping eyelids,

as if drawing a veil over the fixed, penetrating glance,
the nostrils somewhat distended, and lips compressed
so as hardly to let the breath escape him, denote the
character of the man for high-reaching policy and deep
designs as plainly as they can be written. How is it
that we decipher this expression in the face? First,
by feeling it. And how is it that we feel it ? Not by
pre-established rules, but by the instinct of analogy,
by the principle of association, which is subtle and sure
in proportion as it is variable and indefinite. A circum-
stance, apparently of no value, shall alter the whole
interpretation to be put upon an expression or action ;
and it shall alter it thus powerfully because in pro-
portion to its very insignificance it shows a strong
general principle at work that extends in its ramifica-
tions to the smallest things. This in fact will make
all the difference between minuteness and subtlety or
refinement ; for a small or trivial eifect may in given
circumstances imply the operation of a great power.
Stillness may be the result of a blow too powerful to
be resisted ; silence may be imposed by feelings too
agonising for utterance. The minute, the trifling and
insipid is that which is little in itself, in its causes and
its consequences ; the subtle and refined is that which
is slight and evanescent at first sight, but which mounts
up to a mighty sum in the end, which is an essential
part of an important whole, which has consequences
greater than itself, and where more is meant than
meets the eye or ear. We complain sometimes of
littleness in a Dutch picture, where there are a vast
number of distinct parts and objects, each small in
itself, and leading to nothing else. A sky of Claude's
cannot fall under this censure, where one imperceptible

ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE 49

gradation is as it were the scale to another, where the
broad arch of heaven is piled up of endlessly inter-
mediate gold and azure tints, and where an infinite
number of minute, scarce noticed particulars blend and
melt into universal harmony. The subtlety in Shake-
spear, of which there is an immense deal scattered
everywhere up and down, is always the instrument of
passion, the vehicle of character. The action of a man
pulling his hat over his forehead is indifferent enough
in itself, and generally speaking, may mean anything
or nothing ; but in the circumstances in which Macduff
is placed, it is neither insignificant nor equivocal.

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

It admits but of one interpretation or inference, that
which follows it : —

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

The passage in the same play, in which Duncan and his
attendants are introduced, commenting on the beauty
and situation of Macbeth's castle, though familiar in
itself, has been often praised for the striking contrast
it presents to the scenes which follow. — The same look
in different circumstances may convey a totally different
expression. Thus the eye turned round to look at you
without turning the head indicates generally slyness or
suspicion ; but if this is combined with large expanded
eyelids or fixed eyebrows, as we see it in Titian's
pictures, it will denote calm contemplation or piercing
sagacity, without anything of meanness or fear of being
observed. In other cases it may imply merely indolent,
enticing voluptuousness, as in Lely's portraits of
women. The languor and weakness of the eyelids
give the amorous turn to the expression. How should
there be a rule for all this beforehand, seeing it
depends on circumstances ever varying, and scarce
discernible but by their effect on the mind ? Rules are
applicable to abstractions, but expression is concrete

50 TABLE-TALK

and individual. We know the meaning of certain
looks, and we feel how they modify one another in
conjunction. But we cannot have a separate rule to
judge of all their combinations in different degrees and
circumstances, without foreseeing all those combinations,
which is impossible ; or if we did foresee them, we
should only be where we are, that is, we could only
make the rule as we now judge without it, from imagina-
tion and the feeling of the moment. The absurdity of
reducing expression to a preconcerted system was
perhaps never more evidently shown than in a picture
of the Judgment of Solomon by so great a man as
N. Poussin, which I once heard admired for the skill
and discrimination of the artist in making all the
women, who are ranged on one side, in the greatest
alarm at the sentence of the judge, while all the men
on the opposite side see through the design of it.
Nature does not go to work or cast things in a regular
mould in this sort of way. I once heard a person
remark of another, 'He has an eye like a vicious
horse/ This was a fair analogy. We all, I believe,
have noticed the look of a horse's eye just before he
is going to bite or kick. But will any one, therefore,
describe to me exactly what that look is ? It was the
same acute observer that said of a self-sufficient, prating
music-master, 'He talks on all subjects at sight' —
which expressed the man at once by an allusion to his
profession. The coincidence was indeed perfect. No-
thing else could compare to the easy assurance with
which this gentleman would volunteer an explanation
of things of which he was most ignorant, but the
nonchalance with which a musician sits down to a
harpsichord to play a piece he has never seen before.
My physiognomical friend would not have hit on this
mode of illustration without knowing the profession
of the subject of his criticism ; but having this hint
given him, it instantly suggested itself to his 'sure
trailing/ The manner of the speaker was evident ;
and the association of the music-master sitting down to
play at sight, lurking in his mind, was immediately

ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE 61

called out by the strength of his impression of the
character. The feeling of character and the felicity of
invention in explaining it were nearly allied to each
other. The first was so wrought up and running over
that the transition to the last was very easy and un-
avoidable. When Mr. Kean was so much praised for
the action of Richard in his last struggle with his
triumphant antagonist, where he stands, after his
sword is wrested from him, with his hands stretched
out, ' as if«his will could not be disarmed, and the very
phantoms of his despair had a withering power,' he
said that he borrowed it from seeing the last efforts of
Painter in his fight with Oliver. This assuredly did
not lessen the merit of it. Thus it ever is with the
man of real genius. He has the feeling of truth
already shrined in his own breast, and his eye is still
bent on Nature to see how she expresses herself.
When we thoroughly understand the subject it is easy
to translate from one language into another. Raphael,
in muffling up the figure of Elymas the Sorcerer in
his garments, appears to have extended the idea of
blindness even to his clothes. Was this design ?
Probably not ; but merely the feeling of analogy
thoughtlessly suggesting this device, which being so
suggested was retained and carried on, because it
flattered or fell in with the original feeling. The tide
of passion, when strong, overflows and gradually in-
sinuates itself into all nooks and corners of the mind.
Invention (of the best kind) I therefore do not think so
distinct a thing from feeling as some are apt to imagine.
The springs of pure feeling will rise and fill the
moulds of fancy that are fit to receive it. There are
some striking coincidences of colour in well-composed
pictures, as in a straggling weed in the foreground
streaked with blue or red to answer to a blue or red
drapery, to the tone of the flesh or an opening in the
sky : — not that this was intended, or done by rule (for
then it would presently become affected and ridiculous),
but the eye, being imbued with a certain colour,
repeats and varies it from a natural sense of harmony,

62 TABLE-TALK

a secret craving and appetite for beauty, which in the
same manner soothes and gratifies the eye of taste,
though the cause is not understood. Tact, finesse, is
nothing but the being completely aware of the feeling
belonging to certain situations, passions, etc. , and the
being consequently sensible to their slightest indica-
tions or movements in others. One of the most
remarkable instances of this sort of faculty is the
following story, told of Lord Shaftesbury, the grand-
father of the author of the Characteristics. He had
been to dine with Lady Clarendon and her daughter,
who was at that time privately married to the Duke of
York (afterwards James II.), and as he returned home
with another nobleman who had accompanied him, he
suddenly turned to him, and said, ' Depend upon it,
the Duke has married Hyde's daughter.' His companion
could not comprehend what he meant ; but on explain-
ing himself, he said, ' Her mother behaved to her with
an attention and a marked respect that it is impossible
to account for in any other way ; and I am sure of it.'
His conjecture shortly afterwards proved to be the
truth. This was carrying the prophetic spirit of
common sense as far as it could go.

ESSAY V

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

GENIUS or originality is, for the most part, some strong
quality in the mind, answering to and bringing out some
new and striking quality in nature.

Imagination is, more properly, the power of carrying
on a given feeling into other situations, which must be
done hest according to the hold which the feeling itself
has taken of the mind.1 In new and unknown combina-
tions the impression must act by sympathy, and not
by rule, but there can be no sympathy where' there is
no passion, no original interest. The personal interest
may in some cases oppress and circumscribe the
imaginative faculty, as in the instance of Rousseau :
but in general the strength and consistency of the
imagination will be in proportion to the strength and
depth of feeling ; and it is rarely that a man even of
lofty genius will be able to do more than carry on his
own feelings and character, or some prominent and
' ruling passion, into fictitious and uncommon situations.
Milton has by allusion embodied a great part of his
political and personal history in the chief characters
and incidents of Paradise Lost. He has, no doubt,
wonderfully adapted and heightened them, but the
elements are the same ; you trace the bias and opinions
of the man in the creations of the poet. Shakespear
(almost alone) seems to have been a man of genius

1 I do not here speak of the figurative or fanciful exercise of the
nagination, which consist
image to illustrate another.

imagination, which consists in finding out some striking object or /

54 TABLE-TALK

raised above the definition of genius. 'Born universal
heir to all humanity/ he was ' as one, in suffering all
who suffered nothing'; with a perfect sympathy with
all things, yet alike indifferent to all : who did not
tamper with Nature or warp her to his own purposes ;
who ' knew all qualities with a learned spirit/ instead
of judging of them by his own predilections ; and was
rather ( a pipe for the Muse's finger to play what stop
she pleased, than anxious to set up any character or
pretensions of his own. His genius consisted in the
faculty of transforming himself at will into whatever
he chose : his originality was the power of seeing every
object from the exact point of view in which others
would see it He was the Proteus of human intellect.
Genius in ordinary is a more obstinate and less
versatile thing. It is sufficiently exclusive and self-
willed, quaint and peculiar. It does some one thing
by virtue of doing nothing else : it excels in some one
pursuit by being blind to all excellence but its own.
It is just the reverse of the cameleon ; for it does not
borrow, but lends its colour to all about it ; or like the
glow-worm, discloses a little circle of gorgeous light in
the twilight of obscurity, in the night of intellect that
surrounds it. So did Rembrandt If ever there was
a man of genius, he was one, in the proper sense of the
term. He lived in and revealed to others a world of
his own, and might be said to have invented a new
view of nature. He did not discover things out of
nature, in fiction or fairy land, or make a voyage to
the moon 'to descry new lands, rivers, or mountains
in her spotty globe/ but saw things in nature that
every one had missed before him, and gave others
eyes to see them with. This is the test and triumph
of originality, not to show us what has never been,
and what we may therefore very easily never have
dreamt of, but to point out to us what is before our
eyes and under our feet, though we have had no
suspicion of its existence, for want of sufficient strength
of intuition, of determined grasp of mind, to seize and
retain it. Rembrandt's conquests were not over the

ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE 55

ideal, but the real. He did not contrive a new story or
character., but we nearly owe to him a fifth part of
painting, the knowledge oPchiaroscuro — a distinct power
and element in art and nature. He had a steadiness,
a firm keeping of mind and eye, that first stood the
shock of ' fierce extremes' in light and shade, or
reconciled the greatest obscurity and the greatest
brilliancy into perfect harmony ; and he therefore was
the first to hazard this appearance upon canvas, and
give full effect to what he saw and delighted in. He
was led to adopt this style of broad and startling
contrast from its congeniality to his own feelings : his
mind grappled with that which afforded the best exercise
to its master-powers : he was bold in act, because he
was urged on by a strong native impulse. Originality
is then nothing but nature and feeling working in the
mind. A man does not affect to be original : he is so,
because he cannot help it, and often without knowing
it. This extraordinary artist indeed might be said to
have had a particular organ for colour. His eye
seemed to come in contact with it as a feeling, to lay
hold of it as a substance, rather than to contemplate it
as a visual object. The texture of his landscapes is ( of
the earth, earthy' — his clouds are humid, heavy,
slow ; his shadows are t darkness that may be felt,' a
•palpable obscure' ; his lights are lumps of liquid
splendour ! There is something more in this than can
be accounted for from design or accident : Rembrandt
was not a man made up of two or three rules and
directions for acquiring genius.

I am afraid I shall hardly write so satisfactory a
character of Mr. Wordsworth, though he too, like
Rembrandt, has a faculty of making something out of
nothing, that is, out of himself, by the medium through
which he sees and with which he clothes the barrenest
subject. Mr. Wordsworth is the last man to 'look
abroad into universality,' if that alone constituted
genius : he looks at home into himself, and is ' content
with riches fineless.' He would in the other case be
' poor as winter,' if he had nothing but general capacity

56 TABLE-TALK

to trust to. He is the greatest, that is, the most
original poet of the present day, only because he is the
greatest egotist. He is 'self-involved, not dark.' He
sits in the centre of his own being, and there ' enjoys
bright day. ' He does not waste a thought on others.
Whatever does not relate exclusively and wholly to
himself is foreign to his views. He contemplates a
whole-length figure of himself, he looks along the
unbroken line of his personal identity. He thrusts
aside all other objects, all other interests, with scorn
and impatience, that he may repose on his own being,
that he may dig out the treasures of thought contained
in it, that he may unfold the precious stores of a mind
for ever brooding over itself. His genius is the effect
of his individual character. He stamps that character,
that deep individual interest, on whatever he meets.
The object is nothing but as it furnishes food for inter-
nal meditation, for old associations. If there had been
no other being in the universe, Mr. Wordsworth's
poetry would have been just what it is. If there had
been neither love nor friendship, neither ambition nor
pleasure nor business in the world, the author of the
Lyrical Ballads need not have been greatly changed
from what he is — might still have ' kept the noiseless
tenour of his way,' retired in the sanctuary of his own
heart, hallowing the Sabbath of his own thoughts.
With the passions, the pursuits, and imaginations of
other men he does not profess to sympathise, but ( finds
tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks,
sermons in stones, and good in everything.' With a
mind averse from outward objects, but ever intent
upon its own workings, he hangs a weight of thought
and feeling upon every trifling circumstance connected
with his past history. The note of the cuckoo sounds
in his ear like the voice of other years ; the daisy
spreads its leaves in the rays of boyish delight that
stream from his thoughtful eyes ; the rainbow lifts its
proud arch in heaven but to mark his progress from
infancy to manhood ; an old thorn is buried, bowed
down under the mass of associations he has wound

ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE 67

about it; and to him, as he* himself beautifully

says,

The meanest flow'r that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

It is this power of habitual sentiment, or of transferring
the interest of our conscious existence to whatever
gently solicits attention, and is a link in the chain
of association without rousing our passions or hurting ./
our pride, that is the striking feature in Mr. Words-''
worth's mind and poetry. Others have left and shown
this power before, as Wither, Burns, etc., but none
have felt it so intensely and absolutely as to lend to it
the voice of inspiration, as to make it the foundation
of a new style and school in poetry. His strength, as
it so often happens, arises from the excess of his
weakness. But he has opened a new avenue to the
human heart, has explored another secret haunt and
nook of nature, ' sacred to verse, and sure of everlasting
fame.' Compared with his lines, Lord Byron's stanzas
are but exaggerated common-place, and Walter Scott's
poetry (not his prose) old wives' fables.1 There is no
one in whom I have been more disappointed than in
the writer here spoken of, nor with whom I am more
disposed on certain points to quarrel ; but the love
of truth and justice which obliges me to do this, will
not suffer me to blench his merits. Do what he can,
he cannot help being an original-minded man. His
poetry is not servile. While the cuckoo returns in the
spring, while the daisy looks bright in the sun, while
the rainbow lifts its head above the storm —

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

Sir Joshua Reynolds, in endeavouring to show that
there is no such thing as proper originality, a spirit ^/
emanating from the mind of the artist and shining

i Mr. Wordsworth himself should not say this, and yet I am not
sure he would not.

68 TABLE-TALK

through his works, has traced Raphael through a
number of figures which he has borrowed from Mas-
accio and others. This is a bad calculation. If
Raphael had only borrowed those figures from others,
would he, even in Sir Joshua's sense, have been entitled
to the praise of originality ? Plagiarism, I presume, in
so far as it is plagiarism, is not originality. Salvator
is considered by many as a great genius. He was what
they call an irregular genius. My notion of genius is
not exactly the same as theirs. It has also been made
a question whether there is not more genius in Rem-
brandt's Three Trees than in all Claude Lorraine's
landscapes. I do not know how that may be ; but it
was enough for Claude to have been a perfect landscape-
painter.

Capacity is not the same thing as genius. Capacity

however acquired ; genius, to its quality and the mode
of acquiring it. Capacity is power over given ideas or
combinations of ideas ; genius is the power over those
•which are not given, and for which no obvious or
precise rule can be laid down. Or capacity is power of
any sort ; genius is power of a different sort from what
has yet been shown. A retentive memory, a clear
understanding, is capacity, but it is not genius. The
admirable Crichton was a person of prodigious capacity ;
but there is no proof (that I know) that he had an atom
of genius. His verses that remain are dull and sterile.
He could learn all that was known of any subject ; he
could do anything if others could show him the way to
do it. This was very wonderful ; but that is all you
can say of it. It requires a good capacity to play well
at chess ; but, after all, it is a game of skill, and not of
genius. Know what you will of it, the understanding
still moves in certain tracks in which others have trod
it before, quicker or slower, with more or less com-
prehension and presence of mind. The greatest skill
strikes out nothing for itself, from its own peculiar
resources ; the nature of the game is a thing deter-
minate and fixed : there is no royal or poetical road to

ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE 59

checkmate your adversary. There is no place for
genius but in the indefinite and unknown. The
discovery of the binomial theorem was an effort of
genius ; but there was none shown in Jedediah Buxton's
being able to multiply 9 figures by 9 in his head. If
he could have multiplied 90 figures by 90 instead of 9,
it would have been equally useless toil and trouble.1
He is a man of capacity who possesses considerable
intellectual riches : he is a man of genius who finds out
a vein of new ore. Originality is the seeing nature I/
differently from others, and yet as it is in itself. It is
not singularity or affectation, but the discovery of new
and valuable truth. All the world do not" see the
whole meaning of any object they have been looking
at. Habit blinds them to some things ; short-sighted-
ness to others. Every mind is not a gauge and measure
of truth. Nature has her surface and her dark recesses.
She is deep, obscure, and infinite. It is only minds on . .
whom she makes her fullest impressions that can *
penetrate her shrine or unveil her Holy of Holies. It
is only those whom she has filled with her spirit that
have the boldness or the power to reveal her mysteries
to others. But Nature has a thousand aspects, and one
man can only draw out one of them. Whoever does
this is a man of genius. One displays her force, another
her refinement ; one her power of harmony, another
her suddenness of contrast ; one her beauty of form,
another her splendour of colour. Each does that for is
which he is best fitted by his particular genius, that is

i The only good thing I ever heard come of this man's singular
faculty of memory was the following. A gentleman was mentioning
his having been sent up to London from the place where he lived to
see Garrick act. When he went back into the country ho was
asked what he thought of the player and the play. ' Oh ! ' he said,
' he did not know : he had only seen a little man strut about the
stage and repeat 7956 words.' We all laughed at this ; but a person
in one corner of the room, holding one hand to his forehead, and
seeming mightily delighted, called out, ' Ay, indeed 1 And pray,
was he found to be correct?' This was the supererogation of literal
matter-of-fact curiosity. Jedediah Buxtou's counting the number
of words was idle enough ; but here was a fellow who wanted some
one to count them over again to see if he was correct.

The force of dulneas could no farther go I

60 TABLE-TALK

to say, by some quality of mind into which the quality
of the object sinks deepest, where it finds the most
cordial welcome, is perceived to its utmost extent, and
where again it forces its way out from the fulness with
which it has taken possession of the mind of the student.
The imagination gives out what it has first absorbed by
congeniality of temperament, what it has attracted and
moulded into itself by elective affinity, as the loadstone
draws and impregnates iron. A little originality is
more esteemed and sought for than the greatest acquired
talent, because it throws a new light upon things, and
is peculiar to the individual. The other is common ;
and may be had for the asking, to any amount.

The value of any work is to be judged of by the
quantity of originality contained in it. A very little
of this will go a great way. If Goldsmith had never
written anything but the two or three first chapters of
the Vicar of Wakefield, or the character of a Village
Schoolmaster, they would have stamped him a man of
genius. The editors of Encyclopedias are not usually
reckoned the first literary characters of the age. The
works of which they have the management contain a
great deal of knowledge, like chests or warehouses, but
the goods are not their own. We should as soon think
of admiring the shelves of a library ; but the shelves of
a library are useful and respectable. I was once
applied to, in a delicate emergency, to write an article
on a difficult subject for an Encyclopedia, and was
advised to take time and give it a systematic and
scientific form, to avail myself of all the knowledge
that was to be obtained on the subject, and arrange it
with clearness and method. I made answer that as to
the first, I had taken time to do all that I ever pretended
to do, as I had thought incessantly on different matters
for twenty years of my life ; l that 1 had no particular
knowledge of the subject in question, and no head for
arrangement ; and that the utmost I could do in such
a case would be, when a systematic and scientific article

1 Sir Joshua Reynolds, being asked how long it had taken hiin to
do a certain picture, made answer, ' All my life.'

ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE 61

was prepared, to write marginal notes upon it, to insert
a remark or illustration of my own (not to be found in
former Encyclopedias), or to suggest a better definition
than had been offered in the text. There are two sorts
of writing. The first is compilation ; and consists in
collecting and stating all that is already known of any
question in the best possible manner, for the benefit of
the uninformed reader. An author of this class is a
very learned amanuensis of other people's thoughts.
The second sort proceeds on an entirely different
principle : instead of bringing down the account of
knowledge to the point at which it has already arrived,
it professes to start from that point on the strength of
the writer's individual reflections; and supposing the^
reader in possession of what is already known, supplies
deficiencies, fills up certain blanks, and quits the
beaten road in search of new tracts of observation or
sources of feeling. It is in vain to object to this last }
style that it is disjointed, disproportioned, and irregular. /
It is merely a set of additions and corrections to other \
men's works, or to the common stock of human know-
ledge, printed separately. You might as well expect a /
continued chain of reasoning in the notes to a book, /
It skips all the trite, intermediate, level common-places \
of the subject, and only stops at the difficult passages
of the human mind, or touches on some striking point /
that has been overlooked in previous editions. A view(
of a subject, to be connected and regular, cannot be all
new. A writer will always be liable to be charged
either with paradox or common-place, either with
dulness or affectation. But we have no right to
demand from any one more than he pretends to.
There is indeed a medium in all things, but to unite
opposite excellencies is a task ordinarily too hard for
mortality. He who succeeds in what he aims at, or
who takes the lead in any one mode or path of ex-
cellence, may think himself very well off. It would
not be fair to complain of the style of an Encyclopedia
as dull, as wanting volatile salt ; nor of the style of an
Essay because it is too light and sparkling, because it

62 TABLE-TALK

is not a caput mortuum. So it is rather an odd objection
to a work that it is made up entirely of 'brilliant
passages ' — at least it is a fault that can be found with
few works, and the book might be pardoned for its
singularity. The censure might indeed seem like
adroit flattery, if it were not passed on an author whom
any objection is sufficient to render unpopular and
ridiculous. I grant it is best to unite solidity with
show, general information with particular ingenuity.
This is the pattern of a perfect style ; but I myself do
not pretend to be a perfect writer. In fine, we do not
banish light French wines from our tables, or refuse to
taste sparkling Champagne when we can get it because
it has not the body of Old Port. Besides, I do not
know that dulness is strength, or that an observation is
slight because it is striking. Mediocrity, insipidity,
want of character is the great fault.

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

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

It is not then acuteness of organs or extent of capacity
that constitutes rare genius or produces the most ex-
quisite models of art, but an intense sympathy with
some one beauty or distinguishing characteristic in
nature. Irritability alone, or the interest taken in
certain things, may supply the place of genius in weak
and otherwise ordinary minds. As there are certain
instruments fitted to perform certain kinds of labour,
there are certain minds so framed as to produce certain
chef-d'ceuvres in art and literature, which is surely the
best use they can be put to. If a man had all sorts of
instruments in his shop and wanted one, he would
rather have that one than be supplied with a double
set of all the others. If he had them twice over, he
could only do what he can do as it is, whereas without
that one he perhaps cannot finish any one work he has
in hand. So if a man can do one thing better than
anybody else, the value of this one thing is what he

ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE 63

must stand or fall by, and his being able to do a hun-
dred other things merely as well as anybody else would
not alter the sentence or add to his respectability ; on
the contrary, his being able to do so many other things
well would probably interfere with and encumber him
in the execution of the only thing that others cannot
do as well as he, and so far be a drawback and a
disadvantage. More people, in fact, fail from a multi-
plicity of talents and pretensions than from an absolute
poverty of resources. I have given instances of this
elsewhere. Perhaps Shakespear's tragedies would in
some respects have been better if he had never written
comedies at all ; and in that case his comedies might
well have been spared, though they must have cost us
some regret. Racine, it is said, might have rivalled
Moliere in comedy ; but he gave up the cultivation of
his comic talents to devote himself wholly to the tragic
Muse. If, as the French tell us, he in consequence
attained to the perfection of tragic composition, this
was better than writing comedies as well as Moliere
and tragedies as well as Crebillon. Yet I count those
persons fools who think it a pity Hogarth did not suc-
ceed better in serious subjects. The division of labour
is an excellent principle in taste as well as in mechanics.
Without this, I find from Adam Smith, we could not
have a pin made to the degree of perfection it is. We
do not, on any rational scheme of criticism, inquire
into the variety of a man's excellences, or the number
of his works, or his facility of production. Venice
Preserved is sufficient for Otway's fame. I hate all
those nonsensical stories about Lope de Vega and his
writing a play in a morning before breakfast. He had
time enough to do it after. If a man leaves behind
him any work which is a model in its kind, we have no
right to ask whether he could do anything else, or how
he did it, or how long he was about it. All that talent
which is not necessary to the actual quantity of excel-
lence existing in the world, loses its object, is so much
waste talent or talent to let. I heard a sensible man
say he should like to do some one thing better than all

64 TABLE-TALK

the rest of the world, and in everything else to he like
all the rest of the world. Why should a man do more
than his part? The rest is vanity and vexation of spirit
We look with jealous and grudging eyes at all those
qualifications which are not essential; first, because
they are superfluous, and next, because we suspect
they will be prejudicial. Why does Mr. Kean play all
those harlequin tricks of singing, dancing, fencing,
etc.? They say, 'It is for his benefit.' It is not for
his reputation. Garrick indeed shone equally in
comedy and tragedy. But he was first, not second-
rate in both. There is not a greater impertinence
than to ask, if a man is clever out of his profession.
I have heard of people trying to cross-examine Mrs.
Siddons. I would as soon try to entrap one of the
Elgin Marbles into an argument. Good nature and
common sense are required from all people ; but one
proud distinction is enough for any one individual to
possess or to aspire to.

ESSAY VI

CHARACTER OF COBBETT

PEOPLE have about as substantial an idea of Cobbett as
they have of Cribb. His blows are as hard, and he
himself is as impenetrable. One has no notion of him
as making use of a fine pen, but a great mutton-fist ;
his style stuns his readers, and he ' fillips the ear of the
public with a three-man beetle.' He is too much for
any single newspaper antagonist ; ' lays waste ' a city
orator or Member of Parliament, and bears hard upon
the Government itself. He is a kind of fourth estate
in the politics of the country. He is not only un-
questionably the most powerful political writer of the
present day, but one of the best writers in the language.
He speaks and thinks plain, broad, downright English.
He might be said to have the clearness of Swift, the
naturalness of Defoe, and the picturesque satirical de-
scription of Mandeville ; if all such comparisons were
not impertinent. A really great and original writer
is like nobody but himself. In one sense, Sterne was
not a wit, nor Shakespear a poet. It is easy to describe
second-rate talents, because they fall into a class and
enlist under a standard ; but first-rate powers defy
calculation or comparison, and can be defined only by
themselves. They are sui generis, and make the class
to which they belong. I have tried half a dozen times
to describe Burke's style without ever succeeding,
— its severe extravagance ; its literal boldness ; its
matter-of-fact hyperboles ; its running away with a
subject, and from it at the same time, — but there is no

66 TABLE-TALK

making it out, for there is no example of the same
thing anywhere else. We have no common measure
to refer to ; and his qualities contradict even them-
selves.

Cobbett is not so difficult. He has been compared
to Paine ; and so far it is true there are no two writers
who come more into juxtaposition from the nature of
their subjects, from the internal resources on which
they draw, and from the popular effect of their writings
and their adaptation (though that is a bad word in the
present case) to the capacity of every reader. But still
if we turn to a volume of Paine's (his Common Sense or
Rights of Man) we are struck (not to say somewhat
refreshed) by the difference. Paine is a much more
sententious writer than Cobbett. You cannot open a
page in any of his best and earlier works without meet-
ing with some maxim, some antithetical and memorable
saying, which is a sort of starting-place for the argu-
ment, and the goal to which it returns. There is not
a single bon mot, a single sentence in Cobbett that has
ever been quoted again. If anything is ever quoted
from him, it is an epithet of abuse or a nickname. He
is an excellent hand at invention in that way, and has
'damnable iteration' in him. What could be better
than his pestering Erskiue year after year with his
second title of Baron Clackmannan ? He is rather too
fond of the Sons and Daughters of Corruption. Paine
affected to reduce things to first principles, to announce
self-evident truths. Cobbett troubles himself about
little but the details and local circumstances. The first
appeared to have made up his mind beforehand to cer-
tain opinions, and to try to find the most compendious
and pointed expressions for them : his successor appears
to have no clue, no fixed or leading principles, nor
ever to have thought on a question till he sits down to
write about it ; but then there seems no end of his
matters of fact and raw materials, which are brought
out in all their strength and sharpness from not having
been squared or frittered down or vamped up to suit a
theory — he goes on with his descriptions and illustra-

CHARACTER OF COBBETT 67

tions as if he would never come to a stop ; they have
all the force of novelty with all the familiarity of old
acquaintance ; his knowledge grows out of the subject,
and his style is that of a man who has an absolute
intuition of what he is talking about, and never thinks
of anything else. He deals in premises and speaks to
evidence — the coming to a conclusion and summing up
(which was Paine' s forte) lies in a smaller compass.
The one could not compose an elementary treatise on
politics to become a manual for the popular reader ;
nor could the other in all probability have kept up a
weekly journal for the same number of years with the
same spirit, interest, and untired perseverance. Fame's
writings are a sort of introduction to political arith-
metic on a new plan : Cobbett keeps a day-book, and
makes an entry at full of all the occurrences and
troublesome questions that start up throughout the
year. Cobbett, with vast industry, vast information,
and the utmost power of making what he says intelli-
gible, never seems to get at the beginning or come to
the end of any question : Paine in a few short sentences
seems by his peremptory manner ' to clear it from all
controversy, past, present, and to come.' Paine takes
a bird's-eye view of things. Cobbett sticks close to
them, inspects the component parts, and keeps fast
hold of the smallest advantages they afford him. Or,
if I might here be indulged in a pastoral allusion, Paine
tries to enclose his ideas in a fold for security and re-
pose ; Cobbett lets his pour out upon the plain like a
ilock of sheep to feed and batten. Cobbett is a pleas-
anter writer for those to read who do not agree with
him ; for he is less dogmatical, goes more into the
common grounds of fact and argument to which all
appeal, is more desultory and various, and appears less
to be driving at a previous conclusion than urged on
by the force of present conviction. He is therefore
tolerated by all parties, though he has made himself
by turns obnoxious to all ; and even those he abuses
read him. The Reformers read him when he was
a Tory, and the Tories read him now that he is a

68 TABLE-TALK

Reformer. He must, I think, however, be caviare to the
Whigs.1

If he is less metaphysical and poetical than his cele-
brated prototype, he is more picturesque and dramatic.
His episodes, which are numerous as they are pertinent,
are striking, interesting, full of life and na'ivete, minute,
double measure running over, but never tedious — nun-
quam sujflaminandus erat. He is one of those writers
who can never tire us, not even of himself; and the
reason is, he is always 'full of matter.' He never runs
to lees, never gives us the vapid leavings of himself, is
never ' weary, stale, and unprofitable,' but always set-
ting out afresh on his journey, clearing away some old
nuisance, and turning up new mould. His egotism is
delightful, for there is no affectation in it. He does
not talk of himself for lack of something to write about,
but because some circumstance that has happened to
himself is the best possible illustration of the subject,
and he is not the man to shrink from giving the best
possible illustration of the subject from a squeamish
delicacy. He likes both himself and his subject too
well. He does not put himself before it, and say,
f Admire me first,' but places us in the same situation
with himself, and makes us see all that he does. There
is no blindman's-buff, no conscious hints, no awkward
ventriloquism, no testimonies of applause, no abstract,
senseless self-complacency, no smuggled admiration of
his own person by proxy : it is all plain and above-
board. He writes himself plain William Cobbett, strips
himself quite as naked as anybody would wish — in a
word, his egotism is full of individuality, and has room
for very little vanity in it. We feel delighted, rub our
hands, and draw our chair to the fire, when we come to
a passage of this sort : we know it will be something
new and good, manly and simple, not the same insipid
story of self over again. We sit down at table with
the writer, but it is to a course of rich viands, flesh,
fish, and wild-fowl, and not to a nominal entertainment,

\ The late Lord Thurlow used to say that Cobbett was the only
writer that deserved the name of a political

CHARACTER OF COBBETT 69

like that given by the Barmecide in the Arabian Nights,
who put off his visitors with calling for a number of
exquisite things that never appeared, arid with the
honour of his company. Mr. Cobbett is not a make-
believe writer : his worst enemy cannot say that of
him. Still less is he a vulgar one : he must be a puny,
common-place critic indeed who thinks him so. How
fine were the graphical descriptions he sent us from
America : \vhat a Transatlantic flavour, what a native
gusto, what a fine sauce piquante of contempt they were
seasoned with ! If he had sat down to look at himself
in the glass, instead of looking about him like Adam
in Paradise, he would not have got up these articles
in so capital a style. What a noble account of his first
breakfast after his arrival in America ! It might serve
for a month. There is no scene on the stage more
amusing. How well he paints the gold and scarlet
plumage of the American birds, only to lament more
pathetically the want of the wild wood -notes of his
native land ! The groves of the Ohio that had just
fallen beneath the axe's stroke ' live in his description,'
and the turnips that he transplanted from Botley ' look
green ' in prose ! How well at another time he de-
scribes the poor sheep that had got the tick and had
tumbled down in the agonies of death ! It is a portrait
in the manner of Bewick, with the strength, tne sim-
plicity, and feeling of that great naturalist. What
havoc he makes, when he pleases, of the curls of Dr.
Parr's wig and of the Whig consistency of Mr. [Cole-
ridge?]! His Grammar, too, is as entertaining as a
story-book. He is too hard upon the style of others,
and not enough (sometimes) on his own.

As a political partisan no one can stand against him.
With his brandished club, like Giant Despair in the
Pilgrim s Progress, he knocks out their brains ; and not
only no individual, but no corrupt system could hold
out against his powerful and repeated attacks, but
with the same weapon, swung round like a flail, that
he levels his antagonists, he lays his friends low, and
puts his own party hors de combat. This is a bad

70 TABLE-TALK

propensity, and a worse principle in political tactics,
though a common one. If his blows were straight-
forward and steadily directed to the same object, no
unpopular minister could live before him ; instead of
which he lays about right and left, impartially and
remorselessly, makes a clear stage, has afl the ring to
himself, and then runs out of it, just when he should
stand his ground. He throws his head into his ad-
versary's stomach, and takes away from him all inclina-
tion for the fight, hits fair or foul, strikes at every-
thing, and as you come up to his aid or stand ready to
pursue his advantage, trips up your heels or lays you
sprawling, and pummels you when down as much to
his heart's content as ever the Yanguesian carriers
belaboured Rosinante with their pack-staves. ' He has
the back-trick simply the best of any man in Illyria.' He
pays off both scores of old friendship and new-acquired
enmity in a breath, in one perpetual volley, one raking
fire of ' arrowy sleet ' shot from his pen. However his
own reputation or the cause may suffer in consequence,
he cares not one pin about that, so that he disables all
who oppose, or wno pretend to help him. In fact, he
cannot bear success of any kind, not even of his own
views or party ; and if any principle were likely to
become popular, would turn round against it to show
his power in shouldering it on one side. In short,
wherever power is, there is -he against it : he naturally
butts at afl obstacles, as unicorns are attracted to oak
trees, and feels his own strength only by resistance to
the opinions and wishes of the rest of the world. To
sail with the stream, to agree with the company, is not
his humour. If he could bring about a Reform in
Parliament, the odds are that he would instantly fall
foul of and try to mar his own handiwork ; and he
quarrels with his own creatures as soon as he has
written them into a little vogue — and a prison. I do
not think this is vanityor fickleness so much as a
pugnacious dispositioja^JgSFgrt^t have an antagonistic
power to contend vJi^PanthonKSfinds itself at ease in
systematic opposilgn/ If it wd^ot for this, the high

" LIBRARY

CHARACTER OF COBBETT 71

towers and rotten places of the world would fall before
the battering-ram of his hard-headed reasoning ; but if
he once found them tottering, he would apply his
strength to prop them up, and disappoint the expecta-
tions of his followers. He cannot agree to anything
established, nor to set up anything else in its stead.
While it is established, he presses hard against it,
because it presses upon him, at least in imagination.
Let it crumble under his grasp, and the motive to
resistance is gone. He then requires some other
grievance to set his face against. His principle is
repulsion, his nature contradiction : he is made up of
mere antipathies, an Ishmaelite indeed without a fellow.
He is always playing at hunt-the-slipper in politics. He
turns round upon whoever is next him. The way to
wean him from any opinion, and make him conceive an
intolerable hatred against it, would be to place some-
body near him who was perpetually dinning it in his
ears. When he is in England he does nothing but
abuse the Boroughmongers and laugh at the whole
system ; when he is in America he grows impatient of
freedom and a republic. If he had stayed there a little
longer he would have become a loyal and a loving
subject of His Majesty King George IV. He lampooned
the French Revolution when it was hailed as the dawn
of liberty by millions : by the time it was brought
into almost universal ill-odour by some means or other
(partly no doubt by himself), he had turned, with one
or two or three others, staunch Buonapartist. He is
always of the militant, not of the triumphant party : so
far he bears a gallant show of magnanimity. But his
gallantry is hardly of the right stamp. It wants
principle ; for though he is not servile or mercenary,
he is the victim of self-will. He must pull down and
pull in pieces : it is not in his disposition to do other-
wise. It is a pity ; for with his great talents he might
do great things, if he would go right forward to any
useml object, make thorough stitch-work of any ques-
tion, or join hand and heart with any principle. He
changes his opinions as he does his friends, and much

72 TABLE-TALK

on the same account. He has no comfort in fixed
principles : as soon as anything is settled in his own
mind, he quarrels with it. He has no satisfaction but
in the chase after truth, runs a question down, worries
and kills it, then quits it like vermin, and starts some
new game, to lead him a new dance, and give him a
fresh breathing through bog and brake, with the
rabble yelping at his heels and the leaders perpetually
at fault. This he calls sport-royal. He thinks it as
good as cudgel-playing or single-stick, or anything else
that has life in it. He likes the cut and thrust, the
falls, bruises, and dry blows of an argument : as to
any good or useful results that may come of the
amicable settling of it, any one is welcome to them for
him. The amusement is over when the matter is once
fairly decided.

There is another point of view in which this may be
put. I might say that Mr. Cobbett is a very honest
man with a total want of principle, and I might
explain this paradox thus :— I mean that he is, I think,
in downright earnest in what he says, in the part he
takes at the time ; but in taking that part, he is led
entirely by headstrong obstinacy, caprice, novelty,
pique, or personal motive of some sort, and not by a
steadfast regard for truth or habitual anxiety for what
is right uppermost in his mind. He is not a fee'd,
time-serving, shuffling advocate (no man could write as
he does who did not believe himself sincere) ; but his
understanding is the dupe and slave of his momentary,
violent, and irritable humours. He does not adopt an
opinion ' deliberately or for money,' yet his conscience
is at the mercy of the first provocation he receives, of
the first whim he takes in his head : he sees things
through the medium of heat and passion, not with
reference to any general principles, and his whole
system of thinking is deranged by the first object that
strikes his fancy or sours his temper.— One cause of
this phenomenon is perhaps his want of a regular
education. He is a self-taught man, and has the faults
as well as excellences of that class of persons in their

CHARACTER OF COBBETT 73

most striking and glaring excess. It must be ac-
knowledged that the editor of the Political Register
(the twopenny trash, as it was called, till a bill passed
the House to raise the price to sixpence) is not ' the
gentleman and scholar/ though he has qualities that,
with a little better management, would be worth (to the
public) both those titles. For want of knowing what
has been discovered before him, he has not certain
general landmarks to refer to, or a general standard of
thought to apply to individual cases. He relies on his
own acuteness and the immediate evidence, without
being acquainted with the comparative anatomy or
philosophical structure of opinion. He does not view
things on a large scale or at the horizon (dim and airy
enough perhaps) — but as they affect himself, close,
palpable, tangible. Whatever he finds out is his own,
and he only knows what he finds out. He is in the
constant hurry and fever of gestation ; his brain teems
incessantly with some fresh project. Every new light
is the birth of a new system, the dawn of a new world
to him. He is continually outstripping and over-
reaching himself. The last opinion is the only true
one. He is wiser to-day than he was yesterday. Why
should he not be wiser to-morrow than he was to-day ?
— Men of a learned education are not so sharp-witted
as clever men without it ; but they know the balance
of the human intellect better ; if they are more stupid,
they are more steady, and are less liable to be led
astray by their own sagacity and the overweening
petulance of hard-earned and late-acquired wisdom.
They do not fall in love with every meretricious ex-
travagance at first sight, or mistake an old battered
hypothesis for a vestal, because they are new to the
ways of this old world. They do not seize upon it as a
prize, but are safe from gross imposition by being as
wise and no wiser than those who went before them.

Paine said on some occasion, c What I have written,
I have written ' — as rendering any further declaration
of his principles unnecessary. Not so Mr. Cobbett.
What he has written is no rule to him what he is to

74 TABLE-TALK

write. He learns something every day, and every week
he takes the field to maintain the opinions of the last
six days against friend or foe. I doubt whether this
outrageous inconsistency, this headstrong fickleness,
this understood want of all rule and method, does not
enable him to go on with the spirit, vigour, and variety
that he does. He is not pledged to repeat himself.
Every new Register is a kind of new Prospectus. He
blesses himself from all ties and shackles on his under-
standing ; he has no mortgages on his brain ; his
notions are free and unencumbered. If he was put in
trammels, he might become a vile hack like so many
more. But he gives himself ' ample scope and verge
enough.' He takes both sides of a question, and main-
tains one as sturdily as the other. If nobody else can
argue against him, he is a very good match for himself.
He writes better in favour of Reform than anybody
else ; he used to write better against it. Wherever he
is, there is the tug of war, the weight of the argument,
the strength of abuse. He is not like a man in danger
of being bed-rid in his faculties — he tosses and tumbles
about his unwieldy bulk, and when he is tired of lying
on one side, relieves himself by turning on the other.
His shifting his point of view from time to time not
merely adds variety and greater compass to his topics
(so that the Political Register is an armoury and
magazine for all the materials and weapons of political
warfare), but it gives a greater zest and liveliness to
his manner of treating them. Mr. Cobbett takes
nothing for granted as what he has proved before ; he
doss not write a book of reference. We see his ideas
in their first concoction, fermenting and overflowing
with the ebullitions of a lively conception. We look
on at the actual process, and are put in immediate
possession of the grounds and materials on which he
forms his sanguine, unsettled conclusions. He does
not give us samples of reasoning, but the whole solid
mass, refuse and all.

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

CHARACTER OF COBBETT 75

This is one cause of the clearness and force of his
writings. An argument does not stop to stagnate and
muddle in his brain, hut passes at once to his paper.
His ideas are served up, like pancakes, hot and hot.
Fresh theories give him fresh courage. He is like a
young and lusty bridegroom that divorces a favourite
speculation every morning, and marries a new one
every night. He is not wedded to his notions, not he.
He has not one Mrs. Cobbett among all his opinions.
He makes the most of the last thought that has come
in his way, seizes fast hold of it, rumples it about in all
directions with rough strong hands, has his wicked
will of it, takes a surfeit, and throws it away. — Our
author's changing his opinions for new ones is not so
wonderful ; what is more remarkable is his facility in
forgetting his old ones. He does not pretend to
consistency (like Mr. Coleridge) ; he frankly disavows
all connection with himself. He feels no personal
responsibility in this way, and cuts a friend or principle
with the same decided indifference that Antipholis of
Ephesus cuts JEgeon of Syracuse. It is a hollow thing.
The only time he ever grew romantic was in bringing
over the relics of Mr. Thomas Paine with him from
America to go a progress with them through the dis-
affected districts. Scarce had he landed in Liverpool
when he left the bones of a great man to shift for
themselves ; and no sooner did he arrive in London
than he made a speech to disclaim all participation in
the political and theological sentiments of his late idol,
and to place the whole stock of his admiration and
enthusiasm towards him to the account of his financial
speculations, and of his having predicted the fate of
paper-money. If he had erected a little gold statue to
him, it might have proved the sincerity of this assertion ;
but to make a martyr and a patron saint of a man, and
to dig up 'his canonised bones' in order to expose
them as objects of devotion to the rabble's gaze, asks
something that has more life and spirit in it, more
mind and vivifying soul, than has to do with any
calculation of pounds, shillings, and pence ! The fact

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is, he ratted from his own project He found the thing
not so ripe as he had expected. His heart failed him ;
his enthusiasm fled, and he made his retractation. His
admiration is short-lived ; his contempt only is rooted,
and his resentment lasting.— The above was only one
instance of his building too much on practical data.
He has an ill habit of prophesying, and goes on,
though still deceived. The art of prophesying does
not suit Mr. Cobbett's style. He has a knack of
fixing names and times and places. According to him,
the Reformed Parliament was to meet in March 3818
— it did not, and we heard no more of the matter.
When his predictions fail, he takes no further notice of
them, but applies himself to new ones — like the country
people who turn to see what weather there is in the
almanac for the next week, though it has been out in
its reckoning every day of the last.

Mr. Cobbett is great in attack, not in defence ; he
cannot fight an up-hill battle. He will not bear the
least punishing. If any one turns upon him (which
few people like to do) he immediately turns tail. Like
an overgrown schoolboy, he is so used to have it all his
own way, that he cannot submit to anything like com-
petition or a struggle for the mastery ; he must lay on
all the blows, and take none. He is bullying and
cowardly ; a Big Ben in politics, who will fall upon
others and crush them by his weight, but is not pre-
pared for resistance, and is soon staggered by a few
smart blows. Whenever he has been set upon, he has
slunk out of the controversy. The Edinburgh Review
made (what is called) a dead set at him some years ago,
to which he only retorted by an eulogy on the superior
neatness of an English kitchen-garden to a Scotch one.
I remember going one day into a bookseller's shop in
Fleet Street to ask for the Review; and on my express-
ing my opinion to a young Scotchman, who stood
behind the counter, that Mr. Cobbett might hit as hard
in his reply, the North Briton said with some alarm,
< But you don't think, sir, Mr. Cobbett will be able to
injure the Scottish nation?' I said I could not speak

CHARACTER OF COBBETT 77

to that point, but I thought he was very well able to
defend himself. He, however, did not, but has borne a
grudge to the Edinburgh Review ever since, which he
hates worse than the Quarterly. I cannot say I do. l

i Mr. Cobbett speaks almost as well as he writes. The only time
I ever saw him he seemed to me a very pleasant man — easy of access,
affable, clear-headed, simple and mild in his manner, deliberate and
unruffled in his speech, though some of his expressions were not very
qualified. His figure is toll and portly. He has a good, sensible
face — rather full, with little grey eyes, a hard, square forehead, a
ruddy complexion, with hair grey or powdered ; and had on a scarlet
broadcloth waistcoat with the flaps of the pockets hanging down,
as was the custom for gentlemen-farmers in the last century, or as
we see it in the pictures of Members of Parliament in the reign of
George I. I certainly did not think less favourably of him for
seeing him.

ESSAY VII

ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA

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

There is Major Cartwright : he has but one idea or
subject of discourse, Parliamentary Reform. Now
Parliamentary Reform is (as far as I know) a very good
thing, a very good idea, and a very good subject to talk
about ; but why should it be the only one ? To hear
the worthy and gallant Major resume his favourite
topic, is like law-business, or a person who has a suit
in Chancery going on. Nothing can be attended to,
nothing can be talked of but that. Now it is getting
on, now again it is standing still ; at one time the
Master has promised to pass judgment by a certain
day, at another he has put it off again and called for
more papers, and both are equally reasons for speaking
of it. Like the piece of packthread in the barrister's
hands, he turns and twists it all ways, and cannot
proceed a step without it. Some schoolboys cannot
read but in their own book ; and the man of one idea
cannot converse out of his own subject. Conversation
it is not ; but a sort of recital of the preamble of a bill,
or a collection of grave arguments for a man's being of
opinion with himself. It would be well if there was
anything of character, of eccentricity in all this ; but
that is not the case. It is a political homily personified,
a walking common-place we have to encounter and
listen to. It is just as if a man was to insist on your

ON PEOPLE WYTH ONE IDEA 79

hearing him go through the fifth chapter of the Book
of Judges every time you meet, or like the story of the
Cosmogony in the Vicar of Wakefi&ld. It is a tune
played on a barrel-organ. It is a common vehicle of
discourse into which they get and are set down when
they please, without any pains or trouble to themselves.
Neither is it professional pedantry or trading quackery :
it has no excuse. The man has no more to do with the
question which he saddles on all his hearers than you
have. This is what makes the matter hopeless. If a
farmer talks to you about his pigs or his poultry, or a
physician about his patients, or a lawyer about his
briefs, or a merchant about stock, or an author about
himself, you know how to account for this, it is a
common infirmity, you have a laugh at his expense,
and there is no more to be said. But here is a man
who goes out of his way to be absurd, and is trouble-
some by a romantic effort of generosity. You cannot
say to him, f All this may be interesting to you, but I
have no concern in it ' : you cannot put him off in that
way. He retorts the Latin adage upon you — Nihil
humani a me alienum puto. He has got possession of a
subject which is of universal and paramount interest
(not 'a fee-grief, due to some single breast'), and on
that plea may hold you by the button as long as he
chooses. His delight is to harangue on what nowise
regards himself: how then can you refuse to listen to
what as little amuses you ? Time and tide wait for no
man. The business of the state admits of no delay.
The question of Universal Suffrage and Annual Parlia-
ments stands first on the order of the day — takes
precedence in its own right of every other question.
Any other topic, grave or gay, is looked upon in the
light of impertinence, and sent to Coventry. Business
is an interruption ; pleasure a digression from it. It
is the question before every company where the Major
comes, which immediately resolves itself into a com-
mittee of the whole world upon it, is carried on by
means of a perpetual virtual adjournment, and it is
presumed that no other is entertained while this is

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pending— a determination which gives its persevering
advocate a fair prospect of expatiating on it to his
dying day. As Cicero says of study, it follows him
into the country, it stays with him at home: it sits
with him at breakfast, and goes out with him to dinner.
It is like a part of his dress, of the costume of his
person, without which he would be at a loss what to do.
If he meets you in the street, he accosts you with it as
a form of salutation : if you see him at his own house,
it is supposed you come upon that. If you happen to
remark, ' It is a fine day/ or l The town is full,' it is
considered as a temporary compromise of the question ;
you are suspected of not going the whole length of the
principle. As Sancho, when reprimanded for mention-
ing his homely favourite in the Duke's kitchen, defended
himself by saying, 'There I thought of Dapple, and
there I spoke of him/ so the true stickler for Reform
neglects no opportunity of introducing the subject
wherever he is. Place its veteran champion under the
frozen north, and he will celebrate sweet smiling
Reform ; place him under the mid-day Afric suns, and
he will talk of nothing but Reform — Reform so sweetly
smiling and so sweetly promising for the last forty
years —

Dulce ridentem Lalagen,
Dulce loquentem 1

A topic of this sort of which the person himself may be
considered as almost sole proprietor and patentee is an
estate for life, free from all encumbrance of wit, thought,
or study, you live upon it as a settled income ; and
others might as well think to eject you out of a capital
freehold house and estate as think to drive you out of
it into the wide world of common sense and argument.
Every man's house is his castle ; and every man's
common-place is his stronghold, from which he looks
out and smiles at the dust and heat of controversy,
raised by a number of frivolous and vexatious questions
— ' Rings the world with the vain stir ! ' A cure for
this and every other evil would be a Parliamentary
Reform ; and so we return in a perpetual circle to the

ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA 81

point from which we set out. Is not this a species of
sober madness more provoking than the real? Has
not the theoretical enthusiast his mind as much warped,
as much enslaved by one idea as the acknowledged
lunatic, only that the former has no lucid intervals?
If you see a visionary of this class going along the
street, you can tell as well what he is thinking of and
will say next as the man that fancies himself a teapot
or the Czar of Muscovy. The one is as inaccessible to
reason as the other : if the one raves, the other dotes !

There are some who fancy the Corn Bill the root of
all evil, and others who trace all the miseries of life to
the practice of muffling up children in night-clothes
when they sleep or travel. They will declaim by the
hour together on the first, and argue themselves black
in the face on the last. It is in vain that you give up
the point. They persist in the debate, and begin
again — 'But don't you see — ?' These sort of partial
obliquities, as they are more entertaining and original,
are also by their nature intermittent. They hold a
man but for a season. He may have one a year or
every two years ; and though, while he is in the heat
of any new discovery, he will let you hear of nothing
else, he varies from himself, and is amusing undesign-
edly. He is not like the chimes at midnight.

People of the character here spoken of, that is, who
tease you to death with some one idea, generally differ
in their favourite notion from the rest of the world ;
and indeed it is the love of distinction which is mostly
at the bottom of this peculiarity. Thus one person is
remarkable for living on a vegetable diet, and never
fails to entertain you all dinner-time with an invective
against animal food. One of this self-denying class,
who adds to the primitive simplicity of this sort of
food the recommendation of having it in a raw state,
lamenting the death of a patient whom he had augured
to be in a good way as a convert to his system, at last
accounted for his disappointment in a whisper — 'But
she ate meat privately, depend upon it.' It is not
pleasant, though it is what one submits to willingly

82 TABLE-TALK

from some people, to be asked every time you meet,
whether you have quite left off drinking wine, and to
be complimented or condoled with on your looks
according as you answer in the negative or affirmative.
Abemethy thinks his pill an infallible cure for all
disorders. A person once complaining to his physician
that he thought his mode of treatment had not answered,
he assured him it was the best in the world,—' and as
a proof of it/ says he, ' I have had one gentleman, a
patient with your disorder, under the same regimen
for the last sixteen years ! ' — I have known persons
whose minds were entirely taken up at all times and
on all occasions with such questions as the Abolition
of the Slave Trade, the Restoration of the Jews, or the
progress of Unitarianism. I myself at one period took
a pretty strong turn to inveighing against the doctrine
of Divine Right, and am not yet cured of my prejudice
on that subject. How many projectors have gone mad
in good earnest from incessantly harping on one idea :
the discovery of the philosopher's stone, the finding
out the longitude, or paying off the national debt !
The disorder at length comes to a fatal crisis ; but
long before this, and while they were walking about
and talking as usual, the derangement of the fancy,
the loss of all voluntary power to control or alienate
their ideas from the single subject that occupied them,
was gradually taking place, and overturning the fabric
of the understanding by wrenching it all on one side.
Alderman Wood has, I should suppose, talked of
nothing but the Queen in all companies for the last
six months. Happy Alderman Wood ! Some persons
have got a definition of the verb, others a system of
short-hand, others a cure for typhus fever, others a
method for preventing the counterfeiting of bank-notes,
which they think the best possible, and indeed the only
one. Others insist there have been only three great
men in the world, leaving you to add a fourth. A
man who has been in Germany will sometimes talk of
nothing but what is German : a Scotchman always
leads the discourse to his own country. Some descant

ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA 83

on the Kantean philosophy. There is a conceited
fellow about town who talks always and everywhere on
this subject. He wears the Categories round his neck
like a pearl-chain : he plays off the names of the
primary and transcendental qualities like rings on his
fingers. He talks of the Kantean system while he
dances ; he talks of it while he dines ; he talks of it to
his children, to his apprentices, to his customers. He
called on me to convince me of it, and said I was only
prevented from becoming a complete convert by one
or two prejudices. He knows no more about it than a
pikestaff. Why then does he make so much ridiculous
fuss about it ? It is not that he has got this one idea
in his head, but that he has got no other. A dunce
may talk on the subject of the Kantean philosophy
with great impunity : if he opened his lips on any
other he might be found out. A French lady who
had married an Englishman who said little, excused
him by saying, e He is always thinking of Locke and
Newton.' This is one way of passing muster by follow-
ing in the suite of great names ! — A friend of mine,
whom I met one day in the street, accosted me with
more than usual vivacity, and said, 'Well, we're sell-
ing, we're selling ! ' I thought he meant a house.
' No,' he said, 'haven't you seen the advertisement in
the newspapers ? I mean five and twenty copies of the
PJesay.' This work, a comely, capacious quarto on the
most abstruse metaphysics, had occupied his sole
thoughts for several years, and he concluded that I
must be thinking of what he was. I believe, however,
I may say I am nearly the only person that ever read,
certainly that ever pretended to understand it. It is
an original and most ingenious work, nearly as in-
comprehensible as it is original, and as quaint as it is
ingenious. If the author is taken up with the ideas in
his own head and no others, he has a right ; for he has
ideas there that are to be met with nowhere else, and
which occasionally would not disgrace a Berkeley. A
dextrous plagiarist might get himself an immense
reputation by putting them in a popular dress. Oh !

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how little do they know, who have never done anything
but repeat after others by rote, the pangs, the labour,
the yearnings and misgivings of mind it costs to get
at the germ of an original idea — to dig it out of the
hidden recesses of thought and nature, and bring it
half-ashamed, struggling, and deformed into the day —
to give words and intelligible symbols to that which
was never imagined or expressed before ! It is as if
the dumb should speak for the first time, as if things
should stammer out their own meaning through the
imperfect organs of mere sense. I wish that some of
our fluent, plausible declaimers, who have such store
of words to cover the want of ideas, could lend their
art to this writer. If he, ' poor, unfledged ' in this
respect, ' who has scarce winged from view o' th' nest,'
could find a language for his ideas, truth would find a
language for some of her secrets. Mr. Fearn was
buried in the woods of Indostan. In his leisure from
business and from tiger-shooting, he took it into his
head to look into his own mind. A whim or two, an
odd fancy, like a film before the eye, now and then
crossed it: it struck him as something curious, but the
impression at first disappeared like breath upon glass.
He thought no more of it ; yet still the same conscious
feelings returned, and what at first was chance or
instinct became a habit. Several notions had taken
possession of his brain relating to mental processes
which he had never heard alluded to in conversation,
but not being well versed in such matters, he did not
know whether they were to he found in learned authors
or not. He took a journey to the capital of the Penin-
sula on purpose, bought Locke, Reid, Stewart, and
Berkeley, whom he consulted with eager curiosity
when he got home, but did not find what he looked
for. He set to work himself, and in a few weeks
sketched out a rough draft of his thoughts and observa-
tions on bamboo paper. The eagerness of his new
pursuit, together with the diseases of the climate,
proved too much for his constitution, and he was
forced to return to this country. He put his meta-

ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA 85

physics, his bamboo manuscript, into the boat with
him, and as he floated down the Ganges, said to him-
self, ' If I live, this will live ; if I die, it will not be
heard of.' What is fame to this feeling ? The babbling
of an idiot ! He brought the work home with him,
and twice had it stereotyped. The first sketch he
allowed was obscure, but the improved copy he thought
could not fail to strike. It did not succeed. The
world, as Goldsmith said of himself, made a point of
taking no notice of it. Ever since he has had nothing
but disappointment and vexation, — the greatest and
most heart-breaking of all others — that of not being
able to make yourself understood. Mr. Fearn tells me
there is a sensible writer in the Monthly Review who
sees the thing in its proper light, and says so. But I
have heard of no other instance. There are, notwith-
standing, ideas in this work, neglected and ill-treated
as it has been, that lead to more curious and subtle
speculations on some of the most disputed and difficult
points of the philosophy of the human mind (such as
relation} abstraction, etc.) than have been thrown out in
any work for the last sixty years, I mean since Hume ;
for since his time there has been no metaphysician in
this country worth the name. Yet his Treatise on
Human Nature, he tells us, 'fell still-born from the
press.' So it is that knowledge works its way, and
reputation lingers far behind it. But truth is better
than opinion, I maintain it ; and as to the two stereo-
typed and unsold editions of the Essay on Consciousness,
I say, Honi soit qui mal y pense ! l — My Uncle Toby had
one idea in his head, that of his bowling-green, and
another, that of the Widow Wadman. Oh, spare
them both ! I will only add one more anecdote in
illustration of this theory of the mind's being occupied
with one idea, which is most frequently of a man's self.

i Quarto poetry, as well as quarto metaphysics, does not always
sell. Going one day into a shop in Paternoster Row to see for some
lines in Mr. Wordsworth's Excursion to interlard some prose with,
I applied to the constituted authorities, and asked if I could look
at a copy of the Excursion ? The answer was, ' Into which county,
sir?'

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A celebrated lyrical writer happened to drop into a
small party where they had just got the novel of Rob
Roy, by the author of Waverley. The motto in the
title-page was taken from a poem of his. This was a
hint sufficient, a word to the wise. He instantly went
to the book-shelf in the next room, took down the
volume of his own poems, read the whole of that in
question aloud with manifest complacency, replaced it
on the shelf, and walked away, taking no more notice
of Rob Roy than if there had been no such person, nor
of the new novel than if it had not been written by its
renowned author. There was no reciprocity in this.
But the writer in question does not admit of any merit
second to his own.1

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

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

He even got possession, in the suddenness of his onset,
of the steam-engine of the Times newspaper, and struck
off ten thousand woodcuts of the Projected Villages,
which afforded an ocular demonstration to all who saw
them of the practicability of Mr. Owen's whole scheme.
He comes into a room with one of these documents in

i These fantastic poets are like a foolish ringer at Plymouth that
Northcote tells the story of. He was proud of his ringing, and the
boys who made a jest of his foible used to get him in the belfry and
ask him 'Well now, John, how many good ringers are there in
Plymouth? 'Two,' he would say, without any hesitation. 'Ay,
Indeed! and who are they?' 'Why, first, there's myself, that's

one ; and— and ' Well, and who's the other ? ' ' Why, there's—

there s Ecod, I can't think of any other but myself.' Talk we of

one Master Launcelot. The story is of ringers : it will do for any
vam, shallow, self-satisfied egotist of them alL

ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA 87

his hand, with the air of a schoolmaster and a quack
doctor mixed, asks very kindly how you do, and on
hearing you are still in an indifferent state of health
owing to bad digestion, instantly turns round and
observes that ' All that will be remedied in his plan ;
that indeed he thinks too much attention has been
paid to the mind, and not enough to the body ; that in
his system, which he has now perfected and which will
shortly be generally adopted, he has provided effectu-
ally for both ; that he has been long of opinion that
the mind depends altogether on the physical organisa-
tion, and where the latter is neglected or disordered
the former must languish and want its due vigour ;
that exercise is therefore a part of his system, with
full liberty to develop every faculty of mind and body ;
that two objections had been made to his New View of
Society, viz. its want of relaxation from labour, and its
want of variety ; but the first of these, the too great
restraint, he trusted he had already answered, for
where the powers of mind and body were freely exer-
cised and brought out, surely liberty must be allowed
to exist in the highest degree ; and as to the second,
the monotony which would be produced by a regular
and general plan of co-operation, he conceived he had
proved in his New View and Addresses to the Higher
Glasses, that the co-operation he had recommended
was necessarily conducive to the most extensive im-
provement of the ideas and faculties, and where this
was the case there must be the greatest possible variety
instead of a want of it.' And having said this, this
expert and sweeping orator takes up his hat and walks
downstairs after reading his lecture of truisms like a
playbill or an apothecary's advertisement ; and should
you stop him at the door to say, by way of putting in
a word in common, that Mr. Southey seems somewhat
favourable to his plan in his late Letter to Mr. William
Smith, he looks at you with a smile of pity at the futil-
ity of all opposition and the idleness of all encourage-
ment. People who thus swell out some vapid scheme
of their own into undue importance seem to me to

88 TABLE-TALK

labour under water in the head — to exhibit a huge
hydrocephalus ! They may be very worthy people for
all that, but they are bad companions and very indiffer-
ent reasoners. Tom Moore says of some one some-
where, ' that he puts his hand in his breeches pocket
like a crocodile.' The phrase is hieroglyphical ; but
Mr. Owen and others might be said to put their foot
in the question of social improvement and reform much
in the same unaccountable manner.

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

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

I am not for ' a collusion' but 'an exchange' of ideas.
It is well to hear what other people have to say on a
number of subjects. I do not wish to be always respir-
ing the same confined atmosphere, but to vary the scene,
and get a little relief and fresh air out of doors. Do
all we can to shake it off, there is always enough
pedantry, egotism, and self-conceit left lurking behind ;
we need not seal ourselves up hermetically in these
precious qualities, so as to think of nothing but our
own wonderful discoveries, and hear nothing but the
sound of our own voice. Scholars, like princes, may
learn something by being incognito. Yet we see those
who cannot go into a bookseller's shop, or bear to be
five minutes in a stage-coach, without letting you know
who they are. They carry their reputation about with
them as the snail does its shell, and sit under its canopy,
like the lady in the lobster. 1 cannot understand this
at all. What is the use of a man's always revolving
round his own little circle? He must, one should
think, be tired of it himself, as well as tire other people.
A well-known writer says with much boldness, both in
the thought and expression, that ' a Lord is imprisoned
in the Bastille of a name, and cannot enlarge himself
into man ' ; and I have known men of genius in the

ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA 89

same predicament Why must a man be for ever
mouthing out his own poetry, comparing himself with
Milton, passage by passage, and weighing every line in
a balance of posthumous fame which he holds in his
own hands ? It argues a want of imagination as well
as common sense. Has he no ideas but what he has
put into verse ; or none in common with his hearers ?
Why should he think it the only scholar-like thing,
the only ' virtue extant,' to see the merit of his writ-
ings, and that fmen were brutes without them' ? Why
should he bear a grudge to all art, to all beauty, to all
wisdom, that does not spring from his own brain ? Or
why should he fondly imagine that there is but one
fine thing in the world, namely, poetry, and that he is
the only poet in it ? It will never do. Poetry is a very
fine thing ; but there are other things besides it. Every-
thing must have its turn. Does a wise man think to
enlarge his comprehension by turning his eyes only on
himself, or hope to conciliate the admiration of others
by scouting, proscribing, and loathing all that they
delight in? He must either have a disproportionate
idea of himself, or be ignorant of the world in which
he lives. It is quite enough to have one class of people
born to think the universe made for them ! — It seeins
also to argue a want of repose, of confidence, and firm
faith in a man's real pretensions, to be always dragging
them forward into the foreground, as if the proverb
held here — Out of sight out of mind. Does he, for in-
stance, conceive that no one would ever think of his
poetry unless he forced it upon them by repeating it
himself? Does he believe all competition, all allowance
of another's merit, fatal to him ? Must he, like Moody
in the Country Girl, lock up the faculties of his admirers
in ignorance of all other fine things, painting, music,
the antique, lest they should play truant to him ? Me-
thinks such a proceeding implies no good opinion of
his own genius or their taste : it is deficient in dignity
and in decorum. Surely if any one is convinced of
the reality of an acquisition, he can bear not to have
it spoken of every minute. If he knows he has an

90 TABLE-TALK

undoubted superiority in any respect, he will not be un-
easy because every one he meets is not in the secret,
nor staggered by the report of rival excellence. One of
the first mathematicians and classical scholars of the
day was mentioning it as a compliment to himself that
a cousin of his, a girl from school, had said to him,
' You know [Manning] is a very plain good sort of a
young man, but he is not anything at all out of the
common/ Leigh Hunt once said to me, '1 wonder
I never heard you speak upon this subject before, which
you seem to have studied a good deal.' I answered,
'Why, we were not reduced to that, that I know

of !'

There are persons who, without being chargeable
with the vice here spoken of, yet ' stand accountant
for as great a sin' ; though not dull and monotonous,
they are vivacious mannerists in their conversation,
and excessive egotists. Though they run over a thou-
sand subjects in mere gaiety of heart, their delight still
flows from one idea, namely, themselves. Open the
book in what page you will, there is a frontispiece of
themselves staring you in the face. They are a sort of
Jacks o' the Green, with a sprig of laurel, a little tinsel,
and a little smut, but still playing antics and keeping
in incessant motion, to attract attention and extort
your pittance of approbation. Whether they talk of
the town or the country, poetry or politics, it comes
to much the same thing. If they talk to you of the
town, its diversions, 'its palaces, its ladies, and its
streets,' they are the delight, the grace, and ornament
of it If they are describing the charms of the country,
they give np account of any individual spot or object
or source of pleasure but the circumstance of their being
there. 'With them conversing, we forget all place, all
seasons, and their change/ They perhaps pluck a leaf
or a flower, patronise it, and hand it you to admire, but
select no one feature of beauty or grandeur to dispute
the palm of perfection with their own persons. Their
rural descriptions are mere landscape backgrounds with
their own portraits in an engaging attitude in front.

ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA 91

They are not observing or enjoying the scene, but doing
the honours as masters of the ceremonies to nature, and
arbiters of elegance to all humanity. If they tell a
love-tale of enamoured princesses, it is plain they fancy
themselves the hero of the piece. If they discuss
poetry, their encomiums still turn on something genial
and unsophisticated, meaning their own style. If they
enter into politics, it is understood that a hint from
them to the potentates of Europe is sufficient. In
short, as a lover (talk of what you will) brings in his
mistress at every turn, so these persons contrive to
divert your attention to the same darling object — they
are, in fact, in love with themselves, and, like lovers,
should be left to keep their own company.

ESSAY VIII

ON THE IGNORANCE OP THE LEARNED

For the more languages a man can speak,

His talent has but sprung the greater leak :

And, for the industry he has spent upon't,

Must full as much some other way discount.

The Hebrew, Chaldee, and the Syriac

Do, like their letters, set men's reason back,

And turn their wits that strive to understand it

(Like those that write the characters) left-handed.

Yet he that is but able to express

No sense at all in several languages,

Will pass for learneder than he that's known

To speak the strongest reason in his own.

BUTLER.

THE description of persons who have the fewest ideas
of all others are mere authors and readers. It is better
to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to
do nothing else. A lounger who is ordinarily seen with
a book in his hand is (we may be almost sure) equally
without the power or inclination to attend either to
what passes around him or in his own mind. Such a
one may be said to carry his understanding about with
him in his pocket, or to leave it at home on his library
shelves. He is afraid of venturing on any train of
reasoning, or of striking out any observation that is
not mechanically suggested to him by passing his eyes
over certain legible characters ; shrinks from the fatigue
of thought, which, for want of practice, becomes insup-
portable to him ; and sits down contented with an
endless, wearisome succession of words and half-formed
images, which fill the void of the mind, and continually
efface one another. Learning is, in too many cases,

THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED 93

but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true know-
ledge. Books are less often made use of as 'spectacles '\
to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its-
strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and }
indolent dispositions. The book-worm wraps himself
up in his web of verbal generalities, and sees only the
glimmering shadows of things reflected from the minds
of others. Nature puts him out. The impressions of
real objects, stripped of the disguises of words and
voluminous roundabout descriptions, are blows that
stagger him ; their variety distracts, their rapidity ex-
hausts him ; and he turns from the bustle, the noise, ti
and glare, and whirling motion of the world about him )
(which he has not an eye to follow in its fantastic
changes, nor an understanding to reduce to fixed prin-
ciples), to the quiet monotony of the dead languages,
and the less startling and more intelligible combinations
of the letters of the alphabet. It is well, it is perfectly
well. 'Leave me to my repose/ is the motto of the
sleeping and the dead. You might as well ask the
paralytic to leap from his chair and throw away his
crutch, or, without a miracle, to { take up his bed and
walk,' as expect the learned reader to throw down his
book and think for himself. He clings to it for his
intellectual support ; and his dread of being left to
himself is like the horror of a vacuum. He can only
breathe a learned atmosphere, as other men breathe
common air. He is a borrower of sense. He has no
ideas of his own, and must live on those of other
people. The habit of supplying our ideas from foreign
sources ' enfeebles all internal strength of thought,' as
a course of dram -drinking destroys the tone of the
stomach. The faculties of the mind, when not exerted,
or when cramped by custom and authority, become
listless, torpid, and unfit for the purposes of thought
or action. Can we wonder at the languor and lassitude
which is thus produced by a life of learned sloth and
ignorance ; by poring over lines and syllables that
excite little more idea or interest than if they were
the characters of an unknown tongue, till the eye

94 TABLE-TALK

closes on vacancy, and the book drops from the feeble
hand ! I would rather be a wood-cutter, or the meanest
hind, that all day 'sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and
at night sleeps in Elysium,' than wear out my life so,
'twixt dreaming and awake. The learned author differs
from the learned student in this, that the one tran-
scribes what the other reads. The learned are mere
literary drudges. If you set them upon original com-
position, their heads turn, they don't know where they
are. The indefatigable readers of books are like the
everlasting copiers of pictures, who, when they attempt
to do anything of their own, find they want an eye
quick enough, a hand steady enough, and colours
bright enough, to trace the living forms of nature.

Any one who has passed through the regular grada-
tions of a classical education, and is not made a fool by
it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow
escape. It is an old remark, that boys who shine at
school do not make the greatest figure when they grow
up and come out into the world. The things, in fact,
which a boy is set to learn at school, and on which his
success depends, are things which do not require the
exercise either of the highest or the most useful
faculties of the mind. Memory (and that of the lowest
kind) is the chief faculty called into play in conning
over and repeating lessons by rote in grammar, in
languages, in geography, arithmetic, etc., so that he
who has the most of this technical memory, with the
least turn for other things, which have a stronger and
more natural claim upon his childish attention, will
make the most forward school-boy. The jargon con-
taining the definitions of the parts of speech, the rules
for casting up an account, or the inflections of a Greek
verb, can have no attraction to the tyro of ten years
old, except as they are imposed as a task upon him by
others, or from his feeling the want of sufficient relish
or amusement in other things. A lad with a sickly
constitution and no very active mind, who can just
retain what is pointed out to him, and has neither
sagacity to distinguish nor spirit to enjoy for himself,

THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED 95

mil generally be at the head of his form. An idler at
school, on the other hand, is one who has high health
and spirits, who has the free use of his limbs, with all
his wits about him, who feels the circulation of his
blood and the motion of his heart, who is ready to
laugh and cry in a breath, and who had rather chase a
ball or a butterfly, feel the open air in his face, look at
the fields or the sky, follow a winding path, or enter
with eagerness into all the little conflicts and interests
of his acquaintances and friends, than doze over a
musty spelling-book, repeat barbarous distichs after his
master, sit so many hours pinioned to a writing-desk,
and receive his reward for the loss of time and pleasure
in paltry prize-medals at Christmas and Midsummer.
There is indeed a degree of stupidity which prevents
children from learning the usual lessons, or ever
arriving at these puny academic honours. But what
passes for stupidity is much often er a want of interest,
of a sufficient motive to fix the attention and force a
reluctant application to the dry and unmeaning pursuits
of school-learning. The best capacities are as much
above this drudgery as the dullest are beneath it.
Our men of the greatest genius have not been most *
distinguished for their acquirements at school or at the f
university.

Th' enthusiast Fancy was a truant ever.

Gray and Collins were among the instances of this
wayward disposition. Such persons do not think so
highly of the advantages, nor can they submit their
imaginations so servilely to the trammels of strict
scholastic discipline. There is a certain kind and
degree of intellect in which words take root, but into
which things have not power to penetrate. A medi-
ocrity of talent, with a certain slenderness of moral
constitution, is the soil that produces the most brilliant
specimens of successful prize -essayists and Greek
epigrammatists. It should not be forgotten that the
least respectable character among modern politicians
was the cleverest boy at Eton.

96 TABLE-TALK

Learning is the knowledge of that which is not
generally known to others, and which we can only
derive at second-hand from books or other artificial
sources. The knowledge of that which is before us,
or about us, which appeals to our experience, passions,
and pursuits, to the bosoms and businesses of men, is
not learning. Learning is the knowledge of that
which none but the learned know. He is the most
learned man who knows the most of what is farthest
removed from common life and actual observation, that
is of the least practical utility, and least liable to be
brought to the test of experience, and that, having
been handed down through the greatest number of
intermediate stages, is the most full of uncertainty,
difficulties, and contradictions. It is seeing with the
eyes of others, hearing with their ears, and pinning
our faith on their understandings. The learned man
prides himself in the knowledge of names and dates,
not of men or things. He thinks and cares nothing
about his next-door neighbours, but he is deeply read
in the tribes and castes of the Hindoos and Calmuc
Tartars. He can hardly find his way into the next
street, though he is acquainted with the exact dimen-
sions of Constantinople and Pekin. He does not know
whether his oldest acquaintance is a knave or a fool,
but he can pronounce a pompous lecture on all the
principal characters in history. He cannot tell whether
an object is black or white, round or square, and yet
he is a professed master of the laws of optics and the
rules of perspective. He knows as much of what he
talks about as a blind man does of colours. He cannot
give a satisfactory answer to the plainest question, nor
is he ever in the right in any one of his opinions upon
any one matter of fact that really comes before him,
and yet he gives himself out for an infallible judge on
all these points, of which it is impossible that he or any
other person living should know anything but by
conjecture. He is expert in all the dead and in most
of the living languages ; but he can neither speak his
own fluently, nor write it correctly. A person of thi&

THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED 97

class, the second Greek scholar of his day, undertook
to point out several solecisms in Milton's Latin style ;
and in his own performance there is hardly a sentence

of common English. Such was Dr. . Such is

Dr. . Such was not Person. He was an exception

that confirmed the general rule, — a man that, by
uniting talents and knowledge with learning, made the
distinction between them more striking and palpable.

A mere scholar, who knows nothing but books, must
be ignorant even of them. ' Books do not teach the
use of books.' How should he know anything of a
work who knows nothing of the subject of it ? The
learned pedant is conversant with books only as they
are made of other books, and those again of others,
without end. He parrots those who have parroted
others. He can translate the same word into ten
different languages, but he knows nothing of the thing
which it means in any one of them. He stuffs his head
with authorities built on authorities, with quotations
quoted from quotations, while he locks up his senses,
his understanding, and his heart. He is unacquainted
with the maxims and manners of the world ; he is to
seek in the characters of individuals. He sees no beauty
in the face of nature or of art. To him ' the mighty
world of eye and ear ' is hid ; and ( knowledge,' except
at one entrance, ' quite shut out.' His pride takes part
with tois ignorance ; and his self-importance rises with
the number of things of which he does not know the
value, and which he therefore despises as unworthy of
his notice. He knows nothing of pictures, — 'of the
colouring of Titian, the grace of Raphael, the purity of
Domenichino, the corregioscity of Correggio, the learn-
ing of Poussin, the airs of Guido, the taste of tho Caracci,
or the grand contour of Michael Angelo,' — of all those
glories of the Italian and miracles of the Flemish school,
which have filled the eyes of mankind with delight, and
to the study and imitation of which thousands have in
vain devoted their lives. These are to him as if they
had never been, a mere dead letter, a by-word ; and
no wonder, for he neither sees nor understands their

98 TABLE-TALK

prototypes in nature. A print of Rubens' Watering-
place or Claude's Enchanted Castle may be hanging
on the walls of his room for months without his once
perceiving them ; and if you point them out to him he
will turn away from them. The language of nature,
or of art (which is another nature), is one that he does
not understand. He repeats indeed the names of
Apelles and Phidias, because they are to be found in
classic authors, and boasts of their works as prodigies,
because they no longer exist ; or when he sees the finest
remains of Grecian art actually before him in the Elgin
Marbles, takes no other interest in them than as they
lead to a learned dispute, and (which is the same thing)
a quarrel about the meaning of a Greek particle. He
is equally ignorant of music ; he ' knows no touch of
it,' from the strains of the all-accomplished Mozart to
the shepherd's pipe upon the mountain. His ears are
nailed to his books ; and deadened with the sound of

!the Greek and Latin tongues, and the din and smithery
of school-learning. Does he know anything more of
poetry ? He knows the number of feet in a verse, and
of acts in a play ; but of the soul or spirit he knows
nothing. He can turn a Greek ode into English, or a
Latin epigram into Greek verse ; but whether either is
worth the trouble he leaves to the critics. Does he
understand { the act and practique part of life ' better
than ' the theorique ' ? No. He knows no liberal or
)( mechanic art, no trade or occupation, no game of skill
or chance. Learning ( has no skill in surgery,' in
agriculture, in building, in working in wood or in iron ;
it cannot make any instrument of labour, or use it when
made ; it cannot handle the plough or the spade, or the
chisel or the hammer ; it knows nothing of hunting or
hawking, fishing or shooting, of horses or dogs, of
fencing or dancing, or cudgel-playing, or bowls, or
cards, or tennis, or anything else. The learned
professor of all arts and sciences cannot reduce any one
of them to practice, though he may contribute an
account of them to an Encyclopedia, He has not the
use of his hands nor of his feet ; he can neither run,

THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED 99

nor walk, nor swim ; aiid he considers all those who
actually understand and can exercise any of these arts
of body or mind as vulgar and mechanical men, —
though to know almost any one of them in perfection
requires long time aiid practice, with powers originally
fitted, and a turn of mind particularly devoted to them.
It does riot require more than this to enable the learned
candidate to arrive, by painful study, at a doctor's
degree and a fellowship, and to eat, drink, and sleep
the rest of his life !

The thing is plain. All that men really understand
is confined to a very small compass ; to their daily affairs
and experience ; to what they have an opportunity to
know, and motives to study or practise. The rest is
affectation and imposture. The common people have
the use of their limbs ; for they live by their labour or
skill. They understand their own business and the
characters of those they have to deal with ; for it is
necessary that they should. They have eloquence to
express their passions, and wit at will to express their
contempt and provoke laughter. Their natural use of
speech is not hung up in monumental mockery, in
an obsolete language ; nor is their sense of what is
ludicrous, or readiness at finding out allusions to express
it, buried in collections of Anas. You will hear more
good things on the outside of a stage-coach from London
to Oxford than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with
the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous
university ; and more home truths are to be learnt from
listening to a noisy debate in an alehouse than from
attending to a formal one in the House of Commons.
An elderly country gentlewoman will often know more
of character, and be able to illustrate it by more amus-
ing anecdotes taken from the history of what has been
said, done, and gossiped in a country town for the last
fifty years, than the best blue-stocking of the age will
be able to glean from that sort of learning which
consists in an acquaintance with all the novels and
satirical poems published in the same period. People |
in towns, indeed, are woefully deficient in a knowledge f

100 TABLE-TALK

{of character, which they see only in the bust, not as a
whole-length. People in the country not only know
all that has happened to a man, but trace his virtues or
vices, as they do his features, in their descent through
several generations, and solve some contradiction in
his behaviour by a cross in the breed half a century
ago. The learned know nothing of the matter, either
in town or country. Above all, the mass of society
have common sense, which the learned in all ages want.
The vulgar are in the right when they judge for
themselves ; they are wrong when they trust to their
blind guides. The celebrated nonconformist divine,
Baxter, was almost stoned to death by the good women
of Kidderminster, for asserting from the pulpit that
{ hell was paved with infants' skulls ' ; but, by the force
of argument, and of learned quotations from the
Fathers, the reverend preacher at length prevailed
over the scruples of his congregation, and over reason
and humanity.

Such is the use which has been made of human learn-
ing. The labourers in this vineyard seem as if it was
their object to confound all common sense, and the dis-
tinctions of good and evil, by means of traditional
maxims and preconceived notions taken upon trust,
and increasing in absurdity with increase of age.
They pile hypothesis on hypothesis, mountain high,
till it is impossible to come at the plain truth on any
question. They see things, not as they are, but as
they find them in books, and ' wink and shut their
apprehensions up,' in order that they may discover
nothing to interfere with their prejudices or convince
them of their absurdity. It might be supposed that
the height of human wisdom consisted in maintaining
contradictions and rendering nonsense sacred. There
is no dogma, however fierce or foolish, to which these
persons have not set their seals, and tried to impose on
the understandings of their followers as the will of
Heaven, clothed with all the terrors and sanctions of
religion. How little has the human understanding
been directed to find out the true and useful ! How

THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED 101

much ingenuity has been thrown away in the defence
of creeds and systems ! How much time and talents
have been wasted in theological controversy, in law, in
politics, in verbal criticism, in judicial astrology, and
in finding out the art of making gold ! What actual
benefit do we reap from the writings of a Laud tTr a
Whitgift, or of Bishop Bull or Bishop Waterland, or
Prideaux' Connections, or Beausobre, or Calmet, or St.
Augustine, or Puffendorf, or Vattel, or from the more
literal but equally learned and unprofitable labours of
Scaliger, Cardan, and Scioppius? How many grains
of sense are there in their thousand folio or quarto
volumes? What would the world lose if they were'
committed to the flames to-morrow ? Or are they not
already ' gone to the vault of all the Capulets ' ? Yet
all these were pjracles in their time, and would have
scoffed at you or me, at common sense and human
nature, for "differing with them. It is our turn to laugh
now.

To conclude this subject The most sensible people
to be met with in society are men of business and of
the world, who argue from what they see and know,
instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things
ought to be. "Women have often more of what is called
good sense than men. They have fewer pretensions ;
are less implicated in theories ; and judge of objects
more from their immediate and involuntary impression
on the mind, and, therefore, moje truly and naturally.
They cannot reason wrong ; for they do not reason at
all. They do not think or speak by rule ; and they
have in general more eloquence and wit, as well as
sense, on that account. By their wit, sense, ancT
eloquence together, they generally contrive to govern
their husbands. Their style, when they write to their
friends (not for the booksellers), is better than that of
most authors. — Uneducated people have most exuber-
ance of invention and the greatest freedom from
prejudice. Shakespear's was evidently an uneducated
mind, both in the freshness of his imagination and in
the variety of his views ; as Milton's was scholastic, in

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the texture both of his thoughts and feelings. Shake-
spear had not been accustomed to write themes at school
in favour of virtue or against vice. To this we owe the
unaffected but healthy tone of his dramatic morality.
If we wish to know the £Qr.c,e of human genius we
should read Shakespear. If we wish to see the insig-
\ nificance of human learning we may study his com-
mentators.

ESSAY IX

THE INDIAN JUGGLKRS

COMING forward and seating himself on the ground in
his white dress and tightened turban, the chief of the
Indian Jugglers begins with tossing up two brass balls,
which is what any of us could do, and concludes with
keeping up four at the same time, which is what none
of us could do to save our lives, nor if we were to take
our whole lives to do it in. Is it then a trifling power
we see at work, or is it not something next to miracu-
lous ? It is the utmost stretch of human ingenuity,
which nothing but the bending the faculties of body
and mind to it from the tenderest infancy with in-
cessant, ever anxious application up to manhood can
accomplish or make even a slight approach to. Man,
thou art a wonderful animal, and thy ways past finding
out ! Thou canst do strange things, but thou turnest
them to little account ! — To conceive of this effort of
extraordinary dexterity distracts the imagination and
makes admiration breathless. Yet it costs nothing to
the performer, any more than if it were a mere
mechanical deception with which he had nothing to do
but to watch and laugh at the astonishment of the
spectators. A single error of a hair's-breadth, of the
smallest conceivable portion of time, would be fatal :
the precision of the movements must be like a mathe-
matical truth, their rapidity is like lightning. To
catch four balls in succession in less than a second of
time, and deliver them back so as to return with
seeming consciousness to the hand again ; to make

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them revolve round him at certain intervals, like the
planets in their spheres ; to make them chase one
another like sparkles of fire, or shoot up like flowers or
meteors ; to throw them behind his hack and twine
them round his neck like ribbons or like serpents ; to
do what appears an impossibility, and to do it with all
the ease, the grace, the carelessness imaginable; to
laugh at, to play with the glittering mockeries ; to
follow them with his eye as if he could fascinate them
with its lambent fire, or as if he had only to see that
they kept time with the music on the stage, — there is
something in all this which he who does not admire
may be quite sure he never really admired anything in
the whole course of his life. It is skill surmounting
difficulty, and beauty triumphing over skill. It seems
as if the difficulty once mastered naturally resolved
itself into ease and grace, and as if to be overcome at
all, it must be overcome without an effort. The
smallest awkwardness or want of pliancy or self-posses-
sion would stop the whole process. It is the work of
witchcraft, and yet sport for children. Some of the
other feats are quite as curious and wonderful, such as
the balancing the artificial tree and shooting a bird
from each branch through a quill; though none of
them have the elegance or facility of the keeping up
of the brass balls. You are in pain for the result, and
glad when the experiment is over; they are not ac-
companied with the same unmixed, unchecked delight
as the former ; and I would not give much to be merely
astonished without being pleased at the same time.
As to the swallowing of the sword, the police ought to
interfere to prevent it. When I saw the Indian
Juggler do the same things before, his feet were bare,
and he had large rings on the toes, which kept turning
round all the time of the performance, as if they
moved of themselves. — The hearing a speech in Parlia-
ment drawled or stammered out by the Honourable
Member or the Noble Lord ; the ringing the changes on
their common-places, which any one could repeat after
them as well as they, stirs me not a jot, shakes not my

THE INDIAN JUGGLERS 105

good opinion of myself; but the seeing the Indian
Jugglers does. It makes me ashamed of myself. I
ask what there is that I can do as well as this ? Nothing.
What have I been doing all my life? Have I been
idle, or have I nothing to show for all my labour and
pains? Or have 1 passed my time in pouring words
like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill
and then down again, trying to prove an argument in
the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark
and not finding them ? Is there no one thing in which
I can challenge competition, that 1 can bring as an
instance of exact perfection in which others cannot
find a flaw ? The utmost I can pretend to is to write a
description of what this fellow can do. I can write a
book : so can many others who have not even learned
to spell. What abortions are these Essays ! ^V^lat
errors, what ill-pieced transitions, what crooked reasons,
what lame conclusions ! How little is made out, and
that little how ill ! Yet they are the best I can do. 1
endeavour to recollect all I have ever observed or
thought upon a subject, and to express it as nearly as I
can. Instead of writing on four subjects at a time, it
is as much as I can manage to keep the thread of one
discourse clear and unentangled. I have also time on
my hands to correct my opinions, and polish my
periods ; but the one I cannot, and the other I will not
do. 1 am fond of arguing : yet with a good deal of
pains and practice it is often as much as I can do to
beat my man ; though he may be an indifferent hand.
A common fencer would disarm his adversary in the
twinkling of an eye, unless he were a professor like
himself. A stroke of wit will sometimes produce this
effect, but there is no such power or superiority in
sense or reasoning. There is no complete mastery of
execution to be shown there ; and you hardly know
the professor from the impudent pretender or the mere
clown.1

1 The celebrated Peter Pindar (Dr. Wolcot) first discovered and
brought out the talents of the late Mr. Opie the painter. He was a
poor Cornish boy, and was out at work in the fields when the poet

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I have always had this feeling of the inefficacy and
slow progress of intellectual compared to mechanical
excellence, and it has always made me somewhat dis-
satisfied. It is a great many years since I saw Richer,
the famous rope-dancer, perform at Sadler's Wells. He
was matchless in his art, and added to his extraordinary
skill exquisite ease, and unaffected, natural grace. I
was at that time employed in copying a half-length
picture of Sir Joshua Reynolds's ; and it put me out
of conceit with it. How ill this part was made out in
the drawing ! How heavy, how slovenly this other
was painted ! I could not help saying to myself, ' If
the rope-dancer had performed his task in this manner,
leaving so many gaps and botches in his work, he
would have broken his neck long ago ; I should never
have seen that vigorous elasticity of nerve and precision
of movement!' — Is it, then, so easy an undertaking
(comparatively) to dance on a tightrope? Let any
one who thinks so get up and try. There is the thing.
It is that which at first we cannot do at all which in
the end is done to such perfection. To account for
this in some degree, I might observe that mechanical
dexterity is confined to doing some one particular
thing, which you can repeat as often as you please,
in which you know whether you succeed or fail, and
where the point of perfection consists in succeeding in
a given undertaking. — In mechanical efforts you im-
prove by perpetual practice, and you do so infallibly,
because the object to be attained is not a matter of
taste or fancy or opinion, but of actual experiment,
in which you must either do the thing or not do it.
If a man is put to aim at a mark with a bow and arrow,
he must hit it or miss it, that's certain. He cannot

went in search of him. ' Well, my lad, can you go and bring me your
very best picture?' The other flew like lightning, and soon came
back with what he considered as his masterpiece. The stranger
looked at it, and the young artist, after waiting for some time with-
out his giving any opinion, at length exclaimed eagerly, ' Well, what
do you think of it?' 'Think of it?' said Wolcot; 'why, I think you
ought to be ashamed of it^ that you, who might do so well, do no
better ! The same answer would have applied to this artist's latest
performances, that had been suggested by one of his earliest efforts.

THE INDIAN JUGGLERS 107

deceive himself, and go on shooting wide or falling
short, and still fancy that he is making progress. The
distinction between right and wrong, between true and
false, is here palpable ; and he must either correct his
aim or persevere in his error with his eyes open, for
which there is neither excuse nor temptation. If a
man is learning to dance on a rope, if he does not mind
what he is about he will break his neck. After that
it will be in vain for him to argue that he did not make
a false step. His situation is not like that of Gold-
smith's pedagogue : —

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

Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So
are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and
laughter. There is no opportunity in such cases for
self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your
guard (or you must take the consequences) — neither
is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice.
If the Indian Juggler were to play tricks in throwing
up the three case-knives, which keep their positions
like the leaves of a crocus in the air, he would cut his
fingers. I can make a very bad antithesis without
cutting my fingers. The tact of style is more ambigu-
ous than that of double-edged instruments. If the
Juggler were told that by flinging himself under the
wheels of the Juggernaut, when the idol issues forth
on a gaudy day, he would immediately be transported
into Paradise, he might believe it, and nobody could
disprove it. So the Brahmins may say what they please
on that subject, may build up d'ogmas and mysteries
without end, and not be detected ; but their ingenious
countryman cannot persuade the frequenters of the
Olympic Theatre that he performs a number of aston-
ishing feats without actually giving proofs of what he
says. — There is, then, in this sort of manual dexterity,
first a gradual aptitude acquired to a given exertion of
muscular power, from constant repetition, and in the
next place, an exact knowledge how much is still wanting

108 TABLE-TALK

and necessary to be supplied. The obvious test is
to increase the effort or nicety of the operation, and
still to find it come true. The muscles ply instinct-
ively to the dictates of habit. Certain movements and
impressions of the hand and eye, having been repeated
together an infinite number of times, are unconsciously
but unavoidably cemented into closer and closer union ;
the limbs require little more than to be put in motion
for them to follow a regular track with ease and cer-
tainty ; so that the mere intention of the will acts
mathematically like touching the spring of a machine,
and you come with Locksley in Ivanhoe, in shooting at
a mark, 'to allow for the wind/

Further, what is meant by perfection in mechanical
exercises is the performing certain feats to a uniform
nicety, that is, in fact, undertaking no more than you
can perform. You task yourself, the limit you fix is
optional, and no more than human industry and skill
can attain to ; but you have no abstract, independent
standard of difficulty or excellence (other than the
extent of your own powers). Thus he who can keep
up four brass balls does this to perfection ; but he can-
not keep up five at the same instant, and would fail
every time he attempted it. That is, the mechanical
performer undertakes to emulate himself, not to equal
another. l But the artist undertakes to imitate another,
or to do what Nature has done, and this it appears is
more difficult, viz. to copy what she has set before us
in the face of nature or ' human face divine,' entire and
without a blemish, than to keep up four brass balls at
the same instant, for the one is done by the power of
human skill and industry, and the other never was nor
will be. Upon the whole, therefore, I have more
respect for Reynolds than I have for Richer ; for,
happen how it will, there have been more people in the
world who could dance on a rope like the one than
who could paint like Sir Joshua. The latter was but
a bungler in his profession to the other, it is true ; but

i If two persons play against each other at any game, one of them
necessarily fails.

THE INDIAN JUGGLERS 100

then he had a harder taskmaster to obey, whose will
was more wayward and obscure, and whose instructions
it was more difficult to practise. You can put a child
apprentice to a tumbler or rope-dancer with a comfort-
able prospect of success, if they are but sound of wind
and limb ; but you cannot do the same thing in paint-
ing. The odds are a million to one. You may make

indeed as many Haydons and H s as you put into

that sort of machine, but not one Reynolds amongst
them all, with his grace, his grandeur, his blandness
of gusto, ' in tones and gestures hit,' unless you could
make the man over again. To snatch this grace
beyond the reach of art is then the height of art —
where fine art begins, and where mechanical skill ends.
The soft suffusion of the soul, the speechless breathing
eloquence, the looks ' commercing with the skies,' the
ever-shifting forms of an eternal principle, that which
is seen but for a moment, but dwells in the heart
always, and is only seized as it passes by strong and
secret sympathy, must be taught by nature and genius,
not by rujes or study. It is suggested by feeling, not
by laborious microscopic inspection ; in seeking for it
without, we lose the harmonious clue to it within ; and
in aiming to grasp the substance, we let the very spirit
of art evaporate. In a word, the objects of fine art are
not the objects of sight, but as these last are the
objects of taste and imagination, that is, as they appeal
to the sense of beauty, of pleasure, and of power in the
human breast, and are explained by that finer sense,
and revealed in their inner structure to the eye in
return. Nature is also a language. Objects, like
words, have a meaning ; and the true artist is the
interpreter of this language, which he can only do by
knowing its application, to a thousand other objects in
a thousand other situations. Thus the eye is too blind
a guide of itself to distinguish between the warm or
cold tone of a deep-blue sky ; but another sense acts
as a monitor to it and does not err. The colour of
the leaves in autumn would be nothing without the
feeling that accompanies it ; but it is that feeling that

110 TABLE-TALK

stamps them on the canvas, faded, seared, blighted,
shrinking from the winter's flaw, and makes the sight
as true as touch —

And visions, as poetic eyes avow,

Cling to each leaf and hang on every bough.

The more ethereal, evanescent, more refined and sub-
lime part of art is the seeing nature through the
medium of sentiment and passion, as each object is a
symbol of the affections and a link in the chain of our
endless being. But the unravelling this mysterious
web of thought and feeling is alone in the Muse's gift,
namely, in the power of that trembling sensibility
which is awake to every change and every modification
of its ever-varying impressions, that

Thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line.

This power is indifferently called genius, imagination,
feeling, taste ; but the manner in which it acts upon
the mind can neither be defined by abstract rules, as is
the case in science, nor verified by continual, unvarying
experiments, as is the case in mechanical performances.
The mechanical excellence of the Dutch painters in
colouring and handling is that which comes the nearest
in fine art to the perfection of certain manual exhibi-
tions of skill. The truth of the effect and the facility
with which it is produced are equally admirable. Up
to a certain point everything is faultless. The hand
and eye have done their part. There is only a want
of taste and genius. It is after we enter upon that
enchanted ground that the human mind begins to
droop and Hag as in a strange road, or in a thick mist,
benighted and making little way with many attempts
and many failures, and that the best of us only escape
with half a triumph. The undefined and the imaginary
are the regions that we must pass like Satan, difficult
and doubtful, ' half flying, half on foot.' The object
in sense is a positive thing, and execution comes with
practice.

THE INDIAN JUGGLERS 111

Cleverness is a certain knack or aptitude at doing
certain things, which depend more on a particular
adroitness and off-hand readiness than on force or per-
severance, such as making puns, making epigrams,
making extempore verses, mimicking the company,
mimicking a style, etc. Cleverness is either liveliness
and smartness, or something answering to sleight of
hand, like letting a glass fall sideways off a table, or
else a trick, like knowing the secret spring of a watch.
Accomplishments are certain external graces, which
are to be learned from others, and which are easily
displayed to the admiration of the beholder, viz.
dancing, riding, fencing, music, and so on. These
ornamental acquirements are only proper to those who
are at ease in mind and fortune. I know an individual
who, if he had been born to an estate of five thousand a
year, would have been the most accomplished gentle-
man of the age. He would have been the delight and
envy of the circle in which he moved — would have
graced by his manners the liberality flowing from the
openness of his heart, would have laughed with the
women, have argued with the men, have said good
things and written agreeable ones, have taken a hand
at piquet or the lead at the harpsichord, and have set
and sung his own verses — nugae canorae — with tender-
ness and spirit ; a Rochester without the vice, a modern
Surrey ! As it is, all these capabilities of excellence
stand in his way. He is too versatile for a professional
man, not dull enough for a political drudge, too gay
to be happy, too thoughtless to be rich. He wants the
enthusiasm of the poet, the severity of the prose-writer,
and the application of the man of business. — Talent is
the capacity of doing anything that depends on appli-
cation and industry, such as writing a criticism, making
a speech, studying the law. Talent differs from genius
as voluntary differs from involuntary power. Ingenuity
is genius in trifles ; greatness is genius in undertakings
of much pith and moment. A clever or ingenious
man is one who can do anything well, whether it is
worth doing or not ; a great man is one who can do

112 TABLE-TALK

that which when done is of the highest importance
Themistocles said he could not play on the flute, but
that he could make of a small city a great one. This
gives one a pretty good idea of the distinction in ques-
tion.

Greatness is great power, producing great effects.
It is not enough that a man has great power in himself ;
he must show it to all the world in a way that cannot
be hid or gainsaid. He must fill up a certain idea in
the public mind. I have no other notion of greatness
than this twofold definition, great results springing
from great inherent energy. The great in visible ob-
jects has relation to that which extends over space ;
the great in mental ones has to do with space and time.
No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime.
The test of greatness is the page of history. Nothing
can be said to be great that has a distinct limit, or that
borders on something evidently greater than itself.
Besides, what is short-lived and pampered into mere
notoriety is of a gross and vulgar quality in itself. A
Lord Mayor is hardly a great man. A city orator or
patriot of the day only show, by reaching the height of
their wishes, the distance they are at from any true am-
bition. Popularity is neither fame nor greatness. A
king (as such) is not a great man. He has great power,
but it is not his own. He merely wields the lever of
the state, which a child, an idiot, or a madman can do.
It is the office, not the man we gaze at. Any one else
in the same situation would be just as much an object
of abject curiosity. We laugh at the country girl who
having seen a king expressed her disappointment by
saying, ' Why, he is only a man ! ' Yet, knowing
this, we run to see a king as if he was something more
than a man. — To display the greatest powers, unless
they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for
the character of greatness. To throw a barleycorn
through the eye of a needle, to multiply nine figures
by nine in the memory, argues definite dexterity of
body and capacity of mind, but nothing comes of either,
There is a surprising power at work, but the effects are

THE INDIAN JUGGLERS 113

not proportionate, or such as take hold of the imagina-
tion. To impress the idea of power on others, they
must he made in some way to feel it. It must be com-
municated to their understandings in the shape of an
increase of knowledge, or it must subdue and overawe
them by subjecting their wills. Admiration to be solid
and lasting must be founded on proofs from which we
have no means of escaping ; it is neither a slight nor a
voluntary gift. A mathematician who solves a pro-
found problem, a poet who creates an image of beauty
in the mind that was not there before, imparts know-
ledge and power to others, in which his greatness and
his fame consists, and on which it reposes. Jedediah
Buxton will be forgotten ; but Napier's bones will live.
Lawgivers, philosophers, founders of religion, con-
querors and heroes, inventors and great geniuses in
arts and sciences, are great men, for they are great
public benefactors, or formidable scourges to mankind.
Among ourselves, Shakespear, Newton, Bacon, Milton,
Cromwell, were great men, for they showed great
power by acts and thoughts, which have not yet "been
consigned to oblivion. They must needs be men of
lofty stature, whose shadows lengthen out to remote
posterity. A great farce-writer may be a great man ;
for Moliere was but a great farce-writer. In my mind,
the author of Don Quixote was a great man. So have
there been many others. A great chess-player is not
a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.
No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. This
will apply to all displays of power or trials of skill which
are confined to the momentary, individual effort, and
construct no permanent image or trophy of themselves
without them. Is not an actor then a great man,
because ' he dies and leaves the world no copy ' ? I
must make an exception for Mrs. Siddons, or else give
up my definition of greatness for her sake. A man at
the top of his profession is not therefore a great man.
He is great in his way, but that is all, unless he shows
the marks of a great moving intellect, so that we trace
the master-mind, and can sympathise with the springs
i

114 TABLE-TALK

that urge him on. The rest is but a craft or mystery.
John Hunter was a great man — that any one might see
without the smallest skill in surgery. His style and
manner showed the man. He would set about cutting
up the carcass of a whale with the same greatness of
gusto that Michael Angelo would have hewn a block of
marble. Lord Nelson was a great naval commander ;
but for myself, I have not much opinion of a seafaring
life. Sir Humphry Davy is a great chemist, but I am
not sure that he is a great man. I am not a bit the
wiser for any of his discoveries, nor I never met with
any one that was. But it is in the nature of greatness
to propagate an idea of itself, as wave impels wave,
circle without circle. It is a contradiction in terms
for a coxcomb to be a great man. A really great man
has always an idea of something greater than himself.
I have observed that certain sectaries and polemical
writers have no higher compliment to pay their most
shining lights than to say that f< Such a one was a con-
siderable man in his day." Some new elucidation of a
text sets aside the authority of the old interpretation,
and a " great scholar's memory outlives him half a
century," at the utmost. A rich man is not a great
man, except to his dependants and his steward. A
lord is a great man in the idea we have of his ancestry,
and probably of himself, if we know nothing of him
but his title. I have heard a story of two bishops, one
of whom said (speaking of St. Peter's at Rome) that
when he first entered it, he was rather awe-struck, but
that as he walked up it, his mind seemed to swell and
dilate with it, and at last to fill the whole building :
the other said that as he saw more of it, he appeared
to himself to grow less and less every step he took, and
in the end to dwindle into nothing. This was in some
respects a striking picture of a great and little mind ;
for greatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness
shrinks into itself. The one might have become a
Wolsey ; the other was only fit to become a Mendi-
cant Friar — or there might have been court reasons
for making him a bishop. The French have to me a

THE INDIAN JUGGLERS 115

character of littleness in all about them ; but they have
produced three great men that belong to every country,
Moliere, Rabelais, and Montaigne.

To return from this digression, and conclude the
Essay. A singular instance of manual dexterity was
shown in the person of the late John Cavanagh, whom
1 have several times seen. His death was celebrated at
the time in an article in the Examiner newspaper (Feb.
7, 1819), written apparently between jest and earnest ;
but as it is pat to our purpose, and falls in with my
own way of considering such subjects, I shall here take
leave to quote it : —

'Died at his house in Burbage Street, St. Giles's,
John Cavanagh, the famous hand fives-player. When
a person dies who does any one thing better than any
one else in the world, which so many others are trying
to do well, it leaves a gap in society. It is not likely
that any one will now see the game of fives played in
its perfection for many years to come — for Cavanagh is
dead, and has not left his peer behind him. It may
be said that there are things of more importance than
striking a ball against a wall — there are things, indeed,
that make more noise and do as little good, such as
making war and peace, making speeches and answering
them, making verses and blotting them, making money
and throwing it away. But the game of fives is what
no one despises who has ever played at it. It is the
finest exercise for the body, and the best relaxation for
the mind. The Roman poet said that " Care mounted
behind the horseman and stuck to his skirts." But
this remark would not have applied to the fives-
player. He who takes to playing at fives is twice
young. He feels neither the past nor future " in the
instant." Debts, taxes, "domestic treason, foreign
levy, nothing can touch him further." He has no
other wish, no other thought, from the moment the
game begins, but that of striking the ball, of placing
it, of making it ! This Cavanagh was sure to do.
Whenever he touched the ball there was an end of
the chase. His eye was certain, his hand fatal, his

116 TABLE-TALK

presence of mind complete. He could do what he
pleased, and he always knew exactly what to do. He
saw tie whole game, and played it ; took instant ad-
vantage of his adversary's weakness, and recovered
halls, as if hy a miracle and from sudden thought, that
every one gave for lost. He had equal power and skill,
quickness and judgment. He could either outwit his
antagonist hy finesse, or heat him by main strength.
Sometimes, when he seemed preparing to send the hall
with the full swing of his arm, he would by a slight
turn of his wrist drop it within an inch of the line. In
general, the ball came from his hand, as if from a
racket, in a straight, horizontal line ; so that it was in
vain to attempt to overtake or stop it. As it was said
of a great orator that he never was at a loss for a word,
and for the properest word, so Cavanagh always could
tell the degree of force necessary to be given to a ball,
and the precise direction in which it should be sent.
He did his work with the greatest ease ; never took
more pains than was necessary ; and while others were
fogging themselves to death, was as cool and collected
as if he had just entered the court His style of play
was as remarkable as his power of execution. He had
no affectation, no trifling. He did not throw away the
game to show off an attitude or try an experiment.
He was a fine, sensible, manly player, who did what
he could, but that was more than any one else could
even affect to do. His blows were not undecided and
ineffectual — lumbering like Mr. Wordsworth's epic
poetry, nor wavering like Mr. Coleridge's lyric prose,
nor short of the mark like Mr. Brougham's speeches,
nor wide of it like Mr. Canning's wit, nor foul like
the Quarterly, nor let balls like the Edinburgh Review.
Cobbett and Junius together would have made a Cavan-
agh. He was the best up-hill player in the world ; even
when his adversary was fourteen, he would play on the
same or better, and as he never flung away the game
through carelessness and conceit, he never gave it up
through laziness or want of heart. The only peculiarity
of his play was that he never volleyed, but let the balls

THE INDIAN JUGGLERS 117

hop ; but if they rose an inch from the ground he never
missed having them. There was not only nobody equal,
but nobody second to him. It is supposed that he could
give any other player half the game, or beat them with
his left hand. His service was tremendous. He once
played Woodward and Meredith together (two of the
best players in England) in the Fives-court, St. Martin's
Street, and made seven and twenty aces following by
services alone — a thing unheard of. He another time
played Peru, who was considered a first-rate fives-player,
a match of the best out of five games, and in the three
first games, which of course decided the match, Peru
got only one ace. Cavanagh was an Irishman by birth,
and a house-painter by profession. He had once laid
aside his working-dress, and walked up, in his smartest
clothes, to the Rosemary Branch to have an afternoon's
pleasure. A person accosted him, and asked him if he
wo uld have a game. So they agreed to play for half a
crown a game and a bottle of cider. The first game
began — it was seven, eight, ten, thirteen, fourteen, all.
Cavanagh won it. The next was the same. They
played on, and each game was hardly contested.
" There," said the unconscious fives-player, "there
was a stroke that Cavanagh could not take : I never
played better in my life, and yet 1 can't win a game.
I don't know how it is ! " However, they played on,
Cavanagh winning every game, and the bystanders
drinking the cider and laughing all the time. In the
twelfth game, when Cavanagh was only four, and the
stranger thirteen, a person came in and said, " What !
are you here, Cavanagh ? " The words were no sooner
pronounced than the astonished player let the ball drop
from his hand, and saying, " What I have I been break-
ing my heart all this time to beat Cavanagh ? " refused
to make another effort. "And yet, I give you my
word," said Cavanagh, telling the story with some
triumph, "I played all the while with my clenched
fist." — He used frequently to play matches at Copen-
hagen House for wagers and dinners. The wall against
which they play is the same that supports the kitchen-

118 TABLE-TALK

chimney, and when the wall resounded louder than
usual, the cooks exclaimed, " Those are the Irishman's
balls," and the joints trembled on the spit ! — Goldsmith
consoled himself that there were places where he too
was admired : and Cavanagh was the admiration of all
the fives-courts where he ever played. Mr. Powell, when
he played matches in the Court in St. Martin's Street,
used to fill his gallery at half a crown a head with
amateurs and admirers of talent in whatever depart-
ment it is shown. He could not have shown himself
in any ground in England but he would have been
immediately surrounded with inquisitive gazers, trying
to find out in what part of his frame his unrivalled skill
lay, as politicians wonder to see the balance of Europe
suspended in Lord Castlereagh's face, and admire the
trophies of the British Navy lurking under Mr. Croker's
hanging brow. Now Cavanagh was as good-looking a
man as the Noble Lord, and much better looking than
the Right Hon. Secretary. He had a clear, open
countenance, and did not look sideways or down, like
Mr. Murray the bookseller. He was a young fellow
of sense, humour, and courage. He once had a quarrel
with a waterman at Hungerford Stairs, and, they say,
served him out in great style. In a word, there are
hundreds at this day who cannot mention his name
without admiration, as the best fives-player that per-
haps ever lived (the greatest excellence of which they
have any notion) ; and the noisy shout of the ring
happily stood him in stead of the unheard voice of
posterity ! — The only person who seems to have ex-
celled as much in another way as Cavanagh did in his
was the late John Davies, the racket-player. It was
remarked of him that he did not seem to follow the
ball, but the ball seemed to follow him. Give him a
foot of wall, and he was sure to make the ball. The
four best racket-players of that day were Jack Spines,
Jem Harding, Armitage, and Church. Davies could
give any one of these two hands a time, that is, half
the game, and each of these, at their best, could give
the best player now in London the same odds. Such

THE INDIAN JUGGLERS 119

are the gradations in all exertions of human skill and
art. He once played four capital players together,
and beat them. He was also a first-rate tennis-player
and an excellent fives-player. In the Fleet or King's
Bench he would have stood against Powell, who was
reckoned the best open-ground player of his time.
This last-mentioned player is at present the keeper of
the Fives-court, and we might recommend to him for
a motto over his door, "Who enters here, forgets
himself, his country, and his friends." And the best
of it is, that by the calculation of the odds, none of
the three are worth remembering ! — Cavanagh died
from the bursting of a blood-vessel, which prevented
him from playing for the last two or three years. This,
he was often heard to say, he thought hard upon him.
He was fast recovering, however, when he was suddenly
carried off, to the regret of all who knew him. As
Mr. Peel made it a qualification of the present Speaker,
Mr. Manners Sutton, that he was an excellent moral
character, so Jack Cavanagh was a zealous Catholic,
and could not be persuaded to eat meat on a Friday,
the day on which he died. We have paid this willing
tribute to his memory.

Let no rude hand deface It,
And his forlorn "Hie Jacet."

ESSAY X
ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELFI

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

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

If the writing on this subject is no easy task, the
thing itself is a harder one. It asks a troublesome
effort to ensure the admiration of others : it is a still
greater one to be satisfied with one's own thoughts.
As I look from the window at the wide bare heath
before me, and through the misty moonlight air see
the woods that wave over the top of Winterslow,

While Heav'n's chancel-vault is blind with sleet,

my mind takes its flight through too long a series of
years, supported only by the patience of thought and
secret yearnings after truth and good, for me to be at
a loss to understand the feeling I intend to write
about ; but I do not know that this will enable me to
convey it more agreeably to the reader.

* Written at Winterslow Hut, January 18-19, 1821.

ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF 121

Lady Grandison, in a letter to Miss Harriet Byron,
assures her that ' her brother Sir Charles lived to him-
self' ; and Lady L. soon after (for Richardson was
never tired of a good thing) repeats the same observa-
tion ; to which Miss Byron frequently returns in her
answers to both sisters, 'For you know Sir Charles
lives to himself,' till at length it passes into a proverb
among the fair correspondents. This is not, however,
an example of what I understand by living to ones-self,
for Sir Charles Grandison was indeed always thinking
of himself ; but by this phrase I mean never thinking
at all about one's-self, any more than if there was no
such person in existence. The character I speak of is
as little of an egotist as possible: Richardson's great
favourite was as much of one as possible. Some
satirical critic has represented him in Elysium t bowing
over the faded hand of Lady Grandison ' (Miss Byron
that was) — he ought to have been represented bowing
over his own hand, for he never admired any one ]^uj;
himself, and was the God of his own idolatry. — Neither
do 1 call it living to one's-self to retire into a desert
(like the saints and martyrs of old) to be devoured by
wild beasts, nor to descend into a cave to be considered
as a hermit, nor to get to the top of a pillar or rock to
do fanatic penance and be seen of all men. What I
mean by living to one's-self is living in the world, as
in it, not of it : it is as if no one knew there was such
a person, and you wished no one to know it : it is to be
a silent spectator of the mighty scene of things, not an
object of attention or curiosity in it ; to take a thought-
ful, anxious interest in what is passing in the world,
but not to feel the slightest inclination to make or
meddle with it. It is such a life as a pure spirit might
be supposed to lead, and such an interest as it might
take in the affairs of men, calm, contemplative, passive,
distant, touched with pity for their sorrows, smiling at
their follies without bitterness, sharing their affections,
but not troubled by their passions, not seeking their
notice, nor once dreamt of by them. He who lives
wisely to himself and to his own heart looks at the

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busy world through the loop-holes of retreat, and does
not want to mingle in the fray. ' He hears the tumult,
and is still.' He is not able to mend it, nor willing to
mar it. He sees enough in the universe to interest
him without putting himself forward to try what he
can do to fix the eyes of the universe upon him. Vain
the attempt ! He reads the clouds, he looks at the
stars, he watches the return of the seasons, the falling
leaves of autumn, the perfumed breath of spring,
starts with delight at the note of a thrush in a copse
near him, sits by the fire, listens to the moaning of the
wind, pores upon a book, or discourses the freezing
hours away, or melts down hours to minutes in pleasing
thought. All this while he is taken up with other
things, forgetting himself. He relishes an author's
style without thinking of turning author. He is fond
of looking at a print from an old picture in the room,
without teasing himself to copy it. He does not fret
himself to death with trying to be what he is not, or
to do what he cannot. He hardly knows what he is
capable of, and is not in the least concerned whether
he shall ever make a figure in the world. He feels the
truth of the lines —

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

He looks out of himself at the wide, extended prospect
of nature, and takes an interest beyond his narrow
pretensions in general humanity. He is free as air,
and independent as the wind. Woe be to him when
he first begins to think what others say of him. While
a man is contented with himself arid his own resources,
all is well. When he undertakes to play a part on the
stage, and to persuade the world to think more about
him than they do about themselves, he is got into a
track where he will find nothing but briars and thorns,
vexation and disappointment. I can speak a little to
this point. For many years of my life I did nothing
but think. I had nothing else to do but solve some

ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF 123

knotty point, or dip in some abstruse author, or look
at the sky, -or wander by the pebbled sea-side —

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

I cared for nothing, I wanted nothing. I took my
time to consider whatever occurred to me, and was in
no hurry to give a sophistical answer to a question —
there was no printer's devil waiting for me. I used to
write a page or two perhaps in half a year ; and re-
member laughing heartily at the celebrated experi-
mentalist Nicholson, who told me that in twenty years
he had written as much as would make three hundred
octavo volumes. If I was not a great author, I could
read with ever fresh delight, ( never ending, still
beginning,' and had no occasion to write a criticism
when I had done. If I could not paint like Claude, I
could admire 'the witchery of the soft blue sky* as I
walked out, and was satisfied with the pleasure it gave
me. If I was dull, it gave me little concern : if I was
lively, I indulged my spirits. I wished well to the
world, and believed as favourably of it as I could. I
was like a stranger in a foreign land, at which I looked
with wonder, curiosity, and delight, without expecting
to be an object of attention in return. I had no rela-
tions to the state, no duty to perform, no ties to bind
me to others : I had neither friend nor mistress, wife
nor child. I lived in a world of contemplation, and
not of action.

This sort of dreaming existence is the best. He who
quits it to go in search of realities generally barters
repose for repeated disappointments and vain regrets.
His time, thoughts, and feelings are no longer at his
own disposal. From that instant he does not survey
the objects of nature as they are in themselves, but
looks asquint at them to see whether he cannot make
them the instruments of his ambition, interest, or
pleasure ; for a candid, undesigning, undisguised sim-
plicity of character, his views become jaundiced,

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sinister, and double : he takes no farther interest in
the great changes of the world but as he has a paltry
share in producing them : instead of opening his
senses, his understanding, and his heart to the re-
splendent fabric of the universe, he holds a crooked
mirror before his face, in which he may admire his own
person and pretensions, and just glance his eye aside
to see whether others are not admiring him too. He
no more exists in the impression which 'the fair variety
of things ' makes upon him, softened and subdued by
habitual contemplation, but in the feverish sense of his
own upstart self-importance. By aiming to fix, he is
become the slave of opinion. He is a tool, a part of a
machine that never stands still, and is sick and giddy
with the ceaseless motion. He has no satisfaction but
in the reflection of his own image in the public gaze —
but in the repetition of his own name in the public ear.
He himself is mixed up with and spoils everything. I
wonder Buonaparte was not tired of the N. N.'s stuck
all over the Louvre and throughout France. Gold-
smith (as we all know) when in Holland went out into
a balcony with some handsome Englishwomen, and on
their being applauded by the spectators, turned round
and said peevishly, ' There are places where I also am
admired.' He could not give the craving appetite of
an author's vanity one day's respite. I have seen a
celebrated talker of our own time turn pale and go out
of the room when a showy-looking girl has come into
it who for a moment divided the attention of his
hearers. — Infinite are the mortifications of the bare
attempt to emerge from obscurity ; numberless the
failures ; and greater and more galling still the vicissi-
tudes and tormenting accompaniments of success —

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

' Would to God,' exclaimed Oliver Cromwell, when he
was at any time thwarted by the Parliament, 'that I
had remained by my woodside to tend a flock of sheep,

ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF 125

rather than have been thrust on such a government as
this !' When Buonaparte got into his carriage to pro-
ceed on his Russian expedition, carelessly twirling his
glove, and singing the air, ' Malbrook to the war is
going,' he did not think of the tumble he has got
since, the shock of which no one could have stood but
himself. We see and hear chiefly of the favourites of
Fortune and the Muse, of great generals, of first-rate
actors, of celebrated poets. These are at the head ;
we are struck with the glittering eminence on which
they stand, and long to set out on the same tempting
career, — not thinking how many discontented half-pay
lieutenants are in vain seeking promotion all their
lives, and obliged to put up with 'the insolence of
office, and the spurns which patient merit of the un-
worthy takes ' ; how many half-starved strolling players
are doomed to penury and tattered robes in country
places, dreaming to the last of a London engagement ;
how many wretched daubers shiver and shake in the
ague-fit of alternate hopes and fears, waste and pine
away in the atrophy of genius, or else turn drawing-
masters, picture -cleaners, or newspaper-critics ; how
many hapless poets have sighed out their souls to the
Muse in vain, without ever getting their effusions
farther known than the Poet's Corner of a country
newspaper, and looked and looked with grudging,
wistful eyes at the envious horizon that bounded their
provincial fame ! — Suppose an actor, for instance,
' after the heart-aches and the thousand natural pangs
that flesh is heir to,' does get at the top of his pro-
fession, he can no longer bear a rival near the throne ;
to be second or only equal to another is to be nothing :
he starts at the prospect of a successor, and retains the
mimic sceptre with a convulsive grasp : perhaps as he
is about to seize the first place which he has long had
in his eye, an unsuspected competitor steps in before
him, and carries off the prize, leaving him to commence
his irksome toil again. He is in a state of alarm at
every appearance or rumour of the appearance of a
new actor : ' a mouse that takes up its lodging in a cat's

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ear ' l has a mansion of peace to him : he dreads every
hint of an objection, and least of all, can forgive praise
mingled with censure: to doubt is to insult; to
discriminate is to degrade : he dare hardly look into a
criticism unless some one has tasted it for him, to see
that there is no offence in it : if he does not draw
crowded houses every night, he can neither eat nor
sleep ; or if all these terrible inflictions are removed,
and he can 'eat his meal in peace/ he then becomes
surfeited with applause and dissatisfied with his pro-
fession : he wants to be something else, to be dis-
tinguished as an author, a collector, a classical
scholar, a man of sense and information, and weighs
every word he utters, and half retracts it before he
utters it, lest if he were to make the smallest slip of

the tongue it should get buzzed abroad that Mr,

was only clever as an actor ! If ever there was a man
who did not derive more pain than pleasure from his
vanity, that man, says Rousseau, was no other than a
fooL A country gentleman near Taunton spent his
whole life in making some hundreds of wretched copies
of second-rate pictures, which were bought up at his
death by a neighbouring baronet, to whom

Some Demon whisper'd, L , have a taste 1

A little Wilson in an obscure corner esraped the man
of virtu, and was carried off by a Bristol picture-dealer
for three guineas, while the muddled copies of the
owner of the mansion (with the frames) fetched thirty,
forty, sixty, a hundred ducats a piece. A friend of
mine found a very fine Canaletti in a state of strange
disfigurement, with the upper part of the sky smeared
over and fantastically variegated with English clouds ;
and on inquiring of the person to whom it belonged
whether something had not been done to it, received
for answer 'that a gentleman, a great artist in the
neighbourhood, had retouched some parts of it.'
What infatuation ! Yet this candidate for the honours

i Webster's Duchess of Malfy.

ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF 127

of the pencil might probably have made a jovial fox-
hunter or respectable justice of the peace if he could
only have stuck to what nature and fortune intended

him for. Miss can by no means be persuaded to

quit the boards of the theatre at , a little country

town in the West of England. Her salary has been
abridged, her person ridiculed, her acting laughed at ;
nothing will serve — she is determined to be an actress,
and scorns to return to her former business as a
milliner. Shall I go on? An actor in the same
company was visited by the apothecary of the place in
an ague-fit, who, on asking his landlady as to his way
of life, was told that the poor gentleman was very
quiet and gave little trouble, that he generally had a
plate of mashed potatoes for his dinner, and lay in bed
most of his time, repeating his part. A young couple,
every way amiable and deserving, were to have been
married, and a benefit-play was bespoke by the officers
of the regiment quartered there, to defray the expense
of a license and of the wedding-ring, but the profits of
the night did not amount to the necessary sum, and
they have, I fear, ' virgined it e'er since ' ! Oh for the
pencil of Hogarth or Wilkie to give a view of the

comic strength of the company at , drawn up in

battle-array in the Clandestine Marriage, with a coup
d'ceil of the pit, boxes, and gallery, to cure for ever
the love of the ideal, and the desire to shine and make
holiday in the eyes of others, instead of retiring within
ourselves and keeping our wishes and our thoughts at
home ! — Even in the common affairs of life, in love,
friendship, and marriage, how little security have we
when we trust our happiness in the hands of others !
Most of the friends I have seen have turned out the
bitterest enemies, or cold, uncomfortable acquaintance.
Old companions are like meats served up too often,
that lose their relish and their wholesomeness. He
who looks at beauty to admire, to adore it, who reads
of its wondrous power in novels, in poems, or in plays,
is not unwise ; but let no man fall in love, for from
that moment he is 'the baby of a girl.' I like very

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well to repeat such lines as these in the play of

Mlrandola —

With what a waving air she goes
Along the corridor 1 How like a fawn 1
Yet statelier. Hark 1 No sound, however soft,
Nor gentlest echo telleth when she treads,
But every motion of her shape doth seem
Hallowed by silence.

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

The fly that sips treacle

Is lost in the sweets ;
So he that tastes woman

Ruin meets.

The song is Gay's, not mine, and a bitter-sweet it is.
How few out of the infinite number of those that marry
and are given in marriage wed with those they would
prefer to all the world ! nay, how far the greater
proportion are joined together by mere motives of
convenience, accident, recommendation of friends, or
indeed not unfrequently by the very fear of the event,
by repugnance and a sort of fatal fascination ! yet the
tie is for life, not to be shaken off but with disgrace or
death : a man no longer lives to himself, but is a body
(as well as mind) chained to another, in spite of him-
self—

Like life and death in disproportion met.

So Milton (perhaps from his own experience) makes
Adam exclaim in the vehemence of his despair,

For either

He never shall find out fit mate, but such
As some misfortune brings him or mistake
Or whom he wishes most shall seldom gain
Through her perverseness, but shall see her gain'd
By a far worse ; or if she love, withheld
By parents ; or his happiest choice too late
Shall meet, already link'd and wedlock-bound
To a fell adversary, his hate and shame ;
Which infinite calamity shall cause
To human life, and household peace confound.

If love at first sight were mutual, or to be conciliated
by kind offices ; if the fondest affection were not so

ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF 129

often repaid and chilled by indifference and scorn ; if
so many lovers both before and since the madman in
Don Quixote had not 'worshipped a statue, hunted the
wind, cried aloud to the desert' ; if friendship were
lasting ; if merit were renown, and renown were health,
riches, and long life ; or if the homage of the world
were paid to conscious worth and the true aspirations
after excellence, instead of its gaudy signs and outward
trappings ; then indeed 1 might be of opinion that it
is better to live to others than one's-self ; but as the
case stands, 1 incline to the negative side of the
question.1

] have not loved the world, nor the world me ;

I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bow'd

To its idolatries a patient knee—

Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles— nor cried aloud

lu worship of an echo; in the crowd

They could not deem me one of such ; I stood

Among them, but not of them ; in a shroud

Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,

Had I not tilled my mind which thus itself subdued.

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

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

If 1 had sufficient provocation to rail at the public,

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

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as Ben Jonson did at the audience in the Prologues to
his plays, I think I should do it in good set terms,
nearly "as follows : — There is not a more mean, stupid,
dastardly, pitiful, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful
animal than the Public. It is the greatest of cowards,
for it is afraid of itself. From its unwieldy, overgrown
dimensions, it dreads the least opposition to it, and
shakes like isinglass at the touch of a finger. It starts
at its own shadow, like the man in the Hartz mountains,
and trembles at the mention of its own name. It has
a lion's mouth, the heart of a hare, with ears erect and
sleepless eyes. It stands ' listening its fears.' It is so
in awe of its own opinion that it never dares to form
any, but catches up the first idle rumour, lest it should
be behindhand in its judgment, and echoes it till it is
deafened with the sound of its own voice. The idea of
what the public will think prevents the public from
ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise
of private judgment, so that, in short, the public ear is
at the mercy of the first impudent pretender who
chooses to fill it with noisy assertions, or false surmises,
or secret whispers. What is said by one is heard by
all ; the supposition that a thing is known to all the
world makes all the world believe it, and the hollow
repetition of a vague report drowns the ' still, small
voice ' of reason. We may believe or know that what
is said is not true ; but we know or fancy that others
believe it, — we dare not contradict or are too indolent to
dispute with them, and therefore give up our internal,
and, as we think, our solitary conviction to a sound
without substance, without proof, and often without
meaning. Nay more, we may believe and know not
only that a thing is false, but that others believe and
know it to be so, that they are quite as much in the
secret of the imposture as we are, that they see the
puppets at work, the nature of the machinery, and yet
if any one has the art or power to get the management
of it, he shall keep possession of the public ear by
virtue of a cant phrase or nickname, and by dint of
effrontery and perseverance make all the world believe

ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF 131

and repeat what all the world know to be false. The
ear is quicker than the judgment. We know that
certain things are said ; by that circumstance alone,
we know that they produce a certain effect on the
imagination of others, and we conform to their pre-
judices by mechanical sympathy, and for want of
sufficient spirit to differ with them. So far then is
public opinion from resting on a broad and solid basis,
as the aggregate of thought and feeling in a community,
that it is slight and shallow and variable to the last
degree — the bubble of the moment ; so that we may
safely say the public is the dupe of public opinion, not
its parent. The public is pusillanimous and cowardly,
because it is weak. It knows itself to be a great dunce,
and that it has no opinions but upon suggestion. Yet
it is unwilling to appear in leading-strings, and would
have it thought that its decisions are as wise as they
are weighty. It is hasty in taking up its favourites",
more hasty in laying them aside, lest it should be
supposed deficient in sagacity in either case. It is
generally divided into two strong parties, each of which
will allow neither common sense nor common honesty
to the other side. It reads the Edinburgh and Quarterly
Reviews, and believes them both — or if there is a doubt,
malice turns the scale. Taylor and Hessey told me
that they had sold nearly two editions of the Characters
of Shakespears Plays in about three months, but that
after the Quarterly Review of them came out they never
sold another copy. The public, enlightened as they
are, must have known the meaning of that attack as
well as those who made it. It \vas not ignorance then,
but cowardice, that led them to give up their own
opinion. A crew of mischievous critics at Edinburgh
having affixed the epithet of the Cockney School to one
or two writers born in the metropolis, all the people in
London became afraid of looking into their works, lest
they too should be convicted of cockueyism. Oh,
brave public ! This epithet proved too much for one
of the writers in question, and stuck like a barbed
arrow in his heart. Poor Keats ! What was sport to

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the town was death to him. Young, sensitive, delicate,
he was like

A bud bit by an envious worm,

Ere he could spread his sweet leaves to the air

Or dedicate his beauty to the sun ;

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

A huge-sized monster of ingratitudes.

It reads, it admires, it extols, only because it is the
fashion, not from any love of the subject or the man.
It cries you up or runs you down out of mere caprice
and levity. If you have pleased it, it is jealous of
its own involuntary acknowledgment of merit, and
seizes the first opportunity, the first shabby pretext,
to pick a quarrel with you and be quits once more.
Every petty caviller is erected into a judge, every tale-
bearer is implicitly believed. Every little, low, paltry
creature that gaped and wondered, only because others
did so, is glad to find you (as he thinks) on a level with
himself. An author is not then, after all, a being of
another order. Public admiration is forced, and goes
against the grain. Public obloquy is cordial and sin-
cere : every individual feels his own importance in it.
They give you up bound hand and foot into the power
of your accusers. To attempt to defend yourself is a
high crime and misdemeanour, a contempt of court, an
extreme piece of impertinence. Or if you prove every
jj charge unfounded, they never think of retracing their
I error or making you amends. It would be a com-
I promise of their dignity ; they consider themselves as
f the party injured, and resent your innocence as an
imputation on their judgment The celebrated Bub
Doddington, when out of favour at court, said 'he
would not justify before his sovereign : it was for
Majesty to be displeased, and for him to believe him-
self in the wrong!' The public are not quite so

ON LIVING TO ONE'S-SELF 133

modest. People already begin to talk of the Scotch
Novels as overrated. How then can common authors
be supposed to keep their heads long above water?
As a general rule, all those who live by the public
starve, and are made a by-word and a standing jest
into the bargain. Posterity is no better (not a bit
more enlightened or more liberal), except that you
are no longer in their power, and that the voice of
common fame saves them the trouble of deciding on
your claims. The public now are the posterity of
Milton and Shakespear. Our posterity will be the
living public of a future generation. When a man is
dead, they put money in his coffin, erect monuments
to his memory, and celebrate the anniversary of his
birthday in set speeches. Would they take any notice
of him if he were living ? No ! — I was complaining of
this to a Scotchman who had been attending a dinner
and a subscription to raise a monument to Burns. He
replied he would sooner subscribe twenty pounds to
his monument than have given it him while living ; so
that if the poet were to come to life again, he would
treat him just as he was treated in fact. This was an
honest Scotchman. What he said, the rest would do.

Enough : my soul, turn from them, and let me try
to regain the obscurity and quiet that I love, ' far from
the madding strife,' in some sequestered corner of my
own, or in some far-distant land ! In the latter case,
I might carry with me as a consolation the passage in
Bolingbroke s Reflections on Exile, in which he describes *
in glowing colours the resources which a man may I
always find within himself, and of which the world |
cannot deprive him : —

' Believe me, the providence of God has established
such an order in the world, that of all which belongs to
us the least valuable parts can alone fall under the
will of others. \Vhatever is best is safest ; lies out of
tfhe reach of human power ; can neither be given nor
taken away. Such is this great and beautiful work of
nature, the world. Such is the mind of man, which
contemplates and admires the world, whereof it makes

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the noblest part. These are inseparably ours, and as
long as we remain in one we shall enjoy the other.
Let us march therefore intrepidly wherever we are led
by the course of human accidents. WTierever they
lead us, on what coast soever we are thrown by them,
we shall not find ourselves absolutely strangers. We
shall feel the same revolution of seasons, and the same
sun and moon l will guide the course of our year. The
same azure vault, bespangled with stars, will be every-
where spread over our heads. There is no part of the
world from whence we may not admire those planets
which roll, like ours, in different orbits round the same
central sun ; rrom whence we may not discover an
object still more stupendous, that army of fixed stars
hung up in the immense space of the universe, in-
numerable suns whose beams enlighten and cherish the
unknown worlds which roll around them : and whilst
I am ravished by such contemplations as these, whilst
my soul is thus raised up to heaven, it imports me
little what ground I tread upon.'

i ' Plut. of Banishment. He compares those who cannot live out
of their own country to the simple people who fancied the moon
of Athens was a finer moon than that of Corinth,

Labentem coelo quae ducitis annum.

VIRQ. Georg,

ESSAY XI

ON THOUGHT AND ACTION

THOSE persons who are much accustomed to abstract
contemplation are generally unfitted for active pursuits,
and vice versa. I myself am sufficiently decided and
dogmatical in my opinions, and yet in action I am as
imbecile as a woman or a child. I cannot set about
the most indifferent thing without twenty efforts, and
had rather write one of these Essays than have to seal
a letter. In trying to throw a hat or a book upon a
table, I miss it ; it just reaches the edge and falls back
again, and instead of doing what I mean to perform, I
do what I intend to avoid. Thought depends on the
habitual exercise of the speculative faculties ; action,
on the determination of the will. The one assigns
reasons for things, the other puts causes into act.
Abraham Tucker relates of a friend of his, an old
special pleader, that once coming out of his chambers
in the Temple with him to take a walk, he hesitated at
the bottom of the stairs which way to go — proposed
different directions, to Charing Cross, to St. Paul's —
found some objection to them all, and at last turned
back for want of a casting motive to incline the scale.
Tucker gives this as an instance of professional in-
decision, or of that temper of mind which having been
long used to weigh the reasons for things with scrupu-
lous exactness, could not come to any conclusion at all
on the spur of the occasion, or without some grave
distinction to justify its choice. Lou vet in his Narra-
tive tells us, that when several of the Brisotin party

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were collected at the house of Barbaroux (I think it
was) ready to effect their escape from the power of
Robespierre, one of them going to the window and
finding a shower of rain coming on, seriously advised
their stopping till the next morning, for that the
emissaries of government would not think of coming
in search of them in such bad weather. Some of them
deliberated on this wise proposal, and were nearly
taken. Such is the effeminacy of the speculative and
philosophical temperament, compared with the prompt-
ness and vigour of the practical ! It is on such unequal
terms that the refined and romantic speculators on
possible good and evil contend with their strong-
nerved, remorseless adversaries, and we see the result.
Reasoners in general are undecided, wavering, and
sceptical, or yield at last to the weakest motive as
most congenial to their feeble habit of soul.1

Some men are mere machines. They are put in a
go-cart of business, and are harnessed to a profession
— yoked to Fortune's wheels. They plod on, and suc-
ceed. Their affairs conduct them, not they their affairs.
All they have to do is to let things take their course,
and not go out of the beaten road. A man may carry
on the business of farming on the same spot and prin-
ciple that his ancestors have done for many generations
before him without any extraordinary share of capacity :
the proof is, it is done every day, in every county and
parish in the kingdom. All that is necessary is that
he should not pretend to be wiser than his neighbours.
If he has a grain more wit or penetration than they, if
his vanity gets the start of his avarice only half a neck,
if he has ever thought or read anything upon the sub-
ject, it will most probably be the ruin of him. lie will
turn theoretical or experimental farmer, and no more
need be said. Mr. Cobbett, who is a sufficiently shrewd

i When Buonaparte left the Chamber of Deputies to go and flght his
last fatal battle, he advised them not to be debating the forms of
Constitutions when the enemy was at their gates. Benjamin Con-
stant thought otherwise. He wanted to play a game at cat's-cradk
between the Republicans and Royalists, and lost his match. He did
not care, so that he hampered a more efficient man than himself.

ON THOUGHT AND ACTION 137

and practical man, with an eye also to the main chance,
had got some notions in his head (from Tull's Hus-
bandry) about the method of sowing turnips, to which
he would have sacrificed not only his estate at Botley,
but his native county of Hampshire itself, sooner than
give up an inch of his argument. ' Tut ! will you baulk
a man in the career of his humour?' Therefore, that
a man may not be ruined by his humours, he should
be too dull and phlegmatic to have any : he must have
' no figures nor no fantasies which busy thought draws
in the brains of men.' The fact is, that the ingenuity
or judgment of no one man is equal to that of the world
at large, which is the fruit of the experience and ability
of all mankind. Even where a man is right in a par-
ticular notion, he will be apt to overrate the importance
of his discovery, to the detriment of his affairs. Action
requires co-operation, but in general if you set your
face against custom, people will set their faces against
you. They cannot tell whether you are right or wrong,
but they know that you are guilty of a pragmatical
assumption of superiority over them which they do not
like. There is no doubt that if a person two hundred
years ago had foreseen and attempted to put in practice
the most approved and successful methods of cultiva-
tion now in use, it would have been a death-blow to
his credit and fortune. So that though the experiments
and improvements of private individuals from time to
time gradually go to enrich the public stock of in-
formation and reform the general practice, they are
mostly the ruin of the person who makes them, because
he takes a part for the whole, and lays more stress upon
the single point in which he has found others in the
wrong than on all the rest in which they are substan-
tially and prescriptively in the right The great
requisite, it should appear, then, for the prosperous
management of ordinary business is the want of im-
agination, or of any ideas but those of custom and
interest on the narrowest scale ; and as the affairs of
the world are necessarily carried on by the common
run of its inhabitants, it seems a wise dispensation of

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Providence that it should be so. If no one could rent
a piece of glebe-land without a genius for mechanical
inventions, or stand behind a counter without a large
benevolence of soul, what would become of the com-
mercial and agricultural interests of this great (and
once flourishing) country ? — I would not be understood
as saying that there is not what may be called a genius
for business, an extraordinary capacity for affairs, quick-
ness and comprehension united, an insight into char-
acter, an acquaintance with a number of particular
circumstances, a variety of expedients, a tact for finding
out what will do: I grant all this (in Liverpool and
Manchester they would persuade you that your mer-
chant and manufacturer is your only gentleman and
scholar) — but still, making every allowance for the
difference between the liberal trader and the sneaking
shopkeeper, I doubt whether the most surprising success
is to be accounted for from any such unusual attain-
ments, or whether a man's making half a million of
money is a proof of his capacity for thought in general.
It is much oftener owing to views and wishes bounded
but constantly directed to one particular object. To
succeed, a man should aim only at success. The child
of Fortune should resign himself into the hands of For-
tune. A plotting head frequently overreaches itself :
a mind confident of its resources and calculating powers
enters on critical speculations, which in a game depend-
ing so much on chance and unforeseen events, and not
entirely on intellectual skill, turn the odds greatly
against any one in the long run. The rule of business
is to take what you can get, and keep what you have
got ; or an eagerness in seizing every opportunity that
offers for promoting your own interest, and a plodding,
persevering industry in making the most of the advan-
tages you have already obtained, are the most effectual
as well as the safest ingredients in the composition of
the mercantile character. The world is a book in which
the Chapter of Accidents is none of the least consider-
able ; or it is a machine that must be left, in a great
measure, to turn itself. The most that a worldly-

ON THOUGHT AND ACTION 139

minded man can do is to stand at the receipt of custom,
and be constantly on the lookout for windfalls. The
true devotee in this way waits for the revelations of
Fortune as the poet waits for the inspiration of the
Muse, and does not rashly anticipate her favours. He
must be neither capricious nor wilful. I have known
people untrammelled in the ways of business, but with
so intense an apprehension of their own interest, that
they would grasp at the slightest possibility of gain as
a certainty, and were led into as many mistakes by an
overgriping, usurious disposition as they could have
been by the most thoughtless extravagance. — We hear
a great outcry about the want of judgment in men of
genius. It is not a want of judgment, but an excess
of other things. They err knowingly, and are wilfully
blind. The understanding is out of the question. The
profound judgment which soberer people pique them-
selves upon is in truth a want of passion and imagina-
tion. Give them an interest in anything, a sudden
fancy, a bait for their favourite foible, and who so be-
sotted as they? Stir their feelings, and farewell to
their prudence ! The understanding operates as a
motive to action only in the silence of the passions.
I have heard people of a sanguine temperament re-
proached with betting according to their wishes, instead
of their opinion who should win ; and I have seen those
who reproached them do the very same thing the instant
their own vanity or prejudices are concerned. The
most mechanical people, once thrown off their balance,
are the most extravagant and fantastical. What passion
is there so unmeaning and irrational as avarice itself?

The Dutch went mad for tulips, and for love !

To return to what was said a little way back, a question
might be started, whether as thought relates to the
whole circumference of things and interests, and busi-
ness is confined to a very small part of them, viz. to a
knowledge of a man's own affairs and the making of
his own fortune, whether a talent for the latter will
not generally exist in proportion to the narrowness
and grossness of his ideas, nothing drawing his atten-

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tion out of his own sphere, or giving him an interest
except in those things which he can realise and hring
home to himself in the most undoubted shape? To the
man of business all the world is a fable but the Stock
Exchange : to the money - getter nothing has a real
existence that he cannot convert into a tangible feel-
ing, that he does not recognise as property, that he
cannot ( measure with a two-foot rule or count upon
ten fingers.' The want of thought, of imagination,
drives the practical man upon immediate realities : to
the poet or philosopher all is real and interesting that
is true or possible, that can reach in its consequences to
others, or be made a subject of curious speculation to
himself !

But is it right, then, to judge of action by the quan-
tity of thought implied in it, any more than it would
be to condemn a life of contemplation for being in-
active ? Or has not everything a source and principle
of its own, to which we should refer it, and not to the
principles of other things? He who succeeds in any
pursuit in which others fail may be presumed to have
qualities of some sort or other which they are without
If he has not brilliant wit, he may have solid sense ;
if he has not subtlety of understanding, he may have
energy and firmness of purpose ; if he has only a few
advantages, he may have modesty and prudence to
make the most of what he possesses. Propriety is one
great matter in the conduct of life ; which, though, like
a graceful carriage of the body, it is neither definable
nor striking at first sight, is the result of finely balanced
feelings, and lends a secret strength and charm to the
whole character.

Quicquld agit, quoquo vestigia Yertit*
Componit furtim, subsequiturque decor.

There are more ways than one in which the various
faculties of the mind may unfold themselves. Neither
words nor ideas reducible to words constitute the ut-
most limit of human capacity. Man is not a merely
talking nor a merely reasoning animal. Let us then

ON THOUGHT AND ACTION 141

take him as he is, instead of ' curtailing him of nature's
fair proportions' to suit our previous notions. Doubt-
less, there are great characters both in active and
contemplative life. There have been heroes as well as
sages, legislators and founders of religion, historians »
and able statesmen and generals, inventors of useful
arts and instruments and explorers of undiscovered
countries, as well as writers and readers of books. It
will not do to set all these aside under any fastidious
or pedantic distinction. Comparisons are odious, ,
because they are impertinent, and lead only to the
discovery of defects by making one thing the standard
of another which has no relation to it. If, as some one
proposed, we were to institute an inquiry, e Which was
the greatest man, Milton or Cromwell, Buonaparte or
Rubens?' we should have all the authors arid artists
on one side, and all the military men and the whole
diplomatic body on the other, who would set to work
with all their might to pull in pieces the idol of the
other party, and the longer the dispute continued, the
more would each grow dissatisfied with his favourite,
though determined to allow no merit to any one else.
The mind is not well competent to take in the full
impression of more than one style of excellence or one
extraordinary character at once ; contradictory claims
puzzle and stupefy it ; and however admirable any
individual may be in himself and unrivalled in his
particular way, yet if we try him by others in a totally
opposite class, that is, if we consider not what he was
but what he was not, he will be found to be nothing.
We do not reckon up the excellences on either side,
for then these would satisfy the mind and put an end
to the comparison : we have no way of exclusively
setting up our favourite but by running down his
supposed rival ; and for the gorgeous hues of Rubens,
the lofty conceptions of Milton, the deep policy and
cautious daring of Cromwell, or the dazzling exploits
and fatal ambition of the modern chieftain, the poet is
transformed into a pedant, the artist sinks into a
mechanic, the politician turns out no better than a

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knave, and the hero is exalted into a madman. It
is as easy to get the start of our antagonist in argument
by frivolous and vexatious objections to one side of the
question as it is difficult to do full and heaped justice
to the other. If I am asked which is the greatest of
those who have been the greatest in different ways, I
answer, the one that we happen to be thinking of at
the time ; for while that is the case, we can conceive of
nothing higher.— If there is a propensity in the vulgar
to admire the achievements of personal prowess or
instances of fortunate enterprise too much, it cannot
be denied that those who have to weigh out and dispense
the meed of fame in books have been too much disposed,
by a natural bias, to confine all merit and talent to the
productions of the pen, or at least to those works
which, being artificial or abstract representations of
things, are transmitted to posterity, and cried up as
models in their kind. This, though unavoidable, is
hardly just. Actions pass away and are forgotten, or
are only discernible in their effects ; conquerors, states-
men, and kings live but by their names stamped on the
page of history. Hume says rightly that more people
think about Virgil and Homer (and that continually)
than ever trouble their heads about Caesar or Alexander.
In fact, poets are a longer-lived race than heroes :
they breathe more of the air of immortality. They
survive more entire in their thoughts and acts. We
have all that Virgil or Homer did, as much as if we
had lived at the same time with them : we can hold
their works in our hands, or lay them on our pillows,
or put them to our lips. Scarcely a trace of what the
• others did is left upon the earth, so as to be visible to
common eyes. The one, the dead authors, are living
men, still breathing and moving in their writings.
The others, the conquerors of the world, are but the
ashes in an urn. The sympathy (so to speak) between
thought and thought is more intimate and vital than
that between thought and action. Thought is linked
to thought as flame kindles into flame : the tribute of
admiration to the manes of departed heroism is like

ON THOUGHT AND ACTION 143

burning incense in a marble monument. Words,
ideas, feelings, with the progress of time harden into
substances : things, bodies, actions, moulder away, or
melt into a sound, into thin air ! — Yet though the
Schoolmen in the Middle Ages disputed more about the
texts of Aristotle than the battle of Arbela, perhaps
Alexander's Generals in his lifetime admired his pupil
as much and liked him better. For not only a man's
actions are effaced and vanish with him ; his virtues
and generous qualities die with him also : his intellect
only is immortal and bequeathed unimpaired to pos-
terity. Words are the only things that last for ever.

If, however, the empire of words and general know-
ledge is more durable in proportion as it is abstracted
and attenuated, it is less immediate and dazzling : if
authors are as good after they are dead as when they
were living, while living they might as well be dead :
and moreover with respect to actual ability, to write a
book is not the only proof of taste, sense, or spirit, as
pedants would have us suppose. To do anything well,
to paint a picture, to fight a battle, to make a plough
or a threshing-machine, requires, one would think, as
much skill and judgment as to talk about or write a
description of it when done. Words are universal,
intelligible signs, but they are not the only real,
existing things. Did not Julius Caesar show himself
as much of a man in conducting his campaigns as in
composing his Commentaries? Or was- the Retreat of
the Ten Thousand under Xenophon, or his work of
that name, the most consummate performance? Or
would not Lovelace, supposing him to have existed and
to have conceived and executed all his fine stratagems
on the spur of the occasion, have been as clever a
fellow as Richardson, who invented them in cold blood?
If to conceive and describe an heroic character is the
height of a literary ambition, we can hardly make it
out that to be and to do all that the wit of man can
feign is nothing. To use means to ends ; to set causes
in motion ; to wield the machine of society ; to subject
the wills of others to your own ; to manage abler men

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than yourself by means of that which is stronger in
them "than their wisdom, viz. their weakness and their
folly ; to calculate the resistance of ignorance and pre-
judice to your designs, and by obviating, to turn them
to account; to foresee a long, obscure, and complicated
train of events, of chances and openings of success ; to
unwind the web of others' policy and weave your own
out of it ; to judge of the effects of things, not in the
abstract, but with reference to all their bearings, rami-
lications, arid impediments ; to understand character
thoroughly ; to see latent talent or lurking treachery ;
to know mankind for what they are, and use them as
they deserve; to have a purpose steadily in view, and to
effect it after removing every obstacle ; to master others
and be true to yourself, — asks power and knowledge,
both nerves and brain.

Such is the sort of talent that may be shown and
that has been possessed by the great leaders on the
stage of the world. To accomplish great things argues,
I imagine, great resolution : to design great things
implies no common mind. Ambition is in some sort
genius. Though I would rather wear out my life in
arguing a broad speculative question than in caballing
for the election to a wardmote, or canvassing for votes
in a rotten borough, yet I should think that the loftiest
Epicurean philosopher might descend from his punctilio
to identify himself with the support of a great principle,
or to prop a falling state. This is what the legislators and
founders of empire did of old ; and the permanence of
their institutions showed the depth of the principles from
which they emanated. A tragic poem is not the worse
for acting well : if it will not bear this test it savours
of effeminacy. Well-digested schemes will stand the
touchstone of experience. Great thoughts reduced to
practice become great acts. Again, great acts grow
out of great occasions, and great occasions spring from
great principles, working changes in society, and
tearing it up by the roots. But still I conceive that a
genius for action depends essentially on the strength
of the will rather than on that of the understanding ;

ON THOUGHT AND ACTION 145

that the long-headed calculation of causes and con-
sequences arises from the energy of the first cause,
which is the will setting others in motion and prepared
to anticipate the results ; that its sagacity is activity
delighting in meeting difficulties and adventures more
than half-way, and its wisdom courage not to shrink
from danger, but to redouble its efforts with opposition.
Its humanity, if it has much, is magnanimity to spare
the vanquished, exulting in power but not prone to
mischief, with good sense enough to be aware of the
instability of fortune, and with some regard to reputa-
tion. YVrhat may serve as a criterion to try this
question by is the following consideration, that we
sometimes find as remarkable a deficiency of the
speculative faculty coupled with great strength of will
and consequent success in active life as we do a want
of voluntary power and total incapacity for business
frequently joined to the highest mental qualifications.
In some cases it will happen that (to be wise is to be
obstinate.' If you are deaf to reason but stick to your
own purposes, you will tire others out, and bring them
over to your way of thinking. Self-will and blind
prejudice are the best defence of actual power and
exclusive advantages. The forehead of the late king
was not remarkable for the character of intellect, but
the lower part of his face was expressive of strong
passions and fixed resolution. Charles Fox had an
animated, intelligent eye, and brilliant, elastic fore-
head (with a nose indicating fine taste), but the lower
features were weak, unsettled, fluctuating, and without
purchase — it was in them the Whigs were defeated.
What a fine iron binding Buonaparte had round his
face, as if it had been cased in steel ! What sensibility
about the mouth ! What watchful penetration in the
eye ! What a smooth, unruffled forehead ! Mr. Pitt,
with little sunken eyes, had a high, retreating fore-
head, and a nose expressing pride and aspiring self-
opinion : it was on that (with submission) that he
suspended the decisions of the House of Commons and
dangled the Opposition as he pleased. Lord Castle-

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reagh is a man rather deficient than redundant in
words and topics. He is not (any more than St.
Augustine was, in the opinion of La Fontaine) so great
a wit as Rabelais, nor is he so great a philosopher as
Aristotle ; but he has that in him which is not to be
trifled with. He has a noble mask of a face (not well
filled up in the expression, which is relaxed and
dormant) with a fine person and manner. On the
strength of these he hazards his speeches in the
House. He has also a knowledge of mankind, and of
the composition of the House. He takes a thrust
which he cannot parry on his shield — is 'all tran-
quillity and smiles ' under a volley of abuse, sees when
to pay a compliment to a wavering antagonist, soothes
the melting mood of his hearers, or gets up a speech
full of indignation, and knows how to bestow his
attentions on that great public body, whether he
wheedles or bullies, so as to bring it to compliance.
With a long reach of undefined purposes (the result of
a temper too indolent for thought, too violent for
repose) he has equal perseverance and pliancy in
bringing his objects to pass. I would rather be Lord
Castlereagh, as far as a sense of power is concerned
(principle is out of the question), than such a man as
Mr. Canning, who is a mere fluent sophist, and never
knows the limit of discretion, or the effect which will
be produced by what he says, except as far as florid
common-places may be depended on. Buonaparte is
referred by Mr. Coleridge to the class of active rather
than of intellectual characters ; and Cowley has left an
invidious but splendid eulogy on Oliver Cromwell,
which sets out on much the same principle. 'What,'
he says, 'can be more extraordinary than that a
person of mean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities
of body, which have sometimes, or of mind, which have
often, raised men to the highest dignities, should have
the courage to attempt, and the happiness to succeed
in, so improbable a design as the destruction of one of
the most ancient and most solidly-founded monarchies
upon the earth? That he should have the power or

ON THOUGHT AND ACTION 147

boldness to put his prince and master to an open and
infamous death ; to banish that numerous and strongly-
allied family ; to do all this under the name and wages
of a Parliament ; to trample upon them too as he
pleased, and spurn them out of doors when he grew
weary of them ; to raise up a new and unheard-of
monster out of their ashes ; to stifle that in the very
infancy, and set up himself above all things that ever
were called sovereign in England ; to oppress all his
enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by
artifice ; to serve all parties patiently for a while, and
to command them victoriously at last ; to overrun each
corner of the three nations, and overcome with equal
facility both the riches of the south and the poverty
of the north ; to be feared and courted by all foreign
princes, and adopted a brother to the Gods of the
earth ; to call together Parliaments with a word of his
pen, and scatter them again with the breath of his
mouth ; to be humbly and daily petitioned that he
would please to be hired, at the rate of two millions a
year, to be the master of those who had hired him
before to be their servant; to have the estates and
lives of three kingdoms as much at his disposal as was
the little inheritance of his father, and to be as noble
and liberal in the spending of them ; and lastly (for
there is no end of all the particulars of his glory), to
bequeath all this with one word to his posterity ; to die
with peace at home, and triumph abroad ; to be buried
among kings, and with more than regal solemnity ;
and to leave a name behind him, not to be extinguished
but with the whole world ; which as it is now too little
for his praises, so might have been too for his con-
quests, if the short line of his human life could have
been stretched out to the extent of his immortal
designs ! '

Cromwell was a bad speaker and a worse writer.
Milton wrote his despatches for him in elegant and
erudite Latin ; and the pen of the one, like the sword
of the other, was 'sharp and sweet.' We have not
that union in modern times of the heroic and literary

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character which was common among the ancients.
Julius Caesar and Xenophon recorded their own acts
with equal clearness of style and modesty of temper.
The Duke of Wellington (worse off than Cromwell)
is obliged to get Mr. Mudford to write the History
of his Life. Sophocles, JEschylus, and Socrates were
distinguished for their military prowess among their
contemporaries, though now only remembered for
what they did in poetry and philosophy. Cicero and
Demosthenes, the two greatest orators of antiquity,
appear to have been cowards : nor does Horace seem
to give a very favourable picture of his martial achieve-
ments. But in general there was not that division in
the labours of the mind and body among the Greeks
and Romans that has been introduced among us either
by the progress of civilisation or by a greater slowness
and inaptitude of parts. The French, for instance,
appear to unite a number of accomplishments, the
literary character and the man of the world, better
than we do. Among us, a scholar is almost another
name for a pedant or a clown : it is not so with them.
Their philosophers and wits went into the world and
mingled in the society of the fair. Of this there needs
no other proof than the spirited print of most of the
great names in French literature, to whom Moliere is
reading a comedy in the presence of the celebrated
Ninon de 1'Enclos. D'Alembert, one of the first
mathematicians of his age, was a wit, a man of gallantry
and letters. With us a learned man is absorbed in
himself and some particular study, and minds nothing
else. There is something ascetic and impracticable in
his very constitution, and he answers to the description
of the Monk in Spenser —

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

Perhaps the superior importance attached to the institu-
tions of religion, as well as the more abstracted and
vwionary nature of its objects, has led (as a genera)

ON THOUGHT AND ACTION 149

result) to a wider separation between thought and '.
action in modern times.

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

Better be lord of them that riches have,

Than riches have myself, and be their servile slave.

The incentive to ambition is the love of power ; the
spur to avarice is either the fear of poverty or a strong
desire of self-indulgence. The amassers of fortunes
seem divided into two opposite classes — lean, penurious-
looking mortals, or jolly fellows who are determined
to get possession of, because they want to enjoy, the
good things of the world. The one have famine and
a workhouse always before their eyes ; the others, in the
fulness of their persons and the robustness of their
constitutions, seem to bespeak the reversion of a landed
estate, rich acres, fat beeves, a substantial mansion,
costly clothing, a chine and turkey, choice wines, and
all other good things consonant to the wants and full-
fed desires of their bodies. Such men charm fortune
by the sleekness of their aspects and the goodly
rotundity of their honest faces, as the others scare
away poverty by their wan, meagre looks. The last
starve themselves into riches by care and carking ; the
first eat, drink, and sleep their way into the good
things of this life. The greatest number of warm
men in the city are good, jolly fellows. Look at Sir

William . Callipash and callipee are written in

his face : he rolls about his unwieldy bulk in a sea of
turtle-soup. How many haunches of venison does he
carry on his back ! He is larded with jobs and con-
tracts : he is stuffed and swelled out with layers of
bank-notes and invitations to dinner ! His face hangs
out a flag of defiance to mischance : the roguish twinkle
in his eye with which he lures half the city and beats

Alderman hollow, is a smile reflected from heaps

of unsunned gold ! Nature and Fortune are not so
much at variance as to differ about this fellow. To

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enjoy the good the Gods provide us is to deserve it.
Nature meant him for a Knight, Alderman, and City
Member ; and Fortune laughed to see the goodly person
and prospects of the man ! 1 — I am not, from certain
early prejudices, much given to admire the ostenta-
tious marks of wealth (there are persons enough to
admire them without me) — but I confess, there is
something in the look of the old banking-houses in
Lombard Street, the posterns covered with mud, the
doors opening sullenly and silently, the absence of all
pretence, the darkness and the gloom within, the
gleaming of lamps in the day-time,

Like a laint shadow of uncertain light,

that almost realises the poetical conception of the cave
of Mammon in Spenser, where dust and cobwebs con-
cealed the roofs and pillars of solid gold, and lifts the
mind quite off its ordinary hinges. The account of
the manner in which the founder of Guy's Hospital

1 A thorough fitness for any end implies the means. Where there
is a will, there is a way. A real passion, an entire devotion to any
object, always succeeds. The strong sympathy with what we wish
and imagine realises it, dissipates all obstacles, and removes all
scruples. The disappointed lover may complain as much as he
pleases. He was himself to blame. He was a half-witted, wishy-
washy fellow. His love might be as great as he makes it out ; but
it was not his ruling passion. His fear, his pride, his vanity was
greater. Let any one's whole soul be steeped in this passion ; let him
think and care for nothing else ; let nothing divert, cool, or intimi-
date him; let the ideal feeling become an actual one and take
possession of his whole faculties, looks, and manner ; let the same
voluptuous hopes and wishes govern his actions in the presence of
his mistress that haunt his fancy in her absence, and I will answer
for his success. But I will not answer for the success of ' a dish of
skimmed milk ' in such a case.— I could always get to see a fine col-
lection of pictures myself. The fact is, I was set upon it. Neither
the surliness of porters nor the impertinence of footmen could keep
me back. I had a portrait of Titian in my eye, and nothing could put
me out in my determination. If that had not (as it were) been looking
on me all the time I was battling my way, I should have been irritated
•r disconcerted, and gone away. But my liking to the end conquered
my scruples or aversion to the means. I never understood the Scotch
character but on these occasions. I would not take 'No' for an
knswer. If I had wanted a place under government or a writership
to India, I could have got It from the same Importunity, and on the
same terms,

ON THOUGHT AND ACTION 151

accumulated his immense wealth has always to me
something romantic in it, from the same force of con-
trast He was a little shop-keeper, and out of his
saving's bought Bibles and purchased seamen's tickets
in Queen Anne's wars, by which he left a fortune of
two hundred thousand pounds. The story suggests
the idea of a magician ; nor is there anything in the
Arabian Nights that looks more like a fiction.

ESSAY XII

ON WILL-MAKINQ

FEW things show the human character in a more ridicu-
lous light than the circumstance of will-making. It
is the latest opportunity we have of exercising the
natural perversity of the disposition, and we take care
to make a good use of it. We husband it with jealousy,
put it off as long as we can, and then use every precau-
tion that the world shall be no gainer by our deaths.
This last act of our lives seldom belies the former tenor
of them for stupidity, caprice, and unmeaning spite.
All that we seem to think of is to manage matters so
(in settling accounts with those who are so unmannerly
as to survive us) as to do as little good, and to plague
and disappoint as many people, as possible.

Many persons have a superstition on the subject of
making their last will and testament, and think that
when everything is ready signed and sealed, there is
nothing further left to delay their departure. 1 have
heard of an instance of one person who, having a feel-
ing of this kind on his mind, and being teased into
making his will by those about him, actually fell ill
with pure apprehension, and thought he was going to
die in good earnest, but having executed the deed
over-night, awoke, to his great surprise, the next

1

morning, and found himself as well as ever he was.1

i A poor woman at Plymouth who did not like the formality, or
could not afford the expense of a will, thought to leave what little
property she had in wearing apparel and household moveablea to her
friends and relations, viva voce, and before Death stopped her breath.
She gave and willed away (of her proper authority) her chair and

ON WILL-MAKING 153

An elderly gentleman possessed of a good estate and
the same idle notion, and who found himself in a
dangerous way, was anxious to do this piece of justice
to those who remained behind him, but when it came
to the point, his heart failed him, and his nervous
fancies returned in full force. Even on his death-bed
he still held back and was averse to sign what he
looked upon as his own death-warrant, and just at the
last gasp, amidst the anxious looks and silent upbraid-
ings of friends and relatives that surrounded him, he
summoned resolution to hold out his feeble hand, which
was guided by others, to trace his name, and he fell
back — a corpse ! If there is any pressing reason for
it, that is, if any particular person would be relieved
from a state of harassing uncertainty or materially
benefited by their making a will, the old and infirm
(who do not like to be put out of their way) generally
make this an excuse to themselves for putting it off to
the very last moment, probably till it is too late ; or
where this is sure to make the greatest number of
blank faces, contrive to give their friends the slip,
without signifying their final determination in their
favour. Where some unfortunate individual has been
kept long in suspense, who has been perhaps sought
out for that very purpose, and who may be in a great
measure dependent on this as a last resource, it is
nearly a certainty that there will be no will to be
found ; no trace, no sign to discover whether the
person dying thus intestate ever had any intention of
the sort, or why they relinquished it This is to be-
speak the thoughts and imaginations of others for
victims after we are dead, as well as their persons and
expectations for hangers-on while we are living. A
celebrated beauty of the middle of the last century,

table to one, her bed to another, an old cloak to a third, a night-cap
and petticoat to a fourth, and so on. The old crones sat weeping
round, and soon after carried off all they could lay their hands upon,
and left their benefactress to her fate. They were no sooner gone
than she unexpectedly recovered, and sent to have her things back
again ; but not one of them could she get, and she was left without
a rag to her back, or a friend to condole with her.

154 TABLE-TALK

towards its close, sought out a female relative, the
friend and companion of her youth, who had lived
during the forty years of their separation in rather
straitened circumstances, and in a situation which
admitted of some alleviations. Twice they met after
that long lapse of time — once her relation visited her
in the splendour of a rich old family mansion, and once
she crossed the country to become an inmate of the
humble dwelling of her early and only remaining
friend. What was this for? Was it to revive the
image of her youth in the pale and careworn face of
her friend? Or was it to display the decay of her
charms and recall her long-forgotten triumphs to the
memory of the only person who could bear witness
to them ? Was it to show the proud remains of her-
self to those who remembered or had often heard what
she was — her skin like shrivelled alabaster, her emaci-
ated features chiselled by Nature's finest hand, her eyes
that, when a smile lighted them up, still shone like
diamonds, the vermilion hues that still bloomed among
wrinkles ? Was it to talk of bone-lace, of the flounces
and brocades of the last century, of race-balls in the
year '62, and of the scores of lovers that had died at
her feet, and to set whole counties in a flame again,
only with a dream of faded beauty ? Whether it was
for this, or whether she meant to leave her friend
anything (as was indeed expected, all things considered,
not without reason), nobody knows — for she never
breathed a syllable on the subject herself, and died
without a will. The accomplished coquette of twenty,
who had pampered hopes only to kill them, who had
kindled rapture with a look and extinguished it with a
breath, could find no better employment at seventy than
to revive the fond recollections and raise up the drooping
hopes of her kinswoman only to let them fall — to rise no
more. Such is the delight we have in trifling with and
tantalising the feelings of others by the exquisite
refinements, the studied sleights of love or friendship !
Where a property is actually bequeathed, supposing
the circumstances of the case and the usages of society

ON WILI^MAKING 155

to leave a practical discretion to the testator, it is most
frequently in such portions as can be of the least ser-
vice. Where there is much already, much is given ;
where much is wanted, little or nothing. Poverty
invites a sort of pity, a miserable dole of assistance ;
necessity, neglect and scorn ; wealth attracts and
allures to itself more wealth by natural association of
ideas or by that innate love of inequality and injustice
which is the favourite principle of the imagination.
Men like to collect money into large heaps in their
lifetime ; they like to leave it in large heaps after they
are dead. They grasp it into their own hands, not to
use it for their own good, but to hoard, to lock it up,
to make an object, an idol, and a wonder of it. Do
you expect them to distribute it so as to do others
good ; that they will like those who come after them
better than themselves; that if they were willing to
pinch and starve themselves, they will not deliberately
defraud their sworn friends and nearest kindred of
what would be of the utmost use to them ? No, they
will thrust their heaps of gold and silver into the hands
of others (as their proxies) to keep for them untouched,
still increasing, still of no use to any one, but to
pamper pride and avarice, to glitter in the huge,
watchful, insatiable eye of fancy, to be deposited as a
new offering at the shrine of Mammon, their God, — this
is with them to put it to its intelligible and proper use ;
this is fulfilling a sacred, indispensable duty ; this cheers
them in the solitude of the grave, and throws a gleam
of satisfaction across the stony eye of death. But to
think of frittering it down, of sinking it in charity, of
throwing it away on the idle claims of humanity, where
it would no longer peer in monumental pomp over
their heads, — and that, too, when on the point of death
themselves, in articulo mortis, — oh ! it would be madness,
waste, extravagance, impiety! — Thus worldlings feel and
argue without knowing it ; and while they fancy they
are studying their own interest or that of some booby
successor, their alter idem, are but the dupes and puppets
of a favourite idea, a phantom, a prejudice, that must be

156 TABLE-TALK

kept up somewhere (no matter where), if it still plays be-
fore and haunts their imagination, while they have sense
or understanding left to cling to their darling follies.

There was a remarkable instance of this tendency
to the heap, this desire to cultivate an abstract passion
for wealth, in a will of one of the Thelussons some
time back. This will went to keep the greater part of
a large property from the use of the natural heirs and
next-of-kin for a length of time, and to let it accumulate
at compound interest in such a way and so long, that
it would at last mount up in value to the purchase-
money of a whole county. The interest accruing from
the funded property or the rent of the lands at certain
periods was to be employed to purchase other estates,
other parks and manors in the neighbourhood or farther
off, so that the prospect of the future demesne that was
to devolve at some distant time to the unborn lord of
acres swelled and enlarged itself, like a sea, circle
without circle, vista beyond vista, till the imagination
was staggered and the mind exhausted. Now here
was a scheme for the accumulation of wealth and for
laying the foundation of family aggrandisement purely
imaginary, romantic — one might almost say, disinter-
ested. The vagueness, the magnitude, the remoteness
of the object, the resolute sacrifice of all immediate
and gross advantages, clothe it with the privileges of
an abstract idea, so that the project has the air of a
fiction or of a story in a novel. It was an instance of
what might be called posthumous avarice, like the love
of posthumous fame. It had little more to do with
selfishness than if the testator had appropriated the
same sums in the same way to build a pyramid, to con-
struct an aqueduct, to endow a hospital, or effect any
other patriotic or merely fantastic purpose. He wished
to heap up a pile of wealth (millions of acres) in the
dim horizon of future years, that could be of no use to
him or to those with whom he was connected by positive
and personal ties, but as a crotchet of the brain, a gew-
gaw of the fancy.1 Yet to enable himself to put this

i The law of primogeniture has its origin in the principle here

ON WILL-MAKING 157

scheme in execution, he had perhaps toiled and watched
all his life, denied himself rest, food, pleasure, liberty,
society, and persevered with the patience and self-
denial of a martyr. I have insisted on this point the
more, to show how much of the imaginary and specu-
lative there is interfused even in those passions and
purposes which have not the good of others for their
object, and how little reason this honest citizen and
builder of castles in the air would have had to treat
those who devoted themselves to the pursuit of fame,
to obloquy and persecution for the sake of truth and
liberty, or who sacrificed their lives for their country
in a just cause, as visionaries and enthusiasts, who did
not understand what was properly due to their own
interest and the securing of the main chance. Man is
not the creature of sense and selfishness, even in those
pursuits which grow up out of that origin, so much as
of imagination, custom, passion, whim, and humour.

I have heard of a singular instance of a will made by
a person who was addicted to a habit of lying. He was
so notorious for this propensity (not out of spite or
cunning, but as a gratuitous exercise of invention) that
from a child no one could ever believe a syllable lie
uttered. From the want of any dependence to be
placed on him, he became the jest and by-word of the
school where he was brought up. The last act of his
life did not disgrace him ; for, having gone abroad,
and falling into a dangerous decline, he was advised to
return home. He paid all that he was worth for his
passage, went on ship-board, and employed a few re-
maining days he had to live in making and executing
his will ; in which he bequeathed large estates in differ-
ent parts of England, money in the funds, rich jewels,
rings, and all kinds of valuables to his old friends and
acquaintance, who, not knowing how far the force of
nature could go, were not for some time convinced
that all this fairy wealth had never had an existence
anywhere but in the idle coinage of his brain, whose

stated, the desire of perpetuating some one palpable and prominent
proof of wealth and power.

168 TABLE-TALK

whims and projects were no more ! — The extreme keep-
ing in this character is only to be accounted for by
supposing such an original constitutional levity as made
truth entirely indifferent to him, and the serious im-
portance attached to it by others an object of perpetual
sport and ridicule !

The art of will-making chiefly consists in baffling
the importunity of expectation. I do not so much
find fault with this when it is done as a punishment
and oblique satire on servility and selfishness. It is in
that case Diamond cut Diamond — a trial of skill between
the legacy-hunter and the legacy-maker, which shall
fool the other. The cringing toad-eater, the officious
tale-bearer, is perhaps well paid for years of obsequious
attendance with a bare mention and a mourning-ring ;
nor can I think that Gil Bias' library was not quite as
much as the coxcombry of his pretensions deserved.
There are some admirable scenes in Ben Jonson's Vol-
pone, showing the humours of a legacy-hunter, and
the different ways of fobbing him off with excuses and
assurances of not being forgotten. Yet it is hardly
right, after all, to encourage this kind of pitiful, bare-
faced intercourse without meaning to pay for it, as the
coquette has no right to jilt the lovers she has trifled
with. Flattery and submission are marketable com-
modities like any other, have their price, and ought
scarcely to be obtained under false pretences. If we
see through and despise the wretched creature that
attempts to impose on our credulity, we can at any
time dispense with his services : if we are soothed by
this mockery of respect and friendship, why not pay
him like any other drudge, or as we satisfy the actor
who performs a part in a play by our particular desire ?
But often these premeditated disappointments are as
unjust as they are cruel, and are marked with circum-
stances of indignity, in proportion to the worth of the
object The suspecting, the taking it for granted that
your name is down in the will, is sufficient provocation
to have it struck out : the hinting at an obligation, the
consciousness of it on the part of the testator, will

ON WILL-MAKING 169

make him determined to avoid the formal acknowledg-
ment of it at any expense. The disinheriting of rela-
tions is mostly for venial offences, not for base actions :
we punish out of pique, to revenge some case in which
we have been disappointed of our wills, some act of
disobedience to what had no reasonable ground to go
upon ; and we are obstinate in adhering to our resolu-
tion, as it was sudden and rash, and doubly bent on
asserting our authority in what we have least right to
interfere in. It is the wound inflicted upon our self-
love, not the stain upon the character of the thoughtless
offender, that calls for condign punishment Crimes,
vices may go unchecked or unnoticed ; but it is the
laughing at our weaknesses, or thwarting our humours,
that is never to be forgotten. It is not the errors of
others, but our own miscalculations, on which we wreak
our lasting vengeance. It is ourselves that we cannot
forgive. In the will of Nicholas Gimcrack the virtuoso,
recorded in the Taller, we learn, among other items,
that his eldest son is cut off with a single cockle-shell
for his undutiful behaviour in laughing at his little
sister whom his father kept preserved in spirits of
wine. Another of his relations has a collection of
grasshoppers bequeathed him, as in the testator's
opinion an adequate reward and acknowledgment due
to his merit. The whole will of the said Nicholas Gim-
crack, Esq., is a curious document and exact picture
of the mind of the worthy virtuoso defunct, where his
various follies, littlenesses, and quaint humours are
set forth as orderly and distinct as his butterflies'
wings and cockle-shells and skeletons of fleas in glass
cases.1 We often successfully try, in this way, to give

i It is as follows :—

' The Will of a Virtuoso.

' I, Nicholas Gimcrack, being in sound Health of Mind, but in great
Weakness of Body, do by this my Last Will and Testament bequeath
my worldly Goods and Chattels in Manner following :—
Imprimis, To my dear Wife,
One Box of Butterflies,
One Drawer of Shells,
A Female Skeleton,
A. Dried Cockatrice. [Item,

160 TABLE-TALK

the finishing stroke to our pictures, hang up our weak-
nesses in perpetuity, and embalm our mistakes in the
memories of others.

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

I shall not speak here of unwarrantable commands
imposed upon survivors, by which they were to carry
into effect the sullen and revengeful purposes of un-
principled men, after they had breathed their last ; but
we meet with continual examples of the desire to keep
up the farce (if not the tragedy) of life after we, the
performers in it, have quitted the stage, and to have
our parts rehearsed by proxy. We thus make a caprice
immortal, a peculiarity proverbial. Hence we see the

Item, To my Daughter Elizabeth,
My Receipt for preserving dead Caterpillars,
As also my Preparations of Winter May-Dew, and Embrio Pickle.
Item, to my little Daughter Fanny,
Three Crocodiles' Eggs.
And upon the Birth of her first Child, if she marries with her

Mother's Consent,
The Nest of a Humming Bird.
Item, To my eldest Brother, as an acknowledgment for the Lands

he has vested in my Son Charles, I bequeath
My last Year's Collection of Grasshoppers.
Ttem, To his Daughter Susanna, being his only Child, I bequeath

my English Weeds pasted on Royal Paper,
With my large Folio of Indian Cabbage.

' Having fully provided for my Nephew Isaac, by making over to
him some years since
A horned Scarabceus,
The Skin of a Rattle-Snake, and
The Mummy of an Egyptian King,
I make no further Provision for him in this my Will.

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

' To my Second Son Charles, I give and bequeath all my Flowers,
Plants, Minerals, Mosses, Shells, Pebbles, Fossils, Beetles, Butter-
flies, Caterpillars, Grasshoppers, and Vermin, not above specified :
As also my Monsters, both wet and dry, making the said Charles
whole and sole Executor of this my Last Will and Testament, he
paying or causing to be paid the aforesaid Legacies within the Space
of Six Months after my Decease. And I do hereby revoke all other
Wills whatsoever by me formerly made.'— Tatter, vol. iv. No. 216.

ON WILL-MAKING 161

number of legacies and fortunes left on condition that
the legatee shall take the name and style of the testator,
by which device we provide for the continuance of the
sounds that formed our names, and endow them with
an estate, that they may be repeated with proper re-
spect. In the Memoirs of an Heiress all the difficulties
of the plot turn on the necessity imposed by a clause in
her uncle's will that her future husband should take
the family name of Beverley. Poor Cecilia ! What
delicate perplexities she was thrown into by this im-
provident provision ; and with what minute, endless,
intricate distresses has the fair authoress been enabled
to harrow up the reader on this account ! There was a
Sir Thomas Dyot in the reign of Charles II. who left
the whole range of property which forms Dyot Street,
in St. Giles's, and the neighbourhood, on the sole and
express condition that it should be appropriated entirely
to that sort of buildings, and to the reception of that
sort of population, which still keeps undisputed, un-
divided possession of it. The name was changed the
other day to George Street as a more genteel appella-
tion, which, I should think, is an indirect forfeiture of
the estate. This Sir Thomas Dyot I should be disposed
to put upon the list of old English worthies — as humane,
liberal, and no flincher from what he took in his head.
He was no common-place man in his line. He was the
best commentator on that old-fashioned text — 'The
foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests,
but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.' —
We find some that are curious in the mode in which
they shall be buried, and others in the place. Lord
Camelford had his remains buried under an ash tree
that grew on one of the mountains in Switzerland ; and
Sir Francis Bourgeois had a little mausoleum built for
him in the college at Dulwich, where he once spent a
pleasant, jovial day with the masters and wardens.1 It

i Kellerman lately left his heart to be buried in the field of Valmy,
where the first great battle was fought in the year 1792, in which the
Allies were repulsed. Oh 1 might that heart prove the root from
which the tree of Liberty may spring up and flourish once more, as
the basil tree grew and grew from the cherished head of Isabella's lover I
M

162 TABLE-TALK

is, no doubt, proper to attend, except for strong reasons
to the contrary, to these sort of requests ; for by break-
ing faith with the dead we loosen the confidence of the
living. Besides, there is a stronger argument: we
sympathise with the dead as well as with the living,
and are bound to them by the most sacred of all ties,
our own involuntary fellow-feeling with others !

Thieves, as a last donation, leave advice to their
friends, physicians a nostrum, authors a manuscript
work, rakes a confession of their faith in the virtue of
the sex — all, the last drivellings of their egotism and
impertinence. One might suppose that if anything
could, the approach and contemplation of death might
bring men to a sense of reason and self-knowledge.
On the contrary, it seems only to deprive them of the
little wit they had, and to make them even more the
sport of their wilfulness and short-sightedness. Some
men think that because they are going to be hanged,
they are fully authorised to declare a future state of
rewards and punishments. All either indulge their
caprices or cfing to their prejudices. They make a
desperate attempt to escape from reflection by taking
hold of any whim or fancy that crosses their minds, or
by throwing themselves implicitly on old habits and
attachments.

An old man is twice a child : the dying man becomes
the property of his family. He has no choice left, and
his voluntary power is merged in old saws and pre-
scriptive usages. The property we have derived from
our kindred reverts tacitly to them ; and not to let it
take its course is a sort of violence done to nature as
well as custom. The idea of property, of something in
common, does not mix cordially with friendship, but is
inseparable from near relationship. We owe a return
in kind, where we feel no obligation for a favour ; and
consign our possessions to our next-of-kin as mechani-
cally as we lean our heads on the pillow, and go out of
the world in the same state of stupid amazement that
we came into it ! ... Caetera dewnt.

ESSAY XIII

ON CERTAIN INCONSISTENCIES IN SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS* 8
DISCOURSES

THE two chief points which Sir Joshua aims at in his
Discourses are to show that excellence in the Fine
Arts is the result of pains and study rather than of
genius, and that all beauty, grace, and grandeur are
to be found, not in actual nature, but in an idea
existing in the mind. On both these points he appears
to have fallen into considerable inconsistencies or very
great latitude of expression, so as to make it difficult
to know what conclusion to draw from his various
reasonings. I shall attempt little more in this Essay
than to bring together several passages that, from
their contradictory import, seem to imply some radical
defect in Sir Joshua's theory, and a doubt as to the
possibility of placing an implicit reliance on his
authority.

To begin with the first of these subjects, the question
of original genius. In the Second Discourse, ' On the
Method of Study,' Sir Joshua observes towards the end :
'There is one precept, however, in which I shall
only be opposed by the vain, the ignorant, and the
idle. I am not afraid that I shall repeat it too often.
You must have no dependence on your own genius. If
you have great talents, industry will improve them : if
you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply
their deficiency. Nothing is denied to well-directed
labour ; nothing is to be obtained without it. Not to
enter into metaphysical discussions on the nature or

164 TABLE-TALK

essence of genius, I will venture to assert that assiduity
unabated by difficulty, and a disposition eagerly directed
to the object of its pursuit, will produce effects similar
to those which some call the result of natural powers.'

The only tendency of the maxim here laid down
seems to be to lure those students on with the hopes of
excellence who have no chance of succeeding, and to
deter those who have from relying on the only prop
and source of real excellence — the strong bent and
impulse of their natural powers. Industry alone can
only produce mediocrity ; but mediocrity in art is not
worth the trouble of industry. Genius, great natural
powers, will give industry and ardour in the pursuit of
their proper object, but not if you divert them from
that object into the trammels of common-place mechani-
cal labour. By this method yo u neutralise all distinction
of character — make a pedant of the blockhead and a
drudge of the man of genius. What, for instance,
would have been the effect of persuading Hogarth or
Rembrandt to place no dependence on their own
genius, and to apply themselves to the general study
of the different branches of the art and of every sort of
excellence, with a confidence of success proportioned
to their misguided efforts, but to destroy both those
great artists ? ' You take my house when you do take
the prop that doth sustain my house ! ' You under-
mine the superstructure of art when you strike at its
main pillar and support, confidence and faith in nature.
We might as well advise a person who had discovered
a silver or a lead mine on his estate to close it up,
or the common farmer to plough up every acre he
rents in the hope of discovering hidden treasure, as
advise the man of original genius to neglect his parti-
cular vein for the study of rules and the imitation of
others, or try to persuade the man of no strong natural
powers that he can supply their deficiency by laborious
application. — Sir Joshua soon after, in the Third
Discourse, alluding to the terms, inspiration, genius,
gusto, applied by critics and orators to painting, pro-
ceeds :

SIR J. HEYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES 165

' Such is the warmth with which both the Ancients
and Moderns speak of this divine principle of the art ;
but, as I have formerly observed, enthusiastic admira-
tion seldom promotes knowledge. Though a student
by such praise may have his attention roused and a
desire excited of running in this great career, yet it is
possible that what has been said to excite may only
serve to deter him. He examines his own mind, and
perceives there nothing of that divine inspiration with
which, he is told, so many others have been favoured.
He never travelled to heaven to gather new ideas ; and
he finds himself possessed of no other qualifications
than what mere common observation and a plain
understanding can confer. Thus he becomes gloomy
amidst the splendour of figurative declamation, and
thinks it hopeless to pursue an object which he supposes
out of the reach of human industry.'

Yet presently after he adds :

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

Here, then, Sir Joshua admits that it is a question
whether the student is likely to be at all capable of such
an acquisition as the higher excellencies of art, though
he had said in the passage just quoted above that it is
within the reach of constant assiduity and of a disposi-
tion eagerly directed to the object of its pursuit to
effect all that is usually considered as the result of
natural powers. Is the theory which our - author
means to inculcate a mere delusion, a mere arbitrary
assumption? At one moment Sir Joshua attributes
the hopelessness of the student to attain perfection to
the discouraging influence of certain figurative and
overstrained expressions, and in the next doubts his
capacity for such an acquisition under any circum-
stances. Would he have him hope against hope,
then? If he 'examines his own mind and finds nothing

166 TABLE-TALK

there of that divine inspiration with which he is told
so many others have been favoured/ but which he has
never felt himself ; if ' he finds himself possessed of no
other qualifications' for the highest efforts of genius
and imagination l than what mere common observation
and a plain understanding can confer,' he may as well
desist at once from ' ascending the brightest heaven of
invention': — if the very idea of the divinity of art
deters instead of animating him, if the enthusiasm with
which others speak of it damps the flame in his own
breast, he had better not enter into a competition
where he wants the first principle of success, the daring
to aspire and the hope to excel. He may be assured
he is not the man. Sir Joshua himself was not struck
at first by the sight of the masterpieces of the great
style of art, and he seems unconsciously to have
adopted this theory to show that he might still have
succeeded in it but for want of due application. His
hypothesis goes to this — to make the common run of
his readers fancy they can do all that can be done by
genius, and to make the man of genius believe he can
only do what is to be done by mechanical rules and
systematic industry. This is not a very feasible
scheme ; nor is Sir Joshua sufficiently clear and
explicit in his reasoning in support of it.

In speaking of Carlo Maratti, he confesses the
inefficiency of this doctrine in a very remarkable
manner : —

'Carlo Maratti succeeded better than those I have
first named, and I think owes his superiority to the
extension of his views : besides his master Andrea
Sacchi, he imitated Raffaelle, Guido, and the Caraccis.
It is true, there is nothing very captivating in Carlo
Maratti ; but this proceeded from a want which cannot
be completely supplied ; that is, want of strength of
parts. In this certainly men are not equal ; and a man
can bring home wares only in proportion with the
capital with which he goes to market. Carlo, by
diligence, made the most of what he had ; but there
was undoubtedly a heaviness about him, which extended

SIR J. REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES 167

itself uniformly to his invention, expression, his
drawing, colouring, and the general effect of his
pictures. The truth is, he never equalled any of his
patterns in any one thing, and he added little of his
own.'

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

{ The daily food and nourishment of the mind of an
Artist is found in the great works of his predecessors.
There is no other way for him to become great him-
self. SerpenSj nisi serpentem comederit, non Jit draco.
Raffaelle, as appears from what has been said, had
carefully studied the works of Masaccio, and indeed
there was no other, if we except Michael Angelo
(whom he likewise imitated),1 so worthy of his atten-
tion ; and though his manner was dry and hard, his
compositions formal, and not enough diversified, accord-
ing to the custom of Painters in that early period, yet
his works possess that grandeur and simplicity which
accompany, and even sometimes proceed from, regu-
larity and hardness of manner. We must consider the
barbarous state of the arts before his time, when skill
in drawing was so little understood, that the best of the
painters could not even foreshorten the foot, but every
figure appeared to stand upon his toes, and what served

i How careful is Sir Joshua, even in a parenthesis, to insinuate the
obligations of this great genius to others, as if he would have been
nothing without them.

168 TABLE-TALK

for drapery had, from the hardness and smallness ot
the folds, too much the appearance of cords clinging
round the body. He first introduced large drapery,
flowing in an easy and natural manner ; indeed, he
appears to be the first who discovered the path that
leads to every excellence to which the art afterwards
arrived, and may therefore be justly considered ae one
of the Great Fathers of Modern Art.

' Though I have been led on to a longer digression
respecting this great painter than I intended, yet 1
cannot avoid mentioning another excellence which he
possessed in a very eminent degree : he was as much
distinguished among his contemporaries for his diligence
and industry as he was for the natural faculties of his
mind. We are told that his whole attention was
absorbed in the pursuit of his art, and that he acquired
the name of Masaccio from his total disregard to his
dress, his person, and all the common concerns of life.
He is indeed a signal instance of what well-directed
diligence will do in a short time : he lived but twenty-
seven years, yet in that short space carried the art so
far beyond what it had before reached, that he appears
to stand alone as a model for his successors. Vasari
gives a long catalogue of painters and sculptors who
formed their taste and learned their art by studying
his works ; among those, he names Michael Angelo,
Lionardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino, Raffaelle, Bar-
tholomeo, Andrea del Sarto, II Rosso, and Pierino del
Vaga.'

Sir Joshua here again halts between two opinions.
He tells us the names of the painters who formed them-
selves upon Masaccio's style: he does not tell us on
whom he formed himself. At one time the natural
faculties of his mind were as remarkable as his indus-
try ; at another he was only a signal instance of what
well-directed diligence will do in a short time. Then
again, 'he appears to have been the first who discovered
the path that leads to every excellence to which the
Art afterwards arrived,' though he is introduced in an
argument to show that ' the daily food and nourish-

SIR J. REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES 169

ment of the mind of the Artist must be found in the
works of his predecessors.' There is something surely
very wavering and unsatisfactory in all this.

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

' Genius is supposed to be a power of producing ex-
cellencies which are out of the reach of the rules of
art : a power which no precepts can teach, and which
no industry can acquire.

' This opinion of the impossibility of acquiring those
beauties which stamp the work with the character of
genius, supposes that it is something more fixed than
in reality it is, and that we always do and ever did
agree in opinion with respect to what should be con-
sidered as the characteristic of genius. But the truth
is, that the degree of excellence which proclaims Genius
is different in different times and different places ; and
what shows it to be so is, that mankind have often
changed their opinion upon this matter.

' When the Arts were in their infancy, the power of
merely drawing the likeness of any object was con-
sidered as one of its greatest efforts. The common
people, ignorant of the principles of art, talk the same
language even to this day. But when it was found
that every man could be taught to do this, and a great
deal more, merely by the observance of certain pre-
cepts, the name of Genius then shifted its application,
and was given only to him who added the peculiar
character of the object he represented — to him who
had invention, expression, grace, or dignity ; in short,
those qualities or excellencies, the power of producing

170 TABLE-TALK

which could not then be taught by any known and pro-
mulgated rules.

1 We are very sure that the beauty of form, the ex-
pression of the passions, the art of composition, even
the power of giving a general air of grandeur to a work,
is at present very much under the dominion of rules.
These excellencies were heretofore considered merely
as the effects of genius ; and justly, if genius is not
taken for inspiration, but as the effect of close observa-
tion and experience.'

Sir Joshua began with undertaking to show that
' genius was the child of the imitation of others, and
now it turns out not to be inspiration indeed, but the
effect of close observation and experience.' The whole
drift of this argument appears to be contrary to what
the writer intended, for the obvious inference is that
the essence of genius consists entirely, both in kind
and degree, in the single circumstance of originality.
The very same things are or are not genius, according
as they proceed from invention or from mere imitation.
In so far as a thing is original, as it has never been
done before, it acquires and it deserves the appellation
of genius : in so far as it is not original, and is borrowed
from others or taught by rule, it is not, neither is it
called, genius. This does not make much for the sup-
position that genius is a traditional and second-hand
quality. Because, for example, a man without much
genius can copy a picture of Michael Angelo's, does it
follow that there was no genius in the original design,
or that the inventor and copyist are equal r If indeed,
as Sir Joshua labours to prove, mere imitation of exist-
ing models and attention to established rules could
produce results exactly similar to those of natural
powers, if the progress of art as a learned profession
were a gradual but continual accumulation of individual
excellence, instead of being a sudden and almost mirac-
ulous start to the highest beauty and grandeur nearly
at first, and a regular declension to mediocrity ever
after, then indeed the distinction between genius and
imitation would be little worth contending for ; the

SIR J. REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES 171

causes might be different, the effects would be the
same, or rather skill to avail ourselves of external
advantages would be of more importance and efficacy
than the most powerful internal resources. But as the
case stands, all the great works of art have been the
offspring of individual genius, either projecting itself
before the general advances of society or striking out
a separate path for itself ; all the rest is but labour in
vain. For every purpose of emulation or instruction
we go back to the original inventors, not to those who
imitated, and, as it is falsely pretended, improved upon
their models : or if those who followed have at any
time attained as high a rank or surpassed their pre-
decessors, it was not from borrowing their excellencies,
but by unfolding new and exquisite powers of their
own, of which the moving principle lay in the indi-
vidual mind, and not in the stimulus afforded by pre-
vious example and general knowledge. Great faults, it
is true, may be avoided, but great excellencies can never
be attained in this way. If Sir Joshua's hypothesis of
progressive refinement in art was anything more than
a verbal fallacy, why does he go back to Michael
Angelo as the God of his idolatry? Why does he find
fault with Carlo Maratti for being heavy? Or why
does he declare as explicitly as truly, that 'the judg-
ment, after it has been long passive, by degrees loses
its power of becoming active when exertion is neces-
sary ' ? — Once more to point out the fluctuation in Sir
Joshua's notions on this subject of the advantages of
natural genius and artificial study, he says, when
recommending the proper objects of ambition to the
young artist :

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

This is the Fifth Discourse. In the Seventh our

172 TABLE-TALK

artist seems to waver, and flings a doubt on his former
decision, whereby 'it loses some colour.'

'Indeed perfection in an inferior style may be
reasonably preferred to mediocrity in the highest
walks of art A landscape of Claude Lorraine may l
be preferred to a history by Luca Giordano : but hence
appears the necessity of the connoisseur's knowing in
what consists the excellency of each class, in order to
judge how near it approaches to perfection.'

As he advances, however, he grows bolder, and alto-
gether discards his theory of judging of the artist by
the class to which he belongs — ' But we have the sanc-
tion of all mankind,' he says, ' in preferring genius in
a lower rank of art to feebleness and insipidity in the
highest.' This is in speaking of Gainsborough. The
whole passage is excellent, and, I should think, con-
clusive against the general and factitious style of art
on which he insists so much at other times.

' On this ground, however unsafe, I will venture to
prophesy, that two of the last distinguished painters of
that country, I mean Pompeio Battoni and Rafaelle
Mengs, however great their names may at present
sound in our ears,2 will very soon fall into the rank
of Imperiale, Sebastian Concha, Placido Coiistanza,
Musaccio, and the rest of their immediate predeces-
sors ; whose names, though equally renowned in their
lifetime, are now fallen into what is little short of total
oblivion. I do not say that those painters were not
superior to the artist I allude to,3 and whose loss we
lament, in a certain routine of practice, which, to the
eyes of common observers, has the air of a learned
composition, and bears a sort of superficial resem-
blance to the manner of the great men who went
before them. I know this perfectly well ; but I know
likewise, that a man looking for real and lasting repu-
tation must unlearn much of the common-place method

i If Sir Joshua had an offer to exchange a Luca Giordano In his
collection for a Claude Lorraine, he would not have hesitated long
about the preference.

a Written in 1788. s Gainsborough.

SIR J. REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES 173

ao observable in the works of the artists whom I have
named. For my own part, I confess, J take more
interest in and am more captivated with the powerful
impression of nature, which Gainsborough exhibited
in his portraits and in his landscapes, and the interest-
ing simplicity and elegance of his little ordinary beggar-
children, than with any of the works of that school,
since the time of Andrea Sacchi, or perhaps we may
say Carlo Maratti : two painters who may truly be
said to be ULTIMI ROMANORUM.

( I am well aware how much I lay myself open to the
censure and ridicule of the academical professors of
other nations in preferring the humble attempts of
Gainsborough to the works of those regular graduates
in the great historical style. But we have the sanction
of all mankind in preferring genius in a lower rank of
art to feebleness and insipidity in the highest.*

Yet this excellent artist and critic had said but a
few pages before when working upon his theory — ' For
this reason I shall beg leave to lay before you a few
thoughts on the subject ; to throw out some hints that
may lead your minds to an opinion (which I take to be
the true one) that Painting is not only not to be con-
sidered as an imitation operating by deception, but
that it is, and ought to be, in many points of view and
strictly speaking, no imitation at all of external nature.
Perhaps it ought to be as far removed from the vulgar
idea of imitation as the refined, civilised state in which
we live is removed from a gross state of nature ; and
those who have not cultivated their imaginations,
which the majority of mankind certainly have not,
may be said, in regard to arts, to continue in this state
of nature. Such men will always prefer imitation'
(the imitation of nature) ( to that excellence which is
addressed to another faculty that they do not possess ;
but these are not the persons to whom a painter is to
look, any more than a judge of morals and manners
ought to refer controverted points upon those subjects
to the opinions of people taken from the banks of the
Ohio or from New Holland.'

174 TABLE-TALK

In opposition to the sentiment here expressed thai
' Painting is and ought to he, in many points of view
and strictly speaking, no imitation at all of external
nature/ it is emphatically said in another place :
* Nature is and must be the fountain which alone is
inexhaustible, and from which all excellences must
originally flow.'

I cannot undertake to reconcile so many contradic-
tions, nor do I think it an easy task for the student to
derive any simple or intelligible clue from these con-
flicting authorities and broken hints in the prosecution
of his art Sir Joshua appears to have imbibed from
others (Burke or Johnson) a spurious metaphysical
notion that art was to be preferred to nature, and
learning to genius, with which his own good sense and
practical observation were continually at war, but from
which he only emancipates himself for a moment to
relapse into the same error again shortly after.1 The
conclusion of the Twelfth Discourse is, I think, how-
ever, a triumphant and unanswerable denunciation of
his own favourite paradox on the objects and study
of art.

'Those artists' (he says with a strain of eloquent
truth) ' who have quitted the service of nature (whose
service, when well understood, is perfect freedom) and
have put themselves under the direction of I know not
what capricious fantastical mistress, who fascinates and
overpowers their whole mind, and from whose dominion
there are no hopes of their being ever reclaimed (since
they appear perfectly satisfied, and not at all conscious
of their forlorn situation), like the transformed followers
of Comus,

Not onoe perceive their foul disfigurement ;
But boast themselves more comely than before.

1 Sir Joshua himself wanted academic skill and patience in the
details of his profession. From these defects he seems to have been
alternately repelled by each theory and style of art, the simply
natural and elaborately scientific, as it came before him; and in
hia impatience of each, to have been betrayed into a tissue of incon-
sistencies somewhat difficult to unravel

SIR J. REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES 175

'Methinks such men who have found out so short
a path have no reason to complain of the shortness of
life and the extent of art ; since life is so much longer
than is wanted for their improvement, or is indeed
necessary for the accomplishment of their idea of per-
fection.1 On the contrary, he who recurs to nature, at
every recurrence renews his strength. The rules of art
he is never likely to forget ; they are few and simple : but
Nature is refined, subtle, and infinitely various, beyond
the power and retention of memory ; it is necessary
therefore to have continual recourse to her. In this
intercourse there is no end of his improvement: the
longer he lives, the nearer he approaches to the true
and perfect idea of Art.'

i He had been before speaking of Boucher, Director of the French
Academy, who told him that ' when he was young, studying his art,
ho found it necessary to use models, but that he had left them off foi
many years.'

ESSAY XIV

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

THE first inquiry which runs through Sir Joshua Key-
uolds's Discourses is whether the student ought to look
at nature with his own eyes or with the eyes of others,
and on the whole, he apparently inclines to the latter.
The second question is what is to he understood hy
nature ; whether it is a general and abstract idea, or
an aggregate of particulars ; and he strenuously main-
tains the former of these positions. Yet it is not easy
always to determine how far or with what precise
limitations he does so.

The first germ of his speculations on this subject is
to be found in two papers in the Idler. In the last
paragraph of the second of these, he says :

' If it has been proved that the painter, by attending
to the invariable and general ideas of nature, produces
beauty, he must, by regarding minute particularities
and accidental discrimination, deviate from the uni-
versal rule, and pollute his canvas with deformity.'

In answer to this, I would say that deformity is not
the being varied in the particulars, in which all things
differ (for on this principle all nature, which is made
up of individuals, would be a heap of deformity), but
in violating general rules, in which they all or almost
all agree. Thus there are no two noses in the world
exactly alike, or without a great variety of subordinate
parts, which may still be handsome, but a face without
any nose at all, or a nose (like that of a mask) without
any particularity in the details, would be a great

SIR J, REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES 177

deformity in art or nature. Sir Joshua seems to have
been led into his notions on this subject either by an
ambiguity of terms, or by taking only one view of
nature. He supposes grandeur, or the general effect
of the whole, to consist in leaving out the particular
details, because these details are sometimes found
without any grandeur of effect, and he therefore
conceives the two things to be irreconcilable and the
alternatives of each other. This is very imperfect
reasoning. If the mere leaving out the details con-
stituted grandeur, any one could do this : the greatest
dauber would at that rate be the greatest artist. A
house or sign painter might instantly enter the lists
with Michael Angelo, and might look down on the
little, dry, hard manner of Raphael. But grandeur
depends on a distinct principle of its own, not on a
negation of the parts ; and as it does not arise from
their omission, so neither is it incompatible with their
insertion or the highest finishing. In fact, an artist
may give the minute particulars of any object one by
one and with the utmost care, and totally neglect the
proportions, arrangement, and general masses, on
which the effect of the whole more immediately
depends ; or he may give the latter, viz. the propor-
tions and arrangement of the larger parts and the
general masses of light and shade, and leave all the
minuter parts of which those parts are composed a
mere blotch, one general smear, like the first crude
and hasty getting in of the groundwork of a picture :
he may do either of these, or he may combine both,
that is, finish the parts, but put them in their right
places, and keep them in due subordination to the
general effect and massing of the whole. If the
exclusion of the parts were necessary to the grandeur
of the whole composition, if the more entire this
exclusion, if the more like a tabula rasa, a vague, un-
defined, shadowy and abstracted representation the
picture was, the greater the grandeur, there could be
no danger of pushing this principle too far, and going
the full length of Sir Joshua's theory without any

178 TABLE-TALK

restrictions or mental reservations. But neither of
these suppositions is true. The greatest grandeur may
coexist with the most perfect, nay with a microscopic
accuracy of detail, as we see it does often in nature :
the greatest looseness and slovenliness of execution
may be displayed without any grandeur at all either in
the outline or distribution of the masses of colour. To
explain more particularly what I mean. I have seen
and copied portraits by Titian, in which the eyebrows
were marked with a number of small strokes, like hair-
lines (indeed, the hairs of which they were composed
were in a great measure given) — but did this destroy
the grandeur of expression, the truth of outline, arising
from the arrangement of these hair-lines in a given
form ? The grandeur, the character, the expression
remained, for the general form or arched and expanded
outline remained, just as much as if it had been daubed
in with a- blacking-brush : the introduction of the
internal parts and texture only added delicacy and
truth to the general and striking effect of the whole.
Surely a number of small dots or lines may be arranged
into the form of a square or a circle indiscriminately ;
the square or circle, that is, the larger figure, remains
the same, whether the line of which it consists is
broken or continuous ; as we may see in prints where
the outlines, features, and masses remain the same in
all the varieties of mezzotinto, dotted and lined engrav-
ing. If Titian in marking the appearance of the hairs
had deranged the general shape and contour of the
eyebrows, he would have destroyed the look of nature ;
but as he did not, but kept both in view, he pro-
portionably improved his copy of it. So, in what
regards the masses of light and shade, the variety, the
delicate transparency and broken transitions of the
tints is not inconsistent with the greatest breadth or
boldest contrasts. If the light, for instance, is thrown
strongly on one side of a face, and the other is cast
into deep shade, let the individual and various parts of
the surface be finished with the most scrupulous exact-
ness both in the drawing and in the colours, provided

SIR J. REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES 179

nature is not exceeded, this will not nor cannot destroy
the force and harmony of the composition. One side
of the face will still have that great and leading distinc-
tion of being seen in shadow, and the other of being
seen in the light, let the subordinate differences be as
many and as precise as they will. Suppose a panther
is painted in the sun : will it be necessary to leave out
the spots to produce breadth and the great style, or
will not this be done more effectually by painting the
spots of one side of his shaggy coat as they are seen in
the light, and those of the other as they really appear
in natural shadow ? The two masses are thus preserved
completely, and no offence is done to truth and nature.
Otherwise we resolve the distribution of light and
shade into local colouring. The masses, the grandeur
exist equally in external nature with the local differences
of different colours. Yet Sir Joshua seems to argue
that the grandeur, the effect of the whole object, is
confined to the general idea in the mind, and that all
the littleness and individuality is in nature. This is
an essentially false view of the subject. This grandeur,
this general effect, is indeed always combined with the
details, or what our theoretical reasoner would designate
as littleness in nature : and so it ought to be in art, as
far as art can follow nature with prudence and profit.
AVTiat is the fault of Denner's style?— It is, that he
does not give this combination of properties : that he

fives only one view of nature ; that he abstracts the
etails, the finishing, the curiosities of natural appear-
ances from the general result, truth, and character of
the whole, and in finishing every part with elaborate
care, totally loses sight of the more important and
striking appearance of the object as it presents itself to
us in nature. He gives every part of a face ; but the
shape, the expression, the light and shade of the whole
is wrong, and as far as can be from what is natural.
He gives an infinite variety of tints of the human face,
nor are they subjected to any principle of light and
shade. He is different from Rembrandt or Titian,
The English schools, formed on Sir Joshua's theory,

180 TABLE-TALK

give neither the finishing of the parts nor the effect of
the whole, but an inexplicable dumb mass without
distinction or meaning. They do not do as Denuer
did, and think that not to do as he did is to do as
Titian and Rembrandt did ; I do not know whether
they would take it as a compliment to be supposed to
imitate nature. Some few artists, it must be said,
have 'of late reformed this indifferently among us !
Oh ! let them reform it altogether ! ' I have no doubt
they would if they could ; but I have some doubts
whether they can or not. — Before I proceed to consider
the question of beauty and grandeur as it relates to the
selection of form, I will quote a few passages from Sir
Joshua with reference to what has been said on the
imitation of particular objects. In the Third Discourse
he observes : ' I will now add that nature herself is not
to be too closely copied. ... A mere copier of nature
can never produce anything great ; can never raise and
enlarge the conceptions, or warm the heart of the spectator.
The wish of the genuine painter must be more ex-
tensive : instead of endeavouring to amuse mankind
with the minute neatness of his imitations, he must
endeavour to improve them by the grandeur of his
ideas ; instead of seeking praise by deceiving the
superficial sense of the spectator, he must strive for
fame by captivating the imagination.'

From this passage it would surely seem that there
was nothing in nature but minute neatness and super-
ficial effect : nothing great in her style, for an imitator
of it can produce nothing great ; nothing ' to enlarge
the conceptions or warm the heart of the spectator.'

What word hath passed thy lips, Adam severe 1

All that is truly grand or excellent is a figment of the
imagination, a vapid creation out of nothing, a pure
effect of overlooking and scorning the minute neatness
of natural objects. This will not do. Again, Sir
Joshua lays it down without any qualification that —
' The whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists

SIR J. REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES 181

in being able to get above all singular forms, local
customs, peculiarities, and details of every kind.'

Yet we find him acknowledging a different opinion :

' I am very ready to allow ' (he says, in speaking of
history-painting) 'that some circumstances of minute-
ness and particularity frequently tend to give an air of
truth to a piece, and to interest the spectator in an
extraordinary manner. Such circumstances therefore
cannot wholly be rejected ; but if there be anything in
the Art which requires peculiar nicety of discernment,
it is the disposition of these minute, circumstantial
parts, which, according to the judgment employed in
the choice, become so useful to truth or so injurious to
grandeur.'

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

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

This would imply that the principle of unity and
integrity is only in the mind, and that nature is a heap
of disjointed, disconnected particulars, a chaos of
points and atoms. In the very next page the follow-
ing sentence occurs : —

' As painting is an art, they ' (the ignorant) ' think
they ought to be pleased in proportion as they see that
art ostentatiously displayed ; they will from this supposi-
tion prefer neatness, high finishing, and gaudy colour-
ing, to the truth, simplicity, and unity of nature.

182 TABLE-TALK

Before, neatness and high finishing were supposed to
belong exclusively to the littleness of nature, but here
truth, simplicity, and unity are her characteristics.
Soon after, Sir Joshua says : ' I should be sorry if
what has been said should be understood to have any
tendency to encourage that carelessness which leaves
work in an unfinished state. I commend nothing for
the want of exactness ; I mean to point out that kind
of exactness which is the best, and which is alone truly
to be so esteemed.' This Sir Joshua has already told ua
consists in getting above ' all particularities and details
of every kind.' Once more we find it stated that —

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

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

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

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

'Many artists, as Vasari likewise observes, have
ignorantly imagined they are imitating the manner of
Titian when they leave their colours rough and neglect
the detail ; but not possessing the principles on which
he wrought, they have produced what he calls gojfe
pitture — absurd, foolish pictures.'

Many artists have also imagined they were following
the directionsof Sir Joshua when they did the same thing,
that is, neglected the detail, and produced the same
results — vapid generalities, absurd, foolish pictures.

I will only give two short passages more, and hav«

SIR J. REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES 183

done with this part of the subject. I am anxious to
confront Sir Joshua with his own authority : —

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

At page 63 we find the following words : —

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

Farther, as Sir Joshua is inclined to merge the
details of individual objects in general effect, so he is
resolved to reduce all beauty or grandeur in natural
objects to a central form or abstract idea of a certain
class, so as to exclude all peculiarities or deviations
from this ideal standard as unfit subjects for the artist's

L84 TABLE-TALK

pencil, and as polluting his canvas with deformity.
As the former principle went to destroy all exactness
and solidity in particular things, this goes to confound
all variety, distinctness, and characteristic force in the
broader scale of nature. There is a principle of con-
formity in nature or of something in common between
a number of individuals of the same class, but there is
also a principle of contrast, of discrimination and
identity, which is equally essential in the system of the
universe and in the structure of our ideas both of art
and nature. Sir Joshua would hardly neutralise the
tints of the rainbow to produce a dingy grey, as a
medium or central colour ; why, then, should he
neutralise all features, forms, etc., to produce an
insipid monotony? He does not indeed consider his
theory of beauty as applicable to colour, which he well
understood, but insists upon and literally enforces it as
to form and ideal conceptions, of which he knew com-
paratively little, and where his authority is more
questionable. I will not in this place undertake to
show that his theory of a middle form (as the standard
of taste and beauty) is not true of the outline of the
human face and figure or other organic bodies, though
I think that even there it is only one principle or
condition of beauty ; but I do say that it has little or
nothing to do with those other capital parts of painting,
colour, character, expression, and grandeur of concep-
tion. Sir Joshua himself contends that 'beauty in
creatures of the same species is the medium or centre
of all its various forms ' ; and he maintains that gran-
deur is the same abstraction of the species in the
individual. Therefore beauty and grandeur must be
the same thing, which they are not; so that this
definition must be faulty. Grandeur I should suppose
to imply something that elevates and expands the
mind, which is chiefly power or magnitude. Beauty is
that which soothes and melts it ; and its source, I
apprehend, is a certain harmony, softness, and grada-
tion of form, within the limits of our customary
associations, no doubt, or of what we expect of certain

SIR J. REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES 185

species, but not independent of every other considera-
tion. Our critic himself confesses of Michael Angelo,
whom he regards as the pattern of the great or sublime
style, that ' his people are a superior order of beings :
there is nothing about them, nothing in the air of their
actions or their attitudes, or the style or cast of their
limbs or features, that reminds us of their belonging to
our own species. Raffaelle's imagination is not so
elevated ; his figures are not so much disjoined from
our own diminutive race of beings, though his ideas
are chaste, noble, and of great conformity to their
subjects. Michael Angelo's works have a strong,
peculiar, and marked character : they seem to proceed
from his own mind entirely, and that mind so rich and
abundant that he never needed, or seemed to disdain
to look abroad for foreign help. Raffaelle's materials
are generally borrowed, though the noble structure is
his own.'1 How does all this accord with the same
writer's favourite theory that all beauty, all grandeur,
and all excellence consist in an approximation to that
central form or habitual idea of mediocrity, from which
every deviation is so much deformity and littleness?
Michael Angelo's figures are raised above our diminu-
tive race of beings, yet they are confessedly the
standard of sublimity in what regards the human
form. Grandeur, then, admits of an exaggeration of
our habitual impressions ; and ' the strong, marked,
and peculiar character which Michael Angelo has at
the same time given to his works ' does not take away
from it. This is fact against argument. I would take
Sir Joshua's word for the goodness of a picture, and
for its distinguishing properties, sooner than I would
for an abstract metaphysical theory. Our artist also
speaks continually of high and low subjects. There can
be no distinction of this kind upon his principle, that
the standard of taste is the adhering to the central
form of each species, and that every species is in itself
equally beautiful. The painter of flowers, of shells, or
of anything else, is equally elevated with Raphael or
1 The Filth Diucourw.

186 TABLE-TALK

Michael, if he adheres to the generic or established
form of what he paints : the rest, according1 to this
definition, is a matter of indifference. There must
therefore be something besides the central or customary
form to account for the difference of dignity, for the
high and low style in nature or in art. Michael
Angelo's figures, we are told, are more than ordinarily
grand ; why, by the same rule, may not Raphael's be
more than ordinarily beautiful, have more than ordinary
softness, symmetry, and grace? — Character and ex-
pression are still less included in the present theory.
All character is a departure from the common-place
form ; and Sir Joshua makes no scruple to declare
that expression destroys beauty. Thus he says :

' If you mean to preserve the most perfect beauty in
its most perfect state, you cannot express the passions,
all of which produce distortion and deformity, more or
less, in the most beautiful faces.'

He goes on : ' Guido, from want of choice in adapting
his subject to his ideas and his powers, or from attempt-
ing to preserve beauty where it could not be preserved,
has in this respect succeeded very ill. His figures are
often engaged in subjects that required great expression ;
yet his Judith and Holofernes, the daughter of Herodias
with the Baptist's head, the Andromeda, and some
even of the Mothers of the Innocents, have little more
expression than his Venus attired by the Graces.'

What a censure is this passed upon Guido, and what
a condemnation of his own theory, which would reduce
and level all that is truly great and praiseworthy in
art to this insipid, tasteless standard, by setting aside
as illegitimate all that does not come within the middle,
central form ! Yet Sir Joshua judges of Hogarth as
he deviates from this standard, not as he excels in
individual character, which he says is only good or
tolerable as it partakes of general nature ; and he
might accuse Michael Angelo and Raphael, the one
for his grandeur of style, the other for his expression ;
for neither are what he sets up as the goal of perfec-
tion.—I will just stop to remark here that Sir Joshua has

SIR J. REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES 187

committed himself very strangely in speaking of the
character and expression to be found in the Greek
statues. He says in one place :

(l cannot quit the Apollo without making one
observation on the character of this figure. He is
supposed to have just discharged his arrow at the
Python ; and by the head retreating a little towards
the right shoulder, he appears attentive to its effect.
What I would remark is the difference of this attention
from that of the Discobolus, who is engaged in the
same purpose, watching the effect of his .Discus. The
graceful, negligent, though animated air of the one,
and the vulgar eagerness of the other, furnish an
instance of the judgment of the ancient Sculptors in
their nice discrimination of character. They are both
equally true to nature, and equally admirable.'

After a few observations on the limited means of the
art of sculpture, and the inattention of the ancients to
almost everything but form, we meet with the following
passage : —

' Those who think Sculpture can express more than
we have allowed may ask, by what means we discover,
at the first glance, the character that is represented in
a Bust, a Cameo, or Intaglio? I suspect it will be
found, on close examination, by him who is resolved
not to see more than he really does see, that the figures
are distinguished by their insignia more than by any
variety of form or beauty. Take from Apollo his Lyre*,
from Bacchus his Thyrsus and Vine-leaves, and Meleager
the Boar's Head, and there will remain little or no
difference in their characters. In a Juno, Minerva, or
Flora, the idea of the artist seems to have gone no
further than representing perfect beauty, and after-
wards adding the proper attributes, with a total in-
difference to which they gave them.'

[A Vhat, then, becomes of that ( nice discrimination of
character' for which our author has just before cele-
brated them ?]

'Thus John De Bologna, after he had finished a
group of a young man holding up a young woman in

188 TABLE-TALK

his arms, with an old man at his feet, called his friends
together, to tell him what name he should give it, and
it was agreed to call it The Rape of the Sabines ; and
this is the celebrated group which now stands before
the old Palace at Florence. The figures have the same
general expression which is to be found in most of the
antique Sculpture ; and yet it would be no wonder if
future critics should find out delicacy of expression
which was never intended, and go so far as to see, in
the old man's countenance, the exact relation which he
bore to the woman who appears to be taken from him.'

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

I confess, it strikes me as a self-evident truth that
variety or contrast is as essential a principle in art and
nature as uniformity, and as necessary to make up the
harmony of the universe and the contentment of the
mind. Who would destroy the shifting effects of light
and shade, the sharp, lively opposition of colours in
the same or in different objects, the streaks in a flower,
the stains in a piece of marble, to reduce all to the
same neutral, dead colouring, the same middle tint?
Yet it is on this principle that Sir Joshua would get
rid of all variety, character, expression, and picturesque
effect in forms, or at least measure the worth or the
spuriousness of all these according to their reference to
or departure from a given or average standard. Surely,
nature is more liberal, art is wider than Sir Joshua's
theory. Allow (for the sake of argument) that all
forms are in themselves indifferent, and that beauty or
the sense of pleasure in forms can therefore only arise
from customary association, or from that middle
impression to which they all tend : yet this cannot by
the same rule apply to other things. Suppose there is
no capacity in form to affect the mind except from its
corresponding to previous expectation, the same thing
cannot be said of the idea of power or grandeur,. No

SIR J. REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES 189

one can say that the idea of power does not affect the
mind with the sense of awe and sublimity. That is,
power and weakness, grandeur and littleness, are not
indifferent things, the perfection of which consists in a
medium between both. Again, expression is not a
thing indifferent in itself, which derives its value or its
interest solely from its conformity to a neutral standard.
MTio would neutralise the expression of pleasure and
pain ? or say that the passions of the human mind —
pity, love, joy, sorrow, etc. — are only interesting to the
imagination and worth the attention of the artist, as he
can reduce them to an equivocal state which is neither
pleasant nor painful, neither one thing nor the other ?
Or who would stop short of the utmost refinement,
precision, and force in the delineation of each ? Ideal
expression is not neutral expression, but extreme
expression. Again, character is a thing of peculiarity,
of striking contrast, of distinction, and not of uni-
formity. It is necessarily opposed to Sir Joshua's
exclusive theory, and yet it is surely a curious and
interesting field of speculation for the human mind.
Lively, spirited discrimination of character is one
source of gratification to the lover of nature and art,
which it could not be if all truth and excellence con-
sisted in rejecting individual traits. Ideal character is
not common-place, but consistent character marked
throughout, which may take place in history or por-
trait. Historical truth in a picture is the putting the
different features of the face or muscles of the body
into consistent action. The picturesque altogether
depends on particular points or qualities of an object,
projecting as it were beyond the middle line of beauty,
and catching the eye of the spectator. It was less,
however, my intention to hazard any speculations of
my own than to confirm the common-sense feelings on
the subject by Sir Joshua's own admissions in different
places. In the Tenth Discourse, speaking of some
objections to the Apollo, he has these remarkable
words : —

' In regard to the last objection (viz. that the lower

190 TABLE-TALK

half of the figure is longer than just proportion allows)
it must be remembered that Apollo is here in the
exertion of one of his peculiar powers, which is swift-
ness ; he has therefore that proportion which is best
adapted to that character. This is no more incorrect-
ness than when there is given to a Hercules an extra-
ordinary swelling and strength of muscles.'

Strength and activity then do not depend on the
middle form ; and the middle form is to be sacrificed
to the representation of these positive qualities. Char-
acter is thus allowed not only to be an integrant part
of the antique and classical style of art, but even to
take precedence of and set aside the abstract idea
of beauty. Little more would be required to justify
Hogarth in his Gothic resolution, that if he were to
make a figure of Charon, he would give him bandy legs,
because watermen are generally bandy-legged. It is
very well to talk of the abstract idea of a man or of a
God, but if you come to anything like an intelligible
proposition, you must either individualise and define,
or destroy the very idea you contemplate. Sir Joshua
goes into this question at considerable length in the
Third Discourse : —

' To the principle I have laid down, that the idea of
beauty in each species of beings is an invariable one, it
may be objected,' he says, 'that in every particular
species there are various central forms, which are
separate and distinct from each other, and yet are
undeniably beautiful ; that in the human figure, for
instance, the beauty of Hercules is one, of the Gladiator
another, of the Apollo another, which makes so many
different ideas of beauty. It is true, indeed, that these
figures are each perfect in their kind, though of differ-
ent characters and proportions ; but still none of them
is the representation of an individual, but of a class.
And as there is one general form, which, as I have
said, belongs to the human kind at large, so in each of
these classes there is one common idea which is the
abstract of the various individual forms belonging to
that class. Thus, though the forms of childhood and

SIR J. REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES 191

age differ exceedingly, there is a common form in
childhood, and a common form in age, which is the
more perfect as it is remote from all peculiarities.
But I must add further, that though the most perfect
forms of each of the general divisions of the human
figure are ideal, and superior to any individual form of
that class, yet the highest perfection of the human
figure is not to be found in any of them. It is not in
the Hercules, nor in the Gladiator, nor in the Apollo ;
but in that form which is taken from all, and which
partakes equally of the activity of the Gladiator, of the
delicacy of the Apollo, and of the muscular strength
of the Hercules. For perfect beauty in any species
must combine all the characters which are beautiful in
that species. It cannot consist in any one to the
exclusion of the rest : no one, therefore, must be
predominant, that no one may be deficient'

Sir Joshua here supposes the distinctions of classes
and character to be necessarily combined with the
general leading idea of a middle form. This middle
form is not to confound age, sex, circumstance, under
one sweeping abstraction ; but we must limit the
general ideas by certain specific differences and char-
acteristic marks, belonging to the several subordinate
divisions and ramifications of each class. This is
enough to show that there is a principle of individuality
as well as of abstraction inseparable from works of art
as well as nature. We are to keep the human form
distinct from that of other living beings, that of men
from that of women ; we are to distinguish between
age and infancy, between thoughtfulness and gaiety,
between strength and softness. Where is this to stop ?
But Sir Joshua turns round upon himself in this very
passage, and says : ' No : we are to unite the strength
of the Hercules with the delicacy of the Apollo ; for
perfect beauty in any species must combine all the
characters which are beautiful in that species.' Now
if these different characters are beautiful in them-
selves, why not give them for their own sakes and in
their most striking appearances, instead of qualifying

192 TABLE-TALK

and softening them down in a neutral form ; which
must produce a compromise, not a union of different
excellences. If all excess of beauty, if all character is
deformity, then we must try to lose it as fast as
possible in other qualities. But if strength is an
excellence, if activity is an excellence, if delicacy is an
excellence, then the perfection, i.e. the highest degree
of each of these qualities, cannot be attained but by
remaining satisfied with a less degree of the rest. But
let us hear what Sir Joshua himself advances on this
subject in another part of the Discourses :

'Some excellences bear to be united, and are
improved by union : others are of a discordant nature,
and the attempt to unite them only produces a harsh
jarring of incongruent principles. The attempt to
unite contrary excellences (of form, for instance *) in a
single figure can never escape degenerating into tJie
monstrous but by sinking into the insipid ; by taking away
its marked character, and weakening its expression.

'Obvious as these remarks appear, there are many
writers on our art who, not being of the profession and
consequently not knowing what can or cannot be done,
have been very liberal of absurd praises in their
description of favourite works. They always find in
them what they are resolved to find. They praise
excellences that can hardly exist together ; and, above
all things, are fond of describing with great exactness
the expression of a mixed passion, which more particu-
larly appears to me out of the reach of our art.' 2

' Such are many disquisitions which I have read on
some of the Cartoons and other pictures of Raffaelle,
where the critics have described their own imagina-
tions ; or indeed where the excellent master himself
may have attempted this expression of passions above
the powers of the art, and has, therefore, by an
indistinct and imperfect marking, left room for every
imagination with equal probability to find a passion of

i These are Sir Joshua's words.

a I do not know that ; but I do not think the two passions oould
be expressed by expressing neither or something between both.

SIR J. REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES 193

his own. What has been, and what can be done in the
art, is sufficiently difficult : we need not be mortified or
discouraged at not being able to execute the conceptions
of a romantic imagination. Art has its boundaries,
though imagination has none. We can easily, like the
ancients, suppose a Jupiter to be possessed of all those
powers and perfections which the subordinate Deities
were endowed with separately. Yet when they em-
ployed their art to represent him, they confined his
character to majesty alone. Pliny, therefore, though
we are under great obligations to him for the informa-
tion he has given us in relation to the works of the
ancient artists, is very frequently wrong when he
speaks of them, which he does very often, in the style
of many of our modern connoisseurs. He observes
that in a statue of Paris, by Euphranor, you might
discover at the same time three different characters :
the dignity of a Judge of the Goddesses, the Lover of
Helen, and the Conqueror of Achilles. A statue in
which you endeavour to unite stately dignity, youthful
elegance, and stern valour, must surely possess none
of these to any eminent degree.

( From hence it appears that there is much difficulty
as well as danger in an endeavour to concentrate in a
single subject those various powers which, rising from
various points, naturally move in different directions.'

What real clue to the art or sound principles of judg-
ing the student can derive from these contradictory
statements, or in what manner it is possible to reconcile
them one to the other, I confess I am at a loss to dis-
cover. As it appears to me, all the varieties of nature
in the infinite number of its qualities, combinations,
characters, expressions, incidents, etc., rise from dis-
tinct points or centres and must move in distinct direc-
tions, as the forms of different species are to be referred
to a separate standard. It is the object of art to bring
them out in all their force, clearness, and precision,
and not to blend them into a vague, vapid, nondescript
ideal conception, which pretends to unite, but in reality
destroys. Sir Joshua's theory limits nature and para-

194 TABLE-TALK

lyses art According to him, the middle form or the
average of our various impressions is the source from
which all beauty, pleasure, interest, imagination springs.
I contend, on the contrary, that this very variety is good
in itself, nor do I agree with him that the whole of
nature as it exists in fact is stark naught, and that there
is nothing worthy of the contemplation of a wise man
but that ideal perfection which never existed in the world
nor even on canvas. There is something fastidious and
sickly in Sir Joshua's system. His code of taste con-
sists too much of negations, and not enough of positive,
prominent qualities. It accounts for nothing but the
beauty of the common Antique, and hardly for that.
The merit of Hogarth, I grant, is different from that of
the Greek statues ; but I deny that Hogarth is to be
measured by this standard or by Sir Joshua's middle
forms : he has powers of instruction and amusement
that, ' rising from a different point, naturally move in
a different direction,' and completely attain their end.
It would be just as reasonable to condemn a comedy
for not having the pathos of a tragedy or the stateli-
ness of an epic poem. If Sir Joshua lleynolds's theory
were true, Dr. Johnson's Irene would be a better
tragedy than any of Shakespear's.

The reasoning of the Discourses is, I think, then,
deficient in the following particulars : —

1. It seems to imply that general effect in a picture
is produced by leaving out the details, whereas the
largest masses and the grandest outline are consistent
with the utmost delicacy of finishing in the parts.

2. It makes no distinction between beauty and gran-
deur, but refers both to an ideal or middle form, as the
centre of the various forms of the species, and yet in-
consistently attributes the grandeur of Michael Augelo's
style to the superhuman appearance of his prophets and
apostles.

3. It does not at any time make mention of power
or magnitude in an object as a distinct source of the
sublime (though this is acknowledged unintentionally
in the case of Michael Angelo, etc.), nor of softness or

SIR J. REYNOLDS'S DISCOURSES 195

symmetry of form as a distinct source of beauty, in-
dependently of, though still in connection with another
source arising from what we are accustomed to expect
from each individual species.

4. Sir Joshua's theory does not leave room for char-
acter, but rejects it as an anomaly.

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

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

ESSAY XV

ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE

I HAVE been sometimes accused of a fondness for para-
doxes, but I cannot in my own mind plead guilty to
the charge. I do not indeed swear by an opinion be-
cause it is old ; but neither do 1 fall in love with every
extravagance at first sight because it is new. I con-
ceive that a thing may have been repeated a thousand
times without being a bit more reasonable than it was
the first time : and I also conceive that an argument or
an observation may be very just, though it may so
happen that it was never stated before : but I do not
take it for granted that every prejudice is ill-founded ;
nor that every paradox is self-evident, merely because
it contradicts the vulgar opinion. Sheridan once said
of some speech in his acute, sarcastic way, that 'it
contained a great deal both of what was new and what
was true : but that unfortunately what was new was
not true, and what was true was not new.' This appears
to me to express the whole sense of the question. I do
not see much use in dwelling on a common-place, how-
ever fashionable or well established : nor am I very
ambitious of starting the most specious novelty, unless
I imagine I have reason on my side. Originality im-
plies independence of opinion ; but differs as widely
from mere singularity as from the tritest truism. It
consists in seeing and thinking for one's-self : whereas
singularity is only the affectation of saying something
to contradict other people, without having any real
opinion of one's own upon the matter. Mr. Burke was

ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE 197

an original, though an extravagant writer : Mr. Wind-
ham was a regular manufacturer of paradoxes.

The greatest number of minds seem utterly incapable
of fixing on any conclusion, except from the pressure
of custom and authority: opposed to these there is
another class less numerous but pretty formidable, who
in all their opinions are equally under the influence of
novelty and restless vanity. The prejudices of the one
are counterbalanced by the paradoxes of the other ;
and folly, f putting in one scale a weight of ignorance,
in that of pride/ might be said to 'smile delighted with
the eternal poise.' A sincere and manly spirit of in-
quiry is neither blinded by example nor dazzled by
sudden flashes of light. Nature is always the same,
the storehouse of lasting truth, and teeming with inex-
haustible variety ; and he who looks at her with steady
and well-practised eyes will find enough to employ all
his sagacity, whether it has or has not been seen by
others before him. Strange as it may seem, to learn
what an object is, the true philosopher looks at the
object itself, instead of turning to others to know what
they think or say or have heard of it, or instead of con-
sulting the dictates of his vanity, petulance, and in-
genuity to see what can be said against their opinion,
and to prove himself wiser than all the rest of the
world. For want of this the real powers and resources
of the mind are lost and dissipated in a conflict of
opinions and passions, of obstinacy against levity, of
bigotry against self-conceit, of notorious abuses against
rash innovations, of dull, plodding, old-fashioned stu-
j.idity against new-fangled folly, of worldly interest
against headstrong egotism, of the incorrigible pre-
judices of the old and the unmanageable humours of
the young ; while truth lies in the middle, and is over-
looked by both parties. Or as Luther complained long
ago, ' human reason is like a drunken man on horse-
back : set it up on one side, and it tumbles over on the
other.' — With one sort, example, authority, fashion,
ease, interest, rule all : with the other, singularity, the
love of distinction, mere whim, the throwing off all

198 TABLE-TALK

restraint and showing an heroic disregard of con-
sequences, an impatient and unsettled turn of mind,
the want of sudden and strong excitement, of some
new plaything for the imagination, are equally ' lords of
the ascendant/ and are at every step getting the start
of reason, truth, nature, common sense, and feeling.
With one party, whatever is, is right : with their
antagonists, whatever is, is wrong. These swallow
every antiquated absurdity : those catch at every
new, unfledged project — and are alike enchanted with
the velocipedes or the French Revolution. One set,
wrapped up in impenetrable forms and technical tradi-
tions, are deaf to everything that has not been dinned
in their ears, and in those of their forefathers, from
time immemorial : their hearing is thick with the same
old saws, the same unmeaning form of words, ever-
lastingly repeated: the others pique themselves on a
jargon of their own, a Babylonish dialect, crude, un-
concocted, harsh, discordant, to which it is impossible
for any one else to attach either meaning or respect.
These last turn away at the mention of all usages,
creeds, institutions of more than a day's standing as a
mass of bigotry, superstition, and barbarous ignorance,
whose leaden "touch would petrify and benumb their
quick, mercurial, 'apprehensive, forgetive' faculties.
The opinion of to-day supersedes that of yesterday :
that of to-morrow supersedes, by anticipation, that of
to-day. The wisdom of the ancients, the doctrines of
the learned, the laws of nations, the common senti-
ments of morality, are to them like a bundle of old
almanacs. As the modern politician always asks for
this day's paper, the modern sciolist always inquires
after the latest paradox. With him instinct is a dotard,
nature a changeling, and common sense a discarded
by-word. As with the man of the world, what every-
body says must be true, the citizen of the world has
quite a different notion of the matter. With the one,
the majority ; ' the powers that be ' have always been
in the right in all ages and places, though they have
been cutting one another's throats and turning the

ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE 199

world upside down with their quarrels and disputes
from the beginning of time : with the other, what any
two people have ever agreed in is an error on the face
of it. The credulous bigot shudders at the idea of
altering anything in ' time-hallowed ' institutions ; and
under this cant phrase can bring himself to tolerate any
knavery or any folly, the Inquisition, Holy Oil, the
Right Divine, etc. ; — the more refined sceptic will laugh
in your face at the idea of retaining anything which has
the damning stamp of custom upon it, and is for abat-
ing all former precedents, 'all trivial, fond records,'
the whole frame and fabric of society as a nuisance in
the lump. Is not this a pair of wiseacres well matched?
The one stickles through thick and thin for his own
religion and government : the other scouts all religions
and all governments with a smile of ineffable disdain.
The one will not move for any consideration out of the
broad and beaten path : the other is continually turning
off at right angles, and losing himself in the labyrinths
of his own ignorance and presumption. The one will
not go along with any party : the other always joins
the strongest side. The one will not conform to any
common practice : the other will subscribe to any thriv-
ing system. The one is the slave of habit : the other is
the sport of caprice. The first is like a man obstinately
bed-rid : the last is troubled with St. Vitus's dance.
He cannot stand still, he cannot rest upon any conclu-
sion. ' He never is — but always to be right.'

The author of the Prometheus Unbound (to take an
individual instance of the last character) has a fire in
his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a
hectic nutter in his speech, which mark out the philo-
sophic fanatic. He is sanguine - complexioned and
shrill-voiced. As is often observable in the case of
religious enthusiasts, there is a slenderness of con-
stitutional stamina, which renders the flesh no match
for the spirit. His bending, flexible form appears
to take no strong hold of things, does not grapple
with the world about him, but slides from it like a
river —

200 TABLE-TALK

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

The shock of accident, the weight of authority make
no impression on his opinions, which retire like a
feather, or rise from the encounter unhurt through
their own buoyancy. He is clogged hy no dull system
of realities, no earth-bound feelings, no rooted pre-
judices, hy nothing that belongs to the mighty trunk
and hard husk of nature and habit, but is drawn up by
irresistible levity to the regions of mere speculation
and fancy, to the sphere of air and fire, where his
delighted spirit floats in ' seas of pearl and clouds of
amber.' There is no caput mortuum of worn -out,
threadbare experience to serve as ballast to his mind ;
it is all volatile intellectual salt of tartar, that refuses
to combine its evanescent, inflammable essence with
anything solid or anything lasting. Bubbles are to
him the only realities : — touch them, and they vanish.
Curiosity is the only proper category of his mind, and
though a man in knowledge, he is a child in feeling.
Hence he puts everything into a metaphysical crucible
to judge of it himself and exhibit it to others as a sub-
ject of interesting experiment, without first making it
over to the ordeal of his common sense or trying it on
his heart. This faculty of speculating at random on
all questions may in its overgrown and uninformed
state do much mischief without intending it, like an
overgrown child with the power of a man. Mr.
Shelley has been accused of vanity — I think he is
chargeable with extreme levity ; but this levity is so
great that I do not believe he is sensible of its con-
sequences. He strives to overturn all established
creeds and systems ; but this is in him an effect of
constitution. He runs before the most extravagant
opinions ; but this is because he is held back by none
of the merely mechanical checks of sympathy and
habit. He tampers with all sorts of obnoxious sub-
jects ; but it is less because he is gratified with the
rankness of the taint than captivated with the intel-
lectual phosphoric light they emit. It would seem

ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE 201

that he wished not so much to convince or inform as
to shock the public by the tenor of his productions ;
but I suspect he is more intent upon startling himself
with his electrical experiments in morals and philo-
sophy ; and though they may scorch other people,
they are to him harmless amusements, the coruscations
of an Aurora Borealis, that ' play round the head, but
do not reach the heart.' Still I could wish that he
would put a stop to the incessant, alarming whirl of
his voltaic battery. With his zeal, his talent, and his
fancy, he would do more good and less harm if he
were to give up his wilder theories, and if he took less
pleasure in feeling his heart flutter in unison with the
panic-struck apprehensions of his readers. Persons of
this class, instead of consolidating useful and acknow-
ledged truths, and thus advancing the cause of science
and virtue, are never easy but in raising doubtful and
disagreeable questions, which bring the former into
disgrace and discredit. They are not contented to lead
the minds of men to an eminence overlooking the
prospect of social amelioration, unless, by forcing them
up slippery paths and to the utmost verge of possibility,
they can dash them down the precipice the instant
they reach the promised Pisgah. They think it no-
thing to hang up a beacon to guide or warn, if they do
not at the same time frighten the community like a
comet. They do not mind making their principles
odious, provided they can make themselves notorious.
To win over the public opinion by fair means is to
them an insipid, common-place mode of popularity :
they would either force it by harsh methods, or seduce
it by intoxicating potions. Egotism, petulance, licen-
tiousness, levity of principle (whatever be the source)
is a bad thing in any one, and most of all in a philo-
sophical reformer. Their humanity, their wisdom, is
always fat the horizon.' Anything new, anything
remote, anything questionable, comes to them in a
shape that is sure of a cordial welcome— a welcome
cordial in proportion as the object is new, as it is
apparently impracticable, as it is a doubt whether it

202 TABLE-TALK

is at all desirable. Just after the final failure, the
completion of the last act of the French Revolution,
when the legitimate wits were crying out, f The farce
is over, now let us go to supper,' these provoking
reasoners got up a lively hypothesis about introducing
the domestic government of the Nayrs into this country
as a feasible set-off against the success of the Borough-
mongers. The practical is with them always the
antipodes of the ideal ; and like other visionaries of
a different stamp, they date the Millennium or New
Order of Things from the Restoration of the Bourbons .
'Fine words butter no parsnips,' says the proverb.
f While you are talking of marrying, I am thinking
of hanging/ says Captain Macheath. Of all people the
most tormenting are those who bid you hope in the
midst of despair, who, by never caring about anything
but their own sanguine, hair-brained Utopian schemes,
have at no time any particular cause for embarrassment
and despondency because they have never the least
chance of success, and who by including whatever does
not hit their idle fancy, kings, priests, religion, govern-
ment, public abuses or private morals, in the same
sweeping clause of ban and anathema, do all they can
to combine all parties in a common cause against them,
and to prevent every one else from advancing one
step farther in the career of practical improvement
than they do in that of imaginary and unattainable
perfection.

Besides, all this untoward heat and precocity often
argues rottenness and a falling-off. I myself remember
several instances of this sort of unrestrained license
of opinion and violent effervescence of sentiment in the
first period of the French Revolution. Extremes meet :
and the most furious anarchists have since become the
most barefaced apostates. Among the foremost of
these I might mention the present poet-laureate and
some of his friends. The prose-writers on that side
of the question — Mr. Godwin, Mr. Bentham, etc. — have
not turned round in this extraordinary manner : they
seem to have felt their ground (however mistaken in

ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE 203

some points), and have in general adhered to their rirst
principles. But ' poets (as it has been said) have such
seething brains, that they are disposed to meddle with
everything, and mar all. They make bad philosophers
and worse politicians.1 They live, for the most part,
in an ideal world of their own ; and it would perhaps
be as well if they were confined to it. Their flights
and fancies are delightful to themselves and to every-
body else : but they make strange work with matter
of fact ; and if they were allowed to act in public
affairs, would soon turn the world the wrong side out.
They indulge only their own flattering dreams or super-
stitious prejudices, and make idols or bugbears of
whatever they please, caring as little for history or
particular facts as for general reasoning. They are
dangerous leaders and treacherous followers. Their
inordinate vanity runs them into all sorts of extra-
vagances ; and their habitual effeminacy gets them out
of them at any price. Always pampering their own
appetite for excitement, and wishing to astonish others,
their whole aim is to produce a dramatic effect, one
way or other — to shock or delight the observers ; and
they are apparently as indifferent to the consequences
of what they write as if the world were merely a stage
for them to play their fantastic tricks on, and to
make their admirers weep. Not less romantic in their
servility than their independence, and equally im-
portunate candidates for fame or infamy, they require
only to be distinguished, and are not scrupulous as to
the means of distinction. Jacobins or Anti-Jacobins —
outrageous advocates for anarchy and licentiousness,
or flaming apostles of political persecution — always

i 'As for politics, I think poets are tories by nature, supposing
them to be by nature poets. The love of an individual person or
family, that has worn a crown for many successions, is an inclination
greatly adapted to the fanciful tribe. On the other hand, mathe-
maticians, abstract reasoners, of no manner of attachment to persons,
at least to the visible part of them, but prodigiously devoted to the
ideas of virtue, liberty, and so forth, are generally whigs. It happens
agreeably enough to this maxim, that the whigs are friends to that
wise, plodding, unpoetical people, the Dutch.'— Shenstone'8 Letters,
1746, p. 105.

204 TABLE-TALK

violent and vulgar in their opinions, they oscillate,
with a giddy and sickening motion, from one absurdity
to another, and expiate the follies of youth by the
heartless vices of advancing age. None so ready as
they to carry every paradox to its most revolting and
ridiculous excess — none so sure to caricature, in their
own persons, every feature of the prevailing philo-
sophy ! In their days of blissful innovation, indeed,
the philosophers crept at their heels like hounds, while
they darted on their distant quarry like hawks ; stoop-
ing always to the lowest game; eagerly snuffing up
the most tainted and rankest scents ; feeding their
vanity with a notion of the strength of their digestion
of poisons, and most ostentatiously avowing whatever
would most effectually startle the prejudices of others.1
Preposterously seeking for the stimulus of novelty in
abstract truth, and the eclat of theatrical exhibition in
pure reason, it is no wonder that these persons at last

1 To give the modern reader un petit aperyu of the tone of literary
conversation about five or six and twenty years ago, I remember
being present in a large party composed of men, women, and chil-
dren, in which two persons of remarkable candour and ingenuity
were labouring (as hard as if they had been paid for it) to prove that
all prayer was a mode of dictating to the Almighty, and an arrogant
assumption of superiority. A gentleman present said, with great
simplicity and nalveti, that there was one prayer which did not strike
him as coming exactly under this description, and being asked what
that was, made answer, ' The Samaritan's — " Lord, be merciful to me,
a sinner 1 " ' This appeal by no means settled the sceptical dogmatism
of the two disputants, and soon after the proposer of the objection
went away; on which one of them observed with great marks of
satisfaction and triumph — ' I am afraid we have shocked that gentle-
man's prejudices.' This did not appear to me at that time quite the
thing, and this happened in the year 1794. — Twice has the iron
entered my soul. Twice have the dastard, vaunting, venal crew gone
over it : once as they went forth, conquering and to conquer, with
reason by their side, glittering like a falchion, trampling on pre-
judices and marching fearlessly on in the work of regeneration ; once
again, when they returned with retrograde steps, like Cacus's oxen
dragged backward by the heels, to the den of Legitimacy, ' rout on
rout, confusion worse confounded,' with places and pensions and the
Quarterly Review dangling from their pockets, and shouting, ' De-
liverance for mankind,' for ' the worst, the second fall of man.' Yet
I have endured all this marching and countermarching of poets,
philosophers, and politicians over my head as well as I could, like
'the camomile that thrives, the more 'tis trod upon.' By Heavens,
I think, I'll endure it no longer 1

ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE 205

became disgusted with their own pursuits, and that, in
consequence of the violence of the change, the most
inveterate prejudices and uncharitable sentiments have
rushed in to fill up the void produced by the previous
annihilation of common sense, wisdom, and humanity ! '

I have so far been a little hard on poets and re-
formers. Lest I should be thought to have taken a
particular spite to them, I will try to make them the
amende honorable by turning to a passage in the writ-
ings of one who neither is nor ever pretended to be
a poet or a reformer, but the antithesis of both, an
accomplished man of the world, a courtier, and a wit,
and who has endeavoured to move the previous ques-
tion on all schemes of fanciful improvement, and all
plans of practical reform, by the following declaration.
It is in itself a finished common-place; and may serve
as a test whether that sort of smooth, verbal reasoning
which passes current because it excites no one idea in
the mind, is much freer from inherent absurdity than
the wildest paradox.

'My lot,' says Mr. Canning in the conclusion of his
Liverpool speech, ' is cast under the British Monarchy.
Under that I have lived ; under that I have seen my
country nourish ; l under that I have seen it enjoy as
great a share of prosperity, of happiness, and of glory
as I believe any modification of human society to be
capable of bestowing ; and I am not prepared to sacri-
fice or to hazard the fruit of centuries of experience,
of centuries of struggles, and of more than one century
of libertv, as perfect as ever blessed any country upon

the earth, for visionary schemes of ideal perfectibility
for doubtful experiments even of possible improvement.'2
Such is Mr. Canning's common-place ; and in giving
the following answer to it, I do not think I can be
accused of falling into that extravagant and unmiti-
gated strain of paradoxical reasoning with which I have
already found so much fault.

1 Trojafuit.

2 Mr. Canning's Speech at the Liverpool Dinner, given in celebra-
tion of his Re-election, March 18, 1820. Fourth edition, reyised and
corrected.

206 TABLE-TALK

The passage, then, which the gentleman here throws
down as an effectual bar to all change, to all innova-
tion, to all improvement, contains at every step a
refutation of his favourite creed. He is not ' prepared
to sacrifice or to hazard the fruit of centuries of
experience, of centuries of struggles, and of one
century of liberty, for visionary schemes of ideal
perfectibility/ So here are centuries of experience
and centuries of struggles to arrive at one century of
liberty ; and yet, according to Mr. Canning's general
advice, we are never to make any experiments or to
engage in any struggles either with a view to future
improvement, or to recover benefits which we have
lost. Man (they repeat in our ears, line upon line,
precept upon precept) is always to turn his back upon
the future, and his face to the past. He is to believe
that nothing is possible or desirable but what he finds
already established to his hands in time-worn institu-
tions or inveterate abuses. His understanding is to be
buried in implicit creeds, and he himself is to be made
into a political automaton, a go-cart of superstition
and prejudice, never stirring hand or foot but as he is
pulled by the wires and strings of the state-conjurers,
the legitimate managers and proprietors of the show.
His powers of will, of thought, and action are to be
paralysed in him, and he is to be told and to believe
that whatever is, must be. Perhaps Mr. Canning will
say that men were to make experiments and to re-
solve upon struggles formerly, but that now they are
to surrender their understandings and their rights
into his keeping. But at what period of the world was
the system of political wisdom stereotyped, like Mr.
Cobbett's Gold against Paper, so as to admit of no
farther alterations or improvements, or correction of
errors of the press? When did the experience of
mankind become stationary or retrograde, so that we
must act from the obsolete inferences of past periods,
not from the living impulse of existing circumstances,
and the consolidated force of the knowledge and re-
flection of ages up to the present instant, naturally

ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE 207

projecting us forward into the future, and not driving
us back upon the past ? Did Mr. Canning never hear,
did he never think, of Lord Bacon's axiom, 'That
those times are the ancient times in which we live,
and not those which, counting backwards from our-
selves, ordine retrograde, we call ancient ' ? The latest
periods must necessarily have the advantage of the
sum-total of the experience that has gone before them,
and of the sum-total of human reason exerted upon
that experience, or upon the solid foundation of nature
and history, moving on in its majestic course, not flutter-
ing in the empty air of fanciful speculation, nor leaving
a gap of centuries between us and the long-mouldered
grounds on which we are to think and act. Mr.
Canning cannot plead with Mr. Burke that 110 dis-
coveries, no improvements have been made in political
science and institutions; for he says we have arrived
through centuries of experience and of struggles at
one century of liberty. Is the world, then, at a stand ?
Mr. Canning knows well enough that it is in ceaseless
progress and everlasting change, but he would have it
to be the change from liberty to slavery, the progress
of corruption, not of regeneration and reform. Why,
no longer ago than the present year, the two epochs of
November and January last presented (he tells us in
this very speech) as great a contrast in the state of the
country as any two periods of its history the most
opposite or most remote. Well then, are our ex-
perience and our struggles at an end ? No, he says,
' the crisis is at hand for every man to take part for or
against the institutions of the British Monarchy.' His
part is taken : ' but of this be sure, to do aught good
will never be his task ! ' He will guard carefully
against all possible improvements, and maintain all
possible abuses sacred, impassive, immortal. He will
not give up the fruit of centuries of experience, of
struggles, and of one century at least of liberty, since
the Revolution of 1688, for any doubtful experiments
whatever. We are arrived at the end of our experience,
our struggles, and our liberty — and are to anchor

208 TABLE-TALK

through time and eternity in the harbour of passive
obedience and non-resistance. We (the people of
England) will tell Mr. Canning frankly what we think
of his magnanimous and ulterior resolution. It is our
own ; and it has been the resolution of mankind in all
ages of the world. No people, no age, ever threw
away the fruits of past wisdom, or the enjoyment of
present blessings, for visionary schemes of ideal perfec-
tion. It is the knowledge of the past, the actual
infliction of the present, that has produced all changes,
all innovations, and all improvements — not (as is
pretended) the chimerical anticipation of possible ad-
vantages, but the intolerable pressure of long-established,
notorious, aggravated, and growing abuses. It was
the experience of the enormous and disgusting abuses
and corruptions of the Papal power that produced the
Reformation. It was the experience of the vexations
and oppressions of the feudal system that produced its
abolition after centuries of sufferings and of struggles.
It was the experience of the caprice and tyranny of the
Monarch that extorted Magna Charta at Runnymede.
It was the experience of the arbitrary and insolent
abuse of the prerogative in the reigns of the Tudors
and the first Stuarts that produced the resistance to it
in the reign of Charles I. and the Grand Rebellion.
It was the experience of the incorrigible attachment
of the same Stuarts to Popery and Slavery, with their
many acts of cruelty, treachery, and bigotry, that
produced the Revolution, and set the House of Bruns-
wick on the Throne. It was the conviction of the
incurable nature of the abuse, increasing with time
and patience, and overcoming the obstinate attachment
to old habits and prejudices, — an attachment not to be
rooted out by fancy or theory, but only by repeated,,
lasting, and incontrovertible proofs, — that has abated
every nuisance that ever was abated, and introduced
every innovation and every example of revolution and
reform. It was the experience of the abuses, licentious-
ness, and innumerable oppressions of the old Govern-
ment in France that produced the French Revolution.

ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE 209

ft was the experience of the determination of the
British Ministry to harass, insult, and plunder them,
that produced the Revolution of the United States.
Away then with this miserable cant against fanciful
theories, and appeal to acknowledged experience !
Men never act against their prejudices but from the
spur of their feelings, the necessity of their situations
— their theories are adapted to their practical con-
victions and their varying circumstances. Nature has
ordered it so, and Mr. Canning, by showing off his
rhetorical paces, by his 'ambling and lisping and
nicknaming God's creatures,' cannot invert that order,
efface the history of the past, or arrest the progress of
the future. — Public opinion is the result of public
events and public feelings ; and government must be
moulded by that opinion, or maintain itself in opposi-
tion to it by the sword. Mr. Canning indeed will not
consent that the social machine should in any case
receive a different direction from what it has had, ' lest
it should be hurried over the precipice and dashed to
pieces.' These warnings of national ruin and terrific
accounts of political precipices put one in mind of
Edgar's exaggerations to Gloster ; they make one's
hair stand on end in the perusal ; but the poor old
man, like poor old England, could fall no lower than
he was. Mr. Montgomery, the ingenious and amiable
poet, after he had been shut up in solitary confinement
for a year and a half for printing the Duke of Richmond's
Letter on Reform, when he first walked out into the
narrow path of the adjoining field, was seized with an
apprehension that he should fall over it, as if he had
trod on the brink of an abrupt declivity. The author
of the loyal Speech at the Liverpool Dinner has been
so long kept in the solitary confinement of his pre-
judices, and the dark cells of his interest and vanity,
that he is afraid of being dashed to pieces if he makes
a single false step, to the right or the left, from his
dangerous and crooked policy. As to himself, his ears
are no doubt closed to any advice that might here be
offered him ; and as to his country, he seems bent on
p

210 TABLE-TALK

its destruction. If, however, an example of the futility
of all his projects and all his reasonings on a broader
scale, ' to warn and scare, be wanting/ let him look at
Spain, and take leisure to recover from his incredulity
and his surprise. Spain, as Ferdinand, as the Mon-
archy, has fallen from its pernicious height, never to
rise again : Spain, as Spain, as the Spanish people, has
risen from the tomb of liberty, never (it is to be hoped)
to sink again under the yoke of the bigot and the
oppressor !

ESSAY XVI

ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION

FEW subjects are more nearly allied than these two —
vulgarity and affectation. It may be said of them
truly that 'thin partitions do their bounds divide.'
There cannot be a surer proof of a low origin or of
an innate meanness of disposition than to be always
talking and thinking of being genteel. One must feel
a strong tendency to that which one is always trying
to avoid : whenever we pretend, on all occasions, a
mighty contempt for anything, it is a pretty clear sign
that we feel ourselves very nearly on a level with it.
Of the two classes of people, I hardly know which is to
be regarded with most distaste, the vulgar aping the
genteel, or the genteel constantly sneering at and
endeavouring to distinguish themselves from the
vulgar. These two sets of persons are always thinking
of one another ; the lower of the higher with envy, the
more fortunate of their less happy neighbours with
contempt. They are habitually placed in opposition to
each other ; jostle in their pretensions at every turn ;
and the same objects and train of thought (only reversed
by the relative situation of either party) occupy their
whole time and attention. The one are straining every
nerve, and outraging common sense, to be thought
genteel ; the others have no other object or idea in
their heads than not to be thought vulgar. This is
but poor spite ; a very pitiful style of ambition. To be
merely not that which one heartily despises is a very
humble claim to superiority : to despise what one

212 TABLE-TALK

really is, is still worse. Most of the characters in
Miss Burney's novels — the Branghtons, the Smiths, the
Dubsters, the Cecilias, the Delvilles, etc. — are well met
in this respect, and much of a piece : the one half are
trying not to be taken for themselves, and the other
half not to be taken for the first. They neither of
them have any pretensions of their own, or real
standard of worth. ' A feather will turn the scale of
their avoirdupois'; though the fair authoress was not
aware of the metaphysical identity of her principal and
subordinate characters. Affectation is the master-key
to both.

Gentility is only a more select and artificial kind of
vulgarity. It cannot exist but by a sort of borrowed
distinction. It plumes itself up and revels in the homely
pretensions of the mass of mankind. It judges of the
worth of everything by name, fashion, and opinion ;
and hence, from the conscious absence of real qualities
or sincere satisfaction in itself, it builds its supercilious
and fantastic conceit on the wretchedness and wants of
others. Violent antipathies are always suspicious, and
betray a secret affinity. The difference between the
' Great Vulgar and the Small' is mostly in outward
circumstances. The coxcomb criticises the dress of
the clown, as the pedant cavils at the bad grammar
of the illiterate, or the prude is shocked at the back-
slidings of her frail acquaintance. Those who have
the fewest resources in themselves naturally seek the
food of their self-love elsewhere. The most ignorant
people find most to laugh at in strangers : scandal and
satire prevail most in country-places ; and a propensity
to ridicule every the slightest or most palpable devia-
tion from what we happen to approve, ceases with the
progress of common sense and decency.1 Trr.o worth

i ' If a European, when he has cut off his beard and put false hair
on his head, or bound up his own natural hair in regular hard knots,
as unlike nature as he could possibly make it ; and after having ren-
dered them immovable by the help of the fat of hogs, has covered
the whole with flour, laid on by a machine with the utmost regularity;
if when thus attired he issues forth, and meets with a Cherokee
Indian, who has bestowed as much time at his toilet, and laid on

ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION 213

does not exult in the faults and deficiencies of others ;
as true refinement turns away from grossness and de-
formity, instead of being tempted to indulge in an
unmanly triumph over it. Raphael would not faint
away at the daubing of a signpost, nor Homer hold his
head the higher for being in the company of a Grub
Street bard. Real power, real excellence, does not
seek for a foil in inferiority ; nor fear contamination
from coining in contact with that which is coarse and
homely. It reposes on itself, and is equally free from
spleen and affectation. But the spirit of gentility is
the mere essence of spleen and affectation ; of affected
delight in its own would-be qualifications, and of ineffable
disdain poured out upon the involuntary blunders or
accidental disadvantages of those whom it chooses to
treat as its inferiors. Thus a fashionable Miss titters
till she is ready to burst her sides at the uncouth shape
of a bonnet or the abrupt drop of a curtsey (such as
Jeanie Deans would make) in a country-girl who comes
to be hired by her Mamma as a servant ; yet to show
how little foundation there is for this hysterical expres-
sion of her extreme good opinion of herself and con-
tempt for the untutored rustic, she would herself the
next day be delighted with the very same shaped
bonnet if brought her by a French milliner and told
it was all the fashion, and in a week's time will become
quite familiar with the maid, and chatter with her
(upon equal terms) about caps and ribbons and lace by
the hour together. There is no difference between
them but that of situation in the kitchen or in the
parlour : let circumstances bring them together, and
they fit like hand and glove. It is like mistress, like
maid. Their talk, their thoughts, their dreams, their
likings and dislikes are the same. The mistress's head
runs continually on dress and finery, so does the
maid's : the young lady longs to ride in a coach and

with equal care and attention his yellow and red oker on particular
parts of his forehead or cheeks, as he judges most becoming; whoever
of these two despises the other for this attention to the fashion of his
country, whichever first feels himself provoked to laugh, is the bar-
barian.'— Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses, vol. i. pp. 231, 232.

214 TABLE-TALK

six, so does the maid, if she could ; Miss forms a beau-
ideal of a lover with black eyes and rosy cheeks, which
does not differ from that of her attendant ; both like
a smart man, the one the footman and the other his
master, for the same reason ; both like handsome fur-
niture and fine houses ; both apply the terms shocking
and disagreeable to the same things and persons ; both
have a great notion of balls, plays, treats, song-books,
and love-tales ; both like a wedding or a christening,
and both would give their little fingers to see a corona-
tion— with this difference, that the one has a chance of
getting a seat at it, and the other is dying with envy
that she has not. Indeed, this last is a ceremony that
delights equally the greatest monarch and the meanest
of his subjects— the vilest of the rabble. Yet this which
is the height of gentility and consummation of external
distinction and splendour, is, I should say, a vulgar
ceremony. For what degree of refinement, of capacity,
of virtue is required in the individual who is so distin-
guished, or is necessary to his enjoying this idle and
imposing parade of his person ? Is he delighted with
the stage-coach and gilded panels ? So is the poorest
wretch that gazes at it. Is he struck with the spirit,
the beauty, and symmetry of the eight cream-coloured
horses? There is not one of the immense multitude
who flock to see the sight from town or country, St.
Giles's or Whitechapel, young or old, rich or poor,
gentle or simple, who does not agree to admire the
same object. Is he delighted with the yeomen of the
guard, the military escort, the groups of ladies, the
badges of sovereign power, the kingly crown, the mar-
shal's truncheon and the judge's robe, the array that
precedes and follows him, the crowded streets, the
windows hung with eager looks ? So are the mob, for
they 'have eyes and see them!' There is no one
faculty of mind or body, natural or acquired, essential
to the principal figure in this procession more than is
common to the meanest and most despised attendant on
it. A waxwork figure would answer the same purpose :
a Lord Mayor of London has as much tinsel to be proud

ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION 215

of. I would rather have a king do something that no
one else has the power or magnanimity to do, or say
something that no one else has the wisdom to say, or
look more handsome, more thoughtful, or henign than
any one else in his dominions. But I see nothing to
raise one's idea of him in his being made a show of : if
the pageant would do as well without the man, the man
would do as well without the pageant ! Kings have
been declared to be * lovers of low company ' ; and this
maxim, besides the reason sometimes assigned for it,
viz, that they meet with less opposition to their wills
from such persons, will I suspect be found to turn at
last on the consideration I am here stating, that they
also meet with more sympathy in their tastes. The
most ignorant and thoughtless have the greatest admira-
tion of the baubles, the outward symbols of pomp and
power, the sound and show, which are the habitual
delight and mighty prerogative of kings. The stupidest
slave worships the gaudiest tyrant. The same gross
motives appeal to the same gross capacities, flatter the
pride of the superior and excite the servility of the
dependant ; whereas a higher reach of moral and in-
tellectual refinement might seek in vain for higher
proofs of internal worth and inherent majesty in the
object of its idolatry, and not finding the divinity
lodged within, the unreasonable expectation raised
would probably end in mortification on both sides ! —
There is little to distinguish a king from his subjects
but the rabble's shout — if he loses that and is reduced
to the forlorn hope of gaining the suffrages of the wise
and good, he is of all men the most miserable. — But
enough of this.

' I like it,' says Miss Branghton l in Evelina (meaning
the opera), 'because it is not vulgar.' That is, she
likes it, not because there is anything to like in it, but

i This name was originally spelt Branghton in the manuscript,
and was altered to Branghton by a mistake of the printer. Brangh-
ton, however, was thought a good name for the occasion and was
suffered to stand. ' Dip it in the ocean,' as Sterne's barber says of
the buckle, ' and it will stand I'

216 TABLE-TALK

because other people are prevented from liking or
knowing anything about it. Janus Weathercock, Esq.,
laugheth to scorn and spitefully entreateth and hugely
condemneth my dramatic criticisms in the London, for
a like exquisite reason. I must therefore make an
example of him in terrorem to all such hypercritics.
He finds fault with me and calls my taste vulgar,
because I go to Sadler's Wells (e a place he has heard
of — O Lord, sir !) — because I notice the Miss Den-
netts, 'great favourites with the Whitechapel orders'
— praise Miss Valancy, fa bouncing Columbine at
Ashley's and them the're places, as his barber informs
him ' (has he no way of establishing himself in his
own good opinion but by triumphing over his barber's
bad English?) — and finally, because I recognised the
existence of the Coburg and the Surrey theatres, at the
names of which he cries ' Faugh' with great significance,
as if he had some personal disgust at them, and yet he
would be supposed never to have entered them. It is
not his cue as a well-bred critic. C'est beau fa. Now
this appears to me a very crude, unmeaning, indis-
criminate, wholesale, and vulgar way of thinking. It
is prejudicing things in the lump, by names and places
and classes, instead of judging of them by what they
are in themselves, by their real qualities and shades o'f
distinction. There is no selection, truth, or delicacy
in such a mode of proceeding. It is affecting ignorance,
and making it a title to wisdom. It is a vapid assump-
tion of superiority. It is exceeding impertinence. It
is rank coxcombry. It is nothing in the world else.
To condemn because the multitude admire is as
essentially vulgar as to admire because they admire.
There is no exercise of taste or judgment in either
case : both are equally repugnant to good sense, and of
the two I should prefer the good-natured side. I
would as soon agree with my barber as differ from
him ; and why should I make a point of reversing the
sentence of the Whitechapel orders ? Or how can it
affect my opinion of the merits of an actor at the
Coburg or the Surrey theatres, that these theatres are

ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION 217

in or out of the Bills of Mortality ? This is an easy,
short-hand way of judging, as gross as it is mechanical.
It is not a difficult matter to settle questions of taste
by consulting the map of London, or to prove your
liberality by geographical distinctions. Janus jumbles
things together strangely. If he had seen Mr. Kean
in a provincial theatre, at Exeter or Taunton, he would
have thought it vulgar to admire him ; but when he
had been stamped in London, Janus would no doubt
show his discernment and the subtlety of his tact for
the display of character and passion by not being
behind the fashion. The Miss Dennetts are ' little
unformed girls,' for no other reason than because they
danced at one of the minor theatres : let them but
come out on the opera boards, and let the beauty and
fashion of the season greet them with a fairy shower of
delighted applause, and they would outshine Milanie
' with the foot of fire.' His gorge rises at the mention
of a certain quarter of the town : whatever passes
current in another, he 'swallows total grist unsifted,
husks and all.' This is not taste, but folly. At this
rate, the hackney-coachman who drives him, or his
horse Contributor whom he has introduced as a select
personage to the vulgar reader, knows as much of the
matter as he does. — In a word, the answer to all this
in the first instance is to say what vulgarity is. Now
its essence, I imagine, consists in taking manners,
actions, words, opinions on trust from others, without
examining one's own feelings or weighing the merits of
the case. It is coarseness or shallowness of taste
arising from want of individual refinement, together
with the confidence and presumption inspired by
example and numbers. It may be defined to be a
prostitution of the mind or body to ape the more or
less obvious defects of others, because by so doing we
shall secure the suffrages of those we associate with.
To afiect a gesture, an opinion, a phrase, because it is
the rage with a large number of persons, or to hold it in
abhorrence because another set of persons very little,
if at all, better informed cry it down to distinguish

218 TABLE-TALK

themselves from the former, is in either case equal
vulgarity and absurdity.— A thing is not vulgar merely
because it is common. 'Tis common to breathe, to see,
to feel, to live. Nothing is vulgar that is natural,
spontaneous, unavoidable. Grossness is not vulgarity,
ignorance is not vulgarity, awkwardness is not vulgar-
ity ; but all these become vulgar when they are affected
and shown off on the authority of others, or to fall in
with the fashion or the company we keep. Caliban is
coarse enough, but surely he is not vulgar. We might
as well spurn the clod under our feet and call it
vulgar. Cobbett is coarse enough, but he is not
vulgar. He does not belong to the herd. Nothing
real, nothing original, can be vulgar ; but I should
think an imitator of Cobbett a vulgar man. Emery's
Yorkshireman is vulgar, because he is a Yorkshireman.
It is the cant and gibberish, the cunning and low life
of a particular district ; it has ' a stamp exclusive and
provincial.' He might ' gabble most brutishly* and
yet not fall under the letter of the definition ; but ' his
speech bewrayeth him/ his dialect (like the jargon of a
Bond Street lounger) is the damning circumstance. If
he were a mere blockhead, it would not signify ; but
he thinks himself a knowing hand, according to the
notions and practices of those with whom he was
brought up, and which he thinks the go everywhere.
In a word, this character is not the offspring of un-
tutored nature but of bad habits; it is made up of
ignorance and conceit. It has a mixture of slang in it.
All slang phrases are for the same reason vulgar ; but
there is nothing vulgar in the common English idiom.
Simplicity is not vulgarity ; but the looking to affecta-
tion of any sort for distinction is. A cockney is a
vulgar character, whose imagination cannot wander
beyond the suburbs of the metropolis ; so is a fellow
who is always thinking of the High Street, Edinburgh.
We want a name for this last character. An opinion
is vulgar that is stewed in the rank breath of the rabble ;
nor is it a bit purer or more refined for having passed
through the well-cleansed teeth of a whole court. The

ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION 219

inherent vulgarity is in having no other feeling on any
subject than the crude, blind, headling, gregarious
notion acquired by sympathy with the mixed multitude
or with a fastidious minority, who are just as insensible
to the real truth, and as indifferent to everything but
their own frivolous and vexatious pretensions. The
upper are not wiser than the lower orders because
they resolve to differ from them. The fashionable
have the advantage of the unfashionable in nothing
but the fashion. The true vulgar are the servum pecus
imitatorum — the herd of pretenders to what they do not
feel and to what is not natural to them, whether in
high or low life. To belong to any class, to move in
any rank or sphere of life, is not a very exclusive
distinction or test of refinement. Refinement will in
all classes be the exception, not the rule ; and the
exception may fall out in one class as woll as another.
A king is but an hereditary title. A nobleman is only
one of the House of Peers. To be a knight or alder-
man is confessedly a vulgar thing. The king the other
day made Sir Walter Scott a baronet, but not all the
power of the Three Estates could make another Author
of Waverley. Princes, heroes, are often common-
place people : Hamlet was not a vulgar character,
neither was Don Quixote. To be an author, to be
a painter, is nothing. It is a trick, it is a trade.

An author ! 'tis a venerable name :

How few deserve it, yet what numbers claim !

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

There is a well-dressed and an ill-dressed mob, both
which I hate. Odi profanum vulgus, et arceo. The

220 TABLE-TALK

vapid affectation of the one to me is even more intoler-
able than the gross insolence and brutality of the other.
If a set of low-lived fellows are noisy, rude, and
boisterous to show their disregard of the company, a
set of fashionable coxcombs are, to a nauseous degree,
finical and effeminate to show their thorough breeding.
The one are governed by their feelings, however coarse
and misguided, which is something ; the others consult
only appearances, which are nothing, either as a test
of happiness or virtue. Hogarth in his prints has
trimmed the balance of pretension between the down-
right blackguard and the soi-disant fine gentleman
unanswerably. It does not appear in his moral
demonstrations (whatever it may do in the genteel
letter-writing of Lord Chesterfield or the chivalrous
rhapsodies of Burke) that vice by losing all its gross-
ness loses half its evil. It becomes more contemptible,
not less disgusting. What is there in common, for
instance, between his beaux and belles, his rakes and
his coquettes, and the men and women, the true heroic
and ideal characters in Raphael? But his people of
fashion and quality are just upon a par with the low,
the selfish, the unideal characters in the contrasted
view of human life, and are often the very same
characters, only changing places. If the lower ranks
are actuated by envy and uncharitableness towards the
upper, the latter have scarcely any feelings but of
pride, contempt, and aversion to the lower. If the
poor would pull down the rich to get at their good
things, the rich would tread down the poor as in a
wine-press, and squeeze the last shilling out of their
pockets and the last drop of blood out of their veins.
If the headstrong self-will and unruly turbulence of a
common alehouse are shocking, what shall we say to
the studied insincerity, the insipid want of common
sense, the callous insensibility of the drawing-room
and boudoir ? I would rather see the feelings of our
common nature (for they are the same at bottom)
expressed in the most naked and unqualified way, than
see every feeling of our nature suppressed, stifled,

ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION 221

hermetically sealed under the smooth, cold,
varnish of pretended refinement and conventional
politeness. The one may be corrected bv being better
informed ; the other is incorrigible, wilful, heartless
depravity. I cannot describe the contempt and disgust
I have felt at the tone of what would be thought good
company, when I have witnessed the sleek, smiling,
glossy, gratuitous assumption of superiority to every
feeling of humanity, honesty, or principle, as a part of
the etiquette, the mental and moral costume of the
table, and every profession of toleration or favour for
the lower orders, that is, for the great mass of our
fellow-creatures, treated as an indecorum and breach
of the harmony of well-regulated society. In short, I
prefer a bear-garden to the adder's den ; or, to put
this case in its extremest point of view, I have more
patience with men in a rude state of nature outraging
the human form than I have with apes ' making mops
and mows' at the extravagances they have first pro-
voked. I can endure the brutality (as it is termed)
of mobs better than the inhumanity of courts. The
violence of the one rages like a fire ; the insidious
policy of the other strikes like a pestilence, and is
more fatal and inevitable. The slow poison of despot-
ism is worse than the convulsive struggles of anarchy.
fOf all evils,' says Hume, ' anarchy is the shortest
lived.' The one may 'break out like a wild over-
throw ' ; but the other from its secret, sacred stand,
operates unseen, and undermines the happiness of
kingdoms for ages, lurks in the hollow cheek, and
stares you in the face in the ghastly eye of want and
agony and woe. It is dreadful to hear the noise and
uproar of an infuriated multitude stung by the sense
of wrong and maddened by sympathy ; it is more
appalling to think of tlie smile answered by other
gracious smiles, of the whisper echoed by other assent-
ing whispers, which doom them first to despair and
then to destruction. Popular fury finds its counterpart
in courtly servility. If every outrage is to be appre-
hended from the one, every iniquity is deliberately

222 TABLE-TALK

sanctioned by the other, without regard to justice or
decency. The word of a king-, ( Go thou and do like-
wise/ makes the stoutest heart dumb : truth and
honesty shrink before it.1 If there are watchwords
for the rabble, have not the polite and fashionable
their hackneyed phrases, their fulsome, unmeaning
jargon as well ? Both are to me anathema !

To return to the first question, as it regards indi-
vidual and private manners. There is a fine illustration
of the effects of preposterous and affected gentility in
the character of Gertrude, in the old comedy of East-
ward Hoe, written by Ben Jonson, Marston, and
Chapman in conjunction. This play is supposed to
have given rise to Hogarth's series of prints of the
Idle and Industrious Apprentice ; and there is some-
thing exceedingly Hogarthian in the view both of vulgar
and of genteel life here displayed. The character of
Gertrude, in particular, the heroine of the piece, is
inimitably drawn. The mixture of vanity and mean-
ness, the internal worthlessness and external pretence,
the rustic ignorance and fine lady-like airs, the intoxica-
tion of novelty and infatuation of pride, appear like
a dream or romance, rather than anything in real life.
Cinderella and her glass slipper are common-place to
it. She is not, like Millamant (a century afterwards),
the accomplished fine lady, but a pretender to all the
foppery and finery of the character. It is the honey-
moon with her ladyship, and her folly is at the full.
To be a wife, and the wife of a knight, are to her
pleasures ' worn in their newest gloss/ and nothing can
exceed her raptures in the contemplation of both parts
of the dilemma. It is not familiarity, but novelty,
that weds her to the court. She rises into the air
of gentility from the ground of a city life, and flutters
about there with all the fantastic delight of a butterfly
that has just changed its caterpillar state. The sound
of My Lady intoxicates her with delight, makes her

1 A lady of quality, in allusion to the gallantries of a reigning
prince, being told, 'I suppose it will be your turn next?1 said, 'No,
I hope not ; for you know it is impossible to refuse ! '

ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION 223

giddy, and almost turns her brain. On the bare
strength of it she is ready to turn her father and
mother out of doors, and treats her brother and sister
with infinite disdain and judicial hardness of heart.
With some speculators the modern philosophy has
deadened and distorted all the natural affections ; and
before abstract ideas and the mischievous refinements
of literature were introduced, nothing was to be met
with in the primeval state of society but simplicity and
pastoral innocence of manners —

And all was conscience and tender heart

This historical play gives the lie to the above theory
pretty broadly, yet delicately. Our heroine is as vain
as she is ignorant, and as unprincipled as she is both,
and without an idea or wish of any kind but that of
adorning her person in the glass, and being called and
thought a lady, something superior to a citizen's wife.1

i 'Gertrude. For the passion of patience, look if Sir Petronel

approach. That sweet, that fine, that delicate, that for love's

sake, tell me if he come. Oh, sister Mill, though my father be a low-
capt tradesman, yet I must be a lady, and I praise God my mother
must call me madam. Does he come? Off with this gown for shame's
sake, off with this gown ! Let not my knight take me in the city cut,
in any hand ! Tear't ! Pox on't (does he come ?), tear't off ! Thus
while she sleeps, I sorrow for her sake. (Sings.)

Mildred. Lord, sister, with what an immodest iuipatiency and dis-
graceful scorn do you put off your city-tire ! I am sorry to think you
imagine to right yourself in wronging that which hath made both
you and us.

Ger. I tell you, I cannot endure it : I must be a lady : do you wear
your quoiff with a London licket ! your stamel petticoat with two
guards ! the buffin gown with the tuftafitty cap and the velvet lace 1
I must be a lady, and I will be a lady. I like some humours of the
city dames well ; to eat cherries only at an angel a pound ; good : to
dye rich scarlet black ; pretty : to line a grogram gown clean through
with velvet ; tolerable : their pure linen, their smocks of three pound
a smock, are to be borne withal : but your mincing niceries, taffity
pipkins, durance petticoats, and silver bodkins— God's my life ! as I
shall be a lady, I cannot endure it.

Mil. Well, sister, those that scorn their nest oft fly with a sick
wing.

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

224 TABI,E-TALK

She is so bent on finery that she believes in miracles to
obtain it, and expects the fairies to bring it her.1 She

Mil. Now (lady's ray comfort), what a profane ape's here !
[Enter SIR PETRONEL FLASH, MR. TOUCHSTONE, and
MRS. TOUCHSTONE.]

Qer. la ray knight come 1 0 the lord, my band 1 Sister, do my
cheeks look well? Give me a little box o' the ear, that I may seera
to blush. Now, now 1 so, there, there ! here he is ! 0 my dearest
delight I Lord, lord ! and how does my knight ?

Touchstone. Fie, with more modesty.

Ger. Modesty 1 why, I am no citizen now. Modesty ! am I not to
be married ? You're best to keep me modest, now I am to be a lady.

Sir Petronel. Boldness is a good fashion and court-like.

Ger. Aye, in a country lady I hope it is, as I shall be. And how
chance ye came no sooner, knight?

Sir Pet. Faith, I was so entertained in the progress with one Count
Epernoun, a Welch knight : we had a match at baloon too with my
Lord Whackum for four crowns.

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

Sir Pet. I am come now to consummate : and your father may call
a poor knight son-in-law.

Mrs. Touchstone. Yes, that he is a knight : I know where he had
money to pay the gentlemen ushers and heralds their fees. Aye,
that he is a knight : and so might you have been too, if you had been
aught else but an ass, as well as some of your neighbours. An I
thought you would not ha' been knighted, as I am an honest woman,
I would ha' dubbed you myself. I praise God, I have wherewithal.
But as for you, daughter

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

Mrs. Touch. That you shall, lady-daughter; and have a coach as
well as I.

Qer. Yes, mother ; but my coach-horses must take the wall of your
coach-horses.

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

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

Tills dotage on sound and show seemed characteristic of that age
(see New Way to Pay Old Debts, etc.)— as if in the grossness of sense,
and the absence of all intellectual and abstract topics of thought and
discourse (the thin, circulating medium of the present day) the mind
was attracted without the power of resistance to the tinkling sound
of its own name with a title added to it, and the image of its own
person tricked out in old-fashioned finery. The effect, no doubt,
was also more marked and striking from the contrast between the
ordinary penury and poverty of the age and the first and more
extravagant demonstrations of luxury and artificial refinement.

i Gertrude. Good lord, that there are no fairies nowadays, Syn.

Syndefy. Why, Madam?

ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION 225

is quite above thinking of a settlement, jointure, or
pin-money. She takes the will for the deed all through
the piece, and is so besotted with this ignorant, vulgar
notion of rank and title as a real thing that cannot be
counterfeited that she is the dupe of her own fine
stratagems, and marries a gull, a dolt, a broken
adventurer for an accomplished and brave gentleman.
Her meanness is equal to her folly and her pride (and
nothing can be greater), yet she holds out on the
strength of her original pretensions for a long time,
and plays the upstart with decency and imposing con-
sistency. Indeed, her infatuation and caprices are
akin to the flighty perversity of a disordered imagina-
tion ; and another turn of the wheel of good or evil
fortune would have sent her to keep company with
Hogarth's Merveilleuses in Bedlam, or with Decker's
group of coquettes in the same place. — The other parts
of the play are a dreary lee-shore, like Cuckold's Point
on the coast of Essex, where the preconcerted shipwreck
takes place that winds up the catastrophe of the piece.
But this is also characteristic of the age, and serves as
a contrast to the airy and factitious character which is
the principal figure in the plot. We had made but
little progress from that point till Hogarth's time, if
Hogarth is to be believed in his description of city
manners. How wonderfully we have distanced it since !

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

Si/7i. They are pretty waking dreams, these.

Ger. Or may not some old usurer be drunk overnight with a bag of
money, and leave it behind him on a stall? For God's sake, Syn, let's
rise to-morrow by break of day, and see. I protest, la, if I had as
much money as an alderaian, I would scatter some en't i' the streets
for poor ladies to find when their knights were laid up. And now I
remember my song of the Golden Shower, why may not I have such a
fortune ? I'll sing it, and try what luck I shall have after it.'— Act V.
Scene 1.

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

ESSAY XVII

ON A LANDSCAPE OP NICOLAS POUSSIN

And blind Orion hungry for the morn.

ORION, the subject of this landscape, was the classical
Nimrod ; and is called by Homer, ( a hunter of
shadows, himself a shade.' He was the son of
Neptune ; and having lost an eye in some affray between
the Gods and men, was told that if he would go to
meet the rising sun he would recover his sight. He
is represented setting out on his journey, with men on
his shoulders to guide him, a bow in his hand, and
Diana in the clouds greeting him. He stalks along, a
giant upon earth, and reels and falters in his gait, as if
just awakened out of sleep, or uncertain of his way ; —
you see his blindness, though his back is turned.
Mists rise around htm, and veil the sides of the green
forests ; earth is dank and fresh with dews, the ' gray
dawn and the Pleiades before him dance,' and in the
distance are seen the blue hills and sullen ocean.
Nothing was ever more finely conceived or done. It
breathes the spirit of the morning ; its moisture, its
repose, its obscurity, waiting the miracle of light to
kindle it into smiles ; the whole is, like the principal
figure in it, ( a forerunner of the dawn. ' The same atmo-
sphere tinges and imbues every object, the same dull
light ' shadowy sets off' the face of nature : one feeling
of vastness, of strangeness, and of primeval forms
pervades the painter's canvas, and we are thrown back
upon the first integrity of things. This great and

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learned man might be said to see nature through the
glass of time ; he alone has a right to be considered as
the painter of classical antiquity. Sir Joshua has done
him justice in this respect. Pie could give to the
scenery of his heroic fables that unimpaired look of
original nature, full, solid, large, luxuriant, teeming
with life and power ; or deck it with all the pomp of
art, with temples and towers, and mythologic groves.
His pictures 'denote a foregone conclusion.' He
applies Nature to his purposes, works out her images
according to the standard of his thoughts, embodies
high fictions ; and the first conception being given, all
the rest seems to grow out of and be assimilated to it,
by the unfailing process of a studious imagination.
Like his own Orion, he overlooks the surrounding
scene, appears to 'take up the isles as a very little
thing, and to lay the earth in a balance.' With a
laborious and mighty grasp, he puts nature into the
mould of the ideal and antique ; and was among
painters (more than any one else) what Milton was
among poets. There is in both something of the
same pedantry, the same stiffness, the same elevation,
the same grandeur, the same mixture of art and
nature, the same richness of borrowed materials, the
same unity of character. Neither the poet nor the
painter lowered thesubjects they treated, but filled up the
outline in the fancy, and added strength and reality to
it; and thus not only satisfied, but surpassed the
expectations of the spectator and the reader. This is
held for the triumph and the perfection of works of
art. To give us nature, such as we see it, is well and
deserving of praise ; to give us nature, such as we have
never seen, but have often wished to see it, is better,
and deserving of higher praise. He who can show the
world in its first naked glory, with the hues of fancy
spread over it, or in its high and palmy state, with the
gravity of history stamped on the proud monuments of
vanished empire, — who, by his c so potent art,' can
recall time past, transport us to distant places, and
join the regions of imagination (a new conquest) to

A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN 229

those of reality, — who shows us not only what Nature
is, but what she has been, and is capable of, — he who
does this, and does it with simplicity, with truth, and
grandeur, is lord of Nature and her powers ; and his
mind is universal, and his art the master-art !

There is nothing in this 'more than natural,' if
criticism could be persuaded to think so. The historic
painter does not neglect or contravene Nature, but
follows her more closely up into her fantastic heights
or hidden recesses. He demonstrates what she would
be in conceivable circumstances and under implied
conditions. He ' gives to airy nothing a local habita-
tion,' not ' a name.' At his touch, words start up into
images, thoughts become things. He clothes a dream,
a phantom, with form and colour, and the wholesome
attributes of reality. His art is a second nature ; not a
different one. There are those, indeed, who think
that not to copy nature is the rule for attaining perfec-
tion. Because they cannot paint the objects which
they have seen, they fancy themselves qualified to
paint the ideas which they have not seen. But it is
possible to fail in this latter and more difficult style of
imitation, as well as in the former humbler one. The de-
tection, it is true, is not so easy, because the objects are
not so nigh at hand to compare, and therefore there is
more room both for false pretension and for self-deceit.
They take an epic motto or subject, and conclude that
the spirit is implied as a thing of course. They paint
inferior portraits, maudlin lifeless faces, without
ordinary expression, or one look, feature, or particle of
nature in them, and think that this is to rise to the
truth of history. They vulgarise and degrade whatever
is interesting or sacred to the mind, and suppose that
they thus add to the dignity of their profession. They
represent a face that seems as if no thought or feeling
of any kind had ever passed through it, and would
have you believe that this is the very sublime of
expression, such as it would appear in heroes, or demi-
gods of old, when rapture or agony was raised to its
height. They show you a landscape that looks as if the

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sun never shone upon it, and tell you that it is not
modern — that so earth looked when Titan first kissed
it with his rays. This is not the true ideal. It is not
to fill the moulds of the imagination, but to deface and
injure them ; it is not to come up to, but to fall short
of the poorest conception in the public mind. Such
pictures should not be hung in the same room with
that of Orion.1

Poussin was, of all painters, the most poetical. He
was the painter of ideas. No one ever told a story half
so well, nor so well knew what was capable of being
told by the pencil. He seized on, and struck off with
grace and precision, just that point of view which would
be likely to catch the reader's fancy. There is a signi-
ficance, a consciousness in whatever he does (sometimes
a vice, but oftener a virtue) beyond any other painter.
His Giants sitting on the tops of craggy mountains, as
huge themselves, and playing idly on their Pan's-pipes,
seem to have been seated there these three thousand
years, and to know the beginning and the end of their
own story. An infant Bacchus or Jupiter is big with

i Everything tends to show the manner In which a great artist is
formed. If any person could claim an exemption from the careful
imitation of individual objects, it was Nicolas Poussin. He studied
the antique, but he also studied nature. ' I have often admired,1 says
Vignuel de Marville, who knew him at a late period of his life, 'the
love he had for his art. Old as he was, I frequently saw him among
the ruins of ancient Rome, out in the Campagna, or along the banks
of the Tyber, sketching a scene that had pleased him ; and I often met
him with his handkerchief full of stones, moss, or flowers, which he
carried home, that he might copy them exactly from nature. One
day I asked him how he had attained to such a degree of perfection,
as to have gained so high a rank among the great painters of Italy?
He answered, "I HAVE NEGLECTED NOTHING.'"— See his Life lately
published. It appears from this account that he had not fallen into a
recent error, that Nature puts the man of genius out. As a contrast
to the foregoing description, I might mention, that I remember an
old gentleman once asking Mr. West in the British Gallery if he had
ever been at Athens? To which the President made answer, No ; nor
did he feel any great desire to go ; for that he thought he had as good
an idea of the place from the Catalogue as he could get by living there
for any number of years. What would he have said, if any one had
told him, he could get as good an idea of the subject of one of his
great works from reading the Catalogue of it, as from seeing the
picture itself ? Yet the answer was characteristic of the genius of the
painter.

A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN 231

his future destiny. Even inanimate and dumb things
speak a language of their own. His snakes, the mes-
sengers of fate, are inspired with human intellect. His
trees grow and expand their leaves in the air, glad of
the rain, proud of the sun, awake to the winds of
heaven. In his Plague of Athens, the very buildings
seem stiff with horror. His picture of the Deluge is,
perhaps, the finest historical landscape in the world.
You see a waste of waters, wide, interminable ; the
sun is labouring, wan and weary, up the sky ; the
clouds, dull and leaden, lie like a load upon the eye,
and heaven and earth seem commingling into one con-
fused mass ! His human figures are sometimes ' o'er-
informed ' with this kind of feeling. Their actions
have too much gesticulation, and the set expression
of the features borders too much on the mechanical
and caricatured style. In this respect they form a
contrast to Raphael's, whose figures never appear to
be sitting for their pictures, or to be conscious of a
spectator, or to have come from the painter's hand.
In Nicolas Poussin, on the contrary, everything seems
to have a distinct understanding with the artist ; ' the
very stones prate of their whereabout ' ; each object
has its part and place assigned, and is in a sort of com-
pact with the rest of the picture. It is this conscious
keeping, and, as it were, internal design, that gives
their peculiar character to the works of this artist.
There was a picture of Aurora in the British Gallery
a year or two ago. It was a suffusion of golden light.
The Goddess wore her saffron -coloured robes, and
appeared just risen from the gloomy bed of old
Tithonus. Her very steeds, milk-white, were tinged
with the yellow dawn. It was a personification of the
morning. Poussin succeeded better in classic than in
sacred subjects. The latter are comparatively heavy,
forced, full of violent contrasts of colour, of red, blue,
and black, and without the true prophetic inspiration
of the characters. But in his ipagan allegories and
fables he was quite at home. The native gravity and
native levity of the Frenchman were combined with

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Italian scenery and an antique gusto, and gave even to
his colouring an air of learned indifference. He wants,
in one respect, grace, form, expression ; but he has
everywhere sense and meaning, perfect costume and
propriety. His personages always belong to the class
and time represented, and are strictly versed in the
business in hand. His grotesque compositions in par-
ticular, his Nymphs and Fauns, are superior (at least,
as far as style is concerned) even to those of Rubens.
They are taken more immediately out of fabulous his-
tory. Rubens' Satyrs and Bacchantes have a more
jovial and voluptuous aspect, are more drunk with

Sleasure, more full of animal spirits and riotous
npulses ; they laugh and bound along —

Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring :

but those of Poussiu have more of the intellectual part
of the character, and seem vicious on reflection, and
of set purpose. Rubens' are noble specimens of a
class ; Poussin's are allegorical abstractions of the
same class, with bodies less pampered, but with minds
more secretly depraved. The Bacchanalian groups of
the Flemish painter were, however, his masterpieces in
composition. Witness those prodigies of colour, char-
acter, and expression at Blenheim. In the more chaste
and refined delineation of classic fable, Poussin was
without a rival. Rubens, who was a match for him
in the wild and picturesque, could not pretend to vie
with the elegance and purity of thought in his pic-
ture of Apollo giving a poet a cup of water -to drink,
nor with the gracefulness of design in the figure of a
nymph squeezing the juice of a bunch of grapes from
her fingers (a rosy wine-press) which falls into the
mouth of a chubby infant below. But, above all, who
shall celebrate, in terms of fit praise, his picture of the
shepherds in the Vale of Tempe going out in a fine
morning of the spring, and coming to a tomb with this
inscription : Ex EGO IN ARCADIA vixi ! The eager
curiosity of some, the expression of others who start

A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN 233

back with fear and surprise, the clear breeze playing
with the branches of the shadowing trees, ' the valleys
low, where the mild zephyrs use,' the distant, uninter-
rupted, sunny prospect speak (and for ever will speak
on)of ages past to ages yet to come ! 1

Pictures are a set of chosen images, a stream of plea-
sant thoughts passing through the mind. It is a luxury
to have the walls of our rooms hung round with them,
and no less so to have such a gallery in the mind, to
con over the relics of ancient art bound up 'within
the book and volume of the brain, unmixed (if it were
possible) with baser matter ! ' A life passed among
pictures, in the study and the love of art, is a happy
noiseless dream : or rather, it is to dream and to be
awake at the same time ; for it has all ' the sober cer-
tainty of waking bliss,' with the romantic voluptuous-
ness of a visionary and abstracted being. They are the
bright consummate essences of things, and 'he who
knows of these delights to taste and interpose them
oft, is not unwise ! ' — The Orion, which I have here
taken occasion to descant upon, is one of a collection
of excellent pictures, as this collection is itself one of a
series from the old masters, which have for some years
back embrowned the walls of the British Gallery, and
enriched the public eye. What hues (those of nature
mellowed by time) breathe around as we enter ! What
forms are there, woven into the memory ! What looks,
which only the answering looks of the spectator can
express ! What intellectual stores have been yearly
poured forth from the shrine of ancient art ! The
works are various, but the names the same — heaps of
Rembrandts frowning from the darkened walls, Rubens'
glad gorgeous groups, Titians more rich and rare,
Claudes always exquisite, sometimes beyond compare,
Guido's endless cloying sweetness, the learning of
Poussin and the Caracci, and Raphael's princely mag-

1 Poussin has repeated this subject more than once, and appears
to have revelled in its witcheries. I have before alluded to it, and
may again. It is hard that we should not be allowed to dwell as
often as we please on what delights us, when things that are dis-
agreeable recur so often against our will.

234 TABLE-TALK

nificence crowning all. We read certain letters and
syllables in the Catalogue, and at the well-known magic
sound a miracle of skill and beauty starts to view.
One might think that one year's prodigal display of
such perfection would exhaust the labours of one man's
life ; but the next year, and the next to that, we find
another harvest reaped and gathered in to the great
garner of art, by the same immortal hands —

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

Their works seem endless as their reputation — to be
many as they are complete — to multiply with the desire
of the mind to see more and more of them ; as if there
were a living power in the breath of Fame, and in the
very names of the great heirs of glory * there were pro-
pagation too ' ! It is something to have a collection of
this sort to count upon once a year ; to have one last,
lingering look yet to come. Pictures are scattered
like stray gifts through the world ; and while they
remain, earth has yet a little gilding left, not quite
rubbed off, dishonoured, and defaced. There are
plenty of standard works still to be found in this
country, in the collections at Blenheim, at Burleigh,
and in those belonging to Mr. Angerstein, Lord Gros-
venor, the Marquis of Stafford, and others, to keep up
this treat to the lovers of art for many years ; and it is
the more desirable to reserve a privileged sanctuary of
this sort, where the eye may dote, and the heart take
its fill of such pictures as Poussin's Orion, since the
Louvre is stripped of its triumphant spoils, and since
he who collected it, and wore it as a rich jewel in his
Iron Crown, the hunter of greatness and of glory, is
himself a shade !

ESSAY XVIII
ON MILTON'S SONNETS

THE great object of the Sonnet seems to be, to express
in musical numbers, and as it were with undivided
breath, some occasional thought or personal feeling,
'some fee-grief due to the poet's breast.' It is a sigh
uttered from the fulness of the heart, an involuntary
aspiration born and dying in the same moment. I have
always been fond of Milton's Sonnets for this reason, that
they have more of this personal and internal character
than any others ; and they acquire a double value
when we consider that they come from the pen of the
loftiest of our poets. Compared with Paradise Lost,
they are like tender flowers that adorn the base of
some proud column or stately temple. The author in
the one could work himself up with unabated fortitude
f to the height of his great argument ' ; but in the
other he has shown that he could condescend to men
of low estate, and after the lightning and the thunder-
bolt of his pen, lets fall some drops of natural pity
over hapless infirmity, mingling strains with the
nightingale's, 'most musical, most melancholy.' The
immortal poet pours his mortal sorrows into our breasts,
and a tear falls from his sightless orbs on the friendly
hand he presses. The Sonnets are a kind of pensive
record of past achievements, loves, and friendships, and
a noble exhortation to himself to bear up with cheerful
hope and confidence to the last. Some of them are of
a more quaint and humorous character ; but I speak
of those only which are intended to be serious and

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pathetical. — I do not know indeed but they may be
said to be almost the first effusions of this sort of
natural and personal sentiment in the language.
Drummond's ought perhaps to be excepted, were they
formed less closely on the model of Petrarch's, so as to
be often little more than translations of the Italian
poet. But Milton's Sonnets are truly his own in
allusion, thought, and versification. 'Those of Sir
Philip Sydney, who was a great transgressor in his
way, turn sufficiently on himself and his own adven-
tures ; but they are elaborately quaint and intricate,
and more like riddles than sonnets. They are ' very
tolerable and not to be endured.' Shakespear's, which
some persons better informed in such matters than
1 can pretend to be, profess to cry up as ' the divine,
the matchless, what you will,' — to say nothing of the
want of point or a leading, prominent idea in most of
them, are I think overcharged and monotonous, and
as to their ultimate drift, as for myself, I can make
neither head nor tail of it Yet some of them, I own,
are sweet even to a sense of faintness, luscious as the
woodbine, and graceful and luxuriant like it. Here
is one : —

From you have I been absent in the spring,

When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim,

Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing ;

That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.

Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell

Of different flowers in odour and in hue,

Could make me any summer's story tell,

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew :

Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose ;

They were but sweet, but figures of delight,

Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.

Yet seem'd it winter still, and you away,

As with your shadow, 1 with these did play.

I am not aware of any writer of Sonnets worth men-
tioning here till long after Milton, that is, till the time
of Warton and the revival of a taste for Italian and for
our own early literature. During the rage for French
models the Sonnet had not been much studied. It is

ON MILTON'S SONNETS 237

a mode of composition that depends entirely on expres*-
sion; and this the French and artificial style gladly
dispenses with, as it lays no particular stress on any-
thing— except vague, general common-places. Warton's
Sonnets are undoubtedly exquisite, both in style and
matter ; they are poetical and philosophical effusions
of very delightful sentiment; but the thoughts, though
fine and deeply felt, are not, like Milton's subjects,
identified completely with the writer, and so far want
a more individual interest. Mr. Wordsworth's are also
finely conceived and high-sounding Sonnets. They
mouth it well, and are said to be sacred to Liberty.
Brutus's exclamation, ' Oh Virtue, I thought thee a
substance, but I find thee a shadow,' was not considered
as a compliment, but as a bitter sarcasm. The beauty
of Milton's Sonnets is their sincerity, the spirit of
poetical patriotism which they breathe. Either Milton's
or the living bard's are defective in this respect. There
is no Sonnet of Milton's on the Restoration of Charles
II. There is no Sonnet of Mr. Wordsworth's corre-
sponding to that of ' the poet blind and bold ' ' On the
late Massacre in Piedmont.' It would be no niggard
praise to Mr. Wordsworth to grant that he was either
half the man or half the poet that Milton was. He
has not his high and various imagination, nor his deep
and fixed principle. Milton did not worship the rising
sun, nor turn his back on a losing and fallen cause.

Such recantation had no charms for him 1

Mr. Southey has thought proper to put the author
of Paradise Lost into his late Heaven, on the under-
stood condition that he is ' no longer to kings and to
hierarchs hostile. ' In his lifetime he gave no sign of
such an alteration ; and it is rather presumptuous in
the poet-laureate to pursue the deceased antagonist of
Salmasius into the other world to compliment him with
his own infirmity of purpose. It is a wonder he did
not add in a note that Milton called him aside to
whisper in his ear that he preferred the new English
hexameters to his own blank verse !

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Our first of poets was one of our first of men. He
was an eminent instance to prove that a poet is not
another name for the slave of power and fashion, as is
the case with painters and musicians — things without
an opinion — and who merely aspire to make up the
pageant and show of the day. There are persons in
common life who have that eager curiosity and restless
admiration of bustle and splendour, that sooner than
not be admitted on great occasions of feasting and
luxurious display, they will go in the character of
livery-servants to stand behind the chairs of the great.
There are others who can so little bear to be left for
any length of time out of the grand carnival and
masquerade of pride and folly, that they will gain
admittance to it at the expense of their characters as
well as of a change of dress. Milton was not one of
these. Pie had too much of the ideal faculty in his
composition, a lofty contemplative principle, and con-
sciousness of inward power and worth, to be tempted
by such idle baits. We have plenty of chanting and
chiming in among some modern writers with the
triumphs over their own views and principles ; but
none of a patient resignation to defeat, sustaining and
nourishing itself with the thought of the justice of their
cause, and with firm-fixed rectitude. 1 do not pretend
to defend the tone of Milton's political writings (which
was borrowed from the style of controversial divinity),
or to say that he was right in the part he took, — I say
that he was consistent in it, and did not convict him-
self of error : he was consistent in it in spite of danger
and obloquy, fon evil days though fallen, and evil
tongues,' and therefore his character has the salt of
honesty about it. It does not offend in the nostrils
of posterity. He had taken his part boldly and stood
to it manfully, and submitted to the change of times
with pious fortitude, building his consolations on the
resources of his own mind and the recollection of the
past, instead of endeavouring to make himself a re-
treat for the time to come. As an instance of this
we may take one of the best and most admired of thesti

ON MILTON'S SONNETS 239

Sonnets, that addressed to Cyriac Skinner, on his own
blindness : —

Cyriac, this three years' day, these eyes, though clear,

To outward view, of blemish or of spot,

Bereft of light their seeing have forgot,

Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear

Of sun or moon or stars throughout the year,

Or man or woman. Yet I argue not

Against Heav'n's hand or will, nor bate a jot

Of heart or hope ; but still bear up and steer

Right onward. What supports nie, dost thou ask ?

The conscience, Friend, to have lost them overply'd

In liberty's defence, my noble task,

Of which all Europe talks from side to side.

This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask,

Content though blind, had I no better guide.

Nothing can exceed the mild, subdued tone of this
Sonnet, nor the striking grandeur of the concluding
thought It is curious to remark what seems to be a
trait of character in the two first lines. From Milton's
care to inform the reader that ' his eyes were still clear,
to outward view, of spot or blemish,' it would be
thought that he had not yet given up all regard to
personal appearance ; a feeling to which his singular
beauty at an earlier age might be supposed naturally
enough to lead. Of the political or (what may be
called) his State-Sonnets, those to Cromwell, to Fairfax,
and to the younger Vane are full of exalted praise
and dignified advice. They are neither familiar nor
servile. The writer knows what is due to power and
to fame. He feels the true, unassumed equality of
greatness. He pays the full tribute of admiration for
great acts achieved, and suggests becoming occasion to
deserve higher praise. That to Cromwell is a proof
how completely our poet maintained the erectiiess of
his understanding and spirit in his intercourse with
men in power. It is such a compliment as a poet
might pay to a conqueror and head of the state, with-
out the possibility of self-degradation : —

Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud,

Not of war only, but detractions rude,

Guided by faith and matchless fortitude,

To peace and truth thy glorious way hast plough'd,

240 TABLE-TALK

And on the neck of crowned fortune proud

Hast rear'd God's trophies and his work pursued,

While Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbrued,

And Dunbar field resounds thy praises loud,

And Worcester's laureat wreath. Yet much remains

To conquer still ; peace hath her victories

No less renown'd than war : new foes arise

Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains ;

Help us to save free conscience from the paw

Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw.

The most spirited and impassioned of them all, arid
tho most inspired with a sort of prophetic fury, is the
one entitled, ' On the late Massacre in Piedmont.'

Avenge, 0 Lord, thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones
Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold ;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones,
Forgot not : in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that roll'd
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To Heav'n. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple Tyrant ; that from these may grow
A hundred fold, who having learn'd thy way
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

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

When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide,

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent,

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide ;

Doth God exact day-labour, light denied,

I fondly ask : But patience to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts ; who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best ; his state

Is kingly ; thousands at his bidding speed,

And post o'er land and ocean without rest ;

They also serve who only stand and wait.

ON MILTON'S SONNETS 241

Those to Mr. Henry Lawes on his Airs, and to
Mr. Lawrence, can never be enough admired. They
breathe the very soul of music and friendship. Both
have a tender, thoughtful grace ; and for their light-
ness, with a certain melancholy complaining intermixed,
might be stolen from the harp of ^olus. The last is
the picture of a day spent in social retirement and
elegant relaxation from severer studies. VV^e sit with
tho poet at table and hear his familiar sentiments from
his own lips afterwards : —

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

In the last, ' On his deceased Wife,' the allusion to
Alcestis is beautiful, and shows how the poet's mind
raised and refined his thoughts by exquisite classical
conceptions, and how these again were enriched by a
passionate reference to actual feelings and images. It
is this rare union that gives such voluptuous dignity
and touching purity to Milton's delineation of the
female character : —

Methought I saw my late espoused saiat

Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,

Whom Jove's great sou to her glad husband gave,

Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.

Mine, as whom wash'd from spot of child-bed taint

Purification in the old law did save,

And such, as yet once more I trust to have

Full sight of her in Heav'n without restraint,

Came vested all in white, pure as her mind :

Her face was veil'd, yet to my fancied sight

Love, sweetness, goodness in her person sinned

So clear, as in no face with more delight :

But 0 as to embrace me she inclined,

I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night

R

242 TABLE-TALK

There could not have been a greater mistake or a
more unjust piece of criticism than to suppose that
Milton only shone on great subjects, and that on
ordinary occasions and in familiar life his mind was
unwieldy, averse to the cultivation of grace and
elegance, and unsusceptible of harmless pleasures.
The whole tenor of his smaller compositions con-
tradicts this opinion, which, however, they have been
cited to confirm. The notion first got abroad from the
bitterness (or vehemence) of his controversial writings,
and has been kept up since with little meaning and
with less truth. His Letters to Donatus and others are
not more remarkable for the display of a scholastic
enthusiasm than for that of the most amiable disposi-
tions. They are ' severe in youthful virtue unreproved.'
There is a passage in his prose-works (the Treatise on
Education) which shows, 1 think, his extreme openness
and proneness to pleasing outward impressions in a
striking point of view. 'But to return to our own
institute,' he says, 'besides these constant exercises
at home, there is another opportunity of gaining ex-
perience to be won from pleasure itself abroad. In
those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and
pleasantf it were an injury and sullenness against Nature
not to go out and see her riches , and partake in her rejoic-
ing with Heaven and earth. I should not therefore be
a persuader to them of studying much then, but to
ride out in companies with prudent and well -staid
guides, to all quarters of the land,' etc. Many other
passages might be quoted, in which the poet breaks
through the groundwork of prose, as it were, by
natural fecundity and a genial, unrestrained sense oi
delight. To suppose that a poet is not easily accessible
to pleasure, or that he does not take an interest in
individual objects and feelings, is to suppose that he is
no poet ; and proceeds on the false theory, which has
been so often applied to poetry and the Fine Arts, that
the whole is not made up of the particulars. If our
author, according to Dr. Johnson's account of him,
could only have treated epic, high-sounding subjects,

ON MILTON'S SONNETS 243

he would not have been what he was, but another Sir
Richard Blackmore. — I may conclude with observing,
that I have often wished that Milton had lived to see
the Revolution of 1688. This would have been a
triumph worthy of him, and which he would have
earned by faith and hope. He would then have been
old, but would not have lived in vain to see it, and
might have celebrated the event in one more undying
strain !

ESSAY

ON GOING A JOURNEY

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246 TABLE-TALK

disposal of others ; to talk or be silent, to walk or sit
still, to be sociable or solitary. I was pleased with an
observation of Mr. Cobbett's, that ( he thought it a bad
French custom to drink our wine with our meals, and
that an Englishman ought to do only one thing at a
time.' So I cannot talk and think, or indulge in
melancholy musing and lively conversation by fits and
starts. 'Let me have a companion of my way/ says
Sterne, 'were it but to remark how the shadows
lengthen as the sun declines.' It is beautifully said ;
but, in my opinion, this continual comparing of notes
interferes with the involuntary impression of things
upon the mind, and hurts the sentiment. If you only
hint what you feel in a kind of dumb show, it is insipid :
if you have to explain it, it is making a toil of a
pleasure. You cannot read the book of nature without
being perpetually put to the trouble of translating it
for the benefit of others. I am for this synthetical
method on a journey in preference to the analytical.
I am content to lay in a stock of ideas then, and to
examine and anatomise them afterwards. I want to
see my vague notions float like the down of the thistle
before the breeze, and not to have them entangled in
the briars and thorns of controversy. For once, I like
to have it all my own way ; and this is impossible
unless you are alone, or in such company as I do not
covet. I have no objection to argue a point with any
one for twenty miles of measured road, but not for
pleasure. If you remark the scent of a bean-field
crossing the road, perhaps your fellow-traveller has no
smell. If you point to a distant object, perhaps he is
short-sighted, and has to take out his glass to look at
it. There is a feeling in the air, a tone in the colour
of a cloud, which hits your fancy, but the effect of which
you are unable to account for. There is then no sym-
pathy, but an uneasy craving after it, and a dissatisfac-
tion which pursues you on the way, and in the end
probably produces ill-humour. Now I never quarrel
with myself, and take all my own conclusions for
granted till I find it necessary to defend them against

ON GOING A JOURNEY 247

objections. It is not merely that you may not be of
accord on the objects and circumstances that present
themselves before you — these may recall a number of
objects, and lead to associations too delicate and
refined to be possibly communicated to others. Yet
these I love to cherish, and sometimes still fondly
clutch them, when I can escape from the throng to do
so. To give way to our feelings before company seems
extravagance or affectation ; and, on the other hand, to
have to unravel this mystery of our being at every
turn, and to make others take an equal interest in it
(otherwise the end is not answered), is a task to which
few are competent. We must ' give it an understand-
ing, but no tongue.' My old friend Coleridge, however,
could do both. He could go on in the most delightful
explanatory way over hill and dale a summer's day,
and convert a landscape into a didactic poem or a
Pindaric ode. 'He talked far above singing.' If I
could so clothe my ideas in sounding and flowing
words, I might perhaps wish to have some one with me
to admire the swelling theme ; or I could be more
content, were it possible for me still to hear his echoing
voice in the woods of All-Foxden.1 They had 'that
fine madness in them which our first poets had ' ; and
if they could have been caught by some rare in-
strument, would have breathed such strains as the
following : —

Here be woods as green
As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet
As when smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet
Face of the curled streams, with flow'rs as many
As the young spring gives, and as choice as any ;
Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells,
Arbours o'ergrown with woodbines, caves and della ;
Choose where thou wilt, whilst I sit by and sing,
Or gather rushes to make many a ring
For thy long fingers ; tell thee tales of love,
How the pale Phoabe, hunting in a grove,
First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes
She took eternal fire that never dies ;

i Near Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire, where the author of thi>
Essay visited Coleridge in 1798. He was there again in 1 803.

248 TABLE-TALK

How she convey'd him softly in a sleep,
His temples bound with poppy, to the steep
Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night,
Gilding the mountain with her brother's light,
To kiss her sweetest' 1

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

In general, a good thing spoils out-of-door prospects :
it should be reserved for Table-talk. Lamb is for this
reason, 1 take it, the worst company in the world out
of doors ; because he is the best within. I grant there
is one subject on which it is pleasant to talk on a
journey, and that is, what one shall have for supper
when we get to our inn at night. The open air im-
proves this sort of conversation or friendly altercation,
by setting a keener edge on appetite. Every mile of
the road heightens the flavour of the viands we expect
at the end of it. How fine it is to enter some old
town, walled and turreted, just at approach of night-
fall, or to come to some straggling village, with the
lights streaming through the surrounding gloom ; and
then, after inquiring for the best entertainment that
the place affords, to ' take one's ease at one's inn ' !
These eventful moments in our lives' history are too
precious, too full of solid, heartfelt happiness to be
frittered and dribbled away in imperfect sympathy. I
would have them all to myself, and drain them to
the last drop : they will do to talk of or to write about
afterwards. \TTiat a delicate speculation it is, after
drinking whole goblets of tea —

The cups that cheer, but not Inebriate—

i Fletcher's 'Faithful Shepherdess,' 1. 3 (Dyce's Beaumont and

ON GOING A JOURNEY 249

and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit
considering what we shall have for supper — eggs and a
rasher, a rabbit smothered in onions, or an excellent
veal-cutlet ! Sancho in such a situation once fixed on
cow-heel ; and his choice, though he could not help it,
is not to be disparaged. Then, in the intervals of
pictured scenery and Shandean contemplation, to catch
the preparation and the stir in the kitchen [getting
ready for the gentleman in the parlour]. Procul, 0
procul este profani ! These hours are sacred to silence
and to musing, to be treasured up in the memory, and
to feed the source of smiling thoughts hereafter. I
would not waste them in idle talk ; or if I must have
the integrity of fancy broken in upon, I would rather
it were by a stranger than a friend. A stranger takes
his hue and character from the time and place ; he is a
part of the furniture and costume of an inn. If he is
a Quaker, or from the West Riding of Yorkshire, so
much the better. I do not even try to sympathise
with him, and he breaks no squares. [How I love to
see the camps of the gypsies, and to sigh my soul into
that sort of life. If I express this feeling to another,
he may qualify and spoil it with some objection.] I
associate nothing with my travelling companion but
present objects and passing events. In his ignorance
of me and my affairs, I in a manner forget myself.
But a friend reminds one of other things, rips up old
grievances, and destroys the abstraction of the scene.
He comes in ungraciously between us and our imaginary
character. Something is dropped in the course of
conversation that gives a hint of your profession and
pursuits ; or from having some one with you that
knows the less sublime portions of your history, it
seems that other people do. You are no longer a
citizen of the world ; but your 'unhoused free condition
is put into circumspection and confine.' The incognito
of an inn is one of its striking privileges — e lord of
one's self, uncumbered with a name.' Oh! it is great
to shake off the trammels of the world and of public
opinion — to lose our importunate, tormenting, ever-

250 TABLE-TALK

lasting personal identity in the elements of nature, and
become the creature of the moment, clear of all ties —
to hold to the universe only by a dish of sweetbreads,
and to owe nothing but the score of the evening — and
no longer seeking for applause and meeting with
contempt, to be known by no other title than the
Gentleman in the parlour! One may take one's choice
of all characters in this romantic state of uncertainty
as to one's real pretensions, and become indefinitely
respectable and negatively right-worshipful. We baffle
prejudice and disappoint conjecture ; and from being
so to others, begin to be objects of curiosity and
wonder even to ourselves. We are no more those
hackneyed common-places that we appear in the world ;
an inn restores us to the level of nature, and quits
scores with society ! I have certainly spent some
enviable hours at inns — sometimes when I have been
left entirely to myself, and have tried to solve some
metaphysical problem, as once at Witham Common,
where I found out the proof that likeness is not a case
of the association of ideas — at other times, when there
have been pictures in the room, as at St. Neot's (I
think it was), where I first met with Gribelin's engrav-
ings of the Cartoons, into which I entered at once, and
at a little inn on the borders of Wales, where there
happened to be hanging some of Westell's drawings,
which I compared triumphantly (for a theory that I
had, not for the admired artist) with the figure of a
girl who had ferried me over the Severn, standing up
in a boat between me and the twilight — at other times
I might mention luxuriating in books, with a peculiar
interest in this way, as I remember sitting up half the
night to read Paul and Virginia, which I picked up at
an inn at Bridgewater, after being drenched in the rain
all day ; and at the same place I got through two
volumes of Madame D'Arblay's Camilla. It was on the
10th of April 1798 that I sat down to a volume of the
New Eloise, at the inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of
sherry and a cold chicken. The letter I chose was
that in which St. Preux describes his feelings as he

ON GOING A JOURNEY 251

first caught a glimpse from the heights of the Jura of
the Pays de Vaud, which I had hrought with me as a
bon bouche to crown the evening with. It was my birth-
day, and I had for the first time come from a place in
the neighbourhood to visit this delightful spot. The
road to Llangollen turns off between Chirk and
Wrexham ; and on passing a certain point you come
all at once upon the valley, which opens like an amphi-
theatre, broad, barren hills rising in majestic state on
either side, with 'green upland swells that echo to the
bleat of flocks' below, and the river Dee babbling over
its stony bed in the midst of them. The valley at this
time 'glittered green with sunny showers,' and a
budding ash-tree dipped its tender branches in the
chiding stream. How proud, how glad I was to walk
along the high road that overlooks the delicious
prospect, repeating the lines which I have just quoted
from Mr. Coleridge's poems ! But besides the prospect
which opened beneath my feet, another also opened to
my inward sight, a heavenly vision, on which were
written, in letters large as Hope could make them, these
four words, LIBERTY, GENIUS, LOVE, VIRTUE ; which
have since faded into the light of common day, or mock
my idle gaze.

The beautiful is vanished, aud returns not

Still I would return some time or other to this en-
chanted spot ; but I would return to it alone. What
other self could I find to share that influx of thoughts,
of regret, and delight, the fragments of which I could
hardly conjure up to myself, so much have they been
broken and defaced. I could stand on some tall rock,
and overlook the precipice of years that separates me
from what I then was. I was at that time going
shortly to visit the poet whom I have above named.
Where is he now ? Not only I myself have changed ;
the world, which was then new to me, has become old
and incorrigible. Yet will I turn to thee in thought,
O sylvan Dee, in joy, in youth and gladness as thou

252 TABLE-TALK

then wert ; and thou shalt always be to me the river
of Paradise, where I will drink of the waters of life
freely !

There is hardly anything that shows the short-
sightedness or capriciousness of the imagination more
than travelling does. With change of place we change
our ideas ; nay, our opinions and feelings. We can
by an effort indeed transport ourselves to old and long-
forgotten scenes, and then the picture of the mind
revives again ; but we forget those that we have just
left. It seems that we can think but of one place at a
time. The canvas of the fancy is but of a certain
extent, and if we paint one set of objects upon it, they
immediately efface every other. We cannot enlarge
our conceptions, we only shift our point of view. The
landscape bares its bosom to the enraptured eye, we
take our fill of it, and seem as if we could form no
other image of beauty or grandeur. We pass on, and
think no more of it : the horizon that shuts it from our
sight also blots it from our memory like a dream. In
travelling through a wild barren country I can form
no idea of a woody and cultivated one. It appears to
me that all the world must be barren, like what I see
of it. In the country we forget the town, and in town
we despise the country. 'Beyond Hyde Park,' says
Sir Topling Flutter, 'all is a desert' All that part of
the map that we do not see before us is blank. The
world in our conceit of it is not much bigger than a
nutshell. It is not one prospect: expanded into an-
other, county joined to county, kingdom to kingdom,
land to seas, making an image voluminous and vast ; —
the mind can form no larger idea of space than the eye
can take in at a single glance. The rest is a name
written in a map, a calculation of arithmetic. For
instance, what is the true signification of that immense
mass of territory and population known by the name
of China to us ? An inch of pasteboard on a wooden
globe, of no more account than a China orange ! Things
near us are seen of the size of life : things at a distance
are diminished to the size of the understanding. We

ON GOING A JOURNEY 253

measure the universe by ourselves, and even comprehend
the texture of our being only piecemeal. In this way,
however, we remember an infinity of things and places.
The mind is like a mechanical instrument that plays a
great variety of tunes, but it must play them in succes-
sion. One idea recalls another, but it at the same time
excludes all others. In trying to renew old recollec-
tions, we cannot as it were unfold the whole web of our
existence ; we must pick out the single threads. So in
coming to a place where we have formerly lived, and
with which we have intimate associations, every one
must have found that the feeling grows more vivid the
nearer we approach the spot, from the mere anticipa-
tion of the actual impression : we remember circum-
stances, feelings, persons, faces, names that we had not
thought of for years ; but for the time all the rest of
the world is forgotten ! — To return to the question I
have quitted above : —

I have no objection to go to see ruins, aqueducts,
pictures, in company with a friend or a party, but
rather the contrary, for the former reason reversed.
They are intelligible matters, and will bear talking
about. The sentiment here is not tacit, but communi-
cable and overt. Salisbury Plain is barren of criticism,
but Stonehenge will bear a discussion antiquarian,
picturesque, and philosophical. In setting out on a
party of pleasure, the first consideration always is where
we shall go to : in taking a solitary ramble, the ques-
tion is what we shall meet with by the way. 'The
mind is its own place'; nor are we anxious to arrive at
the end of our journey. I can myself do the honours
indifferently well to works of art and curiosity. I once
took a party to Oxford witli no mean eclat — showed
them that seat of the Muses at a distance,

With glistering spires and pinnacles adorn'd—

descanted on the learned air that breathes from the
grassy quadrangles and stone walls of halls and colleges
— was at home in the Bodleian ; and at Blenheim quite

254 TABLE-TALK

superseded the powdered Cicerone that attended us,
and that pointed in vain with his wand to common-
place beauties in matchless pictures. As another excep-
tion to the above reasoning, I should not feel confident
in venturing on a journey in a foreign country without
a companion. I should want at intervals to hear the
sound of my own language. There is an involuntary
antipathy in the mind of an Englishman to foreign
manners and notions that requires the assistance of
social sympathy to carry it off. As the distance from
home increases, this relief, which was at first a luxury,
becomes a passion and an appetite. A person would
almost feel stifled to find himself in the deserts of
Arabia without friends and countrymen : there must
be allowed to be something in the view of Athens or
old Rome that claims the utterance of speech ; and I
own that the Pyramids are too mighty for any single
contemplation. In such situations, so opposite to all
one's ordinary train of ideas, one seems a species by
one's-self, a limb torn off from society, unless one can
meet with instant fellowship and support. Yet I did
not feel this want or craving very pressing once, when
I first set my foot on the laughing shores of France.
Calais was peopled with novelty and delight. The
confused, busy murmur of the place was like oil and
wine poured into my ears ; nor did the mariners' hymn,
which was sung from the top of an old crazy vessel in
the harbour, as the sun went down, send an alien
sound into my soul. I only breathed the air of general
humanity. I walked over ' the vine-covered hills and
gay regions of France,' erect and satisfied ; for the
image of man was not cast down and chained to the
foot of arbitrary thrones : I was at no loss for language,
for that of all the great schools of painting was open to
me. The whole is vanished like a shade. Pictures,
heroes, glory, freedom, all are fled : nothing remains
but the Bourbons and the French people ! — There is
undoubtedly a sensation in travelling into foreign
parts that is to be had nowhere else ; but it is more
pleasing at the time than lasting. It is too remote

ON GOING A JOURNEY 255

from our habitual associations to be a common topic of
discourse or reference, arid, like a dream or another
state of existence, does not piece into our daily modes
of life. It is an animated but a momentary hallucina-
tion. It demands an effort to exchange our actual for
our ideal identity ; and to feel the pulse of our old
transports revive very keenly, we must 'jump' all our
present comforts and connections. Our romantic and
itinerant character is not to be domesticated. Dr.
Johnson remarked how little foreign travel added to
the facilities of conversation in those who had been
abroad. In fact, the time we have spent there is both
delightful, and in one sense instructive ; but it appears
to be cut out of our substantial, downright existence,
and never to join kindly on to it. We are not the
same, but another, and perhaps more enviable in-
dividual, all the time we are out of our own country.
We are lost to ourselves, as well as our friends. So
the poet somewhat quaintly sings :

Out of my country and myself I go.

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

ESSAY XX

ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS

THERE is a set of people who fairly come under this
denomination. They spend their time and their breath
in coffee-houses and other places of public resort, hear-
ing or repeating some new thing. They sit with a
paper in their hands in the morning, and with a pipe
in their mouths in the evening, discussing the con-
tents of it. The Times, the Morning Chronicle, and the
Herald are necessary to their existence : in them ' they
live and move and have their being/ The Evening
Paper is impatiently expected and called for at a certain
critical minute : the news of the morning becomes stale
and vapid by the dinner-hour. A fresher interest is
required, an appetite for the latest-stirring information
is excited with the return of their meals ; and a glass
of old port or humming ale hardly relishes as it ought
without the infusion of some lively topic that had its
birth with the day, and perishes before night. ' Then
come in the sweets of the evening ' : — the Queen, the
coronation, the last new play, the next fight, the in-
surrection of the Greeks or Neapolitans, the price of
stocks, or death of kings, keep them on the alert till
bedtime. No question comes amiss to them that is
quite new — none is ever heard of that is at all old.

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

The World before the Flood or the Intermediate State
of the Soul are never once thought of — such is the

ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS 257

quick succession of subjects, the suddenness and fugi-
tiveness of the interest taken in them, that the Twopenny
Post Bag would be at present looked upon as an old-
fashioned publication ; and the Battle of Waterloo, like
the proverb, is somewhat musty. It is strange that
people should take so much interest at one time in
what they so soon forget ; — the truth is, they feel no
interest in it at any time, but it does for something to
talk about. Their ideas are served up to them, like
their bill of fare, for the day ; and the whole creation,
history, war, politics, morals, poetry, metaphysics, is
to them like a file of antedated newspapers, of no use,
not even for reference, except the one which lies on
the table ! You cannot take any of these persons at
a greater disadvantage than before they are provided
with their cue for the day. They ask with a face of
dreary vacuity, ' Have you anything new ? ' — and on
receiving an answer in the negative, have nothing
further to say. [They are like an oyster at the ebb of
the tide, gaping for fresh tidings.] Talk of the West-
minster Election, the Bridge Street Association, or Mr.
Cobbett's Letter to John Cropper of Liverpool, and
they are alive again. Beyond the last twenty-four
hours, or the narrow round in which they move, they
are utterly to seek, without ideas, feelings, interests,
apprehensions of any sort ; so that if you betray any
knowledge beyond the vulgar routine of SECOND EDI-
TIONS and first-hand private intelligence, you pass with
them for a dull fellow, not acquainted with what is
going forward in the world, or with the practical value
of things. I have known a person of this stamp censure
John Cam Hobhouse for referring so often as he does
to the affairs of the Greeks and Romans, as if the affairs
of the nation were not sufficient for his hands : another
asks you if a general in modern times cannot throw a
bridge over a river without having studied Caesar's
Commentaries; and a third cannot see the use of the
learned languages, as he has observed that the greatest
proficients in them are rather taciturn than otherwise,
and hesitate in their speech more than other people.

268 TABLE-TALK

A dearth of general information is almost necessary
to the thorough-paced coffee-house politician ; in the
absence of thought, imagination, sentiment, he is at-
tracted immediately to the nearest common-place, and
floats through the chosen regions of noise and empty
rumours without difficulty and without distraction.
Meet 'any six of these men in buckram/ and they
will accost you with the same question and the same
answer : they have seen it somewhere in print, or had
it from some city oracle, that morning ; and the sooner
they vent their opinions the better, for they will not
keep. Like tickets of admission to the theatre for a
particular evening, they must be used immediately, or
they will be worth nothing : and the object is to find
auditors for the one and customers for the other,
neither of which is difficult ; since people who have no
ideas of their own are glad to hear what any one else
has to say, as those who have not free admissions to
the play will very obligingly take up with an occasional
order. It sometimes gives one a melancholy but mixed
sensation to see one of the better sort of this class of
politicians, not without talents or learning, absorbed
for fifty years together in the all-engrossing topic of
the day : mounting on it for exercise and recreation of
his faculties, like the great horse at a riding-school,
and after his short, improgressive, untired career, dis-
mounting just where he got up ; flying abroad in con-
tinual consternation on the wings of all the newspapers ;
waving his arm like a pump-handle in sign of constant
change, and spouting out torrents of puddled politics
from his mouth ; dead to all interests but those of the
state ; seemingly neither older nor wiser for age ; un-
accountably enthusiastic, stupidly romantic, and actu-
ated by no other motive than the mechanical operations
of the spirit of newsmongering. l

1 It is not very long ago that I saw two Dissenting Ministers (the
Ultima Thule of the sanguine, visionary temperament in polities'!
stuffing their pipes with dried currant-leaves, calling it Radical
Tobacco, lighting it with a lens in the rays of the sun, and at every
puff fancying that they undermined the Boroughmongers, as Trim

ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS 259

' What things/ exclaims Beaumont in his verses to
Ben Jonson, f have we not seen done at the Mermaid !

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

I cannot say the same of the Southampton, though it
stands on classic ground, and is connected by local
tradition with the great names of the Elizabethan age.
What a falling off is here ! Our ancestors of that
period seem not only to be older by two hundred years,
and proportionably wiser and wittier than we, hot
hardly a trace of them is left, not even the memory
of what has been. How should I make my friend
Mounsey stare, if I were to mention the name of my
still better friend, old honest Signer Friscobaldo, the
father of Bellafront ; — yet his name was perhaps in-
vented, and the scenes in which he figures unrivalled
might for the first time have been read aloud to thrill-
ing ears on this very spot ! Who reads Decker now ?
Or if by chance any one awakes the strings of that
ancient lyre, and starts with delight as they yield wild,
broken music, is he not accused of envy to the living
Muse? What would a linen-draper from Holborn
think, if I were to ask him after the clerk of St.
Andrew's, the immortal, the forgotten Webster ? His
name and his works are no more heard of : though

blew up the army opposed to the Allies 1 They had deceived tht
Senate. Methinks I see them now, smiling as in scorn of Corruption.

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

The world of Reform that you dote on, like Berkeley's material
world, lives only in your own brain, and long may it live there I
Those same Dissenting Ministers throughout the country (I mean
the descendants of the old Puritans) are to this hour a sort of Fifth-
monarchy men : very turbulent fellows, in my opinion altogether
incorrigible, and according to the suggestions of others, should be
hanged out of the way without judge or jury for the safety of church
and state. Marry, hang them ! they may be left to die a natural
death : the race is nearly extinct of itself, and can do little more
good or harm !

260 TABLE-TALK

these were written with a pen of adamant, ' within the
red-leaved tables of the heart,' his fame was ' writ in
water.' So perishable is genius, so swift is time, so
fluctuating is knowledge, and so far is it from being
true that men perpetually accumulate the means of
improvement and refinement. On the contrary, living
knowledge is the tomb of the dead, and while light
and worthless materials float on the surface, the solid
and sterling as often sink to the bottom, and are
swallowed up for ever in weeds and quicksands ! — A
striking instance of the short-lived nature of popular
reputation occurred one evening at the Southampton,
when we got into a dispute, the most learned and
recondite that ever took place, on the comparative
merits of Lord Byron and Gray. A country gentle-
man happened to drop in, and thinking to show off in
London company, launched into a lofty panegyric on
The Bard of Gray as the sublimest composition in the
English language. This assertion presently appeared
to be an anachronism, though it was probably the
opinion in vogue thirty years ago, when the gentle-
man was last in town. After a little floundering, one
of the party volunteered to express a more contem-
porary sentiment, by asking in a tone of mingled
confidence and doubt—' But you don't think, sir, that
Gray is to be mentioned as a poet in the same day with
my Lord Byron ? ' The disputants were now at issue :
all that resulted was that Gray was set aside as a poet
who would not go down among readers of the present
day, and his patron treated the works of the Noble
Bard as mere ephemeral effusions, and spoke of poets
that would be admired thirty years hence, which was
the farthest stretch of his critical imagination. His
antagonist's did not even reach so far. This was the
most romantic digression we ever had ; and the sub-
ject was not afterwards resumed. — No one here
(generally speaking) has the slightest notion of any-
thing that has happened, that has been said, thought,
or done out of his own recollection. It would be in
vain to hearken after those 'wit-skirmishes,' those

ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS 261

' brave sublunary things ' which were the employment
and delight of the Beaumonts and Bens of former
times : but we may happily repose on dulness, drift
with the tide of nonsense, and gain an agreeable
vertigo by lending an ear to endless controversies.
The confusion, provided you do not mingle in the fray
and try to disentangle it, is amusing and edifying
enough. Every species of false wit and spurious
argument may be learnt here by potent examples.
Whatever observations you hear dropt have been
picked up in the same place or in a kindred atmo-
sphere. There is a kind of conversation made up
entirely of scraps and hearsay, as there are a kind
of books made up entirely of references to other
books. This may account for the frequent contra-
dictions which abound in the discourse of persons
educated and disciplined wholly in coffee-houses.
There is nothing stable or well-grounded in it: it ia
'nothing but vanity, chaotic vanity.' They hear a
remark at the Globe which they do not know what to
make of ; another at the Rainbow in direct opposition
to it ; and not having time to reconcile them, vent
both at the Mitre. In the course of half an hour, if
they are not more than ordinarily dull, you are sure
to find them on opposite sides of the question. This
is the sickening part of it. People do not seem to
talk for the sake of expressing their opinions, but to
maintain an opinion for the sake of talking. We
meet neither with modest ignorance nor studious
acquirement. Their knowledge has been taken in too
much by snatches to digest properly. There is neither
sincerity nor system in what they say. They hazard
the first crude notion that comes to hand, and then
defend it how they can ; which is for the most part
but ill. ' Don't you think,' says Mounsey, ' that

Mr. is a very sensible, well-informed man?'

' Why, no,' I say, ' he seems to me to have no ideas
of his own, and only to wait to see what others will
say in order to set himself against it I should not
think that is the way to get at the truth. I do not

262 TABLE-TALK

desire to be driven out of my conclusions (such as they
are) merely to make way for his upstart pretensions.'

— 'Then there is : what of him?' 'He might

very well express all he has to say in half the time,
and with half the trouble. Why should he beat about
the bush as he does? He appears to be getting up
a little speech and practising on a smaller scale for a
Debating Society — the lowest ambition a man can have.
Besides, by his manner of drawling out his words, and
interlarding his periods with innuendos and formal
reservations, he is evidently making up his mind all
the time which side he shall take. He puts his sen-
tences together as printers set up types, letter by
letter. There is certainly no principle of short-hand
in his mode of elocution. He goes round for a mean-
ing, and the sense waits for him. It is not conversation,
but rehearsing a part. Men of education and men of
the world order this matter better. They know what
they have to say on a subject, and come to the point
at once. Your coffee-house politician balances be-
tween what he heard last and what he shall say next ;
and not seeing his way clearly, puts you off with cir-
cumstantial phrases, and tries to gain time for fear of
making a false step. This gentleman has heard some
one admired for precision and copiousness of language ;
and goes away, congratulating himself that he has not
made a blunder in grammar or in rhetoric the whole
evening. He is a theoretical Quidnunc — is tenacious
in argument, though wary ; carries his point thus and
thus, bandies objections and answers with uneasy pleas-
antry, and when he has the worst of the dispute, puns
very emphatically on his adversary's name, if it admits
of that kind of misconstruction.' George Kirkpatrick
is admired by the waiter, who is a sleek hand,1 for his
temper in managing an argument. Any one else

i William, our waiter, Is dressed neatly in black, takes in the
TICKLBR (which many of the gentlemen like to look into), wears, I am
told, a diamond pin in his shirt-collar, has a music-master to teach
him to play on the flageolet two hours before the maids are up,
complains of confinement and a delicate constitution, and is a com.
plete Master Stephen in his way.

ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS 263

would perceive that the latent cause is not patience
with his antagonist, but satisfaction with himself. J
think this unmoved self-complacency, this cavalier,
smooth, simpering indifference is more annoying than
the extremest violence or irritability. The one shows
that your opponent does care something about you,
and may be put out of his way by your remarks ; the
other seems to announce that nothing you say can
shake his opinion a jot, that he has considered the
whole of what you have to offer beforehand, and that
he is in all respects much wiser and more accomplished
than you. Such persons talk to grown people with
the same air of patronage and condescension that they
do to children. 'They will explain' — is a familiar
expression with them, thinking you can only differ
from them in consequence of misconceiving what they
say. Or if you detect them in any error in point of
fact (as to acknowledged deficiency in wit or argument,
they would smile at the idea), they add some correction
to your correction, and thus have the whip-hand of
you again, being more correct than you who corrected
them. If you hint some obvious oversight, they know
what you are going to say, and were aware of the
objection before you uttered it : — ' So shall their anti-
cipation prevent your discovery.' By being in the
right you gain no advantage : by being in the wrong
you are entitled to the benefit of their pity or scorn !
It is sometimes curious to see a select group of our
little Gotham getting about a knotty point that will
bear a wager, as whether Dr. Johnson's Dictionary was
originally published in quarto or folio. The confident
assertions, the cautious overtures, the length of time
demanded to ascertain the fact, the precise terms of
the forfeit, the provisos for getting out of paying it at
last, lead to a long and inextricable discussion. George
Kirkpatrick was, however, so convinced in his own mind
that the Mourning Bride was written by Shakespear,
that he ran headlong into the snare : the bet was
decided, and the punch was drunk. He has skill in
numbers, and seldom exceeds his sevenpence. — He had

264 TABLE-TALK

a brother once, no Michael Cassio, no great arith-
metician. Roger Kirkpatrick was a rare fellow, of
the driest humour, and the nicest tact, of infinite
sleights and evasions, of a picked phraseology, and the
very soul of mimicry. I fancy I have some insight
into physiognomy myself, but he could often expound
to me,at a single glance the characters of those of my
acquaintance that 1 had been most at fault about. The
account as it was cast up and balanced between us was
not always very favourable. How finely, how truly,
how gaily he took off the company at the South-
ampton ! Poor and faint are my sketches compared
to his ! It was like looking into a camera obseura —
you saw faces shining and speaking — the smoke curled,
the lights dazzled, the oak wainscotting took a higher
polish — there was old Sarratt, tall and gaunt, with his
couplet from Pope and case at Nisi Prius, Mounsey
eyeing the ventilator arid lying perdu for a moral, and
Hume and Ayrton taking another friendly finishing

glass ! These and many more windfalls of character

he gave us in thought, word, and action. I remember
his once describing three different persons together to
myself and Martin Burney, viz. the manager of a
country theatre, a tragic and a comic performer, till
we were ready to tumble on the floor with laughing
at the oddity of their humours, and at Roger's extra-
ordinary powers of ventriloquism, bodily and mental ;
and Burney said (such was the vividness of the scene)
that when he awoke the next morning, he wondered
what three amusing characters he had been in com-
pany with the evening before. Oh ! it was a rich treat
to see him describe Mudford, him of the Courier, the
Contemplative Man, who wrote an answer to Coelebs,
coming into a room, folding up his greatcoat, taking
out a little pocket volume, laying it down to think,
rubbing the calf of his leg with grave self-complacency,
and starting out of his reverie when spoken to with an
inimitable vapid exclamation of rEh!' Mudford is
like a man made of fleecy hosiery : Roger was lank
and lean 'as is the ribbed sea-sand.' Yet he seemed

ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS 265

the very man he represented, as fat, pert, and dull as
it was possible to be. I have not seen him of late : —

For Kais is fled, and our tents are forlorn.

But 1 thought of him the other day, when the news of
the death of Buonaparte came, whom we both loved
for precisely contrary reasons, he for putting down the
rabble of the people, and I because he had put down
the rabble of kings. Perhaps this event may rouse
him from his lurking-place, where he lies like Rey-
nard, ' with head declined, in feigned slumbers ! ' 1

I had almost forgotten the Southampton Tavern.
We for some time took C for a lawyer, from a cer-
tain arguteness of voice and slenderness of neck, and

1 His account of Dr. Whittle was prodigious — of his occult sagacity,
of his eyes prominent and wild like a hare's, fugacious of followers,
of the arts by which he had left the City to lure the patients that he
wanted after him to the West End, of the ounce of tea that he pur-
chased by stratagem as an unusual treat to his guest, and of the
narrow winding staircase, from the height of which he contemplated
in security the imaginary approach of duns. He was a large, plain,
fair-faced Moravian preacher, turned physician. He was an honest
man, but vain of he knew not what. He was once sitting where
Sarratt was playing a game at chess without seeing the board ; and
after remaining for some time absorbed in silent wonder, he turned
suddenly to me and said, ' Do you know, Mr. Hazlitt, that I think
there is something I could do?' ' Well, what is that?' ' Why, per-
haps you would not guess, but I think I could dance, I'm sure I
could ; ay, I could dance like Vestris ! ' Sarratt, who was a man of
various accomplishments (among others one of the Fancy), after-
wards bared his arm to convince us of his muscular strength, and
Mrs. Sarratt going out of the room with another lady said, ' Do you
know, Madam, the Doctor is a great jumper ! ' Moliere could not
outdo this. Never shall I forget his pulling off his coat to eat beef-
steaks on equal terms with Martin Burney. life is short, but full
of mirth and pastime, did we not so soon forget what we have
laughed at, perhaps that we may not remember what we have cried
at ! Sarratt, the chess-player, was an extraordinary man. He had
the same tenacious, epileptic faculty in other things that he had at
chess, and could no more get any other ideas out of his mind than
he could those of the figures on the board. He was a great reader,
but had not the least taste. Indeed the violence of his memory
tyrannised over and destroyed all power of selection. He could
repeat [all] Ossiaa by heart, without knowing the best passage from
the worst ; and did not perceive he was tiring you to death by giving
an account of the breed, education, and manners of fighting-dogs for
hours together. The sense of reality quite superseded the distinction
between the pleasurable and the painful. He was altogether a
mechanical philosopher.

266 TABLE-TALK

from his having a quibble and a laugh at himself always
ready. On inquiry, however, he was found to be a
patent-medicine seller, and having leisure in his appren-
ticeship, and a forwardness of parts, he had taken
to study Blackstone and the Statutes at Large. On
appealing to Mounsey for his opinion on this matter,
he observed pithily, ' 1 don't like so much law : the
gentlemen here seem fond of law, but I have law
enough at chambers.' One sees a great deal of the
humours and tempers of men in a place of this sort,
and may almost gather their opinions from their char-
acters. There is C , a fellow that is always in the

wrong — who puts might for right on all occasions — a
Tory in grain — who has no one idea but what has been
instilled into him by custom and authority — an ever-
lasting babbler on the stronger side of the question —
querulous and dictatorial, and with a peevish whine in
his voice like a beaten schoolboy. He is a great advo-
cate for the Bourbons and for the National Debt.
The former he affirms to be the choice of the French
people, and the latter he insists is necessary to the
salvation of these kingdoms. This last point a little
inoffensive gentleman among us, of a saturnine aspect
but simple conceptions, cannot comprehend. el will
tell you, sir — I will make my propositions so clear
that you will be convinced of the truth of my observa-
tion in a moment. Consider, sir, the number of trades
that would be thrown out of employ if it were done
away with : what would become of the porcelain manu-
facture without it ? ' Any stranger to overhear one of
these debates would swear that the English as a nation
are bad logicians. Mood and figure are unknown to
them. They do not argue by the book. They arrive
at conclusions through the force of prejudice, and on

the principles of contradiction. Mr. C having thus

triumphed in argument, offers a flower to the notice
of the company as a specimen of his flower-garden, a
curious exotic, nothing like it to be found in this king-
dom ; talks of his carnations, of his country-house, and
old English hospitality, but never invites any of his

ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS 267

friends to come down and take their Sunday's dinner
with him. He is mean and ostentatious at the same
time, insolent and servile, does not know whether to
treat those he converses with as if they were his porters
or his customers : the prentice-boy is not yet wiped out
of him, and his imagination still hovers between his

mansion at and the workhouse. Opposed to him

and to every one else is B., a radical reformer and
logician, who makes clear work of the taxes and National
Debt, reconstructs the Government from the first prin-
ciples of things, shatters the Holy Alliance at a blow,
grinds out the future prospects of society with a
machine, and is setting out afresh with the com-
mencement of the French Revolution five and twenty
years ago, as if on an untried experiment. He minds
nothing but the formal agreement of his premises and
his conclusions, and does not stick at obstacles in the
way, nor consequences in the end. If there was but
one side of a question, he would be always in the right.
He casts up one column of the account to admiration,
but totally forgets and rejects the other. His ideas lie
like square pieces of wood in his brain, and may be
said to be piled up on a stiff architectural principle,
perpendicularly, and at right angles. There is no
inflection, no modification, no graceful embellishment,
no Corinthian capitals. I never heard him agree to
two propositions together, or to more than half a one
at a time. His rigid love of truth bends to nothing
but his habitual love of disputation. He puts one in
mind of one of those long-headed politicians and fre-
quenters of coffee-houses mentioned in Berkeley's
Minute Philosopher, who would make nothing of such
old-fashioned fellows as Plato and Aristotle. He has
the new light strong upon him, and he knocks other
people down with its solid beams. He denies that he
has got certain views out of Cobbett, though he allows
that there are excellent ideas occasionally to be met
with in that writer. It is a pity that this enthusiastic
and unqualified regard to truth should be accompanied
with an equal exactness of expenditure and unrelenting

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eye to the main chance. He brings a bunch of radishes
with him for cheapness, and gives a band of musicians
at the door a penny, observing that he likes their per-
formance better than all the Opera squalling. This
brings the severity of his political principles into ques-
tion, if not into contempt. He would abolish the
National Debt from motives of personal economy, and
objects to Mr. Canning's pension because it perhaps
takes a farthing a year out of his own pocket. A great
deal of radical reasoning has its source in this feeling.
— He bestows no small quantity of his tediousness upon
Mounsey, on whose mind all these formulas and dia-
grams fall like seed on stony ground : ' while the
manna is descending,' he shakes his ears, and, in the
intervals of the debate, insinuates an objection, and
calls for another half-pint. 1 have sometimes said to
him, ' Any one to come in here without knowing you,
would take you for the most disputatious man alive,
for you are always engaged in an argument with some-
body or other.' The truth is, that Mounsey is a good-
natured, gentlemanly man, who notwithstanding, if
appealed to, will not let an absurd or unjust proposi-
tion pass without expressing his dissent ; and therefore
he is a sort of mark for all those (and we have several
of that stamp) who like to tease other people's under-
standings as wool-combers tease wool. He is certainly
the flower of the flock. He is the oldest frequenter of
the place, the latest sitter-up, well-informed, inob-
trusive, and that sturdy old English character, a lover
of truth and justice. I never knew Mounsey approve
of anything unfair or illiberal. There is a candour
and uprightness about his mind which can neither be
wheedled nor browbeat into unjustifiable complaisance.
He looks straight forward as he sits with his glass in his
hand, turning neither to the right nor the left, and I
will venture to say that he has never had a sinister
object in view through life. Mrs. Battle (it is recorded
in her Opinions on Whist) could not make up her mind
to use the word ' Go.' Mounsey, from long practice, has
got over this difficulty, and uses it incessantly. It ia

ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS 269

no matter what adjunct follows in the train of this de-
spised monosyllable, — whatever liquid comes after this
prefix is welcome. Mounsey, without being the most
communicative, is the most conversible man I know.
The social principle is inseparable from his person. If
he has nothing1 to say, he drinks your health ; and when
you cannot, from the rapidity and carelessness of his
utterance, catch what he says, you assent to it with
equal confidence : you know his meaning is good.
His favourite phrase is, ' We have all of us something
of the coxcomb ' ; and yet he has none of it himself.
Before I had exchanged half a dozen sentences with
Mounsey, I found that he knew several of my old
acquaintance (an immediate introduction of itself, for
the discussing the characters and foibles of common
friends is a great sweetener and cement of friendship)
— and had been intimate with most of the wits and
men about town for the last twenty years. He knew
Tobin, Wordsworth, Porson, Wilson, Paley, Erskine,
and many others. He speaks of Paley's pleasantry
and unassuming manners, and describes Person's long
potations and long quotations formerly at the Cider
Cellar in a very lively way. He has doubts, however,
as to that sort of learning. On my saying that I had
never seen the Greek Professor but once, at the Library
of the London Institution, when he was dressed in an
old rusty black coat with cobwebs hanging to the skirts
of it, and with a large patch of coarse brown paper
covering the whole length of his nose, looking for all
the world like a drunken carpenter, and talking to one
of the proprietors with an air of suavity, approaching
to condescension, Mounsey could not help expressing
some little uneasiness for the credit of classical liter-
ature. ' I submit, sir, whether common sense is not
the principal thing ? What is the advantage of genius
and learning if they are of no use in the conduct of
life ? ' — Mounsey is one who loves the hours that usher
in the morn, when a select few are left in twos and
threes like stars before the break of day, and when the
discourse and the ale are 'aye growing better and

270 TABLE-TALK

better.' Wells, Mounsey, and myself were all that
remained one evening. We had sat together several
hours without being tired of one another's company.
The conversation turned on the Beauties of Charles
the Second's Court at Windsor, and from thence to
Count Grammont, their gallant and gay historian.
We took our favourite passages in turn — one prefer-
ring that of Killigrew's country cousin, who, having
been resolutely refused by Miss Warminster (one of
the Maids of Honour), when he found she had been
unexpectedly brought to bed, fell on his knees and
thanked God that now she might take compassion on
him — another insisting that the Chevalier Hamilton's
assignation with Lady Chesterfield, when she kept him
all night shivering in an old out-house, was better.
Jacob Hall's prowess was not forgotten, nor the story
of Miss Stuart's garters. I was getting on in my way
with that delicate endroit in which Miss Churchill is
first introduced at court and is besieged (as a matter of
course) by the Duke of York, who was gallant as well
as bigoted on system. His assiduities, however, soon
slackened, owing (it is said) to her having a pale, thin
face : till one day, as they were riding out hunting
together, she fell from her horse, and was taken up
almost lifeless. The whole assembled court was thrown
by this event into admiration that such a body should
belong to such a face l (so transcendent a pattern was
she of the female form), and the Duke was fixed. This,
I contended, was striking, affecting, and grand, the
sublime of amorous biography, and said I could con-
ceive of nothing finer than the idea of a young person
in her situation, who was the object of indifference or
scorn from outward appearance, with the proud sup-
pressed consciousness of a Goddess -like symmetry,
locked up by ' fear and niceness, the handmaids of all
women,' from the wonder and worship of mankind. J
said so then, and I think so now : my tongue grew

i ' Us ne pouvoient croire qu'un corps de cette beaute f At de quelque
chose au visage de Mademoiselle Churchill.'— Mfonoires de Gh-ammont.
vol. ii. p. 254.

ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS 271

wanton in the praise of this passage, and I believe it
bore the bell from its competitors. Wells then spoke
of Lucius Apuleius and his Golden Ass, which contains
the story of Cupid and Psyche, with other matter rich
and rare, and Avent on to the romance of Heliodorus,
Theagenes and Chariclea. This, as he affirmed, opens
with a pastoral landscape equal to Claude, and in it
the presiding deities of Love and Wine appear in all
their pristine strength, youth, and grace, crowned and
worshipped as of yore. The night waned, but our
glasses brightened, enriched with the pearls of Grecian
story. Our cup-bearer slept in a corner of the room,
like another Endymion, in the pale ray of a half-ex-
tinguished lamp, and starting up at a fresh summons
for a further supply, he swore it was too late, and was
inexorable to entreaty. Mounsey sat with his hat on
and with a hectic flush in his face while any hope re-
mained, but as soon as we rose to go, he darted out of
the room as quick as lightning, determined not to be
the last that went. — I said some time after to the
waiter, that 'Mr. Mounsey was no flincher.' 'Oh!
sir,' says he, 'you should have known him formerly,
when Mr. Hume and Mr. Ayrton used to be here.
Now he is quite another man : he seldom stays later
than one or two.' — 'Why, did they keep it up much
then ? ' ' Oh ! yes ; and used to sing catches and all
sorts.' — 'What, did Mr. Mounsey sing catches?' 'He
joined chorus, sir, and was as merry as the best of
them. He was always a pleasant gentleman!' — This
Hume and Ayrton succumbed in the fight. Ayrton
was a dry Scotchman, Hume a good-natured, hearty
Englishman. I do not mean that the same character
applies to all Scotchmen or to all Englishmen. Hume
was of the Pipe-Office (not unfitly appointed), and in
his cheerfuller cups would delight to speak of a widow
and a bowling-green, that ran in his head to the last.
' What is the good of talking of those things now ? '
said the man of utility. ' I don't know,' replied the
other, quaffing another glass of sparkling ale, and with
a lambent fire playing in his eye and round his bald

272 TABLE-TALK

forehead — (he had a head that Sir Joshua would have
made something bland and genial of)—' I don't know,
but they were delightful to me at the time, and are still
pleasant to talk and think of.' — Such a one, in Touch-
stone's phrase, is a natural philosopher ; and in nine cases
out of ten that sort of philosophy is the best ! I could en-
large this sketch, such as it is ; but to prose on to the end
of the chapter might prove less profitable than tedious.
I like very well to sit in a room where there are
people talking on subjects I know nothing of, if I am
only allowed to sit silent and as a spectator ; but I do
not much like to join in the conversation, except with
people and on subjects to my taste. Sympathy is
necessary to society. To look on, a variety of faces,
humours, and opinions is sufficient; to mix with
others, agreement as well as variety is indispensable.
What makes good society? I answer, in one word,
real fellowship. Without a similitude of tastes, ac-
quirements, and pursuits (whatever may be the differ-
ence of tempers and characters) there can be no intimacy
or even casual intercourse worth the having. What
makes the most agreeable party ? A number of people
with a number of ideas in common, 'yet so as with
a difference' ; that is, who can put one or more
subjects which they have all studied in the greatest
variety of entertaining or useful lights. Or, in other
words, a succession of good things said with good-
humour, and addressed to the understandings of those
who hear them, make the most desirable conversation.
Ladies, lovers, beaux, wits, philosophers, the fashion-
able or the vulgar, are the fittest company for one
another. The discourse at Randal's is the best for
boxers ; that at Long's for lords and loungers. I
prefer Hunt's conversation almost to any other person's,
because, with a familiar range of subjects, he colours
with a totally new and sparkling light, reflected from
his own character. Elia, the grave and witty, says
things not to be surpassed in essence ; but the manner
is more painful and less a relief to my own thoughts.
Some one conceived he could not be an excellent

ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS 273

companion, because he was seen walking down the side
of the Thames, passibus iniquis, after dining at Rich-
mond. The objection was not valid. 1 will, however,
admit that the said Elia is the worst company in the
world in bad company, if it be granted me that in good
company he is nearly the best that can be. He is one
of those of whom it may be said, Tell me your company,
and I'll tell you your manners. He is the creature of
sympathy, and makes good whatever opinion you seem
to entertain of him. He cannot outgo the apprehen-
sions of the circle, and invariably acts up or down
to the point of refinement or vulgarity at which they
pitch him. He appears to take a pleasure in exaggerat-
ing the prejudice of strangers against him ; a pride in
confirming the prepossessions of friends. In whatever
scale of intellect he is placed, he is as lively or as
stupid as the rest can be for their lives. If you think
him odd and ridiculous, he becomes more and more so
every minute, a lafolie, till he is a wonder gazed [at]
by all — set him against a good wit and a ready appre-
hension, and he brightens more and more —

Or like a gate of steel

Fronting the sun, receives and renders back
Its figure and its heat.

We had a pleasant party one evening at Procter's. A
young literary bookseller who was present went away
delighted with the elegance of the repast, and spoke in
raptures of a servant in green livery and a patent lamp.
I thought myself that the charm of the evening con-
sisted in some talk about Beaumont and Fletcher and
the old poets, in which every one took part or interest,
and in a consciousness that we could not pay our host
a better compliment than in thus alluding to studies
in which he excelled, and in praising authors whom he
had imitated with feeling and sweetness ! — I should
think it may also be laid down as a rule on this sub-
ject, that to constitute good company a certain pro-
portion of hearers and speakers is requisite. Coleridge
makes good company for this reason. He immediately

T

274 TABLE-TALK

establishes the principle of the division of labour in
this respect wherever he comes. He takes his cue
as speaker, and the rest of the party theirs as listeners
— a ' Circean herd ' — without any previous arrangement
having been gone through. I will just add that there
can be no good society without perfect freedom from
affectation and constraint. If the unreserved com-
munication of feeling or opinion leads to offensive
familiarity, it is not well ; but it is no better where the
absence of offensive remarks arises only from formality
and an assumed respectfulness of manner.

I do not think there is anything deserving the name
of society to be found out of London ; and that for the
two following reasons. First, there is neighbourhood
elsewhere, accidental or unavoidable acquaintance :
people are thrown together by chance or grow together
like trees ; but you can pick your society nowhere but
in London. The very persons that of all others you
would wish to associate with in almost every line of
life (or at least of intellectual pursuit) are to be met
with there. It is hard if out of a million of people you
cannot find half a dozen to your liking. Individuals
may seem lost and hid in the size of the place ; but in
fact, from this very circumstance, you are within two
or three miles' reach of persons that, without it, you
would be some hundreds apart from. Secondly,
London is the only place in which each individual in
company is treated according to his value in company,
and to that only. In every other part of the kingdom
he carries another character about with him, which
supersedes the intellectual or social one. It is known
in Manchester or Liverpool what every man in the
room is worth in land or money ; what are his connec-
tions and prospects in life — and this gives a character
of servility or arrogance, of mercenariness or imperti-
nence to the whole of provincial intercourse. You
laugh not in proportion to a man's wit, but his wealth ;
you have to consider not what, but whom you contradict.
You speak by the pound, and are heard by the rood.
In the metropolis there is neither time nor inclination

ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS 275

for these remote calculations. Every man depends on
the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings
into society for the reception he meets with in it.
A Member of Parliament soon finds his level as a
commoner : the merchant and manufacturer cannot
bring his goods to market here : the great landed
proprietor shrinks from being the lord of acres into
a pleasant companion or a dull fellow. When a visitor
enters or leaves a room, it is not inquired whether he
is rich or poor, whether he lives in a garret or a palace,
or comes in his own or a hackney coach, but whether
he has a good expression of countenance, with an
unaffected manner, and whether he is a man of under-
standing or a blockhead. These are the circumstances
by which you make a favourable impression on the
company, and by which they estimate you in the
abstract. In the country, they consider whether you
have a vote at the next election or a place in your
gift, and measure the capacity of others to instruct or
entertain them by the strength of their pockets and
their credit with their banker. Personal merit is at
a prodigious discount in the provinces. I like the
country very well if I want to enjoy my own company;
but London is the only place for equal society, or
where a man can say a good thing or express an honest
opinion without subjecting himself to being insulted,
unless he first lays his purse on the table to back his
pretensions to talent or independence of spirit. I
speak from experience.1

i When I was young I spent a good deal of my time at Manchester
and Liverpool ; and I confess I give the preference to the former.
There you were oppressed only by the aristocracy of wealth ; in the
latter by the aristocracy of wealth and letters by turns. You could
not help feeling that some of their great men were authors among
merchants and merchants among authors. Their bread was buttered
on both sides, and they had you at a disadvantage either way. The
Manchester cotton -spinners, on the contrary, set up no pretensions
beyond their looms, were hearty good fellows, and took any informa-
tion or display of ingenuity on other subjects in good part. 1
remember well being introduced to a distinguished patron of art
and rising merit at a little distance from Liverpool, and was received
with every mark of attention and politeness ; till, the conversation
turning on Italian literature, our host remarked that there wa?

276 TABLE-TALK

nothing in the English language corresponding to the severity of the
Italian ode — except perhaps Dryden's Alexander's Feast and Pope's
St. Cecilia! I could no longer contain my desire to display my
smattering in criticism, and began to maintain that Pope's Ode was,
as it appeared to me, far from an example of severity in writing. I
soon perceived what I had done, but here am I writing Table-
talks in consequence. Alas 1 I knew as little of the world then
as I do now. I never could understand anything beyond an abstract
definition.

ESSAY XXI

ON THE ARISTOCRACY OP LETTERS

Ha 1 here's three of us are sophisticated :— off, you lendings.

THERE is such a thing as an aristocracy or privileged
order in letters which has sometimes excited my
wonder, and sometimes my spleen. We meet with
authors who have never done anything, but who have a
vast reputation for what they could have done. Their
names stand high, and are in everybody's mouth, but
their works are never heard of, or had better remain
undiscovered for the sake of their admirers. — Stat
nominis umbra — their pretensions are lofty and un-
limited, as they have nothing to rest upon, or because
it is impossible to confront them with the proofs of their
deficiency. If you inquire farther, and insist upon
some act of authorship to establish the claims of these
Epicurean votaries of the Muses, you find that they had
a great reputation at Cambridge, that they were
senior wranglers or successful prize-essayists, that they
visit at Holland House, and, to support that honour,
must be supposed, of course, to occupy the first rank in
the world of letters.1 It is possible, however, that they

1 Lord Holland had made a diary (in the manner of Boswell) of the
conversation held at his house, and read it at the end of a week prc
bono publico. Sir James Mackintosh made a considerable figure in it,
and a celebrated poet none at all, merely answering Yes and No.
With this result he was by no means satisfied, and talked incessantly
from that day forward. At the end of the week he asked, with sonw
anxiety and triumph, if his Lordship had continued his diary, expect-
ing himself to shine in ' the first row of the rubric.' To which his
Noble Patron answered in the negative, with an intimation that it

278 TABLE-TALK

have some manuscript work in hand, which is of too
much importance (and the writer has too much at
stake in publishing it) hastily to see the light : or
perhaps they once had an article in the Edinburgh
Review, which was much admired at the time, and is
kept by them ever since as a kind of diploma and un-
questionable testimonial of merit. They are not like
Grub Street authors, who write for bread, and are paid
by the sheet. Like misers who hoard their wealth, they
are supposed to be masters of all the wit and sense they
do not impart to the public. ' Continents have most
of what they contain,' says a considerable philosopher ;
and these persons, it must be confessed, have a pro-
digious command over themselves in the expenditure of
light and learning. The Oriental curse, ' O that
mine enemy had written a book ! ' hangs suspended
over them. By never committing themselves, they
neither give a handle to the malice of the world, nor
excite the jealousy of friends ; and keep all the reputa-
tion they have got, not by discreetly blotting, but by
never writing a line. Some one told Sheridan, who
was always busy about some new work and never
advancing any farther in it, that he would not write
because he was afraid of the author of the School for
Scandal. So these idle pretenders are afraid of under-
going a comparison with themselves in something they
have never done, but have had credit for doing. They
do not acquire celebrity, they assume it ; and escape
detection by never venturing out of their imposing and
mysterious incognito. They do not let themselves down
by everyday work : for them to appear in print is a
work of supererogation as much as in lords and kings ;
and like gentlemen with a large landed estate, they
live on their established character, and do nothing (or
as little as possible) to increase or lose it. There is
not a more deliberate piece of grave imposture going.
I know a person of this description who has been

had not appeared to him worth while. Our poet was thus thrown
again Into the background, and Sir James remained master of th«
field)

ON THE ARISTOCRACY OF LETTERS 279

employed many years (by implication) in a translation
of Thucydides, of which no one ever saw a word, but it
does not answer the purpose of bolstering up a facti-
tious reputation the less on that account. The longer
it is delayed and kept sacred from the vulgar gaze, the
more it swells into imaginary consequence ; the labour
and care required for a work of this kind being
immense ; — and then there are no faults in an un-
executed translation. The only impeccable writers are
those that never wrote. Another is an oracle on
subjects of taste and classical erudition, because (he
says at least) he reads Cicero once a year to keep up
the purity of his Latinity. A third makes the indecency
pass for the depth of his researches and for a high
gusto in virtu, till, from his seeing nothing in the finest
remains of ancient art, the world by the merest
accident find out that there is nothing in him. There
is scarcely anything that a grave face with an im-
penetrable manner will not accomplish, and whoever is
weak enough to impose upon himself will have wit
enough to impose upon the public — particularly if he
can make ,it their interest to be deceived by shallow
boasting, and contrives not to hurt their self-love by
sterling acquirements. Do you suppose that the
understood translation of Thucydides costs its supposed
author nothing ? A select party of friends and admirers
dine with him once a week at a magnificent town
mansion, or a more elegant and picturesque retreat in
the country. They broach their Horace and their old
hock, and sometimes allude with a considerable degree
of candour to the defects of works which are brought
out by contemporary writers — the ephemeral offspring
of haste and necessity !

Among other things, the learned languages are a
ready passport to this sort of unmeaning, unanalysed
reputation. They presently lift a man up among the
celestial constellations, the signs of the zodiac (as it
were) and third heaven of inspiration, from whence he
looks down on those who are toiling on in this lower
sphere, and earning their bread by the sweat of their

280 TABLE-TALK

brain, at leisure and in scorn. If the graduates in this
way condescend to express their thoughts in English,
it is understood to be infra dignitatem — such light and
unaccustomed essays do not lit the ponderous gravity
of their pen — they only draw to advantage and with
full justice to themselves in the bow of the ancients.
Their native tongue is to them strange, inelegant, un-
apt, and crude. They ' cannot command it to any
utterance of harmony. They have not the skill.'
This is true enough ; but you must not say so, under a
heavy penalty — the displeasure of pedants and block-
heads. It would be sacrilege against the privileged
classes, the Aristocracy of Letters. What f will you
affirm that a profound Latin scholar, a perfect Grecian,
cannot write a page of common sense or grammar ? Is
it not to be presumed, by all the charters of the
Universities and the foundations of grammar-schools,
that he who can speak a dead language must be a
fortiori conversant with his own ? Surely the greater
implies the less. He who knows every science and
every art cannot be ignorant of the most familiar
forms of speech. Or if this plea is found not to hold
water, then our scholastic bungler is said to be above
this vulgar trial of skill, ' something must be excused
to want of practice — but did you not observe the
elegance of the Latinity, how well that period would
become a classical and studied dress ? ' Thus defects
are ' monster'd ' into excellences, and they screen their
idol, and require you, at your peril, to pay prescriptive
homage to false concords and inconsequential criticisms,
because the writer of them has the character of the
first or second Greek or Latin scholar in the kingdom.
If you do not swear to the truth of these spurious
credentials, you are ignorant and malicious, a quack
and a scribbler— flagranti delicto I Thus the man who
can merely read and construe some old author is of a
class superior to any living one, and, by parity of
reasoning, to those old authors themselves : the poet
or prose-writer of true and original genius, by the
courtesy of custom, < ducks to the learned fool ' ; or, as

ON THE ARISTOCRACY OF LETTERS 281

the author of Hudibras has so well stated the same

thing —

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

These preposterous and unfounded claims of mere
scholars to precedence in the commonwealth of letters,
which they set up so formally themselves and which
others so readily bow to, are partly owing to tradi-
tional prejudice : there was a time when learning was
the only distinction from ignorance, and when there
was no such thing as popular English literature.
Again, there is something more palpable and positive
in this kind of acquired knowledge, like acquired
wealth, which the vulgar easily recognise. That
others know the meaning of signs which they are
confessedly and altogether ignorant of is to them both
a matter of fact and a subject of endless wonder. The
languages are worn like a dress by a man, and dis-
tinguish him sooner than his natural figure ; and we
are, from motives of self-love, inclined to give others
credit for the ideas they have borrowed or have come
into indirect possession of, rather than for those that
originally belong to them and are exclusively their
own. The merit in them and the implied inferiority
in ourselves is less. Learning is a kind of external
appendage or transferable property —

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

Genius and understanding are a man's self, an inte-
grant part of his personal identity ; and the title to
these last, as it is the most difficult to be ascertained, is
also the most grudgingly acknowledged. Few persons
would pretend to deny that Person had more Greek
than they ; it was a question of fact which might be
put to the immediate proof, and could not be gainsaid ;
but the meanest frequenter of the Cider Cellar or the
Hole in the Wall would be inclined, in his own conceit,
to dispute the palm of wit or sense with him, and

282 TABLE-TALK

indemnify his self-complacency for the admiration paid
to living learning by significant hints to friends and
casual droppers-in, that the greatest men, when you
came to know them, were not without their weak sides
as well as others. Pedants, I will add here, talk to
the vulgar as pedagogues talk to schoolboys, on an
understood principle of condescension and superiority,
and therefore make little progress in the knowledge of
men or things. While they fancy they are accommo-
dating themselves to, or else assuming airs of import-
ance over, inferior capacities, these inferior capacities
are really laughing at them. There can be no true
superiority but what arises out of the presupposed
ground of equality : there can be no improvement but
from the free communication and comparing of ideas.
Kings and nobles, for this reason, receive little benefit
from society — where all is submission on one side, and
condescension on the other. The mind strikes out
truth by collision, as steel strikes fire from the flint !

There are whole families who are born classical, and
are entered in the heralds' college of reputation by the
right of consanguinity. Literature, like nobility, runs
in the blood. There is the Burney family. There is
no end of it or its pretensions. It produces wits,
scholars, novelists, musicians, artists in ' numbers
numberless.' The name is alone a passport to the
Temple of Fame. Those who bear it are free of
Parnassus by birthright. The founder of it was him-
self an historian and a musician, but more of a courtier
and man of the world than either. The secret of his
success may perhaps be discovered in the following
passage, where, in alluding to three eminent per-
formers on different instruments, he says : ' These
three illustrious personages were introduced at the
Emperor's court,' etc. ; speaking of them as if they
were foreign ambassadors or princes of the blood, and
thus magnifying himself and his profession. This
overshadowing manner carries nearly everything before
it, and mystifies a great many. There is nothing like
putting the best face upon things, and leaving others

ON THE ARISTOCRACY OF LETTERS 283

to find out the difference. He who could call three
musicians ' personages ' would himself play a person-
age through life, and succeed in his leading object.
Sir Joshua Reynolds, remarking on this passage, said :
'No one had a greater respect than he had for his
profession, but that he should never think of applying
to it epithets that were appropriated merely to external
rank and distinction.' Madame d'Arblay, it must be
owned, had cleverness enough to stock a whole family,
and to set up her cousin-germans, male and female, for
wits and virtuosos to the third and fourth generation.
The rest have done nothing, that I know of, but keep
up the name.

The most celebrated author in modern times has
written without a name, and has been knighted for
anonymous productions. Lord Byron complains that
Horace Walpole was not properly appreciated, ( first,
because he was a gentleman ; and secondly, because he
was a nobleman.' His Lordship stands in one, at least,
of the predicaments here mentioned, and yet he has
had justice, or somewhat more, done him. He towers
above his fellows by all the height of the peerage. If
the poet lends a grace to the nobleman, the nobleman
pays it back to the poet with interest. What a fine
addition is ten thousand a year and a title to the
flaunting pretensions of a modern rhapsodist ! His
name so accompanied becomes the mouth well : it is
repeated thousands of times, instead of hundreds, be-
cause the reader in being familiar with the Poet's
works seems to claim acquaintance with the Lord.

Let but a lord once own the happy lines :
How the wit brightens, and the style refines 1

He smiles at the high-flown praise or petty cavils of
little men. Does he make a slip in decorum, which
Milton declares to be the principal thing? His proud
crest and armorial bearings support him : no bend-
sinister slurs his poetical escutcheon ! Is he dull, or
does he put off some trashy production on the public ?
It is not charged to his account, as a deficiency which

284 TABLE-TALK

he must make good at the peril of his admirers. His
Lordship is not answerable for the negligence or extra-
vagances of his Muse. He 'bears a charmed reputa-
tion, which must not yield ' like one of vulgar birth.
The Noble Bard is for this reason scarcely vulnerable
to the critics. The double barrier of his pretensions
baffles their puny, timid efforts. Strip off some of his
tarnished laurels, and the coronet appears glittering
beneath : restore them, and it still shines through
with keener lustre. In fact, his Lordship's blaze of
reputation culminates from his rank and place in
society. He sustains two lofty and imposing char-
acters ; and in order to simplify the process of our
admiration, and ' leave no rubs or botches in the way/
we equalise his pretensions, and take it for granted
that he must be as superior to other men in genius as
he is in birth. Or, to give a more familiar solution of
the enigma, the Poet and the Peer agree to honour
each other's acceptances on the bank of Fame, and
sometimes cozen the town to some tune between them.
Really, however, and with all his privileges, Lord
Byron might as well not have written that strange
letter about Pope. I could not afford it, poor as I am.
Why does he pronounce, eat cathedra and robed, that
Cowper is no poet ? Cowper was a gentleman and of
noble family like his critic. He was a teacher of
morality as well as a describer of nature, which is
more than his Lordship is. His John Gilpin will last
as long as Beppo, and his verses to Mary are not less
touching than the Farewell. If I had ventured upon
such an assertion as this, it would have been worse for
me than finding out a borrowed line in the Pleasures of
Hope.

There is not a more helpless or more despised animal
than a mere author, without any extrinsic advantages
of birth, breeding, or fortune to set him off. The real
ore of talents or learning must be stamped before it
will pass current. To be at all looked upon as an
author, a man must be something more or less than an
author — a rich merchant, a banker, a lord, or a plough-

ON THE ARISTOCRACY OF LETTERS 285

man. He is admired for something foreign to himself,
that acts as a bribe to the servility or a set-off to the
envy of the community. ' What should such fellows
as we do, crawling betwixt heaven and earth ' ; — ' coin-
ing our hearts for drachmas ' ; now scorched in the
sun, now shivering in the breeze, now coming out in
our newest gloss and best attire, like swallows in the
spring, now 'sent back like hollowmas or shortest
day ' ? The best wits, like the handsomest faces upon
the town, lead a harassing, precarious life — are taken
up for the bud and promise of talent, which they no
sooner fulfil than they are thrown aside like an old
fashion — are caressed without reason, and insulted with
impunity — are subject to all the caprice, the malice,
and fulsome advances of that great keeper, the Public
— and in the end come to no good, like all those who
lavish their favours on mankind at large, and look to
the gratitude of the world for their reward. Instead
of this set of Grub Street authors, the mere canaille of
letters, this corporation of Mendicity, this ragged regi-
ment of genius suing at the corners of streets in forma
pauperis, give me the gentleman and scholar, with a
good house over his head and a handsome table ' with
wine of Attic taste' to ask his friends to, and where
want and sorrow never come. Fill up the sparkling
bowl ; heap high the dessert with roses crowned ; bring
out the hot-pressed poem, the vellum manuscripts, the
medals, the portfolios, the intaglios — this is the true
model of the life of a man of taste and virtu — the
possessors, not the inventors of these things, are the
true benefactors of mankind and ornaments of letters.
Look in, and there, amidst silver services and shining
chandeliers, you will see the man of genius at his
proper post, picking his teeth and mincing an opinion,
sheltered by rank, bowing to wealth — a poet framed,
glazed, and hung in a striking light ; not a straggling
weed, torn and trampled on ; not a poor Kit-run-the-
street, but a powdered beau, a sycophant plant, an
exotic reared in a glass case, hermetically sealed,
Free from the Slrian star and the dread thunder-stroke —

286 TABLE-TALK

whose mealy coat no moth can corrupt nor blight can
wither. The poet Keats had not this sort of protection
for his person — he lay bare to weather — the serpent
stung him, and the poison-tree dropped upon this little
western flower : when the mercenary servile crew ap-
proached him, he had no pedigree to show them, no
rent-roll to hold out in reversion for their praise : he
was not in any great man's train, nor the butt and
puppet of a lord — he could only offer them ( the fairest
flowers of the season, carnations and streaked gilli-
flowers,' — ' rue for remembrance and pansies for
thoughts,' — they recked not of his gift, but tore him
with hideous shouts and laughter,

Nor could the Muse protect her son !

Unless an author has an establishment of his own, or
is entered on that of some other person, he will hardly
be allowed to write English or to spell his own name.
To be well spoken of, he must enlist under some stand-
ard ; he must belong to some coterie. He must get
the esprit de corps on his side : he must have literary
bail in readiness. Thus they prop up one another's
rickety heads at Murray's shop, and a spurious repu-
tation, like false argument, runs in a circle. Croker
affirms that Gifford is sprightly, and Gifford that
Croker is genteel ; Disraeli that Jacob is wise, and
Jacob that Disraeli is good-natured. A Member of
Parliament must be answerable that you are not
dangerous or dull before you can be of the entrte.
You must commence toad-eater to have your obser-
vations attended to ; if you are independent, uncon-
nected, you will be regarded as a poor creature. Your
opinion is honest, you will say ; then ten to one it is
not profitable. It is at any rate your own. So much
the worse ; for then it is not the world's. Tom Hill
is a very tolerable barometer in this respect. He
knows nothing, hears everything, and repeats just
what he hears ; so that you may guess pretty well
from this round-faced echo what is said by others !
Almost everything goes by presumption and appear-

ON THE ARISTOCRACY OF LETTERS 287

ances. 'Did you not think Mr. B 's

very elegant ? ' — I thought he bowed very low. ' Did
you not think him remarkably well-behaved ? ' — He
was unexceptionably dressed. 'But were not Mr.

C 'e manners quite insinuating ? ' — He said nothing.

' You will at least allow his friend to be a well-
informed man ?' — He talked upon all subjects alike.
Such would be a pretty faithful interpretation of the
tone of what is called good society. The surface is
everything ; we do not pierce to the core. The setting
is more valuable than the jewel. Is it not so in other
things as well as letters ? Is not an R. A. by the sup-
position a greater man in his profession than any one
who is not so blazoned? Compared with that un-
rivalled list, Raphael had been illegitimate, Claude
not classical, and Michael Angelo admitted by special
favour. What is a physician without a diploma f An
alderman without being knighted ? An actor whose
name does not appear in great letters ? All others are
counterfeits — men 'of no mark or likelihood.' This
was what made the Jackals of the North so eager to
prove that I had been turned out of the Edinburgh
Review. It was not the merit of the articles which
excited their spleen — but their being there. Of the
style they knew nothing ; for the thought they cared
nothing : all that they knew was that I wrote in that
powerful journal, and therefore they asserted that I
did not !

We find a class of persons who labour under an
obvious natural inaptitude for whatever they aspire
to. Their manner of setting about it is a virtual
disqualification. The simple affirmation, 'What this
man has said, I will do/ is not always considered as
the proper test of capacity. On the contrary, there
are people whose bare pretensions are as good or better
than the actual performance of others. What I myself
have done, for instance, I never find admitted as proof
of what I shall be able to do : whereas I observe others
who bring as proof of their competence to any task
(and are taken at their word) what they have never

288 TABLE-TALK

done, and who gravely assure those who are inclined
to trust them that their talents are exactly fitted for
some post because they are just the reverse of what
they have ever shown them to be. One man has the
air of an Editor as much as another has that of a

butler or porter in a gentleman's family. is the

model of this character, with a prodigious look of busi-
ness, an air of suspicion which passes for sagacity, and
an air of deliberation which passes for judgment. If
his own talents are no ways prominent, it is inferred
he will be more impartial and in earnest in making
use of those of others. There is Britton, the respon-
sible conductor of several works of taste and erudition,
yet (God knows) without an idea in his head relating
to any one of them. He is learned by proxy, and suc-
cessful from sheer imbecility. If he were to get the
smallest smattering of the departments which are
under his control, he would betray himself from his
desire to shine ; but as it is, he leaves others to do all
the drudgery for him. He signs his name in the title-
page or at the bottom of a vignette, and nobody sus-
pects any mistake. This contractor for useful and
ornamental literature once offered me two guineas for
a Life and Character of Shakespear, with an admission
to his converzationi. I went once. There was a col-
lection of learned lumber, of antiquaries, lexicographers,
and other * illustrious obscure,' and I had given up the
day for lost, when in dropped Jack Taylor of the Sun
— (Who would dare to deny that he was * the Sun of
our table ' ?) — and I had nothing now to do but hear
and laugh. Mr. Taylor knows most of the good things
that have been said in the metropolis for the last thirty
years, and is in particular an excellent retailer of the
humours and extravagances of his old friend Peter
Pindar. He had recounted a series of them, each
rising above the other in a sort of magnificent bur-
lesque and want of literal preciseness, to a medley
of laughing and sour faces, when on his proceeding to
state a joke of a practical nature by the said Peter, a
Mr. (I forget the name) objected to the moral of

ON THE ARISTOCRACY OF LETTERS 289

the story, and to the whole texture of Mr. Taylor's
facetiae — upon which our host, who had till now sup-
posed that all was going on swimmingly, thought it
time to interfere and give a turn to the conversation
by saying, e Why, yes, gentlemen, what we have
hitherto heard fall from the lips of our friend has been
no doubt entertaining and highly agreeable in its way;
but perhaps we have had enough of what is altogether
delightful and pleasant and light and laughable in
conduct. Suppose, therefore, we were to shift the
subject, and talk of what is serious and moral and
industrious and laudable in character — Let us talk of
Mr. Tomkius the Penman ! ' — This staggered the
gravest of us, broke up our dinner-party, and we went
upstairs to tea. So much for the didactic vein of one
of our principal guides in the embellished walks of
modern taste, and master manufacturers of letters.
He had found that gravity had been a never-failing
resource when taken at a pinch — for once the joke
miscarried — and Mr. Tomkins the Penman figures to
this day nowhere but in Sir Joshua's picture of him !

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

ESSAY XXII

ON CRITICISM

CRITICISM is an art that undergoes a great variety of
changes, and aims at different objects at different times.
At first, it is generally satisfied to give an opinion
whether a work is good or bad, and to quote a passage
or two in support of this opinion : afterwards, it is
bound to assign the reasons of its decision and to
analyse supposed beauties or defects with microscopic
minuteness. A critic does nothing nowadays who does
not try to torture the most obvious expression into a
thousand meanings, and enter into a circuitous ex-
planation of all that can be urged for or against its
being in the best or worst style possible. His object
indeed is not to do justice to his author, whom he
treats with very little ceremony, but to do himself
homage, and to show his acquaintance with all the
topics and resources of criticism. If he recurs to the
stipulated subject in the end, it is not till after he has
exhausted his budget of general knowledge ; and he
establishes his own claims first in an elaborate in-
augural dissertation de ornni scibite et quibusdam aliis,
before he deigns to bring forward the pretensions of
the original candidate for praise, who is only the
second figure in the piece. We may sometimes see
articles of this sort, in which no allusion whatever is
made to the work under sentence of death, after the
first announcement of the title-page ; and 1 apprehend
it would be a clear improvement on this species of
nominal criticism to give stated periodical accounts of

ON CRITICISM 291

works that had never appeared at all, which would
save the hapless author the mortification of writing,
and his reviewer the trouble of reading them. If the
real author is made of so little account by the modern
critic, he is scarcely more an object of regard to the
modern reader ; and it must be confessed that after a
dozen close-packed pages of subtle metaphysical dis-
tinction or solemn didactic declamation, in which the
disembodied principles of all arts and sciences float
before the imagination in undefined profusion, the eye
turns with impatience and indifference to the imper-
fect embryo specimens of them, and the hopeless
attempts to realise this splendid jargon in one poor
work by one poor author, which is given up to sum-
mary execution with as little justice as pity. ' As
when a well-graced actor leaves the stage, men's eyes
are idly bent on him that enters next' — so it is here.
Whether this state of the press is not a serious abuse
and a violent encroachment in the republic of letters,
is more than I shall pretend to determine. The truth
is, that in the quantity of works that issue from the
press, it is utterly impossible they should all be read
by all sorts of people. There must be tasters for the
public, who must have a discretionary power vested in
them, for which it is difficult to make them properly
accountable. Authors in proportion to their numbers
become not formidable, but despicable. They would
not be heard of or severed from the crowd without the
critic's aid, and all complaints of ill-treatment are vain.
He considers them as pensioners on his bounty for any
pittance or praise, and in general sets them up as butts
for his wit and spleen, or uses them as a stalking-horse
to convey his own favourite notions and opinions, which
he can do by this means without the possibility of cen-
sure or appeal. He looks upon his literary protegd
(much as Peter Pounce looked upon Parson Adams)
as a kind of humble companion or unnecessary inter-
loper in the vehicle of fame, whom he has taken up
purely to oblige him, and whom he may treat with
neglect or insult, or set down in the common footpath.

292 TABLE-TALK

whenever it suits his humour or convenience. He
naturally grows arbitrary with the exercise of power.
He by degrees wants to have a clear stage to himself,
and would be thought to have purchased a monopoly
of wit, learning, and wisdom —

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

Besides, something of this overbearing manner goes a
great way with the public. They cannot exactly tell
whether you are right or wrong ; and if you state your
difficulties or pay much deference to the sentiments of
others, they will think you a very silly fellow or a mere
pretender. A sweeping, unqualified assertion ends all
controversy, and sets opinion at rest. A sharp, senten-
tious, cavalier, dogmatical tone is therefore necessary,
even in self-defence, to the office of a reviewer. If
you do not deliver your oracles without hesitation,
how are the world to receive them on trust and without
inquiry? People read to have something to talk about,
and ' to seem to know that which they do not. ' Con-
sequently, there cannot be too much dialectics and
debatable matter, too much pomp and paradox, in a
review. To elevate and surprise is the great rule for
producing a dramatic or critical effect. The more you
startle the reader, the more he will be able to startle
others with a succession of smart intellectual shocks.
The most admired of our Reviews is saturated with this
sort of electrical matter, which is regularly played off
so as to produce a good deal of astonishment and a
Strong sensation in the public mind. The intrinsic
merits of an author are a question of very subordinate
consideration to the keeping up the character of the
work and supplying the town with a sufficient number
of grave or brilliant topics for the consumption of the
next three months !

This decided and paramount tone in criticism is the
growth of the present century, and was not at all the
fashion in that calm, peaceable period when the Monthly
Review bore ' sole sovereign sway and masterdom ' over

ON CRITICISM 293

all literary productions. Though nothing can be said
against the respectability or usefulness of that publica-
tion during its long and almost exclusive enjoyment
of the public favour, yet the style of criticism adopted
in it is such as to appear slight and unsatisfactory to a
modem reader. The writers, instead of 'outdoing
termagant or out-Heroding Herod,' were somewhat
precise and prudish, gentle almost to a fault, full of
candour and modesty,

And of their port as meek as IB a maid ! *

There was none of that Drawcansir work going on then
that there is now ; no scalping of authors, no hacking
and hewing of their Lives and Opinions, except that
they used those of Tristram Shandy, gent., rather
scurvily ; which was to be expected. All, however,
had a show of courtesy and good manners. The satire
was covert and artfully insinuated ; the praise was
short and sweet We meet with no oracular theories ;
no profound analysis of principles ; no unsparing ex-
posure of the least discernible deviation from them.
It was deemed sufficient to recommend the work in
general terms, ' This is an agreeable volume/ or ' This.
is a work of great learning and research,' to set forth
the title and table of contents, and proceed without
farther preface to some appropriate extracts, for the
most part concurring in opinion with the author's text,
but now and then interposing an objection to maintain
appearances and assert the jurisdiction of the court.
This cursory manner of hinting approbation or dissent
would make but a lame figure at present. We must
have not only an announcement that ' This is an agree-
able or able work ' ; but we must have it explained at
full length, and BO as to silence all cavillers, in what

i A Mr. Rose and the Rev. Dr. Klppis were for many years its
principal support. Mrs. Rose (I have heard my father say) con-
tributed the Monthly Catalogue. There is sometimes a certain tart-
ness and the woman's tongue in it. It is said of Gray's Elegy, ' Thii
little poem, however humble its pretensions, is not without elegance
or merit.1 The character* of prophet and critic are not always
united.

294 TABLE-TALK

the agreeableness or ability of the work consists : the
author must be reduced to a class, all the living or
defunct examples of which must be characteristically
and pointedly differenced from one another ; the value
of this class of writing must be developed and ascer-
tained in comparison with others ; the principles of
taste, the elements of our sensations, the structure of
the human faculties, all must undergo a strict scrutiny
and revision. The modern or metaphysical system of
criticism, in short, supposes the question, Why ? to be
repeated at the end of every decision ; and the answer
gives birth to interminable arguments and discussion.
The former laconic mode was well adapted to guide
those who merely wanted to be informed of the char-
acter and subject of a work in order to read it : the
present is more useful to those whose object is less to
read the work than to dispute upon its merits, and go
into company clad in the whole defensive and offensive
armour of criticism.

Neither are we less removed at present from the dry
and meagre mode of dissecting the skeletons of works,
instead of transfusing their living principles, which
prevailed in Dry den's Prefaces,1 and in the criticisms
written on the model of the French school about a
century ago. A genuine criticism should, as I take
it, reflect the colours, the light and shade, the soul
and body of a work : here we have nothing but its
superficial plan and elevation, as if a poem were a
piece of formal architecture. -We are told something
of the plot or fable, of the moral, and of the observance
or violation of the three unities of time, place, and
action ; and perhaps a word or two is added on the
dignity of the persons or the baldness of the style ; but
we no more know, after reading one of these com-
placent tirades, what the essence of the work is, what
passion has been touched, or how skilfully, what tone
and movement the author's mind imparts to his subject

1 There are some splendid exceptions to this censure. Hia com-
parison between Ovid and Virgil and his character of Shakeapear
are masterpieces of their kind.

ON CRITICISM 295

or receives from it, than if we had been reading a
homily or a gazette. That is, we are left quite in the
dark as to the feelings of pleasure or pain to be derived
from the genius of the performance or the manner in
which it appeals to the imagination : we know to a
nicety how it squares with the threadbare rules of com-
position, not in the least how it affects the principles
of taste. We know everything about the work, and
nothing of it. The critic takes good care not to baulk
the reader's fancy by anticipating the effect which the
author has aimed at producing. To be sure, the works
so handled were often worthy of their commentators ;
they had the form of imagination without the life or
power ; and when any one had gone regularly through
the number of acts into which they were divided, the
measure in which they were written, or the story on
which they were founded, there was little else to be
said about them. It is curious to observe the effect
which the Paradise Lost had on this class of critics,
like throwing a tub to a whale : they could make
nothing of it. ' It was out of all plumb — not one of
the angles at the four corners was a right angle !'
They did not seek for, nor would they much relish,
the marrow of poetry it contained. Like polemics in
religion, they had discarded the essentials of fine writ-
ing for the outward form and points of controversy.
They were at issue with Genius and Nature by what
route and in what garb they should enter the Temple
of the Muses. Accordingly we find that Dry den had
no other way of satisfying himself of the pretensions
of Milton in the epic style but by translating his
anomalous work into rhyme and dramatic dialogue.1

We have critics in the present day [1821] who cannot tell what to
ke of the tragic writers of Queen Elizabeth's age (except Shake-

i

spear, who passes by prescriptive right), and are e~xtremely puzzled
to reduce the efforts of their 'great and irregular' power to the
standard of their own slight and showy common-places. The truth is,
they had better give up the attempt to reconcile such contradictions
as an artificial taste and natural genius ; and repose on the admira-
tion of verses which derive their odour from the scent of rose Ua*e»
inserted between the pages, and their polish from the smoothness
of the paper on which they are printed. They, and such writers as

J596 TABLE-TALK

So there are connoisseurs who give you the subject,
the grouping, the perspective, and all the mechanical
circumstances of a picture ; but they never say a word
about the expression. The reason is, they see the
former, but not the latter. There are persons, how-
ever, who cannot employ themselves better than in
taking an inventory of works of art (they want a faculty
for higher studies), as there are works of art, so called,
which seemed to have been composed expressly with
an eye to such a class of connoisseurs. In them are
to be found no recondite nameless beauties thrown
away upon the stupid vulgar gaze; no 'graces snatched
beyond the reach of art'; nothing but what the merest
pretender may note down in good set terms in his com-
mon-place book, just as it is before him. Place one of
these half -informed, imperfectly organised spectators
before a tall canvas with groups on groups of figures,
of the size of life, and engaged in a complicated action,
of which they know the name and all the particulars,
and there are no bounds to their burst of involuntary
enthusiasm. They mount on the stilts of the subject
and ascend the highest Heaven of Invention, from
whence they see sights and hear revelations which
they communicate with all the fervour of plenary ex-
planation to those who may be disposed to attend to
their raptures. They float with wings expanded in
lofty circles, they stalk over the canvas at large strides,
never condescending to pause at anything of less mag-
nitude than a group or a colossal figure. The face
forms no part of their collective inquiries ; or so that
it occupies only a sixth or an eighth proportion to the
whole body, all is according to the received rules of
composition. Point to a divine portrait of Titian, to
an angelic head of Guido, close by — they see and heed
it not. What are the 'looks commercing with the
skies,' the soul speaking in the face, to them ? It asks
another and an inner sense to comprehend them ; but

Decker, and Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford and Marlowe,
move in different orbit* of the human intellect, and need nevei
Josti..

ON CRITICISM 297

for the trigonometry of painting, nature has constituted
them indifferently well. They take a stand on the
distinction between portrait and history, and there
they are spell-bound. Tell them that there can be no
fine history without portraiture, that the painter must
proceed from that ground to the one above it, and that
a hundred bad heads cannot make one good historical
picture, and they will not believe you, though the
thing is obvious to any gross capacity. Their ideas
always fly to the circumference, and never fix at the
centre. Art must be on a grand scale ; according to
them, the whole is greater than a part, and the greater
necessarily implies the less. The outline is, in this
view of the matter, the same thing as the filling-up,
and f the limbs and flourishes of a discourse' the SUD-
stance. Again, the same persons make an absolute
distinction, without knowing why, between high and
low subjects. Say that you would as soon have Murillo's
Two Beggar Boys at the Dulwich Gallery as almost
any picture in the world, that is, that it would be one
you would choose out of ten (had you the choice), and
they reiterate upon you that surely a low subject cannot
be of equal value with a high one. It is in vain that
you turn to the picture : they keep to the class. They
nave eyes, but see not ; and, upon their principles of
refined taste, would be just as good judges of the merit
of the picture without seeing it as with that supposed
advantage. They know what the subject is from the
catalogue! — Yet it is not true, as Lord Byron asserts,
that execution is everything, and the class or subject
nothing. The highest subjects, equally well executed
(which, however, rarely happens), are the best But
the power of execution, the manner of seeing nature,
is one thing, and may be so superlative (if you are only
able to judge of it) as to countervail every disadvan-
tage of subject. Raphael's storks hi the Miraculous
Draught of Fishes, exulting in the event, are finer
than the head of Christ would have been in almost
any other hands. The cant of criticism is on the other
side of the question ; because execution depends on

298 TABLE-TALK

various degrees of power in the artist, and a knowledge
of it on various degrees of feeling and discrimination in
you ; but to commence artist or connoisseur in the
grand style at once, without any distinction of qualifica-
tions whatever, it is only necessary for the first to
choose his subject and for the last to pin his faith on
the sublimity of the performance, for both to look
down with ineffable contempt on the painters and
admirers of subjects of low life. I remember a young
Scotchman once trying to prove to me that Mrs.
Dickons was a superior singer to Miss Stephens,
because the former excelled in sacred music and the
latter did not. At that rate, that is, if it is the singing
sacred music that gives the preference, Miss Stephens
would only have to sing sacred music to surpass herself
and vie with her pretended rival ; for this theory
implies that all sacred music is equally good, and,
therefore, better than any other. I grant that Madame
Catalani's singing of sacred music is superior to Miss
Stephens's ballad-strains, because her singing is better
altogether, and an ocean of sound more wonderful than
a simple stream of dulcet harmonies. In singing the
last verse of 'God Save the King' not long ago her
voice towered above the whole confused noise of the
orchestra like an eagle piercing the clouds, and poured
' such sweet thunder ' through the ear as excited equal
astonishment and rapture !

Some kinds of criticism are as much too insipid as
others are too pragmatical. It is not easy to combine
point with solidity, spirit with moderation and candour.
Many persons see nothing but beauties in a work,
others nothing but defects. Those cloy you with
sweets, and are 'the very milk of human kindness/
flowing on in a stream of luscious panegyrics ; these
take delight in poisoning the sources of your satisfac-
tion, and putting you out of conceit with nearly every
author that comes in their way. The first are frequently
actuated by personal friendship, the last by all the
virulence of party spirit. Under the latter head would
fall what may be termed political criticism. The basis

ON CRITICISM 290

of this style of writing is a caput mortuum of impotent
spite and dulness, till it is varnished over with the
slime of servility, and thrown into a state of unnatural
activity by the venom of the most rancorous bigotry.
The eminent professors in this grovelling department
are at first merely out of sorts with themselves, and
vent their spleen in little interjections and contortions
of phrase— cry Pish, at a lucky hit, and Hem at a fault,
are smart on personal defects, and sneer at 'Beauty
out of favour and on crutches' — are thrown into an
ague-fit by hearing the name of a rival, start back with
horror at any approach to their morbid pretensions,
like Justice Woodcock with his gouty limbs — rifle the
flowers of the Delia Cruscan school, and give you in
their stead, as models of a pleasing pastoral style,
Verses upon Anna — which you may see in the notes to
the Baviad and Maviad. All this is like the fable of
1 The Kitten and the Leaves.' But when they get their
brass collar on and shake their bells of office, they set
up their backs like the Great Cat Rodilardus, and
pounce upon men and things. Woe to any little heed-
less reptile of an author that ventures across their path
without a safe-conduct from the Board of Control.
They snap him up at a mouthful, and sit licking their
lips, stroking their whiskers, and rattling their bells
over the imaginary fragments of their devoted prey, to
the alarm and astonishment of the whole breed of
literary, philosophical, and revolutionary vermin that
were naturalised in this country by a Prince of Orange
and an Elector of Hanover a hundred years ago.1
When one of these pampered, sleek, ' demure-looking,
spring-nailed, velvet-pawed, green-eyed ' critics makes
his King and Country parties to this sort of sport
literary, you have not much chance of escaping out of
his clutches in a whole skin. Treachery becomes a
principle with them, and mischief a conscience, that is,
a livelihood. They not only damn the work in th«

* The intelligent reader will be pleased to understand that there
la here a tacit allusion to Squire Western's significant pLraw oi
Hanover Rait.

300 TABLE-TALK

lump, but vilify and traduce the author, and substitute
lying abuse and sheer malignity for sense and satire.
To have written a popular work is as much as a man's
character is worth, and sometimes his life, if he does
not happen to be on the right side of the question.
The way in which they set about stultifying an adversary
is not to accuse you of faults, or to exaggerate those
which you may really have, but they deny that you
have any merits at all, least of all those that the world
have given you credit for ; bless themselves from
understanding a single sentence in a whole volume ;
and unless you are ready to subscribe to all their
articles of peace, will not allow you to be qualified
to write your own name. It is not a question of literary
discussion, but of political proscription. It is a mark
of loyalty and patriotism to extend no quarter to those
of the opposite party. Instead of replying to your
arguments, they call you names, put words and opinions
into your mouth which you have never uttered, and
consider it a species of misprision of treason to admit
that a Whig author knows anything of common sense
or English. The only chance of putting a stop to this
unfair mode of dealing would perhaps be to make a few
reprisals by way of example. The Court party boast
some writers who have a reputation to lose, and who
would not like to have their names dragged through
the kennel of dirty abuse and vulgar obloquy. What
silenced the masked battery of Blackwood'f Magazine
was the implication of the name of Sir Walter Scott in
some remarks upon it — (an honour of which it seems
that extraordinary person was not ambitious) — to be
'pilloried on infamy's high stage' was a distinction
and an amusement to the other gentlemen concerned
in that praiseworthy publication. I was complaining
not long ago of this prostitution of literary criticism as
peculiar to our own times, when I was told that it was
just as bad in the time of Pope and Dryden, and indeed
worse, inasmuch as we have no Popes or Drydens now
on the obnoxious side to be nicknamed, metamorphosed
into scarecrows, and impaled alive by bigots and dunces.

ON CRITICISM 301

I shall not pretend to say how far this remark may be
true. The English (it must be owned) are rather a
foul-mouthed nation.

Besides temporary or accidental biases of this kind,
there seem to be sects and parties in taste and criticism
(with a set of appropriate watchwords) coeval with the
arts of composition, and that will last as long as the
difference with which men's minds are originally con-
stituted. There are some who are all for the elegance
of an author's style, and some who are equally delighted
with simplicity. The last refer you to Swift as a model
of English prose, thinking all other writers sophisticated
and naught ; the former prefer the more ornamented
and sparkling periods of Junius or Gibbon. It is to no
purpose to think of bringing about an understanding
between these opposite factions. It is a natural differ-
ence of temperament and constitution of mind. The
one will never relish the antithetical point and perpetual
glitter of the artificial prose style ; as the plain, un-
perverted English idiom will always appear trite and
insipid to the others. A toleration, not an uniformity
of opinion, is as much as can be expected in this case ;
and both sides may acknowledge, without imputation
on their taste or consistency, that these different writers
excelled each in their way. I might remark here that
the epithet elegant is very sparingly used in modern
criticism. It has probably gone out of fashion with
the appearance of the Lake School, who, I apprehend,
have no such phrase in their vocabulary. Mr. Rogers
was, 1 think, almost the last poet to whom it was
applied as a characteristic compliment. At present it
would be considered as a sort of diminutive of the title
of poet, like the terms pretty or fanciful, and is banished
from the haut ton of letters. It may perhaps come into
request at some future period. Again, the dispute
between the admirers of Homer and Virgil has never
been settled and never will, for there will always be
minds to whom the excellences of Virgil will be more
congenial, and therefore more objects of admiration
and delight than those of Homer, and vice

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Both are right in preferring what suits them best, the
delicacy and selectness of the one, or the fulness and
majestic flow of the other. There is the same difference
in their tastes that there was in the genius of their two
favourites. Neither can the disagreement between the
French and English school of tragedy ever be reconciled
till the French become English or the English French.1
Both are right in what they admire, both are wrong in
condemning the others for what they admire. We see
the defects of Racine, they see the faults of Shakespear
probably in an exaggerated point of view. But we may
be sure of this, that when we see nothing but grossness
and barbarism, or insipidity and verbiage, in a writer
that is the god of a nation's idolatry, it is we and not
they who want true taste and feeling. The controversy
about Pope and the opposite school in our own poetry
comes to much the same thing. Pope's correctness,
smoothness, etc., are very good things and much to be
commended in him. But it is not to be expected or
even desired that others should have these qualities
in the same paramount degree, to the exclusion of
everything else. If you like correctness and smooth-
ness of all things in the world, there they are for you
in Pope. If you like other things better, such as
strength and sublimity, you know where to go for
them. Why trouble Pope or any other author for
what they have not, and do not profess to give?
Those who seem to imply that Pope possessed, besides
his own peculiar, exquisite merits, all that is to be
found in Shakespear or Milton, are, I should hardly
think, in good earnest. But I do not therefore see
that, because this was not the case. Pope was no poet.
We cannot by a little verbal sophistry confound the
qualities of different minds, nor force opposite excel-
lences into a union by all the intolerance in the world.
We may pull Pope in pieces as long as we please for
not being Shakespear or Milton, as we may carp at
them for not being Pope, but this will not make a poet

1 Of the two the latter alternative is more likely to happen. We
abuse and imitate them. They laugh at, but do not imitate us.

ON CRITICISM 303

equal to all three. If we have a taste for some one
precise style or manner, we may keep it to ourselves
and let others have theirs. If we are more catholic in
our notions, and want variety of excellence and beauty,
it is spread abroad for us to profusion in the variety of
books and in the several growth of men's minds, fettered
by no capricious or arbitrary rules. Those who would
proscribe whatever falls short of a given standard oi
imaginary perfection do so, not from a higher capacity
of taste or range of intellect than others, but to destroy,
to 'crib and cabin in* all enjoyments and opinions but
their own.

We find people of a decided and original, and others
of a more general and versatile taste. I have some-
times thought that the most acute and original-minded
men made bad critics. They see everything too much
through a particular medium. What does not fall in
with their own bias and mode of composition strikes
them as common-place and factitious. What does not
come into the direct line of their vision, they regard
idly, with vacant, 'lack -lustre eye.' The extreme
force of their original impressions, compared with the
feebleness of those they receive at second-hand from
others, oversets the balance and just proportion of
their minds. Men who have fewer native resources,
and are obliged to apply oftener to the general stock,
acquire by habit a greater aptitude in appreciating
what they owe to others. Their taste is not made a
sacrifice to their egotism and vanity, and they enrich
the soil of their minds with continual accessions of
borrowed strength and beauty. I might take this
opportunity of observing, that the person of the most
refined and least contracted taste I ever knew was the
late Joseph Fawcett, the friend of my youth. He was
almost the first literary acquaintance I ever made, and
I think the mose candid and unsophisticated. He had
a masterly perception of all styles and of every kind
and degree of excellence, sublime or beautiful, from
Milton's Paradise Lost to Shenstone's Pastoral Ballad,
from Butler's Analogy down to Humphrey Clinker. If

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you had a favourite author, he had read him too, and
knew all the best morsels, the subtle traits, the capital
touches. 'Do you like Sterne?' 'Yes, to be sure,'
he would say ; ' I should deserve to be hanged if 1
didn't ! ' His repeating some parts of Comus with his
fine, deep, mellow-toned voice, particularly the lines,
1 1 have heard my mother Circe with the Sirens three,'
etc., and the enthusiastic comments he made after-
wards, were a feast to the ear and to the soul. He
read the poetry of Milton with the same fervour and
spirit of devotion that J have since heard others read
their own. ' That is the most delicious feeling of all,'
I have heard him explain, 'to like what is excellent,
no matter whose it is.' In this respect he practised
what he preached. He was incapable of harbouring
a sinister motive, and judged only from what he felt.
There was no flaw or mist in the clear mirror of his
mind. He was as open to impressions as he was
strenuous in maintaining them. He did not care a
rush whether a writer was old or new, in prose or in
verse — ' What he wanted,' he said, ( was something to
make him think.' Most men's minds are to me like
musical instruments out of tune. Touch a particular
key, and it jars and makes harsh discord with your
own. They like Gil Bias, but can see nothing to laugh
at in Don Quixote: they adore Richardson, but are
disgusted with Fielding. Fawcett had a taste accom-
modated to all these. He was not exceptious. He
gave a cordial welcome to all sort, provided they were
the best in their kind. He was not fond of counter-
feits or duplicates. His own style was laboured and
artificial to a fault, while his character was frank and
ingenuous in the extreme. He was not the only indi-
vidual whom I have known to counteract their natural
disposition in coming before the public, and by avoiding
what they perhaps thought an inherent infirmity, debar
themselves of their real strength and advantages. A
heartier friend or honester critic I never coped withal.
He has made me feel (by contrast) the want of genuine
sincerity and generous sentiment in some that I have

ON CRITICISM 305

lifltened to since, and convinced me (if practical proof
were wanting) of the truth of that text of Scripture —
( That had I all knowledge and could speak with the
tongues of angels, yet without charity I were nothing ! '
I would rather be a man of disinterested taste and
liberal feeling, to see and acknowledge truth and
beauty wherever I found it, than a man of greater and
more original genius, to hate, envy, and deny all
excellence but my own — but that poor scanty pittance
of it (compared with the whole) which I had myself
produced !

There is another race of critics who might be desig-
nated as the Occult School — vere adepti. They discern
no beauties but what are concealed from superficial
eyes, and overlook all that are obvious to the vulgar
part of mankind. Their art is the transmutation of
styles. By happy alchemy of mind they convert dross
into gold — and gold into tinsel. They see farther into
a millstone than most others. If an author is utterly
unreadable, they can read him for ever : his intricacies
are their delight, his mysteries are their study. They
prefer Sir Thomas Browne to the Rambler by Dr. John-
son, and Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy to all the
writers of the Georgian Age. They judge of works of
genius as misers do of hid treasure — it is of no value
unless they have it all to themselves. They will no
more share a book than a mistress with a friend. If
they suspected their favourite volumes of delighting
any eyes but their own, they would immediately dis-
card them from the list. Theirs are superannuated
beauties that every one else has left off intriguing with,
bedridden hags, a 'stud of nightmares.' This is not
envy or affectation, but a natural proneness to sin-
gularity, a love of what is odd and out of the way.
They must come at their pleasures with difficulty, and
support admiration by an uneasy sense of ridicule and
opposition. They despise those qualities in a work
which are cheap and obvious. They like a monopoly
of taste, and are shocked at the prostitution of intellect
implied in popular productions. In like manner, they

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would choose a friend or recommend a mistress for
gross defects ; and tolerate the sweetness of an actress's
voice only for the ugliness of her face. Pure pleasures
are in their judgment cloying and insipid —

An ounce of sour is worth a pound of sweet 1

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

The last sort I shall mention are verbal critics — mere
word-catchers, fellows that pick out a word in a sen-
tence and a sentence in a volume, and tell you it is
wrong.1 These erudite persons constantly find out
by anticipation that you are deficient in the smallest
things — that you cannot spell certain words or join
the nominative case and the verb together, because to
do this is the height of their own ambition, and of
course they must set you down lower than their
opinion of themselves. They degrade by reducing
you to their own standard of merit ; for the qualifica-
tions they deny you, or the faults they object, are so
very insignificant, that to prove yourself possessed of
the one or free from the other is to make yourself
doubly ridiculous. Littleness is their element, and
they give a character of meanness to whatever they
touch. They creep, buzz, and fly-blow. It is much
easier to crush than to catch these troublesome insects ;
and when they are in your power your self-respect
spares them. The race is almost extinct : — one or two
of them are sometimes seen crawling over the pages of
the Quarterly Review !

1 The title of Ultra-Crepidarittn critics has been given to a variety
of this species.

ESSAY XXIII

ON GREAT AND LITTLB THINGS

These little things are great to little man.

GOLDSMITH.

THE great and the little have, no doubt, a real exist-
ence in the nature of things ; but they both find pretty
much the same level in the mind of man. It is a
common measure, which does not always accommodate
itself to the size and importance of the objects it repre-
sents. It has a certain interest to spare for certain
things (and no more) according to its humour and
capacity ; and neither likes to be stinted in its allow-
ance, nor to muster up an unusual share of sympathy,
just as the occasion may require. Perhaps, if we could
recollect distinctly, we should discover that the two
things that have affected us most in the course of our
lives have been, one of them of the greatest, and the
other of the smallest possible consequence. To let
that pass as too fine a speculation, we know well
enough that very trifling circumstances do give us
great arid daily annoyance, and as often prove too
much for our philosophy and forbearance, as matters
of the highest moment. A lump of soot spoiling a
man's dinner, a plate of toast falling in the ashes, the
being disappointed of a ribbon to a cap or a ticket for
a ball, have led to serious and almost tragical conse-
quences. Friends not unfrequently fall out and never
meet again for some idle misunderstanding, f some
trick not worth an egg,' who have stood the shock of
serious differences of opinion and clashing interests in

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life ; and there is an excellent paper in the Tatlcr, to
prove that if a married couple do not quarrel about
some point in the first instance not worth contesting,
they will seldom find an opportunity afterwards to
quarrel about a question of real importance. Grave
divines, great statesmen, and deep philosophers are
put out of their way by very little things : nay, dis-
creet, worthy people, without any pretensions but to
good-nature and common sense, readily surrender the
happiness of their whole lives sooner than give up an
opinion to which they have committed themselves,
though in all likelihood it was the mere turn of a
feather which side they should take in the argument.
It is the being baulked or thwarted in anything that
constitutes the grievance, the unpardonable affront,
not the value of the thing to which we had made up
our minds. Is it that we despise little things ; that
we are not prepared for them ; that they take us in
our careless, unguarded moments, and tease us out of
our ordinary patience by their petty, incessant, insect
warfare, buzzing about us and stinging us like gnats,
so that we can neither get rid of nor grapple with
them ; whereas we collect all our fortitude and resolu-
tion to meet evils of greater magnitude ? Or is it that
there is a certain stream of irritability that is con-
tinually fretting upon the wheels of life, which finds
sufficient food to play with in straws and feathers,
while great objects are too much for it, either choke it
up, or divert its course into serious and thoughtful
interest? Some attempt might be made to explain
this in the following manner.

One is always more vexed at losing a game of any
sort by a single hole or ace than if one has never had
a chance of winning it. This is no doubt in part or
chiefly because the prospect of success irritates the
subsequent disappointment. But people have been
known to pine and fall sick from holding the next
number to the twenty thousand pound prize in the
lottery. Now this could only arise from their being
so near winning in fancy, from there seeming to be so

ON GREAT AND LITTLE THINGS 309

thin a partition between them and success. When
they were within one of the right number, why could
they not have taken the next — it was so easy : this
haunts their minds and will not let them rest, notwith-
standing the absurdity of the reasoning. It is that the
will here has a slight imaginary obstacle to surmount
to attain its end ; it should appear it had only an ex-
ceedingly trifling effort to make for this purpose, that
it was absolutely in its power (had it known) to seize
the envied prize, and it is continually harassing itself
by making the obvious transition from one number to
the other, when it is too late. That is to say, the will
acts in proportion to its fancied power, to its superiority
over immediate obstacles. Now in little or indifferent
matters there seems no reason why it should not have
its own way, and therefore a disappointment vexes it
the more. It grows angry according to the insignifi-
cance of the occasion, and frets itself to death about an
object, merely because from its very futility there can
be supposed to be no real difficulty in the way of its
attainment, nor anything more required for this pur-
pose than a determination of the will. The being
baulked of this throws the mind off its balance, or puts
it into what is called a passion ; and as nothing but an
act of voluntary power still seems necessary to get rid
of every impediment, we indulge our violence more
and more, and heighten our impatience by degrees into
a sort of frenzy. The object is the same as it was, but
we are no longer as we were. The blood is heated,
the muscles are strained. The feelings are wound up
to a pitch of agony with the vain strife. The temper
is tried to the utmost it will bear. The more con-
temptible the object or the obstructions in the way to
it, the more are we provoked at being hindered by
them. It looks like witchcraft. We fancy there is a
spell upon us, so that we are hampered by straws and
entangled in cobwebs. We believe that there is a
fatality about our affairs. It is evidently done on pur-
pose to plague us. A demon is at our elbow to torment
and defeat us in everything, even in the smallest things.

310 TABLE-TALK

We see him sitting and mocking us, and we rave and
gnash our teeth at him in return. It is particularly
hard that we cannot succeed in any one point, however
trifling, that we set our hearts on. We are the sport
of imbecility and mischance. We make another des-
perate effort, and fly out into all the extravagance of
impotent rage once more. Our anger runs away with
our reason, because, as there is little to give it birth,
there is nothing to check it or recall us to our senses in
the prospect of consequences. We take up and rend
in pieces the mere toys of humour, as the gusts of wind
take up and whirl about chaff and stubble. Passion
plays the tyrant, in a grand tragi-comic style, over the
Lilliputian difficulties and petty disappointments it has
to encounter, gives way to all the fretfulness of grief
and all the turbulence of resentment, makes a fuss
about nothing because there is nothing to make a fuss
about — when an impending calamity, an irretrievable
loss, would instantly bring it to its recollection, and
tame it in its preposterous career. A man may be in
a great passion and give himself strange airs at so
simple a thing as a game at ball, for instance ; may
rage like a wild beast, and be ready to dash his head
against the wall about nothing, or about that which he
will laugh at the next minute, and think no more of
ten minutes after, at the same time that a good smart
blow from the ball, the effects of which he might feel
as a serious inconvenience for a month, would calm
him directly —

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

The truth is, we pamper little griefs into great ones,
and bear great ones as well as we can. We can afford
to dally and play tricks with the one, but the others
we have enough to do with, without any of the wanton-
ness and bombast of passion — without the swaggering
of Pistol or the insolence of King Cambyses' vein. To
great evils we submit ; we resent little provocations.
I have before now been disappointed of a hundred-

ON GREAT AND LITTLE THINGS 311

pound job and lost half a crown at rackets on the same
day, and been more mortified at the latter than the
former. That which is lasting we share with the
future, we defer the consideration of till to-morrow :
that which belongs to the moment we drink up in all
its bitterness, before the spirit evaporates. We probe
minute mischiefs to the quick ; we lacerate, tear, and
mangle our bosoms with misfortune's finest, brittlest
point, and wreak our vengeance on ourselves and it for
good and all. Small pains are more manageable, more
within our reach ; we can fret and worry ourselves
about them, can turn them into any shape, can twist
and torture them how we please : — a grain of sand in
the eye, a thorn in the flesh, only irritates the part,
and leaves us strength enough to quarrel and get out
of all patience with it : a heavy blow stuns and takes
away all power of sense as well as of resistance. The
great and mighty reverses of fortune, like the revolu-
tions of nature, may be said to carry their own weight
and reason along with them : they seem unavoidable
and remediless, and we submit to them without mur-
muring as to a fatal necessity. The magnitude of the
events in which we may happen to be concerned fills
the mind, and carries it out of itself, as it were, into
the page of history. Our thoughts are expanded with
the scene on which we have to act, and lend us
strength to disregard our own personal share in it.
Some men are indifferent to the stroke of fate, as
before and after earthquakes there is a calm in the air.
From the commanding situation whence they have
been accustomed to view things, they look down at
themselves as only a part of the whole, and can
abstract their minds from the pressure of misfortune,
by the aid of its very violence. They are projected, in
the explosion of events, into a different sphere, far
from their former thoughts, purposes, and passions.
The greatness of the change anticipates the slow effects
of time and reflection : — they at once contemplate them-
selves from an immense distance, and look up with
speculative wonder at the height on which they stood.

312 TABLE-TALK

Had the downfall been less complete, it would have
been more galling and borne with less resignation,
because there might still be a chance of remedying it
by farther efforts and farther endurance — but past
cure, past hope. It is chiefly this cause (together with
something of constitutional character) which has en-
abled the greatest man in modern history to bear his
reverses of fortune with gay magnanimity, and to
submit to the loss of the empire of the world with as
little discomposure as if he had been playing a game
at chess. 1 This does not prove by our theory that he
did not use to fly into violent passions with Talleyrand
for plaguing him with bad news when things went
wrong. He was mad at uncertain forebodings of
disaster, but resigned to its consummation. A man
may dislike impertinence, yet have no quarrel with
necessity !

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

Si Pergama dextra
Defend! possent, etiam hac defensa fuisseut

It is the mist and obscurity through which we view
objects that makes us fancy they might have been or
might still be otherwise. The precise knowledge of
antecedents and consequents makes men practical as
well as philosophical Necessarians. — It is the want oi

1 This Essay was written in January 1821.

ON GREAT AND LITTLE THINGS 313

this knowledge which is the principle and soul of
gambling, and of all games of chance or partial skill.
The supposition is, that the issue is uncertain, and
that there is no positive means of ascertaining it. It
is dependent on the turn of a die, on the tossing up of
a halfpenny : to be fair it must be a lottery ; there is
no knowing but by the event ; and it is this which
keeps the interest alive, and works up the passion little
short of madness. There is all the agitation of sus-
pense, all the alternation of hope and fear, of good and
bad success, all the eagerness of desire, without the
possibility of reducing this to calculation, that is, of
subjecting the increased action of the will to a known
rule, or restraining the excesses of passion within the
bounds of reason. We see no cause beforehand why
the run of the cards should not be in our favour : we
will hear of none afterwards why it should not have
been so. As in the absence of all data to judge by, we
wantonly fill up the blank with the most extravagant
expectations, so, when all is over, we obstinately recur
to the chance we had previously. There is nothing to
tame us down to the event, nothing to reconcile us to
our hard luck, for so we think it. We see no reason
why we failed (and there was none, any more than why
we should succeed) — we think that, reason apart, our
will is the next best thing ; we still try to have it our
own way, and fret, torment, and harrow ourselves up
with vain imaginations to effect impossibilities.1 We
play the game over again : we wonder how it was
possible for us to fail. We turn our brain with strain-
ing at contradictions, and striving to make things what
they are not, or, in other words, to subject the course
of nature to our fastastical wishes. ' If it had been so
— if we had done such and such a thing' — we try it in a
thousand different ways, and are just as far off the
mark as ever. We appealed to chance in the first

i Losing gamesters thus become desperate, because the continued
«,L'l violent irritation of the will against a run of ill luck drives it to
extremity, and makes it bid defiance to common sense and ever;
txHuideration of prudence or self-interest.

314 TABLE-TALK

instance, and yet, when it has decided against us, we
will not give in, and sit down contented with our loss,
but refuse to submit to anything but reason, which has
nothing to do with the matter. In drawing two straws,
for example, to see which is the longest, there was no
apparent necessity we should fix upon the wrong one,
it was so easy to have fixed upon the other, nay, at one
time we were going to do it — if we had, — the mind
thus runs back to what was so possible and feasible at
one time, while the thing was pending, and would fain
give a bias to causes so slender and insignificant, as
the skittle-player bends his body to give a bias to the
bowl he has already delivered from his hand, not con-
sidering that what is once determined, be the causes
ever so trivial or evanescent, is in the individual
instance unalterable. Indeed, to be a great philoso-
pher, in the practical and most important sense of the
term, little more seems necessary than to be convinced
of the truth of the maxim which the wise man repeated
to the daughter of King Cophetua, Thai if a thing is,
it is, and there is an end of it !

We often make life unhappy in wishing things to
have turned out otherwise than they did, merely
because that is possible to the imagination, which is
impossible in fact. I remember, when Lamb's farce
was damned (for damned it was, that's certain), I used
to dream every night for a month after (and then I
vowed I would plague myself no more about it) that it
was revived at one of the minor or provincial theatres
with great success, that such and such retrenchments
and alterations had been made in it, and that it was
thought it might do at the other House. I had heard
indeed (this was told in confidence to Lamb) that
Gentleman Lewis was present on the night of its per-
formance, and said that if he had had it he would
have made it, by a few judicious curtailments, fthe
most popular little thing that had been brought out
for some time.' How often did I conjure up in
recollection the full diapason of applause at the end
of the Prologue, and hear my ingenious friend in the

ON GREAT AND LITTLE THINGS 315

first row of the pit roar with laughter at his own wit !
Then I dwelt with forced complacency on some part
in which it had been doing well : then we would con-
sider (in concert) whether the long tedious opera of
che Travellers, which preceded it, had not tired people
beforehand, so that they had not spirits left for the
quaint and sparkling ' wit skirmishes ' of the dialogue ;
and we all agreed it might have gone down after a
tragedy, except Lamb himself, who swore he had no
hopes of it from the beginning, and that he knew the
name of the hero when it came to be discovered could

not be got over. Mr. H , thou wert damned !

Bright shone the morning on the play-bills that an-
nounced thy appearance, and the streets were filled
with the buzz of persons asking one another if they

would go to see Mr. H , and answering that they

would certainly ; but before night the gaiety, not of
the author, but of his friends and the town, was
eclipsed, for thou were damned ! Hadst thou been
anonymous thou haply mightst have lived. But tbo«
didst come to an untimely end for thy tricks, and for
want of a better name to pass them off !

In this manner we go back to the critical minutes
on which the turn of our fate, or that of any one else
in whom we are interested, depended ; try them over
again with new knowledge and sharpened sensibility ;
and thus think to alter what is irrevocable, and ease
for a moment the pang of lasting regret So in a
game at rackets 1 (to compare small things with great),
I think if at such a point I had followed up my success,
if I had not been too secure or over-anxious in another

rrt, if I had played for such an opening — in short, if
had done anything but what I did and what has
proved unfortunate in the result, the chances were all
in my favour. But it is merely because I do not know
what would have happened in the other case that I

* Some of the poets in the beginning of the last century vrouia
often set out on a simile by observing, ' So in Arabia have I seen »
Phoenix 1 ' I confess my illustrations are of a more homely and
nwnble nature.

316 TABLE-TALK

interpret it so readily to my own advantage. I have
sometimes lain awake a whole night, trying to serve
out the last ball of an interesting game in a particular
corner of the court, which I had missed from a
nervous feeling. Rackets (I might observe, for the
sake of the uninformed reader) is, like any other
athletic game, very much a thing of skill and practice ;
but it is also a thing of opinion, ' subject to all the
skyey influences.' If you think you can win, you can
win. Faith is necessary to victory. If you hesitate in
striking at the ball, it is ten to one but you miss it.
If you are apprehensive of committing some particular
error (such as striking the ball/bw/) you will be nearly
sure to do it. While thinking of that which you are
so earnestly bent upon avoiding, your hand mechanic-
ally follows the strongest idea, and obeys the imagina-
tion rather than the intention of the striker. A run
of luck is a forerunner of success, and courage is as
much wanted as skill. No one is, however, free from
nervous sensations at times. A good player may not
be able to strike a single stroke if another comes into
the court that he has a particular dread of; and it
frequently so happens that a player cannot beat an-
other, even though he can give half the game to an
equal player, because he has some associations of
jealousy or personal pique against the first which he
has not towards the last Sed haec hactenus. Chess is
a game I do not understand, and have not comprehen-
sion enough to play at. But I believe, though it is so
much less a thing of chance than science or skill,
eager players pass whole nights in marching and
counter - marching their men and checkmating a
successful adversary, supposing that at a certain point
of the game they had determined upon making a
particular move instead of the one which they actually
did make. I have heard a story of two persons playing
at backgammon, one of whom was so enraged at losing
his match at a particular point of the game that he
took the board and threw it out of the window. It
fell upon the head of one of the passengers in the

ON GREAT AND LITTLE THINGS 317

street, who came up to demand instant satisfaction for
the affront and injury he had sustained. The losing
gamester only asked him if he understood back-
gammon, and finding that he did, said, that if upon
seeing the state of the game he did not excuse the
extravagance of his conduct, he would give him any
other satisfaction he wished for. The tables were
accordingly brought, and the situation of the two
contending parties being explained, the gentleman
put up his sword and went away perfectly satisfied.
To return from this, which to some will seem a digres-
sion, and to others will serve as a confirmation of the
doctrine I am insisting on.

It is not, then, the value of the object, but the time
and pains bestowed upon it, that determines the sense
and degree of our loss. Many men set their minds
only on trifles, and have not a compass of soul to take
an interest in anything truly great and important
beyond forms and minutiae. Such persons are really
men of little minds, or may be complimented with the
title of great children,

Pleased with a feather, tickled with a straw.

Larger objects elude their grasp, while they fasten
eagerly on the light and insignificant. They fidget
themselves and others to death with incessant anxiety
about nothing. A part of their dress that is awry
keeps them in a fever of restlessness and impatience ;
they sit picking their teeth, or paring their nails, or
stirring the fire, or brushing a speck of dirt off their
coats, while the house or the world tumbling about
their ears would not rouse them from their morbid
insensibility. They cannot sit still on their chairs for
their lives, though if there were anything for them to
do they would become immovable. Their nerves are
as irritable as their imaginations are callous and inert.
They are addicted to an inveterate habit of littleness
and perversity, which rejects every other motive to
action or object of contemplation but the daily, teasing,

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contemptible, familiar, favourite sources of uneasiness
and dissatisfaction. When they are of a sanguine
instead of a morbid temperament, they become quid-
nuncs and virtuosos — collectors of caterpillars and odd
volumes, makers of fishing-rods and curious in watch-
chains. Will Wimble dabbled in this way, to his
immortal honour. But many others have been less
successful. There are those who build their fame on
epigrams or epitaphs, and others who devote their lives
to writing the Lord's Prayer in little. Some poets
compose and sing their own verses. Which character
would they have us think most highly of — the poet or
the musician? The Great is One. Some there are
who feel more pride in sealing a letter with a head of
Homer than ever that old blind bard did in reciting
his Eiad. These raise a huge opinion of themselves
out of nothing, as there are those who shrink from
their, own merits into the shade of unconquerable
humility. I know one person at least, who would
rather be the author of an unsuccessful farce than of a
successful tragedy. Repeated mortification has pro-
duced an inverted ambition in his mind, and made
failure the bitter test of desert. He cannot lift his
drooping head to gaze on the gaudy crown of popularity

E laced within his reach, but casts a pensive, riveted
>ok downwards to the modest flowers which the
multitude trample under their feet. If he had a piece
likely to succeed, coming out under all advantages, he
would damn it by some ill-timed, wilful jest, and lose
the favour of the public, to preserve the sense of his
personal identity. ( Misfortune,' Shakespear says,
' brings a man acquainted with strange bedfellows ' ;
and it makes our thoughts traitors to ourselves.— It is
a maxim with many — ' Take care of the pence, and the
pounds voill take care of themselves.' Those only put it
in practice successfully who think more of the pence
than of the pounds. To such, a large sum is less than
a small one. Great speculations, great returns are to
them extravagant or imaginary: a few hundreds a
year are something snug and comfortable. Persons

ON GREAT AND LITTLE THINGS 319

who have been used to a petty, huckstering way of
life cannot enlarge their apprehensions to a notion of
anything hotter. Instead of launching out into
greater expense and liberality with the tide of fortune,
they draw back with the fear of consequences, and
think to succeed on a broader scale by dint of mean-
ness and parsimony. My uncle Toby frequently caught
Trim standing up behind his chair, when he had told
him to be seated. What the corporal did out oi
respect, others would do out of servility. The menial
character does not wear out in three or four genera-
tions. You cannot keep some people out of the
kitchen, merely because their grandfathers or grand-
mothers came out of it. A poor man and his wife
walking along in the neighbourhood of Portland Place,
he said to her peevishly, * What is the use of walking
along these fine streets and squares ? Let us turn
down some alley ! ' He felt he should be more at
home there. Lamb said of an old acquaintance of his,
that when he was young he wanted to be a tailor, but
had not spirit ! This is the misery of unequal matches.
The woman cannot easily forget, or think that others
forget, her origin ; and, with perhaps superior sense
and beauty, keeps painfully in the background. It is
worse when she braves this conscious feeling, and
displays all the insolence of the upstart and affected
fine lady. But shouldst thou ever, my Infelice, grace
my home with thy loved presence, as thou hast cheered
my hopes with thy smile, thou wilt conquer all hearts
with thy prevailing gentleness, and 1 will show the
world wnat Shakespear's women were !— Some gallants
set their hearts on princesses ; others descend in
imagination to women of quality ; others are mad after
opera-singers. For my part, I am shy even of actresses,
and should not think of leaving my card with Madame
Vestris. I am for none of these bonnes fortunes ; but
for a list of humble beauties, servant - maids and
shepherd -girls, with their red elbows, hard hands,
black stockings and mob-caps, I could furnish out a
gallery equal to Cowley's, and paint them half as well.

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Oh ! might I but attempt a description of some of then
in poetic prose, Don Juan would forget his Julia, and
Mr. Davison might both print and publish this volume.
I agree so far with Horace, and differ with Montaigne.
I admire the Clementinas and Clarissas at a distance :
the Pamelas and Fannys of Richardson and Fielding
make my blood tingle. I have written love-letters to
such in my time, d'un pathetique a faire fendre les
rockers, and with about as much effect as if they had
been addressed to stone. The simpletons only laughed,
and said that 'those were not the sort of things to
gain the affections.' I wish I had kept copies in my
own justification. What is worse, 1 have an utter
aversion to blue-stockings. I do not care a fig for any
woman that knows even what an author means. If I
know that she has read anything I have written, I cut
her acquaintance immediately. This sort of literary
intercourse with me passes for nothing. Her critical
and scientific acquirements are carrying coals to New-
castle. I do not want to be told that I have published
such or such a work. I knew all this before. It
makes no addition to my sense of power. I do not
wish the affair to be brought about in that way. 1
would have her read my soul : she should understand
the language of the heart : she should know what I
am, as if she were another self ! She should love me
for myself alone. I like myself without any reason : I
would have her do so too. This is not very reasonable.
I abstract from my temptations to admire all the
circumstances of dress, birth, breeding, fortune ; and I
would not willingly put forward my own pretensions,
whatever they may be. The image of some fair
creature is engraven on my inmost soul ; it is on that
I build my claim to her regard, and expect her to see
into my heart, as I see her |form always before me.
Wherever she treads, pale primroses, like her face,
vernal hyacinths, like her brow, spring up beneath
her feet, and music hangs on every bough ; but all is
cold, barren, and desolate without her. Thus I feel,
and thus I think. But have I ever told her so ? No.

ON GREAT AND LITTLE THINGS 321

Or if I did, would she understand it ? No. I ' hunt
the wind, I worship a statue, cry aloud to the desert.'
To see beauty is not to be beautiful, to pine in love
is not to be loved again. — 1 always was inclined to
raise and magnify the power of Love. I thought that
his sweet power should only be exerted to join together
the loveliest forms and fondest hearts ; that none but
those in whom his godhead shone outwardly, and was
inly felt, should ever partake of his triumphs ; and I
stood and gazed at a distance, as unworthy to mingle
in so bright a throng, and did not (even for a moment)
wish to tarnish the glory of so fair a vision by being
myself admitted into it. I say this was my notion
once, but God knows it was one of the errors of my
youth. For coming nearer to look, I saw the maimed,
the blind, and the halt enter in, the crooked and the
dwarf, the ugly, the old and impotent, the man of
pleasure and the man of the world, the dapper and the
pert, the vain and shallow boaster, the fool and the
pedant, the ignorant and brutal, and all that is farthest
removed from earth's fairest- born, and the pride of
human life. Seeing all these enter the courts of Love,
and thinking that I also might venture in under favour
of the crowd, but finding myself rejected, I fancied (I
might be wrong) that it was not so much because I was
below, as above the common standard. I did feel, but
1 was ashamed to feel, mortified at my repulse, when I
saw the meanest of mankind, the very scum and refuse,
all creeping things and every obscene creature, enter
in before me. I seemed a species by myself. I took a
pride even in my disgrace ; and concluded I had
elsewhere my inheritance ! The only thing I ever
piqued myself upon was the writing the Essay on the
Principles of Human Action — a work that no woman
ever read, or would ever comprehend the meaning of.
But if 1 do not build my claim to regard on the
pretensions I have, how can I build it on those I am
totally without ? Or why do I complain and expect to
gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ? Thought
has in me cancelled pleasure ; and this dark forehead,

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bent upon truth, is the rock on which all affection has
split. And thus I waste my life in one long sigh ; nor
ever (till too late) beheld a gentle face turned gently
upon mine ! . . . But no ! not too late, if that face,
pure, modest, downcast, tender, with angel sweetness,
not only gladdens the prospect of the future, but sheds
its radiance on the past, smiling in tears. A purple
light hovers round my head. The air of love is in the
room. As I look at my long-neglected copy of the
Death of Clorinda, golden gleams play upon the
canvas, as they used when I painted it. The flowers
of Hope and Joy springing up in my mind, recall the
time when they first bloomed there. The years that
are fled knock at the door and enter. I am in the
Louvre once more. The sun of Austerlitz has not set.
It still shines here — in my heart ; and he, the son of
glory, is not dead, nor ever shall, to me. I am as
when my life began. The rainbow is in the sky again.
I see the skirts of the departed years. All that I have
thought and felt has not been in vain. I am not
utterly worthless, unregarded ; nor shall I die and
wither of pure scorn. Now could I sit on the tomb of
Liberty, and write a Hymn to Love. Oh ! if I am
deceived, let me be deceived still. Let me live in the
Elysium of those soft looks ; poison me with kisses,
kill me with smiles ; but still mock me with thy love ! 1
Poets choose mistresses who have the fewest charms,
that they may make something out of nothing They
succeed best in fiction, and they apply this rule to love.
They make a goddess of any dowdy. As Don Quixote
said, in answer to the matter-of-fact remonstrances of
Sancho, that Dulcinea del Toboso answered the purpose
of signalising his valour just as well as the ' fairest
princess under sky,' so any of the fair sex will serve
them to write about just as well as another. They take
some awkward thing and dress her up in fine words,
as children dress up a wooden doll in fine clothes.

1 I beg the reader to consider this passage merely as a specimen
of the mock-heroic style, and as having nothing to do with any reaJ
facts or feelings.

ON GREAT AND LITTLE THINGS 323

Perhaps a fine head of hair, a taper waist, or some other
circumstance strikes them, and they make the rest out
according to their fancies. They have a wonderful
knack of supplying deficiencies in the subjects of their
idolatry out of the storehouse of their imaginations.
They presently translate their favourites to the skies,
where they figure with Berenice's locks and Ariadne's
crown. This predilection for the unprepossessing and
insignificant, I take to arise not merely from a desire
in poets to have some subject to exercise their inventive
talents upon, but from their jealousy of any pretensions
(even those of beauty in the other sex) that might
interfere with the continual incense offered to their
personal vanity.

Cardinal Mazarine never thought anything of Car-
dinal de Retz after he told him that he had written for
the last thirty years of his life with the same pen.
Some Italian poet going to present a copy of verses
to the Pope, and finding, as he was looking them over
in the coach as he went, a mistake of a single letter in
the printing, broke his heart of vexation and chagrin.
A still more remarkable case of literary disappointment
occurs in the history of a countryman of his, which I
cannot refrain from giving here, as I find it related.
'Anthony Codrus Urceus, a most learned and unfor-
tunate Italian, born near Modena, 1446, was a striking
instance,' says his biographer, { of the miseries men
bring upon themselves by setting their affections un-
reasonably on trifles. This learned man lived at Forli,
and had an apartment in the palace. His room was so
very dark that he was forced to use a candle in the
daytime ; and one day, going abroad without putting
it out, his library was set on fire, and some papers
which he had prepared for the press were burned.
The instant he was informed of this ill news he was
affected even, to madness. He ran furiously to the
palace, and stopping at the door of his apartment, he
cried aloud, " Christ Jesus ! what mighty crime have
1 committed ! whom of your followers have I ever
injured, that you thus rage with inexpiable hatred

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against me ? " Then turning himself to an image of
the Virgin Mary near at hand, " Virgin (says he), hear
what I have to say, for I speak in earnest, and with
a composed spirit : if I shall happen to address you in
my dying moments, I humbly entreat you not to hear
me, nor receive me into Heaven, for I am determined
to spend all eternity in Hell ! " Those who heard
these blasphemous expressions endeavoured to comfort
him ; but all to no purpose: for, the society of mankind
being no longer supportable to him, he left the city,
and retired, like savage, to the deep solitude of a wood.
Some say that he was murdered there by ruffians :
others, that he died at Bologna in 1500, after much
contrition ajad penitence.'

Perhaps "the censure passed at the outset of the
anecdote on this unfortunate person is unfounded and
severe, when it is said that he brought his miseries on
himself 'by having set his affections unreasonably on
trifles.' To others it might appear so ; but to himself
the labour of a whole life was hardly a trifle. His
passion was not a causeless one, though carried to such
frantic excess. The story of Sir Isaac Newton presents
a strong contrast to the last-mentioned one, who, on
going into his study and finding that his dog Tray had
thrown down a candle on the table, and burnt some
papers of great value, contented himself with exclaim-
ing, ' Ah ! Tray, you don't know the mischief you have
done ! ' Many persons would not forgive the overturning
a cup of chocolate so soon.

I remember hearing an instance some years ago of a
man of character and property, who through unexpected
losses had been condemned to a long and heartbreaking
imprisonment, which he bore with exemplary fortitude.
At the end of four years, by the interest and exertions
of friends, he obtained his discharge, with every pros-
pect of beginning the world afresh, and had made his
arrangements for leaving his irksome abode, and meet-
ing his wife and family at a distance of two hundred
mile? by a certain day. Owing to the miscarriage of
a letter, some signature necessary to the completion

ON GREAT AND LITTLE THINGS 325

of the business did not arrive in time, and on account
of the informality which had thus arisen, he could not
set out home till the return of the post, which was four
days longer. His spirit could not brook the delay.
He had wound himself up to the last pitch of expecta-
tion ; he had, as it were, calculated his patience to hold
out to a certain point, and then to throw down his load
for ever, and he could not find resolution to resume it
for a few hours beyond this. He put an end to the
intolerable conflict of hope and disappointment in a fit
of excruciating anguish. Woes that we have time to
foresee and leisure to contemplate break their force by
being spread over a larger surface and borne at inter-
vals ; but those that come upon us suddenly, for how-
ever short a time, seem to insult us by their unnecessary
and uncalled-for intrusion ; and the very prospect of
relief, when held out and then withdrawn from us, to
however small a distance, only frets impatience into
agony by tantalising our hopes and wishes ; and to
rend asunder the thin partition that separates us from
our favourite object, we are ready to burst even the
fetters of life itself !

I am not aware that any one has demonstrated how
it is that a stronger capacity is required for the conduct
of great affairs than of small ones. The organs of the
mind, like the pupil of the eye, may be contracted or
dilated to view a broader or a narrower surface, and
yet find sufficient variety to occupy its attention in
each. The material universe is infinitely divisible, and
so is the texture of human affairs. We take things in
the gross or in the detail, according to the occasion.
I think I could as soon get up the budget of Ways and
Means for the current year, as be sure of making both
ends meet, and paying my rent at quarter-day in a
paltry huckster's shop. Great objects move on by their
own weight and impulse; great power turns aside petty
obstacles ; and he who wields it is often but the puppet
of circumstances, like the fly on the wheel that said,
' What a dust we raise ! ' It is easier to ruin a king-
dom and aggrandise one's own pride and prejudices

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than to set up a greengrocer's stall. An idiot or a
madman may do this at any time, whose word is law,
and whose nod is fate. Nay, he whose look is obedi-
ence, and who understands the silent wishes of the
great, may easily trample on the necks and tread out
the liberties of a mighty nation, deriding their strength,
and hating it the more from a consciousness of his own
meanness. Power is not wisdom, it is true ; but it
equally ensures its own objects. It does not exact, but
dispenses with talent. When a man creates this power,
or new -moulds the state by sage counsels and bold
enterprises, it is a different thing from overturning it
with the levers that are put into his baby hands. In
general, however, it may be argued that great transac-
tions and complicated concerns ask more genius to
conduct them than smaller ones, for this reason, viz.
that the mind must be able either to embrace a greater
variety of details in a more extensive range of objects,
or must have a greater faculty of generalising, or a
greater depth of insight into ruling principles, and so
come at true results in that way. Buonaparte knew
everything, even to the names of our cadets in the East
[ndia service; but he failed in this, that he did not
calculate the resistance which barbarism makes to re-
finement. He thought that the Russians could not
burn Moscow, because the Parisians could not burn
Paris. The French think everything must be French.
The Cossacks, alas ! do not conform to etiquette : the
rudeness of the seasons knows no rules of politeness !
Some artists think it a test of genius to paint a large
picture, and I grant the truth of this position, if the
large picture contains more than a small one. It is
not the size of the canvas, but the quantity of truth
and nature put into it, that settles the point. It is a
mistake, common enough on this subject, to suppose
that a miniature is more finished than an oil-picture.
The miniature is inferior to the oil-picture only because
it is less finished, because it cannot follow nature into
so many individual and exact particulars. The proof
of which is, that the copy of a good portrait will always

ON GREAT AND LITTLE THINGS 327

make a highly finished miniature (see for example Mr.
Bone's enamels), whereas the copy of a good miniature,
if enlarged to the size of life, will make but a very
sorry portrait. Several of our best artists, who are
fond of painting large figures, invert this reasoning.
They make the whole figure gigantic, not that they
may have room for nature, but for the motion of their
brush (as if they were painting the side of a house),
regarding the extent of canvas they have to cover as
an excuse for their slovenly and hasty manner of get-
ting over it ; and thus, in fact, leave their pictures
nothing at last but overgrown miniatures, but huge
caricatures. It is not necessary in any case (either in
a larger or a smaller compass) to go into the details, so
as to lose sight of the effect, and decompound the face
into porous and transparent molecules, in the manner
of Denner, who painted what he saw through a mag-
nifyiiig-glass. The painter's eye need not be a micro-
scope, but I contend that it should be a looking-glass,
bright, clear, lucid. The little in art begins with
insignificant parts, with what does not tell in connec-
tion with other parts. The true artist will paint not
material points, but moral qualities. In a word, where-
over there is feeling or expression in a muscle or a
vein, there is grandeur and refinement too. — I will
conclude these remarks with an account of the manner
in which the ancient sculptors combined great and
little things in such matters. 'That the name of
Phidias,' says Pliny, 'is illustrious among all the
nations that have heard of the fame of the Olympian
Jupiter, no one doubts ; but in order that those may
know that he is deservedly praised who have not even
seen his works, we shall offer a few arguments, and
those of his genius only : nor to this purpose shall we
insist on the beauty of the Olympian Jupiter, nor on
the magnitude of the Minerva at Athens, though it is
twenty-six cubits in height (about thirty-five feet), and
is made of ivory and gold ; but we shall refer to the
shield, on which the battle of the Amazons is carved
on the outer side ; on the inside of the same is the

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fight of the Gods and Giants ; and on the sandals, that
between the Centaurs and Lapithae ; so well did every
part of that work display the powers of the art. Again,
the sculptures on the pedestal he called the birth of
Pandora : there are to be seen in number thirty gods,
the figure of Victory being particularly admirable : the
learned also admire the figures of the serpent and the
brazen sphinx, writhing under the spear. These things
are mentioned, in passing, of an artist never enough
to be commended, that it may be seen that he showed
the same magnificence even in small things.' 1

i Flings Natural History, Book 36.

ESSAY XXIV

ON FAMILIAR STYLE

IT is not easy to write a familiar style. Many people
mistake a familiar for a vulgar style, and suppose that
to write without affectation is to write at random. On
the contrary, there is nothing that requires more pre-
cision, and, if I may so say, purity of expression, than
the style I am speaking of. It utterly rejects not only
all unmeaning pomp, but all low, cant phrases, and
loose, unconnected, slipshod allusions. It is not to
take the first word that offers, but the best word in
common use ; it is not to throw words together in any
combinations we please, but to follow and avail ourselves
of the true idiom of the language. To write a genuine
familiar or truly English style is to write as any one
would speak in common conversation who had a
thorough command and choice of words, or who could
discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting
aside all pedantic and oratorical nourishes. Or, to
give another illustration, to write naturally is the same
thing in regard to common conversation as to read
naturally is in regard to common speech. It does not
follow that it is an easy thing to give the true accent
and inflection to the words you utter, because you do
not attempt to rise above the level of ordinary life and
colloquial speaking. You do not assume, indeed, the
solemnity of the pulpit, or the tone of stage-declama-
tion ; neither are you at liberty to gabble on at a
venture, without emphasis or discretion, or to resort to
vulgar dialect or clownish pronunciation. You must

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steer a middle course. You are tied down to a given
aud appropriate articulation, which is determined by
the habitual associations between sense and sound, and
which you can only hit by entering into the author's
meaning, as you must find the proper words and style
to express yourself by fixing your thoughts on the
subject you have to write about. Any one may mouth
out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon
stilts to tell his thoughts ; but to write or speak with
propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus
it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice
as big as the thing you want to express : it is not
so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.
Out of eight or ten words equally common, equally
intelligible, with nearly equal pretensions, it is a
matter of some nicety and discrimination to pick out
the very one the preferableness of which is scarcely
perceptible, but decisive. The reason why 1 object to
Dr. Johnson's style is that there is no discrimination,
no selection, no variety in it. He uses none but ' tall,
opaque words,' taken from the f first row of the rubric '
— words with the greatest number of syllables, or Latin
phrases with merely English terminations. If a fine
style depended on this sort of arbitrary pretension, it
would be fair to judge of an author's elegance by the
measurement of his words and the substitution of
foreign circumlocutions (with no precise associations)
for the mother - tongue. l How simple is it to be
dignified without ease, to be pompous without mean-
ing ! Surely it is but a mechanical rule for avoiding
what is low, to be always pedantic and affected.
Jt is clear you cannot use a vulgar English word
if you never use a common English word at all.
A fine tact is shown in adhering to those which
are perfectly common, and yet never falling into
any expressions which are debased by disgusting

i I have heard of such a thing as an author who makes it a rule
never to admit a monosyllable into his vapid verse. Yet the charm
and sweetness of Marlowe's lines depended often on their being
made up almost entirely of monosyllables.

ON FAMILIAR STYLE 331

circumstances, or which owe their signification and
point to technical or professional allusions. A truly
natural or familiar style can never be quaint or
vulgar, for this reason, that it is of universal force
and applicability, and that quaintness and vulgarity
arise out of the immediate connection of certain words
with coarse and disagreeable or with confined ideas.
The last form what we understand by cant or slang
phrases. — To give an example of what is not very clear
in the general statement I should say that the phrase
To cut with a knife, or To cut a piece of wood, is perfectly
free from vulgarity, because it is perfectly common ;
but to cut an acquaintance is not quite unexceptionable,
because it is not perfectly common or intelligible, and
has hardly yet escaped out of the limits of slang
phraseology. I should hardly, therefore, use the word
in this sense without putting it in italics as a license
of expression, to be received cum grano salts. All
provincial or bye-phrases come under the same mark
of reprobation — all such as the writer transfers to the
page from his fireside or a particular coterie, or that he
invents for his own sole use and convenience. I con-
ceive that words are like money, not the worse for
being common, but that it is the stamp of custom alone
that gives them circulation or value. I am fastidious
in this respect, and would almost as soon coin the
currency of the realm as counterfeit the King's English.
I never invented or gave a new and unauthorised
meaning to any word but one single one (the term
impersonal applied to feelings), and that was in an
abstruse metaphysical discussion to express a very
difficult distinction. I have been (I know) loudly
accused of revelling in vulgarisms and broken English.
I cannot speak to that point ; but so far I plead guilty
to the determined use of acknowledged idioms and
common elliptical expressions. I am not sure that the
critics in question know the one from the other, that
is, can distinguish any medium between formal pedantry
and the most barbarous solecism. As an author 1
endeavour to employ plain words and popular modes

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of construction, as, were I a chapman and dealer, I
should common weights and measures.

The proper force of words lies not in the words
themselves, but in their application. A word may be
a fine-sounding word, of an unusual length, and very
imposing from its learning and novelty, and yet in the
connection in which it is introduced may be quite
pointless and irrelevant. It is not pomp or pretension,
but the adaptation of the expression to the idea, that
clenches a writer's meaning : — as it is not the size or
glossiness of the materials, but their being fitted each
to its place, that gives strength to the arch ; or as the
pegs and nails are as necessary to the support of the
building as the larger timbers, and more so than the
mere showy, unsubstantial ornaments. I hate anything
that occupies more space than it is worth. I hate to
see a load of bandboxes go along the street, and I hate
to see a parcel of big words without anything in them.
A person who does not deliberately dispose of all his
thoughts alike in cumbrous draperies and flimsy dis-
guises may strike out twenty varieties of familiar every-
day language, each coming somewhat nearer to the
feeling he wants to convey, and at last not hit upon
that particular and only one which may be said to be
identical with the exact impression in his mind. This
would seem to show that Mr. Cobbett is hardly right in
saying that the first word that occurs is always the
best. It may be a very good one ; and yet a better
may present itself on reflection or from time to time.
It should be suggested naturally, however, and spon-
taneously, from a fresh and lively conception of the
subject. We seldom succeed by trying at improve-
ment, or by merely substituting one word for another
that we are not satisfied with, as we cannot recollect
the name of a place or person by merely plaguing our-
selves about it. We wander farther from the point by
persisting in a wrong scent ; but it starts up accidentally
in the memory when we least expected it, by touching
some link in the chain of previous association.

There are those who hoard up and make a cautious

ON FAMILIAR STYLE 333

display of nothing but rich and rare phraseology —
ancient medals, obscure coins, and Spanish pieces of
eight. They are very curious to inspect, but I myself
would neither offer nor take them in the course of
exchange. A sprinkling of archaisms is not amiss, but
a tissue of obsolete expressions is more fit for keep than
wear. I do not say I would not use any phrase that
had been brought into fashion before the middle or the
end of the last century, but I should be shy of using
any that had not been employed by any approved author
during the whole of that time. Words, like clothes,
get old-fashioned, or mean and ridiculous, when they
have been for some time laid aside. Mr. Lamb is the
only imitator of old English style I can read with
pleasure ; and he is so thoroughly imbued with the
spirit of his authors that the idea of imitation is almost
done away. There is an inward unction, a marrowy
vein, both in the thought and feeling, an intuition,
deep and lively, of his subject, that carries off any
quaintness or awkwardness arising from an antiquated
style and dress. The matter is completely his own,
though the manner is assumed. Perhaps his ideas are
altogether so marked and individual as to require their
point and pungency to be neutralised by the affectation
of a singular but traditional form of conveyance.
Tricked out in the prevailing costume, they would
probably seem more startling and out of the way. The
old English authors, Burton, Fuller, Coryate, Sir
Thomas Browne, are a kind of mediators between us
and the more eccentric and whimsical modern, reconcil-
ing us to his peculiarities. I do not, however, know
how far this is the case or not, till he condescends
to write like one of us. I must confess that what I
like best of his papers under the signature of Elia (still
I do not presume, amidst such excellence, to decide
what is most excellent) is the account of ' Mrs. Battle's
Opinions on Whist,' which is also the most free from
obsolete allusions and turns of expression —

A well of native English undented.
To those acquainted with his admired prototypes, these

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Essays of the ingenious and highly gifted author have
the same sort of charm and relish that Erasmus's
Colloquies or a fine piece of modern Latin have to the
classical scholar. Certainly, I do not know any bor-
rowed pencil that has more power or felicity of execu-
tion than the one of which I have here been speaking.

It is as easy to write a gaudy style without ideas as
it is to spread a pallet of showy colours or to smear
in a flaunting transparency. ( What do you read ? '
' Words, words, words.' — ' What is the matter?'
' Nothing/ it might be answered. The florid style is
the reverse of the familiar. The last is employed as
an unvarnished medium to convey ideas; the first is
resorted to as a spangled veil to conceal the want of
them. When there is nothing to be set down but
words, it costs little to have them fine. Look through
the dictionary, and cull out a florilegium, rival the
tulippomania. Rouge high enough, and never mind the
natural complexion. The vulgar, who are not in the
secret, will admire the look of preternatural health
and vigour; and the fashionable, who regard only
appearances, will be delighted with the imposition.
Keep to your sounding generalities, your tinkling
phrases, and all will be well. Swell out an unmean-
ing truism to a perfect tympany of style. A thought,
a distinction is the rock on which all this brittle cargo
of verbiage splits at once. Such writers have merely
verbal imaginations, that retain nothing but words.
Or their puny thoughts have dragon-wings, all green
and gold. They soar far above the vulgar failing of
the Sermo humi obrepens — their most ordinary speech is
never short of an hyperbole, splendid, imposing, vague,
incomprehensible, magniloquent, a cento of sounding
common-places. If some of us, whose ( ambition is
more lowly,' pry a little too narrowly into nooks and
corners to pick up a number of ' unconsidered trifles,'
they never once direct their eyes or lift their hands to
seize on any but the most gorgeous, tarnished, thread-
bare, patchwork set of phrases, the left-off finery of poetic
extravagance, transmitted down through successive

ON FAMILIAR STYLE 335

generations of barren pretenders. If they criticise
actors and actresses, a huddled phantasmagoria of
feathers, spangles, floods of light, and oceans of sound
float before their morbid sense, which they paint in
the style of Ancient Pistol. Not a glimpse can you
get of the merits or defects of the performers : they
are hidden in a profusion of barbarous epithets and
wilful rhodomontade. Our hypercritics are not think-
ing of these little fantoccini beings —

That strut and fret their hour upon the stage-
but of tall phantoms of words, abstractions, genera and
species, sweeping clauses, periods that unite the Poles,
forced alliterations, astounding antitheses —

And on their pens Fustian sits plumed.

If they describe kings and queens, it is an Eastern
pageant. The Coronation at either House is nothing
to it. We get at four repeated images — a curtain, a
throne, a sceptre, and a footstool. These are with
them the wardrobe of a lofty imagination ; and they
turn their servile strains to servile uses. Do we read
a description of pictures? It is not a reflection of
tones and hues which ' nature's own sweet and cunning
hand laid on,' but piles of precious stones, rubies,
pearls, emeralds, Golconda's mines, and all the
blazonry of art. Such persons are in fact besotted
with words, and their brains are turned with the
glittering but empty and sterile phantoms of things.
Personifications, capital letters, seas of sunbeams,
visions of glory, shining inscriptions, the figures of a
transparency, Britannia with her shield, or Hope lean-
ing on an anchor, make up their stock-in-trade.
They may be considered as hieroglyphical writers.
Images stand out in their minds isolated and import-
ant merely in themselves, without any groundwork
of feeling — there is no context in their imaginations.
Words affect them in the same way, by the mere
sound, that is, by their possible, not by their actual

336 TABLE-TALK

application to the subject in hand. They are fasci-
nated by first appearances, and have no sense of con-
sequences. Nothing more is meant by them than
meets the ear : they understand or feel nothing more
than meets their eye. The web and texture of the
universe, and of the heart of man, is a mystery to
them : they have no faculty that strikes a chord in
unison with it. They cannot get beyond the daubings
of fancy, the varnish of sentiment. Objects are not
linked to feelings, words to things, but images revolve
in splendid mockery, words represent themselves in
their strange rhapsodies. The categories of such a
mind are pride and ignorance — pride in outside show,
to which they sacrifice everything, and ignorance of
the true worth and hidden structure both of words
and things. With a sovereign contempt for what is
familiar and natural, they are the slaves of vulgar
affectation — of a routine of high-flown phrases. Scorn-
ing to imitate realities, they are unable to invent any-
thing, to strike out one original idea. They are not
copyists of nature, it is true ; but they are the poorest
of all plagiarists, the plagiarists of words. All is far-
fetched, dear bought, artificial, oriental in subject and
allusion ; all is mechanical, conventional, vapid, formal,
pedantic in style and execution. They startle and
confound the understanding of the reader by the
remoteness and obscurity of their illustrations ; they
soothe the ear by the monotony of the same everlast-
ing round of circuitous metaphors. They are the
mock-school in poetry and prose. They flounder about
between fustian in expression and bathos in senti-
ment. They tantalise the fancy, but never reach the
head nor touch the heart. Their Temple of Fame is
like a shadowy structure raised by Dulness to Vanity,
or like Cowper's description of the Empress of Russia's
palace of ice, 'as worthless as in show 'twas glittering ' —

It smiled, and it was cold !

ESSAY XXV

ON EFFEMINACY OF CHARACTER

EFFEMINACY of character arises from a prevalence of
the sensibility over the will ; or it consists in a want of
fortitude to bear pain or to undergo fatigue, however
urgent the occasion. We meet with instances of people
who cannot lift up a little finger to save themselves
from ruin, nor give up the smallest indulgence for the
sake of any other person. They cannot put themselves
out of their way on any account. No one makes a
greater outcry when the day of reckoning comes, or
affects greater compassion for the mischiefs they have
occasioned ; but tiU the time comes, they feel nothing,
they care for nothing. They live in the present
moment, are the creatures of the present impulse
(whatever it may be) — and beyond that, the universe
is nothing to them. The slightest toy countervails the
empire of the world ; they will not forego the smallest
inclination they feel, for any object that can be pro-
posed to them, or any reasons that can be urged for it.
You might as well ask of the gossamer not to wanton
in the idle summer air, or of the moth not to play with
the flame that scorches it, as ask of these persons to
put off any enjoyment for a single instant, or to gird
themselves up to any enterprise of pith or moment.
They have been so used to a studied succession of
agreeable sensations that the shortest pause is a priva-
tion which they can by no means endure — it is like
tearing them from their very existence — they have
been so inured to ease and indolence, that the most

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trifling effort is like one of the tasks of Hercules, a
thing of impossibility, at which they shudder. They
lie on beds of roses, and spread their gauze wings to
the sun and summer gale, and cannot bear to put their
tender feet to the ground, much less to encounter the
thorns and briars of the world. Life for them

Rolls o'er Elysian flowers its amber stream,

and they have no fancy for fishing in troubled waters.
The ordinary state of existence they regard as some-
thing importunate and vain, and out of nature. What
must they think of its trials and sharp vicissitudes?
Instead of voluntarily embracing pain, or labour, or
danger, or death, every sensation must be wound up
to the highest pitch of voluptuous refinement, every
motion must be grace and elegance ; they live in a
luxurious, endless dream, or

Die of a rose in aromatic pain !

Siren sounds must float around them ; smiling forms
must everywhere meet their sight ; they must tread a
soft measure on painted carpets or smooth -shaven
lawns; books, arts, jests, laughter occupy every
thought and hour — what have they to do with the
drudgery, the struggles, the poverty, the disease or
anguish which are the common lot of humanity?
These things are intolerable to them, even in imagina-
tion. They disturb the enchantment in which they
are lapt They cause a wrinkle in the clear and
polished surface of their existence. They exclaim
with impatience and in agony, 'Oh, leave me to my
repose!' How 'they shall discourse the freezing
hours away, when wind and rain beat dark December
down/ or ' bide the pelting of the pitiless storm/ gives
them no concern, it never once enters their heads.
They close the shutters, draw the curtains, and enjoy
or shut out the whistling of the approaching tempest.
'They take no thought for the morrow/ not they.
They do not anticipate evils. Let them come when

ON EFFEMINACY OF CHARACTER 339

they will come, they will not run to meet them. Nay
more, they will not move one step to prevent them,
nor let any one else. The mention of such things is
shocking ; the very supposition is a nuisance that must
not be tolerated. The idea of the trouble, the pre-
cautions, the negotiations necessary to obviate disagree-
able consequences oppresses them to death, is an
exertion too great for their enervated imaginations.
They are not like Master Barnardine in Measure for
Measure, who would not ' get up to be hanged ' — they
would not get up to avoid being hanged. They are
completely wrapped up in themselves ; but then all
their self-love is concentrated in the present minute.
They have worked up their effeminate and fastidious
appetite of enjoyment to such a pitch that the whole of
their existence, every moment of it, must be made up
of these exquisite indulgences ; or they will fling it all
away, with indifference and scorn. They stake their
entire welfare on the gratification of the passing
instant Their senses, their vanity, their thoughtless
gaiety have been pampered till they ache at the
smallest suspension of their perpetual dose of excite-
ment, and they will purchase the hollow happiness of
the next five minutes by a mortgage on the independ-
ence and comforu of years. They must have their
will in everything, or they grow sullen and peevish
like spoiled children. Whatever they set their eyes
on, or make up their minds to, they must have that
instant. They may pay for it hereafter. But that is
no matter. They snatch a joy beyond the reach of
fate, and consider the present time sacred, inviolable,
unaccountable to that hard, churlish, niggard, inexor-
able taskmaster, the future. Now or never is their
motto. They are madly devoted to the plaything, the
ruling passion of the moment What is to happen to
them a week hence is as if it were to happen to them a
thousand years hence. They put off the consideration
for another day, and their heedless unconcern laughs
at it as a fable. Their life is 'a cell of ignorance,
travelling a-bed ' ; their existence is ephemeral ; their

340 TABLE-TALK

thoughts are insect-winged ; their identity expires with
the whim, the folly, the passion of the hour.

Nothing but a miracle can rouse such people from
their lethargy. It is not to be expected, nor is it even
possible in the natural course of things. Pope's strik-
ing exclamation,

Oh 1 blindness to the future kindly given,

That each may fill the circuit mark'd by Heaven !

hardly applies here ; namely, to evils that stare us in
the face, and that might be averted with the least
prudence or resolution. But nothing can be done.
How should it? A slight evil, a distant danger, will
not move them ; and a more imminent one only makes
them turn away from it in greater precipitation and
alarm. The more desperate their affairs grow, the
more averse they are to look into them ; and the
greater the effort required to retrieve them, the more
incapable they are of it. At first, they will not do
anything ; and afterwards, it is too late. The very
motives that imperiously urge them to self-reflection
and amendment, combine with their natural disposi-
tion to prevent it This amounts pretty nearly to a
mathematical demonstration. Ease, vanity, pleasure
are the ruling passions in such cases. How will you
conquer these, or wean their infatuated votaries from
them ? By the dread of hardship, disgrace, pain ?
They turn from them, and you who point them out as
the alternative, with sickly disgust ; and instead of a
stronger effort of courage or self-denial to avert the
crisis, hasten it by a wilful determination to pamper
the disease in every way, and arm themselves, not with
fortitude to bear or to repel the consequences, but with
judicial blindness to their approach. Will you rouse
the indolent procrastinator to an irksome but neces-
sary effort, by showing him how much he has to do ?
He will only draw back the more for all your entreaties
and representations. If of a sanguine turn, he will
make a slight attempt at a new plan of life, be satis-
fied with the first appearance of reform, and relapse

ON EFFEMINACY OF CHARACTER 34]

into indolence again. If timid and undecided, the
hopelessness of the undertaking will put him out of
heart with it, and he will stand still in despair. Will
you save a vain man from ruin, by pointing out the
obloquy and ridicule that await him in his present
career.* He smiles at your forebodings as fantastical ;
or the more they are realised around him, the more
he is impelled to keep out the galling conviction, and
the more fondly he clings to flattery and death. He
will not make a bold and resolute attempt to recover
his reputation, because that would imply that it was
capable of being soiled or injured ; or he no sooner
meditates some desultory project, than he takes credit
to himself for the execution, and is delighted to wear
his unearned laurels while the thing is barely talked
of. The chance of success relieves the uneasiness of
his apprehensions ; so that he makes use of the interval
only to flatter his favourite infirmity again. Would
you wean a man from sensual excesses by the inevitable
consequences to which they lead ? — What holds more
antipathy to pleasure than pain ? The mind given up
to self-indulgence revolts at suffering, and throws it
from it as an unaccountable anomaly, as a piece of
injustice when it comes. Much less will it acknow-
ledge any affinity with or subjection to it as a mere
threat. If the prediction does not immediately come
true, we laugh at the prophet of ill : if it is verified,
we hate our adviser proportionably, hug our vices the
closer, and hold them dearer and more precious the
more they cost us. We resent wholesome counsel as
an impertinence, and consider those who warn us of
impending mischief as if they had brought it on our
heads. We cry out with the poetical enthusiast —

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

But oh thou ! who didst lend me speech when I was
dumb, to whom I owe it that I have not crept on my

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belly all the days of my life like the serpent, but some-
times lift my forked crest or tread the empyrean, wake
thou out of thy mid-day slumbers ! Shake off the
heavy honeydew of thy soul, no longer lulled with
that Circean cup, drinking thy own thoughts with thy
own ears, but start up in thy promised likeness, and
shake the pillared rottenness of the world ! Leave not
thy sounding words in air, write them in marble, and
teach the coming age heroic truths ! Up, and wake
the echoes of Time ! Rich in deepest lore, die not the
bed-rid churl of knowledge, leaving the survivors un-
blest ! Set, set as thou didst rise in pomp and glad-
ness ! Dart like the sunflower one broad, golden flash
of light ; and ere thou ascendest thy native sky, show
us the steps by which thou didst scale the Heaven of
philosophy, with Truth and Fancy for thy equal guides,
that we may catch thy mantle, rainbow-dipped, and
still read thy words dear to Memory, dearer to Fame !
There is another branch of this character, which is
the trifling or dilatory character. Such persons are
always creating difficulties, and unable or unwilling to
remove them. They cannot brush aside a cobweb, and
are stopped by an insect's wing. Their character is
imbecility, rather than effeminacy. The want of
energy and resolution in the persons last described
arises from the habitual and inveterate predominance
of other feelings and motives ; in these it is a mere
want of energy and resolution, that is, an inherent
natural defect of vigour of nerve and voluntary power.
There is a specific levity about such persons, so that
you cannot propel them to any object, or give them a
decided momentum in any direction or pursuit They
turn back, as it were, on the occasion that should
project them forward with manly force and vehemence.
They shrink from intrepidity of purpose, and are
alarmed at the idea of attaining their end too soon.
They will not act with steadiness or spirit, either for
themselves or you. If you chalk out a line of conduct
for them, or commission them to execute a certain
task, they are sure to conjure up some insignificant

ON EFFEMINACY OF CHARACTER 343

objection or fanciful impediment in the way, and are
withheld from striking an effectual blow by mere
feebleness of character. They may be officious, good-
natured, friendly, generous in disposition, but they
are of no use to any one. They will put themselves
to twice the trouble you desire, not to carry your
point, but to defeat it ; and in obviating needless
objections, neglect the main business. If they do
what you want, it is neither at the time nor in the
manner that you wish. This timidity amounts to
treachery ; for by always anticipating some misfortune
or disgrace, they realise their unmeaning apprehensions.
The little bears sway in their minds over the great :
a small inconvenience outweighs a solid and indispens-
able advantage ; and their strongest bias is uniformly
derived from the weakest motive. They hesitate about
the best way of beginning a thing till the opportunity
for action is lost, and are less anxious about its being
done than the precise manner of doing it. They will
destroy a passage sooner than let an objectionable
word pass ; and are much less concerned about the
truth or the beauty of an image than about the recep-
tion it will meet with from the critics. They alter
what they write, not because it is, but because it may
possibly be wrong ; and in their tremulous solicitude
to avoid imaginary blunders, run into real ones.
What is curious enough is, that with all this caution
and delicacy, they are continually liable to extra-
ordinary oversights. They are, in fact, so full of all
sorts of idle apprehensions, that they do not know how
to distinguish real from imaginary grounds of appre-
hension ; and they often give some unaccountable
offence, either from assuming a sudden boldness half
in sport, or while they are secretly pluming themselves
on their dexterity in avoiding everything exception-
able ; and the same distraction of motive and short-
sightedness which gets them into scrapes hinders them
from seeing their way out of them. Such persons
(often of ingenious and susceptible minds) are con-
stantly at cross-purposes with themselves and others ;

344 TABLE-TALK

will neither do things nor let others do them ; and
whether they succeed or fail, never feel confident or
at their ease. They spoil the freshness and originality
of their own thoughts by asking contradictory advice ;
and in hefriending others, while they are about it and
about it, you might have done the thing yourself a
dozen times over.

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

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

I should be sorry for any one to say what he did not
think of me ; but I should not be pleased to see him
slink out of his acknowledged opinion, lest it should
not be confirmed by malice or stupidity. He who is
well acquainted and well inclined to you ought to

ON EFFEMINACY OF CHARACTER 345

give the tone, not to receive it from others, and may
set it to what key he pleases in certain cases.

There are those of whom it has been said, that to
them an obligation is a reason for not doing anything,
and there are others who are invariably led to do the
reverse of what they should. The last are perverse,
the first impracticable people. Opposed to the effemi-
nate in disposition and manners are the coarse and
brutal. As those were all softness and smoothness,
these affect or are naturally attracted to whatever is
vulgar and violent, harsh and repulsive in tone, in
modes of speech, in forms of address, in gesture and
behaviour. Thus there are some who ape the lisping
of the fine lady, the drawling of the fine gentleman,
and others who all their life delight in and catch the
uncouth dialect, the manners and expressions of clowns
and hoydens. The last are governed by an instinct of
the disagreeable, by an appetite and headlong rage
for violating decorum and hurting other people's
feelings, their own being excited and enlivened by the
shock. They deal in home truths, unpleasant reflec-
tions, and unwelcome matters of fact ; as the others
are all compliment and complaisance, insincerity and
insipidity.

We may observe an effeminacy of style, in some de-
gree corresponding to effeminacy of character. Writers
of this stamp are great interliners of what they indite,
alterers of indifferent phrases, and the plague of printers'
devils. By an effeminate style I would be understood
to mean one that is all florid, all fine ; that cloys by its
sweetness, and tires by its sameness. Such are what
Dryden calls ' calm, peaceable writers.' They only aim
to please, and never offend by truth or disturb by singu-
larity. Every thought must be beautiful per se^ every
expression equally fine. They do not delight in vul-
garisms, but in common-places, and dress out unmean-
ing forms in all the colours of the rainbow. They do
not go out of their way to think — that would startle
the indolence of the reader : they cannot express a trite
thought in common words — that would be a sacrifice of

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their own vanity. They are not sparing of tinsel, for
it costs nothing. Their works should be printed, as
they generally are, on hot-pressed paper, with vignette
margins. The Delia Cruscan school comes under this
description, which is now nearly exploded. Lord Byron
is a pampered and aristocratic writer, but he is not
effeminate, or we should not have his works with only
the printer's name to them ! I cannot help thinking
that the fault of Mr. Keats's poems was a deficiency in
masculine energy of style. He had beauty, tenderness,
delicacy, in an uncommon degree, but there was a want
of strength and substance. His Endymion is a very
delightful description of the illusions of a youthful
imagination given up to airy dreams — we have flowers,
clouds, rainbows, moonlight, all sweet sounds and
smells, and Oreads and Dryads flitting by — but there
is nothing tangible in it, nothing marked or palpable
— we have none of the hardy spirit or rigid forms of
antiquity. He painted his own thoughts and charac-
ter, and did not transport himself into the fabulous and
heroic ages. There is a want of action, of character,
and so far of imagination, but there is exquisite fancy.
All is soft and fleshy, without bone or muscle. We
see in him the youth without the manhood of poetry.
His genius breathed 'vernal delight and jojr.' 'Like
Maia's son he stood and shook his plumes,' with fra-
grance filled. His mind was redolent of spring. He
had not the fierceness of summer, nor the richness of
autumn, and winter he seemed not to have known till
he felt the icy hand of death !

ESSAY XXVI

WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLKA8E

DISTANT objects please, because, in the first place, they
imply an idea of space and magnitude, and because,
not being obtruded too close upon the eye, we clothe
them with the indistinct and airy colours of fancy.
In looking at the misty mountain-tops that bound the
horizon, the mind is as it were conscious of all the con-
ceivable objects and interests that lie between ; we
imagine all sorts of adventures in the interim ; strain
our hopes and wishes to reach the air-drawn circle, or
to ' descry new lands, rivers, and mountains,' stretch-
ing far beyond it : our feelings, carried out of them-
selves, lose their grossuess and their husk, are rarefied,
expanded, melt into softness and brighten into beauty,
turning to ethereal mould, sky-tinctured. We drink
the air before us, and borrow a more refined existence
from objects that hover on the brink of nothing. Where
the landscape fades from the dull sight, we fill the thin,
viewless space with shapes of unknown good, and tinge
the hazy prospect with hopes and wishes and more
charming fears.

But them, oh Hope 1 with eyes so fair,
What was thy delighted measure ?
Still it whisper' d promised pleasure,
And bade the lovely scenes at distance hall !

Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and
knowledge, whatever is imperfectly discerned, the
fancy pieces out at its leisure ; and all but the present

348 TABLE-TALK

moment, but the present spot, passion claims for
its own, and brooding over it with wings outspread,
stamps it with an image of itself. Passion is lord of
infinite space, and distant objects please because they
border on its confines and are moulded by its touch.
When I was a boy, I lived within sight of a range of
lofty hills, whose blue tops blending with the setting
sun had often tempted my longing eyes and wandering
feet. At last I put my project in execution, and on a
nearer approach, instead of glimmering air woven into
fantastic shapes, found them huge lumpish heaps of
discoloured earth. I learnt from this (in part) to leave
' Yarrow unvisited,' and not idly to disturb a dream of
good !

Distance of time has much the same effect as distance
of place. It is not surprising that fancy colours the
prospect of the future as it thinks good, when it even
effaces the forms of memory. Time takes out the sting
of pain ; our sorrows after a certain period have been
so often steeped in a medium of thought and passion
that they 'unmould their essence'; and all that re-
mains of our original impressions is what we would
wish them to have been. Not only the untried steep
ascent before us, but the rude, unsightly masses of our
past experience presently resume their power of decep-
tion over the eye : the golden cloud soon rests upon
their heads, and the purple light of fancy clothes their
barren sides ! Thus we pass on, while both ends of
our existence touch upon Heaven ! There is (so to
speak) ' a mighty stream of tendency' to good in the
human mind, upon which all objects float and are im-
perceptibly borne along ; and though in the voyage of
life we meet with strong rebuffs, with rocks and quick-
sands, yet there is ' a tide in the affairs of men,' a heav-
ing and a restless aspiration of the soul, by means of
which, 'with sails and tackle torn,' the wreck and
scattered fragments of our entire being drift into the
port and haven of our desires ! In all that relates to
the affections, we put the will for the deed ; so that
the instant the pressure of unwelcome circumstances

WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE 349

is removed, the mind recoils from their hold, recovers
its elasticity, and reunites itself to that image of good
which is but a reflection and configuration of its own
nature. Seen in the distance, in the long perspective
of waning years, the meanest incidents, enlarged and
enriched by countless recollections, become interest-
ing ; the most painful, broken and softened by time,
soothe. How any object that unexpectedly brings
back to us old scenes and associations startles the
mind ! What a yearning it creates within us ; what a
longing to leap the intermediate space ! How fondly
we cling to, and try to revive the impression of all that
we then were !

Such tricks hath strong imagination I

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

When I was quite a boy my father used to take me
to the Montpelier Tea Gardens at Walworth. Do I go
there now ? No ; the place is deserted, and its borders

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and its beds o'erturned. Is there, then, nothing that
can

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

Oh ! yes. I unlock the casket of memory, and draw
back the warders of the brain ; and there this scene
of my infant wanderings still lives uufaded, or with
fresher dyes. A new sense comes upon me, as in a
dream ; a richer perfume, brighter colours start out ;
my eyes dazzle ; my heart heaves with its new load of
bliss, and I am a child again. My sensations are all
glossy, spruce, voluptuous, and fine : they wear a
candied coat, and are in holiday trim. I see the beds
of larkspur with purple eyes ; tall hollyhocks, red or
yellow ; the broad sunflowers, caked in gold, with bees
buzzing round them ; wildernesses of pinks, and hot
glowing peonies ; poppies run to seed ; the sugared
lily, and faint mignonette, all ranged in order, and as
thick as they can grow ; the box-tree borders ; the
gravel -walks, the painted alcove, the confectionery,
the clotted cream : — I think I see them now with
sparkling looks ; or have they vanished while I have
been writing this description of them ? No matter ;
they will return again when I least think of them.
All that I have observed since, of flowers and plants,
and grass-plots, and of suburb delights, seems to me
borrowed from ' that first garden of my innocence ' — to
be slips and scions stolen from that bed of memory.
In this manner the darlings of our childhood burnish
out in the eye of after years, and derive their sweetest
perfume from the first heartfelt sigh of pleasure
breathed upon them,

Like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour 1

If I have pleasure in a flower-garden, I have in a
kitchen-garden too, and for the same reason. If I see
a row of cabbage-plants, or of peas or beans coming up,

WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE 351

I immediately think of those which I used so carefully
to water of an evening at Wem, when my day's tasks
were done, and of the pain with which I saw them
droop and hang down their leaves in the morning's
sun. Again, I never see a child's kite in the air but
it seems to pull at my heart It is to me ' a thing of
life.' I feel the twinge at my elbow, the flutter and
palpitation, with which I used to let go the string of
my own, as it rose in the air, and towered among the
clouds. My little cargo of hopes and fears ascended
with it ; and as it made a part of my own consciousness
then, it does so still, and appears 'like some gay
creature of the element,' my playmate when life was
young, and twin-born with my earliest recollections.
I could enlarge on this subject of childish amusements,
but Mr. Leigh Hunt has treated it so well, in a paper
in the Indicator, on the productions of the toy-shops of
the metropolis, that if I were to insist more on it I
should only pass for an imitator of that ingenious and
agreeable writer, and for an indifferent one into thp
bargain.

Sounds, smells, and sometimes tastes, are remembered
longer than visible objects, and serve, perhaps, better
for links in the chain of association. The reason
seems to be this : they are in their nature intermittent,
and comparatively rare ; whereas objects of sight are
always before us, and, by their continuous succession,
drive one another out. The eye is always open ; and
between any given impression and its recurrence a
second time, fifty thousand other impressions have, in
all likelihood, been stamped upon the sense and on the
brain. The other senses are not so active or vigilant
They are but seldom called into play. The ear, for
example, is oftener courted by silence than noise ; and
the sounds that break that silence sink deeper and
more durably into the mind. I have a more present
and lively recollection of certain scents, tastes, and
sounds, for this reason, than I have of mere visible
images, because they are more original, and less
worn by frequent repetition. Where there is nothing

352 TABLE-TALK

interposed between any two impressions, whatever the
distance of time that parts them, they naturally seem
to touch ; and the renewed impression recalls the
former one in full force, without distraction or com-
petitor. The taste of barberries, which have hung out
in the snow during the severity of a North American
winter, I have in my mouth still, after an interval of
thirty years ; for I have met with no other taste in all
that time at all like it. It remains by itself, almost
like the impression of a sixth sense. But the colour is
mixed up indiscriminately with the colours of many
other berries, nor should I be able to distinguish it
among them. The smell of a brick-kiln carries the
evidence of its own identity with it : neither is it to me
(from peculiar associations) unpleasant. The colour of
brickdust, on the contrary, is more common, and easily
confounded with other colours. Raphael did not keep
it quite distinct from his flesh-colour. I will not say
that we have a more perfect recollection of the human
voice than of that complex picture the human face,
but I think the sudden hearing of a well-known voice
has something in it more affecting and striking than
the sudden meeting with the face : perhaps, indeed, this
may be because we have a more familiar remembrance
of the one than the other, and the voice takes us more
by surprise on that account. I am by no means
certain (generally speaking) that we have the ideas of
the other senses so accurate and well made out as those
of visible form : what I chiefly mean is, that the
feelings belonging to the sensations of our other
organs, when accidentally recalled, are kept more
separate and pure. Musical sounds, probably, owe a
good deal of their interest and romantic effect to the
principle here spoken of. Were they constant, they
would become indifferent, as we may find with respect
to disagreeable noises, which we do not hear after a
time. ] know no situation more pitiable than that of
a blind fiddler who has but one sense left (if we except
the sense of snuff-taking 1) and who has that stunned
i S«e Wilkie's Blind Fiddler.

WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE 353

or deafened by his own villainous noises. Shakespear
says,

How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night !

It has been observed in explanation of this passage,
that it is because in the day-time lovers are occupied
with one another's faces, but that at night they can
only distinguish the sound of each other's voices. I
know not how this may be ; but I have, ere now,
heard a voice break so upon the silence,

To angels' 'twas most like,

and charm the moonlight air with its balmy essence,
that the budding leaves trembled to its accents.
Would I might have heard it once more whisper peace
and hope (as erst when it was mingled with the breath
of spring), and with its soft pulsations lift winged fancy
to heaven. But it has ceased, or turned where I no
more shall hear it ! — Hence, also, we see what is the
charm of the shepherd's pastoral reed ; and why we
hear him, as it were, piping to his flock, even in a
picture. Our ears are fancy stung ! I remember once
strolling along the margin of a stream, skirted with
willows and plashy sedges, in one of those low
sheltered valleys on Salisbury Plain, where the monks
of former ages had planted chapels and built hermits'
cells. There was a little parish church near, but tall
elms and quivering alders hid it from my sight, when,
all of a sudden, I was startled by the sound of the
full organ pealing on the ear, accompanied by rustic
voices and the willing choir of village maids and chil-
dren. It rose, indeed, ' like an exhalation of rich dis-
tilled perfumes.' The dew from a thousand pastures
was gathered in its softness ; the silence of a thousand
years spoke in it. It came upon the heart like the
calm beauty of death ; fancy caught the sound, and
faith mounted on it to the skies. It filled the valley
like a mist, and still poured out its endless chant, and
still it swells upon the ear, and wraps me in a golden
trance, drowning the noisy tumult of the world I
2 A

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There is a curious and interesting discussion on the
comparative distinctness of our visual and other ex-
ternal impressions, in Mr. Fearn's Essay on Conscious-
ness, with which I shall try to descend from this
rhapsody to the ground of common sense and plain
reasoning again. After observing, a little before, that
' nothing is more untrue than that sensations of vision
do necessarily leave more vivid and durable ideas than
those of grosser senses/ he proceeds to give a number
of illustrations in support of this position. ' Notwith-
standing,' he says, 'the advantages here enumerated
in favour of sight, I think there is no doubt that a man
will come to forget acquaintance, and many other
visible objects, noticed in mature age, before he will in
the least forget taste and smells, of only moderate
interest, encountered either in his childhood or at any
time since.

'In the course of voyaging to various distant
regions, it has several times happened that I have
eaten once or twice of different things that never came
in my way before nor since. Some of these have been
pleasant, and some scarce better than insipid ; but I
have no reason to think I have forgot, or much altered
the ideas left by those single impulses of taste ; though
here the memory of them certainly has not been
preserved by repetition. It is clear I must have seen
as well as tasted those things ; and I am decided that I
remember the tastes with more precision than I do the
visual sensations.

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

' Twenty-eight years ago, in the island of Jamaica, 1
partook (perhaps twice) of a certain fruit, of the taste
of which I have now a very fresh idea ; and I could
add other instances of that period.

WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE 365

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

' After retention of such ideas, it certainly would be
very difficult to persuade me that feeling, taste, and
smell can scarce be said to leave ideas, unless in-
distinct and obscure ones. . . .

' Show a Londoner correct models of twenty London
churches, and, at the same time, a model of each, which
differs, in several considerable features, from the truth,
and I venture to say he shall not tell you, in any in-
stance, which is the correct one, except by mere chance.

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

f I once heard a person quaintly ask another, How
many trees there are in St Paul's churchyard ? The
question itself indicates that many cannot answer it ;
and this is found to be the case with tho«e who have
passed the church a hundred times : whilst the cause
is, that every individual in the busy stream which
glides past St Paul's is engrossed in various other
interests.

'How often does it happen that we enter a well-
known apartment, or meet a well-known friend, and
receive some vague idea of visible difference, but can-
not possibly find out what it is ; until at length we
come to perceive (or perhaps must be told) that some
ornament or furniture is removed, altered, or added

356 TABLE-TALK

in the apartment ; or that our friend has cut his hair,
taken a wig, or has made any of twenty considerable
alterations in his appearance. At other times we have
no perception of alteration whatever, though the like
has taken place.

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

*I imagine an ordinary person would find it very
difficult, supposing he had some knowledge of drawing,
to afford from memory a tolerable sketch of such a
familiar object as his curtain, his carpet, or his dress-
ing-gown, if the pattern of either be at all various or
irregular ; yet he will instantly tell, with precision,
either if his snuff or his wine has not the same char-
acter it had yesterday, though both these are compounds.

' Beyond all this I may observe, that a draper who
is in the daily habit of such comparisons cannot carry
in his mind the particular shade of a colour during
a second of time ; and has no certainty of tolerably
matching two simple colours, except by placing the
patterns in contact.' 1

1 will conclude the subject of this Essay with observ-
ing that (as it appears to me) a-nearer and more familiar
acquaintance with persons has a different and more
favourable effect than that with places or things. The
latter improve (as an almost universal rule) by being
1 Essay on Consciousness, p. 303.

WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE 357

removed to a distance : the former, generally at least,
gain by being brought nearer and more home to us.
Report or imagination seldom raises any individual so
high in our estimation as to disappoint us greatly when
we are introduced to him : prejudice and malice con-
stantly exaggerate defects beyond the reality. Ignor-
ance alone makes monsters or bugbears : our actual
acquaintances are all very common-place people. The
thing is, that as a matter of hearsay or conjecture, we
make abstractions of particular vices, and irritate our-
selves against some particular quality or action of the
person we dislike : whereas individuals are concrete
existences, not arbitrary denominations or nicknames ;
and have innumerable other qualities, good, bad, and
indifferent, besides the damning feature with which we
fill up the portrait or caricature in our previous fancies.
We can scarcely hate any one that we know. An acute
observer complained, that if there was any one to whom
he had a particular spite, and a wish to let him see it,
the moment he came to sit down with him his enmity
was disarmed by some unforeseen circumstance. If it
was a Quarterly Reviewer, he was in other respects
like any other man. Suppose, again, your adversary
turns out a very ugly man, or wants an eye, you are
baulked in that way : he is not what you expected, the
object of your abstract hatred and implacable disgust
He may be a very disagreeable person, but he is no
longer the same. If you come into a room where a
man is, you find, in general, that he has a nose upon
his face. ' There's sympathy ! ' This alone is a diver-
sion to your unqualified contempt. He is stupid, and
says nothing, but he seems to have something in him
when he laughs. You had conceived of him as a rank
Whig or Tory — yet he talks upon other subjects. You
knew that he was a virulent party-writer ; but you find
that the man himself is a tame sort of animal enough.
He does not bite. That's something. In short, you
can make nothing of it Even opposite vices balance
one another. A man may be pert in company, but he
is also dull ; so that you cannot, though you try, hate

368 TABLE-TALK

him cordially, merely for the wish to be offensive. He
is a knave. Granted. You learn, on a nearer acquaint-
ance, what you did not know before — that he is a fool
as well ; so you forgive him. On the other hand, he
may be a profligate public character, and may make no
secret of it ; but he gives you a hearty shake by the
hand, speaks kindly to servants, and supports an aged
father and mother. Politics apart, he is a very honest
fellow. You are told that a person has carbuncles on
his face ; but you have ocular proofs that he is sallow,
and pale as a ghost. This does not much mend the
matter ; but it blunts the edge of the ridicule, and
turns your indignation against the inventor of the lie ;

but he is , the editor of a Scotch magazine ; so

you are just where you were. I am not very fond of
anonymous criticism ; I want to know who the author
can be : but the moment I learn this, I am satisfied.

Even would do well to come out of his disguise.

It is the mask only that we dread and hate : the man
may have something human about him ! The notions,
in short, which we entertain of people at a distance,
or from partial representations, or from guess-work,
are simple uncompounded ideas, which answer to
nothing in reality : those which we derive from experi-
ence are mixed modes, the only true, and, in general,
the most favourable ones. Instead of naked deformity,
or abstract perfection —

Those faultless monsters which the world ne'er saw—

( the web of our lives is of mingled yarn, good and ill
together : our virtues would be proud, if our faults
whipt them not ; and our vices would despair, if they
were not encouraged by our virtues.' This was truly
and finely said long ago, by one who knew the strong
and weak points of human nature ; but it is what sects,
and parties, and those philosophers whose pride and
boast it is to classify by nicknames, have yet to know
the meaning of !

ESSAY XXVII

ON CORPORATE BODIES

Corporate bodies have no soul.

CORPORATE bodies are more corrupt arid profligate than
individuals, because they have more power to do mis-
chief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment.
They feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor good-
will. The principle of private or natural conscience is
extinguished in each individual (we have no moral
sense in the breasts of others), and nothing is considered
but how the united efforts of the whole (released from
idle scruples) may be best directed to the obtaining of
political advantages and privileges to be shared as
common spoil. Each member reaps the benefit, and
lays the blame, if there is any, upon the rest. The
esprit de corps becomes the ruling passion of every
corporate body, compared with which the motives of
delicacy or decorum towards others are looked upon as
being both impertinent and improper. If any person
sets up a plea of this sort in opposition to the rest, he
is overruled, he gets ill-blood, and does no good : he
is regarded as an interloper, a black sfieep in the flock,
and is either sent to Coventry or obliged to acquiesce in
the notions and wishes of those he associates and is
expected to co-operate with. The refinements of
private judgment are referred to and negatived in a
committee of the whole body, while the projects and
interests of the Corporation meet with a secret but
powerful support in the self-love of the different

360 TABLE-TALK

members. Remonstrance, opposition, is fruitless,
troublesome, invidious ; it answers no one end ; and a
conformity to the sense of the company is found to be
no less necessary to a reputation for good-fellowship
than to a quiet life. Self-love and social here look
like the same ; and in consulting the interests of a
particular class, which are also your own, there is even
a show of public virtue. He who is a captious, im-
practicable, dissatisfied member of his little club or
coterie is immediately set down as a bad member of the
community in general, as no friend to regularity and
order, as t a pestilent fellow,' and one who is incapable
of sympathy, attachment, or cordial co-operation in
any department or undertaking. Thus the most
refractory novice in such matters becomes weaned from
his obligations to the larger society, which only breed
him inconvenience without any adequate recompense,
and wedded to a nearer and dearer one, where he finds
every kind of comfort and consolation. He contracts
the vague and unmeaning character of Man into the
more emphatic title of Freeman and Alderman. The
claims of an undefined humanity sit looser and looser
upon him, at the same time that he draws the bands of
his new engagements closer and tighter about him.
He loses sight, by degrees, of all common sense and
feeling in the petty squabbles, intrigues, feuds, and
airs of affected importance to which he has made him-
self an accessory. He is quite an altered man. f Really
the society were under considerable obligations to him
in that last business'; that is to say, in some paltry
job or underhand attempt to encroach upon the rights
or dictate to the understandings of the neighbourhood.
In the meantime they eat, drink, and carouse together.
They wash down all minor animosities and unavoidable
differences of opinion in pint bumpers ; and the com-
plaints of the multitude are lost in the clatter of plates
and the roaring of loyal catches at every quarter's
meeting or mayor's feast. The town-hall reels with an
unwieldy sense of self-importance ; ' the very stones
prate ' of processions ; the common pump creaks in

ON CORPORATE BODIES 361

concert with the uncorking of bottles and tapping of
beer-barrels : the market-cross looks big with authority.
Everything has an ambiguous, upstart, repulsive air.
Circle within circle is formed, an imperium in imperio :
and the business is to exclude from the first circle all
the notions, opinions, ideas, interests, and pretensions
of the second. Hence there arises not only an antipathy
to common sense and decency in those things where
there is a real opposition of interest or clashing of
prejudice, but it becomes a habit and a favourite
amusement in those who are ' dressed in a little brief
authority,' to thwart, annoy, insult, and harass others
on all occasions where the least opportunity or pretext
for it occurs. Spite, bickerings, back-biting, insinua-
tions, lies, jealousies, nicknames are the order of the
day, and nobody knows what it's all about. One would
think that the mayor, aldermen, and liverymen were a
higher and more select species of animals than their
townsmen ; though there is no difference whatever
but in their gowns and staff of office ! This is the
essence of the esprit de corps. It is certainly not a
very delectable source of contemplation or subject to
treat of.

Public bodies are so far worse than the individuals
composing them, because the official takes place of the
moral sense. The nerves that in themselves were soft
and pliable enough, and responded naturally to the
touch of pity, when fastened into a machine of that
sort become callous and rigid, and throw off every
extraneous application that can be made to them with
perfect apathy. An appeal is made to the ties of
individual friendship : the body in general know
nothing of them. A case has occurred which strongly
called forth the compassion of the person who was
witness of it ; but the body (or any special deputation
of them) were not present when it happened. These
little weaknesses and 'compunctious visitings of nature'
are effectually guarded against, indeed, by the very
rules and regulations of the society, as well as by its
spirit. The individual is the creature of his feelings of

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all sorts, the sport of his vices and his virtues— like the
fool in Shakespear, ' motley's his proper wear ' : — cor-
porate bodies are dressed in a moral uniform ; mixed
motives do not operate there, frailty is made into a
system, 'diseases are turned into commodities.' Only
so much of any one's natural or genuine impulses can
influence him in his artificial capacity as formally comes
home to the aggregate conscience of those with whom
he acts, or bears upon the interests (real or pretended),
the importance, respectability, and professed objects of
the society. Beyond that point the nerve is bound up,
the conscience is seared, and the torpedo-touch of so
much inert matter operates to deaden the best feelings
and harden the heart. Laughter and tears are said to
be the characteristic signs of humanity. Laughter is
common enough in such places as a set-off to the mock-
gravity ; but who ever saw a public body in tears ?
Nothing but a job or some knavery can keep them
serious for ten minutes together.1

Such are the qualifications and the apprenticeship
necessary to make a man tolerated, to enable him to
pass as a cypher, or be admitted as a mere numerical
unit, in any corporate body: to be a leader and dictator
he must be diplomatic in impertinence, and officious in
every dirty work. He must not merely conform to
established prejudices; he must flatter them. He
must not merely be insensible to the demands of
moderation and equity ; he must be loud against them.
He must not simply fall in with all sorts of contemp-
tible cabals and intrigues ; he must be indefatigable in
fomenting them, and setting everybody together by the
ears. He must not only repeat, but invent lies. He

i We sometimes see a whole playhouse in tears. But the audience
at a theatre, though a public assembly, are not a public body. They
are not incorporated into a framework of exclusive, narrow-minded
interests of their own. Each individual looks out of his own in-
significance at a scene, ideal perhaps, and foreign to himself, but
true to nature ; friends, strangers, meet on the common ground of
humanity, and the tears that spring from their breasts are those
which 'sacred pity has engendered.' They are a mixed multitude
melted into sympathy by remote, imaginary events, not a combination
cemented by petty views, and sordid, selfish prejudices.

ON CORPORATE BODIES 363

must make speeches and write handbills ; he must
be devoted to the wishes and objects of the society, its
creature, its jackal, its busybody, its mouthpiece, its
prompter ; he must deal in law cases, in demurrers,
in charters, in traditions, in common-places, in logic
and rhetoric — in everything but common sense and
honesty. He must (in Mr. Burke's phrase) 'disembowel
himself of his natural entrails, and be stuffed with
paltry, blurred sheets of parchment about the rights ' of
the privileged few. He must be a concentrated essence,
a varnished, powdered representative of the vices,
absurdities, hypocrisy, jealousy, pride, and pragmatical-
ness of his party. Such a one, by bustle and self-
importance and puffing, by flattering one to his face,
and abusing another behind his back, by lending him-
self to the weaknesses of some, and pampering the
mischievous propensities of others, will pass for a great
man in a little society.

Age does not improve the morality of public bodies.
They grow more and more tenacious of their idle privi-
leges and senseless self-consequence. They get weak
and obstinate at the same time. Those who belong to
them have all the upstart pride and pettifogging spirit
of their present character ingrafted on the venerable-
ness and superstitious sanctity of ancient institutions.
They are naturally at issue, first with their neighbours,
and next with their contemporaries, on all matters of
common propriety and judgment. They become more
attached to forms, the more obsolete they are ; and the
defence of every absurd and invidious distinction is a
debt which (by implication) they owe to the dead as
well as the living. What might once have been of
serious practical utility they turn to farce, by retaining
the letter when the spirit is gone : and they do this the
more, the more glaring the inconsistency and want of
sound reasoning ; for they think they thus give proof
of their zeal and attachment to the abstract principle
on which old establishments exist, the ground of pre-
scription and authority. The greater the wrong, the
greater the right, in all such cases. The esprit de corps

364 TABLE-TALK

does not take much merit to itself for upholding what
is justifiable in any system, or the proceedings of any
party, but for adhering to what is palpably injurious.
You may exact the first from an enemy : the last is the
province of a friend. It has been made a subject of
complaint, that the champions of the Church, for ex-
ample, who are advanced to dignities and honours, are
hardly ever those who defend the common principles
of Christianity, but those who volunteer to man the
out-works, and set up ingenious excuses for the ques-
tionable points, the ticklish places in the established
form of worship, that is, for those which are attacked
from without, and are supposed in danger of being
undermined by stratagem, or carried by assault !

The great resorts and seats of learning often outlive
in this way the intention of the founders as the world
outgrows them. They may be said to resemble anti-
quated coquettes of the last age, who think everything
ridiculous and intolerable but what was in fashion when
they were young, and yet are standing proofs of the
progress of taste and the vanity of human pretensions.
Our universities are, in a great measure, become cisterns
to hold, not conduits to disperse knowledge. The age
has the start of them ; that is, other sources of know-
ledge have been opened since their formation, to which
the world have had access, and have drunk plentifully
at those living fountains, but from which they are de-
barred by the tenor of their charter, and as a matter of
dignity and privilege. They have grown poor, like the
old grandees in some countries, by subsisting on the
inheritance of learning, while the people have grown
rich by trade. They are too much in the nature of
fixtures in intellect : they stop the way in the road to
truth ; or at any rate (for they do not themselves ad-
vance) they can only be of service as a check-weight on
the too hasty arid rapid career of innovation. All that
has been invented or thought in the last two hundred
years they take no cognizance of, or as little as possible ;
they are above it ; they stand upon the ancient land-
marks, and will not budge ; whatever was not known

ON CORPORATE BODIES 3G5

when they were first endowed, they are still in pro-
found and lofty ignorance of. Yet in that period how
much has been done in literature, arts, and science, of
which (with the exception of mathematical knowledge,
the hardest to gainsay or subject to the trammels of
prejudice and barbarous ipse dixits) scarce any trace is
to be found in the authentic modes of study and legiti-
mate inquiry which prevail at either of our Univer-
sities ! The unavoidable aim of all corporate bodies of
learning is not to grow wise, or teach others wisdom,
but to prevent any one else from being or seeming
wiser than themselves ; in other words, their infallible
tendency is in the end to suppress inquiry and darken
knowledge, by setting limits to the mind of man, and
saying to his proud spirit, Hitherto shaft thou come, and
no farther ! It would not be an unedifying experiment
to make a collection of the titles of works published in
the course of the year by Members of the Universities.
If any attempt is to be made to patch up an idle system
in policy or legislation, or church government, it is by
a Member of the University : if any hashed-up specula-
tion on an old exploded argument is to be brought
forward ' in spite of shame, in erring reason's spite,' it
is by a Member of the University: if a paltry project
is ushered into the world for combining ancient pre-
judices with modern time-serving, it is by a Member
of the University. Thus we get at a stated supply of
the annual Defences of the Sinking Fund, Thoughts on
the Evils of Education, Treatises on Predestination,
and Eulogies on Mr. Malthus, all from the same source,
and through the same vent. If they came from any
other quarter nobody would look at them ; but they
have an Imprimatur 'from dulness and authority : we
know that there is no offence in them ; and they are
stuck in the shop windows, and read (in the intervals
of Lord Byron's works, or the Scotch novels) in cathe-
dral towns and close boroughs !

It is, I understand and believe, pretty much the same
in more modern institutions for the encouragement of
the Fine Arts. The end is lost in the means : rules

366 TABLE-TALK

take place of nature and genius ; cabal and bustle, and
struggles for rank and precedence, supersede the study
and the love of art. A Royal Academy is a kind of
hospital and infirmary for the obliquities of taste and
ingenuity — a receptacle where enthusiasm and origin-
ality stop and stagnate, and spread their influence no
farther, instead of being a school founded for genius,
or a temple built to fame. The generality of those
who wriggle, or fawn, or beg their way to a seat there,
live on their certificate of merit to a good old age, and
are seldom heard of afterwards. If a man of sterling
capacity gets among them, and minds his own business,
he is nobody ; he makes no figure in council, in voting,
in resolutions or speeches. If he comes forward with
plans and views for the good of the Academy and the
advancement of art, he is immediately set upon as a
visionary, a fanatic, with notions hostile to the interest
and credit of the existing members of the society. If
he directs the ambition of the scholars to the study of
History, this strikes at once at the emoluments of the
profession, who are most of them (by God's will) por-
trait painters. If he eulogises the Antique, and speaks
highly of the Old Masters, he is supposed to be actuated
by envy to living painters and native talent. If, again,
he insists on a knowledge of anatomy as essential to
correct drawing, this would seem to imply a want of it
in our most eminent designers. Every plan, suggestion,
argument, that has the general purposes and principles
of art for its object, is thwarted, scouted, ridiculed,
slandered, as having a malignant aspect towards the
profits and pretensions of the great mass of flourishing
and respectable artists in the country. This leads to
irritation and ill-will on all sides. The obstinacy of
the constituted authorities keeps pace with the violence
and extravagance opposed to it ; and they lay all the
blame on the folly and mistakes they have themselves
occasioned or increased. It is considered as a personal
quarrel, not a public question ; by which means the
dignity of the body is implicated in resenting the slips
and inadvertencies of its members, not in promoting

ON CORPORATE BODIES 367

their common and declared objects. In this sort of

wretched tracasserie the Barrys and H s stand no

chance with the Catons, the Tubbs, and F s. Sit

Joshua even was obliged to hold himself aloof from
them, and Fuseli passes as a kind of nondescript, or
one of his own grotesques. The air of an academy, in
short, is not the air of genius and immortality ; it is
too close and heated, and impregnated with the notions
of the common sort A man steeped in a corrupt
atmosphere of this description is no longer open to the
genial impulses of nature and truth, nor sees visions of
ideal beauty, nor dreams of antique grace and grandeur,
nor has the finest works of art continually hovering and
floating through his uplifted fancy ; but the images
that haunt it are rules of the academy, charters, in-
augural speeches, resolutions passed or rescinded, cards
of invitation to a council-meeting, or the annual dinner,
prize medals, and the king's diploma, constituting him
a gentleman and esquire. He ' wipes out all trivial,
fond records ' ; all romantic aspirations ; ' the Raphael
grace, the Guido air' ; and the commands of the
academy alone ' must live within the book and volume
of his brain, unmixed with baser matter.' It may be
doubted whether any work of lasting reputation and
universal interest can spring up in this soil, or ever
has done in that of any academy. The last question
is a matter of fact and history, not of mere opinion or
prejudice ; and may be ascertained as such accordingly.
The mighty names of former times rose before the ex-
istence of academies ; and the three greatest painters,
undoubtedly, that this country has produced, Rey-
nolds, Wilson, and Hogarth, were not ' dandled and
swaddled ' into artists in any institution for the fine
arts. I do not apprehend that the names of Chantrey
or Wilkie (great as one, and considerable as the other of
them is) can be made use of in any way to impugn the
jet of this argument. We may find a considerable im-
provement in some of our artists, when they get out of
the vortex for a time. Sir Thomas Lawrence is all the
better for having been abstracted for a year or two from

368 TABLE-TALK

Somerset House ; and Mr. Dawe, they say, has been
doing wonders in the North. When will he return,
and once more ' bid Britannia rival Greece ' ?

Mr. Canning somewhere lays it down as a rule, that
corporate bodies are necessarily correct and pure in
their conduct, from the knowledge which the indi-
viduals composing them have of one another, and the
jealous vigilance they exercise over each other's motives
and characters ; whereas people collected into mobs are
disorderly and unprincipled from being utterly un-
known and unaccountable to each other. This is a
curious pass of wit. I differ with him in both parts
of the dilemma. To begin with the first, and to
handle it somewhat cavalierly, according to the model
before us ; we know, for instance, there is said to be
honour among thieves, but very little honesty towards
others. Their honour consists in the division of the
booty, not in the mode of acquiring it : they do not
(often) betray one another, but they will waylay a
stranger, or knock out a traveller's brains : they may
be depended on in giving the alarm when any of their
posts are in danger of being surprised ; and they will
stand together for their ill-gotten gains to the last
drop of their blood. Yet they form a distinct society,
and are strictly responsible for their behaviour to one
another and to their leader. They are not a mob, but
a gang, completely in one another's power and secrets.
Their familiarity, however, with the proceedings of
the corps does not lead them to expect or to exact from
it a very high standard of moral honesty ; that is out
of the question ; but they are sure to gain the good
opinion of their fellows by committing all sorts of
depredations, fraud, and violence against the com-
munity at large. So (not to speak it profanely) some
of Mr. Croker's friends may be very respectable people
in their way — 'all honourable men' — but their respect-
ability is confined within party limits ; every one does
not sympathise in the integrity of their views ; the
understanding between them and the public is not
well defined or reciprocal. Or, suppose a gang

ON CORPORATE BODIES 369

of pickpockets hustle a passenger in the street,
and the mob set upon them, and proceed to
execute summary justice upon such as they can
lay hands on, am I to conclude that the rogues
are in the right, because theirs is a system of
well -organised knavery, which they settled in the
morning, with their eyes one upon the other, and
which they regularly review at night, with a due
estimate of each other's motives, character, and con-
duct in the business ; and that the honest men are in
the wrong, because they are a casual collection of un-
prejudiced, disinterested individuals, taken at a venture
from the mass of the people, acting without concert
or responsibility, on the spur of the occasion, and
giving way to their instantaneous impulses and honest
anger ? Mobs, in fact, then, are almost always right
in their feelings, and often in their judgments, on this
very account — that being utterly unknown to and
disconnected with each other, they have no point of
union or principle of co-operation between them, but
the natural sense of justice recognised by all persons
in common. They appeal, at the first meeting, not
to certain symbols and watchwords privately agreed
upon, like Freemasons, but to the maxims and instincts
proper to all the world. They have no other clue to
guide them to their object but either the dictates of
the heart or the universally understood sentiments of
society, neither of which are likely to be in the wrong.
The flame which bursts out and blazes from popular
sympathy is made of honest but homely materials. It
is not kindled by sparks of wit or sophistry, nor
damped by the cold calculations of self-interest. The
multitude may be wantonly set on by others, as is too
often the case, or be carried too far in the impulse of
rage and disappointment ; but their resentment, when
they are left to themselves, is almost uniformly, in
the first instance, excited by some evident abuse and
wrong ; and the excesses into which they run arise
from that very want of foresight and regular system
which is a pledge of the uprightness and heartiness
2 B

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of their intentions. In short, the only class of persons
to whom the above courtly charge of sinister and
corrupt motives is not applicable is that body of
individuals which usually goes by the name of the
People!

ESSAY XXVIII

WHETHER ACTORS OUGHT TO SIT IN THE BOXES?

I THINK not ; and that for the following reasons, as
well as I can give them : —

Actors belong to the public : their persons are not
their own property. They exhibit themselves on the
stage : that is enough, without displaying themselves
in the boxes of the theatre. I conceive that an actor,
on account of the very circumstances of his profession,
ought to keep himself as much incognito as possible.
He plays a number of parts disguised, transformed
into them as much as he can 'by his so potent art/
and he should not disturb this borrowed impression
by unmasking before company more than he can help.
Let him go into the pit, if he pleases, to see — not into
the first circle, to be seen. He is seen enough without
that : he is the centre of an illusion that he is bound
to support, both, as it appears to me, by a certain self-
respect which should repel idle curiosity, and by a
certain deference to the public, in whom he has in-
spired certain prejudices which he is covenanted not
to break. He represents the majesty of successive
kings ; he takes the responsibility of heroes and lovers
on himself; the mantle of genius and nature falls on
his shoulders ; we ' pile millions ' of associations on
him, under which he should be 'buried quick,' and
not perk out an inauspicious face upon us, with a
plain-cut coat, to say, f What fools you all were ! — I
am not Hamlet the Dane ! '

It is very well and in strict propriety for Mr.

372 TABLE-TALK

Mathews, in his AT HOME, after he has been imitating
his inimitable Scotchwoman, to slip out as quick as
lightning, and appear in the side-box shaking hands
with our old friend Jack Bannister. It adds to our
surprise at the versatility of his changes of place and
appearance, and he had been before us in his own
person during a great part of the evening. There was
no harm done — no imaginary spell broken — no dis-
continuity of thought or sentiment. Mr. Mathews is
himself (without offence be it spoken) both a cleverer
and more respectable man than many of the characters
he represents. Not so when

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

A different feeling then prevails: — close, close the
scene upon them, and never break that fine phantas-
magoria of the brain. Or if it must be done at all,
let us choose some other time and place for it : let
no one wantonly dash the Circean cup from our lips,
or dissolve the spirit of enchantment in the very palace

of enchantment. Go, Mr. , and sit somewhere

else ! What a thing it is, for instance, for any part of
an actor's dress to come off unexpectedly while he is
playing ! What a cut it is upon himself and the audi-
ence ! What an effort he has to recover himself, and
struggle through this exposure of the naked truth !
It has been considered as one of the triumphs 6?\
Garrick's tragic power, that once, when he was playing )
Lear, his crown of straw came off, and nobody laughed/
or took the least notice, so much had he identified f
himself with the character. Was he, after this, to pay
so little respect to the feelings he had inspired, as to
tear off his tattered robes, and take the old crazed-
king with him to play the fool in the boxes ?

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

ACTORS IN THE BOXES 373

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

An actor, after having performed his part well,
instead of courting farther distinction, should affect
obscurity, and ' steal most guilty-like away,' conscious
of admiration that he can support nowhere but in his
proper sphere, and jealous of his own and others' good
opinion of him, in proportion as he is a darling in the
public eye. He cannot avoid attracting dispropor-
tionate attention : why should he wish to fix it on
himself in a perfectly flat and insignificant part, viz.
his own character? It was a bad custom to bring
authors on the stage to crown them. Omne Ignotum
pro magnifico est. Even professed critics, I think,
should be shy of putting1 themselves forward to applaud
loudly : any one in a crowd has ' a voice potential ' as
the press : it is either committing their pretensions A
little indiscreetly, or confirming their own judgment
by a clapping of hands. If you only go and give the-
cue lustily, the house seems in wonderful accord with
your opinions. An actor, like a king, should only
appear on state occasions. He loses popularity by
too much publicity; or, according to the proverb,
familiarity breeds contempt. Both characters personate
a certain abstract idea, are seen in a fictitious costume,
and when they have ' shuffled off this more than mortal
coil,' they had better keep out of the way — the acts

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and sentiments emanating from themselves will not
carry on the illusion of our prepossessions. Ordinary
transactions do not give scope to grace and dignity
like romantic situations or prepared pageants, and the
little is apt to prevail over the great, if we come to
count the instances.

The motto of a great actor should be aut Ccesar aut
nihil. 1 do not see how with his crown, or plume of
feathers, he can get through those little box-doors
without stooping and squeezing his artificial import-
ance to tatters. The entrance of the stage is arched
so high ' that players may get through, and keep their
gorgeous turbans on, without good -morrow to the
gods !'

The top -tragedian of the day has too large and
splendid a train following him to have room for them
in one of the dress-boxes. When he appears there, it
should be enlarged expressly for the occasion ; for at
his heels march the figures, in full costume,, of Cato,
and Brutus, and Cassius, and of him with the falcon
eye, and Othello, and Lear, and crook-backed Richard,
and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, and numbers more,
and demand entrance along with him, shadows to
which he alone lends bodily substance ! ' The graves
yawn and render up their dead to push us from our
stools.' There is a mighty bustle at the door, a
gibbering and squeaking in the lobbies. An actor's
retinue is imperial, it presses upon the imagination
too much, and he should therefore slide unnoticed
into the pit. Authors, who are in a manner his
makers and masters, sit there contented — why should
not he? { He is used to show himself.' That, then, is
the very reason he should conceal his person at other
times. A habit of ostentation should not be reduced
to a principle. If I had seen the late Gentleman Lewis
fluttering in a prominent situation in the boxes, I
should have been puzzled whether to think of him as
the Copper Captain, or as Bobadil, or Ranger, or
Young Rapid, or Lord Foppington, or fifty other
whimsical characters ; then J should have got Munden

ACTORS IN THE BOXES 376

and Quick and a parcel more of them in my head,
till 'my brain would have been like a smoke-jack':
I should not have known what to make of it ; but if
I had seen him in the pit, I should merely have eyed
him with respectful curiosity, and have told every one
that that was Gentleman Lewis. We should have con-
cluded from the circumstance that he was a modest,
sensible man : we all knew beforehand that he could
show off whenever he pleased !

There is one class of performers that I think is quite
exempt from the foregoing reasoning, I mean retired
actors. Come when they will and where they will,
they are welcome to their old friends. They have as
good a right to sit in the boxes as children at the
holidays. But they do not, somehow, come often. It
is but a melancholy recollection with them : —

Then sweet,
Now sad to think on !

Mrs. Garrick still goes often, and hears the applause of
her husband over again in the shouts of the pit Had
Mrs. Pritchard or Mrs. Clive been living, I am afraid
we should have seen little of them — it would have been
too home a feeling with them. Mrs. Siddons seldom if
ever goes, and yet she is almost the only thing left
worth seeing there. She need not stay away on
account of any theory that I can form. She is out
of the pale of all theories, and annihilates all rules.
Wherever she sits there is grace and grandeur, there
is tragedy personified. Her seat is the undivided
throne of the Tragic Muse. She had no need of the
robes, the sweeping train, the ornaments of the stage ;
in herself she is as great as any being she ever repre-
sented in the ripeness and plenitude of her power !
I should not, I confess, have had the same paramount
abstracted feeling at seeing John Kemble there, whom
I venerate at a distance, and should not have known
whether he was playing off the great man or the great

actor : —

A little more than kin, and less than kind.

376 TABLE-TALK

I know it may be said in answer to all this pretext of
keeping the character of the player inviolate, ' What
is there more common, in fact, than for the hero of a
tragedy to speak the prologue, or than for the heroine,
who has been stabbed or poisoned, to revive, and come
forward laughing in the epilogue?' As to the epi-
logue, it is spoken to get rid of the idea of the tragedy
altogether, and to ward off the fury of the pit, who
may be bent on its damnation. The greatest incon-
gruity you can hit upon is, therefore, the most proper
for this purpose. But 1 deny that the hero of a
tragedy, or the principal character in it, is ever
pitched upon to deliver the prologue. It is always,
by prescription, some walking shadow, some poor
player, who cannot even spoil a part of any conse-
quence. Is there not Mr. Claremont always at hand
for this purpose, whom the late king pronounced three
times to be ' a bad actor' P1 What is there in common
between that accustomed wave of the hand and the
cocked hat under the arm, and any passion or person
that can be brought forward on the stage ? It is not
that we can be said to acquire a prejudice against so
harmless an actor as Mr. Claremont :^wejire born ^ with
a prejudice against a speaker of prologues. It is an
innate idea : a natural instinct : there is a particular
organ in the brain provided for it. Do we not all hate
a manager ? It is not because he is insolent or imper-
tinent, or fond of making ridiculous speeches, or a
notorious puffer, or ignorant, or mean, or vain, but it is
because we see him in a coat, waistcoat, and breeches.
The stage is the world of fantasy : it is Queen Mab

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

ACTORS IN THE BOXES 377

that has invited us to her revels there, and all that
have to do with it should wear motley !

Lastly, there are some actors by profession whose
faces we like to see in the boxes or anywhere else ;
but it is because they are no actors, but rather gentle-
men and scholars, and in their proper places in the
boxes, or wherever they are. Does not an actor him-
self, I would ask, feel conscious and awkward in the
boxes if he thinks that he is known ? And does lie not
sit there in spite of this uneasy feeling-, and run the
gauntlet of impertinent looks and whispers, only to
get a little by-admiration, as he thinks ? It is hardly
to be supposed that he comes to see the play — the
show. He must have enough of plays and finery.
But he wants to see a favourite (perhaps a rival) actor
in a striking part. Then the place for him to do this
is the pit. Painters, I know, always get as close up to
a picture they want to copy as they can ; and I should
imagine actors would want to do the same, in order
to look into the texture and mechanism of their art.
Even theatrical critics can make nothing of a part that
•they see from the boxes. If you sit in the stage-box,
your attention is drawn off by the company and other
circumstances. If you get to a distance (so as to be
out of the reach of notice) you can neither hear nor
see well. For myself, I would as soon take a seat on
the top of the Monument to give an account of a first
appearance, as go into the second or third tier of boxes
to do it. I went, but the other day, with a box-ticket
to see Miss Fanny Brunton come out in Juliet, and
Mr. Macready make a first appearance in Romeo ; and
though I was told (by a tolerable judge) that the new
Juliet was the most elegant figure on the stage, and
that Mr. Macready's Romeo was quite beautiful, I vow
to God I knew nothing of it. So little could I tell ol
the matter that at one time I mistook Mr. Horrebow
for Mr. Abbott. I have seen Mr. Kean play Sir Giles
Overreach one night from the front of the pit, and a
few nights after from the front boxes facing the stage.
It was another thing altogether. That which had

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been so lately nothing but flesh and blood, a living
fibre, ' instinct with fire' and spirit, was no better
than a little fantoccini figure, darting backwards and
forwards on the stage, starting, screaming, and play-
ing a number of fantastic tricks before the audience.
I could account, in the latter instance, for the little
approbation of the performance manifested around me,
and also for the general scepticism with respect to
Mr. Kean's acting, which has been said to prevail
among those who cannot condescend to go into the
pit, and have not interest in the orchestra — to see him
act. They may, then, stay away altogether. His face
is the running comment on his acting, which recon-
ciles the audience to it. Without that index to his
mind, you are not prepared for the vehemence and
suddenness of his gestures ; his pauses are long,
abrupt, and unaccountable, if not filled up by the
expression ; it is in the working of his face that you
see the writhing and coiling up of the passions before
they make their serpent-spring ; the lightning of his
eye precedes the hoarse burst of thunder from his
voice.

One may go into the boxes, indeed, and criticise
acting and actors with Sterne's stop-watch, but not
otherwise — '"And between the nominative case and
the verb (which, as your lordship knows, should agree
together in number, person, etc.) there was a full
pause of a second and two-thirds." — "But was the eye
silent — did the look say nothing?" "I looked only
at the stop-watch, my lord." — "Excellent critic!"'
— If any other actor, indeed, goes to see Mr. Kean
act, with a view to avoid imitation, this may be the
place, or rather it is the way to run into it, for you
see only his extravagances and defects, which are the
most easily carried away. Mr. Mathews may translate
him into an AT HOME even from the slips! — Dis-
tinguished actors, then, ought, I conceive, to set the
example of going into the pit, were it only for their
own sakes. I remember a trifling circumstance, which
I worked up at the time into a confirmation of this

ACTORS IN THE BOXES 379

theory of mine, engrafted on old prejudice and tradi-
tion.1 I had got into the middle of the pit, at
considerable risk of broken bones, to see Mr. Kean in
one of his early parts, when I perceived two young
men seated a little behind me, with a certain space left
round them. They were dressed in the height of the
fashion, in light drab-coloured greatcoats, and with
their shirt-sleeves drawn down over their hands, at a
time when this was not so common as it has since
become. I took them for younger sons of some old
family at least. One of them, that was very good-
looking, I thought might be Lord Byron, and his
companion might be Mr. Hobhouse. They seemed to
have wandered from another sphere of this our planet
to witness a masterly performance to the utmost
advantage. This stamped the thing. They were,
undoubtedly, young men of rank and fashion ; but
their taste was greater than their regard for appear-
ances. The pit was, after all, the true resort of
thoroughbred critics and amateurs. When there was
anything worth seeing, this was the place ; and I
began to feel a sort of reflected importance in the
consciousness that I also was a critic. Nobody sat
near them — it would have seemed like an intrusion.
Not a syllable was uttered. — They were two clerks in
the Victualling Office !

What I would insist on, then, is this — that for Mr.
Kean, or Mr. Young, or Mr. Macready, or any of
those that are 'cried out upon in the top of the
compass ' to obtrude themselves voluntarily or ostenta-
tiously upon our notice, when they are out of character,
is a solecism in theatricals. For them to thrust them-
selves forward before the scenes, is to drag us behind
them against our will, than which nothing can be more
fatal to a true passion for the stage, and which is
a privilege that should be kept sacred for impertinent
curiosity. Oh ! while I live, let me not be admitted

i The trunk-maker, I grant, in the Spectator's time, sat in the two-
shilling gallery. But that was in the Spectator'* time, aud not in the
days of Mr. Smirke and Mr. Wyatt.

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(under special favour) to an actor's dressing-room.
Let me not see how Cato painted, or how Caesar
combed ! Let me not meet the prompt-boys in the
passage, nor see the half-lighted candles stuck agai»st
the bare walls, nor hear the creaking of machines, or
the fiddlers laughing ; nor see a Columbine practising
a pirouette in sober sadness, nor Mr. Grimaldi's face
drop from mirth to sudden melancholy as he passes the
side-scene, as if a shadow crossed it, nor witness the
long-chinned generation of the pantomime sit twirling
their thumbs, nor overlook the fellow who holds the
candle for the moon in the scene between Lorenzo and
Jessica ! Spare me this insight into secrets 1 am not
bound to know. The stage is not a mistress that we
are sworn to undress. Why should we look behind
the glass of fashion ? Why should we prick the
bubble that reflects the world, and turn it to a little
soap and water ? Trust a little to first appearances —
leave something to fancy. I observe that the great
puppets of the real stage, who themselves play a grand
part, like to get into the boxes over the stage ; where
they see nothing from the proper point of view, but
peep and pry into what is going on like a magpie
looking into a marrow-bone. This is just like them.
So they look down upon human life, of which they are
ignorant. They see the exits and entrances of the
players, something that they suspect is meant to be
kept from them (for they think they are always
liable to be imposed upon) : the petty pageant of an
hour ends with each scene long before the catastrophe,
and the tragedy of life is turned to farce under their
eyes. These people laugh loud at a pantomime, and
are delighted with clowns and pantaloons. They pay
no attention to anything else. The stage-boxes exist
in contempt of the stage and common sense. The
private boxes, on the contrary, should be reserved as
the receptacle for the officers of state and great
diplomatic characters, who wish to avoid, rather than
court popular notice !

ESSAY XXIX

ON THE DISADVANTAGES OP INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY

THE chief disadvantage of knowing more and seeing
farther than others, is not to be generally understood.
A man is, in consequence of this, liable to start
paradoxes, which immediately transport him beyond
the reach of the common-place reader. A person
speaking once in a slighting manner of a very original-
minded man, received for answer, 'He strides on so
far before you that he dwindles in the distance ! "

Petrarch complains that 'Nature had made him
different from other people' — singular d' altri genti.
The great happiness of life is, to be neither better nor
worse than the general run of those you meet with.
If you are beneath them, you are trampled upon ; if
you are above them, you soon find a mortifying level
in their difference to what you particularly pique your-
self upon. What is the use of being moral in a night-
cellar, or wise in Bedlam? 'To be honest, as this
world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten
thousand.' So says Shakespear ; and the commen-
tators have not added that, under these circumstances,
a man is more likely to become the butt of slander
than the mark of admiration for being so. 'How
now, thou particular fellow ? ' * is the common answer
to all such out-of-the-way pretensions. By not
doing as those at Rome do, we cut ourselves off from
good-fellowship and society. We speak another

i Jack Cade's salutation to one who tries to recommend himself
by saying he can write and read.— See Henry VI. Part Second.

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language, have notions of our own, and are treated as
of a different species. Nothing can be more awkward
than to intrude with any such far-fetched ideas among
the common herd, who will be sure to

Stand all astonied, like a sort of steers,
'Mongst whom some beast of strange and foreign race
Unwares is chanced, far straying from his peers :
So will their ghastly gaze betray their hidden fears.

Ignorance of another's meaning is a sufficient cause
of fear, and fear produces hatred : hence the suspicion
and rancour entertained against all those who set up
for greater refinement and wisdom than their neigh-
bours. It is in vain to think of softening down this
spirit of hostility by simplicity of manners, or by con-
descending to persons of low estate. The more you
condescend, the more they will presume upon it ; they
will fear you less, but hate you more ; and will be the
more determined to take their revenge on you for a
superiority as to which they are entirely in the dark,
and of which you yourself seem to entertain consider-
able doubt. All the humility in the world will only
pass for weakness and folly. They have no notion of
such a thing. They always put their best foot forward ;
and argue that you would do the same if you had any
such wonderful talents as people say. You had better,
therefore, play off the great man at once — hector,
swagger, talk big, and ride the high horse over them :
you may by this means extort outward respect or com-
mon civility ; but you will get nothing (with low people)
by forbearance and good -nature but open insult or
silent contempt. Coleridge always talks to people
about what they don't understand : I, for one, endea-
vour to talk to them about what they do understand,
and find I only get the more ill-will by it. They con-
ceive I do not think them capable of anything better ;
that I do not think it worth while, as the vulgar saying
is, to throw a word to a dog. I once complained -of this
to Coleridge, thinking it hard I should be sent to
Coventry for not making a prodigious display. He
said : ' As you assume a certain character, you ought

ON INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY 383

to produce your credentials. It is a tax upon people's
good -nature to admit superiority of any kind, even
where there is the most evident proof of it ; but it is
too hard a task for the imagination to admit it without
any apparent ground at all.

There is not a greater error than to suppose that
you avoid the envy, malice, and uncharitableness, so
common in the world, by going among people without
pretensions. There are no people who have no pre-
tensions ; or the fewer their pretensions, the less they
can afford to acknowledge yours without some sort of
value received. The more information individuals
possess, or the more they have refined upon any sub-
ject, the more readily can they conceive and admit the
same kind of superiority to themselves that they feel
over others. But from the low, dull, level sink of
ignorance and vulgarity, no idea or love of excellence
can arise. You think you are doing mighty well with
them ; that you are laying aside the buckram of pedan-
try and pretence, and getting the character of a plain,
unassuming, good sort of fellow. It will not do. All
the while that you are making these familiar advances,
and wanting to be at your ease, they are trying to re-
cover the wind of you. You may forget that you are
an author, an artist, or what not — they do not forget
that they are nothing, nor bate one jot of their desire
to prove you in the same predicament They take
hold of some circumstance in your dress ; your manner
of entering a room is different from that of other
people ; you do not eat vegetables — that's odd ; you
have a particular phrase, which they repeat, and this
becomes a sort of standing joke ; you look grave, or
ill ; you talk, or are more silent than usual ; you are
in or out of pocket : all these petty, inconsiderable
circumstances, in which you resemble, or are unlike
other people, form so many counts in the indictment
which is going on in their imaginations against you,
and are so many contradictions in your character. In
any one else they would pass unnoticed, but in a person
of whom they had heard so much they cannot make

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them out at all. Meanwhile, those things in which
you may really excel go for nothing, because they
cannot judge of them. They speak highly of some
book which you do not like, and therefore you make
no answer. You recommend them to go and see some
picture in which they do not find much to admire.
How are you to convince them that you are right?
Can you make them perceive that the fault is in them,
and not in the picture, unless you could give them your
knowledge? They hardly distinguish the difference
between a Correggio and a common daub. Does this
bring you any nearer to an understanding ? The more
you know of the difference, the more deeply you feel
it, or the more earnestly you wish to convey it, the
farther do you find yourself removed to an immeasur-
able distance from the possibility of making them enter
into views and feelings of which they have not even
the first rudiments. You cannot make them see with
your eyes, and they must judge for themselves.

Intellectual is not like bodily strength. You have
no hold of the understanding of others but by their
sympathy. Your knowing, in fact, so much more
about a subject does not give you a superiority, that
is, a power over them, but only renders it the more
impossible for you to make the least impression on
them. Is it, then, an advantage to you ? It may be,
as it relates to your own private satisfaction, but it
places a greater gulf between you and society. It
throws stumbling-blocks in your way at every turn.
All that you take most pride and pleasure in is lost
upon the vulgar eye. What they are pleased with is
a matter of indifference or of distaste to you. In see-
ing a number of persons turn over a portfolio of prints
from different masters, what a trial it is to the patience,
how it jars the nerves to hear them fall into raptures
at some common-place flimsy thing, and pass over some
divine expression of countenance without notice, or
with a remark that it is very singular-looking ? How
useless it is in such cases to fret or argue, or remon-
strate ? Is it not quite as well to be without all this

ON INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY 385

hypercritical, fastidious knowledge, and to be pleased
or displeased as it happens, or struck with the first
fault or beauty that is pointed out by others ? I would
be glad almost to change my acquaintance with pictures,
with books, and, certainly, what 1 know of mankind,
for anybody's ignorance of them !

It is recorded in the life of some worthy (whose
name I forget) that he was one of those ' who loved
hospitality and respect': and I profess to belong to
tin? same classification of mankind. Civility is with
me a jewel. I like a little comfortable cheer, and
careless, indolent chat I hate to be always wise, or
aiming at wisdom. I have enough to do with literary
cabals, questions, critics, actors, essay-writing, without
taking them out with me for recreation, and into all
companies. I wish at these times to pass for a good-
humoured fellow ; and good-will is all I ask in return
to make good company. I do not desire to be always
posing myself or others with the questions of fate,
free-will, foreknowledge absolute, etc. I must unbend
sometimes. I must occasionally lie fallow. The kind
of conversation that I affect most is what sort of a day
it is, and whether it is likely to rain or hold up fine
for to-morrow. This I consider as enjoying the otium
cum dignitate, as the end and privilege of a life of study.
I would resign myself to this state of easy indifference,
but I find I cannot. I must maintain a certain pre-
tension, which is far enough from my wish. I must
be put on my defence, 1 must take up the gauntlet
continually, or I find 1 lose ground. 'I am nothing,
if not critical.' While I am thinking what o'clock it
is, or how I came to blunder in quoting a well-known
passage, as if I had done it on purpose, others are
thinking whether I am not really as dull a fellow as
I am sometimes said to be. If a drizzling shower
'patters against the windows, it puts me in mind of a
mild spring rain, from which I retired twenty years
a#o, into a little public-house near Wem in Shropshire,
and while 1 saw the plants and shrubs before the door
imbibe the dewy moisture, quaffed a glass of sparkling
2c

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ale, and walked home in the dusk of evening, brighter
to me than noonday suns at present are ! Would I
indulge this feeling? In vain. They ask me what
news there is, and stare if I say I don't know. If a
new actress has come out, why must I have seen her ?
If a new novel has appeared, why must I have read it?
I, at one time, used to go and take a hand at cribhage
with a friend, and afterwards discuss a cold sirloin of
beef, and throw out a few lackadaisical remarks, in
a way to please myself, but it would not do long. I
set up little pretension, and therefore the little that
I did set up was taken from me. As I said nothing on
that subject myself, it was continually thrown in my
teeth that I was an author. From having me at this
disadvantage, my friend wanted to peg on a hole or
two in the game, and was displeased if I would not let
him. If I won off him, it was hard he should be beat
by an author. If he won, it would be strange if he did
not understand the game better than I did. If I men-
tioned my favourite game of rackets, there was a general
silence, as if this was my weak point. If I complained
of being ill, it was asked why 1 made myself so. If
I said such an actor had played a part well, the answer
was, there was a different account in one of the news-
papers. If any allusion was made to men of letters,
there was a suppressed smile. , If I told a humorous
story, it was difficult to say whether the laugh was at
me or at the narrative. The wife hated me for my
ugly face ; the servants, because 1 could not always get
them tickets for the play, and because they could riot
tell exactly what an author meant. If a paragraph
appeared against anything I had written, I found it
was ready there before me, and I was to undergo a
regular roasting. I submitted to all this till I was
tired, and then I gave it up.

One of the miseries of intellectual pretensions is,
that nine-tenths of those you come in contact with do
not know whether you are an impostor or not. I
dread that certain anonymous criticisms should got
into the hands of servants where 1 go, or that my hatter

ON INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY 387

or shoemaker should happen to read them, who cannot
possibly tell whether they are well or ill founded.
The ignorance of the world leaves one at the rnercy
of its malice. There are people whose good opinion or
good-will you want, setting aside all literary preten-
sions ; and it is hard to lose by an ill report (which you
have no means of rectifying) what you cannot gain by
a good one. After a diatribe in the Quarterly (which is
taken in by a gentleman who occupies my old apart-
ments on the first floor), my landlord brings me up his
bill (of some standing), and on my offering to give him
so much in money and a note of hand for the rest,
shakes his head, and says he is afraid he could make
no use of it. Soon after, the daughter comes in, and,
on my mentioning the circumstance carelessly to her,
replies gravely, 'that indeed her father has been
almost ruined by bills.' This is the unkindest cut of all.
It is in vain for me to endeavour to explain that the
publication in which I am abused is a mere government
engine — an organ of a political faction. They know
nothing about that. They only know such and such
imputations are thrown out ; and the more I try to
remove them, the more they think there is some truth
in them. Perhaps the people of the house are strong
Tories — government agents of some sort. Is it for me
to enlighten their ignorance? If I say, I once wrote a
thing called Prince Maurice's Parrot, and an Essay on
the Reyal Character, in the former of which allusion
is made to a noble marquis, and in the latter to a great
personage (so at least, I am told, it has been construed),
and that Mr. Croker has peremptory instructions to
retaliate, they cannot conceive what connection there
can be between me and such distinguished characters.
I can get no farther. Such is the misery of pretensions
beyond your situation, and which are not backed by
any external symbols of wealth or rank, intelligible to
all mankind !

The impertinence of admiration is scarcely more
tolerable than the demonstrations of contempt. I have
known a person whom 1 had never seen before besiege

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me all dinner-time with asking what articles I had
written in the Edinburgh Review! 1 was at last ashamed
to answer to my splendid sins in that way. Others
will pick out something not yours, and say they are
sure no one else could write it. By the first sentence
they can always tell your style. Now I hate my style
to be known, as I hate all idiosyncrasy. These obsequi-
ous flatterers could not pay me a worse compliment.
Then there are those who make a point of reading
everything you write (which is fulsome) ; while others,
more provoking, regularly lend your works to a friend
as soon as they receive them. They pretty well know
your notions on the different subjects, from having
heard you talk about them. Besides, they have a
greater value for your personal character than they
have for your writings. You explain things better in
a common way, when you are not aiming at effect.
Others tell you of the faults they have heard found
with your last book, and that they defend your style
in general from a charge of obscurity. A friend once
told me of a quarrel he had had with a near relation,
who denied that I knew how to spell the commonest
words. These are comfortable confidential communica-
tions to which authors who have their friends and
excusers are subject. A gentleman told me that a
lady had objected to my use of the word learneder as
bad grammar. He said he thovght it a pity that 1 did
not take more care, but that the lady was perhaps

?rejudiced, as her husband held a government office,
looked for the word, and found it in a motto from
Butler. I was piqued, and desired him to tell the fair
critic that the fault was not in me, but in one who had
far more wit, more learning, and loyalty than 1 could
pretend to. Then, again, some will pick out the
flattest thing of yours they can find to load it with
panegyrics ; and others tell you (by way of letting you
see how high they rank your capacity) that your best
passages are failures. Lamb has a knack of tasting (or
as he would say, palating) the insipid. Leigh Hunt
has a trick of turning away from the relishing morsels

ON INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY 389

you put on his plate. There is no getting the start of
some people. Do what you will, they can do it hetter ;
meet with what success you may, their own good
opinion stands them in better stead, and runs before
the applause of the world. I once showed a person of
this overweening turn (with no small triumph, 1 con-
fess) a letter of a very flattering description I had
received from the celebrated Count Stendhal, dated
Home. He returned it with a smile of indifference,
and said, he had had a letter from Rome himself the

day before, from his friend S ! I did not think

this 'germane to the matter.' Godwin pretends I
never wrote anything worth a farthing but my 'Answers
to Vetus,' and that I fail altogether when I attempt to
write an essay, or anything in a short compass.

What can one do in such cases ? Shall I confess a
weakness? The only set-off I know to these rebuffs
and mortifications is sometimes in an accidental notice
or involuntary mark of distinction from a stranger. I
feel the force of Horace's digito monstrari — I like to be
pointed out in the street, or to hear people ask in Mr.
Powell's court, Which is Mr. Hazlittf This is to me a
pleasing extension of one's personal identity. Your
name so repeated leaves an echo like music on the ear :
it stirs the blood like the sound of a trumpet It
shows that other people are curious to see you ; that
they think of you, and feel an interest in you without
your knowing it. This is a bolster to lean upon ; a
lining to your poor, shivering, threadbare opinion of
yourself. You want some such cordial to exhausted
spirits, and relief to the dreariness of abstract specula-
tion. You are something ; and, from occupying a
place in the thoughts of others, think less con-
temptuously of yourself. You are the better able to
run the gauntlet of prejudice and vulgar abuse. It is
pleasant in this way to have your opinion quoted
against yourself, and your own sayings repeated to you
as good things. I was once talking to an intelligent
in the pit, and criticising Mr. Knight's perform-
of Filch. ' Ah ! ' he said, ' little Simmons was

man
auce

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the fellow to play that character.' He added, 'There
was a most excellent remark made upon his acting it
in the Examiner (I think it was) — That he looked as if
he had the gallows in one eye and a pretty girl in the
other.' I said nothing, but was hi remarkably good
humour the rest of the evening. I have seldom been
in a company where fives-playing has been talked of
but some one has asked in the course of it, ' Pray, did
any one ever see an account of one Cavanagh that
appeared some time back in most of the papers ? Is it
known who wrote it ? ' These are trying moments. I
had a triumph over a person, whose name I will not
mention, on the following occasion. I happened to be
saying something about Burke, and was expressing my
opinion of his talents in no measured terms, when this
gentleman interrupted me by saying he thought, for
his part, that Burke had been greatly overrated, and
then added, in a careless way, ' Pray, did you read a

character of him in the last number of the ?'

' 1 wrote it ! ' — I could not resist the antithesis, but
was afterwards ashamed of my momentary petulance.
Yet no one that I find ever spares me.

Some persons seek out and obtrude themselves on
public characters, in order, as it might seem, to pick
out their failings, and afterwards betray them. Ap-
pearances are for it, but truth and a better knowledge
of nature are against this interpretation of the matter.
Sycophants and flatterers are undesignedly treacherous
and fickle. They are prone to admire inordinately at
first, and not finding a constant supply of food for this
kind of sickly appetite, take a distaste to the object of
their idolatry. To be even with themselves for their
credulity, they sharpen their wits to spy out faults,
and are delighted to find that this answers better than
their first employment. It is a course of study, ' lively,
audible, and full of vent.' They have the organ of
wonder and the organ of fear in a prominent degree.
The first requires new objects of admiration to satisfy
its uneasy cravings : the second makes them crouch to
power wherever its shifting standard appears, and

ON INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY 391

willing to curry favour with all parties, and ready
to betray any out of sheer weakness and servility. I
do not think they mean any harm : at least, 1 can look
at this obliquity with indifference in my own particular
case. I have been more disposed to resent it as 1 have
seen it practised upon others, where 1 have been better
able to judge of the extent of the mischief, and the
heartlessuess and idiot folly it discovered.

I do not think great intellectual attainments are any
recommendation to the women. They puzzle them,
and are a diversion to the main question. If scholars
talk to ladies of what they understand, their hearers
are none the wiser : if they talk of other things, they
only prove themselves fools. The conversation between
Angelica and Foresight in Love for Love is a receipt in
full for all such overstrained nonsense : while he is
wandering among the signs of the zodiac, she is stand-
ing a-tiptoe on the earth. It has been remarked that
poets do not choose mistresses very wisely. 1 believe
it is not choice, but necessity. If they could throw the
handkerchief like the Grand Turk, I imagine we
should see scarce mortals, but rather goddesses, sur-
rounding their steps, and each exclaiming, with Lord
Byron's own Ionian maid —

So shalt thou find me ever at thy side,
Here and hereafter, if the last may be 1

Ah ! no, these are bespoke, carried off by men of
mortal, not of ethereal mould, and thenceforth the
poet from whose mind the ideas of love and beauty are
inseparable as dreams from sleep, goes on the forlorn
hope of the passion, and dresses up the first Dulcinea
that will take compassion on him in all the colours of
fancy. What boots it to complain if the delusion lasts
for life, and the rainbow still paints its form in the
cloud ?

There is one mistake I would wish, if possible, to
correct. Men of letters, artists, and others not
succeeding with women in a certain rank of life, think
the objection is to their want of fortune, and that they

392 TABLE-TALK

shall stand a better chance by descending lower,
where only their good qualities or talents will be
thought of. Oh ! worse and worse. The objection is
to themselves, not to their fortune — to their abstrac-
tion, to their absence of mind, to their unintelligible
and romantic notions. Women of education may have
a glimpse of their meaning, may get a clue to their
character, but, to all others they are thick darkness.
If the mistress smiles at their ideal advances, the maid
will laugh outright ; she will throw water over you,
get her sister to listen, send her sweetheart to ask you
what you mean, will set the village or the house upon
your back ; it will be a farce, a comedy, a standing jest
for a year, and then the murder will out. Scholars
should be sworn at Highgate. They are no match for
chambermaids, or wenches at lodging-houses. They
had better try their hands on heiresses or ladies of
quality. These last have high notions of themselves
that may fit some of your epithets ! They are above
mortality ; so are your thoughts ! But with low life,
trick, ignorance, and cunning, you have nothing in
common. Whoever you are, that think you can
make a compromise or a conquest there by good
nature or good sense, be warned by a friendly voice,
and retreat in time from the unequal contest.

If, as I have said above, scholars are no match for
chambermaids, on the other hand gentlemen are no
match for blackguards. The former are on their
honour, act on the square ; the latter take all ad-
vantages, and have no idea of any other principle. It
is astonishing how soon a fellow without education will
learn to cheat. He is impervious to any ray of liberal
knowledge ; his understanding is

Not pierceable by power of any star-
but it is porous to all sorts of tricks, chicanery,
stratagems, and knavery, by which anything is to be
got. Mrs. Peachum, indeed, says, that to succeed
at the gaming-table, the candidate should have the

ON INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY 393

education of a nobleman. I do not know how far this
example contradicts my theory. I think it is a rule
that men in business should not he taught other
thing's. Any one will be almost sure to make money
who has no other idea in his head. A college educa-
tion, or intense study of abstract truth, will not enable
a man to drive a bargain, to overreach another, or
even to guard himself from being overreached. As
Shakespear says, that ( to have a good face is the effect
of study, but reading and writing come by nature' ; so
it might be argued, that to be a knave is the gift of
fortune, but to play the fool to advantage it is necessary
to be a learned man. The best politicians are not
those who are deeply grounded in mathematical or in
ethical science. Rules stand in the way of expediency.
Many a man has been hindered from pushing his
fortune in the world by an early cultivation of his
moral sense, and has repented of it at leisure during
the rest of his life. A shrewd man said of my father,
that he would not send a son of his to school to him
on any account, for that by teaching him to speak the
truth he would disqualify him from getting his living
in the world !

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

ESSAY XXX

ON PATRONAGE AND PUFFING

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

A LADY was complaining to a friend of mine of the
credulity of people in attending to quack advertise-
ments, and wondering who could be taken in by them
— " for that she had never bought but one half-guinea

bottle of Dr. 's Elixir of Life, and it had done her

no sort of good ! ' This anecdote seemed to explain
pretty well what made it worth the doctor's while to
advertise his wares in every newspaper in the kingdom.
He would no doubt be satisfied if every delicate,
sceptical invalid in his majesty's dominions gave his
Elixir one trial, merely to show the absurdity of the
thing. We affect to laugh at the folly of those who
put faith in nostrums, but are willing to see ourselves
whether there is any truth in them.

There is a strong tendency in the human mind to
flatter itself with secret hopes, with some lucky reserva-
tion in our own favour, though reason may point out
the grossness of the trick in general ; and, besides,
there is a wonderful power in words, formed into
regular propositions, and printed in capital letters, to
draw the assent after them, till we have proof of their
fallacy. The ignorant and idle believe what they read,
as Scotch philosophers demonstrate the existence of a
material world, and other learned propositions, from
the evidence of their senses. The ocular proof is all
that is wanting in either case. As hypocrisy is said to

ON PATRONAGE AND PUFFING 395

be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is
the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth.
We can hardly believe a thing to bo a lie, though we
know it to be so. The 'puff direct/ even as it
stands in the columns of the Times newspaper, branded
with the title of Advertisement before it, claims some
sort of attention and respect for the merits that it
discloses, though we think the candidate for public
favour and support has hit upon (perhaps) an injudicious
way of laying them before the world. Still there may
be something in them ; and even the outrageous im-
probability and extravagance of the statement on the
very face of it stagger us, and leave a hankering to
inquire farther into it, because we think the advertiser
would hardly have the impudence to hazard such bare-
faced absurdities without some foundation. Such is
the strength of the association between words and
things in the mind — so much oftener must our credulity
have been justified by the event than imposed upon.
If every second story we heard was an invention, we
should lose our mechanical disposition to trust to the
meaning of sounds, just as when we have met with a
number of counterfeit pieces of coin, we suspect good
ones ; but our implicit assent to what we hear is a
proof how much more sincerity and good faith there is
in the sum total of our dealings with one another than
artifice and imposture.

' To elevate and surprise ' is the great art of quackery
and puffing ; to raise a lively and exaggerated image in
the mind, and take it by surprise before it can recover
breath, as it were ; so that by having been caught in
the trap, it is unwilling to retract entirely — has a
secret desire to find itself in the right, and a deter-
mination to see whether it is or not. Describe a picture
as lofty, imposing, and grand, these words excite certain
ideas in the mind like the sound of a trumpet, which
are not to be quelled, except by seeing the picture
itself, nor even then, if it is viewed by the help of a
catalogue, written expressly for the occasion by the
artist himself. It is not to be supposed that he would

396 TABLE-TALK

say such things of his picture unless they were allowed
by all the world ; and he repeats them, on this gentle
understanding, till all the world allows them.1 So
Reputation runs in a vicious circle, and Merit limps
behind it, mortified and abashed at its own insignifi-
cance. It has been said that the test of fame or
popularity is to consider the number of times your
name is repeated by others, or is brought to their
recollection in the course of a year. At this rate, a
man has his reputation in his own hands, and, by the
help of puffing and the press, may forestall the voice
of posterity, and stun the ' groundling ' ear of his con-
temporaries. A name let off in your hearing continu-
ally, with some bouncing epithet affixed to it, startles
you like the report of a pistol close at your ear : you
cannot help the effect upon the imagination, though
you know it is perfectly harmless — vox et praeterea nihil.
So, if you see the same name staring you in the face in
great letters at the corner of every street, you involun-
tarily think the owner of it must be a great man to
occupy so large a space in the eye of the town. The
appeal is made, in the first instance, to the senses, but
it sinks below the surface into the mind. There are
some, indeed, who publish their own disgrace, and
make their names a common by-word and nuisance,
notoriety being all that they want. A quack gets
himself surreptitiously dubbed Doctor or Knight ; and
though you may laugh in his face, it pays expenses.
Parolles and his drum typify many a modern adven-
turer and court- candidate for unearned laurels and
unblushing honours. Of all puffs, lottery puffs are
the most ingenious and most innocent. A collection
of them would make an amusing Vade mecum. They
are still various and the same, with that infinite ruse
with which they lull the reader at the outset out of
all suspicion, the insinuating turn in the middle, the
home-thrust at the ruling passion at last, by which

1 It is calculated that West cleared some hundred pounds by the
catalogues that were sold of his great picture of Death riding on the
Pale Horse.

ON PATRONAGE AND PUFFING 397

your spare cash is conjured clean out of the pocket in
spite of resolution, by the same stale, well-known,
thousandth -time repeated artifice of All prizes and
No blanks — a self-evident imposition ! Nothing, how-
ever, can be a stronger proof of the power of fascinating
the public judgment through the eye alone. I know a
gentleman who amassed a considerable fortune (so as
to be able to keep his carriage) by printing nothing
but lottery placards and handbills of a colossal size.
Another friend of mine (of no mean talents) was applied
to (as a snug thing in the way of business) to write
regular lottery puffs for a large house in the city, and
on having a parcel of samples returned on his hands
as done in too severe and terse a style, complained
quaintly enough, ' That modest merit never could suc-
ceed/' Even Lord Byron, as he tells us, has been
accused of writing lottery -puffs. There are various
ways of playing one's-self off before the public, and
keeping one's name alive. The newspapers, the lamp-
posts, the walls of empty houses, the shutters of
windows, the blank covers of magazines and reviews,
are open to every one. I have heard of a man of
literary celebrity sitting in his study writing letters
of remonstrance to himself, on the gross defects of a
plan of education he had just published, and which
remained unsold on the bookseller's counter. Another
feigned himself dead in order to see what would be
said of him in the newspapers, and to excite a sensation
in this way. A flashy pamphlet has been run to a
five-and-thirtieth edition, and thus ensured the writer
a 'deathless date' among political charlatans, by
regularly striking off a new title-page ^to every fifty
or a hundred copies that were sold. This is a vile
practice. It is an erroneous idea got abroad (and
which I will contradict here) that paragraphs are paid
for in the leading journals. It is quite out of the
question. A favourable notice of an author, an
actress, etc., may be inserted through interest, or to
oblige a friend, but it must invariably be done for love,
not money !

398 TABLE-TALK

When I formerly had to do with these sort of critical
verdicts, I was generally sent out of the way when any
debutant had a friend at court, and was to be tenderly
handled. For the rest, or those of robust constitutions,
I had carte blanche given me. Sometimes I ran out of
the course, to be sure. Poor Perry ! what bitter com-
plaints he used to make, that by running-a-muck at
lords and Scotchmen I should not leave him a place
to dine out at ! The expression of his face at these
moments, as if he should shortly be without a friend
in the world, was truly pitiable. What squabbles we
used to have about Kean and Miss Stephens, the only
theatrical favourites I ever had ! Mrs. Billington had
got some notion that Miss Stephens would never make
a singer, and it was the torment of Perry's life (as he
told me in confidence) that he could not get any two

nple to be of the same opinion on any one point,
mil not easily forget bringing him my account of
her first appearance in the Beggar 8 Opera. I have
reason to remember that article : it was almost the
last I ever wrote with any pleasure to myself. I had
been down on a visit to my friends near Chertsey, and
on my return had stopped at an inn near Kingston-
upon-Thames, where I had got the Beggars Opera,
and had read it over-night. The next day I walked
cheerfully to town. It was a fine sunny morning, in
the end of autumn, and as I repeated the beautiful
song, ' Life knows no return of Spring,' I meditated
my next day's criticism, trying to do all the justice
I could to so inviting a subject. I was not a little
proud of it by anticipation. I had just then begun to
stammer out my sentiments on paper, and was in a
kind of honeymoon of authorship. But soon after, my
final hopes of happiness and of human liberty were
blighted nearly at the same time ; and since then I
have had no pleasure in anything —

And Love himself can flatter me no more.

It was not so ten years since (ten short years since. —
Ah ! how fast those years run that hurry us away from

ON PATRONAGE AND PUFFING 399

our last fond dream of bliss !) when I loitered along
thy green retreats, O Twickenham ! and conned over
(with enthusiastic delight) the chequered view which
one of thy favourites drew of human life ! I deposited
my account of the play at the Morning Chronicle office
in the afternoon, and went to see Miss Stephens as
Polly. Those were happy times, in which she first
came out in this character, in Mandane, where she
sang the delicious air, ' If o'er the cruel tyrant, Love '
(so as it can never be sung again), in Love in a
Vi/Jage, where the scene opened with her and Miss
Matthews in a painted garden of roses and honey-
suckles, and 'Hope, thou nurse of young Desire'
thrilled from two sweet voices in turn. Oh ! may my
ears sometimes still drink the same sweet sounds,
embalmed with the spirit of youth, of health, and joy,
but in the thoughts of an instant, but in a dream of
fancy, and I shall hardly need to complain ! When
I got back, after the play, Perry called out, with his
cordial, grating voice, 'Well, how did she do?' and
on my speaking in high terms, answered, that 'he
had been to dine with his friend the Duke, that some
conversation had passed on the subject, he was afraid
it was not the thing, it was not the true sostenuto style ;
but as 1 had written the article ' (holding my peroration
on the Beggars Opera carelessly in his hand), 'it
might pass ! ' I could perceive that the rogue licked
his lips at it, and had already in imagination 'bought
golden opinions of all sorts of people' by this very
criticism, and I had the satisfaction the next day to
meet Miss Stephens coming out of the editor's room,
who had been to thank him for his very flattering
account of her.

I was sent to see Kean the first night of his per-
formance in Shylock, when there were about a hundred
people in the pit ; but from his masterly and spirited
delivery of the first striking speech, ' On such a day
you called me a dog,' etc., 1 perceived it was a hollow
thing. So it was given out in the Chronicle; but
Perry was continually at me as other people were at

400 TABLE-TALK

him, and was afraid it would not last. It was to no
purpose I said it would last : yet I am in the right
hitherto. It has been said, ridiculously, that Mr.
Kean was written up in the Chronicle. I beg leave to
state my opinion that no actor can be written up or
down by a paper. An author may be puffed into
notice, or damned by criticism, because his book may
not have been read. An artist may be overrated,
or undeservedly decried, because the public is not
much accustomed to see or judge of pictures. But an
actor is judged by his peers, the play-going public, and
must stand or fall by his own merits or defects. The
critic may give the tone or have a casting voice where
popular opinion is divided ; but he can no more force
that opinion either way, or wrest it from its base in
common sense and feeling, than he can move Stone-
henge. Mr. Kean had, however, physical disadvan-
tages and strong prejudices to encounter, and so far
the liberal and independent part of the press might
have been of service in helping him to his seat in the
public favour. May he long keep it with dignity and
firmness ! L

It was pretended by the Covent Garden people, and
some others at the time, that Mr. K can's popularity
was a mere effect of love of novelty, a nine days'
wonder, like the rage after Master Betty's acting, and
would be as soon over. The comparison did not hold.
Master Betty's acting was so far wonderful, and drew
crowds to see it as a mere singularity, because he was a
boy. Mr. Kean was a grown man, and there was no
rule or precedent established in the ordinary course
of nature why some other man should not appear in
tragedy as great as John Kemble. Farther, Master

1 I cannot say how in this respect it might have fared if a Mr.
Mudford, a fat gentleman, who might not have ' liked yon lean and
hungry Roscius,' had continued in the theatrical department of Mr.
Perry's paper at the time of this actor's first appearance ; but I had
been put upon this duty just before, and afterwards Mr. Mudford's
gpare talents were not 5n much request. This, I believe, is the reason
why he takes pains every now and then to inform the readers of the
Courier that it is impossible for any one to understand a word that
I write.

ON PATRONAGE AND PUFFING 401

Betty's acting- was a singular phenomenon, but it was
also as beautiful as it was singular. I saw him in the
part of Douglas, and he seemed almost like ' some gay
creature of the element,' moving about gracefully, with
all the flexibility of youth, and murmuring Mol'iau
sounds with plaintive tenderness. I shall never forget
the way in which he repeated the line in which young
Norval says, speaking of the fate of two brothers :

And in my mind happy was he that died !

The tones fell and seemed to linger prophetic on my
ear. Perhaps the wonder was made greater than it
was. Boys at that age can often read remarkably well,
and certainly are not without natural grace and sweet-
ness of voice. The Westminster schoolboys are a
better company of comedians than we find at most of
our theatres. As to the understanding a part like
Douglas, at least, I see no difficulty on that score. I
myself used to recite the speech in Enfield's Speaker
with good emphasis and discretion when at school, and
entered, about the same age, into the wild sweetness
of the sentiments in Mrs. Radcliffe's Romance of the
Forest, I am sure, quite as much as I should do now ;
yet the same experiment has been often tried since and
has uniformly failed.1

It was soon after this that Coleridge returned from
Italy, and he got one day into a long tirade to explain
what a ridiculous farce the whole was, and how all the

i I (not very long ago) had the pleasure of spending an evening
with Mr. Betty, when we had some ' good talk ' about the good old
times of acting. 1 wanted to insinuate that I had been a sneaking
admirer, but could not bring it in. As, however, we were putting
on our greatcoats downstairs I ventured to break the ice by saying,
'There is one actor of that period of whom we have not made
honourable mention, I mean Master Betty.' 'Oh I' he said, ' I have
forgot all that.' I replied, that he might, but that I could not forget
the pleasure 1 had had in seeing him. On which he turned off, and,
shaking his sides heartily, and with no measured demand upon >«is
lungs, called out, ' Oh, memory t memory ! ' in a way that showed he
felt the full force of the allusion. I found afterwards that the sub-
ject did not offend, and we were to have drunk some Burton ale
together the following evening, but were prevented. 1 hope he will
consider that the engagement still stands good.
2D

402 TABLE-TALK

people abroad were shocked at the gullibility of the
English nation, who on this and every other occasion
were open to the artifices of all sorts of quacks, wonder-
ing how any persons with the smallest pretensions to
common sense could for a moment suppose that a boy
could act the characters of men without any of their
knowledge, their experience, or their passions. We
made some faint resistance, but in vain. The discourse
then took a turn, and Coleridge began a laboured
eulogy on some promising youth, the son of an Eng-
lish artist, whom he had met in Italy, and who had
wandered all over the Campagna with him, whose
talents, he assured us, were the admiration of all
Rome, and whose early designs had almost all the
grace and purity of Raphael's. At last, some one
interrupted the endless theme by saying a little im-
patiently, ' Why just now you would not let us believe
our own eyes and ears about young Betty, because you
have a theory against premature talents, and now you
start a boy phenomenon that nobody knows anything
about but yourself — a young artist that, you tell us, is
to rival Raphael ! ' The truth is, we like to have some-
thing to admire ourselves, as well as to make other
people gape and stare at ; but then it must be a dis-
covery of our own, an idol of our own making and
setting up : — if others stumble on the discovery before
us, or join in crying it up to the skies, we then set to
work to prove that this is a vulgar delusion, and show
our sagacity and freedom from prejudice by pulling it
in pieces with all the coolness imaginable. Whether
we blow the bubble or crush it in our hands, vanity
and the desire of empty distinction are equally at the
bottom of our sanguine credulity or fastidious scepti-
cism. There are some who always fall in with the
fashionable prejudice as others affect singularity of
opinion on all such points, according as they think
they have more or less wit to judge for themselves.

If a little varnishing and daubing, a little puffing
and quacking, and giving yourself a good name, and
getting a friend to speak a word for you, is excusable

ON PATRONAGE AND PUFFING 403

in any profession, it is, I think, in that of painting.
Painting is an occult science, and requires a little
ostentation and mock -gravity in the professor. A
man may here rival Katterfelto, 'with his hair on
end at his own wonders, wondering for his bread ' ;
for, if he does not, he may in the end go without it
He may ride on a high-trotting horse, in green spec-
tacles, and attract notice to his person anyhow he can,
if he only works hard at his profession. If ' it only is
when he is out he is acting, let him make the fools
stare, but give others something worth looking at.
Good Mr. Carver and Gilder, good Mr. Printer's
Devil, good Mr. Billsticker, 'do me your offices' un-
molested ! Painting is a plain ground, and requires a
great many heraldic quarterings and facings to set it
off. Lay on, and do not spare. No man's merit can be
fairly judged of if he is not known ; and how can he
he known if he keeps entirely in the background?1
A great name in art goes but a little way, is chilled as
it creeps along the surface of the world without some-
thing to revive and make it blaze up with fresh splen-
dour. Fame is here almost obscurity. It is long
before your name affixed to a sterling design will be
spelt out by an undiscerning regardless public. Have
it proclaimed, therefore, as a necessary precaution, by
sound of trumpet at the corners of the street, let it be
stuck as a label in your mouth, carry it on a placard
at your back. Otherwise, the world will never trouble
themselves about you, or will very soon forget you.
A celebrated artist of the present day, whose name is
engraved at the bottom of some of the most touching
specimens of English art, once had a frame-maker call
on him, who, on entering his room, exclaimed with
some surprise, 'What, are you a painter, sir?' The
other made answer, a little startled in his turn, ' Why,
didn't you know that ? Did you never see my name at

1 Sir Joshua, who was not a vain man, purchased a tawdry iheriffB
carriage, soon after he took his house in Leicester Fields, and desired
his sister to ride about in it, in order that people might ask, ' Whose
it was ? ' and the answer would be, ' It belongs to the great painter t '

404 TABI^-TALK

the bottom of prints ? ' He could not recollect that he
had. 'And yet you sell picture-frames and prints?'
* Yes.'—' What painters' names, then, did he recollect :
did he know West's?' 'Oh! yes.'— 'And Opie's?'
< Yes. ' — 'And Fuseli's?' 'Oh! yes.' — 'But you
never heard of me ? ' 'I cannot say that I ever did ! '
It was plain from this conversation that Mr. Northcote
had not kept company enough with picture-dealers and
newspaper critics. On another occasion, a country
gentleman, who was sitting to him for his portrait,
asked him if he had any pictures in the Exhibition at
Somerset House, and on his replying in the affirmative,
desired to know what they were. He mentioned,
among others, The Marriage of Two Children; on
which the gentleman expressed great surprise, and
said that was the very picture his wife was always
teasing him to go and have another look at, though
he had never noticed the painter's name. When the
public are so eager to be amused, and care so little
who it is that amuses them, it is not amiss to remind
them of it now and then ; or even to have a starling
taught to repeat the name, to which they owe such
misprised obligations, in their drowsy ears. On any
other principle I cannot conceive how painters (not
without genius or industry) can fling themselves at the
head of the public in the manner they do, having lives
written of themselves, busts made of themselves, prints
stuck in the shop -windows of themselves, arid their
names placed in 'the first row of the rubric,' with
those of Rubens, Raphael, and Michael Angelo, swear-
ing by themselves or their proxies that these glorified
spirits would do well to leave the abodes of the blest
in order to stand in mute wonder and with uplifted
hands before some production of theirs which is yet
hardly dry ! Oh ! whatever you do, leave that string
untouched. It will jar the rash and unhallowed hand
that meddles with it. Profane not the mighty dead by
mixing them up with the uncanonised living. Leave
yourself a reversion in immortality, beyond the noisy
clamour of the day. Do not quite lose your respect

ON PATRONAGE AND PUFFING 405

for public opinion by making it in all cases a palpable
cheat, the echo of your own lungs that are hoarse with
calling on the world to admire. Do not think to bully
posterity, or to cozen your contemporaries. Be not
always anticipating the effect of your picture on the
town — think more about deserving success than com-
manding it. In issuing so many promissory notes
upon the bank of fame, do not forget you have to pay
in sterling gold. Believe that there is something in
the pursuit of high art, beyond the manufacture of a
paragraph or the collection of receipts at the door of
an exhibition. Venerate art as art. Study the works
of others, and inquire into those of nature. Gaze at
beauty. Become great by great efforts, and not by
pompous pretensions. Do not think the world was
blind to merit before your time, nor make the reputa-
tion of great geniuses the stalking-horse to your
vanity. You have done enough to insure yourself
attention : you have now only to do something to
deserve it, and to make good all that you have
aspired to do.

There is a silent and systematic assumption of
superiority which is as barefaced and unprincipled
an imposture as the most impudent puffing. You
may, by a tacit or avowed censure on all other arts,
on all works of art, on all other pretensions, tastes,
talents, but your own, produce a complete ostracism
in the world of intellect, and leave yourself and your
own performances alone standing, a mighty monument
in an universal waste and wreck of genius. By cutting
away the rude block and removing the rubbish from
around it, the idol may be effectually exposed to view,
placed on its pedestal of pride, without any other
assistance. This method is more inexcusable than the
other. For there is no egotism or vanity so hateful as
that which strikes at our satisfaction in everything
else, and derives its nourishment from preying, like
the vampire, on the carcase of others' reputation. I
would rather, in a word, that a man should talk for
ever of himself with vapid, senseless assurance, than

406 TABLE-TALK

preserve a malignant, heartless silence when the merit
of a rival is mentioned. I have seen instances of both,
and can judge pretty well between them.

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

As men of rank and fortune keep lackeys to re-
inforce their claims to self-respect, so men of genius
sometimes surround themselves with a coterie of
admirers to increase their reputation with the public.
These proneurs, or satellites, repeat all their good
things, laugh loud at all their jokes, and remember all
their oracular decrees. They are their shadows and
echoes. They talk of them in all companies, and bring
back word of all that has been said about them. They
hawk the good qualities of their patrons as shopmen
and barkers tease you to buy goods. 1 have no notion
of this vanity at second-hand ; nor can I see how this
servile testimony from inferiors (' some followers of
mine own ') can be a proof of merit. It may soothe the
ear, but that it should impose on the understanding,
I own, surprises me ; yet there are persons who cannot
exist without a cortege of this kind about them, in

ON PATRONAGE AND PUFFING 407

which they smiling read the opinion of the world, in
the midst of all sorts of rancorous abuse and hostility,
as Otho called for his mirror in the Illyrian field.
One good thing is, that this evil, in some degree, cures
itself ; and when a man has been nearly ruined by a
herd of these sycophants, he finds them leaving him,
like thriftless dependants, for some more eligible
situation, carrying away with them all the tattle they
can pick up, and some left-off suit of finery. The
same proneness to adulation which made them lick the
dust before one idol makes them bow as low to the
rising Sun ; they are as lavish of detraction as they
were prurient with praise; and the protege and admirer

of the editor of the figures in Blackwood's train.

The man is a lackey, and it is of little consequence
whose livery he wears !

1 would advise those who volunteer the office of
puffing to go the whole length of it. No half-measures
will do. Lay it on thick and threefold, or not at all.
If you are once harnessed into that vehicle, it will be
in vain for you to think of stopping. You must drive
to the devil at om;e. The mighty Tamburlane, to
whose car you are yoked, cries out :

Holloa, you pamper'd jades of Asia,

Can you not drive but twenty miles a day?

He has you on the hip, for you have pledged your
taste and judgment to his genius. Never fear but he
will drive this wedge. If you are once screwed into
such a machine, you must extricate yourself by main
force. No hyperboles are too much : any drawback,
any admiration on this side idolatry, is high treason.
It is an unpardonable offence to say that the last
production of your patron is not so good as the one
before it, or that a performer shines more in one
character than another. I remember once hearing a
player declare that he never looked into any news-
papers or magazines on account of the abuse that was
always levelled at himself in them, though there were
not less than three persons in company who made it

408 TABLE-TALK

their business through these conduit pipes of fame to
' cry him up to the top of the compass.' This sort of
expectation is a little exigeante!

One fashionable mode of acquiring reputation is by
patronising it. This may be from various motives —
real good nature, good taste, vanity, or pride. I shall
only speak of the spurious ones in this place. The
quack and the would-be patron are well met. The
house of the latter is a sort of curiosity - shop or
menagerie, where all sorts of intellectual pretenders
and grotesques, musical children, arithmetical prodigies,
occult philosophers, lecturers, accoucheurs, apes, chem-
ists, fiddlers, and buffoons are to be seen for the asking,
and are shown to the company for nothing. The
folding doors are thrown open, and display a collection
that the world cannot parallel again. There may be a
few persons of common sense and established reputa-
tion, rari nantes in gurgite vasto, otherwise it is a mere
scramble or lottery. The professed encourager of
virtu and letters, being disappointed of the great
names, sends out into the highways for the halt, the
lame, and the blind, for all who pretend to distinction,
defects, and obliquities, for all the disposable vanity or
affectation floating on the town, in hopes that, among
so many oddities, chance may bring some jewel or
treasure to his door, which he may have the good
fortune to appropriate in some way to his own use,
or the credit of displaying to others. The art is to
encourage rising genius — to bring forward doubtful
and unnoticed merit. You thus get a set of novices
and raw pretenders about you, whose actual productions
do not interfere with your self-love, and whose future
efforts may reflect credit on your singular sagacity and
faculty for finding out talent in the germ ; and in the
next place, by having them completely in your power,
you are at liberty to dismiss them whenever you will,
and to supply the deficiency by a new set of wondering,
unwashed faces in a rapid succession ; an ' aiery of
children,' embryo actors, artists, poets, or philosophers.
Like unfledged birds, they are hatched, nursed, and

ON PATRONAGE AND PUFFING 409

fed by hand : this gives room for a vast deal of manage-
ment, meddling, care, and condescending solicitude ;
but the instant the callow brood are fledged, they are
driven from the nest, and forced to shift for themselves
in the wide world. One sterling production decides
the question between them and their patrons, and from
that time they become the property of the public. Thus
a succession of importunate, hungry, idle, overweening
candidates for fame are encouraged by these fickle
keepers, only to be betrayed, and left to starve or beg,
or pine in obscurity, while the man of merit and
respectability is neglected, discountenanced, and stig-
matised, because he will not lend himself as a tool
to this system of splendid imposition, or pamper the
luxury and weaknesses of the Vulgar Great. When a
young artist is too independent to subscribe to the
dogmas of his superiors, or fulfils their predictions and
prognostics of wonderful contingent talent too soon, so
as to get out of leading-strings, and lean on public
opinion for partial support, exceptions are taken to his
dregs, dialect, or manners, and he is expelled the circle
with a character for ingratitude and treachery. None
can procure toleration long but those who do not
contradict the opinions or excite the jealousy of their
betters. One independent step is an appeal from them
to the public, their natural and hated rivals, and
annuls the contract between them, which implies
ostentatious countenance on the one part and servile
submission on the other. But enough of this.

The patronage of men of talent, even when it pro-
ceeds from vanity, is often carried on with a spirit of
generosity and magnificence, as long as these are in
difficulties and a state of dependence ; but as the prin-
ciple of action in this case is a love of power, the com-
placency in the object of friendly regard ceases with
the opportunity or necessity for the same manifest
display of power ; and when the unfortunate protegt
is just coming to land, and expects a last helping hand,
he is, to his surprise, pushed back, in order that he
may be saved from drowning once more. You are not

410 TABLE-TALK

hailed ashore, as you had supposed, by these kind
friends, as a mutual triumph after all your struggles
and their exertions in your behalf. It is a piece of
presumption in you to be seen walking on terra Jirma :
you are required, at the risk of their friendship, to be
always swimming in troubled waters, that they may
have the credit of throwing out ropes, and sending out
lifeboats to you, without ever bringing you ashore.
Your successes, your reputation, which you think would
please them, as justifying their good opinion, are coldly
received, and looked at askance, because they remove
your dependence on them : if you are under a cloud,
they do all they can to keep you there by their good-
will : they are so sensible of your gratitude that they
wish your obligations never to cease, and take care you
shall owe no one else a good turn ; and provided you
are compelled or contented to remain always in poverty,
obscurity, and disgrace, they will continue your very
good friends and humble servants to command, to the
end of the chapter. The tenure of these indentures is
hard. Such persons will wilfully forfeit the gratitude
created by years of friendship, by refusing to perform
the last act of kindness that is likely ever to be de-
manded of them : will lend you money, if you have no
chance of repaying them : will give you their good
word, if nobody will believe it ; and the only thing
they do not forgive is an attempt or probability on
your part of being able to repay your obligations.
There is something disinterested in all this : at least,
it does not show a cowardly or mercenary disposition,
but it savours too much of arrogance and arbitrary
pretension. It throws a damning light on this ques-
tion, to consider who are mostly the subjects of the
patronage of the great, and in the habit of receiving
cards of invitation to splendid dinners. I confess, for
one, I am not on the list ; at which 1 do not grieve
much, nor wonder at all. Authors, in general, are
not in much request. Dr. Johnson was asked why
he was not more frequently invited out ; and he said,
( Because great lords and ladies do not like to have their

ON PATRONAGE AND PUFFING 411

mouths stopped.' Garriek was not in this predicament:
he could amuse the company in the drawing-room hy
imitating the great moralist and lexicographer, and
make the negro-boy in the courtyard die with laugh-
ing to see him take off the swelling airs and strut of
the turkey-cock. This was clever and amusing, but
it did not involve an opinion, it did not lead to a
difference of sentiment, in which the owner of the
house might be found in the wrong. Players, singers,
dancers, are hand and glove with the great. They
embellish, and have an eclat in their names, but do
not come into collision. Eminent portrait- painters,
again, are tolerated, because they come into personal
contact with the great ; and sculptors hold equality
with lords when they have a certain quantity of solid
marble in their workshops to answer for the solidity
of their pretensions. People of fashion and property
must have something to show for their patronage,
something visible or tangible. A sentiment is a
visionary thing ; an argument may lead to dangerous
consequences, and those who are likely to broach
either one or the other are not, therefore, fit for
good company in general. Poets and men of genius
who find their way there, soon find their way out.
They are not of that ilk, with some exceptions. Painters
who come in contact with majesty get on by servility
or buffoonery, by letting themselves down in some way.
Sir Joshua was never a favourite at court. He kept
too much at a distance. Beechey gained a vast deal of
favour by familiarity, and lost it by taking too great
freedoms.1 West ingratiated himself in the same

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

of dirty p
is as follo

412 TABLE-TALK

quarter by means of practices as little creditable to
himself as his august employer, namely, by playing
the hypocrite, and professing sentiments the reverse
of those he naturally felt. Kings (I know not how
justly) have been said to be lovers of low company
and low conversation. They are also said to be fond
ractical jokes. If the fact is so, the reason
lows. From the elevation of their rank, aided
by pride and flattery, they look down on the rest of
mankind, and would not be thought to have all their
advantages for nothing. They wish to maintain the
same precedence in private life that belongs to them
as a matter of outward ceremony. This pretension
they cannot keep up by fair means ; for in wit or argu-
ment they are not superior to the common run of men.
They therefore answer a repartee by a practical joke,
which turns the laugh against others, and cannot be
retaliated with safety. That is, they avail themselves
of the privilege of their situation to take liberties, and
degrade those about them, as they can only keep up
the idea of their own dignity by proportionably lower-
ing their company.

ESSAY XXXI

ON THE KNOWLEDGE OP CHARACTER

IT is astonishing, with all our opportunities and prac-
tice, how little we know of this subject For myself,
I feel that the more I learn, the less 1 understand it.

I remember, several years ago, a conversation in the
diligence coming from Paris, in which, on its being
mentioned that a man had married his wife after thir-
teen years' courtship, a fellow-countryman of mine
observed, that ( then, at least, he would be acquainted

with her character' ; when a Monsieur P , inventor

and proprietor of the Invisible Girl, made answer, ' No,
not at all ; for that the very next day she might turn
out the very reverse of the character that she had
appeared in during all the preceding time.'1 I could
not help admiring the superior sagacity of the French
juggler, and it struck me then that we could never be
sure when we had got at the bottom of this riddle.

There are various ways of getting at a knowledge
of character — by looks, words, actions. The fifst of
these, which seems the most superficial, is perhaps the
safest, and least liable to deceive : nay, it is that which
mankind, in spite of their pretending to the contrary,
most generally go by. Professions pass for nothing,
and actions may be counterfeited ; but a man cannot
help his looks. * Speech/ said a celebrated wit, ' was
given to man to conceal his thoughts.' Yet I do not
know that the greatest hypocrites are the least silent.
The mouth of Cromwell is pursed up in the portraits

i ' It is not a year or two shows us a man.'— JSmilia, In Othello.

414 TABLE-TALK

of him, as if he was afraid to trust himself with words.
Lord Chesterfield advises us, if we wish to know the
real sentiments of the person we are conversing with,
to look in his face, for he can more easily command
his words than his features. A man's whole life may be
a lie to himself and others ; and yet a picture painted
of him by a great artist would probably stamp his true
character on the canvas, and betray the secret to pos-
terity. Men's opinions were divided, in their lifetimes,
about such prominent personages as Charles V. and
Ignatius Loyola, partly, no doubt, from passion and
interest, but partly from contradictory evidence in their
ostensible conduct : the spectator, who has ever seen
their pictures by Titian, judges of them at once, and
truly. I had rather leave a good portrait of myself
behind me than have a fine epitaph. The face, for the
most part, tells what we have thought and felt — the
rest is nothing. I have a higher idea of Donne from
a rude, half-effaced outline of him prefixed to his poems
than from anything he ever wrote. Caesar's Comment-
aries would not have redeemed him in my opinion, if
the bust of him had resembled the Duke of Wellington.
My old friend Fawcett used to say, that if Sir Isaac
Newton himself had lisped, he could not have thought
anything of him. So I cannot persuade myself that
any one is a great man who looks like a fool. In this
I may be wrong.

First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not
unfrequently) to our cost when we have been wheedled
out of them by plausible professions or actions. A
man's look is the work of years, it is stamped on his
countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more,
by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of
easily. There is, as it has been remarked repeatedly,
something in a person's appearance at first sight which
we do not like, and that gives us an odd twinge, but
which is overlooked in a multiplicity of other circum-
stances, till the mask is taken off, and we see this lurk-
ing character verified in the plainest manner in the
sequel. We are struck at first, and by chance, with

ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER 415

what is peculiar and characteristic ; also with per-
manent traits and general effect : this afterwards goes
off in a set of unmeaning, common-place details. This
sort of prima facie evidence, then, shows what a man is
better than what he says or does ; for it shows us the
habit of his mind, which is the same under all circum-
stances and disguises. You will say, on the other
hand, that there is no judging by appearances, as a
general rule. No one, for instance, would take such a
person for a very clever man without knowing who he
was. Then, ten to one, he is not : he may have got
the reputation, but it is a mistake. You say, there is

Mr. , undoubtedly a person of great genius ; yet,

except when excited by something extraordinary, he
seems half dead. He has wit at will, yet wants life
and spirit. He is capable of the most generous acts,
yet meanness seems to cling to every motion. He
looks like a poor creature — and in truth he is one !
The first impression he gives you of him answers nearly
to the feeling he has of his personal identity ; and this
image of himself, rising from his thoughts, and shroud-
ing his faculties, is that which sits with him in the
house, walks out with him into the street, and haunts
his bedside. The best part of his existence is dull,
cloudy, leaden : the flashes of light that proceed from
it, or streak it here and there, may dazzle others, but
do not deceive himself. Modesty is the lowest of the
virtues, and is a real confession of the deficiency it
indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly under-
valued by others. Whatever good properties he may
possess are, in fact, neutralised by a ' cold rheum ' run-
ning through his veins, and taking away the zest of his
pretensions, the pith and marrow of his performances.
What is it to me that I can write these TABLE-TALKS?
It is true I can, by a reluctant effort, rake up a parcel
of half-forgotten observations, but they do not float on
the surface of my mind, nor stir it with any sense of
pleasure, nor even of pride. Others have more pro-
perty in them than 1 have : they may reap the benefit,
/ have only had the pain. Otherwise, they are to me

416 TABLE-TALK

as if they had never existed ; nor should I know that 1
had ever thought at all, but that 1 am reminded of it
by the strangeness of my appearance, and my untitness
for everything else. Look in Coleridge's face while he
is talking. His words are such as might ' create a soul
under the ribs of death.' His face is a blank. Which
are we to consider as the true index of his mind ? Pain,
languor, shadowy remembrances, are the uneasy in-
mates there : his lips move mechanically !

There are people that we do not like, though we may
have known them long, and have no fault to find with
them, ( their appearance, as we say, is so much against
them.' That is not all, if we could find it out. There
is, generally, a reason for this prejudice ; for nature is
true to itself. They may be very good sort of people
too, in their way, but still something is the matter.
There is a coldness, a selfishness, a levity, an insin-
cerity, which we cannot fix upon any particular phrase
or action, but we see it in their whole persons and de-
portment. One reason that we do not see it in any
other way may be, that they are all the time trying to
conceal this defect by every means in their power.
There is, luckily, a sort of second sight in morals : we
discern the lurking indications of temper and habit a
long while before their palpable effects appear. I once
used to meet with a person at an ordinary, a very civil,
good-looking man in other respects, but with an odd
look about his eyes, which I could not explain, as if he
saw you under their fringed lids, and you could not
see him again : this man was a common sharper. The
greatest hypocrite I ever knew was a little, demure,
pretty, modest-looking girl, with eyes timidly cast
upon the ground, and an air soft as enchantment ; the
only circumstance that could lead to a suspicion of her
true character was a cold, sullen, watery, glazed look
about the eyes, which she bent on vacancy, as if de-
termined to avoid all explanation with yours. I might
have spied in their glittering, motionless surface the
rocks and quicksands that awaited me below ! We do
not feel quite at ease in the company or friendship of

ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER 417

those who have any natural obliquity or imperfection
of person. The reason is, they are not on the best
terms with themselves, and are sometimes apt to play
olf on others the tricks that nature has played them.
This, however, is a remark that, perhaps, ought not to
have been made. I know a person to whom it has
been objected as a disqualification for friendship, that
he never shakes you cordially by the hand. I own this
is a damper to sanguine and florid temperaments, who
abound in these practical demonstrations and ' compli-
ments extern.' The same person who testifies the
least pleasure at meeting you, is the last to quit his
seat in your company, grapples with a subject in con-
versation right earnestly, and is, I take it, backward
to give up a cause or a friend. Cold and distant in
appearance, he piques himself on being the king of
good haters, and a no less zealous partisan. The most
phlegmatic constitutions often contain the most inflam-
mable spirits — a fire is struck from the hardest flints.

And this is another reason that makes it difficult to
judge of character. Extremes meet ; and qualities
display themselves by the most contradictory appear-
ances. Any inclination, in consequence of being
generally suppressed, vents itself the more violently
when an opportunity presents itself: the greatest
grossuess sometimes accompanies the greatest refine-
ment, as a natural relief, one to the other ; and we
find the most reserved and indifferent tempers at the
beginning of an entertainment, or an acquaintance,
turn out the most communicative and cordial at the
end of it. Some spirits exhaust themselves at first :
others gain strength by progression. Some minds
have a greater facility of throwing off impressions —
are, as it were, more transparent or porous than others.
Thus the French present a marked contrast to the
English in this respect. A Frenchman addresses you
at once with a sort of lively indifference : an English-
man is more on his guard, feels his way, and is either
exceedingly reserved, or lets you into his whole con-
fidence, which he cannot so well impart to an entire

2E

418 TABLE-TALK

stranger. Again, a Frenchman is naturally humane :
an Englishman is, I should say, only friendly by habit.
His virtues and his vices cost him more than they do
his more gay and volatile neighbours. An Englishman
is said to speak his mind more plainly than others, —
yes, if it will give you pain to hear it. He does not
care whom he offends by his discourse : a foreigner
generally strives to oblige in what he says. The French
are accused of promising more than they perform.
That may be, and yet they may perform as many good-
natured acts as the English, if the latter are as averse
to perform as they are to promise. Even the pro-
fessions of the French may be sincere at the time, or
arise out of the impulse of the moment ; though their
desire to serve you may be neither very violent nor
very lasting. I cannot think, notwithstanding, that
the French are not a serious people ; nay, that they
are not a more reflecting people than the common run
of the English. Let those who think them merely
light and mercurial explain that enigma, their ever-
lasting prosing tragedy. The English are considered
as comparatively a slow, plodding people. If the

i French are quicker, they are also more plodding.
See, for example, how highly finished and elaborate
their works of art are ! How systematic and correct
they aim at being in all their productions of a graver
cast ! ( If the French have a fault,' as Yorick said,
' it is that they are too grave. ' With wit, sense, cheer-
fulness, patience, good-nature, and refinement of man-
ners, all they want is imagination and sturdiness of
moral principle ! Such are some of the contradictious
in the character of the two nations, and so little does
the character of either appear to have been understood !
Nothing can be more ridiculous indeed than the way
in which we exaggerate each other's vices and ex-
tenuate our own. The whole is an affair of prejudice
on one side of the question, and of partiality on the
other. Travellers who set out to carry back a true
report of the case appear to lose not only the use of
their understandings, but of their senses, the instant

ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER 419

they set foot in a foreign laud. The commonest facts
and appearances are distorted and discoloured. They
go abroad with certain preconceived notions on the
subject, and they make everything answer, in reason's
spite, to their favourite theory. In addition to the
difficulty of explaining customs and manners foreign
to our own, there are all the obstacles of wilful pre-
possession thrown in the way. It is not, therefore,
much to be wondered at that nations have arrived at
so little knowledge of one another's characters ; and
that, where the object has been to widen the breach
between them, any slight diiferences that occur are
easily blown into a blaze of fury by repeated misrepre-
sentations, and all the exaggerations that malice or
folly can invent !

This ignorance of character is not confined to foreign
nations : we are ignorant of that of our own country-
men in a class a little below or above ourselves. We
shall hardly pretend to pronounce magisterially on the
good or bad qualities of strangers ; and, at the same
time, we are ignorant of those of our friends, of our
kindred, and of our own. We are in all these cases
either too near or too far off the object to judge of it
properly.

Persons, for instance, in a higher or middle rank of
life know little or nothing of the characters of those
below them, as servants, country people, etc. I would
lay it down in the first place as a general rule on this
subject, that all uneducated people are hypocrites.
Their sole business is to deceive. They conceive
themselves in a state of hostility with others, and
stratagems are fair in war. The inmates of the kitchen
and the parlour are always (as far as respects their
feelings and intentions towards each other) in Hobbes's
* state of nature.' Servants and others in that line of
life have nothing to exercise their spare talents for
invention upon but those about them. Their super-
fluous electrical particles of wit and fancy are not
carried off by those established and fashionable con-
ductors, novels and romances. Their faculties are not

420 TABLE-TALK

buried in books, but all alive and stirring, erect arid
bristling like a cat's back. Their coarse conversation
sparkles with 'wild wit, invention ever new.' Their
betters try all they can to set themselves up above
them, and they try all they can to pull them down to
their own level. They do this by getting up a little
comic interlude, a daily, domestic, homely drama out
of the odds and ends of the family failings, of which
there is in general a pretty plentiful supply, or make
up the deficiency of materials out of their own heads.
They turn the qualities of their masters and mistresses
inside out, and any real kindness or condescension only
sets them the more against you. They are not to be
taken in that way — they will not be baulked in the
spite they have to you. They only set to work with
redoubled alacrity, to lessen the favour or to blacken
your character. They feel themselves like a degraded
caste, and cannot understand how the obligations can
be all on one side, and the advantages all on the other.
You cannot come to equal terms with them — they
reject all such overtures as insidious and hollow — nor
can you ever calculate upon their gratitude or good-
will, any more than if they were so many strolling
Gipsies or wild Indians. They have no fellow-feeling,
they keep no faith with the more privileged classes.
They are in your power, and they endeavour to be
even with you by trick and cunning, by lying and
chicanery. In this they have nothing to restrain
them. Their whole life is a succession of shift«,
excuses, and expedients. The love of truth is a
principle with those only who have made it their
study, who have applied themselves to the pursuit of
some art or science, where the intellect is severely
tasked, and learns by habit to take a pride in, and to
set a just value on, the correctness of its conclusions.
To have a disinterested regard to truth, the mind must
have contemplated it in abstract and remote questions ;
whereas the ignorant and vulgar are only conversant
with those things in which their own interest is con-
cerned. All their notions are local, personal, and

ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER 421

consequently gross and selfish. They say whatever
comes uppermost — turn whatever happens to their
own account— and invent any story, or give any
answer that suits their purposes. Instead of being
bigoted to general principles, they trump up any lie
for the occasion, and the more of a thumper it is, the
better they like it ; the more unlooked-for it is, why,
so much the more of a God-send! They have no
conscience about the matter ; and if you find them out
in any of their manoeuvres, are not ashamed of them-
selves, but angry with you. If you remonstrate with
them, they laugh in your face. The only hold you
have of them is their interest — you can but dismiss
them from your employment ; and service is no in-
heritance. If they effect anything like decent remorse,
and hope you will pass it over, all the while they are
probably trying to recover the wind of you. Persons
of liberal knowledge or sentiments have no kind of
chance in this sort of mixed intercourse with these
barbarians in civilised life. You cannot tell, by any
signs or principles, what is passing in their minds.
There is no common point of view between you. You
have riot the same topics to refer to, the same language
to express yourself. Your interests, your feelings are
quite distinct You take certain things for granted as
rules of action : they take nothing for granted but
their own ends, pick up all their knowledge out of
their own occasions, are on the watch only for what
they can catch — are

Subtle as the fox for prey :
Like warlike as the wolf, for what they eat.

They have indeed a regard to their character, as this
last may affect their livelihood or advancement, none
as it is connected with a sense of propriety ; and this
sets their mother- wit and native talents at work upon
a double file of expedients, to bilk their consciences,
and salve their reputation. In short, you never know
where to have them, any more than if they were of a
different species of animals ; and in trusting to them,

422 TABLE-TALK

you are sure to be betrayed aud overreached. You
have other things to mind ; they are thinking only of
you, and how to turn you to advantage. Give and take-
is no maxim here. You can build nothing on your
own moderation or on their false delicacy. After a
familiar conversation with a waiter at a tavern, you
overhear him calling you by some provoking nick-
name. If you make a present to the daughter of the
house where you lodge, the mother is sure to recollect
some addition to her bill. It is a running fight. In
fact, there is a principle in human nature not willingly
to endure the idea of a superior, a sour, Jacobinical
disposition to wipe out the score of obligation, or efface
the tinsel of external advantages — and where others
have the opportunity of coming in contact with us, they
generally find the means to establish a sufficiently
marked degree of degrading equality. No man is a
hero to his valet-de-chambre, is an old maxim. A new
illustration of this principle occurred the other day.
While Mrs. Siddons was giving her readings of Shake-
spear to a brilliant and admiring drawing-room, one of
the servants in the hall below was saying, ' What, I
find the old lady is making as much noise as ever ! '
So little is there in common between the different
classes of society, and so impossible is it ever to unite
the diversities of custom and knowledge which separate
them.

Women, according to Mrs. Peachum, are 'bitter
bad judges' of the characters of men ; and men are not
much better of theirs, if we can form any guess from
their choice in marriage. Love is proverbially blind.
The whole is an affair of whim and fancy. Certain it
is that the greatest favourites with the other sex are
not those who are most liked or respected among their
own. I never knew but one clever man who was what
is called a lady's man ; and he (unfortunately for the
argument) happened to be a considerable coxcomb. It
was by this irresistible quality, and not by the force of
his genius, that he vanquished. Women seem to doubt
their own judgments in love, and to take the opinion

ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER 423

which a man entertains of his own prowess and ac-
complishments for granted. The wives of poets are
(for the most part) mere pieces of furniture in the
room. If you speak to them of their husbands' talents
or reputation in the world, it is as if you made mention
of some office that they held. It can hardly be other-
wise, when the instant any subject is started or
conversation arises, in which men are interested, or try
one another's strength, the women leave the room, or
attend to something else. The qualities, then, in which
men are ambitious to excel, and which ensure the
applause of the world, — eloquence, genius, learning,
integrity, — are not those which gain the favour of the
fair. I must not deny, however, that wit and courage
have this effect. Neither is youth or beauty the sole
passport to their affections.

The way of woman's will is hard to find,
Harder to hit

Yet there is some clue to this mystery, some determin-
ing cause ; for we find that the same men are universal
favourites with women, as others are uniformly dis-
liked by them. Is not the loadstone that attracts so
powerfully, and in all circumstances, a strong and
undisguised bias towards them, a marked attention, a
conscious preference of them to every other passing
object or topic ? I am not sure, but I incline to think
so. The successful lover is the cavalier servente of all
nations. The man of gallantry behaves as if he had
made an assignation with every woman he addresses.
An argument immediately draws off my attention from
the prettiest woman in the room. I accordingly
succeed better in argument — than in love ! — I do not
think that what is called Love at first fight is so great an
absurdity as it is sometimes imagined to be. We
generally make up our minds beforehand to the sort of
person we should like, — grave or gay, black, brown, o/
fair ; with golden tresses or with raven locks ; — and
when we meet with a complete example of the qualities
we admire, the bargain is soon struck. We have never

424 TABLE-TALK

seen anything to come up to our newly-discovered
goddess before, but she is what we have been all our
lives looking for. The idol we fall down and worship
is an image familiar to our minds. It has been present
to our waking thoughts, it has haunted us in our
dreams, like some fairy vision. Oh ! thou who, the
first time I ever beheld thee, didst draw my soul into
the circle of thy heavenly looks, and wave enchantment
round me, do not think thy conquest less complete
because it was instantaneous ; for in that gentle form
(as if another Imogen had entered) I saw all that I had
ever loved of female grace, modesty, and sweetness I

K I shall not say much of friendship as giving an
insight into character, because it is often founded on

I mutual infirmities and prejudices. Friendships are
frequently taken up on some sudden sympathy, and we
see only as much as we please of one another's characters
afterwards. Intimate friends are not fair witnesses to
character, any more than professed enemies. They
cool, indeed, in time, part, and retain only a rankling
grudge of past errors and oversights. Their testimony
in the latter case is not quite free from suspicion.

One would think that near relations, who live
constantly together, and always have done so, must be
pretty well acquainted with one another's characters.
They are nearly in the dark about it. Familiarity
confounds all traits of distinction : interest and prejudice
take away the power of judging. We have no opinion
on the subject, any more than of one another's faces.
The Penates, the household gods, are veiled. We do
not see the features of those we love, nor do we clearly
distinguish their virtues or their vices. We take them
as they are found in the lump, — by weight, and not
by measure. We know all about the individuals, their
sentiments, history, manners, words, actions, every-
thing ; but we know all these too much as facts, as
inveterate, habitual impressions, as clothed with too
many associations, as sanctified with too many affec-
tions, as woven too much into the web of our hearts,
to be able to pick out the different threads, to cast up

ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER 425

the items of the debtor and creditor account, or to
refer them to any general standard of right and wrong.
Our impressions with respect to them are too strong,
too real, too much sui generis, to be capable of a
comparison with anything but themselves. We hardly
inquire whether those for whom we are thus interested,
and to whom we are thus knit, are better or worse than
others — the question is a kind of profanation — all we
know is, they are more to us than any one else can be.
Our sentiments of this kind are rooted and grow in us,
and we cannot eradicate them by voluntary means.
Besides, our judgments are bespoke, our interests take
part with our blood. If any doubt arises, if the veil
of our implicit confidence is drawn aside by any
accident for a moment, the shock is too great, like
that of a dislocated limb, and we recoil on our habitual
impressions again. Let not that veil ever be rent
entirely asunder, so that those images may he left bare
of reverential awe, and lose their religion ; for nothing
can ever support the desolation of the heart afterwards.

The greatest misfortune that can happen among \
relations is a different way of bringing up, so as to set k
one another's opinions and characters in an entirely I
new point of view. This often lets in an unwelcome/
daylight on the subject, and breeds schisms, coldness. J
and incurable heart-burnings in families. I have some-
times thought whether the progress of society and
march of knowledge does not do more harm in this
respect, by loosening the ties of domestic attachment,
and preventing those who are most interested in and
anxious to think well of one another from feeling a
cordial sympathy and approbation of each other's
sentiments, manners, views, etc. , than it does good by
any real advantage to the community at large. The
son, for instance, is brought up to the Church, and
nothing can exceed the pride and pleasure the father
takes in him while all goes on well in this favourite
direction. His notions change, and he imbibes a taste
for the Fine Arts. From this moment there is an end
of anything like the same unreserved communication

426 TABLE-TALK

between them. The young man may talk with en-
thusiasm of his 'Rembrandts, Correggios, and stuff':
it is all Hebrew to the elder ; and whatever satisfaction
he may feel in the hearing of his son's progress, or
good wishes for his success, he is never reconciled to
the new pursuit, he still hankers after the first object
that he had set his mind upon. Again, the grandfather
is a Calvinist, who never gets the better of his dis-
appointment at his son's going over to the Unitarian
side of the question. The matter rests here till the
grandson, some years after, in the fashion of the day
and ' infinite agitation of men's wit/ comes to doubt
certain points in the creed in which he has been brought
up, and the affair is all abroad again. Here are three
generations made uncomfortable and in a manner set
at variance by a veering point of theology, and the
officious, meddling biblical critics ! Nothing, on the
other hand, can be more wretched or common than
that upstart pride and insolent good fortune which
is ashamed of its origin ; nor are there many things
more awkward than the situation of rich and poor
relations. Happy, much happier, are those tribes and
people who are confined to the same caste and way of
life from sire to son, where prejudices are transmitted
like instincts, and where the same unvarying standard
of opinion and refinement blends countless generations
in its improgressive, everlasting mould !

Not only is there a wilful and habitual blindness in
near kindred to each other's defects, but an incapacity
to judge from the quantity of materials, from the
contradictoriness of the evidence. The chain of
particulars is too long and massy for us to lift it or
put it into the most approved ethical scales. The
concrete result does not answer to any abstract theory,
to any logical definition. There is black, and white,
and grey, square and round — there are too many
anomalies, too many redeeming points, in poor human
nature, such as it actually is, for us to arrive at a
smart, summary decision on it. We know too much to
come to any hasty or partial conclusion. We do not

ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER 427

pronounce upon the present act, because a hundred
others rise up to contradict it. We suspend our
judgments altogether, because in effect one thing
unconsciously balances another ; and perhaps this
obstinate, pertinacious indecision would be the truest
philosophy in other cases, where we dispose of the
question of character easily, because we have only the
smallest part of the evidence to decide upon. Real
character is not one thing, hut a thousand things ;

actual qualities do not conform to any factitious

" ird in the mind, but rest upo
and nature. The dull stupor under which we labour

standard in the mind, but rest upon their own truth

in respect of those whom we have the greatest oppor-
tunities of inspecting nearly, we should do well to
imitate before we give extreme and uncharitable
verdicts against those whom we only see in passing
or at a distance. If we knew them better, we should
be disposed to say less about them.

in the truth of things, there are none utterly worth-
less, none without some drawback on their pretensions
or some alloy of imperfection. It has been observed t
that a familiarity with the worst characters lessens our \
abhorrence of them ; and a wonder is often expressed
that the greatest criminals look like other men. The
reason is that they are like other men in many respects.
If a particular individual was merely the wretch we
read of, or conceive in the abstract, that is, if he was
the mere personified idea of the criminal brought to
the bar, he would not disappoint the spectator, but
would look like what he would be — a monster ! But
he has other qualities, ideas, feelings, nay, probably
virtues, mixed up with the most profligate habits or
desperate acts. This need not lessen our abhorrence
of the crime, though it does of the criminal ; for it haa
the latter effect only by showing him to us in different
points of view, in which he appears a common mortal,
and not the caricature of vice we took him for, or
spotted all over with infamy. I do not, at the same
time, think this is a lax or dangerous, though it is a
charitable view of the subject In my opinion, no man

428 TABLE-TALK

ever answered in his own mind (except in the agonies
of conscience or of repentance, in which latter case he
throws the imputation from himself in another way) to
the abstract idea of a murderer. He may have killed a
man in self-defence, or ' in the trade of war,' or to save
himself from starving, or in revenge for an injury, but
always 'so as with a difference,' or from mixed and
questionable motives. The individual, in reckoning
with himself, always takes into the account the con-
siderations of time, place, and circumstance, and never
makes out a case of unmitigated, unprovoked villainy,
of 'pure defecated evil' against himself. There are
degrees in real crimes : we reason and moralise only by
names and in classes. I should be loth, indeed, to say
that e whatever is, is right ' ; but almost every actual
choice inclines to it, with some sort of imperfect,
unconscious bias. This is the reason, besides the ends
of secrecy, of the invention of slang terms for different
acts of profligacy committed by thieves, pickpockets,
etc. The common names suggest associations of disgust
in the minds of others, which those who live by them
do not willingly recognise, and which they wish to sink
in a technical phraseology. So there is a story of a
fellow who, as he was writing down his confession of a
murder, stopped to ask how the word murdf,r was spelt ;
this, if true, was partly because his imagination was
staggered by the recollection of the thing, and partly
because he shrunk from the verbal admission of it.
' Amen stuck in his throat ' ! The defence made by
Eugene Aram of himself against a charge of murder,
some years before, shows that he in imagination com-
pletely flung from himself the nominal crime imputed
to him : he might, indeed, have staggered an old man
with a blow, and buried his body in a cave, and lived
ever since upon the money he found upon him, but
there was 'no malice in the case, none at all,' as
Peachum says. The very coolness, subtlety, and cir-
cumspection of his defence (as masterly a legal docu-
ment as there is upon record) prove that he was
guilty of the act, as much as they prove that he was

ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER 429

unconscious of the crime.1 In the same spirit, and 1
conceive with great metaphysical truth, Mr. Coleridge,
in his tragedy of Remorse, makes Ordonio (his chief
character) wave the acknowledgment of his meditated
guilt to his own mind, by putting into his mouth that
striking soliloquy :

Say, I had lay'd a body in the sun !
Well ! in a month there swarm forth from the cone
A thousand, nay, ten thousand sentient beings
In place of that one man. Say I had leill'd him !
Yet who shall tell me, that each one and all
Of these ten thousand lives is not as happy
As that one life, which being push'd aside,
Made room for these unnuiuber'd. — Act ii. Sc. 2.

I am not sure, indeed, that I have not got this whole
train of speculation from him ; but I should not think
the worse of it on that account. That gentleman, I
recollect, once asked me whether 1 thought that the
different members of a family really liked one another
so well, or had so much attachment, as was generally
supposed ; and I said that 1 conceived the regard they
had towards each other was expressed by the word
interest rather than by any other, which he said was the
true answer. I do not know that I could mend it now.
Natural affection is not pleasure in one another's
company, nor admiration of one another's qualities ;
but it is an intimate and deep knowledge of the things
that affect those to whom we are bound by the nearest
ties, with pleasure or pain ; it is an anxious, uneasy
fellow-feeling with them, a jealous watchfulness over
their good name, a tender and unconquerable yearning
for their good. The love, in short, we bear them is
the nearest to that we bear ourselves. Uome, accord-
ing to the old saying, t* home, be it never no homely.
We love ourselves, not according to our deserts, but
our cravings after good : so we love our immediate

l The bones of the murdered man were dug up in an old hermitage.
On this, as one instance of the acuteness which he displayed all
through the occasion, Aram remarks, ' Where would you expect to
find thu bones of a man sooner than in a hermit's cell, except you
were to look for them in a cemetery ? '— 8ee Ifotfyota Calendar for
the year 1758 or 1759.

430 TABLE-TALK

relations in the next degree (if not, even sometimes a
higher one), hecause we know best what they have
suffered and what sits nearest to their hearts. We are
implicated, in fact, in their welfare by habit and
sympathy, as we are in our own.

If our devotion to our own interests is much the
same as to theirs, we are ignorant of our own char-
acters for the same reason. We are parties too much
concerned to return a fair verdict, and are too much in
the secret of our own motives or situation not to be
able to give a favourable turn to our actions. We
exercise a liberal criticism upon ourselves, and put off
the final decision to a late day. The field is large and
open. Hamlet exclaims, with a noble magnanimity,
' I count myself indifferent honest, and yet J could
accuse me of such things ! ' If you could prove to a
man that he is a knave, it would not make much
difference in his opinion, his self-love is stronger than
his love of virtue. Hypocrisy is generally used as a
mask to deceive the world, not to impose on ourselves :
for once detect the delinquent in his knavery, and he
laughs in your face or glories in his iniquity. This
at least happens except where there is a contradiction
in the character, and our vices are involuntary and at
variance with our convictions. One great difficulty is
to distinguish ostensible motives, or such as we acknow-
ledge to ourselves, from tacit or secret springs of
action. A man changes his opinion readily, he thinks
it candour : it is levity of mind. For the most part,
we are stunned and stupid in judging of ourselves.
We are callous by custom to our defects or excellences,
unless where vanity steps in to exaggerate or extenuate
them. 1 cannot conceive how it is that people are in
love with their own persons, or astonished at their own
performances, which are but a nine days' wonder to
every one else. In general it may be laid down that
we are liable to this twofold mistake in judging of our
own talents : we, in the first place, nurse the rickety
bantling, we think much of that which has cost us
much pains and labour, and comes against the grain ;

ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER 431

and we also set little store by what we do with most
ease to ourselves, and therefore best. The works of
the greatest genius are produced almost unconsciously,
with an ignorance on the part of the persons them-
selves that they have done anything extraordinary.
Nature has done it for them. How little Shakespear
seems to have thought of himself or of his fame !
Yet, if 'to know another well were to know one's
self,' he must have been acquainted with his own
pretensions and character, 'who knew all qualities
with a learned spirit.' His eye seems never to have
been bent upon himself, but outwards upon nature.
A man who thinks highly of himself may almost set
it down that it is without reason. Milton, notwith-
standing, appears to have had a high opinion of him-
self, and to have made it good. He was conscious of
his powers, and great by design. Perhaps his tena-
ciousness, on the score of his own merit, might arise
from an early habit of polemical writing, in which
his pretensions were continually called to the bar of
prejudice and party-spirit, and he had to plead not
guilty to the indictment. Some men have died un-
conscious of immortality, as others have almost ex-
hausted the sense of it in their lifetimes. Correggio
might be mentioned as an instance of the one, Voltaire
of the other.

There is nothing that helps a man in his conduct \
through life more than a knowledge of his own char- I
acteristic weaknesses (which, guarded against, become /
his strength), as there is nothing that tends more to
the success of a man's talents than his knowing the
limits of his faculties, which are thus concentrated on
some practicable object One man can do but one
thing. Universal pretensions end in nothing. Or, as
Butler has it, too much wit requires

As much again to govern it

There are those who have gone, for want of this self-
knowledge, strangely out of their way, and others who
have never found it We find many who succeed in

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certain departments, and are yet melancholy and dis-
satisfied, because they failed in the one to which they
first devoted themselves, like discarded lovers who
pine after their scornful mistress. I will conclude
with observing that authors in general overrate the
extent and value of posthumous fame : for what (as it
has been asked) is the amount even of Shakespear's
fame? That in that very country which boasts his
genius and his birth, perhaps, scarce one person in ten
has ever heard of his name or read a syllable of hi§
writings !

ESSAY XXXII

ON THE PICTURESQUE AND IDEAL

A Fragment

THE natural in visible objects is whatever is ordinarily
presented to the senses : the picturesque is that which
stands out and catches the attention by some striking
peculiarity: the ideal is that which answers to the
preconceived imagination and appetite in the mind for
love and beauty. The picturesque depends chiefly on
the principle of discrimination or contrast ; the ideal
on harmony and continuity of effect : the one surprises,
the other satisfies the mind ; the one starts off from a
given point, the other reposes on itself; the one is
determined by an excess of form, the other by a
concentration of feeling.

The picturesque may be considered as something like
an excrescence on the face of nature. It runs imper-
ceptibly into the fantastical and grotesque. Fairies
and satyrs are picturesque ; but they are scarcely ideal.
They are an extreme and unique conception of a certain
thing, but not of what the mind delights in or broods
fondly over. The image created by the artist's hand
is not moulded and fashioned by the love of good and
yearning after grace and beauty, but rather the con-
trary: that is, they are ideal deformity, not ideal
beauty. Rubens was perhaps the most picturesque or
painters ; but he was almost the least ideal. So Rem-
brandt was (out of sight) the most picturesque of
colourists ; as Correggio was the most ideal. In other
2 P

434 TABLE-TALK

words, his composition of light and shade is more a
whole, more in unison, more blended into the same
harmonious feeling than Rembrandt's, who staggers
by contrast, but does not soothe by gradation. Cor-
reggio's forms, indeed, had a picturesque air ; for they
often incline (even when most beautiful) to the quaint-
ness of caricature. Vandyke, 1 think, was at once the
least picturesque and least ideal of all the great
painters. He was purely natural, and neither selected
from outward forms nor added anything from his own
mind. He owes everything to perfect truth, clearness,
and transparency ; and though his productions certainly
arrest the eye, and strike in a room full of pictures, it
is from the contrast they present to other pictures, and
from being stripped quite naked of all artificial advan-
tages. They strike almost as a piece of white paper
would, hung up in the same situation. — I began with
saying that whatever stands out from a given line, and
as it were projects upon the eye, is picturesque ; arid
this holds true (comparatively) in form and colour.
A rough terrier dog, with the hair bristled and matted
together, is picturesque. As we say, there is a decided
character in it, a marked determination to an extreme
point. A shock-dog is odd and disagreeable, but there
is nothing picturesque in its appearance ; it is a mere
mass of flimsy confusion. A goat with projecting
horns and pendent beard is a picturesque animal ; a
sheep is not. A horse is only picturesque from oppo-
sition of colour ; as in Mr. Northcote's study of Gadshill,
where the white horse's head coming against the dark,
scowling face of the man makes as fine a contrast as
can be imagined. An old stump of a tree with rugged
bark, and one or two straggling branches, a little
stunted hedge-row line, marking the boundary of the
horizon, a stubble-field, a winding path, a rock seen
against the sky, are picturesque, because they have
all of them prominence and a distinctive character
of their own. They are riot objects (to borrow Shake-
spear's phrase) 'of no mark or likelihood.' A country
may be beautiful, romantic, or sublime, without being

ON THE PICTURESQUE AND IDEAL 435

picturesque. The Lakes in the North of England are
not picturesque, though certainly the most interesting
sight in this country. To be a subject for painting, a
prospect must present sharp, striking points of view or
singular forms, or one object must relieve and set off
another. There must be distinct stages and salient
points for the eye to rest upon or start from in its
progress over the expanse before it. The distance of
a landscape will oftentimes look flat or heavy, that the
trunk of a tree or a ruin in the foreground would imme-
diately throw into perspective and turn to air. Rem-
brandt's landscapes are the least picturesque in the
world, except from the straight lines and sharp angles,
the deep incision and dragging of his pencil, like a
harrow over the ground, and the broad contrast of
earth and sky. Earth, in his copies, is rough and
hairy ; and Pan has struck his hoof against it ! — A
camel is a picturesque ornament in a landscape or
history-piece. This is not merely from its romantic
and oriental character ; for an elephant has not the
same effect, and if introduced as a necessary appendage,
is also an unwieldy iucumbrance. A negro's head in
a group is picturesque from contrast ; so are the spots
on a panther's hide. This was the principle that Paul
Veronese went upon, who said the rule for composition
was black upon white, and white upon black. He was
a pretty good judge. His celebrated picture of the
Marriage of Cana is in all likelihood tne completest
piece of workmanship extant in the art. When I saw
it, it nearly covered one side of a large room in the
Louvre (being itself forty feet by twenty) — and it
seemed as if that side of the apartment was thrown
open, and you looked out at the open sky, at buildings,
marble pillars, galleries with people in them, emperors,
female slaves, Turks, negroes, musicians, all the famous
painters of the time, the tables loaded with viands,
goblets, and dogs under them — a sparkling, over-
whelming confusion, a bright, unexpected reality — the
only fault you could find was that no miracle was going
on in the faces of the spectators: the only miracle

436 TABLE-TALK

there was the picture itself! A French gentleman,
who showed me this 'triumph of painting' (as it has
been called), perceiving I was struck with it, observed,
'My wife admires it exceedingly for the facility of the
execution.' J took this proof of sympathy for a com-
pliment It is said that when Humboldt, the celebrated
traveller and naturalist, was introduced to Buonaparte,
the Emperor addressed him in these words — f Vous
aimez la botanique, Monsieur' ; and on the other's reply-
ing in the affirmative, added, ( Et ma feninut aussif
This has been found fault with as a piece of brutality
and insolence in the great man by bigoted critics, who
do not know what a thing it is to get a Frenchwoman
to agree with them in any point. For my part, I took
the observation as it was meant, and it did not put me
out of conceit with myself or the picture that Madame
M liked it as well as Monsieur FAnglois. Cer-
tainly, there could be no harm in that. By the side of
it happened to be hung two allegorical pictures of
Rubens (and in such matters he too was ' no baby ' *) —
I don't remember what the figures were, but the texture
seemed of wool or cotton. The texture of the Paul
Veronese was not wool or cotton, but stuff, jewels,
flesh, marble, air, whatever composed the essence of
the varied subjects, in endless relief and truth of
handling. If the Fleming had seen his two allegories
hanging where they did, he would, without a question,
have wished them far enough.

I imagine that Rubens's landscapes are picturesque :
Claude's are ideal. Rubens is always in extremes ;
Claude in the middle. Rubens carries some one
peculiar quality or feature of nature to the utmost
verge of probability : Claude balances and harmonises
different forms and masses with laboured delicacy,
so that nothing falls short, no one thing overpowers
another. Rainbows, showers, partial gleams of sun-
shine, moonlight, are the means with which Rubens
produces his most gorgeous and enchanting effects :

1 And surely Mandricardo was no baby.

HARRINGTON'S

ON THE PICTURESQUE AND IDEAL 437

there are neither rainbows, nor showers, iior sudden
bursts of sunshine, nor glittering moonbeams in Claude.
He is all softness and proportion : the other is all spirit
and brilliant excess. The two sides (for example) of
one of Claude's landscapes balance one another, as in
a scale of beauty : in Rubens the several objects are
grouped and thrown together with capricious wanton-
ness. Claude has more repose : Rubens more gaiety
and extravagance. And here it might be asked, Is a
rainbow a picturesque or an ideal object ? It seems to me
to be both. It is an accident in nature ; but it is an
inmate of the fancy. It startles and surprises the
sense, but it soothes and trauquillises the spirit. It
makes the eye glisten to behold it, but the mind turns
to it long after it has faded from its place in the sky.
It has both properties, then, of giving an extraordinary-
impulse to the mind by the singularity of its appear-
ance, and of riveting the imagination by its intense
beauty. I may just notice here in passing, that I think
the effect of moonlight is treated in an ideal manner
in the well-known line in Shakespear —

See how the moonlight tleeps upon yon bank.

The image is heightened by the exquisiteness of the
expression beyond its natural beauty, and it seems as
if there could be no end to the delight taken in it — A
number of sheep coming to a pool of water to drink,
with shady trees in the background, the rest of the
^ock following them, and the shepherd and his dog
left carelessly behind, is surely the ideal in landscape-
composition, if the ideal has its source in the interest
excited by a subject, in its power of drawing the affec-
tions after it linked in a golden chain, and in the desire
of the mind to dwell on it for ever. The ideal, in a
word, is the height of the pleasing, that which satis-
fies and accords with the inmost longing of the soul :
the picturesque is merely a sharper and bolder impres-
sion of reality. A morning mist drawing a slender
veil over all objects is at once picturesque and ideal;
for it in the first place excites immediate surprise and

438 TABLE-TALK

admiration, and in the next a wish for it to continue,
and a fear lest it should be too soon dissipated. Is the
Cupid riding on a lion in the ceiling at Whitehall, and
urging him with a spear over a precipice, with only
clouds and sky beyond, most picturesque or ideal? It
has every effect of startling contrast and situation, and
yet inspires breathless expectation and wonder for the
event. Rembrandt's Jacob's Dream, again, is both —
fearful to the eye, but realising that loftiest vision of
the soul. Take two faces in Leonardo da Vinci's Last
Supper, the Judas and the St John : the one is all
strength, repulsive character ; the other is all divine
grace and mild sensibility. The individual, the char-
acteristic in painting, is that which is in a marked
manner — the ideal is that which we wish anything to
be, and to contemplate without measure and without
end. The first is truth, the last is good. The one
appeals to* the sense and understanding, the other to
the will and the affections. The truly beautiful and
grand attracts the mind to it by instinctive harmony,
is absorbed in it, and nothing can ever part them after-
wards. Look at a Madonna of Raphael's : what gives
the ideal character to the expression, — the insatiable
purpose of the soul, or its measureless content in the
object of its contemplation ? A portrait of Vandyke's
is mere indifference and still-life in the comparison :
it has not in it the principle of growing and still
unsatisfied desire. In the ideal there is no fixed stint
or limit but the limit of possibility : it is the infinite
with respect to human capacities and wishes. Love is
for this reason an ideal passion. We give to it our all
of hope, of fear, of present enjoyment, and stake our
last chance of happiness wilfully and desperately upon
it. A good authority puts into the mouth of one of
his heroines —

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep 1

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

ESSAY XXXIII

ON THE FEAR OP DEATH

And our little life is rounded with a sleep.

PERHAPS the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect
that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was
a time when we were not : this gives us no concern —
why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come |
when we shall cease to be? I have no wish to have
been alive a hundred years ago, or in the reign of
Queen Anne : why should I regret and lay it so much
to heart that I shall not be alive a hundred years hence,
in the reign of I cannot tell whom ?

When Bickerstaff wrote his Essays I knew nothing
of the subjects of them ; nay, much later, and but the
other day, as it were, in the beginning of the reign of
George III., when Goldsmith, Johnson, Burke, used to
meet at the Globe, when Garrick was in his glory, and
Reynolds was over head and ears with his portraits,
and Sterne brought out the volumes of Tristram Shandy
year by year, it was without consulting me : I had not
the slightest intimation of what was going on : the
debates in the House of Commons on the American
War, or the firing at Bunker's Hill, disturbed not me:
yet I thought this no evil — I neither ate, drank, nor
was merry, yet I did not complain : I had not then
looked out into this breathing world, yet 1 was vt x-ii ,
and the world did quite as well without me as I did
without it ! Why, then, should I make all this outcry 4
about parting with it, and being no worse off than if

440 TABLE-TALK

was before ? There is nothing in the recollection that
at a certain time we were not come into the world that
'the gorge rises at* — why should we revolt at the
idea that we must one day go out of it ? To die is only
to be as we were before we were born ; yet no one
feels any remorse, or regret, or repugnance, in con-
templating this last idea. It is rather a relief and
disburthening of the mind : it seems to have been
holiday-time with us then : we were not called to
appear upon the stage of life, to wear robes or tatters,
to laugh or cry, be hooted or applauded ; we had lain
perdus all this while, snug, out of harm's way ; and
had slept out our thousands of centuries without want-
ing to be waked up ; at peace and free from care, in
a long nonage, in a sleep deeper and calmer than that
of infancy, wrapped in the softest and finest dust.
And the worst that we dread is, after a short, fretful,
feverish being, after vain hopes and idle fears, to sink
to final repose again, and forget the troubled dream of
life ! . . . Ye armed men, knights templars, that
sleep in the stone aisles of that old Temple church,
where all is silent above, and where a deeper silence
reigns below (not broken by the pealing organ), are ye
not contented where ye lie? Or would you come out
of your long homes to go to the Holy War? Or do ye
complain that pain no longer visits you, that sickness
has done its worst, that you have paid the last debt to
nature, that you hear no more of the thickening
phalanx of the foe, or your lady's waning love ; and
that while this ball of earth rolls its eternal round, no
sound shall ever pierce through to disturb your lasting
repose, fixed as the marble over your tombs, breathless
as the grave that holds you ! And thou, oh ! thou, to
whom my heart turns, and will turn while it has feeling
left, who didst love in vain, and whose first was thy
last sigh, wilt not thou too rest in peace (or wilt thou
cry to me complaining from thy clay-cold bed) when
that sad heart is no longer sad, and that sorrow is dead
which thou wert only called into the world to feel !
It is certain that there is nothing in the idea of a

ON THE FEAR OF DEATH 441

pre-existeiit state that excites our longing like the
prospect of a posthumous existence. We are satisfied
to have begun life when we did ; we have no ambition
to have set out on our journey sooner ; and feel that
we have had quite enough to do to battle our way
through since. We cannot say,

The wars we well remember of King Nine,
Of old Assaracus and Iiiachua divine.

Neither have we any wish : we are contented to read of
them in story, and to stand and gaze at the vast sua of
time that separates us from them. It was early days
then : the world was not well-aired enough for us : we
have no inclination to have been up and stirring. Wo
do not consider the six thousand years of the world
before we were born as so much time lost to us : we
are perfectly indifferent about the matter. We do not
grieve and lament that we did not happen to be in time
to see the grand mask and pageant of human life going
ontin all that period; though we are mortified at being
obliged to quit our stand before the rest of the pro-
cession passes.

It may be suggested in explanation of this difference,
that we know from various records and traditions what
happened in the time of Queen Anne, or even in the
reigns of the Assyrian monarchs, but that we have no
means of ascertaining what is to happen hereafter but
by awaiting the event, and that our eagerness and
curiosity are sharpened in proportion as we are in the
dark about it. This is not at all the case ; for at that
rate we should be constantly wishing to make a voyage
of discovery to Greenland or to the Moon, neither of
which we have, in general, the least desire to do.
Neither, in truth, have we any particular solicitude to
pry into the secrets of futurity, but as a pretext for
prolonging our own existence. It is not so much that
we care to be alive a hundred or a thousand years
hence, any more than to have been alive a hundred or
a thousand years ago : but the thing lies here, that we
would all of us wish the present moment to last for

442 TABLE-TALK

ever. We would be as we are, and would have the
world remain just as it is, to please us.

The present eye catches the present object —

to have and to hold while it may ; and abhors, on any

terms, to have it torn from us, and nothing left in its

.room. It is the pang of parting, the unloosing our

;:»grasp, the breaking asunder some strong tie, the

!/ leaving some cherished purpose unfulfilled, that creates

I the repugnance to go, and ' makes calamity of so long

life,' as it often is.

Oh ! thou strong heart !

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

The love of life, then, is an habitual attachment, not
an abstract principle. Simply to be does not ' content
man's natural desire ' : we long to be in a certain time,
place, and circumstance. We would much rather be
now, ' on this bank and shoal of time,' than have our
choice of any future period, than take a slice of fifty or
,J sixty years out of the Millennium, for instance. This
shows that our attachment is not confined either to
being or to well-being ; but that we have an inveterate
prejudice in favour of our immediate existence, such as
it is. The mountaineer will not leave his rock, nor

)the savage his hut ; neither are we willing to give up
our present mode of life, with all its advantages and
disadvantages, for any other that could be substituted
for it. No man would, I think, exchange his existence
with any other man, however fortunate. We had as
lief not be, as not be ourselves. There are some persons
of that reach of soul that they would like t^ojiye two
hundred and fifty years hence, to see to what height of
empire America will have grown up in that period, or
whether the English constitution will last so long.
These are points beyond me. But I confess I should
like to live to see the downfall of the Bourbons. That
is a vital question with me; and I shall like it the
better, the sooner it happens !

ON THE FEAR OF DEATH 443

No young mail ever thinks he shall die. He may
believe that others, .will, or assent to the doctrine that
e all men are mortal' as an abstract proposition, but he
is far enough from bringing it home to himself indi-
vidually.1 Youth, buoyant activity, and animal spirits, f^
hold absolute antipathy with old age as well as with/
death ; nor have we, in the hey-day of life, any
than in the thoughtlessness of childhood, the remotest
conception how

This sensible warm motion can become
A kneaded clod—

nor how sanguine, florid health and vigour, shall ' turn
to withered, weak, and grey.' Or if in a moment of
idle speculation we indulge in this notion of the close
of life as a theory, it is amazing at what a distance it
seems ; what a long, leisurely interval there is be-
tween ; what a contrast its slow and solemn approach
affords to our present gay dreams of existence 1 We
eye the farthest verge of the horizon, and think what a
way we shall have to look back upon, ere we arrive at
our journey's end ; and without our in the least sus-
pecting it, the mists are at our feet, and the shadows
of age encompass us. The two divisions of our lives
have melted into each other : the extreme points close
and meet with none of that romantic interval stretch-
ing out between them that we had reckoned upon ;
and for the rich, melancholy, solemn hues of age, ' the
sear, the yellow leaf,' the deepening shadows of an
autumnal evening, we only feel a dank, cold mist,
encircling all objects, after the spirit of youth is fled.
There is no inducement to look forward ; and what
is worse, little interest in looking back to what has
become so trite and common. The pleasures of our
existence have worn themselves out, are 'gone into
the wastes of time,' or have turned their indifferent
side to us: the pains by their repeated blows have worn
us out, and have left us neither spirit rior inclination

1 All men think aJl mon mortal but themselves.-- YOUHO. £

444 TABLE-TALK

to encounter them again in retrospect. We do not
want to rip up old grievances, nor to renew our youth
like the phoenix, uor to live our lives twice, over. Once
is enough. As the tree falls, so let it lie. Shut up the
book and close the account once for all !

It has been thought by some that life is like the
exploring of a passage that grows narrower and darker
the farther we advance, without a possibility of ever
turning back, and where we are stifled for want of
breath at last. For myself, I do jjot complain of the
greater thickness of the atmosphere as I approach the
narrow house. I felt it more formerly,1 when the
idea alone seemed to suppress a thousand rising hopes,
and weighed upon the pulses of the blood. At present
I rather feel a thinness and want of support, I stretch
out my hand to some object and find none, I am too
much in a world of abstraction ; the naked map of life
is spread out before me, and in the emptiness and
desolation I see Death coming to meet me. In my
youth I could not behold him for the crowd of objects
and feelings, and Hope stood always between us, say-
ing, ' Never mind that old fellow ! ' If 1 had lived
indeed, I should not care to die. But I do not like a
contract of pleasure broken off unfulfilled, a marriage
with joy uucousummated, a promise of happiness re-
scinded. My public and private hopes have been left
a ruin, or remain only to mock me. I would wish
them to be re-edified. I should like to see some
prospect of good to mankind, such as my life began
with. I should like to leave some sterling work
i behind me. I should like to have some friendly
\ hand to consign me to the grave. On these condi-
• tions I am ready, if not willing, to depart I shall
then write on my tomb — GRATEFUL AND CONTENTED !
But 1 have thought and suffered too much to be
willing to have thought and suffered in vain. — In
looking back, it sometimes appears to me as if I had

i I remember once, In particular, having this feeling in reading
Schiller's Don Carlos, where there is & description of death, iu a degree
that almost stifled me.

ON THE FEAR OF DEATH 446

in a manner slept out my life in a dream or shadow on
the side of the hill of knowledge, where I have fed on
books, on thoughts, on pictures, and only heard in
half-murmurs the trampling of busy feet, or the noises
of the throng below. Waked out of this dim, twilight
existence, and startled with the passing scene, I have
felt a wish to descend to the world of realities, and
join in the chase. But I fear too late, and that I had 7
better return to my bookish chimeras and indolence-
once more ! Zanetto, fascia le donne, et studio, la mate-
matica. I will think of it.

It is not wonderful that the contemplation and fear
of death become more familiar to us as we approach
nearer to it : that life seems to ebb with the decay of
Stood and youthful spirits ; and that as we find every-
thing about us subject to chance and change, as our
strength and beauty die, as our hopes and passions,
our friends and our affections leave us, we begin by
degrees to feel ourselves mortal !

I have never seen death but once, and that was in an
irifant. It is years ago. The look was calm and
placid, and the face was fair and firm. It was as if a
waxen image had been laid out in the coffin, and
strewed with innocent flowers. It was not like death,
but more like an image of life ! No breath moved the
lips, no pulse stirred, no sight or sound would enter
those eyes or ears more. YVTiile I looked at it, I saw
no pain was there ; it seemed to smile at the short
pang of life which was over : but I could not bear the
coffin-lid to be closed— it seemed to stifle me ; and still
as the nettles wave in a corner of the churchyard over
his little grave, the welcome breeze helps to refresh
me, and ease the tightness at my breast !

An ivory or marble image, like Chantry's monument
of the two children, is contemplated with pure delight.
Why do we not grieve and fret that the marble is not
alive, or fancy that it has a shortness of breath ? It
never was alive ; and it is the difficulty of making the
transition from life to death, the struggle between the
two in our imagination, that confounds their properties

446 TABLE-TALK

painfully tog-ether, and makes us conceive that the
infant that is but just dead, still wants to breathe, to
enjoy, and look about it, and is prevented by the icy
hand of death, locking up its faculties and benumbing
its senses ; so that, if it could, it would complain of its
own hard state. Perhaps religious considerations re-
concile the mind to this change sooner than any others,
by representing the spirit as fled to another sphere, and
leaving the body behind it. So in reflecting on death
generally, we mix up the idea of life with it, and thus
make it the ghastly monster it is. We think, how we
should feel, not how the dead feel.

Still from the tomb the voice of nature cries ;
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires 1

There is an admirable passage on this subject in Tucker's
Light of Nature Pursued, which I shall transcribe, as
by much the best illustration I can offer of it.

'The melancholy appearance of a lifeless body, the
mansion provided for it to inhabit, dark, cold, close
and solitary, are shocking to the imagination ; but it
is to the imagination only, not the understanding ; for
whoever consults this faculty will see at first glance,
that there is nothing dismal in all these circumstances :
if the corpse were kept wrapped up in a warm bed,
with a roasting fire in the chamber, it would feel no
comfortable warmth therefrom ; were store of tapers
lighted up as soon as day shuts in, it would see no
objects to divert it ; were it left at large it would have
no liberty, nor if surrounded with company would be
cheered thereby ; neither are the distorted features
expressions of pain, uneasiness, or distress, lliis every
one knows, and will readily allow upon being suggested",
yet still cannot behold, nor even cast a thought upon
those objects without shuddering ; for knowing that
a living person must suffer grievously under such
appearances, they become habitually formidable to the
mind, and strike a mechanical horror, which is increased
by the customs of the world around us.'

There is usually one pang added voluntarily and

ON THE FEAR OF DEATH 447

unnecessarily to the fear of death, by our affecting to
compassionate the loss which others will have in us.
If that were all, we might reasonably set our minds at
rest. The pathetic exhortation on country tombstones,
' Grieve not for me, my wife and children dear/ etc.,
is for the most part speedily followed to the letter.
We do not leave so great a void in society as we are
inclined to imagine, partly to magnify our own import-
ance, and partly to console ourselves by sympathy.
Even in the same family the g;ap,ia not so great ; the
wound closes up sooner than we should expect. Nay,
our room is not unfrequently thought be.tt.er than our
company. People walk along the streets the day after
our deaths just as they did before, and the crowd is
not diminished. While we were living, the world
seemed in a manner to exist only for us, for our delight
and amusement, because it contributed to them. But
our hearts cease to beat, and it goes on as usual, and
thinks no more about us than it did in our lifetime.
The million are devoid of sentiment, and care as little
for you or me as if we belonged to the moon. We live
the week over in the Sunday's paper, or are decently
interred in some obituary at the month's end ! It is
not surprising that we are forgotten so soon after we
quit this mortal stage ; we are scarcely noticed while
we are on it. It is not merely that our names are not
known in China — they have hardly been heard of in
the next street. We are hand and glove with the
universe, and think the obligation is mutual. This
is an evident fallacy. If this, however, does not
trouble us now, it will not hereafter. A handful of
dust can have no quarrel to pick with its neighbours,
or complaint to make against Providence, and might
well exclaim, if it had but an understanding and a
tongue, ' Go thy ways, old world, swing round in blue
ether, voluble to every age, you and I shall no mor*
jostle!'

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

448 TABLE-TALK

A little role, a little sway,

IB all the great and mighty hare

Betwixt the cradle and the grave—

and, after its short date, they hardly leave a name
behind them. 'A great man's memory may, at the
«^~~ common rate, survive him half a year/ His heirs and
successors take his titles, his power, and his wealth —
all that made him considerable or courted by others ;
and he has left nothing else behind him either to
delight or benefit the world. Posterity are not by
any means so disinterested as they are supposed to
be. They give their gratitude and admiration only
in return for benefits conferred. They cherish the
memory of those to whom they are indebted for in-
struction and delight; and they cherish it just in
proportion to the instruction and delight they are
conscious they receive. The sentiment of admiration
springs immediately from this ground, and cannot be
otherwise than well founded.1

IThe effeminate clinging to life as such, as a general
or abstract idea, is the effect of a highly civilised and
artificial state of society. Men formerly plunged into
all the vicissitudes and dangers of war, or staked their
all upon a single die, or some one passion, which if
they could not have gratified, life became a burden to
them — now our strongest passion is to think, our chief
amusement is to read new plays, new poems, new
novels, and this we may do at our leisure, in perfect
security, ad infinitum. If we look into the old his-
tories and romances, before the heU&t-lettrft* neutralised
human affairs and reduced passion to a state of mental
equivocation, we find the heroes and heroines not
setting their lives 'at a pin's fee,' but rather courting

i It has been usual to raise a very unjust clamour against the

enormous salaries of public singers, acton, and so on. This matter

seems reducible to a moral equation. They are paid out of m-.n^y

raised by voluntary contributions in the strictest sense ; and if they

did not bring certain sums into the treasury, the managers would

not engage them. These sums are exactly in proportion to the

f number of individuals to whom their performance gives an exbra-

I ordinary degree of pleasure. The talent* of a singer, actor, etc., are

f therefore worth just as much as they will fetch.

ON THE FEAR OF DEATH 440

opportunities of throwing them away in very wanton-
ness of spirit They raise their fondness for some
favourite pursuit to its height, to a pitch of madness,
and think no price too dear to pay for its full gratifica-
tion. Everything else is dross. They go to death as
to a bridal bed, and sacrifice themselves or others
without remorse at the shrine of love, of honour, of
religion, or any other prevailing feeling. Romeo runs
liis 'sea-sick, weary bark upon the rocks r"of death
the instant he finds himself deprived of his Juliet ;
and she clasps his neck in their last agonies, "and
follows him to the same fatal shore. One strong
idea takes possession of the mind and overrules every
other; and even life itself, joyless without that, be-
comes an object of indifference or loathing. There is
at least more of imagination in such a state of things,
more vigour of feeling and promptitude to act, than in
our lingering, languid, protracted attachment to life
for its own poor sake. It is, perhaps, also better, aa
well as more heroical, to strike at some daring or
darling object, and if we fail in that, to take the
consequences manfully, than to renew the lease of a
tedious, spiritless, charmless existence, merely (as
Pierre says) ' to lose it afterwards in some vile brawl '
for some worthless object. Was there not a spirit of
martyrdom as well as a spire of the reckless energy of
barbarism in this bold defiance of death ? Had nojfe.
religion something to do with it : the implicit belief in
:i future life, which rendered this of less value, and
embodied something beyond it to the imagination ;
so that the rough soldier, the infatuated lover, the
valorous knight, etc., could afford to throw away the
present venture, and take a leap into the arms of
futurity, which the modern sceptic shrinks hack from,
with all his boasted reason and vain nhilosophy,
weaker than a woman ! 1 cannot, help thinking so
myself; but 1 have endeavoured to explain this point
before, and will not enlarge farther on it here.

A life of action and danger moderates the dread of
death. It not only gives us fortitude to hear pain, but
2o

450 TABLE-TALK

teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which
we hold our present being. Sedentary and studious
men are the most apprehensive on this score. Dr.
Johnson was an instance in point. A few years
seemed to him soon over, compared with those
sweeping contemplations on time and infinity with
whicn he had been used to pose himself. In the
still-life of a man of letters there was no obvious
reason for a change. He might sit in an arm-chair
and pour out cups of tea to all eternity. Would it
had been possible for him to do so ! The most rational
cure after all for the inordinate fear of death is to set
Aa just value on life. If we merely wish to continue
on the scene to indulge our headstrong humours and
tormenting passions, we had better begone at once ;
and if we only cherish a fondness for existence accord-
ing to the good we derive from it, the pang we feel at
parting with it will not be very severe f

THE END

THE

WORLD S CLASSICS

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The World's Classics

THE best recommendation of The World's
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The Pocket Edition is printed on thin opaque
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reduced, and the volumes marked with an asterisk
are now ready in this form.

October, 1911.

THE WORLD'S CLASSICS

LIST OF TITLES

IN THEIR ORDER IN THE SERIES

Those marked by an asterisk can be obtained in the thin paper, or pocket,
edition.

*i. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Fourth Imp.

*2. Lamb's Essays of Elia. Fifth Impression.

*3. Tennyson's Poems, 1830-1865. With an Intro-
duction by T. H. WARREN. Sixth Impression.

*4. Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. Third Imp.

*5. Hazlitt's Table-Talk. Fourth Impression.

*6. Emerson's Essays, ist and 2nd Series. Fifth Imp.

*7. Keats's Poems. Third Impression.

*8. Dickens's Oliver Twist. With 24 Illustrations by
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. Third Impression.

*g. Barham's Ingoldsby Legends. Fourth Imp.
*io. Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. 3rd Imp.
*n. Darwin's Origin of Species. Fourth Impression.
*I2. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Second Imp.
*I3. English Songs and Ballads. Compiled by

T. W. H. CROSLAND. Third Impression.
*I4. Charlotte Bronte's Shirley. Third Impression.
*i5. Hazlitt's Sketches and Essays. Third Imp.
*io. Herrick's Poems. Second Impression.
*I7. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Second Impression.
*i8. Pope's Iliad of Homer. Third Impression.
*ig. Carlyle's Sartor Resartus. Third Impression. :

20. Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Second Impression.
*2i. Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination.

Third Impression.

*22. White's Natural History of Selborne. 2nd Imp.
*23. De Quincey's Opium-Eater. Third Impression
*24. Bacon's Essays. Third Impression.
*25. Hazlitt's Winterslow. Second Impression.

26. Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. Second Imp.
*27. Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. 2nd Imp.
*28. Thackeray's Henry Esmond. Third Imp.
29. Scott's Ivanhoe. Second Impression.
*3<3. Emerson's English Traits, and Representa-
tive Men. Second Impression.

*3i. George Eliot's Mill on the Floss. Third Imp. "
*32. Selected English Essays. Chosen and Arranged
by W. PEACOCK. Eighth Impression.

THE WORLD'S CLASSICS

List Of Titles— continued

33. Hume's Essays. Second Impression.

*34. Burns's Poems. Second Impression. .

*35, *44, *5i> *55, *&4, *69» *74- Gibbon's Roman Em-
pire. Seven Vols. With Maps. Vols. I, II, Third
Impression. Ill — V, Second Impression.

*3Q. Longfellow's Poems. Vol. I. Second Impression.

*40. Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Second Impression.

*4i, *48, *53. Buckle's History of Civilization in
England. Three Vols. Second Impression.

*42, *56, '76. Chaucer's Works. From the Text of Prof.
SKEAT. Three Vols. Vol. I, Second Impression. Vol.
Ill contains 'The Canterbury Tales.'

*43. Machiavelli's The Prince. Translated by LUIGI
Ricci. Second Impression.

*45. English Prose from Mandeville to Ruskin.
Chosen and arranged by W. PEACOCK. Third Imp.

*46. Essays and Letters by Leo Tolstoy. Trans-
lated by AYLMER MAUDE. Third Impression.

*47- Charlotte Bronte's Villette. Second Impression.

*4Q. A Kempis's Imitation of Christ. Second Imp.

*5o. Thackeray's Book of Snobs, and Sketches
and Travels in London. Second Impression.

*52. Watts-Dunton's Aylwin. Third Impression.

*54» *59- Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Two
Vols. Second Impression.

*«>7. Hazlitt's Spirit of the Age. Second Impression.

*58. Robert Browning's Poems. Vol. I (Pauline,
Paracelsus, Strafford, Sordello, Pippa Passes, King
Victor and King Charles). Second Impression.

*6o. The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius. A new
translation by JOHN JACKSON. Second Impression.

*6i. Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table.
Second Impression.

*62. Carlyle's On Heroes and Hero-Worship.
Second Impression.

*63- George Eliot's Adam Bede. Second Impression.

*65, *79» *77- Montaigne's Essays, FLORIO'S transla-
tion. Three volumes.

*66. Borrow's Lavengro. Second Impression.

THE WORLD'S CLASSICS

List Of Titles— continued

*67. Anne Bronte's Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

*68. Thoreau's Walden. Intro, by T. WATTS- DUNTON.

*7i, *8i, *in-*ii4. Burke's Works. Six vols. With
Prefaces by Judge WILLIS, F. W. KAFFETY, and F. H.
WILLIS.

*72. Twenty-three Tales by Tolstoy. Translated
by L. and A. MAUDE. Second Impression.

'73. Sorrow's Romany Rye.

*75- BOrrow's Bible in Spain.

*78. Charlotte Bronte's The Professor, and the
Poems Of C., E., and A. Bronte. Introduction
by THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON.

*79. Sheridan's Plays. Intro, by JOSEPH KNIGHT,

*8o. George Eliot's Silas Marner, The Lifted Veil,
Brother Jacob. Intro, by T. WATTS-DUNTON.

*82. Defoe's Captain Singleton. With an Introduc-
tion by THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON.

*83, *84- Johnson's Lives of the Poets. With an In-
troduction by ARTHUR WAUGH. Two Vols.

*85. Matthew Arnold's Poems. With an Introduction
by Sir A. T. QUILLER-COUCH.

*86. Mrs. Gaskell's Mary Barton. With an Intro-
duction by CLEMENT SHORTER.

*87 Hood's Poems. With an Intro, by WALTER JERROLD.

*88. Mrs. Gaskell's Ruth. With an Introduction by
CLEMENT SHORTER.

*8g. Holmes's Professor at the Breakfast-Table.
With an Introduction by Sir W. ROBERTSON NICOLL.

*oo. Smollett's Travels through France and
Italy. With an Introduction by THOMAS SECCOMBE.

*gi, *Q2. Thackeray's Pendennis. Introduction by
EDMUND GOSSE. Two Vols.

*93. Bacon's Advancement of Learning, and The
New Atlantis. With an Intro, by Professor CASE.

*Q4. Scott's Lives of the Novelists. With an Intro-
duction by AUSTIN DOBSON.

*95. Holmes's Poet at the Breakfast-Table. \Vith
an Introduction by Sir W. ROBERTSON NICOLL.

*Q6, *Q7, *Q8. Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic.
With an Intro, by CLEMENT SHORTER. Three Vols.

*QQ. Coleridge's Poems. Introduction by Sir A. T.

QUILLER-COUCH.

THE WORLD'S CLASSICS

List Of Titles— continued

*ioo-*io8. Shakespeare's Plays and Poems. With a
Preface by A. C. SWINBURNE, Introductions to the
several plays by E. DOWDEN, and a Note by T. WATTS-
DUNTON on the special typographical features of this
edition. Nine Volumes. Vols. I — 6 now ready. Vols.
7—9 ready shortly.

*iog. George Herbert's Poems. With an Introduction
by ARTHUR WAUGH.

*no. Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford, The Moorland Cot-
tage, etc. With an Intro, by CLEMENT SHORTER.

*ii5- Essays and Sketches by Leigh Hunt. With
• an Introduction by R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON.

*il6. Sophocles. The Seven Plays. Translated into
English Verse by Professor LEWIS CAMPBELL.

"117. Aeschylus. The Seven Plays. Translated into
English Verse by Professor LEWIS CAMPBELL.

*n8. Horae Subsecivae. By Dr. JOHN BROWN. With
an Introduction by AUSTIN DOBSON.

*IIQ. Cobbold's Margaret Catchpole. With an In-
troduction by CLEMENT SHORTER.

*I20, *I2I. Dickens's Pickwick Papers. With 43 Illus-
trations by SEYMOUR and " PHIZ." Two Vols.

*I22. Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures, and other
Stories and Essays, by DOUGLAS JERROLD. With
an Intro, by WALTER JERROLD, and 90 Illustrations.

*I23- Goldsmith's Poems. Edited by AUSTIN DOBSON.

"124. Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Comic
Writers. With an Intro, by R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON.

*I25, ."126. Carlyle's French Revolution. With an
Introduction by C. R. L. FLETCHER. Two Vols.

*I27. Home's A New Spirit of the Age. With an
Introduction by WALTER JERROLD.

*I28. Dickens's Great Expectations. With 6 Illustra-
tions by WARWICK GOBLE.

*I2Q. Jane Austen's Emma. Intro, by E. V. LUCAS.

"130, "131. Don Quixote. Jervas's translation. With an
Introduction and Notes by J. FITZMAURICE-KELLY.
Two Vols.

*I32. Leigh Hunt's The Town. With an Introduction
and Notes by AUSTIN DOBSON, and a Frontispiece.

"133. Palgrave's Golden Treasury, with additional
Poems. Fifth Impression.

THE WORLD'S CLASSICS 7

List Of Titles— continued

*i34- Aristophanes. Frere's translation of the
Acharnians, Knights, Birds, and Frogs.
With an Introduction by W. W. MERRY.

*i35- Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, and Goethe's Faust,
Part I (Anster's Translation). Intro, by A. W. WARD.

"136. Butler's Analogy. Edited by W. E. GLADSTONE.

"137. Browning's Poems. Vol. II (Dramatic Lyrics and
Romances, Men and Women, and Dramatis Personae.)

'138. Cowper's Letters. Selected, with an Introduction,
by E. V. LUCAS. Second Impression.

*I3Q. Gibbon's Autobiography. With an Introduction
by J. B. BURY.

*I40. Trollope's The Three Clerks. With an Intro-
duction by W. TEIGNMOUTH SHORE.

*i4i. Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey.

*i42. Fielding's Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.
With Introduction and Notes by AUSTIN DOBSON, and
Two Illustrations.

"143. Wells's Joseph and his Brethren. Introduc-
tion by A. C. SWINBURNE, and a Note on Rossetti and
Charles Wells by THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON.

*I44- Carlyle's Life of John Sterling. With an In-
troduction by W. HALE WHITE.

*I45- Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, and The Ethics
Of the Dust. Ruskin House edition.

*I46. Ruskin's Time and Tide, and The Crown of
Wild Olive. Ruskin House edition.

"147. Ruskin's A Joy for Ever, and The Two
Paths. Ruskin House edition.

'148. Ruskin's Unto this Last, and Munera Pul-
veris. Ruskin House edition.

"149. Reynolds's Discourses, and his Letters to
the ' Idler.' With an Intro, by AUSTIN DOBSON.

*i5o. Washington Irving's Conquest of Granada.

*I5*> *I52- Lesage's Gil Bias. (Smollett's translation.)
Intro, and Notes by J. FITZMAURICE-KELLY. 2 Vols.

*I53. Carlyle's Past and Present. Introduction by
G. K. CHESTERTON.

*I54. Mrs. Gaskell's North and South. Introduction
by CLEMENT SHORTER.

'155. George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life. In-
troduction by ANNIE MATHESON.

THE WORLD'S CLASSICS

List Of Titles— continued

"156. Mrs. Gaskell's Sylvia's Lovers. Introduction
by CLEMENT SHORTER.

*i57- Mrs. Gaskell's "Wives and Daughters. In-
troduction by CLEMENT SHORTER.

*I58. Lord Dufferin's Letters from High Lati-
tudes. Illustrated. Introduction by R. W. MACAN.

159. Grant's Captain of the Guard.

160. Marryat's Mr. Midshipman Easy.

161. Jane Porter's The Scottish Chiefs.

*• 162. Ainsworth's The Tower of London.

163. Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans.

164. Marryat's The King's Own. With 6 Illustra-
tions by WARWICK GOBLE.

*i65. Lytton's Harold. With 6 Illustrations by CHARLES
BURTON.

166. Mayne Reid's The Rifle Rangers. With 6
Illustrations by J. E. SUTCLIFFE.

167. Mayne Reid's The Scalp Hunters. With 6
Illustrations by A. H. COLLINS.

*i68. Mrs. Gaskell's Cousin Phillis, and other
Tales, etc. With an Introduction by CLEMENT
SHORTER.

*l6g. Southey's Letters. Selected, with an Introduction
and Notes by MAURICE H. FITZGERALD. [In preparation.
Other Volumes in preparation

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HENRY FROWDE

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